I used to make music with Leon and Jurgen (2003), and that rather nice sceptre was promised to me one evening by Hennie the painter. Henk (1982) played a mean snare-drum and is greatly missed; I think I would also be dead by now if that life had continued.
Spain is to be represented in Eurovision by Las Ketchup, three daughters of Cordoban flamenco singer El Tomate. Their number is called Blody Mary–at least by El Diario Montanés; Spanish TV describes it as “a perfect cocktail which combines [a] smooth and elegant melody” with “the happiness and colour of the group”.
Here, from 1957, is Cádiz Renfe’s stationmaster using the regional Information and Tourism-crat to get a carnival club to change the title of their mini-show from “The Stationmaster and His Subordinates” to “Infernal Train Emigrants”. Here‘s an equally hilarious case from 2004, in which the mayoress and assistant of Archidona (Málaga) obtain a court order…
… where, it seems, very fat men with beards and skirts are DJs, very thin men with beards and skirts are gogos, and semi-wrapped Egyptian mummies with not very much hair at all are barmen. Since it seems increasingly unlikely that I will ever be a daddy, maybe it’s time to ditch the dress and…
Like all other biographies of Joseph Goebbels, Das Goebbels Experiment, seen the other night at the Filmoteca, dates the “Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg?” (“Do you want total war?”) call to the February 1943 Sport Palace speech/Sportpalastrede. Here is the truth, as told me by a Dutch bass player: It is not generally known that…
Like all other biographies of Joseph Goebbels, Das Goebbels Experiment, seen the other night at the Filmoteca, dates the “Wollt Ihr den totalen Krieg?” (“Do you want total war?”) call to the February 1943 Sport Palace speech/Sportpalastrede. Here is the truth, as told me by a Dutch bass player: It is not generally known that…
There’s a good organ miscellania page here. The Sultan and I anecdote was one of the few useful pieces of information I knew as a child. The Spanish connection lies in the Novelda rock organ, of which more here, and the information that “Spanish organs of the 18th century include a number of mischievous sound…
Disappointed to discover that Fats Waller’s taties in All that meat and no potatoes are not as grubby as Seamus Heaney’s (“Are your praties dry/And are they fit for digging?”/“Put in your spade and try,”/Says Dirty-Faced McGuigan.) (The previous post contained a link to Alan & Jenny’s site for the St Louis Zipper Washboard Band,…
The eighteenth century would have sounded rather different if composers had employed Persian instead of Turkish music: Xenophon and others report: “In battles, Iranians played certain sounds that made the enemy fearful and escape, such as the sound of stones falling from the mountain or the sound of a waterfall or the horrible sound of…