Category Archive: MUSIC
South Australia Venerates the Maestro
12 September 2016: Thirty Years of the Richard Wagner Society of SA Inc. 1986: what a year! South Australia’s 150th birthday. John Bannon was Premier – remember him? Ronnie Reagan was U.S. President; Bob Hawke was Prime Minister. Glenelg won a stirring Grand Final against the odds. And SA State Opera, eclectic as ever, staged Wagner’s The Flying Dutchman, at Her Majesty’s Theatre, then the Opera Theatre, which inspired three men of letters, Professor Andrew McCredie, Malcolm Fox and Ralph Middenway (with spiritual father Brian Coghlin absent but there in spirit), to convene a hasty public meeting on 20 June 1986, in…
Continue Reading →Suspicious Minds
Songs in Our Heart # 47 Suspicious Minds (Elvis Presley version) (Written by Mark James; released April 1969) [A great unresolved-love-triangle song, brilliantly covered by Elvis in his fecund late 1960s comeback phase, with inspired slow/fast, vanish/reappear production touches. See and hear also the lovely segue performed by Elvis Costello in his Elvis in Memphis concert video, moving from Alison to Suspicious Minds.]
Continue Reading →Hurdy Gurdy Man
(from "Zodiac")
Songs in Our Heart # 46 Hurdy Gurdy Man (Donovan) (Written by Donovan; released May 1968) [Outwardly Sweetness and Light, actually, brilliantly creepy as hell, well suited for use on the film Zodiac.]
Continue Reading →Wallflower
Songs in Our Heart # 45 Wallflower (Peter Gabriel) (Written by Peter Gabriel; released September 1982) [A beautiful, soulful, quiet howl, in honour and recognition of prisoners of conscience everywhere.]
Continue Reading →Wolfie’s Wheel Turns
"Where's my 'Best Of' Compilation?" - 'Mozart's Last Days' by Hermann Kaulbach (1873)
Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (27 January 1756 – 5 December 1791) was identified in Charles Murray’s Curious historiography, Human Accomplishment, as ‘measurably’ the most eminent and significant person in Western Music (along with Beethoven). Mozart finally gets his collected hits properly done. (Now that Mrs Gibb has passed, we can note that Andy Gibb got a greatest hits record after one hit single). Now, we see not only Figaro, Don Giovanni, Cosi, et al, but just about everything the great prodigy ever scribbled, a huge undertaking that will pose a giant test of his admirers. Deutsche Grammophon & Decca Records are marking Wolfie’s…
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