Category Archive: MUSIC
Do You Know the Way to San Jose
Songs in Our Heart # 35 Do You Know the Way to San Jose (Dionne Warwick) (Written by Burt Bacharach and Hal David, released April 1968) [Last time I was there, you could put a hundred down and buy a car. An extremely intricate pop song, sung as only Ms Warwick can.]
Continue Reading →Werther
(by Jules Massenet, 1892) Royal Opera House, London, June 2016 Werther loves Charlotte but she is affianced to Albert and a sense of duty. Werther understands the score; she must do her duty. He will (so he threatens) vanish, violently. But will he, a poet not a marksman, manage to blow himself away? Well, we liked this production. It is a slight piece of work, modern, situational rather than plot-driven, and it can glow only if the doomed non-couple have the requisite conviction. In this production, they did. Massenet’s adaptation of Goethe’s The Sorrows of Young Werther (1774), his animalistic Sturm und Drang…
Continue Reading →Red Right Hand
(photo of Nick by Bleddyn Butcher)
Songs in Our Heart # 34 Red Right Hand (Nick Cave) (Written by Mick Harvey, Nick Cave and Thomas Wydler; released April 1994) [A gothic western classic.] Before we enjoy the song, let us view the interesting portrait of Nick by Harold Arkley (1999), c/- the National Portrait Gallery:
Continue Reading →Gangsta’s Paradise
Songs in Our Heart # 33 Gangsta’s Paradise (Coolio) (Written by Stevie Wonder, Coolio, Doug Rasheed and Larry Sanders; released August 1995) [Desolate and beautiful. How can rap, violins, falsetto and a choir work?] (Update: Coolio, straight outta Compton, now in Paradise: 1 August 1963 – 28 September 2022)
Continue Reading →If I Can’t Have You
Songs in Our Heart # 32 If I Can’t Have You (Yvonne Elliman) (Written by Barry, Maurice and Robin Gibb; released November 1977) [Best disco pop ever. Perhaps equalled only by Donna Summer’s I Feel Love. Hmmmn. Discuss.]
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