Well, dear readers, let’s start with the best news of yesterday – we had us a major miracle, so that was exceptional best news. That colored the entire day. Meanwhile, I am currently sitting here like so much fish, listening to the marvelous Artur Rodzinski conduct Wagner, including act three of Die Valkure with Miss Helen Traubel. I must say, the opening track of it was quite the worst mess I’ve ever heard – as if the engineers were in shock that the music had started before they’d gotten a sound test. Things improve quickly and then it was fun to hear. The other Wagner is orchestral and is great. I think if people get this small box, they’re perhaps going to realize just how good Rodzinski was. So far, my favorite disc is one with Morton Gould’s Spirituals for Orchestra – I have it with Gould conducting and Howard Hanson conducting, but this performance is something special. The companion pieces, Copland’s Lincoln Portrait and Gershwin’s An American in Paris are great, and the sound is really good on that CD. The Bizet Symphony in C was also very nicely done. I can’t tell you what a pleasure it’s been with all this Ormandy and now Rodzinski – just musicmaking at its finest. Looking forward to getting back to the final nineteen Ormandy CDs and to finishing this set, and I also have some other stuff to listen to. Obviously, I got no chance to watch anything, as the day was busy and the night was busy, too. I even started writing these here notes a bit later than usual.
Yesterday was a very nice day, mostly due to the major miracle. I did get eight hours of sleep, got up, and had a forty-five-minute conversation with Cindy Williams, mostly about our friend Vern, but also about the one-woman show she’ll be premiering this summer, which sounds like a whole lot of fun. After that, I finessed the commentary, whilst listening to Rodzinski conduct much wonderful music. Then Marshall Harvey arrived, and the fellow who lives in the back house joined us and we moseyed on over to the new storage facility – a LOT of traffic at three-thirty, which was weird going in that direction. We met the helper’s mom and I gave her the Nudie Musical Blu-rays and a box of something she was out of. Meanwhile, we began the moving of about eight boxes to the lower floor unit and got all that done, so that I can now navigate inside each of those units to more easily find stuff. We found another box of Nudie Blu-rays, but that’s it. I’m finding it hard to believe that we’ve already gone through four hundred of the second pressing – that means we’ve sold nine hundred of these. I can’t believe there’s not another box or two somewhere, so I’ll keep my eye open for them. Otherwise, we’re gonna have to do another pressing of five hundred. I guess the movie has quite a few fans and people seem to find out about the Blu-ray in waves, for whatever reason. Then we went into the personal unit, but that was impossible – the boxes I need to go through are probably all the way in the back, so I’m going to have to hire a couple of workers to remove everything so I can look through those boxes, and then we can reorganize how things are in there. So, I’ll try to do that next week. It really shouldn’t take more than two hours, tops.
After that, we were all exhausted, so we went to Stanley’s. They seemed to be operating at full capacity – almost every table inside was taken, although I must say they’re all pretty far apart. The CDC said no masks necessary for inside or outside if fully vaccinated, so I retired my mask. It felt kind of nice to see people’s faces again. I had my chicken Caesar salad, Marshall had my favorite, the grilled chicken pasta with broccoli, cashews, and red onions, the fellow from the back house had a salmon salad, and the gal who is the good organizer had some pesto pasta thing. My salad was great, and I ate it all up and didn’t add any extra dressing save for one little forkful. We were there for about ninety minutes.
Then I came home, and I had six videos to watch and approve, five of which were fine and one which will get redone this weekend due to my displeasure with the track – the sheet music for this song is so screwed up – it’s from a show, but the music if from the revival, where they totally screwed up the arrangements. So, I went over it with Richard Allen and he now has the correct chords and will send a new track today. I then went to the local Rite Aid for some Claritin-D. This Rite Aid is always out of the twenty-four-hour version, which is what I like, so I had to settle for the twelve-hour version. After all that, I finally listened to music and relaxed.
Today, I’ll be up when I’m up, I’ll do whatever needs doing, I have to rest my voice all day and evening, I’ll hopefully pick up some packages, I’ll eat something but have no idea what, and then at some point I’ll watch, listen and relax.
I have two things to do over the weekend, one quick and the other that will take about two hours, but I must get them done and this is the weekend to do it. Otherwise, I can have some ME time, which will be good, because next week is very busy with shipping Indiegogo stuff and hopefully shipping the two recent titles and announcing a bunch of stuff, including two new show CDs, along with the Tonight’s the Night CD and Blu-ray.
Well, dear readers, I must take the day, I must do the things I do, I must, for example, be up when I’m up, do whatever needs doing, rest my voice, hopefully pick up some packages, eat, and then watch, listen, and relax. Today’s topic of discussion: It’s Friday – what is currently in your CD player and your DVD/Blu and Ray player? I’ll start – CD, Rodzinski and Ormandy. Blu-ray, I think theres still another ballet to watch and a couple of movies, including The Innocents. Your turn. Let’s have loads of lovely postings, shall we, whilst I hit the road to dreamland, happy to have had a major miracle kind of day.