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[JMK]

The constant sound of the lobotomy drilling?

Oh, my, DR Elmore, now you've done it--I have another excuse to mention my web article.   When you have a free half-hour or so ( ), go here:

http://hometown.aol.com/jmkauffman/sheddinglight.html

to discover that Frances was not lobotomized.

[elmore3003]

Though I have a concert this afternoon, I have nothing (nothing, I tell you!) on my schedule for this evening.

DRJay and Hero, what is the afternoon concert, pray tell?

[JMK]

So, tonight begins a World Series between a team from New York

Um, Noel.....

I know you Yankees fans are in denial, but this is ridiculous.  

[elmore3003]

Oh, my, DR Elmore, now you've done it--I have another excuse to mention my web article.   When you have a free half-hour or so (), go here:
to discover that Frances was not lobotomized.

DRJMK, thank you for the article.  I didn't know the lobotomy was a myth.  I do stand my flippancy over why it might be a weird album, mere speculation, however verified inaccurate it may be.  It's always good to try to get a jump from DRJRand54.

[Jrand74]

LOL

[JMK]

Actually, DR Elmore, it's a long-running inside joke.  There is no such album--it was listed years ago (as a misprint) in the All-Music Guide and it struck JR and me as incredibly funny.  We have often referred to Frances' "lost" Ed Sullivan episode where she swings Fats "live," so to speak.  

[Jay]

DRJay and Hero, what is the afternoon concert, pray tell?

The Los Angeles Philharmonic, conducted by Mr. James Conlon.  (It was recently announced, by the way, that Mr. Conlon will become the Music Director of the Los Angeles Opera, following the departure of Mr. Kent Nagano, in 2006.  Though I will miss Mr. Nagano, I am pleased with the selection of Mr. Conlon.)

Mr. Conlon has been involved over the past few years in reviving music from Europe from the '30s and '40s either suppressed by the Nazis or written by composers who were imprisoned (and many of whom were killed) in the concentration camps.

Today's program opens with such a piece of music:  Viktor Ullman's Symphony No. 2.  The second half is comprised of Mahler's Symphony No. 1.

The notes from the L.A. Philharmonic's website offer some interesting insight into the selection of the program:

For anyone who claims art and politics are somehow separate, that the artistic endeavor somehow hovers in the ether, floating above the grime and filth of politics, a comparison of the lives of Gustav Mahler and Viktor Ullmann offers a rude awakening. The reality of Europe in the 1920s and '30s meant that art was political. It always had been, but the shrill demagoguery of politics and rulers between the wars - Stalin in Russia and Hitler in Germany - brought political pressure to bear in every sphere of creative life, music included.

Gustav Mahler's and Viktor Ullmann's careers followed roughly parallel trajectories for their first 30 years. But in their fourth decade of life, the two men's paths diverge. Mahler became director of the Court Opera in Vienna, a leading post in European musical life, at the age of 37, and spent the remaining years before his early death as music director of the New York Philharmonic. The performance of his Eighth Symphony in Munich in 1910 was probably the most important musical event in German-speaking Europe in the years leading up to World War I, and it marked the culmination of Mahler's work as a composer. Ullmann entered his thirties just as the Nazis were consolidating their grip on Germany, a stranglehold that would soon extend throughout central Europe. This included Prague, where the composer settled after the Nazis rendered unfeasible his continued presence in Germany. But Prague proved no safe haven. On September 8, 1942, the Nazis sent Ullmann to the concentration camp at Terezín (Theresienstadt), where he composed, among other things, the Symphony on these programs and his chamber opera The Emperor of Atlantis, the work that spurred the rediscovery of his music following its performance in Amsterdam in 1975. Ullmann died in the gas chamber at Auschwitz on October 18, 1944, a fate that could also have been Mahler's but for a difference of 38 years.

[Panni]

For DR Elmore... The Guest Room! Of course it will have more than two chairs. And the purple curtains will soon be history....

[elmore3003]

Mr. Conlon has been involved over the past few years in reviving music from Europe from the '30s and '40s either suppressed by the Nazis or written by composers who were imprisoned (and many of whom were killed) in the concentration camps.

I recognized the name Ullman, but I did not connect it with THE EMPEROR OF ATLANTIS.  One of the "Entartete Musik" series of recordings for Decca was the gorgeous DIE VOGEL by Braunfels, whose pupil at the Cologne Conservatory Trude Rittmann came to the USA and wrote great Broadway dance arrangements for Agnes de Mille, Jerome Robbins, Fritz Lowe, Richard Rodgers and others, not to mention her incidental music and songs for Mary Martin's PETER PAN.  If you don't know DIE VOGEL, look for a copy.  A glorious opera!

[elmore3003]

For DR Elmore... The Guest Room! Of course it will have more than two chairs. And the purple curtains will soon be history....

How do I love you? Let me count the ways, another Duchess of Windsor quote?

[DearReaderLaura]

Good morning.

TOD: Although I do not actually own any of her CDs, I find "Wing" to be, uh, interesting. "I Want to Hold Your Hand" is especially, uh, interesting.

http://www.wingtunes.com/public/samples.aspx

[Jrand74]

I believe those are Lavender, DRPANNI....

[elmore3003]

I believe those are Lavender, DRPANNI....

You say lavender, Frances Farmer might say different.

[elmore3003]

I meant to ask earlier, is anyone besides me having a hellish time with eBay searches this morning/afternoon?

[Charles Pogue]

BK, I have never heard the Derek and Clive album by Cook & Moore, but have heard about it for years, particularly about the bit of extracting lobsters from Jayne Mansfield's posterior.  You'll have to burn me a CD of this album.  

Another weird album I have is a Helen Merrill album (a Japanese import) where every song is prefaced by a French narrator speaking French gibberish.  The songs are nice, but it's tough to sit through the French.

Speaking of weird lounge music, I do have a CD of Esquivel's space-age bachelor pad music.  

[MBarnum]

DR JRand54, sorry about your Ebay DVD situation...don't you hate it when that happens. I won a Bollywood DVD set and only received one of the two DVDs from the set. He is now an unregistered user and I guess I will never see that second disc. And if you guys have luck with Paypal helping you out let me know...they have always ignored my troubles in the past.

And if you and/or BK still need a DVD of HORROR OF PARTY BEACH just give me a holler and I will wing complimentary copies your way...of course they are the MST3K versions...but the commercials ARE cut out!

[François de Paris]

There is plenty of wonderful children's theatre that kids can go to and be indoctrinated into theatre.  Also I don't personally don't think young, young children belong in a theatre.  They should be of an age old enough where they can behave and understand the proprieties and obligations of being an audience member and appreciate and pay attention to what's happening on stage.  

I quite agree with that!
But then, when they behave as such, I don't think they can be called "children" anymore, since so many so-called "adults" don't even react and act that way!

[François de Paris]

BK, my favourite weird recording is Marcel Marceau Live...long tracks of silence, with intermittent bits of enthusiastic applause.  

I have the studio cast recording of it!
I don't like it and I won't say... a word about it!

[François de Paris]

Play Julie Andrews singing Stay Awake from MARY POPPINS - works for me everytime.

You mean.... Dame Julie had a soporific voice then??!!

Maybe we should call you Michael, and Panni, Jane!

[Jrand74]

I am nonplussed.

[bk]

I'll have to go out and find which of the sixty unpacked boxes has the LPs.

I'm back, and she of the Evil Eye has left the home environment.  On my travels I visited Larry Edmunds in Hollywood.  I have never liked their new store and it's just a sad thing to walk in there and see 0 customers.  Their old store (the original Larry Edmunds), just a block to the west, was one of the great bookstores - all cinema and theater books, and in those halcyon days you could walk in there and see the likes of Francois Truffaut (saw him twice), and many other well-known director/writer types, as well as the creme de la creme of film historians, who would all hang out there regularly.  I walked down the boulevard to kill time, and it's criminal what it's been allowed to become.  Even in the mid-sixties it was starting to go down that route, but somehow all through the seventies there were still wonderful stores spread from Higland to Vine.  Now it's basically crap - tattoo parlors, souvenir shops of the sleazy kind, t-shirt shops, lousy fast food stands - blechhh.  I keep hoping some wealthy conglomerate will fix up Highland to Vine in the way they have La Brea to Highland.  It would be so wonderful to have that miracle mile or so walkable and fun.

In other distressing news, the ice cream emporium that housed C. C. Brown's redux has already folded its tent.  They were in business a total of three weeks.  Shame on them for even thinking they could run a business without sufficient capital to last until the official opening of the complex.  Stupid.

[Jrand74]

Three weeks?!!!

Is that the place that served the ice cream in the glass that tipped over and broke?

[bk]

Yep, a portent of things to come.

[Jane]

François, “They should FIRE Trump!”  I’m ROTFLOL-I love it!

Michael Shayne there are pain specialists out there and I wish you good vibes finding something that helps.  

Panni I like the window in your living room.   I also like the robot, etc. collecton.  After MBarnums post I went back and took a second look at the old style oven.  I miss those.  Your new place looks lovely.

Matthew hope the rehearsal went well.  THE SECRET GARDEN is a show I would like to see again.

[Matt H.]

So, tonight begins a World Series between a team from New York, where I've three shows in rehearsal, and a team from Missouri, where DW Joy will soon be performing,

Since when is Boston located in New York state?

[Jane]

  Also, be careful with the shelves and remember my calamitous experience in August.  I had my friend who rebuilt the one wall come and look at the opposite one where the bookshelves are beginning to sag, and hopefully, he'll be working on it by the end of the week.

Unless your friend lets you sleep at his house, please be sure he doesn’t use your bed to store the books this time.  Don't want you sleeping on the floor again.

[Matt H.]

Finally today my PBS DVD set of BROADWAY - THE AMERICAN MUSICAL came, so I watched the first two hour disc plus extras. Yep, there are definite omissions that make it less than definitive, but what's there is a nice overview and the clips are a tonic. Nice to see that Turner has located a little bit of the movie of SALLY in color. The one time I watched it on TCM some years ago, the whole thing was only the black and white master.

I wish they could find the color versions of "The Wedding of the Painted Doll" and other early Technicolor sequences.

[Noel]

I'm not a Yankees fan, but last I looked they'd won the first three games...

Wait a minute, wait a minute: WHAT HAPPENED?

The Kerry rally was billed as a Victory Party, for whatever that's worth.

All of a sudden, my mind's pulled in a zillion different directions:

There's the musical I've been writing.

Two old friends have just pitched new ideas for musicals at me, and one's pretty intriguing (reading the play on which it's to be based, now)

On Wednesdays, my Advanced Song Improv group marches towards our goal of completing a completely improvised "And Then I Wrote" revue of the works of a non-existant (made-up) songwriter.

Saturdays, there's the Second City revue.  I've just created the world's catchiest tune for them to improvise to, and nobody can get it out of their heads.  We also improvised some other songs.

Monday night is the reading of the play based on Shakespeare sonnets for which I've contributed two songs.

DW Joy's leaving town in a handful of hours, so I must do her laundry so she can fill her tremendous suitcase.

I think the Cardinals will win.

[elmore3003]

Unless your friend lets you sleep at his house, please be sure he doesn’t use your bed to store the books this time.  Don't want you sleeping on the floor again.

Your memory is too good!  No way this time, baby!   As you might remember, the other side isn't as laden with books!  Did you get VANITY FAIR yet?

[Matt H.]

I'm not a Yankees fan, but last I looked they'd won the first three games...

Wait a minute, wait a minute: WHAT HAPPENED?

I would think for someone living in NYC, the last four games of that series would have been headline/front page/lead-off news on every paper, radio, and TV news broadcast, especially since what Boston pulled off was a first in playoff history. Can't believe it would totally have escaped your attention.