If she is nominated and confirmed by the Senate, she would be the first coal miner’s daughter to hold the job . . . Read more →
EppsNet Archive: Music
Blondes
There is the soft and willing and alcoholic blonde who doesn’t care what she wears as long as it is mink or where she goes as long as it is the Starlight Room and there is plenty of dry champagne. There is the small perky blonde who is a little pal and wants to pay her own way and is full of sunshine and common sense and knows judo from the ground up and can toss a truck driver over her shoulder without missing more than one sentence out of the editorial in the Saturday Review. There is the pale, pale blonde with anemia of some non-fatal but incurable type. She is very languid and very shadowy and she speaks softly out of nowhere and you can’t lay a finger on her because in the first place you don’t want to and in the second place she is reading The… Read more →
Teaching Computer Science: Applause
We did an interactive exercise to write a simple program that prints numbers and the squares of the numbers — a for loop, basically. We went around the room with each student providing one element of the loop and me writing them on the whiteboard: for, open paren, int, i, equals, 1, semicolon, etc. I thought it went very well. The timing was good and it was obvious that most of the class understood what was going on. When we got to a girl who’s usually ahead of everyone and knows all the answers, what we needed from her was “curly bracket” but what she actually said was “semicolon” and there was a collective groan from the rest of the class. When the last student said “close curly bracket,” there was spontaneous applause, immediately, before I even wrote it on the board. It wasn’t like a concert at the high… Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Johnny Mathis – singer I got an email this afternoon notifying me that priority tickets are now available for a Johnny Mathis concert Nov. 8 at the Segerstrom Center for the Arts. If you’d asked me this morning if Johnny Mathis is still alive, I would have said “I don’t think so.” Read more →
What Rock and Roll Really Is
It’s very easy for people to forget what rock and roll really is. Look man, I’m forty-seven years old, and I grew up in Wyoming, and I stole cars and drove five hundred miles to watch Little Richard, and I wanna tell you somethin’ — when I saw this nigger come out in a gold suit, fuckin’ hair flyin’, and leap up onstage and come down on his piano bangin’ and goin’ fuckin’ nuts in Salt Lake City, I went, “Hey man, I wanna be like him. This is what I want.” — David Briggs, quoted by Neil Young in Waging Heavy Peace Read more →
EppsNet Movie Reviews: We Are the Best!
Contrary to the IMDB summary below, only two of the girls, Klara and Bobo, have no instruments (or talent). The third girl, Hedvig, is a painfully shy classical guitar-playing schoolmate recruited to teach them about music. This movie is a joy! I don’t know what else to say. See it. Rating: We Are the Best! Director: Cast: IMDb rating: ( votes) Read more →
Rickie Lee Jones at the Coach House
We saw Rickie Lee Jones at the Coach House Sunday night. I’ve been an RLJ fan since . . . I think it was 1979, when this young woman I’d never heard of showed up on Saturday Night Live and sang “Chuck E’s in Love”: It might be possible to watch that now and say, “What’s the big deal? I’ve heard women sing like that.” Not in 1979, you didn’t. In case you’ve forgotten or blocked it out or you weren’t born yet, in 1979 we were listening to Olivia Newton-John, Debby Boone, and similar lame-ass bullshit. (Or Christopher Cross, Barry Manilow . . . the male singers were equally uninspiring.) I couldn’t have been more electrified if she’d capped off the performance by whacking the Captain and Tennille across the face with her beret. RLJ’s style influenced a lot of singers, including some who’ve been much more commercially successful,… Read more →
Dying at the Right Time
Paul McCartney has 5,700,000 Likes on Facebook. John Lennon has 15,000,000 Likes, despite being dead for more than 30 years. As Nietzsche used to say, “One must discontinue being feasted upon when one tasteth best; that is known by those who want to be long loved.” Read more →
People I Thought Were Dead
Chuck Barris – TV host, “The Gong Show” Fidel Castro – Cuban dictator Richard Chamberlain – actor, “Dr. Kildare” Jules Feiffer – cartoonist, “The New Yorker” Rhonda Fleming – actress Pete Fountain – clarinetist Zsa Zsa Gabor – actress Dick Gregory – comedian Lee Iacocca – automobile manufacturer Dean Jones – actor Graham Kerr – The Galloping Gourmet Imelda Marcos – Philippine first lady “Little Richard” Penniman – rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Neil Simon – playwright, “The Odd Couple” Larry Storch – actor, “F-Troop” Rip Taylor – comedian Mel Tillis – country singer/songwriter Grant Tinker – TV executive, NBC Y. A. Tittle – Hall of Fame football player Claus von Bulow – acquitted attempted murder defendant Gene Wilder – actor, “Young Frankenstein” Chuck Yeager – test pilot Updates Chuck Barris – died 3/27/2017, age 87 Fidel Castro – died 11/25/2016, age 90 Rhonda Fleming – died 10/14/2020, age 97 Pete… Read more →
That L.A. Sunshine
Also featuring the USC Marching Band horn section . . . Read more →
Singing the Song from the Heart, Without Any Accoutrements, Without Any Production
The whole idea of a singer-songwriter singing the song from the heart, singing a song that means something to them and actually singing a song that’s good enough to stand up on its own without any accoutrements, without any production, without any machines supporting it, without any formulated beats, without any computer making sure that all the rhythms are justified so that everything is perfect, you take all those things away and put a great song there with a great performance, even if it’s not by the greatest vocalists in the world or the greatest guitar player or instrumentalist in the world, if that person is believing what they’re singing and it’s truly there and the song is great and the song is written from a real place, then the song’s going to resonate with anybody who wants to listen to it. — Neil Young Read more →
See You in Hell, Carl Douglas
[See You in Hell is a feature by our guest blogger, Satan — PE] “It put a smile on my face that finally [Donald Sterling] would be unable to deny the racist allegations against him,” said Carl Douglas, a lawyer who represented former Clippers general manager Elgin Baylor in a lawsuit against Sterling. — FOX Sports Carl Douglas is best known as a member of the O.J. Simpson defense team. O.J. Simpson has done some regrettable things, like murdering a couple of white people, but at least he’s never made negative remarks about Magic Johnson photos on Instagram. See you in Hell . . . P.S. Carl Douglas the lawyer should not be confused with Carl Douglas the “Kung Fu Fighting” singer. Him, I like. Read more →
Let it Bleed
At my piano lesson tonight, I noticed what looked like a streak of blood on one of the keys. The next thing I noticed was that the tip of my right index finger was bleeding — apparently a paper cut from a sheet of music, although I didn’t feel anything at the time. I didn’t want to ruin the piano so I stopped playing and tried to get everything cleaned up. I asked my teacher, “If you’re playing a concert and you start bleeding, what should you do? Just keep going?” “Yes.” “What if in addition to being a pianist, you’re also a hemophiliac and you might die? Would that alter your advice?” “Are you a hemophiliac?” “Fortunately, no.” Read more →
Neil Young Acoustic Show at the Dolby Theater
We were lucky enough to see Neil Young’s solo acoustic performance at the Dolby Theatre in LA last night. I say “lucky” even though we paid for the tickets because they did sell out rather quickly. Here’s the set list, to the best of my recollection. I may have some of the harmonica instrumentation wrong. He had the harmonica rack on for the whole show; some songs he played it and some he didn’t. First Set From Hank to Hendrix – guitar, harmonica. A good opener for this kind of a show: From Hank to Hendrix / I walked these streets with you / Here I am with this old guitar / Doin’ what I do. / I always expected / That you should see me through / I never believed in much / But I believed in you. On the Way Home – guitar, harmonica Only Love Can Break… Read more →
Expanding My Repertoire
My piano teacher asks me if there are any pieces I want to learn . . . “How about . . . ?” and here I name a piece by Chopin. “This one?” she asks and starts to play it. “Yeah.” “It’s hard.” “Well, it sounds quite impressive but I think if you break it down it’s just arpeggios and thirds.” “No, it’s not just thirds,” she says and starts to play it again to show me. “And that’s with the left hand. Do you think you can play that with your left hand?” “My left hand’s not very good.” “I know.” “So that one is too hard.” “Yes.” “OK, how about . . . ?” and here I name another piece by Chopin. “That’s the only piece that’s harder than the first one.” “How about this?” I ask, and play a YouTube video on my phone. “What is that?”… Read more →
Death Row Headlines We’d Like to See
I saw this headline on MSN News this morning: Texas Set to Execute Aspiring Rapper Here’s an undated photo of the musical murderer: The fact that he was an aspiring rapper seems comically irrelevant to the fact that he was convicted of slitting a man’s throat — which didn’t kill him — and then stabbing him — which did. Some future Death Row headlines we might expect to see from MSN: Texas Set to Execute Aspiring Comic with 37 Twitter Followers Texas Set to Execute Amateur Banjo Player Texas Set to Execute Man With Irritating Laugh Read more →
The Best Advice I Got This Week
I was watching a Paul Barton YouTube video about piano practice . . . he said that when someone asked Horowitz how he’s able to play so many difficult pieces, Horowitz replied, “You just got to really want to.” That seems like excellent advice. It’s short, just a few words . . . you can remember it without even trying to. And I think it could be applied to almost any endeavor. Imagine someone listening to Horowitz and thinking, “Wow, that’s great! I’d give anything to be able to play like that!” But he wouldn’t really give anything. He wants to play like Horowitz but he doesn’t really want to play like Horowitz. He doesn’t want to practice 20 hours a day and give up everything else in his life. In any endeavor, reaching a goal often requires more than someone is willing to give . . . not more… Read more →