Roger O Green

Kennedy Center Honors 2016

James Taylor: “I had no concept of where I might be next week, never mind 16 years into the next century.”

As I’ve noted often in this space, I watch the Kennedy Center Honors every year. It’s like a well-oiled machine, with the event taking place in early December (this year Sunday, December 4), then edited down for broadcast in a two-hour slot on CBS-TV the week between Christmas and New Year’s (this time, Tuesday, December 27. 9-11 p.m. EST).

The host of CBS’ Late Show, Stephen Colbert, will return to emcee the Kennedy Center Honors 2016; this is his third consecutive year. This year’s honorees are Al Pacino, Martha Argerich, Mavis Staples, and James Taylor and the Eagles. Generally, the President and First Lady sit in the box seats with the honorees, while others sing, dance, or speak in tribute to the honorees.

Martha Argerich – the one person I must admit I did not know about. This Washington Post title is interesting: Martha Argerich is a legend of the classical music world. “But she doesn’t act like one.” She says:

“‘But I don’t understand, because I think I haven’t done much in America.'”

“Not much, that is, apart from appearing with most of the country’s leading orchestras: the Boston Symphony, the Philadelphia Orchestra, the New York Philharmonic… Argerich always plays with other people now; she never enjoyed the loneliness of appearing solo on a concert stage, and around 1981 simply decided not to do it anymore… She strides out on stage like someone in a tremendous hurry and plunges right into the music, often leaping up as soon as she has finished.”

LISTEN to Tchaikovsky Piano Concerto No 1. Martha Argerich, piano – Charles Dutoit, conductor (1975)

James Taylor – he’s James Taylor. He has helped honor previous winners such as Yo-Yo Ma, last year’s winner Carole King, and, with Mavis Staples, Paul McCartney. Taylor wrote on his page:

“Having grown up in the confines of Chapel Hill, NC in the 1950’s, I found myself, at the age of 18, on my own in Greenwich Village in the mid-60’s. It was a time of great change, many dangers and near complete freedom, purchased at the cost of any sense of a secure future. I had no concept of where I might be next week, never mind 16 years into the next century. So the prospect of attending the Kennedy Center Honors again, but this time as an honoree, is astonishing. I am deeply moved to be included in such august company and hugely grateful to the Kennedy Center Honors for the gift of this great award.”

LISTEN to James Taylor ༺♥༻ Greatest Hits (1976)

Mavis Staples – I wrote about her in 2011 and about the Staple Singers in 2014 (her, her sisters, and her father).

Al Pacino – I have actually seen him in relatively few films.
The Godfather (1972), Serpico (1973), …and justice for all. (1979), Sea of Love (1989), Scent of a Woman (1992) – which I did not much like, The Insider (1999), Danny Collins (2015)

WATCH Top 10 Al Pacino Performances

The Eagles – in anticipation of their award, I wrote about them this past summer

The Kennedy Center Honors 2016 is the 39th annual event.

Always look on the bright side of life

Hey, I’m working on it, looking for the moments with a positive outcome. I got the idea from Ken Levine’s post, Those little pleasures, about which he notes: “Especially now, I’ll take all the pleasures – little or otherwise – that I can get.” Especially since Post-election stress is a big problem (and not just for liberals).

ITEM: My friends Broome and Penny became grandparents last month. Anna, who is partially named after me, and Will , are proud parents of Connor, born November 18.

ITEM: I’ve mentioned my late friend Vito Mastrogiovanni, who died from AIDS back in 1991. His sister Lisa befriended me on Facebook. We started reminiscing about her brother, and Vito’s friends Jane, Harry, and Donna all chimed in with Vito stories.

She mentioned that she and Vito had seen me in Boys in the Band back in 1975 in Binghamton. The director was named Charlie, but none of us could remember his last name. I posted the question to a Binghamton FB site and a guy came up with Charles Dietrich, who is now a professor of theater at Baruch College in New York City. I befriended Charles on FB and sent him my recollection of being in the play.

ITEM: Melanie is a blogger I’ve been following for a time. In mid-October, she wrote to me privately that, to her surprise, she has found somebody who wants to share his life with her. I wrote back and noted how wise and honest her blog is.

Then, about a month later, she wrote Because.

ITEM: I was crossing Madison Avenue in Albany, heading for the CVS drug store. This car was trying to make a right-on-red turn onto Main, but once he saw me in the crosswalk, he apologized profusely. I said it was cool, but he insisted that blocking pedestrian access in the crosswalk was unacceptable.

After he parked, he saw me IN the CVS and apologized one more time. Totally, unnecessary, and it made me laugh.

ITEM: SiriusXM Agrees to Pay Up to $99 Million to Settle Turtles-Backed Copyright Suit. I know it’s a complicated issue, involving differing state and federal copyright laws prior to 1972, but I don’t care. It made me happy. (Obligatory Happy Together link.)

ITEM: Arthur@AmeriNZ is posting a lot of holiday ads from around the world. I particularly enjoyed a Coke ad for three different countries, similar in format.

ITEM: This is sad, actually, but I’m glad she got her shot. ‘Jeopardy!’ contestant dies before show airs. Show scheduled to air Tuesday, December 13

As noted: Always look on the bright side of life, from my favorite Monty Python movie, Life of Brian.

OH, here are 7 breathing GIFs to help you calm down and take a moment.

Music Throwback Saturday: White Christmas

“The version sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 100 million copies worldwide.”

There are, as far as I can ascertain, only two versions of perennial favorite White Christmas that charted on both the pop and the rhythm & blues charts.

One was the version by the Drifters, which got to #2 on the R&B charts in 1954 and returned to the top 12 the next two years. It also got up to #80 on the pop charts in 1955, and showed up on the lower parts of the pop charts the next few years. There were also special Christmas charts where the song showed up in the 1960s.

The other version was by an obscure crooner named Bing Crosby. In 1942, his version topped the pop charts a staggering 11 weeks and led the R&B charts for three weeks. The song hit the Top 10 in both charts in 1943. It re-entered the pop charts every year from then until 1951, and again from 1953 to 1962 before the Christmas carts were instituted in 1963 and dominated for many years.

There was a version recorded in 1947 by Crosby, which supplanted the iteration from Holiday Inn, the 1942 movie, because “the original masters had been worn out from all the pressings.”

From Wikipedia: Irving Berlin “often stayed up all night writing — he told his secretary, ‘Grab your pen and take down this song. I just wrote the best song I’ve ever written — heck, I just wrote the best song that anybody’s ever written!’

Here are movie facts from the 1954 movie White Christmas, starring Bing Crosby and Danny Kaye.

“The version sung by Bing Crosby is the best-selling single of all time, with estimated sales in excess of 100 million copies worldwide.”

Listen to
Bing Crosby 1942 here
Bing Crosby in the movie Holiday Inn (1942) here
Bing Crosby 1947 here
Bing Crosby & Danny Kaye, from the 1954 movie here

The Drifters here or here

Movie Review: Arrival

When the movie was over, I got into some banter with two total strangers about its meaning and message.

I went to see the movie Arrival at the Spectrum Theatre in Albany alone; I’ve discovered that there are lots of people who won’t do that. A few days later, the Wife did the same thing.

Going in, I knew it was some sort of science fiction drama. Odd-looking spacecraft show up at 12 different locations around the globe, including in, or more correctly, over Montana. The military guy (Forest Whitaker) calls on an expert linguist Louise Banks (Amy Adams) to try to figure out what they want. Louise works with theoretical physicist Ian Donnelly (Jeremy Renner) and their teams to try to communicate with these alien beings.

But this takes time. People around the world are nervous. In a nod to the know-nothing media, we see some yahoo on the TV bashing the “do-nothing” government for failing to act promptly against this potential threat, yammering, though he has no idea what he’s talking about.

I liked this film enough to try to be relatively vague about it, lest I spoil it. Interesting that on Rotten Tomatoes, the critics like it a bit more (93%) than the fans (83%). It is generally a cerebral film. And when the movie was over, I got into some banter with two total strangers about its meaning and message, and whether the Louise character should have taken a certain actions, a conversation that I really enjoyed.

As a teacher of English as a New Language, the Wife really enjoyed the struggle to try to understand the language – if it IS a language – of the visitors. I was disappointed in not hearing why Portuguese is so different from other Romance languages.

The director of the film is Denis Villeneuve, who has a well-regarded body of work, but this the first film of his I have seen. I suspect Amy Adams will be nominated for an Oscar this season, if not for Arrival, then for the gritty-looking Nocturnal Animals.

A Beatles Christmas, in memory of John Lennon

As Christmas approached in 1980, the year John Lennon died, the song of his that made me most melancholy, other than the suddenly ironic (Just Like) Starting Over, was Merry Xmas (War Is Over). When someone has been advocating for peace, and is shot down by a fan, it just boggled the mind.

And so this is Xmas (war is over)
For weak and for strong (if you want it)
For rich and the poor ones (war is over)
The world is so wrong (if you want it)
And so happy Xmas (war is over)
For black and for white (if you want it)
For yellow and red ones (war is over)
Let’s stop all the fight (now)

A very Merry Xmas
And a happy New Year
Let’s hope it’s a good one
Without any fear

I was going to post some of those Beatles Christmas 45s, which I have collected on an LP, but, thankfully, someone had already uploaded The Beatles – Complete Christmas Records, which came out every year from 1963 to 1969. Collectively, the cuts reflect the increasingly greater sophistication of the band’s music, as well as the eventually fractured nature of the group.

Even better, I discovered that someone else has made available The History of the Beatles’ Christmas, including everything from Merry Xmas to Wonderful Christmastime by Paul McCartney to Ding Dong by George Harrison to some obscure Ringo song, plus those Beatles Christmas cuts, even the edited version of Christmastime is Here Again that came out at the time of the Beatles Anthology albums.

I’ve also come across a cover band called The Fab Four, which performs Christmas carols in the style of Beatles songs. The whole double CD you can find HERE. My favorite song on the album is the final one, Jingle Bells, performed in the style of the Beatles’ Tomorrow Never Knows. It shows the versatility of that last song on Revolver.

And for reasons that will become obvious, Come Together, a Christmas video for Swedish multinational clothing retailer, H&M. It was directed by Wes Anderson, and stars Adrien Brody.

Oh, yeah – All I Want For Christmas Is A Beatle – Dora Bryan (1963)