Monthly Archives: November 2015

WEEK 51 / 12 JUNE – 18 JUNE 2015

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351 FRIDAY 12 JUNE 2015 (-15)

A Musical – Brad Oscar, Brian d’Arcy James, Ensemble

Something Rotten! (Original Broadway Cast Recording)

A Musical, a love letter to the genre, is full of references from popular musicals. When the song came out, I saw a headline on a website claiming something like: “You’ll never guess the references to other musicals this song has,” or something along those lines. I can’t remember the site, but it was probably the Huffington Post. They love those “dare-you”-attention-grabbing headlines. I took their dare. I listened to the song and had no trouble finding all the references. It wasn’t hard at all. In a way, I felt like those geeks who love “Star Wars/Trek” and know every single detail of the franchises; I realised that I may have more in common with them than I ever thought. Don’t get me wrong; that won’t stop me from still making fun of them.

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WEEK 50 / 5 JUNE – 11 JUNE 2015

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344 FRIDAY 5 JUNE 2015 (-22)

Private Idaho – The B-52’s

Wild Planet

Private Idaho belongs to a group of songs that I went ahead and fetched from iTunes because they represent an era. This time, the early 1980s.

As I became a young man, the mission was to be cool. To achieve that, some steps had to be taken. First, I had to lose weight. Chub and cool were never used in the same sentence in those days. Actually, neither it’s the case today. Anyway, I lost like 15 kilos, started to wear nice clothes designed for thin people, karate became my sport, and Marlboros 100 was the choice when it came to smoking. Talk about being cool, eh? I was the ‘cat’s meow’. Then again, I ask you, could a guy who still describes himself as the ‘cat’s meow’ in 2015 be cool at all? I’d say no. Neither in 2015 nor in 1981, for that matter.

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WEEK 49 / 29 MAY – 4 JUNE 2015

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337 FRIDAY 29 MAY 2015

Just Once – James Ingram

From Q, With Love

This entry seems to come out of the left field. I never thought I would include a track in this style. However, I was cyber shopping in iTunes one evening, trying to see if I could recognise any song from the past, when Just Once jumped at me. It just brought such good memories of a time when I was leaving my childhood and I was entering my young adult years.

Additionally, at 16, and I’m about to toot my own horn, I was able to hit the same notes that James Ingram did on the song. At this age, I was already showing signs of disregard for any form of pop music and Just Once was one of the few I knew. Whenever people talked about new music, I was clueless for the most part. So, I created a little routine for those instances.

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WEEK 48 / 22 – 28 MAY 2015

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330 FRIDAY 22 MAY 2015

Prologue: Ragtime – 1998 Ragtime Cast

Ragtime- Original Broadway Cast (Disc 1)

E.L. Doctorow’s 1975 masterpiece, “Ragtime”, got its musical treatment in the late 1990s. It seemed appropriate to close the 20th century with an extraordinary story that flawlessly mixed historical figures with fictional characters.

I was blown away by Doctorow’s prose when I first read the novel. It fascinated me how easily he intertwined actual historical figures like Emma Goldman, Harry Houdini and Henry Ford with fictional characters. After finishing the book, I stayed in a haze. I just couldn’t shake off the stories; they stayed with me for a long time.

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COMING UP – WEEK 48 PREVIEW

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HOW TO PACK 365 SONGS IN A SUITCASE

Week 48 Preview

And so when young men and old men turn into bold men, to hold my hand. They get too frazzled and bedazzled to understand.

334 Victor / Victoria – Julie Andrews, Tony Roberts, Company

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