PolyArchive

South Dakota’s may plausibly be considered the most genuinely innovative, most inspirationally forward-looking professional orchestra in the United States. It is also the happiest professional orchestra I know, and the most engaged. Fulfilling Theodore Thomas’s credo, it “shows the culture of the community.” Link: The American Scholar | Shostakovich in South Dakota A manifesto for […]

About 18 months ago (in the summer of 1996) I went to see Four Weddings and a Funeral at a North London cineplex. Very soon I was filled with a yearning to be doing something else (for example, standing at a bus stop in the rain); and under normal circumstances I would have walked out […]

Music A Subversive History by Ted Gioia Perseus Books, Basic Books 528 pages, published 2019. From the publisher: “A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched” (Los Angeles Times) global history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions. Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions […]

Allegro Tomas Tranströmer Translated by Robin Fulton I play Haydn after a black day and feel a simple warmth in my hands. The keys are willing. Soft hammers strike. The resonance green, lively and calm. The music says freedom exists and someone doesn’t pay the emperor tax. I push down my hands in my Haydnpockets […]

“And, of course, that is what all of this is – all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or […]

A quote of the day on my email header today: “Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.”–Edgar Cayce. I have to disagree. I think dreams are tonight’s questions to yesterday’s (or last year’s, or 10 years ago’s) answers. And we must always question the answers, my darlings. Even if we are not mighty mighty or […]

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Elliott Smith – The Complete Live Covers | The Rawking Refuses To Stop!.

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So I made you all a little mixtape. Mix file? That sounds lame. Anyway. Here are some good, bad, and interesting cover songs. Why cover songs?

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Snowin’ in the Wind? Dylan Christmas album due | Oddly Enough | Reuters. I suddenly want to watch Love Actually.

Gorbachev Records Album, World Survives – Russia.

SO IF YOUR LIFE WAS A MOVIE, WHAT WOULD THE SOUNDTRACK BE? So, here’s how it works: 1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc) 2. Put it on shuffle 3. Press play 4. For every question, type the song that’s playing 5. When you go to a new question, press the next […]

Okay, so posting lyrics ventures dangerously close to Livejournal/Xanga/AIM profile territory. But this song gets me right here *Celine Dion-style chest-thunk* every time. Which to me is a sign of good poetry. Thunder Road Bruce Springsteen The screen door slams Mary’s dress waves Like a vision she dances across the porch As the radio plays […]