Lady, singing: 14 November 2011

I wish I knew who this lady is, or what the words are. I used to know some Arabic, but this is difficult for me to interpret. [link]

update: Her name is Amal Maher, and she was born in 1985. Evidently she is a pretty big deal currently in Egyptian music.

"Let Your Learning Be Your Eyes" Les McCann

song: "Let Your Learning Be Your Eyes" by Les McCann, from 1975

Nicole Saba - Ana Tabee Keda / نيكول سابا - أنا طبعى كدة

Cry, baby

Jenny Toomey explains what net neutrality means to musicians

Saturday the 3rd

Song is "As we go up we go down," by Guided by Voices. I've been spammed by a pretty insistent jerk who has left over a dozen comment spams on various posts with links to suspicious-sounding sites. I hope nobody followed any of them, as they seem disreputable. At any rate that's why I've decided to turn comments off, possibly indefinitely.

Ladysmith black mambazo

the original is here.

"For 40 years, the choral group Ladysmith Black Mambazo has captured the hearts and minds of people around the world, including former South African President, Nelson Mandela"

Short Night

Watch CBS News Videos Online

and,from th' Onion:"Four Or Five Guys Pretty Much Carry Whole Renaissance"

"...Our research indicates that da Vinci, Michelangelo, Shakespeare, and Galileo basically hoisted the entire intellectual transformation of mankind onto their shoulders while everyone else just sat around being superstitious nimrods," said Sue Viero of the Correr Museum of Art in Venice, Italy. "Here's da Vinci busting his ass to paint such masterpieces as The Last Supper and the Mona Lisa, while some loser like Albrecht Dürer is doing these dinky little woodcuts that are basically worthless."

Guantanamera

Celia Cruz sings Guantanamera, with 'la Fania'. And Pete Seeger, with Rosa Valentin and Rafael Martinez below:

and now it's Tuesday

I seem to remember that we used to make fun of Abba in my high school days, but now people in their 40s and 50s wax nostalgic over them.

the Ventures, live in Japan

I'm at a loss what to do with HZ. My impression is that over 90 percent of the people who find and visit this site do so inadvertently, generally via a Google search for a couple or more keywords that just happen to also appear in a post of mine, as opposed to any intrinsic interest in anything I might have to say, or even occasional idle curiosity about what that Hugo Zoom guy has to say. Undoubtedly that's a useful bridle for my ego, given the common assumption that the unbridled variety are bad, etc. C'est la vie.

Anyway, enjoy the Ventures.

Michael Jackson/Billie Jean/Sungha Jung

You and I and billions of others already know that Michael Jackson died Thursday, aged 50. But before today I hadn't heard of young guitar phenom Sungha Jung, who recorded this performance back in February(via Oyster).

the Vasantotsav festival

from their website:Dr. Vasantrao Deshpande Pratisthan organizes a three day festival every year titled – VASANTOTSAV, in Pune, in the memory of Late Dr. Vasantrao Deshpande by inviting respected artists to perform at this event.

And don't they look like they're having fun? The foto above is from the AFP from March of 2008. So, yes, it looks like you missed VASANTOTSAV 09. Well, there's next year.

The road to nowhere

From Talking Heads' Little Creatures, one of their last albums before they broke up, this is the original video from 1986. I think I was 22 the last time I saw this.

Yma Sumac, "the Inca princess"

I'd just heard of Yma Sumac and her multi-octave voice fairly recently, and now it seems she passed away. Don't know who made this stylish short documentary about her. It reminds me of Cocteau and Welles, just a bit. It's entitled "La Castafiore Inca (Part I)". And no, I can't seem to locate part two. Is this it?

Shirley bassey n' the muppets, c. 1980:

Beware the hooded old man at the rudder...

Now, I know that Chris De Burgh's "Don't Pay the Ferryman" may strike some as melodramatic and overwrought, but that's only because it is. Nevertheless it seems like the perfect song to play while Congress ruminates over retooling the Great Bank Bailout of 2008(with more bailouts to come, no doubt, until we're all broke millionaires, awash in worthless currency...) (With a nod to Bob in Pacifica's "Something for nothing".)

(12.2008: In case the above embed doesn't work, the direct video link is here. Since I don't approve of sighing on the internet, I'll just write "grumble."

They were shining there for you and me

or perhaps, "The Name of the Game" would have been more appropriate. I dunno, I like this one better.

BBC: Sweden approves wiretapping law

Sweden's parliament has approved controversial new laws allowing authorities to spy on cross-border e-mail and telephone traffic.

Glenn Greenwald:
Time Magazine uncritically prints Nancy Pelosi's "justifications" for the FISA "compromise":

The Congressional Democratic leadership explains that sacrificing the Fourth Amendment and the rule of law is necessary to win some more swing seats...

Nicole Belle, at Crooks n' Liars(via IOZ):

"Good God, is this why we elected a Democratic majority in 2006? So they can continue to enable the Bush administration as more and more independent sources have verified the criminality that we’ve claimed correctly all along? "

IOZ-

Yes.

In the above referenced post,Belle also writes:

John[Amato] mentioned our new coalition, Strange Bedfellows, earlier and I can’t reiterate more strongly the need to fight Blue Dogs like Steny Hoyer, so if you can donate, please do so. Think of the message it sends to Congress that we are willing to fight our own if they don’t represent us and our Democratic values the way they should.

I don't know about the details, but I wonder if that's true, because "Act Blue" sounds like an organization whose approach, starting with its very name, may antagonize voters in so-called "Blue-dog" districts, when outreach is needed. (I also think the views of those voters are often stereotyped, and therefore misunderstood, by people in the lefty blogosphere. Not everybody in the hinterlands is unreachable, any more than are all San Fransicans and Bostonians disappointed that Nader isn't running.) Then again that begs the question of whether abandonment of the democratic party altogether makes more sense that yet another attempt to fix it.

it's time to jump up and down

because today is Mike Gravel's birthday.


check out Eva Mendes's très chic hairdo,


according to the BBC, Laurie Anderson and Lou Reed got married in April.

Dennis sings