Love Songs


Kat

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Goes to show that nobody can "take a bad song, and make it better"...

(Apologies to 'Hey, Jude' - a good'un.)

I think you mean "take a sad song..."

Cathy Berberian was a classical soprano, based in Italy, who used to do Beatles songs in her recitals alongside Purcell, Handel, and the like. The ones I posted are actually the most listenable (to my ears). Want to hear the really goofy ones?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHRb35H4kLc
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Goes to show that nobody can "take a bad song, and make it better"...

(Apologies to 'Hey, Jude' - a good'un.)

I think you mean "take a sad song..."

Cathy Berberian was a classical soprano, based in Italy, who used to do Beatles songs in her recitals alongside Purcell, Handel, and the like. The ones I posted are actually the most listenable (to my ears). Want to hear the really goofy ones?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jHRb35H4kLc

Words fail me. Florence Foster Jenkins was reincarnated, who knew?

Ninth, I'm sorry, but you have to move up to Tenth, as in Wonder of the World, music resource division. If you ever get kidnapped, with the contents of your hard drive and brain as ransom, you'll know who is behind it.

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ND,

Goes to show that nobody can "take a bad song, and make it better"...

(Apologies to 'Hey, Jude' - a good'un.)

I don't know - always seemed a sort of down-the-pub, football-supporter of the team that always loses but you're doomed to suport it anyway, end-of-the bachelor-party sort of song to me.

To ND - did the wonderful Cathy B who I am meeting for the first time thanks to you, ever team up with Tiny Tim? She should have. But I suppose Tiny would shrewdly have refused such a duet, knowing when he was outclassed.

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Goes to show that nobody can "take a bad song, and make it better"...

(Apologies to 'Hey, Jude' - a good'un.)

I think you mean "take a sad song" ?

I thought he did mean, bad song, as a pun.Good one too.

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Words fail me. Florence Foster Jenkins was reincarnated, who knew?

No, Cathy Berberian was someone people paid to go see. And she sings in tune. Her Beatles performances were just amusing encores and such. Though it’s what she’s best remembered for, I think.

I might have posted this one on another thread recently, this is really good:

Edited by Ninth Doctor
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The Beatles weren't at their best with love ballads imo. (Sorry, Kat!) "Michelle" was hardly worth recording.(Sorry,sorry...couldn't help it...it just slipped out).

"Michelle, ma belle

Sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble

Très bien ensemble"

Paul's French sounded a little strange ;)

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWVKQoRXhk

Incredible, isn't it, that the Beatles still wore neckties in the mid-sixties!

But still they were considered as 'revolutionaries' because they wore their hair somewhat longer than normal back then. The "Beatle haircut" was called 'mushroom head' ("Pilzkopf") in German.

And this was only the beginning. A few years later, rock stars let their hair grow to shoulder-length and even longer.

It looks like my preference for this male hairstyle was shaped back then, for to this day, I like it when men wear their hair long, regardless of their age. :)

Edited by Xray
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The Beatles weren't at their best with love ballads imo. (Sorry, Kat!) "Michelle" was hardly worth recording.(Sorry,sorry...couldn't help it...it just slipped out).

"Michelle, ma belle

Sont des mots qui vont très bien ensemble

Très bien ensemble"

Paul's French sounded a little strange ;)

Here's the video:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfWVKQoRXhk

Incredible, isn't it, that the Beatles still wore neckties in the mid-sixties!

But still they were considered as 'revolutionaries' because they wore their hair somewhat longer than normal back then. The "Beatle haircut" was called 'mushroom head' ("Pilzkopf") in German.

And this was only the beginning. A few years later, rock stars let their hair grow to shoulder-length and even longer.

It looks like my preference for this male hairstyle was shaped back then, for to this day, I like it when men wear their hair long, regardless of their age. :)

I agree. If there's anything uglier than a young man with no hair and his ears sticking out -- well, there isn't.

Of course, Fortune's wheel turns and squashes us like always. My stunningly handsome son (I think so anyway) regularly shaves his head in the summer and just barely lets it cover his head in the winter. I haven't seen him even with bangs since he was three years old. His father let him get whatever haircut he wanted, or none. I voted for none, it was cheaper, but naturally, nobody paid any attention to my feelings.

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  • 1 year later...

God, to be able to do that. Buddy Holly in his garage or wherever, thinking up that harmony. Bach plodding from church to church with a few dozen kids to feed and Sheep May Safely Graze chugging along in his head. Handel the tetchy bachelor wrangling unbearable prima donnas , following fashion to give up opera and take up oratorio. Mozart moving house one step ahead of creditors, worrying about his wife flirting with officers while composing a couple of sonatas "by the left hand". Mendelssohn, born lucky, and he knew it, creating the sound of gratitude to the gods he had inherited. Just all in a day's work. Strangely, when I read Atlas Shrugged, I imagined halley's symphony as sounding like Mendelssohn"s #5 "the Reformation". Although my fave of his is #3.

To create those worlds of joy, out of nothing. Just their job, really.

Sometimes I think these are the only men who have ever entirely lived.

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I like Bette Midler's version of

better.

The definitive love songs for me will always be

by Elton John, Who Knows Where the Time Goes by Judy Collins and any version of I Get a Kick Out of You (Porter) or Someone to Watch Over Me (Gershwin) that respects the unadorned melody and lyrics. Much as I revere Streisand and Winehouse, they can get in the way of a song.
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I like Bette Midler's version of

better.

The definitive love songs for me will always be

by Elton John, Who Knows Where the Time Goesby Judy Collins and any version of I Get a Kick Out of You (Porter) or Someone to Watch Over Me (Gershwin) that respects the unadorned melody and lyrics. Much as I revere Streisand and Winehouse, they can get in the way of a song.

Getting in the way of a song, so follows my previous thoughts on Words of Love. Covers, interpretations, re-orchestrations, well OK if you are going to give us something extra. But the first job of the interpretive musician , I think Buddy and Johann and Wolfgang would say, and Georg would say it really loudly, is to sing the damn song. As written.

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I like Bette Midler's version of

better.

The definitive love songs for me will always be

by Elton John, Who Knows Where the Time Goesby Judy Collins and any version of I Get a Kick Out of You (Porter) or Someone to Watch Over Me (Gershwin) that respects the unadorned melody and lyrics. Much as I revere Streisand and Winehouse, they can get in the way of a song.

Getting in the way of a song, so follows my previous thoughts on Words of Love. Covers, interpretations, re-orchestrations, well OK if you are going to give us something extra. But the first job of the interpretive musician , I think Buddy and Johann and Wolfgang would say, and Georg would say it really loudly, is to sing the damn song. As written.

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I like Bette Midler's version of

better.

The definitive love songs for me will always be

by Elton John, Who Knows Where the Time Goesby Judy Collins and any version of I Get a Kick Out of You (Porter) or Someone to Watch Over Me (Gershwin) that respects the unadorned melody and lyrics. Much as I revere Streisand and Winehouse, they can get in the way of a song.

Getting in the way of a song, so follows my previous thoughts on Words of Love. Covers, interpretations, re-orchestrations, well OK if you are going to give us something extra. But the first job of the interpretive musician , I think Buddy and Johann and Wolfgang would say, and Georg would say it really loudly, is to sing the damn song. As written.You know

It just struck me that I am carrying on about my profound insights in music, when I am merely a listener, on OL where the host is a professional musician and composer. MSK, if I make too much of a fool of myself on subjects I don't really know, I know you will break it to me gently.

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This is sentimental, over-orchestrated, verging on histrionic ... but (like almost all Dusty Springfield) it raises the hairs on my neck, and gives me a little shock, a thrill in the heart, when she kicks in the afterburners. Is that a love song?

(this thread makes me think of Phil Coates and the one thing we agreed on: the wonderful schmaltzy awful goodness of Ginette Reno's famous duet Donne-moi la tendresse ...)

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D'accord, d'accord. Yes, it is.

The one and only regret I have about my wedding day, is that i did not push harder for my choice for the first dance at the reception. But we didn't have karaoke access then, it was about what the band could play, the band being my friend and classmate and , I did not push. But my first choice was Dusty, well, fulldisclosure, Dusty ( I Only Want to Be With You), or He's a Rebel by the immortal underrated Gene Pitney. But they were old songs and though Gary knew them and thought he could fake them, we went with what we knew my mother wanted. And I am glad now.

I forget what that song was, but who cares. I remember who I danced with.

That's what love songs are really about, I guess.

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  • 9 months later...
  • 1 year later...

Singer Joe Cocker died today.

Excellent choice Stephen...

A...

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  • 1 year later...
  • 2 years later...
Guest bob_hayden

Whether Schwarzkopf was a Nazi is a complicated question.  AFAICT she was not able to get work because her father had resisted the Nazis but eventually she joined the party when offered a good job on condition that she join.  No Howard Roark maybe, but perhaps just along for the ride.  I'm a bit touchy on this subject because of the many victims of the Nazis who were later called Nazis for not throwing away their lives or careers in those years.  What about all those classical musicians who played at the Kennedy White House during the Viet Nam War?

Just the Way You Look Tonight: music by Jerome Kern and words by Dorothy Fields.  Kern wanted to play the melody for her in the hope she could provide lyrics.  Fields immediately told him to keep playing while she ducked out into a hallway.  I don't remember what excuse she gave but the melody immediately brought tears to her eyes and she did not want Kern to see her crying.

A wedding song.

A love that survives the miles and years.

As Kate once said in concert, "This is for all you green-eyed people."

And lest you blue-eyed people feel left out, here is Kate as I remember her.

I'm not much of an opera fan but this is something else, sadly cut and poorly transferred on YouTube.

To go with the rotten sound I could only find one rotten translation.

http://www.murashev.com/opera/Götterdämmerung_libretto_English_German

This scene is part of the prelude and begins after the norns disappear.  It's the morning after the couple have spent their first night together.  The translation I once had sounded much more Objectivist and the LP had much better sound. 

 

 

 

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Guest bob_hayden

This is the original of "Someone to Watch Over Me".  To me it's definitive but I can well imagine moderns not being able to get past the voice, mannerisms, looks and accent.  She was the leading lady of choice of Cole Porter, Noel Coward, and the Gerswhins.

Here's something a bit more earthy.

 

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