Aamas 2004 blog

Posts Tagged ‘music’

I bought this solely for its exercise potential. And it is working out great! I am morbidly obese and I’m finding that the Wii Sports games that came bundled in it are perfect for someone who cannot stand for long periods of time. I’m currently up to 40 minutes per day doing a combined routine of bowling,boxing and golf-with an occasional game of baseball or tennis.

Buy the Wii and start getting fit!
Music of the Renaissance

This documentary hosted by Dan Rather looks into John’s reason for singing in the first place and how he was able to use his music to spread God’s word. There are interviews to be sure, Marshal Grant, John Carter Cash, and more, but most importantly they let John’s music play a big part of this DVD. Far too many of these retrospective, documenteries, interrupt the musical performances with interviews, not this one. The performances stand on their own, with few exceptions. The perfomances start with an old black and white performance that can be found on other DVD’s, but that’s it, later perfomances have him and with June performing several songs from the Billy Graham crusades. Jewels, everyone of them. It also has photos of John at June’s funeral and ends with a still photo from John’s own funeral. This is THE BEST documentary I’ve seen on John (it doesn’t cover all aspects of his life, just concentrates on his gospel music and his relationship with God). Don’t let the use of the term “documentary” scare you from this DVD, the concert performances are great and the songs (for the most part) are uninterrupted. You may never see these performances anywhere else, this is worth owning.
The Gospel Music of

I won’t go into a long review here– I read mostly non-fiction because fiction typically bores me. About 10-20% of the time, though, I like to switch to fiction to enjoy “lighter” reading than the non-fiction I typically read. I picked up Catcher in the Rye in a bookstore on a whim the other day. It really, really blew me away! I NEVER laugh out loud when I’m reading, and I must’ve literally laughed outloud several dozen times when reading this book. It was SO funny! And just brilliantly written, enjoyable to read, fun but serious at times, etc. Just a great book, a classic, and one that I should’ve read earlier in life (I’m 37 now). I will likely re-read it every few years just to remind myself how much of a page-turner it was…
The Music of what

I cannot fathom why anyone became famous, or wealthy, for writing this material… “The Catcher In The Rye” is one long, rambling, goofy, repetitive in the *extreme* diatribe…presented as an ode to Borderline Personality Disorder. It’s like page after page after page…of absolutely nothing. And at the end of it all, there is no pay off. There is no conclusion to the story. Don’t hope for one; it is not there.

Holden Caulfield gets kicked out of school (again), but he doesn’t do anything amazing with his time, except wander around for a weekend. He gets drunk, but he never really has much fun doing it. He picks up with a prostitute, but he gets no action. His creepy room mate dates his childhood friend, but nothing whatsoever comes of that either. His teacher cops a feel on him in the middle of the night, but the one he gets is really pretty silly to read about. He gets slapped around some, but never gets the stuffing knocked out of him, nor any sense knocked in. He gets sick toward the end, but he’s not suffering from anything major. And after 200 pages of terror over what his parents will think, you never actually hear what they have to say. All the reader knows is, Holden’s intelligence is upstaged by a 10 year old. Worst of all, after all of this whining & carrying on… Holden doesn’t come to any important new realizations about life, himself, or anyone else.

The realization I came to on the final page, is that just because a piece of writing is referred to as “a classic”, that does not mean it is particularly well written, or profoundly meaningful. J.D. Salinger wrote a relatively small collection of fiction, “The Catcher In The Rye” was his most “outstanding” writing, it was the hallmark of his life’s work, it became famous for some vague reason, & yet… It says nothing. I don’t know how it inspired 3 infamous stalker-killers to carry it around with them, when they went off to do their deeds… Personally, I would be embarrassed to hav
Classic American Folk Music

So I bought this book because I’ve seen it in stores/online/etc. I didn’t like it too much, I like Artemis and Butler but that’s about it. I bought the second to see if it was better than the first, it was. I bought the third to see if it was better than the second, it was. I bought the forth to see if it was better than the third, it was. And I bought the fifth because I liked the rest, and the fifth was awesome.

What I’m trying to get at is, don’t be turned off by the first, because THEY DO get better.
Black Cast Comedy Music

MUSIC IS THE WEAPON is a 1982 documentary describing the trials and tribulations of Fela Kuti, the Nigerian musician and human rights activist who never stopped calling for an end to corruption in spite of beatings and imprisonment. The context of the film is Fela’s hopes for the 1983 presidential election, which subsequently came to naught when the government refused to recognize his candidacy.

The documentary covers all the main points of Fela’s political life and philosophy. We see him railing against the Nigerian government, calling it worse than that of South Africa because in his country blacks were oppressing blacks. The events of 1977 are recounted, a 15-hour siege when soldiers killed his mother, raped his wives, and arsoned his home. Fela’s discusses his ideas of a return to African roots, explains why he has restored a tradition of polygamy to his family, and deplores both capitalism and Marxism as inappropriate for creating a distinctly African society. Fela throughout seems like a man of boundless energy, and the viewer will be amazed at how well he has held up in spite of his many beatings (scars of which are left all over his body). Now, of course, we know that over the next decade he was going to become increasingly seclusive, and ultimately succumb to AIDS, which gives the film a poignant tone.

The weakness of the film is that it deals very little with Fela’s music itself. I would have liked to see Fela talking about creating the afrobeat genres, his experiences in the US in the late 1960s, and his early work in highlife. There is plenty of footage of performances, but no complete songs, and the audio quality isn’t too hot. Plus, the documentary is all in all just 53 minutes long. All in all, it would probably be best to get the documentary as part of the Music Is the Weapon: The Best of Fela Kuti set of 2 CDs and a DVD.
Fela Kuti Music Is

I just read the book, now I am 47 and this is what I got out of it: All the adults are not dealing with a troubled youth in a constructive way. I have read some of the reviews and I think they are giving Salenger way to much credit. This is a book where the adults are dumb and the only smart one is the kid sister. My guess is Salinger had a issue with authority figures all his life and let it all out in this book. I can say that I have read it so I can at least discuss it with others but I got no insite into my life from it and neither did Holden by the way. There is lots of cussing for no really good reason in the book. If you took all that out, the story would be the same but it would be much more readable to a larger audiance.

Holden has some real mental issues going but I don’t think society is the cause as my guess Salinger would like us to think. I do think society will be shown as the cause if they ever make a movie or Holden will be shown as some misguided saint. Kind of reminds me of the teenage boy shooters that we have seen over the last few years. I wonder if any one of them have read this book?
Music Video Dist Good

William Pleeth A Life …

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Jack s Big Music My grandson loves it! Very cute and wholesome show for young ones. First seen on Diskids TV and decided to buy it. I will try to purchase more in the future. This seller’s product was in great …

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I generally like Hugh Grant’s romantic comedy movies, but this one was embarrassing. Grant plays a washed up pop singer milking his former fame at amusement parks and other shoddy venues. Drew Barrymore plays a supposedly quirky songwriter. I gave it two stars because the Indian doorman and the actress playing Drew’s sister are funny. Grant tries, but the story is pathetic and the humor isn’t there.

Forget this. Go watch Love Actually, instead.
Music and Lyrics Combo