• Restaurant chalkboard: Beer is now cheaper than gas, so drink, don't drive.
    Music

    Lumos Candlelit Concerts: Don’t Bother

    October 11, 2026 - By 

    Ah, look at all the lonely people… The arrangements of Beatles tunes were so… uninspired, and the music was just so much grey paint. The venue was a large Missouri Synod Lutheran church – packed full for the first of 2 performances, nd there were church people acting as ushers, very well organized. But I sensed their enthusiasm was not for the music, but for the evangelizing opportunity. The welcome from the pastor in the name of Christ excluded many in the audience.  And the arrangements were boring. What a frustrating experience. But dinner afterwards at La Hacienda de Roselle…

  • Hazel Scott, virtuoso pianist and Black cultural icon, in an off the shoulder beaded gown, shot in profile. Her features are classically beautiful, like a Greek statue, but cut from granite, strong and confident.
    Music - Politics, Schmolitics

    The Second Vanishing of Hazel Scott

    October 14, 2025 - By 

    I had never heard of Hazel Scott before, her star fell into the shadows of McCarthyism before I was born. It’s a shame that she was forgotten the first time;  let’s resist her second disappearance. It may be time to fire up a PBS Passport membership to watch this documentary (and so much more). I wonder what Mom and Dad thought of her TV show; Pop did love Nat “King” Cole and other Black entertainers.  Sometimes it seems we Americans are forgetting who we were, which means we don’t know who we are, and we won’t recognize who we’ll become.…

  • Music

    Radio Paradise: Okean Elzy

    March 7, 2025 - By 

      This was a Ukraininan song, really liked the melody.   ”Okean Elzy (Ukrainian: ????? ?????, lit.?’Elza’s Ocean’) is a Ukrainian rock band. It was formed in 1994 in Lviv, Ukraine. It is the most famous and successful Ukrainian music band. The band’s vocalist and frontman is Svyatoslav Vakarchuk. In April 2007 Okean Elzy received FUZZ Magazine music awards for “Best rock act”.”   Link: Playlist: Ukrainian song

  • Music - Radio

    Workaround for Last.fm: Universal Scrobbler

    January 10, 2016 - By 

    I listen to a LOT of music via Internet radio streams, and until August, I used to be able to put a nice list of "Listening" tracks on my various blogs. That was courtesy of Last.fm, which used to be the main place people could gather or "scrobble" their personal music libraries as they listened to iTunes or CDs on their computers or listened to radio stations online that provided the right kind of track medadata.

  • All Things Interesting - Music

    Whatever happened to good old Blogging, hey?

    December 29, 2013 - By 

    Why don’t I blog anymore? Sometimes I go back looking for recipes or something and stumble across an older post and think “Damn, I can write pretty well. Why don’t I do that more?” I guess the answer is “No time, no inclination.” But we’re nearing the end of the calendar year, and I’m kind of… getting in the mood and the mindframe to write moar stuffs, and to catch up on things, and reflect. There’s a lot that I never blogged about at the time, that now I wish I’d noted down, if only to fix in my mind…

  • Geek Out! - Music - Radio

    The End And The Beginning of My Virtual Life

    December 13, 2013 - By 

    My iPhone died today. I’m not sure why, but it couldn’t have been good when the speaker dock I’d been using started making more squawky noises than usual – sometimes with shocklingly loud humming and buzzing that came through the speakers. It somehow managed to charge the phone where my older docks did not, but it was never a happy marriage, and David had remarked that it was unshielded, so there’d always be interference. So he’d already found a little wireless speaker called “Mini Jambox” that would be my Hannumas present, and he’s getting a GoPro. But the iPhone? It’s…

  • Music - The Never-Ending Bloga

    Listening, listening, listening: will probably get things set up perfectly just before Last.fm quits working.

    September 19, 2012 - By 

    It’s not easy getting Last.fm to work on an iPad… there’s only partial functionality (I suspect that due to Apple’s well known aversion to all things Flash, and also to their reluctance to grant control of the iTunes player to third parties). Now that I’m working from home, music is becoming more and more a necessity. I couldn’t listen before in the office environment, which could have helped me tune out distractions. Now I can listen, and it helps me stay focused while working on records in “waiting for calls” mode. I have a normal clock radio in my home…