AdamSmith

...In a letter of 1996, Fowlie wrote: I attended one concert of Patti Smith. She showed a large picture of Rimbaud and his brother. A friend of mine threw on to the stage at her feet my translation of R. She picked it up, looked at it, and said, "I know this book by heart." So, the poet goddess truly appreciated the Fowlie translation of the god poet...

Wallace Fowlie One of my most brilliant mentors... ...By the 1980s he had alighted on his holy trinity of Dante, Proust and Rimbaud (with a frequent nod to Jim Morrison), writing critical studies on the first two. In 1990 he was consultant to Oliver Stone's film The Doors, and was commissioned to write the foreword to The Doors Complete. In his last two decades he became fascinated by the cross-currents he had established between the two poetes maudits. In 1995 his book Rimbaud and Jim Morrison: the rebel as poet was issued in Britain and was widely praised. This book compared the four years each poet's star had fried, and presented ideas Fowlie had been brooding over for 15 years. He said of the book: "Most of the readers knew Morrison, but many have discovered Rimbaud thanks to Morrison. This pleased me. Those two rebels make a fine couple." https://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/obituary-professor-wallace-fowlie-1182795.html

Of course 50% modulo pi of all I post comes out of Parallel Time. https://darkshadows.fandom.com/wiki/Parallel_time

Chuck Berry riffed a similar variation: in different recordings, he would change the wording, just slightly, in ‘slant-rhyme’ (again) ways that might have no meaning, or might have much. Contact direct & indirect with these verbal magicians has taught me much. A new Bloom post... https://charlierose.com/videos/30011

Now this is how to live! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brian_May May playing his Red Special in 2017 Background information Birth name Brian Harold May Born 19 July 1947 (age 72) Hampton, London, England Genres Rock Occupation(s) Musician singer songwriter record producer author astrophysicist Instruments Guitar vocals Years active 1965–present Labels Hollywood Parlophone Associated acts Smile Queen Queen + Paul Rodgers Robbie Williams Queen + Adam Lambert Kerry Ellis Education Hampton Grammar School Alma mater Imperial College London (BSc, PhD) Spouse(s) Christine Mullen (m. 1976; div. 1988) Anita Dobson (m. 2000) Children 3 Awards Inductee, Rock & Roll Hall of Fame (2001) CBE (2005) Scientific career Thesis A survey of radial velocities in the zodiacal dust cloud (2008) Doctoral advisor Jim Ring[1][2] Ken Reay[1][2] Michael Rowan-Robinson[1][2] Influences Patrick Moore Chris Lintott Website brianmay.com May was a co-founder of Queen with lead singer Freddie Mercury and drummer Roger Taylor, having previously performed with Taylor in the band Smile, which he had joined while he was at university. Within five years of their formation in 1970 and the recruitment of bass player John Deacon completing the lineup, Queen had become one of the biggest rock bands in the world with the success of the album A Night at the Opera and its single "Bohemian Rhapsody". From the mid-1970s until the early 1990s, Queen were an almost constant presence in the UK charts and played some of the biggest venues in the world, most notably giving an acclaimed performance at Live Aid in 1985. As a member of Queen, May became regarded as a virtuoso musician and he was identified with a distinctive sound created through his layered guitar work, often using a home-built electric guitar called the Red Special.[3] Following the death of Mercury in 1991, Queen were put on hiatus for several years but were eventually reconvened by May and Taylor for further performances featuring other vocalists. In 2005, a Planet Rock poll saw May voted the seventh greatest guitarist of all time.[4] He was ranked at No. 26 on Rolling Stone's list of the "100 Greatest Guitarists of All Time".[5] In 2012, he was ranked the second greatest guitarist in a Guitar World magazine readers poll.[6] In 2001, he was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame as a member of Queen and in 2018 the band received the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award.[7] May was appointed a CBE by Queen Elizabeth II in 2005 for "services to the music industry and for charity work".[8] May earned a PhD in astrophysics from Imperial College London in 2007,[1][2] and was Chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University from 2008 to 2013.[9]He was a "science team collaborator" with NASA's New Horizons Pluto mission.[10][11] He is also a co-founder of the awareness campaign Asteroid Day.[12] Asteroid 52665 Brianmay was named after him. May is also an animal rights activist, campaigning against the hunting of foxes and the culling of badgers in the UK.[13]

Not now believed to be an actual Bach piece, but still charming.

oops

You may be confusing this event with my as-reported encounter with Louis Edmonds at the 1993 Dark Shadows fan con.

It was the greatest social infraction in Cantabrigia to make any note of an interlocutor’s public prominence, or inquire directly into any specific aspect of his work. As we were all almost to a T the world expert in whatever our professional thing was. And the last thing we wanted when out & about socially was to be dragged back to the office. Instead, at the 2 or 3 of these dinner parties where he & I chatted (in the home of our host, herself most fascinating: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Zinberg ), I would raise topics I thought might be of mutual interest, like why does Mark Russell https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mark_Russell put out on TV specials — of his OWN scheduling — such crappy unprofessional versions of his own political satire lyrics that could, with just a little more polishing, be very good? Lehrer replied that this was exactly Russell’s fault — he went on air and performed first drafts. We then went on to some interesting back-&-forth speculations on what makes a good revision/sharpening process. That was greatly valuable, & how I used this access to genius to learn.

One more time...

Fascinating sf story. https://en.m.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Machine_Stops PDF version: https://web.cs.ucdavis.edu/~rogaway/classes/188/materials/the machine stops.pdf

‘Don’t stop! Don’t stop!’

Lehrer’s songs and influence have survived his own indifference, and survived his place in the cultural cul de sac that was the anti-hippie, anti-folk music square left. If your parents went to a fancy college in the late 1950s, they probably played you “Poisoning Pigeons in the Park” when you were 7, and “New Math” when you were 11, and blushed trying to explain “I Got It from Agnes.” And if you have kids of your own now, you’re probably playing them the same songs on the radio as you drive them back from a soccer game or over to their grandparents’. “Wernher Von Braun,” implausibly, cracks them up every time. https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer

https://www.buzzfeed.com/bensmith/tom-lehrer

Lehrer has said of his musical career, "If, after hearing my songs, just one human being is inspired to say something nasty to a friend, or perhaps to strike a loved one, it will all have been worth the while."[4]

Lehrer was praised by Dr. Demento as "the best musical satirist of the twentieth century." Other artists who cite Lehrer as an influence include "Weird Al" Yankovic, whose work generally addresses more popular and less technical or political subjects,[45] and educator and scientist H. Paul Shuch, who tours under the stage name Dr. SETI and calls himself "a cross between Carl Sagan and Tom Lehrer: He sings like Sagan and lectures like Lehrer."[46] Lehrer has commented that he doubts his songs had any real effect on those not already critical of the establishment: "I don't think this kind of thing has an impact on the unconverted, frankly. It's not even preaching to the converted; it's titillating the converted ... I'm fond of quoting Peter Cook, who talked about the satirical Berlin kabaretts of the 1930s, which did so much to stop the rise of Hitler and prevent the Second World War."[36] In 2003 he commented that his particular brand of political satire is more difficult in the modern world: "The real issues I don't think most people touch. The Clinton jokes are all about Monica Lewinsky and all that stuff and not about the important things, like the fact that he wouldn't ban land mines ... I'm not tempted to write a song about George W. Bush. I couldn't figure out what sort of song I would write. That's the problem: I don't want to satirize George Bush and his puppeteers, I want to vaporize them."[18]

The copyist arrived at the last minute with the parts and passed them out to the band... And there was no title on it, and there was no lyrics. And so they ran through it, "What a pleasant little waltz".... And the engineer said, "'Poisoning Pigeons in the Park,' take one," and the piano player said, "What?" and literally fell off the stool."[25]

RecordingsEdit Lehrer was encouraged by the success of his performances, so he paid $15 for some studio time in 1953 to record Songs by Tom Lehrer. The initial pressing was 400 copies. Radio stations would not air his songs because of his controversial subjects, so he sold the album on campus at Harvard for $3 (equivalent to $28.00 today), while "several stores near the Harvard campus sold it for $3.50, taking only a minimal markup as a kind of community service. Newsstands on campus sold it for the same price."[21] After one summer, he started to receive mail orders from all parts of the country, as far away as San Francisco, after the San Francisco Chronicle wrote an article on the record. Interest in his recordings spread by word of mouth. People played their records for friends, who then also wanted a copy.[22]Lehrer recalled, "Lacking exposure in the media, my songs spread slowly. Like herpes, rather than ebola."[23] The album included the macabre "I Hold Your Hand in Mine", the mildly risqué "Be Prepared", and "Lobachevsky" regarding plagiarizing mathematicians. It became a cult success by word of mouth, despite being self-published and without promotion. Lehrer embarked on a series of concert tours and recorded a second album in 1959. He released the second album in two versions: the songs were the same, but More of Tom Lehrer was a studio recording and An Evening Wasted with Tom Lehrer was recorded live in concert. In 2013, Lehrer recalled the studio session for "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park", which referred to the practice of controlling pigeons in Boston with strychnine-treated corn:[24]

Style and InfluencesEdit Lehrer was mainly influenced by musical theater. According to Gerald Nachman's book Seriously Funny,[19] the Broadway musical Let's Face It! (by Cole Porter) made an early and lasting impression on him. Lehrer's style consists of parodying various forms of popular song. For example, his appreciation of list songs led him to write The Elements, which lists the chemical elements to the tune of Gilbert and Sullivan's Major-General's Song. In author Isaac Asimov's second autobiographical volume In Joy Still Felt, Asimov recounted seeing Lehrer perform in a Boston nightclub on October 9, 1954. Lehrer sang cleverly about Jim getting it from Louise, and Sally from Jim, "...and after a while you gathered the 'it' was venereal disease [the song was likely "I Got It From Sally" (in later versions "Agnes")]. Suddenly, as the combinations grew more grotesque, you realized he was satirizing every known perversion without using a single naughty phrase. It was clearly unsingable (in those days) outside a nightclub." Asimov also recalled a song that dealt with the Boston subway system, making use of the stations leading into town from Harvard, observing that the local subject-matter rendered the song useless for general distribution. Lehrer subsequently granted Asimov permission to print the lyrics to the subway song in his book. "I haven't gone to nightclubs often," said Asimov, "but of all the times I have gone, it was on this occasion that I had by far the best time."[20]

Tom Lehrer ...Lehrer's early work typically dealt with non-topical subject matter and was noted for its black humor in songs such as "Poisoning Pigeons in the Park". In the 1960s, he produced a number of songs that dealt with social and political issues of the day, particularly when he wrote for the U.S. version of the television show That Was the Week That Was. The popularity of these songs has endured their topical subjects and references. Lehrer quoted a friend's explanation: "Always predict the worst and you'll be hailed as a prophet."[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Lehrer

Agree anti-war is good morally, but where is there a single point of the electorate who cares about that versus the dozen other shitstorm issues out there before us today?

Every Sikh I have known, several in number, has been among some of the most compassionate, caring, humane individuals it has been my privilege to know. I don’t know remotely enough to speculate why. Just that they were and are. You are indeed fortunate, to have this particular helper.