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Category: Music and Cocktails

Friday Musings: Virtuoso

Friday Musings: Virtuoso

As some of you may recall, I am a huge fan of the 2018 movie Call Me By Your Name and actually wrote a post about it back in March of 2018 that was entitled I Remember Everything, arguably the film’s most well-known line. A few weeks ago, I picked up a copy of the book, which I’d had on my reading list since I’d seen the movie. How I wish I’d read it sooner. It was fabulous! One of the issues I often have with movies that are based on books written in the first person is that we tend to lack the information we need to fully understand the emotional depth of their stories. In the movie Call Me By Your Name, we are given glimpses into what Elio is feeling, but only through hesitant dialogue and yearning looks. For example, there is a part early on in the film when Elio plays a song on the guitar that catches Oliver’s attention. Oliver wants him to play it again, and Elio eventually obliges, but he does so on the piano, making it sound very different. It’s not what Oliver was hoping for. There’s an exasperated exchange between the two characters, and eventually Elio plays what Oliver wants to hear. The relevance of this scene is hard to understand in the movie, but in the book, it becomes a moment that is highly portentous. The back-and-forth between the two characters happens in much the same way, but later that night when Elio is writing in his diary, we learn how much he is struggling with understanding Oliver’s moods, which range from ice to sunshine, and the extent to which he finds his own equally inscrutable. He concludes the entry by saying, “We are not written for one instrument alone; I am not, neither are you.”

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Friday Musings: B-sides and Rarities

Friday Musings: B-sides and Rarities

I recently spent a day in Burlington City that climbed all the way to the top of the perfect scale: the company of my favorite person, lattes from Evermore Coffee Roasters, a late lunch at the Union House, and a marathon browse session at the Burlington Antiques Emporium. As you can imagine, I am always on the hunt for really cool glassware, dishes, or other accompaniments for my cocktail photos. As I meandered past a booth packed with old vinyl, there was a stack of 45s, or singles, depending on which terminology you prefer, that stopped me in my tracks. I was immediately taken over by my 11-year-old self and transported back to the record department of Woolworths in 1972, trying to decide which recent radio hit deserved my hard earned three dollars. Unfortunately, and much to my chagrin, it was probably the decidedly awful Alone Again (Naturally) by Gilbert O’Sullivan that ended up being the winner. But this was how we purchased 45s back then. We were focused only on the hit songs and rarely paid attention to what we’d hear if we flipped the record over. It didn’t matter. For the most part, we fell right in line with the record companies’ intentions. We were pulled in by the A-side, or the one that received the most airtime on the radio and thus generated the most sales, and we never gave much thought to anything else. The B-side was usually a song that was not expected to ever be a hit for a multitude of reasons, most having nothing to do with quality, and there are many examples of those that became exceptions. One of the most notable is God Only Knows by the Beach Boys, which just happens to be the B-side that surpassed Wouldn’t It Be Nice? in popularity. As time went on, vinyl fell out of fashion and was replaced by CDs, which had no B-sides, of course, and eventually the term became more about the rarity of particular songs rather than where they were placed on a record. In fact, many artists began releasing entire albums that were filled with new or unusual material. In this way, B-sides allowed us to discover fresh music from our favorite bands, even the ones that weren’t playing together anymore, and they attained a new level of music geek coolness.

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Music and Cocktails: I Want to Thank You, Thank You…

Music and Cocktails: I Want to Thank You, Thank You…

I have been a Natalie Merchant fan since she was the lead singer for The 10,000 Maniacs. In fact, the post that I wrote back in June about their song “Trouble Me” is one of my all-time favorites. In turning a highly successful career as a member of a band into an equally successful solo act, Merchant was able to accomplish something that has eluded many of her fellow artists. As a musician, her lyrics are well-crafted and profound. She is known to spend hours writing and

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Music and Cocktails: Ancient Lullabies

Music and Cocktails: Ancient Lullabies

Most people who are fans of Eric Clapton’s music know that he wrote the 1992 song “Tears in Heaven” about the tragic death of his four-year-old son Conor. Clapton believed that artists of any kind have a responsibility to bare their souls and to deal with difficulty and sadness through their craft, thus making their pain and loss something to which audiences could relate and might subsequently embrace. It was a responsibility about which Clapton felt very strong, so when he

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Music and Cocktails: (Don’t Fear) the Reaper

Music and Cocktails: (Don’t Fear) the Reaper

I usually don’t name my cocktail after the song itself, but today is Halloween after all, and this is one of the greatest song titles ever, so I decided to make an exception. “(Don’t Fear) the Reaper” was released by Blue Oyster Cult in 1976 as part of their Agents of Fortune album. It charted as high as number 12 here in the U.S. and Rolling Stone Magazine actually went on to name it Song of the Year. Prior to that, Blue Oyster Cult was exactly what their name suggested: a cult rock

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