Scenes From An Alternate Universe Where The Beatles Accepted Lorne Michaels’ Generous Offer

Imagine a world where the Beatles continue to make music well into the 80s and 90s and work to change the world for the better - together - until they were old men.

Thanks Greg for tweeting about this. It made me way too emotional for a Wednesday morning. But I loved it!

READ IT HERE on MightyGodKing.com

My favorite part: A battle of the bands on the Muppet Show with the Electric Mayhem:

The episode [where the Beatles appear] is the highest rated episode of The Muppet Show in the show’s history and the most watched television program of the entire year, beating even the news coverage of the 1980 American presidential election. The undisputed highlight of the episode is the “battle of the bands” between the Beatles and the Electric Mayhem (although Starr says his duet with Fozzie the Bear remains his personal favorite moment). Jim Henson would later say that the Beatles episode “rejuvenated” his joy in working on the show, which by that point he had begun to feel was growing stale: the show continues for another seven seasons.

Read the rest here

(I'm noticing that I post a good deal about Muppets... interesting)

What's your favorite karaoke song to sing?

Had a fun conversation last night about favorite karaoke songs. Andy, if you check this I'm expecting you to respond! I like the soulful lady songs. My recent favorites to sing are:

- "Midnight train to Georgia" - Gladys Knight and the Pips. When I can I get some Pips on stage with me, make the song way more fun

- "Livin on a Prayer" - Bon Jovi. I can hit those high notes and people are impressed! And everyone knows this song, so they sing along, dependiny mostly on how late in the evening it is and how much people have been drinking.

- "Piece of My Heart" - Janis Joplin. I like Erma Franklin's (Aretha's sister) version of this song, she did it first. And some of her phrasings are fun. But I still like trying to howl like Janis, although I certainly don't do it as well.



- "Son of a Preacher Man" by Dusty Springfield. Again, people know this one, so folks sing along.

What are you favorite songs to sing at Karaoke?

"Touch Me" From Spring Awakening on the View

Okay, hopefully my obsession with this show is nearing an end. But I've watched this video so many times I just had to share it with you. And yes, I saw the show again in Sacramento last weekend. I wanted my parents and friend from out of town to see it.

While there are plenty of good songs in this show, for some reason this performance of "Touch Me" on The View has become my favorite.

Spring Awakening takes place in the 1890s, and while many of the buttoned-up/prude Victorian era-like themes are present in the show, the main theme, teenage sexuality, is something that is very much present today. I was 14 once, I remember thinking about it all the time. What it's like? Who will I have it with? When? Who is having sex? Is it like in the movies?

At this point in the show, Moritz, played by John Gallagher Jr. has asked his friend Melchior, played by Jonathan Groff to tell him what he knows about sex (he's not had sex yet, he just reads a lot). And they sing about it, of course, it's a musical.

This is a beautiful song and the lead characters are great, but it's the performance of the secondary characters that just stop me dead in my tracks. First you hear the sweet, sensitive, rich voice of Gideon Glick. Then a second solo by Brian Charles Johnson, with a rockish, raspy voice (now in the cast of American Idiot and whom I'm trying to get an interview with). And then, oh-my-god, Skylar Astin and his amazing solo. The hair-do might fool you, but don't let it. This kid can sing.

Anyway, enjoy. I now release my obsession, hopefully soon to move to something else worthy of my attention.

Presenting The Cathedral of Christ the Light: a new stunning venue for choral and organ music

Today my parents and I stopped into The Cathedral of Christ the Light located about half-a-mile from my house. This cathedral was under construction when I moved to Oakland over two years ago and it opened a little over a year ago. I went inside soon after it opened and thought it would be a good place for music, but was disappointed by the lack of music on the calendar. Well, today, I found the schedule and I'm so excited about a venue like this being so close to my house!

For those of you that know me, you know that I'm a nice Jewish girl that LOVES music about Jesus. No apologies here! For those of you that are new to this blog, get used to it (I wrote my Master's report on the commercialization of gospel music).

Check out my examiner.com article and see what amazing concerts the Bay Area has in store: Bach, Rachmaninoff (The Vespers! Hear a selection down below) and choirs like Chanticleer and the Oakland Symphony Chorus as well as groups that I didn't know about like the Pacific Boys Choir and the California State University East Bay Singers.

READ MY EXAMINER.COM ARTICLE HERE

Interview with Pomplamoose!

Hello everyone! Last week I got to do an interview with the band Pomplamoose. They are sweet genuine people and I learned so much from them. I posted an interview in three parts on examiner.com. Check it out.

I wanted to stress that if you are a musician or have friends that are struggling musicians, tell them to read this interview (at least the first two parts). Nataly and Jack of Pomplamoose are supporting themselves on their mp3 sales! Of course they are also talented and charming, but they've made the internet really work for them. They're doing so well they're even looking for a personal assistant to help them with day-to-day administrative tasks.

If you are in the Bay Area next weekend, Pomplamoose will be playing a show at the Brainwash Cafe on Friday November 13th.

Read the interview

Part 1

Part 2

Part 3

And now, a special 'hello' to all of you at alwaysmoretohear.com

"Spring Awakening" addresses teenage sexuality in a buttoned up era

What young men do with all that pent up sexual energy: JUMP!

Teenage sex, masturbation, abortion, child abuse, suicide... sounds like another night of bad television right? Wrong. Spring Awakening is a musical based on a play by the same title by Frank Wedekind that was banned in 1891 for portraying all of these situations, many of them graphically.

Western society has come a long way since the Victorian era of zipped lips (and flies) when it came to sexuality. I figure, it was hard enough being a teenager in the 1990s when we had sex ed and 90210 to teach us, what must it have been like in the1890s when kids had nothing?

Right now, Spring Awakening is playing in Sacramento at the Community Center Theater just until November 15th. In 2007, Spring Awakening received eleven Tony Award nominations, winning eight, including best musical, direction, book, score and featured actor.

READ MORE OF MY REVIEW HERE

Taylor Trensch as Moritz

Christy Altomare as Wendla and Jake Epstein as Melchior

T.R. Knight stars in "Parade": a sobering reminder of Red/Blue State politics, racism and anti-semtism. Jamie's Dad reports

T.R. Knight stars as Leo Frank in "Parade"

This blog entry was written my my Dad, Jeff. Every so often I ask him to write a review of a show he's seen in Los Angeles. Check out his review of "Howling Blues & Dity Dogs."

Who was Leo Frank? No, he was not Ann Frank’s father. And, while he was also a Jew, he was an American and not a German. And no, he did not die at the hands of the Nazis. He was lynched by Georgia whites in 1917 for a murder he may not have committed and after the Georgia Governor had reduced his sentence from death by hanging to life imprisonment.

Why are we talking about Leo Frank? It’s because the play with music Parade is currently being performed at the Mark Taper Forum in Los Angeles . Fresh from runs in New York and London, where, respectively, it won a Tony award and was nominated for an Olivier award, an ensemble of about two dozen talented men and women deliver a powerful performance of this “musical” about a subject which, although almost 100 years old, still has relevance today in our “red state vs. blue state” reality.

Here’s a quick summary of the story...

READ MORE OF JEFF'S REVIEW HERE

Brad in Namibia and his field recordings

My good friend Brad is a couple months into his two year Peace Corps Adventure. He is living in a small isolated city called Luderitz on the Namibian coast (the country directly north of South Africa on the Atlantic Ocean) located pretty close to the South African boarder. He's described the terrain there as being like the moon.

Brad has been assigned to teach at a Diaz Primary School grades 5-7 and, being a musician, he's going to start an afterschool music program!

Even though mail takes a whole month to get there, I'm going to send him some classroom materials and makeshift instruments. It has to be something relatively small, good for kids and inexpensive. What can I send? A good idea I've heard are kazoos. What else?

Also, Brad brought recording equipment to capture the sounds of this adventure. The hope was that he could make recordings of musicians who might not have access to recording equipment. So far he's recorded Peace Corps songs that he learned during his language and cross cultural training. The sounds quality is *amazing*, this is commercial quality. They are choral songs that remind me very much of South African choral songs.

Brad will be posting his recordings on his blog and you can listen to these Namibian Peace Corp song recordings here.

Please follow Brad's adventures in the Peace Corps. There is a link to his blog in my blog roll over there on the right. He's also posting video as well.

on top of Diamentberg (Diamond Mountain)