Alatar, my ancestry is at least half Irish, but I'm still not quite sure how a song about the terrible injustices of the potato famine came to be associated with rugby.
Can you enlighten me?
I can certainly understand why it's an important song to the Irish, but the rugby connection escapes me!
The Canadian equivalent would be the Club de Foot Montréal adopting 'Un Canadien Errant', a song about the banishment of the Acadian French, after the British took over British North America, as their theme song.
(The Acadians settled in the maritime provinces of Canada, but none of those provinces has a professional football, soccer or even a hockey club, so they would have to be represented by Quebec, the only French-speaking province in Canada.)
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
Its simple and catchy and sounds great when sung by loads of people! Molly Malone is about a fishmonger (or possibly a prositute) who died of a fever, but thousands of people singing Alive-Alive-Oh-oh just sounds great sung by a crowd.
My favourite one is my own team Munster. A team manager 20 years ago was asked to sing a song at a party and he chose "Stand Up and Fight!" which is the english language version of Toreador from Carmen, as rewritten for "Carmen Jones" a little known musical replacing the bullfighters with boxers. It was a huge hit in the room, made its way onto the terraces and is now our anthem and is sung before every home match. THis is my friend Jean Wallace singing it in Thomond Park, our home ground. Not too many rugby matches round the world start with Opera!
And again in a Semi Final in Dublin. Harder to hear the words but gives you an idea of the power of it.
Well it may be opera, but the lyrics are more appropriate for a rugby competition!
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
This is SO funny! Love Arnie!
In case you've never watched a Terminator movie, Linda Hamilton co-starred with Arnie in those movies.
Always like to see Arnie do some comedy - he's quite good at it!
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
A short video documenting a newly-excavated building in Pompeii. What I found most fascinating was a 2-second shot of the 2000-year-old plumbing. I wish they had focused more on that.
My great-grandfather wrote a publication/pamphlet on plumbing. I have a photocopied copy of it somewhere around here. He lived in Chicago/the greater Chicagoland area/Northwest Indiana most of his life and sanitation was a problem in Chicago. Slop was still being thrown into the street! It sounds like Pompeii was waaaay ahead of it's time! Anyway, the pamphlet mainly deals with sanitation and health related issues (and the s bend in the pipes) because it sounds like people needed convincing that it wasn't 'dirty' to put plumbing/toilets inside the home and proper plumbing would reduce disease. I shake my head because it reminds me of recent health crisis's and arguments/distrust regarding vaccines.
That's pretty cool! And to think that after Rome fell nobody had anything better until the 1800s!
Until then, the best anyone could hope for was to be rich enough to employ staff to empty your chamberpot regularly. Even then, you'd have to put up with the stench until they came to deal with it. The things we take for granted...
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
The annual DCI finals competition for drum and bugle corps were held Saturday in Indianapolis. I watched on a web stream (having seen some of the competitors live about a week before). The top four were as good as any in DCI's 51-year history. In fact, the fourth-ranked corps got the highest score ever for that placement. (That would be the Boston Crusaders performing a Melville-inspired show titled "White Whale.") I think the placements were correct -- and I predicted the top score to within one-tenth of a point -- but I'd like to share just a couple minutes from someone's (rather rough) cell phone video of the second-place finisher. That would be the Bluecoats, from Canton, Ohio. Their show was titled "The Garden of Love" and was inspired by the 1794 William Blake poem of that name. The lively segment in question is a piece called "Bump" by the Scottish minimalist composer Anna Meredith:
That video will likely be taken down soon. (As will this video of the whole show, for anyone who'd like to see it.)
And here is Meredith herself performing a piece with something of that feel, "Nautilus," as the opener of her 2018 NPR "Tiny Desk" concert:
Earlier this evening, I conflated the two Meredith pieces, but I reached out to one of the Bluecoats designers, with whom I have a slight acquaintance, and he set me straight, although he acknowledged the two pieces have some similarities. The Bluecoats played "Nautilus" last year.
That's pretty wild. He seems so chill/stoic and yeah.. pretty surprising what one can do with 2 yo-yo's!
I don't have a video, but we went to a wedding over the weekend and the guy doing the entertainment at the reception was simply amazing. He sang BOTH parts of this song spot on (while playing the piano). His range and versatility was just incredible. Wake Me Up/Evanescence
Frelga wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 3:35 am
Friends who are better at music than me, please tell me if I'm hallucinating or if there is really a riff on sem'-sorok in the epic fantasy music.
This is sem'-sorok, or seven-forty, a very popular kleizmer dance ...
I hear it at 29 seconds and again at the last 10 seconds here ...
Two Steps from Hell cranks out so much music that there's probably nothing that doesn't sound like something they wrote. Or vice versa.
Sunsilver wrote: ↑Wed May 03, 2023 7:00 am
When a colleague at work found I was going to hear him [Gordon Lightfoot], he said he wouldn't even go across the street to hear him perform. He once played at the university my colleague was attending, and was so drunk, the audience booed him. He responded by telling them "You hate me? Well, I hate you, too."
Apparently this wasn't the only time he performed while drunk. I suspect alcohol continued to a problem throughout most of his life, and he only cleaned up his act after he nearly died from that aneurysm. I kept seeing pictures of him where he looked as rough a Johnny Cash did during the mid 1960's.
A woman I knew through the Schutzhund club told me her mom used to sing with Lightfoot's band. She said they were heavily into drinking, drugs and partying. Not sure what decade this was, but it's one of the reasons she was mostly raised by her grandmother.
Yeah, I have a colleague who used to do technical work at a concert hall, and he had stories of staying up all night drinking with Lightfoot and his band.
RIP Roger Whittaker, the African-born British folksy baritone singer-songwriter and whistler, who was reported today to have died last week at the age of 87. His biggest hit came in 1975 with a nautical-themed tune, The Last Farewell, and I like a number of his tunes, including "New World in the Morning," "You Won't Believe in 'If' Anymore," "Durham Town," and his cover of "Dirty Old Town" (best known for later versions by the Pogues).
I really love 'The Last Farewell' Sad to hear he's gone.
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
Not good but, has anyone else noticed a deluge of VERY long ads on YouTube? Ads that run 30,40, 50 minutes, even over an hour? I like to support the content creators I appreciate and watch, but there is no way I have the time or inclination to sit through an ad that long. Especially as I have little faith there is any standard/fact check on whatever the heck it is they are selling/have to promote.
David McCallum, best known for playing Illya Kurayakin in the Man From UNCLE, and Dr. 'Ducky' Mallard on NCIS has left us at the age of 90. As a long-time fan of his, I will miss him very much.
Most people aren't aware he was a very talented musician as well as an actor. His father was the conductor of the London Philharmonic, and his mother played the cello, so naturally, they encouraged him to follow in their footsteps.
However, David soon decided he preferred acting. He started his career at 13, doing children's voices for the BBC repetory company on the radio. Once he became famous as Illya Kurayakin he did pursue his love of music, and produced his first album, an instrumental which included both popular works and pieces he'd composed himself. Several more albums followed over the years. Here's a light jazz piece he composed and recorded for his first album, Music: A Part of Me.
Last edited by Sunsilver on Sat Sep 30, 2023 8:43 pm, edited 1 time in total.
When the night has been too lonely, and the road has been too long,
And you think that love is only for the lucky and the strong,
Just remember in the winter far beneath the bitter snows,
Lies the seed, that with the sun's love, in the spring becomes The Rose.
