Tuesday, March 20, 2007

"Take me away...I don't mind..."


"SHERMAN...set the wayback machine for..."
Anybody remember these guys? LOVED these cartoons (and their related family- Bullwinkle, Fractured fairy tales, etc)
Lately, I been thinking about the past quite a bit. I tend to be a fellow who likes to reminisce on the "good old days". On reflection though, I usually realize that those days weren't so good, and that there is no better time to be me than right now. But nevertheless, I can't help but think back to "simpler times" in my life. One of the things that takes me back the quickest is the music. A song can slingshot me back to a particular time and place faster than Doc Brown's flux capacitor! (There's a lyric hint*) That's the nice thing about music, and Art in general I suppose, is it's power to not only transform us, but to transPORT us as well.
But enough rumination and pontificating! I'll leave that to ya'll...
What do you consider the greatest period, or "golden age" of :
A) Music
B) Theatre
C) Film
"Get on it, Sherman!"
"YES SIR, Mister Peabody!"

46 comments:

Anonymous said...

The Golden Age of Music would be the thirties and forties...Big Bands, most of the great American Standards written by the likes of Porter, Gershwin , Berlin, Rodgers and Hart, etc.

Golden Age of Theatre would be the post-war era of late fifties into the sixties. A time when musicals (particularly bad Lloyd-Webberly types of musicals) didn't run roughshod over Broadway and the West End and when both the British and American theatre started to grow up. I say this era continue into the mid or late seventies, then it started to flatten out as did everything in the eighties.

Golden Age of Film starts at its Center-Point Pinnacle...the year 1939 and probably includes 5 years either side, from 1935 to about 1945.

Mike said...

"Back In Time", Huey Lewis and co. (Back To The Future)

"Hold it, fellas. I'm afraid you're just too darn loud. Next, please."

"Golden age" is a bit beyond me to pin down without just repeating what I read somewhere. I'll leave that to you old farts. However, I will say that I believe that there will be another wave of great music to come in the near future. You see little glimpses every once in a while even now. But, most of it is cloud-laden due to the current commercial constraints on what could be really good music.

The tools are there. The distribution method is finally there. The ease of buying is there. The talent is there. Now if we can just sell the public on the idea that there are bands/artists out there who can record and post their music on iTunes JUST LIKE THE BIG BOYS, but who may not give a damn about (or be too busy with raising a family to care about) touring, Payola and all that. I see bands all the time that could smoke 90% of what's on the radio today. And they are unsigned. And they will remain unsigned because they won't tour. But they don't have to tour because they don't have to recoup the big money laid out by some company to a studio and image consultant. They are in the black already.

I do tend to preach this, I know. But with the Godfather Arm of The Recording Industry (the RIAA) choking on its own vomit nowadays, I think the time is nigh for some *good* underground music to rear its head.

Now, if one just had a good resource for sorting through all the thousands of bands out there (most of which, admittedly, suck) and finding the gold that is in the pile...

;-)

Anonymous said...

Amen to that Mike! Keith Richards once said," The best rock n roll band in the world is playing right now in a garage in Nebraska, and no one is listening." I would posit that now that band can be heard.

ReverendEddie said...

Music: 1947-1958 for jazz. Birth of Be-Bop and the emergence of Cool. Bird, Monk, Miles, Mingus, Brubeck, Desmond, Ella, Silver, Mulligan, Farmer, Hawes, Baker, Powell, Brown, and on and on.....
1975-1981 for rock. Emergence of Punk and New Wave (or whatever you want to call it) Ramones, Patti Smith, Blondie, Television, Pistols, Clash, Gen X, Dead Kennedys, Minutemen, Devo, Bad Brains, DC Hardcore, etc.

Theatre: 1880's-1920's: Granville Barker, Wilde, Beerbohm, Courtise Pounds, E.S. Willard, Shaw, Ibsen's Doll's House, Ghosts, An Enemy of the People, etc.
Changed the landscape, and laid the foundation, in my opinion.

Film: The grand 80's!! Three words: Weekend at Bernie's. Such a grand vision, they had to make more than one!

note:tongue firmly planted in cheek.

Really, I'll go with D$'s view. Lotta good shit in those days.

Anonymous said...

I often float back to the late 40's thru 50's-the heyday of the movie musical..

As a little girl I dreamnt of being in those films....

Music...I would have to go to the 70's....can you imagine being at Woodstock? Or at any of the shows in San Fran at that time???

Theatrically, I would love to go back to see Shakepeare in it's true form...sitting in the original Globe. Or to watch Sir Laurence Olivier in Richard the III

Anonymous said...

of course he wasn't back in Shakespeare day...but London theatre 50-40 years That would be cool.

DIVA MASTER said...

Regarding what Anonymous said...

"Amen to that Mike! Keith Richards once said," The best rock n roll band in the world is playing right now in a garage in Nebraska, and no one is listening." I would posit that now that band can be heard."

The band Richards was talking about was actually playing in a garage in H'burg, Mississippi. The band's name was called BART'S BIG-ASS TRUCK.

ReverendEddie said...

K-Lou--
I just watched the Criterion Collection 2 disc DVD of Olivier's Rickard III. Beautifully restored, the "lost 20 minutes" restored, and a wonderful commentary by playwright and state director Russell Lees, joined by John Wilders, former Governor of the Royal Shakespeare Company. Extremely enlightening.
Disc 2 has a great interview with Sir Larry from the TV show Great Acting, a gallery of on-set and production stillls and posters, featuring excerpts from Olivier's autobiography On Acting, the 12-minute television trailer
and an essay by historian Bruce Eder.
I highly recommend it.

ReverendEddie said...

"Rickard III?" I meant Dickie 3: York's Revenge.

Natch.

Anonymous said...

My list:

Music- For my tastes, I'd go with the early to mid 70's. I think many of the seminal British bands did their best work during this time (The Who, the Stones, Kinks, Zepplin, Faces, Mott the Hoople, Bowie, etc...) even the solo Beatles were making, what I feel, to be some of their best work (Lennon's Imagine and Sometime in New York City and Marcartney's early WINGS albums- George Harrison's ALL THINGS PASS) and it also saw the beginings of Hard rock /Heavy Metal (Sabbath,Priest,KISS,Deep Purple,etc) The Philly soul sound debuted during this era (The SPinners, the Delphonics, The mighty OJAYS,the Salsoul orchestra,etc...) which I have always believed to be vastly superior to Motown. We also saw the beginnings of two unfairly maligned genres in stadium rock (or as some say "Corporate rock" )and early Disco. Call me kooky, but I loved the hell out of BOSTON, STYX JOURNEY,SPEEDWAGON,CHEAP TRICK etc...in their early days, the power and songwriting of these bands could not be denied. Unfortunately as time wore on, and success (and EXCESS) took hold, they fell into a horrible downward spiral of increasingly sappy ballads and synth laden crap. But MAN they made some kick ass noise in their day!And lets face it...pre SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER disco was cool as shit!
THEATRE-
I really have always been partial to the 80's. I feel like there was alot of great work happening at the time. All of the great cutting edge work of Lanford Wilson, David Mamet, Sam Shepard,August Wilson,CHristopher Durang and Lee Blessing all hitting their stride and lesser known folks like Bill C. Davis (MASS APPEAL/ DANCING IN THE END ZONE) John Difusco (TRACERS) John Pielmier (AGNES OF GOD)Marsha Norman ( NIGHT MOTHER)
and all those great HUMANA plays that debuted like EXTREMITIES,DANNY AND THE DEEP BLUE SEA,SOME THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW BEFORE THE WORKD ENDS,GODS COUNTRY,THE SWAN, INDEPENDENCE..etc...yeah, there was alot of flash, and alot oftripe, and a tone of shitty musicals, but DAMN there was some great stuff going down as well.

FIlm-
GOTTA go with Rick on the late 60's /70's- Scorcese, Coppola, Spielberg,Woody Allen, Deniro, Pachino, Beatty, Dunnaway,Lemmon,J. Fonda, McQueen, Newman, Redford, STAR WARS, THE STING, THE COWBOYS, BUTCH CASSIDY, GOING IN STYLE,THE FRENCH CONNECTION (1 and 2), THE GODFATHER, DOG DAY AFTERNOON,THE POSIDIEN ADVENTURE,THE OUT OF TOWNERS, THE TOWERING INFERNO, COMING HOME, THE MOTHER F****N' DEAR HUNTER!!!!! HOLY SHIT, it was the MOTHER LODE!!!!

Anonymous said...

OH..and re: music...did I forget to mention the BORN TO RUN came out in this era???? Damn, I'm slippin!

bond571 said...

oh my gosh, Tubby is gone

Anonymous said...

Yep...not where I thought he;d wind up, but not really a surprise...
Here's a link:
http://sports.yahoo.com/ncaab/news?slug=ap-minnesota-smith&prov=ap&type=lgns

ReverendEddie said...

i hear that the golden gophers have no seniors on the roster and have 6 or 7 guys that are range from 6'5 to 6'9.
at least he's out of the "pressure cooker" that is UK. a stand up guy who was getting a lot of crap from UK fans. good luck to him.
i think UK should hire Pat O'Riley to be the next head coach.
or bring billy donovan up from Gainesville. that mutha scratcher can recruit like nobody's business.

Anonymous said...

Actually, diva master, I believe keef was truly referring to what can only be regarded as the greatest unsigned band the universe has ever known. A seriously unrecognized boro outfit called THE RIFFS!!!!!

Mike Tuttle said...

Hey DM, I am familiar with plain ol' "Big Ass Truck" out of Memphis (Steve Selvidge, Sid Selvidge's boy, is in this). No relation, I presume?

bond571 said...

I keep hearing Billy Donovan...

Anonymous said...

Mike,
BART'S Big Ass Truck (which actually came first) was a thrown together band out of Hattiesburg that pkayed our graduation party. (Me, Rodney Frothingham, Scott Mac and Anthony SHank) We jammed like GODS that night!
Fletch...didn't Keith Richards sit in with the RIFFS at EJ's one night?
Or was that Keith Jeznach??? Argghhh...too many dead brain cells.
Adam- Yeah Riley'll be great...till the team starts losing and he takes a "leave of absence" like he did with the HEAT...and no way Donovan leave Florida. Hell, would you?

Anonymous said...

Adam, After hearing some stuff on ESPN, I may reconsider my statements regarding Ugly Donovan...someone brought up Nick Saban and the AL football job, and how everyone said he'd never leave the Dolphins, wasn;t interested, etc...and damned if he didn't go. When it's AL Football ( OR KY b-ball) knocking at the door, everyone is gonna listen. So I amend my earlier statement...

bond571 said...

plus, Donovan was an asst. coach for UK in the early 90's and money speaks and most importantly...it is Kentucky...but, we will see, there are "only" a dozen or so names being mentioned..

Anonymous said...

I'm not so sure about the "no recruits" for UK, Steve. John Lucas's kid , one of the most heavily touted recuits, has UK on his final four, and there's another pretty big name that excapes me who is also strongly considering. If we get even one of those guys, and Morris comes back, I think UK is in good shape for her new coach.

ReverendEddie said...

Ohio State vs Vols was a great game. All-Father's (Odin) block at the end was sick.
If Florida's big boys opt to go Pro after this season, win or lose, that would give Billy an even better reason to leave Florida. Hell, coaching UK is one of the holy grail positions in college basketball. I heard someone say that if there were given the choice to coach either in the NBA or at UK, they would choose UK because of the history and the prestige that goes with it. He didn't mention the unbelievable pressure though. If Billy was offered the job, I don't see how he could turn it down. He's at the top of his game, his name is well known, he's got the creditentials, and he's young. And as X mentioned, Florida is still just a football college. I'd welcome Billy, happily.

bond571 said...

Tubby's press conference was nice..sounds like he really ejoys the feeling of being "wanted" at MN...I wish they weren't called the gophers...I think if he stayed here, he would have ended being a different kind of "gopher"...it was time

Anonymous said...

Who's Tubby?

Mike said...

@Pogue

You made me laugh tonight, sir. And, I thank you.

Anonymous said...

Crap on a cracker - UT and VANDY blowing big leads on consectutive nights and BOTH losing by one point!


...............................................................................AAAARRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRRGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

Anonymous said...

.............................ARRRRGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!

The Drama Mama said...

I'm catching this late. I was thinking you would put up a separate post, X, but Mike informed me we were just gabbing on this post. So, works okay for me.

I'd go for Billy D. or Rick P. My brother lives down in Florida and says that Billy is "Jesus Christ" down there and wouldn't leave. I just don't know, though. UK has money to offer and if the price is right...Plus, hell, it's F-ing UK Basketball!!

I like Travis Ford but he's too green around the gills.

I'm glad Tubby is going to be happy. I didn't have a problem with him personally. He's a nice classy guy - or so my mother says - but I just didn't like him as a coach.

And, no, it's not the race card, either. I wouldn't care if his skin was periwinkle. I just didn't care for him as a coach.

bond571 said...

"Plus, hell, it's F-ing UK Basketball!!"...exactly right, D.Mama...I love reading all these informed opinions and seeing everyone interseted in the games, it is definately part of living here...my nephew adores UK basketball and told me on Monday he read on his blog site that Tubby was leaving...he thinks it's all very exciting to see who the next coach will be...

bond571 said...

wow, not surprising but, quick..I guess it's best to happen so quickly..

ReverendEddie said...

Rumor has it that Mrs. Donovan was in town yesterday looking for a house.
This is what I hear. And if you heard the snippet from the news conference after the Fla game, he said "it wasn't his decision, it was the UK athletic deptartment's decision. Sounds to me like we will have Donovan here next year.

bond571 said...

I heard the same thing, Adam..

bond571 said...

Crawley looking to leave...Jasper & Meeks following Tubby...also, just rumor for now

Anonymous said...

Can I just say
SEVEN of the final 8
and already TWO of my final four picks! My bracket be on FIRE!!!!

Anonymous said...

I hope we can get Billy D. If not him, I'd take Kruger, Billy G, or Floyd. I'd even take the devil back if it came down to him or Crean or Few. I don't think any of the players will leave. Meeks is definitely staying, they interviewed his dad...

On a sidenote, I'm effin livid right now!!! I'm out in the northwest doing some shows, and every time I check my email I get another link to Carlos Mencia. The guy has STOLEN bits from comics for years, but now he is even stealing from legends. Just today I got links to bits he stole from Cosby and SAM EFFING KINNISON!This is ridiculous. If some band put a bunch of Beatles tracks on their record without permission, there would be an uproar. What's worse is Joe Rogan busted Mencia on stage, confronted him, taped it, put the tape on his website, but no one cares! AAAAAAAAAHAHAHAHHAHHAHAHHAHAHAHAH!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQWUwDbmOm0

http://view.break.com/253690

- Angry JB

ReverendEddie said...

I would love to see Billy D. Williams coaching the Cats.

Smooooooooth.

"C'mon Han ol' buddy, don't let me down!"

And how bout those Heels? Gimme a C, gimme an H, gimme an O, gimme a K, gimme an E!

Billy D. will give the announcement that he will be coming to UK the day after he loses to UCLA or two days after he wins the NCAA championship.

Anonymous said...

Ahemm...please refer to my first post in the previous thread to see that ALL FOUR of my final four are there!
I, too, would love to see Billy Dee coaching the Cats...perhaps then COLT 45 would be our new game sponser!

Mike said...

Billy Dee on Family Guy...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Su35RhhmqgA

Anonymous said...

UK bball fans

Several news outlets, (the first being a journalist out of Louisville) broke a story with Billy D agreeing to a contract in principle, somewhere around 7 years/28 million. The problem is, having the story leaked out before the end of the tournament may cause Billy to renig on his decision to save face. Maybe not, but this premature ejourneculation may blow the deal. Can't you just keep it quiet a couple days?

Which begs the question, where does "responsible journalism" come into play? or does it?

JB

The Drama Mama said...

FYI - right from the local news!!


TRUE BLUE COVERAGE
CatsPause: UK Ready To Name Donovan

March 27, 2007 08:29 AM

According to Darrell Bird of CatsPause.com, UK is poised to name Billy Donovan its new basketball coach after Florida's final game in the NCAA Tournament.

According to CatsPause.com, the reported package is a seven year deal worth $3.5 million per year. The report further states there is a $3.5 million loyalty bonus if Donovan completes all seven years. The deal reportedly was made last Thursday and Friday during a meeting with Donovan's agent here in Lexington.

bond571 said...

what UK basketball news!!
and now it gets even better, Summerfest '07...Shakespeare in the Park...yippeeeeeeee..article in the Herald..so exciting!

Anonymous said...

here is the link.



http://www.kentucky.com/454/story/27128.html

The Drama Mama said...

Oh, great, now the same news source is saying that CatPause story is a rumor. Hmm...maybe they are just covering their asses until the tourney is over. Because I heard the same thing from another unmentionable fairly credible source. Come on, Billy D. You know you want to come back.

Anonymous said...

Billy Donovan or is he really Eddie Munster?

You decide.

-Russell

Anonymous said...

He is...I have seen him up close....
I saw him last month in Gainesville...he wears the fangs in Gainesville

But I'll take him

But I also

hate the f*$%#'in Gators....

Anonymous said...

http://hermeshandbag.finniwolf.com Wnyxdue http://hermeskelly.finniwolf.com hermes kelly bag hermes handbags kelly title Hideshi Hino will be a sufficient quantity to make me decide upon a new manga, when they have over heaps enough twisted legends to go on to me coming back. I sac kelly hermes am notably modern hermes 24 faubourg with regard to the discussion forum simply hermes orange verte desire my corporation is posting in proper room. "Steven, warm, advises "better years of our life, and as well,as well as the "Wes" says Barbet Schroeder's "Terror's supporter, they within loans within Wes can be hermes shoe a "significant table dresser, He hermes trismegisto instructs Paltrow this individual tastes nearly anything written and published within the qualifying criterion block (This would include his well-known "royal Tennenbaums" yet let alone).