Page 2936 – That Eric Alper

That Time Debbie Harry Hosted SNL in 1981

Music

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Jul 5, 2015

That Time Debbie Harry Hosted SNL in 1981

Blonde’s Debbie Harry turned 70 (!!!) this week. She recorded several number one singles with Blondie and is sometimes considered the first rapper to chart at number one in the United States as well, due to her work on “Rapture”. She has also had success as a solo artist, and in the mid-1990s she recorded and performed with The Jazz Passengers. Her acting career spans over thirty film roles and numerous television appearances.

Let’s take a look back at the time she hosted Saturday Night Live for Valentine’s Day in 1981. Her debut solo album, KooKoo would be released 5 months later.

DEBORAH HARRY Hosts SNL (Valentine's Day 1981) (Full Show) from VD Party Films on Vimeo.

What’s It Like Auditioning For The Blue Man Group

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Jul 4, 2015

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What’s It Like Auditioning For The Blue Man Group

It’s evolved slightly throughout the years because it’s tough to find Blue Men. About half of us are professional musicians who learn the character, and the other half are professional actors who learn the music. The thing that’s hard is that the character is not the kind of character that a trained actor can immediately understand, and that’s why half of the Blue Men we have aren’t even trained actors. It’s a ‘clown’ character for all intents and purposes, which is a term that’s kind of misused now. For the character to be believable it has to tap into an honesty and a sense of self that a lot of times, actors are trained to get rid of. There are some people who can access that honesty in the character, and there are other people who are basically trained in all sorts of acting styles that can’t really access it.

The audition process is set up to see who can access that and who can’t. [It is also set-up to see] who can tell a story without using any words, but also without being melodramatic, and without over-acting. Just this kind of pared down simplicity, with not much physical movement, just able to express these simple, base emotions, just with your eyes basically.

The audition is half-character-work and half-music. You have to be able to get at least a decent part of the music. A lot of the training process is learning drumming, or learning the Blue Man style of drumming. If you don’t have that elemental understanding of drumming you can’t really get the gig. In the [acting portion of the] audition process there are these different techniques that have been taken from Meisner, and Grotowski, and from simple acting, and been tooled to specific Blue Man purposes. [In my audition] I was given this simple task, which is just, entering the room. It is an old, old clown exercise. You enter the room as a neutral character, just trying to be as pared down, and as honest as possible, just taking in the people in the room. Then you leave the room once you feel something has been exchanged between the two of you. This exchange can be something monumental like we discovered the meaning of life, or we cured some huge disease, or it can be very, very tiny, just a simple hello. Just an exchange of a greeting or something. Simply by doing a very pared down audition like that you can tell who is game for the complexity of the character and who isn’t really willing to go there.

Via Atlas Obscura

10 Of The Best Clothing Tags You’ll Ever Read

Music

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Jul 4, 2015

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Instructive AND funny…I like that in my clothes.

The Indigo Girls set list from June 26. Look what they wrote on the bottom.

Music

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Jul 4, 2015

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The Indigo Girls set list from June 26. Look what they wrote on the bottom.

On June 26, The Indigo Girls had a scheduled date at The Chastain Park Amphitheatre in Atlanta, their hometown. That morning, gay marriage was declared legal across the US in historic supreme court ruling. Look what the dynamic duo wrote on the bottom of their set list. Love them.

The Best Obituary You’ll Read All Week

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Jul 4, 2015

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My headline is longer than this.

Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard: “I don’t feel that all the great songs have been written”

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Jul 4, 2015

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Death Cab for Cutie’s Ben Gibbard: “I don’t feel that all the great songs have been written”

Do you ever worry that all the good songs have been written? Or do you feel like there’s an infinite source out there?

I don’t feel that all the great songs have been written. I do feel that where we are now, certainly with rock & roll music, is that so much of it is variations on themes. But I think that it’s one’s particular creativity and individuality that comes out within that variation on a particular theme that makes a song great.

I think there’s something that feels so good about a 1–4–5 chord progression. It’s a very standard chord progression and it just feels good to the ears. When a song goes from a 4-chord down to a 1-chord, the resolution that our brains recognize and that feel and sound good to us are not going to cease to sound good to us if we start creating new whacky chord structures that don’t appeal to us. I don’t know what it is in our lizard brains that — certainly in Western music — make these progressions and melodies sound good to us, but they do. I would much rather hear a song that’s written from a fresh perspective, using ideas that have existed in rock & roll for 50 years, than something that is incredibly abrasive to my ears but is new. I could write you something that you’ve never heard right now. But it’s not going to sound good. You’re not going to want to listen to it. The thing that makes us want to listen to things, and the thing that makes music really embedded in our lives, is that there’s something new-yet-familiar sounding about it.

Via Medium

This Rule Of Life from the book Enormous Smallness: A Story of E. E. Cummings

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Jul 4, 2015

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This Rule Of Life from the book Enormous Smallness: A Story of E. E. Cummings

How Edward Estlin became E. E. Cummings, thanks to a great teacher.

Via

The creative act of listening to Kermit The Frog’s TEDX Talk

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Jul 3, 2015

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The creative act of listening to Kermit The Frog’s TEDX Talk

A global entertainment icon and beloved Mississippian explains the meaning of life.

Kermit the Frog is an entertainment icon known worldwide for his appearances on The Muppet Show and Sesame Street, as well as a number of feature films. He attributes much of his success to his thirty-five year partnership with Mississippi native and entertainment visionary, Jim Henson. Kermit has received many honors and accolades for his work, including multiple Academy Award nominations, a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, and a commemorative stamp from the U.S. Postal Service.

How Does It Feeeel To Find A Bob Dylan Test Pressing Worth $12,000

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Jul 3, 2015

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How Does It Feeeel To Find A Bob Dylan Test Pressing Worth $12,000

Amoeba Records in Los Angeles recently purchased a large record collection that had a lot of great, rare and one-of-a-kind items. But one piece in particular that stands out from the rest.

One of only five test pressings known to exist of an early version of Bob Dylan’s classic album Blood on the Tracks now sits on the shelves of Amoeba Hollywood. The pressing includes four previously unreleased takes of songs from the album (“Lily, Rosemary & The Jack Of Hearts,” “Idiot Wind,” “If You See Her, Say Hello” and “Tangled Up In Blue”), plus an alternate take of “You’re a Big Girl Now” that was released on 1985’s Biograph box set.

bob dylanThe story goes that in the fall of 1974, Bob Dylan went home for the holidays with a copy of his newly recorded album Blood on the Tracks, which was set to release in weeks. The album had been written after touring with The Band and becoming estranged from his wife, Sara, and though the resulting album delves deeply into troubled relationships, Dylan himself has denied that the album is autobiographical.

Upon listening to the record, which was recorded at A & R Recording in New York, Dylan’s brother, David Zimmerman, suggested that Dylan re-record some of the songs because too many sounded the same. Dylan then stopped production of the album to re-record half of it at Sound 80 in Minneapolis with different musicians, ending up with a 10-song album evenly split between the two sessions.

The ultra rare pressing was made at a Columbia Records plant in Santa Maria, Calif. It is listed at $12,000, making it the most expensive piece Amoeba has ever had for sale.