If you click on this thread you must post on it...

[Rigor Mortis]

Edith attached herself to my youth during a period I dallied with Sinatra and fully invested in Satchmo.

Edited for Satchmo and indication I should also wear glasses when reading a computer screen.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Ah, a renaissance man

 

[Rigor Mortis]

I have a theory that the world would be a much better place if more people really listened to Louis Armstrong.

 

[Louanne Learning]

I'm familiar with his classics, like "What a Wonderful World" and "When You're Smiling" - but I thought I should check out more, so I just Googled "Louis Armstrong most popular songs" and "Go Down Moses" came up and I found it on YouTube. Wow, just wow.

 

[Rigor Mortis]

I'm familiar with his classics, like "What a Wonderful World" and "When You're Smiling" - but I thought I should check out more, so I just Googled "Louis Armstrong most popular songs" and "Go Down Moses" came up and I found it on YouTube. Wow, just wow.

Oh god, what have you started? There's so many, Blueberry Hill, A Kiss to Build a Dream On, Saints Go Marchin' In, La Vie en Rose, which probably was the one that brought me to Piaf. Those were the Hollywood years but before that he was single-handedly changing the making of music, jazz obviously, with his Hot 5 and Hot 7 groups. Oh, don't forget he and Jack Teagarden on trombone breaking racial divisions by playing together at a time it was mostly frowned upon. Legend!

 

[Louanne Learning]

Saints Go Marchin' In

Of course! How could I forget this one?

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Accidental double post

 

[CatrionaGrace]

With that song by Edith Piaf, I posted one by Joan Baez, another incredible voice

Listening to Joan Baez on headphones for the first time was a transcendental experience. When I took physics, we occasionally watched lecture videos made by her father, Albert Baez, PhD. That experience wasn't quite as transcendental.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Joan Baez is absolutely magnetic

 

[Rath Darkblade]

Sigh. All right, folks ... it's confession time: I'm an 80s child, but I'm more than familiar with Edith Piaf, Joan Baez, "Satchmo" Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Billie Halliday, Ella Fitzgerald, Charlie Parker, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie -- legends, one and all.

Being a baritone-bass (emphasis on bass, though I've been practicing my upper register in recent years), I'm also far more than familiar with the lives and songs of two other legends -- Paul Robeson and Noel Coward -- and I have performed several songs of theirs over the years.

Now, some people (not on this forum, though) have accused me of being out of touch, because I listen to what they disparagingly refer to as "moldy oldies". But I find that although older recordings suffer from the pitfalls of older technology (e.g. scratches on the tape/record etc.), the performers themselves are brilliant -- impeccable diction, every syllable tinkling into place -- which is exactly what you want when you're listening to a song, and even more so when you're learning the song. (And I have to say that many modern artists do the same, too. After all, there's no point in singing if nobody can understand the words ... well, in my not-so-humble, anyway).

So am I an old fogey just because I like older music? I don't know. But as long as it gives me pleasure, who the hell cares?

 

[Louanne Learning]

I lol'd at this ten-second clip

 

[Rigor Mortis]

After a reasonably good Summer that included consecutive days of t-shirt weather, even shorts for those of a daring disposition and those who have the legs for it (not necessarily the same group), it has rained heavily, lashing down for the last two weeks. I understand why Irish is reputed to have over 40 words for rain; to make it seem that there's some variation to the pervasive conversation. I also realise that the 40 shades of green has nothing to do with verdant growth and all to do with the build up of mildew and mould from being submerged for all eternity.

 

[Louanne Learning]

Well, you sent me to the long-range weather forecast, and we have very little rain in the forecast, and temperatures staying above 20 C

 

[CatrionaGrace]

I have mostly lived in open, semi-arid country where green is a phenomenon that lasts ten minutes in the spring except along the river banks where the trees stay green for as much as half an hour in a good year. When it rains, I stop whatever I'm doing to watch it fall. One time, we had a cloudburst while I was in the barn loft to get hay for the horses. I sat down on a bale and listened to the rain beat on the roof. Rarely have I felt so peaceful as in those minutes.

 

[Louanne Learning]

That was nice to read, Catriona. Thanks for sharing that.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

You're welcome.

 

[GrahamLewis]

Yesterday the wife and I went for what we thought would be a shortish hike. We went to a short section of the Ice Age Trail (IAT) not far from home, one we had walked several times before. On the way back to our car we saw a loop back into the woods we'd never seen before, so we took it to extend the walk a bit. Every so often the trees were marked with the yellow blaze of the IAT, so we knew were still on the trail. But we kept winding further and further away from our starting point. The trail was obviously maintained, with the occasional bridge or stone steps, so we weren't worried. Never saw another hiker, though. As our milage total approached 4 miles we decided to . . . well, to do something. We came upon a maintenance road of some sort and followed it up out of the woods and found ourselves in between some massive cornfields, towering above our heads. We followed the narrow open path between fields, and eventually saw a house in the distance, which we decided was our best bet, to find out exactly where we were from our car, and maybe to cadge a ride there (80 degrees and a hot sun). I rang the doorbell, no one home. Far down below was a huge field with horses in it, and beside it a clump of outbuildings and another house. No answered the door there, either. Ditto for the third house. This was obviously a back road, no traffic whatsoever. Just an empty road winding into the distance. With a grain silo vaguely visible above distant trees.

We began trudging in that direction, and I began to feel like I was in the Twilight Zone.

Then a car appeared, and my wife waved it down. A woman coming on her lunch hour to feed her horse, boarded at the previous spot. She agreed to give us a ride once she had fed her horse. Turned out we were about as far from our starting point as we could be, and if she had not shown up (we didn't pass any cars on the ride back to ours) we would have spent the whole rest of the afternoon trudging back -- or perhaps died trying.

I look back at that adventure with relief and bemusement. I know of people getting lost in the woods, and I have almost experienced it before, but always in distant mountains, never in the woods five miles from home. It was a concatenation of events and circumstances. We ordinarily carry more water and stuff, even a compass, for long walks, and if it had been spring or late fall the corn would not have been high enough to block our view, and we could have seen further from within the forest, at least enough to orient ourselves.

So damned glad to be sitting here now, recalling it, instead of having been the subject of a story about "Elderly Local Man Gets Fatally Lost in Local Woods; Senility Suspected."

 

[Louanne Learning]

Wow, that's quite a story, Graham. Glad everything turned out all right. Thank goodness that woman showed up.

 

[Homer Potvin]

Pin your car's location and use the map or GPS function on your phone next time. I do that in NH when I hike, but there often isn't any service in the mountains.

 

[CatrionaGrace]

Yesterday the wife and I went for what we thought would be a shortish hike....

Some slight adjustments and you've got a creepy story.