Video Highlights And A New Page
Posted by Mitch on Mar 9, 2010
I have a lot of videos on this blog. Sometimes they’re easy to find because they match up with the content. Other times they’re kind of hidden gems, something I used to add something different to the post.
Overall the videos are all over the place, so I decided it was time to consolidate them, as well as highlight a few of them here. I did this before with my post showing my early videos up to June 2008. Below are 9 others I’d like to highlight, mainly because today is the 9th of March. For all other videos on this blog, though, go to the link above that says Videos, or of course you can click on the link I just created.
This video of Tunak Tunak Tun by Daler Mehndi just thrilled my wife and I when I discovered it last year. It’s infectious and fun.
This was the video of the year in 2009, a funny wedding entrance video.
We’ve talked a lot on this blog about commenting; this was Chris Pirillo’s take on it.
I had someone recently tell me about Google 411 service; told him I’d written about it in 2008, including the video.
I had finally written about the movie The Secret, and this was the 20 minute video clip from The Secret, which is enough to get you going.
This video caused a lot of consternation for a lot of people, mainly me, on my business blog for about 2 years before I decided to move it over here instead; it’s a motivational video of a boy with Down’s Syndrome.
A very recent video showing that stupidity and racism is still alive in America, courtesy of this Rachel Maddow clip with Pat Buchanan being stupid.
Talk about people with a passion that I’m not sure I could ever find again, this one highlights something known as Free Running.
Finally, we’re coming up on St. Patrick’s Day, and even though I’m not Irish and I’m not Catholic and I don’t drink beer (let alone green beer), I figured I’d get into the spirit of things this one time by presenting the Muppets singing Danny Boy.
And there you go, 9 videos I wanted to bring some life back to. I hope you check these out, and if you’re ever looking for some entertainment, remember to check out my Video page above.
Muppet Monday
Posted by Mitch on Feb 16, 2010
I’ve been on kind of a serious kick and decided it was time to cheer things up for a little bit. As you know, I’ve talked about my love affair for the Muppets often enough around here. I have a bunch of Muppets videos all over the blog; one day I’m going to create a page where I’ve got all my videos, including the Muppets. In the meantime, I want to share these six with you, which I love.
Julie Andrews, Lonely Goatherd (Okay, I love Sound of Music also)
Raquel Welch; she still looks great!
Linda Ronstadt singing one of my favorite songs ever, and supposedly she said she never sung the song better than for this show.
Pearl Bailey, bad jousting scene from Camelot. Pearl was actually a U.S. Ambassador when she decided to do this particular show, and in the movie Carmen Jones, was the only actor in the movie who actually sang her own part.
Rita Moreno, the first person to ever win an Oscar, Emmy, Tony and Grammy.
Opening song from the movie Muppets From Space, as they perform Brick House
And that’s that; back to other topics next time.
Cleavage; Yeah, I’m Going There!
Posted by Mitch on Jan 29, 2010
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You see that image there to the left? Every time I’m on Facebook and I go to play this game called Lexulous, that is the first image that pops up when I go to play a game. It’s an ad for a dating service, which proves to me and everyone else that Facebook really isn’t targeting ads to anyone in particular sinse my Facebook profile shows that I married. However, that’s not what I’m here to talk about. I’m here to talk about the image more than that ad. What’s the first thing you notice in the ad? Cleavage!
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Yep, I’m about to tackle the subject of cleavage. I figure we might as well talk about it, because it’s everywhere we go. Guys, we’re just inundated with it pretty much 24/7. It doesn’t even take a lot of cleavage to pull our eyes over there. I don’t think that this makes any of us perverts by any means whatsoever. My wife even says it’s just pretty much “eye candy”, and she would be someone who knows. Let’s just say that my wife could give most of these women a run for their money, but instead has decided to always wear clothes that cover up her cleavage as much as possible.
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I put it that way because in reality there is no hiding what she’s got. Over the years, I have taken to following my wife by a few steps as we walked through malls and places where there are a lot of people. I do that because I love watching people, but I also love watching the reaction that people have when they see my wife. She’s one of those people who makes you smile all the time, but when it’s warm and she’s only wearing a shirt or sweater, even women will take a look at her chest. I have seen women frown and get this look on their face as though she’d done something wrong, then notice I’m looking at them and suddenly turn their heads away. Women get really strange when they see other women’s cleavage, as if it’s something that’s evil.
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Not us guys though. We try not to acknowledge it, but the truth is if it’s out there we’re going to take a look. It’s not that we go out of our way most of the time, but it’s there. I’ll tell you this truth, though you may not believe me. I didn’t notice my wife’s chest when I met her because she kept it covered up. It probably wasn’t until two weeks later when I went to a party and she was dressed a little bit differently that I noticed it was there. I am not someone who’s predisposed to look at women’s chests, instead preferring to look at women’s eyes. However, when it’s blatantly out there and thrown in my face (so to speak), I’m probably going to look. I’m not going to stare, but I’m definitely going to look.
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When it comes to cleavage, we guys are not necessarily discriminating. Most of my friends are women, and for the most part I never pay attention or notice what they’re chest look like. And yet, every once in a while you catch your female friends wearing something that’s either low-cut enough so you see cleavage, or loose enough so that when they bend over you can’t help but notice the cleavage. That’s not our fault either, and I’m not saying it’s the women’s fault, I’m just saying that suddenly your eyes are drawn to it and you have to look. And it doesn’t have to be a lot of cleavage either; we guys will pretty much look at anything.
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I really think we’ve been conditioned to this kind of thing over time. When you think about it, throughout history bodices have always been highlighted by high society. When women used to wear corsets, the basic idea was to make the waste as tiny as possible so that the cleavage stood up. Bodices were cut low to help cleavage pop out of the top. These days, we have a lot of entertainers who are showing a lot of cleavage, whether they have a lot of talent or not. I think we can look at pop icons such as Britney Spears and Jessica Simpson and debate about whether we pay as much attention to them as we do because of their voices or because of how they look. And it’s obviously not just singers, especially if you take a look at this picture of Selma Hayek. I mean, homegirl’s got it going on, and as pretty as she is I think we would all notice her anyway. But wearing something like what she’s got on here, it’s just hard to take your eyes off of that.
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For you ladies who are reading this, I’m wondering how honest you will be with us on this topic of cleavage. Let me preface this by saying that most of my life my friends have been women. I have been privy to some inside information that most guys don’t ever get to hear. I have had some of my women friends tell me that they know the effect that they have on men based on some of the clothes that they wear. They’ve often said to me “I wouldn’t be wearing this if I didn’t want anyone to look at me.” I’ve also heard that there is a rule that says, for the most part, that it’s okay for women to show cleavage as long as they’re holding back on showing everything else. Personally, I think it’s a very strange rule, and I’m not sure I’m buying it all that often, but in general I’m going to let it go because I’m probably going to look anyway.
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A part of this goes back to the old question “does sex sell?” I think it depends on what is being sold. Obviously sex appeal sells a heck of a lot of records. I don’t know if sex appeal sells movies all that well. I don’t know any guy who’s thinking about a woman whose body they think is outstanding that says “I’m going to see this movie because so-and-so’s got an incredible body.” When it comes to television, I’m not so sure. I don’t know a single guy who initially said “I’m going to watch Ghost Whisperer because it looks like an interesting show.” But I know a lot of guys who watch it after the fact, and I’m betting what got them to watch it in the first place was the fact that Jennifer Love Hewitt has one of those bodies and is often showing off some of that cleavage.
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I’m going to say this in closing. America, good or bad, has a thing about women’s bodies. Even those who decry the fact that women might be dressing too sexily are watching them. There’s no getting away from cleavage, and frankly I’m not even going to try. My general thought is that women can wear anything they want to, as long as they retain a little bit of reality about it. Some of my women friends have said to me that they want guys to look at them, but not all guys. My response has always been you don’t get to make that decision. That’s just the way it is; if you’re out and about and you’re dressed in that fashion and people look at you, deal with it and move on.
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And that’s what I’m going to do with this post about cleavage. I think it’s time to move on and see what some of you have to say about it, and I’m betting that Sire is really going to enjoy this post, if only for the pictures. Is this post salacious? It might or might not be depending on your reaction to it. For me, it’s just another topic to talk about as we head into the weekend. And, like I said, I’m not mad at anybody. 
Leno Vs. O’Brien – I Called This One
Posted by Mitch on Jan 15, 2010
I figure it’s my turn to comment on the fray that’s become the late night wars between Jay Leno and Conan O’Brien, wars that never should have occurred in the first place.
Here’s the deal for the uninitiated. Jay Leno this is one of the host of the Tonight Show for about 17 or 18 years. The show came on at 11:35 at night and ran for an hour. It was followed by the Conan O’Brien show, which also ran for an hour. In 2008, it was announced that Jay Leno would be giving up the Tonight Show and that Conan O’Brien would be taken over. Everyone thought that was a fair deal, and that maybe the Tonight Show needed some fresh blood.
Somewhere along the line, Jay Leno decided that he didn’t quite want to give up television life just yet. Little has always been a very active guy, still doing comedy tours and weekend shows while he was host of the Tonight Show. But he must’ve gotten used to the big money that television gives you, so he started a little bit of back chatter. What the network, NBC, decided to do was save a little bit of money in television programming by creating a nightly show for Jay Leno at 10 PM. The show would come on Mondays through Fridays and run for an hour.
The network love this idea; almost nobody else did. When I first heard it I said to my wife “that’s not gonna last and Jay Leno be back on the Tonight Show within a year”. It turns out I’m sort of prophetic; it didn’t even last a year, and by all accounts Jay Leno will be back as the host of the Tonight Show during the last week of February after the Winter Olympics. Conan? Well, he decided not to be emasculated by being pushed back to 12:05, and it’s probably gonna take his ball and go play elsewhere.
My overall opinion is that both moves were the wrong move from the beginning. Jay Leno still had the number one rankings for late night, and there was no reason to believe that they were going to be falling anytime soon. It would have been interesting to see Jay Leno in the spot when David Letterman was going through his problems and eventually took over the number one spot for a while. When Conan took over the Tonight Show, he had the number one rankings for a few nights, but then Dave took over and that was that.
I don’t know how many people saw the Conan O’Brien late night show, but I never thought that he would be the common guy who would work well in 11:35 spot. He’s nice enough guy, but is never come across to me as a comfortable and engaging guy whom people would look at and say “there is a guy like to sit down and have dinner with.” That’s the kind of guy Jay Leno is. You were just comfortable with Jay, and you could tell that his guests were comfortable with him also. I don’t know that anyone could really ever see Conan O’Brien sitting down with the President of the United States or any other big-name politician and having a regular conversation with them.
I also wondered about the strategy of having a Monday through Friday talk show during primetime. I mean, just which networks did you think were going to allow the stars of their television shows to appear on his show? Whether their shows were directly on opposite his or not, it was now more of a threat to the other networks than a promotional tool. Initially some of Jay’s old friend did show up, but by the end, which is in actually over just yet, you could tell it was a bad idea that just wasn’t going to work.
Let’s face the facts folks. We want real entertainment during our primetime ever gonna be watching TV. Late night talk shows during primetime might work on the cable channels, but we’ve all come to expect something different on the networks. Sure, NBC did save some money, but they seem to forget their legacy, which used to be a network that knew how to pick original programming that was actually good. At least they had the good sense to make sure to bring back, in some form or another, all of the Law and Order shows.
I’ll tell you the truth, I don’t watch late night TV shows all that often. As a matter of fact, I tend to watch a lot more documentaries that I taped earlier in the evening. When I do decide to check out late night, I used to love to mix up the Tonight Show and David Letterman show, because each show has something that I enjoyed and would laugh at. While I enjoyed Conan show at 12:30, there was nothing about his show at the earlier hour that ever seemed as good as anything that David Letterman had on his show. Then again, I’m almost in the next demographic that they’re not shooting for anyway.
At this point it’s almost all over, and come the end of February it’s going to be like the final episode of one of the seasons of Dallas, where they decided to write off the whole season by saying that it was just a dream sequence. A year from now someone’s going to ask “did Jay Leno actually have a TV show on before 1135?” And probably no one can remember.
My 10 Favorite Blog Posts Of 2009
Posted by Mitch on Dec 31, 2009
We’re winding down the year, and since I’ve already posted my goals for 2010, I thought I’d take a look back to see what I really liked that I posted in 2009. That’s not necessarily an easy task, as I had well over 200 posts, but I do what I do for my readers, and also for myself I suppose, as I get to see where my mind was at certain times throughout the year.
The posts below weren’t necessarily the most commented posts of the years, although, as it turns out, one of them actually was. These are posts I liked for some reason, and that means it’s a selfish reason. Maybe later on, at some point, I’ll actually post something about the most popular posts for the year; we’ll see. In the interim, I hope you enjoy some of these posts that you might have missed throughout the year, and heck, you might think about doing something like this on your blog.
1. Barack Obama – Our Time Has Come – There shouldn’t be any question why this post is here, even though it may not have been one of my better written posts. You just can’t imagine how proud I was on this day, and man, I wasn’t hearing any mess from anyone about “well, he’s not all black”. If he were walking down the street no one would be saying “Hey, there goes half-white Barack.” So, my wife and I were proud, my mother was proud, my grandmother was proud, my dad would have been proud, and it was a great day.
2. Seven Things You Don’t Know About Me – This one was part of a meme that someone else started, and I decided I’d go this route rather than the 25 questions meme that was going around.
3. Massive Traffic To Your Website/Blog – This post was a rant against all those other posts you’ve all seen where someone is talking about how to drive massive traffic to your blog, but it’s the same thing you read over and over, without any proof that any of what they’re talking about works. You know me; I hate when people copy from each other without offering anything new.
4. Six Things I’ve Learned About Affiliate Marketing – This post turned out to be the most commented on post of the year for me, and Sire, it topped out at 88, so no, I still don’t have a post that’s reached 100 comments. These were pretty good lessons; if I’d only listen to myself every once in awhile.
5. Dad, Mom And Computer – My story about how I used to talk with my dad on the computer and how it meant so much to him, then my mother later on, and of course me.
6. The Keys – Talk about having faith. This was my sharing the story of how I lost my keys on the day of a Syracuse University basketball game, how I knew I’d find them, and how it all came true.
7. Five Personal Lessons On Health Care – This one told the story of what I went through when my mother fell ill in September, and is probably the first time I gave advice to people with my background as a health care consultant that everyone needs to know.
8. No, Reading And Creativity Are Obsolete – Someone else wrote on the topic “is writing obsolete”, and I decided to counter her argument, so to speak, with what I thought was really the problem.
9. My 13 Favorite Singers – I loved putting this one together, and I felt I needed to go there because one of my most popular posts, Top 100 Singers Of All Time, was based on a list that Rolling Stone did and I just commented on it, but a lot of people thought those were my choices.
10. World Diabetes Day – 2009 – They do this type of thing yearly, and being diabetic, I always have some kind of story to share on the subject. This bad boy is growing fast, and I’m sorry but I just don’t believe that all the people gaining too much weight is actually all their fault. So, this is my tale for this year.
And there you go; if that’s not enough to read back through, I don’t know what is. I hope you enjoy going back through a portion of my year with me.
My 13 Favorite Singers
Posted by Mitch on Nov 19, 2009
I figured it was time to lighten things up again, and what better way than one of my “favorites” posts, right? This time around, I’ve selected my favorite 13 singers. This is different than the post I did on the top 100 singers because that was just my commentary on the top 10 singers, which were actually performers, of someone else’s. As far as music is concerned, I also did classical music, and a couple of the folks who I used to help highlight some of those pieces are featured here as well.
The problem with doing a list like this is that you’re really limited by who you know and whom you’ve heard of. At least I’ve mixed genres, but there’s a lot of people I left off this list because, well, these types of posts are kind of time consuming to put together. It’s also hard to find something good for all of them, because I wanted them in the video. Some of the most popular folks have most of their videos with the embed turned off, so I had to search around to find what I’m able to show here. A couple of times I just couldn’t use the song I wanted to use to highlight the person either; so be it. Still, I’d listen to any one of these folks sing names from a phone book, I love their voices so much.
Remember, if you want to purchase something for one of these singers, just click on their name. Love to hear your comments on this list, and of course list your favorite singers, and I highlight singers, not performers. That’s for another time, I figure. And here we go:
13. Paul Robeson – This guy never got the credit he deserved for all the talent he possessed, including his singing. Back in the day, he was labeled a Communist, and that was pretty much that as far as a real career goes. But there was no one else who ever had this deep and powerful a voice.
12. Christina Aguilera - Say what you will with some of her personas, when she wants to sing, this girl can “saaang”, as we like to say. As tiny as she is, you just don’t expect this kind of voice coming out of her, with such power and authority, and she’s had this voice since she was 10.
11. Celine Dion – People love to make a parody out of Celine Dion, but no one can take away her voice from her. One of the most popular songs in history is from the movie Titanic; this here is one of my favorites instead.
10. Barbra Streisand – Younger people might not know just how big a deal Barbra Streisand was at one time. She commanded movies, the stage, and records all at once. There wasn’t any style of music this lady couldn’t sing, and to me it’s a tribute to her that she’s behind the people I have on this list because she easily could have been in my top 5.
9. Luciano Pavarotti – Come on, there was no way I could leave Luciano off this list after having him sing one of my favorite classical music pieces. Talk about a powerful voice, and when he was in better shape than his later years, it looked effortless, like in this video from I Pagliacci.
8. Sarah Brightman – The original Cristine from Phantom of the Opera, some people thought she only got the part because she was married to Andrew Lloyd Webber at the time. That is, until they heard her sing. What a sweet voice, and she can do so many things with it.
7. Josh Groban – Some people can’t believe I like this guy because his music is, well, not all that strong. Who cares when he can sing like he can. I think his voice and his music are just perfect together, and he sings so many uplifting songs like this one.
6. David Ruffin – This one will be a total surprise to many people, who might not know who he is. He was one of the lead singers for The Temptations, and sang lead on my favorite song of theirs, My Girl. However, I couldn’t use that video, so I selected this one, from his later years before he died of an overdose. Still a great voice at the time.
5. Kathleen Battle – If you remember the classical music post, you’ll remember how I said I wanted to marry this one when I was younger. Just an amazing voice, and not bad to look at, and she can hit high notes like very others.
4. Kiri Te Kanawa – Kiri goes the other way. She’s got a powerful also voice that grabs your soul and makes you want to follow her around. She was actually my real introduction into opera singers, as I just wasn’t paying attention to Beverly Sills voice when she was on the Muppet Show; hey, I was in college!
3. Sam Cooke – Man, we lost him way too early. What a voice, and unfortunately, what a terrible video to use to highlight it. But, as I said, I wanted you to see him live. His voice was just so smooth and soulful, even if he was singing a fast song. No, this one’s not fast; but I love it.
2. Mariah Carey - Of course my top two are easy for anyone who knows me. I once told my wife that Mariah is the only woman I’d leave her for, and even then she’d have to sing two songs for me first. This is one of them; I’m not telling you what the other one is. lol
1. Michael Jackson – This one was easy for you to guess, coming from me. Man, I miss him so much, and I hate that anything new that comes out won’t be followed with a new video. I loved lots of songs that he did; this one was probably his most powerful overall.
My Top 19 Favorite Classical Pieces
Posted by Mitch on Oct 19, 2009
This is something different, in a way. I’ve posted on my top 10 favorite TV shows, my top 16 favorite sci-fi movies of all time, and my five top presentations in history.
Now, it’s time for my top 19 favorite classical pieces ever. But it comes with a twist. Instead of just saying I like Beethoven’s 5th Symphony, which isn’t on the list so it’s a throwaway favorite, I’m indicating which movement is my favorite if it’s a long piece. That is, if there is a favorite within a long piece, which you’ll see what I mean as I go through some of these. I’m betting this won’t be one of my more popular posts, as I’ve got a feeling most folks who stop by here probably aren’t into classical music as much as they might be into TV, but hey, I wanted to do something like this, with clips and such, and so here we go. By the way, these particular posts take a lot of time to put together, but I’m trying to show y’all that, when necessary, I will put in the time to bring you something special; whether you like it or not. By the way, Beethoven is my favorite composer, and you’ll see a lot of his stuff here.
In reverse order, here we go:
19. Borodin’s Polovtsian Dances – I have to say this up front; I hate ballet. I don’t like dance like this. I do, however, love the music of a bunch of ballets. This is one of my favorites, though I don’t have any stories saying why because I really don’t know why. I couldn’t get a video that just keyed in on the part I love the most, but it’s contained within here.
18. Orff’s Carmina Burana O Fortuna – I first heard this in college and was blown away by the power of the chorus. This was definitely something I wasn’t prepared for, and yet I loved it from the minute I heard it. I used to know all the lyrics to this bad boy; those days are gone. O Fortuna is the first song from Carmina Burana, and I decided to share a bit of my favorite artist of all time, Michael Jackson, with this song.
17. Gershwin’s An American In Paris – This is a very long piece, almost 24 minutes long, so the video I have of it will only give a short portion from the beginning. I grew to love this song when I saw Gene Kelly, one of my favorite old movie stars, in the movie of the same name. Now this guy was a man’s man when it came to dancing, and the dance sequence was something else. The music was perfect for what they did with it.
16. Puccini’s Turandot, Nessun Dorma – This is a classic opera piece, and within the last couple of years, it was made popular again by Paul Potts, who won Britian’s Got Talent with it. However, the guy who owns the song as his own is Luciano Pavarotti, who I have singing it here.
15. Gershwin’s Porgy & Bess, Summertime – One of the most famous opening songs in operatic history, Gershwin gets two places from me with this powerful song, here sung by Kathleen Battle, who I was going to marry in my past life so she would just sing to me every night. Later I heard she can sometimes be difficult to work with, so I guess I got lucky there.
14. Randall Thompson’s Alleluia – This is one of my favorite choral pieces, and I’m sure it has something to do with it also being one of the first choral pieces I sung when I was a freshman in college. I’ll own up to it; I had problem singing German lyrics, even though I learned how to speak a little German, as well as write it, when I was 10 years old. Those days were gone by the time I reached college, though. But this is one word throughout, crafted well by Thompson, and I always imagined that we sounded this good every time out.
13. Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy, choral part – My first Beethoven piece on this list, the choral part could actually also be called the fourth movement. The reason it’s not is because it’s a fantasy, not a symphony or a concerto, even though the piano is prominent throughout the piece. I always want to play this piece; instead, I was one of the boys of the chorus, but not very good since it was German once again.
12. Beethoven’s Pathetique Sonata, 2nd movement – I don’t know a piano player worth anything who hasn’t played this piece. It was one of the few classical pieces that I actually knew how to play without music, and I played it very well if you ask me. However, it’s also the piece I played for my first piano teacher in college, who absolutely cringed when he heard me play it the first time. He asked me where I heard it from, and I told him from a Glenn Gould record; seems Gould was considered a “hack” by “true” classical pianists; who knew? So, I played it his way sometimes, and the way others played it at other times. Kind of like this version here.
11. Gilbert & Sullivan’s HMS Pinafore, “My gallant crew, good morning” – Gilbert & Sullivan wrote some pretty funny stuff, and it was how political commentary was done back in their day. This particular song is one of the funniest, in my opinion, as it cites a captain who’s more interested in how he’s perceived by his men than in how the job gets done.
Interlude – Andre Watts playing Chopin’s Revolutionary Etude – This isn’t one of my favorite pieces, but Andre Watts was my favorite classical pianist ever, and it’s the only piece I can find of him playing on YouTube that I kind of like. He was the guy who reminded me that I wanted to play piano. And he had style!
Top Ten Time!
10. Beethoven’s 6th Symphony, 1st movement – Also known as the Pastoral Symphony, Beethoven easily captured the free spirit and loveliness of being out in the wilderness. There’s a video montage to this song in Disney’s Fantasia that matches up to the music really well. When I need to calm down some evenings, this is one of the pieces I put on.
9. Mendelssohn’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, overture – I love this entire piece, and actually had hoped to play it at my wedding one day, at least the recessional part. I have to say that the movies they’ve made for this are, well, weird, especially the one with Mickey Rooney in it as a young man; I’m not really sure how old he was. It’s actually another ballet where I love the music and the singing, but hate the dancing.
8. Johann Strauss’ Die Fledermaus, overture – Since there were so many Strauss’ who composed music, you get his first name here. Okay, I admit it; I grew to love this piece because of a Tom and Jerry cartoon. Many old cartoons were matched up with classical pieces, which is probably why I like them so much. In this case, one of the top conductors in history, Seiji Ozawa, is conducting.
7. Bizet’s Carmen, Habanera – Who hasn’t heard Carmen, let alone this piece, which is Carmen’s signature song? What’s wild about this clip is that the first time I ever saw Carmen, this is the lady who was singing it, Agnes Baltsa, and that was back in the late 80’s. This guy at the hospital I was working at invited me to go, as he had box seats, and man, I’ve never gone to another opera if I couldn’t get box seats. She still looks the same to me, as this performance is from 2006.
6. Mendelssohn’s Violin Concerto, 1st Movement – I love this entire piece, and it was my dad’s favorite piece of music ever. The first movement is spectacular, and there’s no build up to it. As for Sarah Chang, who I have playing it here, she was a child prodigy who pretty much owned this song for awhile. Itzhak Perlman and Midori both owned it at certain times also. But she was 14 in this clip; makes some of you feel inadequate, doesn’t it? Unfortunately, because it’s a long movement, you only get about half of it here.
5. Prokofiev’s 3rd Piano Concerto, 3rd Movement – I’d never heard this piece of music, though I knew of Prokofiev because he also wrote Peter and the Wolf, until I saw the movie The Competition with Richard Dreyfuss and Amy Irving; I had a major crush on Amy Irving at the time. They have her “playing” this song at the end of the movie, which wins her the competition. It’s one of those piano pieces that not only sounds great, but visually it’s a stunning performance piece. There are two ways of playing the ending on the piano; one has a lot more flash than the other one.
4. Beethoven’s 9th Symphony, 4th Movement – Beethoven’s 9th Symphony is also known as the Choral Symphony, and the 4th movement is also known as Ode To Joy. Imagine this; it was Beethoven’s last symphony, and he was deaf when he wrote it, then conducted it. And, while he was conducting it, he got the timing incorrect, but the orchestra played it the way it had been rehearsed by someone else. In total it’s a great piece, but this finale is, well, classic.
3. Beethoven’s 5th Piano Concerto, 2nd movement – Yup, another Beethoven piece. The 5th Piano Concerto is also known as the Emperor Concerto, as it was written for Napoleon. However, Beethoven realized what kind of man Napoleon actually was and stripped “emperor” from it. However, it was put back after his death, and people still call it that. Now, remember my mentioning Glenn Gould earlier? Well, this is him playing this movement, and, well, you’ll see that he’s definitely an unconventional piano player. But this movement is beautiful, and another piece that I put on when I need relaxing.
2. Tchaikovsky’s First Piano Concerto, 1st Movement – This is just spectacular, and once again it’s a very long piece of music. It was considered way out there in his time, so much so that it was actually hated and scorned for about 10 years, until he brought it to the United States and became a star. I thought about posting both halves of this because it’s Van Cliburn, one of America’s first well known classical pianists, but instead I’m just posting half of it so you can get a feel for it, and if you want the rest of it you can go to YouTube to listen or buy it from my link in the title (talk about hitting one over the head with a hint!).
1. Rachmaninoff’s 2nd Piano Concerto, 2nd Movement – This is the very first song I pull out when I need relaxing, and one that I practiced for two years, only to get very close but no cigar on. It sounds like it would be easy to play, but homeboy must have had big hands because my hands just couldn’t get it done. Many of you will recognize part of this from a song Eric Carmen did in the 70’s called All By Myself. And it’s this piece that I actually have on videotape from the 80’s of Andre Watts playing, which I’d hoped would be on YouTube; oh well, we’ll just have to deal with this version.
And there you are, my favorite classical pieces. Of course there are plenty more that I could have thrown in, but this post is long enough, even if most of it is video. Please, listen to some of them, and let me know what you think.
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