Let us enjoy some outsider and alternative music. The singer, musician and artist Daniel Dale Johnston (1961–2019) started his career by recording cassettes alone in his home. In the early 1990s, he became famous when Kurt Cobain (of the band Nirvana) was frequently seen wearing a T-shirt with the cover art for Johnston’s 1983 cassette album Hi, How Are You, with the now iconic “Jeremiah the Innocent” frog. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
The 1965 American musical comedy film Harum Scarum, released in the United Kingdom as Harem Holiday, starred Elvis Presley. Full of orientalist clichés, it looks like a spoof of the Arabic adventure genre. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Poets and Lovers exists since five years and a half. It is now the sole survivor of a group of four related sites. Those devoted to the artist Graham Ovenden and his Garage Press have definitively disappeared: Graham died on 9 December 2022, then nobody was responsible for maintaining these two sites, and after the person in charge of the technical management of the four sites disappeared, their domain names were not renewed. The domain name of Pigtails in Paint was also not renewed: according to a press release dated 9 March on its Facebook page, when the person in charge had gone, the Editor-In-Chief could not get complete access to the domain name, so the latter expired. He decided then to let the project sleep until he could get help from other people. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Elizabeth Barrett Browning (1806–1861), one of the most prominent poets of the Victorian era, became widely popular in England and the United States during her lifetime, both for her poetry and her stands against slavery in the United States, injustice toward Italian citizens by foreign rulers, and child labour. From age 15 until her death, she had to battle with a lifelong illness.
Her first known poem, “On the Cruelty of Forcement to Man,” was written at the age of six or eight. She published her first collection of poems, An Essay on Mind, with Other Poems, in 1826. Her 1844 volume Poems made her one of the most popular writers in Britain at the time. A collection of her last poems was published by her husband, the poet Robert Browning, shortly after her death. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
The American rock band ZZ Top was formed in 1969 in Houston, Texas, by Billy Gibbons (guitar and vocals). By the end of that year, he was joined by Frank Beard (drums), and in 1970 by Dusty Hill (bass and vocals); the band’s membership remained then the same until Hill’s death in July 2021. Per Hill’s wishes, ZZ Top continued with Elwood Francis, the band’s long-time guitar tech, and they are still active now. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
After 5 years and 5 days, this blog still lives, having recently overcome new obstacle. Earlier this year, the person in charge of the technical management of the four sites Pigtails in Paint, Poets and Lovers, Graham Ovenden and Garage Press faced a personal emergency and had thus to give up that work. The four sites fell into different hands. At the beginning of this month, the company hosting Poets and Lovers moved it to another server, but due to error in the update of DNS records, the site was unreachable. After correcting it, the security certificate was faulty and had to be replaced. Finally, the contents uploaded to the new server was from an earlier backup, so the latest posts and images were missing, I had to restore them; this was done 4 days ago. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
In February 2001, the ska band The Slackers released their album Wasted Days in two different forms: a CD with 16 tracks and a vinyl LP with 9 tracks. The album cover is a photograph showing Miki Stroman reading a comic titled Wasted Days. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
Paul McCartney wrote the song “I Lost My Little Girl” at the age of 14 in 1956 or 1957, shortly after the death of his mother (on 31 October 1956); the song may have been unconsciously inspired by that event, but he became aware of that much later. It is one of his first songs, and the first he wrote for guitar. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
John Lennon wrote his song “Hello Little Girl” in 1957, and it was the first one composed by the duo Lennon-McCartney. The Beatles recorded a version of it, and submitted it with Paul McCartney’s “Like Dreamers Do” during their unsuccessful audition for Decca Records on 1 January 1962. It was finally included (as Track 19) in their compilation album Anthology 1, released on 20 November 1995 by Apple Records, which is part of The Beatles Anthology series. CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
The jazz song “Little Girl” was written and composed in 1931 by Madeline Hyde and Francis Henry, and first recorded by Sam Lanin and His Orchestra on June 2, 1931, with vocals by Paul Small. Since then, both the song and its instrumental version have been interpreted by various artists (see here for a partial list). CONTINUE READING / CONTINUER LA LECTURE…
