Stone Cupid Real - music_to_listen_to...

Question from the Dead

noreply@blogspirit.com (Julie CHRISTENSEN) — Fri, 03 Jun 2005 16:05:00 -0700

I made a little movie and wanted you to see it. I asked my friend Hal if I could use his music, called "Sundust", which was on the Frisell record, and he said ok. And other people involved said ok, too.

How did we let this happen? From the imagined voices near ground zero to the flag-draped coffins, what would the dead tell us, if they could speak, about where we're going?

Here's another link.
Now, if you download and save or share this thing, there are some ground rules on this page, meaning you gotta be cool and not do it for money.

When is Democracy comin' to the USA???

noreply@blogspirit.com (Julie CHRISTENSEN) — Sat, 12 Mar 2005 16:55:07 -0800

In a post on this blog in December, I pasted a story about the U.S. being behind the Orange Revolution in the Ukraine, because we needed their 1,500 or so troops in Iraq and a pro-Western government, which was promising under Yuschenko. The media frenzy surrounding THEIR exit polls and THEIR protests and THEIR march to democracy was significant. And where were we? Being blocked by Blackwell, the courts, and Diebold in Ohio.
NEW UPDATES MARCH 12 2005 A-HA!!! WE ADMIT IT NOW that good old American ingenuity was behind the Orange Revolution , BUT YUSCHENKO'S PULLING HIS UKRANIAN TROOPS OUT OF IRAQ ANYWAY. AWWW, NOT WILLING ANYMORE?.....

I've also posted the very funny videos of Maher on Gannon
Maher onGannon Video DSL QuickTime
Maher on Gannon Video 56k QuickTime
To find this and other great video on Windows Media go here
and Please Support Truthout!
Thanks for these go to Truthout.org, whom I visit all day every day, as you should, too. The best, most reliable news source anywhere, in my opinion.
and here's my good old Gannongate link which I try to update when there's news, ....

There are not enough hours in the day to update this blog with the music I'm listening to properly, but as a quick note, ya gotta see Los Lobos in their current acoustic incarnation while they're on a brief tour. I LOVE Connor Oberst from Bright Eyes. An old Iowa gal like me can really relate, but so could anybody. Martha Wainwright: "Bloody Motherfucking A,;sshole"--a wonderful indictment of the patriarchal, and her voice!!! And Antony and the Johnsons is the embodiment of love--"I am a Bird Now" cradles you in his unbelievable instrument of power and grace: a tour de force. If you can experience this live, it's like visiting an androgynous saint with a voice hovering somewhere between a young Billie Holliday and a fried Joe Cocker. Magnificent.

Unspeakably Sublime

noreply@blogspirit.com (Julie CHRISTENSEN) — Mon, 14 Feb 2005 10:30:00 -0800

Unspeakable the fall album from Bill Frisell is a staple in my musical diet... like walking through an audio museum of contemporary jazz art. An amazing piece of work by a couple folks with whom I'm proud to be musically acquainted: Mr. Frisell, with whom I sang at a Randy Newman tribute--a real heart and soul man--, and some other folks who worked on it, and produced by my good friend Hal Willner! BRAVO FOR WINNING THE GRAMMY FOR CONTEMPORARY JAZZ ALBUM LAST NIGHT. I KNEW YOU WOULD...

Came So Far For Leonard Cohen

noreply@blogspirit.com (Julie CHRISTENSEN) — Tue, 08 Feb 2005 19:40:00 -0800

Review of the Show From the Sydney Morning Herald.....
with my boldface in your face! It was such an honor working with everyone again on this great music, and an Australian woman named Lian is making a documentary film on Leonard for which some of the concert, rehearsals and interviews with artists was filmed. Scotty has beamed most of me back, but some is still on Cloud Nine....
Came So Far For Beauty
By Bernard Zuel
January 31, 2005

Page Concert Hall, Sydney Opera House, January 28

In Leonard Cohen's 1973 song A Singer Must Die, presenting himself
before a panel of stern judges he declares: "I'm sorry for smudging the
air with my song." Some smudge. Some song.

That smudge's lasting imprint on several generations of singers and
fellow songwriters is the subtext of what simplistically would be
called a tribute show but in effect was a celebration of song. Spread
across nearly four hours it was as strong on interpretation as it was
light on unnecessary reverence; as steeped in Jacques Brel and country
music as German cabaret and folk; as joyous as it was moving.

You could see that with a cocked-hip Jarvis Cocker wholly inhabiting
Death of a Ladies Man (in duet with Beth Orton) and bringing a
self-mocking playboy touch to I Can't Forget. And certainly it was
there in Nick Cave, who made us re-evaluate one of Cohen's more
contentious songs, Diamonds In The Mine - "a nasty Leonard Cohen song"
he cheerfully declared - by playing up some Vegas sleaze while the
always impressive and flexible backing group briefly turned into Elvis
Presley's TCB band.

Not that the evening's stars were only the best-known faces. The
Handsome Family took and gave great delight by relocating A Heart With
No Companion to the Kentucky hills, while Teddy Thompson (whose mother
Linda Thompson earlier had hushed the room with The Story of Isaac)
found a bruised centre to lines such as "I choose the rooms that I live
in with care/the windows are small and the walls almost bare".

And in the category of "where the hell has he been hiding?" was the
hulking, shambling figure of New York singer Antony, who left open
mouths on and off the stage with his heart-piercing explorations of The
Guests and the prayer-like If It Be Your Will. (He's playing tonight at
the Vanguard and must be seen.)

What was staggering was how each time you thought the night had just had its peak someone else would stroll on stage and give you another one. And then another. For example, Rufus Wainwright's version of Hallelujah, which escaped from the shadow of Jeff Buckley's seemingly definitive interpretation with an elegant but effortlessly transporting take, is the kind of song that would climax any regular show, but here was presented early in the first set. Three songs later a former Cohen backing vocalist, Julie Christiansen, beautifully balanced The Singer Must Die between pathos and humour and upped the ante again.

Martha…

More on the Cohen thing....

noreply@blogspirit.com (Julie CHRISTENSEN) — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 15:31:36 -0800

He's their man

January 2, 2005

Leonard Cohen, who for the past decade has been a reclusive devotee of Zen Buddhism.
Photo: Supplied

Leonard Cohen inspires an uncommon kind of devotion among his fans, as the all-star line-up at a tribute concert in Sydney proves. Guy Blackman reports.

"I don’t think he plans on performing any more, and now he doesn’t have to because we’re doing it,” American music industry veteran Hal Willner says of Leonard Cohen. “He is really happy, he has been totally supportive in every way.”

Willner — who has worked with everyone from Sting to Sun Ra and whose credits as a movie soundtrack director include Gangs of New York and Robert Altman’s Short Cuts — is the man behind Came So Far For Beauty, an all-star concert tribute to the music of Leonard Cohen.The concert will be performed for three nights only at the Sydney Opera House later this month, as part of the Sydney Festival.

Already in his 30s when he had his first musical success, the Canadian-born Cohen is now 70. For the past decade he has been a reclusive devotee of Zen Buddhism. It seems unlikely he will ever return to live performance.

Cohen was a respected but relatively obscure poet and novelist in 1968 when his first (and still his most famous) song, Suzanne, introduced a literate, decadent and world-weary romantic vision to the world of pop music. His subsequent body of work, consisting of just 11 studio albums recorded over five decades, has become the subject of more serious analysis and feverish discussion than virtually anyone bar Bob Dylan.

“I just adore Leonard Cohen’s music,” says Willner. “I know it backwards and forwards. So the opportunity to do what I call an exploration or a dissection of his music is fantastic. Hey — I get to choose the set list!”

And the line-up. The hand-picked cast is impeccable, comprising Nick Cave, Beth Orton, Pulp’s Jarvis Cocker, Kate and Anna McGarrigle, Rufus and Martha Wainwright, Linda and Teddy Thompson, the Handsome Family and Cohen back-up singers Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen.

Each night these 13 performers will present 31 songs from Cohen’s total canon of 101, with the backing of a nine-piece band.

The show has already been staged in New York and Brighton, England, to uniformly rave reviews — no small feat for a night dedicated to a man whose music inspires such fierce devotion. Late last year Nick Cave told The Age’s Patrick Donovan how Came So Far For Beauty managed to come as far as Australia.

“Hal’s events are notoriously ramshackle, with lots of different people singing,” he said. “In Brighton, it somehow clicked together, and after that we got offers from all over to do more stuff. But we didn’t want to spend the next year doing tributes to Leonard Cohen — we all have other things to do. But the Sydney Opera House is too interesting to pass up.”

Cave is a Cohen fanatic and his version…

I'm coming to Sydney Opera House!

noreply@blogspirit.com (Julie CHRISTENSEN) — Sat, 15 Jan 2005 15:03:00 -0800

The third installment of the ROLLING THUNDER of Leonard's considerable oevre, Hal Willner's Came So Far for Beauty, an evening of Leonard Cohen Songs in which I have been honored to take part, will be heading to Sydney, Australia to three sold-out concerts later this month. Click above for more about it....
What's Cohen on

The 2005 Sydney Festival is about collaboration - that is why a brooding Australian rock poet, among others, is performing the songs of a brooding Canadian rock poet. By Clare Morgan.

There can't be too many occasions when Nick Cave fans would snuggle happily beside devotees of the McGarrigle Sisters. Brooding rock poet Cave sharing the same bill as trilling French-Canadian folk singers Kate and Anna? Hardly. And how comfortable would ultra-hip connoisseurs of Rufus Wainwright be cuddling up to followers of the oddball country duo the Handsome Family?

Pretty comfortable, as it turns out, thanks to Leonard Cohen. In a blueprint for the art of crossover, Came So Far For Beauty - An Evening of Leonard Cohen Songs brought together a line-up that showed no respect for musical borders, with folk-pop songbird Beth Orton, Martha Wainwright, Linda and Teddy Thompson, and former Cohen bandmates Perla Batalla and Julie Christensen joining the abovementioned artists for a one-off performance in New York in 2003.

The show was repeated last May in Brighton, England, and in the audience was Brett Sheehy, the hyperactive director of the Sydney Festival, who knew immediately he wanted the show for Sydney. "It was just musical heaven," he said.

Sheehy isn't one to think small, but with only eight months until the festival he was pessimistic about his chances as he dashed backstage.

He even admits to being a bit starstruck: "I was in this room with all this awesome talent, looking at my shoes and a bit nervous, and said 'Gosh, if anyone wants to come to Sydney next January then, you know, it'd be great'. And to a woman and man they said 'Yeah, let's do it' ... I'd like to be able to say it was all down to us, but it was delivered on a platter to us by those artists."

Sheehy was amazed by the mix in the audience. "There were the Cohen dinosaurs like me, the Pulp fans for Jarvis Cocker and the Nick Cave fans, then all the underground and avant-garde types who were there for Rufus Wainwright and all the folk fans for the McGarrigle Sisters. The floor was jumping. To feel in the audience the different patches when people were responding to their favourite artists was amazing."

Crossover is a big theme of this year's festival, with the Cohen event just one of several that feature what might seem unlikely collaborations. Take the festival centrepiece, The Black Rider: The Casting of the Magic Bullets. The musical fable is based on a book by beat poet William S. Burroughs; Tom Waits wrote the music and lyrics; and it is being staged by ground-breaking director Robert…

Help the victims

noreply@blogspirit.com (Julie CHRISTENSEN) — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 09:40:00 -0800

Following are some of the agencies accepting contributions
for aid to people affected by the earthquake and tsunami in
Asia.

OXFAM AMERICA
Donor Services Department
26 West Street
Boston, MA
12111-1206
800-77-OXFAM

DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS
P.O. Box 1856
Merrifield, Va.
22116-8056
888-392-0392

INTERNATIONAL FEDERATION OF RED CROSS/RED CRESCENT

INTERNATIONAL MEDICAL CORPS
Earthquake/Tsunami Relief
1919 Santa Monica Boulevard,
Suite 300
Santa Monica, Calif. 90404
800-481-4462

ACTION AGAINST HUNGER
247 West 37th Street, Suite 1201
New York, N.Y. 10018
212-967-7800 x108

AMERICAN FRIENDS SERVICE COMMITTEE
AFSC Crisis Fund
1501 Cherry Street
Philadelphia, Pa. 19102
215-241-7000

ISLAMIC RELIEF USA
Southeast Asia Earthquake Emergency
P.O. Box 6098
Burbank, Calif. 91510
888-479-4968

AMERICAN JEWISH WORLD SERVICE
45 West 36th Street, 10th Floor
New York, N.Y. 10018
800-889-7146

DIRECT RELIEF INTERNATIONAL
27 South La Patera Lane
Santa Barbara, Calif. 93117
805-964-4767

MERCY CORPS
Southeast Asia Earthquake Response
Dept. W
P.O. Box 2669
Portland, Ore. 97208
800-852-2100

INTERNATIONAL ORTHODOX CHRISTIAN
CHARITIES
Asia Disaster Response
P.O. Box 630225
Baltimore, MD 21263-0225
877-803-4622

OPERATION USA
8320 Melrose Avenue, Suite 200
Los Angles,
Calif. 90069
800-678-7255

SAVE THE CHILDREN
Asia Earthquake/Tidal Wave Relief Fund
54 Wilton Road
Westport, Conn. 06880
800-728-3843

( I checked the gushy corporate donor page against "choosetheblue.org"
and it looks to be as much blue as red. Let's hope the corporate
partners give a lot, too...)
I actually went to the web pages of all the charities listed in the New
York Times and left off some that looked too partisan, and American Red
Cross and a couple others that have been in the news as being shady.
If you'd care to see that full list, you can go here:
NEW YORK TIMES

Have a safe and strong new year.

Buying Blue got Better

noreply@blogspirit.com (Julie CHRISTENSEN) — Fri, 17 Dec 2004 10:22:59 -0800
Buying Blue has gotten more comprehensive with a database that tells you whether the parent company gave at all, or what percentage blue or red at a glance. Vote w/ bucks, if ya got 'em. Otherwise, make and give ART.

Choose the Blue

noreply@blogspirit.com (Julie CHRISTENSEN) — Tue, 14 Dec 2004 08:25:00 -0800
CHOOSE THE BLUE
a searchable database that
votes with your $$$

Gigging tonight with Headless Household in Santa Barbara

noreply@blogspirit.com (Julie CHRISTENSEN) — Mon, 13 Dec 2004 13:14:50 -0800
Headless Household with Joe Woodard, sometime Cupid Chris Symer down from Spokane, Tom Lackner, Dick Dunlap, and a wide cast of heads, will turn 21 tonight at the annual Xmas show. This is my 7th year. We retired the polka queen, who sounded like Julie Andrews on meth, but she may rear her ugly head for the Heimlich Maneuver....
and ya gotta see the psychodelic poster