Time Enough At Last

I've been keeping this blog going since 2007 and frankly, I've done a pretty half-hearted job of it to this point.  My major problem has been that my job sucked up the majority of my energy and time to the point where I was only sporadically focused enough to write anything of substance here.  The few times I was ambitious enough to try a series of posts I could never get it together to get very far.
At the end of August that excuse went away.  I retired from my job back then and now, as Rod Serling once put it, I have "time enough at last" (and hopefully my glasses won't break).

So what now? I've been thinking over the past few weeks about just what I want to do with this blog.  I want to continue what I've been trying to do in various forums for a long time,  tell the world about all the cool and fascinating artistic things out there that fly under most people's radar.  I plan to keep writing about whatever interesting music, films, and TV shows I come across but more regularly and in depth than I've been doing,  no more just throwing up YouTube videos like I was doing a few years ago.

My main love is music so that's what I plan to concentrate on.  I want to write about people from every genre I know, not just jazz and deal with what I know and love about their work.  There will be the occasional movie and TV show mentioned but I won't be trying to write about every one I see. I honestly don't have that strong an opinion about some of them.  For the record though here are all the significant ones I've seen in theaters, on Netflix and from other sources since Nymphomaniac Part 1 back in April:  Under The Skin, Locke, The Romantic Englishwoman, The Past, I Want To Go Home, The Hurt Locker, Make Way For Tomorrow, Juan Of The Dead, Scarlet Street, Snowpiercer, Barry Lyndon, The Hunt, Raw Deal (1948), Tokyo Decadence, Proof (1991),  Wish Me Away, Concussion, A Most Wanted Man, The King's Speech, Glenda (AKA Snake Dancer), Calvary, The Tall Target, You Ain't Seen Nothin' Yet, The Big Combo, Heat Lightning, Sexual Chronicles Of A French Family, On Approval, The Drop, Frances Ha, Compulsion (2013).

To go along with the rebirth of this blog, I've decided to give the look a major overhaul.  You should now be seeing a complete redecoration with new colors, pictures and even a new title.  Since I'm now going to explain everything I talk about I'll start there. "The Real Folk Blues" is the closing title theme to the celebrated Japanese anime series, Cowboy Bebop, a noir-science fiction-comedy-drama blend with an amazing and varied Miami Vice like rock and jazz score by composer Yoko Kanno.  The phrase "real folk blues" actually comes from a series of albums Chess Records did in the 60's that repackaged the early recordings of their top blues artists like Muddy Waters and Howlin' Wolf for a white college audience clamoring for authentic folk music.  Beyond all that, the Bebop song is a stone killer.  Here it is...

The Real Folk Blues

Might as well finish up old business. Here is the closing theme of Cowboy Bebop, "The Real Folk Blues". I love how the title is the only English phrase in the lyrics and really has little bearing on the rest of the words.

Let's Jam!

A few years ago while watching Adult Swim I stumbled onto the anime Cowboy Bebop and was immediately blown away by its music which covered big band jazz, blues, rock and whatever else seemed handy. I eventually found out that the score was the work of a composer named Yoko Kanno who is well known for doing the soundtracks for anime and video games. It turns out there are even four CDs available covering all the Cowboy Bebop music and I've somehow managed to buy the two that contained the show's opening and closing themes, "Tank" and "The Real Folk Blues" without having to take out a mortgage.

So I'm looking around on YouTube the other day and guess what I find? Clips of Kanno and her band, Seatbelts, playing the Cowboy Bebop tunes in live concert. I also found clips of this music played by an American high school band and a South American rock group which suggests this is far more well known than I realized. Anyway now that I know how to post videos, here is Yoko Kanno and Seatbelts with "Tank".