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We invite you to attend to Time: time past, time present, time future, a time for this and a time for that, a time for the Ecclesiastes, and a time for Samuel Johnson, a time for the Animals, and for the Kinks, and for the Rolling Stones, and a time for Bach. Oh, yes, also Johnny Cash, and Fairport Convention, and the Fraggles, and Dylan. Time for Leonard Cohen too. And RLS and Seneca and T.S. Eliot and Wendell Berry. And, for some reason, a number of little Latin phrases. A rich show this week.
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All Friends are invited to attend the latest episode, with (as illustrated) Pogo, Randy Newman, Carol King, Dr Hook, and the Fraggles. Also the great Quaker Friend Willima Penn. And the usual guests: Kinks, Dylan, RLS. And not least, two pieces from my friends, Marc Copland and Emma Chapourian.
Songs of Pogo [Soundtrack] (Walt Kelly, “Man’s Best Friend”)
Toy Story (Randy Newman, “You’ve Got a Friend in Me”)
Tapestry (Carole King, “You’ve Got a Friend”)
Completely Hooked – the Best of (Dr Hook, “I Don’t Want to Be Alone Tonight”)
New York Trio Recordings 3: Night Whispers (Marc Copland, “Emily – Take One”)
The Kinks – The Ultimate Collection (Kinks, “See My Friends”)
Down in the Groove (Bob Dylan, “Rank Strangers to Me”)
John Wesley Harding (Bob Dylan, “The Ballad of Frankie Lee and Judas Priest”)
Fraggle Rockin’ a Collection (Fraggle Rock, “Friendship Song”)
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Here is an archived Evening under Lamplight show from February, 2009, with a forty-minute reading of Joyce Carol Oates’ wonderful story “Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been?” Attend to the story as a kind of modern version of Little Red Riding Hood – with a modern-day wolf who apparently is out to destroy the girl, but perhaps, on another level, he is leading her out from the Wasteland of her vapid suburban world into the sublime possibilities waiting for her, “the vast, sunlit reaches” of a new land.
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We celebrate the two energies of Springtime: Anger and Kindness, with the help of Dante and Shakespeare, and our usual panel of Dylan, the Kinks and RLS. Anger leading to self-knowledge and even to kindness – there’s an idea you don’t hear every day. Aha, but it’s a new way of looking at things, just what you expect from Evening under Lamplight!
Including RLA’s Spring meditation from Journey through the Seasons: Meditations on the Five Chinese Healing Energies.
Dante: Inferno (Penguin Classics)
The Tempest (Penguin Popular Classics)
Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan “Like a Rolling Stone”)
Phobia (Kinks, “Hatred”)
In Concert – the Complete 1967 Anaheim Show (Donovan, “Lullaby for Spring)
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Dante and the Hypocrites
We are looking at Actors and Hypocrites – the same game, different rules: people playing parts, sometimes asking us to play along, sometimes desperately keeping us from perceiving that this is not their true self. We hear from the usual guests: Kinks, Dylan, RLS, and also old friends like Leonard Cohen and Randy Newman. And a lot of attention on what Dante’s myth can tell us about these false faces people put on. Thoreau comes into it too.
Everybody’s in Show-Biz (Kinks, “Celluloid Heroes”)
Land of Dreams (Randy Newman, “Masterman and Baby J”)
Abbey Road (Beatles, “Carry That Weight”)
Biograph (Dylan, “Positively 4th Street”)
The Future (Leonard Cohen, “Be for Real”)
Dante: Inferno (Penguin Classics) (trans. Robin Kirkpatrick)
The Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde and Other Tales of Terror (Penguin Classics)
Walden and Civil Disobedience: (American Library) (Thoreau, “Civil Disobedience”)
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Attend to Little Red Riding Hood – the story of all of us leaving the straight path to follow beauty into the woods and get swallowed into our community before being reborn as our whole self. Regular appearances by Dylan, the Kinks, and RLS, plus some silly songs and some freaky songs, and the song that Ed Sullivan told the Rolling Stones “Either that song goes or you go!” 
Red Hot (Billy Lee Riley, “Red Hot”)
Wooly Bully/Li’l Red Riding Hood (Sam the Sham and the Pharaohs, “Little Red Riding Hood”)
Percy (Kinks, “Just Friends”)
Tiptoe Through the Tulips: Resurrection (Tiny Tim, “Tiptoe through the Tulips”)
I Feel Like I’m Fixin’ to Die (Country Joe and the Fish, “Pat’s Song”)
Between The Buttons (UK Version) (Rolling Stones, “Let’s Spend the Night Together”)
Down in the Groove (Bob Dylan, “Death Is Not the End”)
A Child’s Garden of Verses (Penny Books) (RLS, “Escape at Bedtime”)
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Attend to the fools, the jesters and the jokers. Fools in love, idiot winds, and three kinds of professional jesters, including the modern-day Stand-up Comic. Besides regulars Dylan, Ray Davies, and RLS, we have guest appearances from Frankie Lymon, Mothers of Invention, Danny Kaye, the D’Oyly Carte, Jonathan Swift, and a few others. The only way to be cool, is to let yourself first be a fool.
And take a look at our podcast on the Tarot Fool.
Essential Recordings 1955-1961 (Frankie Lymon and the Teenages, “Why Do Fools Fall in Love?”)
Cruising With Ruben & the Jets (Mothers of Invention, “How Could I Be Such a Fool”)
Blood On The Tracks (Bob Dylan, “Idiot Wind”)
The Maladjusted Jester (Danny Kaye, “The Maladjusted Jester”)
Other People S Lives (Ray Davies, “Stand-up Comic”)
Magical Mystery Tour (Beatles, “Fool on the Hill”)
Tashi & friend
RLA & Tashi
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This our third show on Animals, a topic always good for interesting music and poetry. Several dogs here this evening, including the original “Hound Dog” – not sounding like you thought it sounded – and cats and a rooster (cockerel) and a bumble bee with a stinger as long as my arm, a spider, a tiger, some birds, and, yes, even a dragon. Our usuals – Dylan, Kinks, RLS – plus, well, listen along and you’ll see who else.
The Village Green Preservation Society (Kinks, “Animal Farm”)
Anthology 3 (Beatles, “Octopus’s Garden”)
New Morning (Bob Dylan, “If Dogs Run Free”)
Ulysses (Modern Classics) (James Joyce’s Ulysses, read by Jim Norton)
Songs from a Room (Leonard Cohen, “Bird on a Wire”)
Cindrella by Edmund Dulac
You are invited to attend to Cinderella, and fairy tales and transformations and miracles and all those things we usually don’t dare to think will happen in real life. Yes, we have the Kinks and Dylan and RLS, and others. Tammy Wynette tells us she still believes in fairy tales. Do you?
Cinderella by Maxfield Parrish
Debateable Lands (Kathryn
Tickell, “The Return”)
State Of Confusion (Kinks, “Heart of Gold”)
Into the Woods (Sondheim, “On the Steps of the Palace”)
Their Greatest Hits (Hot Chocolate, “You Sexy Thing”)
The Bootleg Series Vol.1-3: Rare & Unreleased 1961-1991 (Bob Dylan, “You Changed My Life”)
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What goes round comes round to our show, featuring the circles we spin in, the ruts we get stuck in, the reciprocal gestures, the circular reasoning, the upward spirals. Dylan, Kinks, RLS, the Band, Guys and Dolls, Kay Starr, and the Choir of the Tuskegee Institute. And a special look at Ralph Ellison’s amazing story “The King of the Bingo Game”. We invite you to attend.
Give The People What They Want (Kinks, “Predictable”)
Music from Big Pink (The Band, “This Wheel’s on Fire”)
ALMANACK (Steeleye Span, “Reels”)
Guys and Dolls (“Luck Be a Lady”)
The Fabulous Kay Starr (“Wheel of Fortune”)
Slow Train Coming (Bob Dylan, “Do Right to Me Baby [Do unto Others]”)
The Works of Robert Louis Stevenson (40+ works with an active table of contents) (“The Sick Man and the Fireman”)
Flying Home and Other Stories (Penguin Twentieth Century Classics) (Ralph Ellison, “The King of the Bingo Game”)
