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We attend to songs lamenting the frustrations of using – or hoping to use – the telephone. We hear, of course, from the Kinks (twice) and Dylan (sort of twice), also Muddy Waters, Eddie Gorman and His Group, Lou Reed, Chuck Berry, Hot Chocolate, Dr Hook, and, at the end, Allan Sherman. And did you know that the first reference to using a telephone occurs in a work by Robert Louis Stevenson?
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“Live by no man’s code”, says Dylan’s lonesome hobo, and we look into this advice, which takes us into the world of individuals who refuse to conform and do things their own way. Usual guests of RLS, Dylan and the Kinks, also Leonard Cohen, Randy Newman, and the Fraggles (actually, this time, a Doozer), plus Robert Burns, Louis Armstrong and Frank Zappa. We invite you to attend.
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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”)
Tags: "I Don't Want to Be Alone Tonight", "It's an owercome sooth", "Rank Strangers to Me", "You've Got a Friend in Me", "You've Got a Friend", Carole King, Dr Hook, Dylan, Emma Chapourian, Fraggle Rock, Frankie Lee and Judas Priest, Friendship Song, Fruits of Solitude, Kinks, Marc Copland, New York Trio, Pogo, Randy Newman, RLS, Robert Louis Stevenson, Sappho Moon, See My Friends, Toy Story, Walt Kelly, William Penn
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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)
Tags: Dante, Donovan, Dylan, Filippo Argenti, Hatred, Inferno, Journey through the Seasons, Kinks, Like a Rolling Stone, Lullaby of Spring, Robert Louis Stevenson, Shakespeare, The Tempest, Vivaldi
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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”)
Tags: Abbey Road, Acting, Actors, Be for Real, Beatles, Celluloid Heroes, civil disobedience, Dante, Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde, Dylan, Everybody's in Show-Biz, Expediency, Hypocrites, Inferno, Kinks, Leonard Cohen, Masterman and Baby J, Positively 4th Street, Randy Newman, RLS, Robert Louis Stevenson, Thoreau
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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”)
Tags: Between the Buttons, Billy Lee Riley, Child's Garden of Verses, Country Joe and the Fish, Death Is Not the End, Down in the Groove, Dylan, Escape at Bedtime, Fairy Tales, Feel like I'm Fixin' to Die, Kinks, Let's Spend the Night together, Little Red Riding Hood, Louis Barabbas, Percy, Red Hot, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rolling Stones, Sam the Sham, Tiny Tim, Tiptoe through the Tulips
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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”)
Tags: Beatles, Crabbed Age and Youth, Danny Kaye, Dylan, Fool on the Hill, Fools, Frankie Lymon, Gilbert and Sullivan, Idiot Wind, Jesters, Jokers, Jonathan Swift, Magical Mystery Tour, Maladjusted Jester, Mothers of Invention, O A Private Buffoon, Ray Davies, Robert Louis Stevenson, Ruben and the Jets, Stand-up Comic, Tale of a Tub
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”)
Tags: Animal Farm, Beatles, Big Mama Thornton, Bird on the Wire, Boris the Spider, Bumble Bee, Catch the Tail by the Tiger, Child's Garden of Verses, Christopher Smart, Donovan, Dylan, Fats Domino, Fraggle Rock, Hound Dog, If Dogs Run Free, James Joyce, Kinks, Leonard Cohen, Magpie, My cat Jeoffry, Nest Eggs, New Morning, Octopus's Garden, Robert Louis Stevenson, Rooster, St George and the Dragon, Stan Freberg, The Who, Ulysses, Vivaldi Winter Largo
