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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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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 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
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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
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Let me tell you a little story about Meg, a top advertising executive in Los Angeles, who discovered her connection to Cinderella and thereby found herself.
Meg was successful. She was making something like $400,000 a year, but was itchy, never content with herself. She spent almost a quarter of her income on clothes, make-up and “body work”. She was a little over fifty years old, still pretty glamorous, especially in her expensive clothes, but her confidence was weakening. She found it hard to show up at business meetings, or if she did show up, she felt compelled to leave as soon as she could get away. She had this fear that sooner or later the other people would discover that she was actually not as attractive as they had thought she was. She had this sense that deep down she was worthless and someday she would be exposed. Read the rest of this entry »
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?
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”)