Decca records may have passed on signing ‘The Beatles’, but they more than made up for that goof by producing the above record which may be my favorite long-playing record ever (next to that Monty Python record on which one side contains two completely different sets of material and you
When I was a kid growing up in the 1970s our ginormous Magnavox console living room stereo was the center of my after school universe. In addition to my ever-growing collection of jazz LPs, a great deal of my time was spent listening to comedy records my parents had bought
I can see by the gently declining number of hits on my blog that my obsession with vintage aviation isn’t necessarily shared by my readers. In that case I’ll wrap the subject up (until I unwrap it of course) with one of my favorite Three Stooges shorts ‘Dizzy Pilots’ (1942).
I mentioned on Monday that we flew in a Biplane this past weekend and experienced one of life’s must-do activities. (Cheap is wasn’t. But I’m happier paying for that than I am for a theater ticket to a Broadway musical I’m sorry that I wound up buying a ticket for).
This past weekend we attended the Rhinebeck Aerodrome, an amazing outdoor (and indoor) display of vintage aircraft, which not only serves as a museum of flight but which also offers an air show consisting of stunt flying of vintage planes by some very very very brave, well trained pilots. As
Here’s a profile of laugh-track maestro/audio engineer Carroll Pratt working his magic on a decidedly unfunny scene from a show called “Webster” in 1983. Pratt added canned laughter to TV shows using a custom ‘laff box’ which he designed and built. He began doing ‘laugh sweetening’ in the late 1950s
The above video provides a neat little (five minutes) history of the laugh track. I agree with all of the points made by the, er, maker and I’d like to write more than these two sentences, but I can’t. You see, I actually did write more but then my word
Yesterday we looked at a scene from an episode of “Friends’ sans laugh track. It revealed itself to be something entirely different than intended–an innocuous sit-com scene with a few laughs instead turned into a Bergman-esque study of faces, mute interactions, intense but silent emotions etc. Today we’ll see what
Laughter is one of our most precious commodities in life, getting us through (and past) difficult situations and topics and providing a release of joy that every day life for the most part lacks. Nobody doesn’t like to laugh. (Except the current leader of the free world who can only
Here’s a fascinating little ten minute audio reel of Frank Sinatra doing multiple takes (six in all) of ‘Pick Yourself Up’ from the ‘Sinatra and Swinging Brass’ album. Neil Hefti’s arrangements are neat and inventive and the band kicks hard. Frank, though, needs a few tries to get things straight–and