As recently mentioned, I'm away from home base as I write this, enjoying a visit back home to the
SF bay area.
Weather wonderful, having great fun, wish you were here.
- - Oh wait, I suppose that you are, in a way...
A couple of whatnots that've popped up...
1. Driving around in the silly rental car, I've been enjoying listening to my copy of a new collection of old music by innovative bandleader Raymond Scott.
The 'Ectoplasm' CD arrived in my mailbox just the afternoon prior to my hopping a plane, so I've been lucky enough to be traveling with it.
It's great!
The music is from Raymond Scott's *Second* (6- and 7-man) 'Quintet,' the one he had in 1948-49, ten-or-so years following his original ground-breaking small jazz ensemble.
This music comes closer to sounding like his older recordings than much of the big band music he'd made earlier in the forties, or the experimental mood music he crafted in the fifties and beyond.
- You can read a good summary of the CD where it's listed at the Basta Music label website, and another piece with reference to the cover art at the Jim Flora blog site.
If you take the distinctive sound of Scott's late-1930's 'chamber jazz', add a few years to fold in new seasonings reminiscent of bebop, film score cues, 20th Century Classical and perhaps composers like Andre Popp, you'll get a bit of an idea of what to expect from this exciting new collection of little-heard material made up of original compositions and takes on pop standards.
It's still clearly Raymond Scott music, perhaps a bit more a 'challenging' listen than some of his earlier material.
Perhaps not a suitable starting point for the uninitiated, but well worth your investigation!
2. Carmina Burana: The Alternate Lyrics?!?
You may have already seen a link to this video piece, forwarded to your In Box. Here it is again.
You may not be entirely familiar with composer Carl Orff's mid-1930's cantata, based upon the medieval manuscript collection of secular songs.
It is highly likely that you have at least a passing familiarity with 'O Fortuna', the
most-widely known movement of the dramatic choral piece - -
-- Y'know, the one that's been overused so terribly often in movies and advertising, etc.
You may be interested in learning alternate lyrics to 'O Fortuna'.
Good luck in NOT hearing these lyrics every time from now on...
Carmina Burana - Alternate Lyrics
(Via You're The Man Now Dog, with thanks to MC 8th-Grader)
3. Another thread picked up from Gary Busey's recent and previously mentioned '15 minutes', tilting at the celebrity machine outside the Oscar ceremonies a few weeks back. Follow the link to a further
Gary Busey Red Carpet moment from the same evening, via DailyMotion.
3. Another thread picked up from Gary Busey's recent and previously mentioned '15 minutes', tilting at the celebrity machine outside the Oscar ceremonies a few weeks back. Follow the link to a further 
