I Love HTML Tests

http://a65.tinypic.com/wtsrup.jpg

OK OK, that's enough of us losers.

Other losers will be selected tonight in these countries:

http://s30.postimg.org/s2rd9cagx/Eurovision_Feb_27_2016.png
(times CET or local(?) - see the ESC site)

Germany has chosen the highly inoffensive "Ghost" by Jamie-Lee Kriewitz - https://youtu.be/Qp5hRoU9HgQ

...while shamefully snubbing "Masters of Chant" by Greg Orion

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EfwRxhGxjn4

ROBBED

And in minor developments, they're changing the Eurovision voting system again

http://www.eurovision.tv/page/news?id=biggest_change_to_eurovision_song_contest_voting_since_1975

It's not very well-explained on there, but apparently Melodifestivalen in Sweden has used something similar.

AIUI there'll be twice as many points awarded – a full set of points from each country's jury, and another set from each country's televote. Then (correct me if wrong) they'll announce the jury results in the normal way. And finally, at the end, the host reveals each country's total televote points in ascending order from 26th to 1st, to guarantee massive tension.

It might well be a better way, but they make it sound like neuroscience. Or something else.

After viewers have cast their votes by telephone, SMS or using the official app, each national spokesperson from the 43 participating countries will be called in to present the points of their professional jury. After the presentation of the scores from the juries, the televoting points from all participating countries will be combined, providing one score for each song. These televoting results will then be announced by the host, starting with the country receiving the fewest points from the public and ending with the country that received the highest number of points, building towards a guaranteed climax.

test

test

☎

✠

𝓈 𝒽 𝒾 𝓉

𝔽𝕌𝔾

The Simon Shaheen interview from 2003 is still available (on Web Archive) and still a fascinating read - http://web.archive.org/web/20030818015403/http://www.afropop.org/multi/interview/ID/39/Simon%20Shaheen%20on%20the%20oud

My first oudist was Waed Bouhassoun from Syria, and her live concert for Radio France Musique from September 2015 - http://www.francemusique.fr/player/resource/106453-118451 - concert starts at 3:00 mins and is available online until Jun 2018

Not sure how Bouhassoun compares to anyone else, but it's a really hypnotic sound, just oud and voice. (More info on the program page.)

http://web.archive.org/web/20101228042512/http://www.afropop.org/multi/interview/ID/39/Simon+Shaheen+on+t

*Shaheen

UK number 1, U.S. #3

Say Anything

the Funny Girls comedy rapping "Work from Home" their previous album?

"Soft Offering (For the Oft Suffering)"

The parentheses of embarrassment. That's the opposite of the ellipsis of anticipation. It just depends how proud you are of the pun.

Less punny threads include.
Funniest song titles
What makes a "good" song title?
Songtitles referring to major news events
What is the greatest song with a comma in it's title?
The Megadeth one

^ Track possibly a joke about what Drake sounds like in ILMers' heads. Okay I'll do it, "in ILMers' heads"

QUOTH THE GATE-VEN

Since all of Hensel’s works were created for presentation at her Sunday musicales, it is important to remember that her choice of genres was largely dictated by the performing forces at her disposal. It was also probably determined to some extent by the fact that her brother discouraged her from writing large-scale works. However, on the evidence of such beautifully crafted, extended compositions as the Op. 11 Piano Trio, the E flat major String Quartet, and the G minor Piano Sonata, one is led to speculate that, given the same encouragement and professional opportunities as her brother, she might well have become his rival as a symphonist.

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was both a victim and a survivor. In light of her upbringing, it must have taken enormous courage for her to defy convention by making the leap from the private sphere of the salon – her allotted place as a female creator – to the public sphere of the published composer. To borrow the words of a recent critic, "Although no one may have danced to her 'piping' during her lifetime, to ignore her now would be a very large loss indeed." (James Parsons, 1986)

Since all of Hensel’s works were created for presentation at her Sunday musicales, it is important to remember that her choice of genres was largely dictated by the performing forces at her disposal. It was also probably determined to some extent by the fact that her brother discouraged her from writing large-scale works. However, on the evidence of such beautifully crafted, extended compositions as the Op. 11 Piano Trio, the E flat major String Quartet, and the G minor Piano Sonata, one is led to speculate that, given the same encouragement and professional opportunities as her brother, she might well have become his rival as a symphonist.

Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel was both a victim and a survivor. In light of her upbringing, it must have taken enormous courage for her to defy convention by making the leap from the private sphere of the salon – her allotted place as a female creator – to the public sphere of the published composer. To borrow the words of a recent critic, "Although no one may have danced to her 'piping' during her lifetime, to ignore her now would be a very large loss indeed." (James Parsons, 1986)

A couple of pieces by Mendelssohn-Hensel to start with:

One of her largest-scale ones, "Oratorio on Scenes from the Bible" No it's not "Bachian", f*** you <- Note to self

And the Four Songs for Piano, op 8, from 1850 (her third collection with that title). Sounds like a vinyl rip, tho I dunno if it can be

Obscurity and reputation

Yes, I am being obscurist. I'm not sorry, U can all eat it ;)

Got to be done... With regard to female composers, it's surely inevitable that there'll be more historical revisionism in future, just like in any field that was so male-dominated for so long. From Fanny's story, it's shocking how this state of affairs was maintained through 'politeness' and presumptions, rather than outright threat. It was Berlin high society, with its ingrained idea that a woman couldn't and wouldn't become a composer, and certainly not one of any merit. Even Fanny herself is quoted doing down the 'femininity' and inferiority of her works. Some news reports on her piano recitals didn't name her, to protect her modesty. She still won many supporters, and she was having her work published for a short time before she passed away.

On a related topic, thinking about shifts in reputation over time: have many obscure older composers gained traction in the past 30-50 years? Which ones do you think? (Obv inspired by that thread, "Vanilla Ice went from hero to zero".)

Fanny's music was performed in a 2010 Juilliard concert series in New York City:
http://www.juilliard.edu/journal/out-shadows-showcase-works-fanny-mendelssohn-hensel

At the moment it looks like she gets played a lot in Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and not so much elsewhere:
http://www.fannyhensel.de/hensel_eng/konzf_frame.htm

Spring and All 2k16 / what are you reading now?

(strip the hostname from the url and it'll work for both www.ilxor.com and ilxor.com)

(in theory...)

Putney Swope (1969)

Cheers Jon. With the Fanny Hensel book, I was lucky to stumble across it in the city library among the rock biogs. Which just proves she 'rocks', or "she's the dope", or however the young people are expressing admiration nowadays.

Leafing through to try and find the bit where Todd writes the academic equivalent of "Fanny > Felix lol"... uh, I couldn't find it. Instead here's some sibling squabbling, which is also quite enlightening:

"Writing to Felix, Fanny observed that her brother had successfully worked his way through Beethoven's late style and 'progressed beyond it [...] my lengthy things die in their youth of decrepitude; I lack the ability to sustain ideas properly and give them the needed consistency.'

[...] Matters indeed came to a head in the fall of 1834 when she completed between August 23 and October 23 one of her most ambitious works, the String Quartet in E-Flat Major (H-U 277). This was the composition, as we shall see, that prompted Felix to write a critique in January 1835, to which Fanny replied with the self-deprecating comments cited above.

[...] [The first three movements] use tonality in an expressive way that further separates her from the eighteenth-century traditions in which [Carl Friedrich] Zelter had trained her and Felix. She deemphasizes the keys of the three movements so that the tonal hierarchy rests more on harmonic associations and implications than on conventional, dominant-to-tonic cadential gestures.

[...] Felix praised the tonal swaying ('Wanken' lol) between E-flat major and C minor at the outset of the quartet as 'schön', but the subsequent persistent appearance of F minor in the first movement and some tonal ambiguities in the second and third convinced him that Fanny had mistakenly embraced a mannerism ('Mannier'). For Felix, tonal clarity was an imperative, and form enhanced that clarity. 'Don't consider me a Philistine,' he insisted; 'I am not, and believe I am right in having more respect than before for form and proper craft, or however one calls the trade terms. Just send me soon something nice, for otherwise I'll think you have struck me dead as a critic.'

What Fanny sent in her next letter was a healthy dose of her own criticism, though not, she assured him, 'a tit-for-tat action'."

(from pp178-186 of Fanny Hensel. Full disclosure, I dunno what all the words mean, but quoted for truthiness)

The quartet, in all its controversy(!), is at https://youtu.be/biWrI7O0s1U

On a related topic, thinking about shifts in reputation over time: have many obscure older composers gained traction in the past 30-50 years? Which ones do you think?

Don't make me challops this thread in order to create a semblance of "debate". Well, you leave me no choice. Here are some Comp-Rep Facts which are literally undebateable:

1. Nobody had heard of Haydn, Telemann, Vivaldi, Scarlatti, Rameau, or Mozart until the 1985 Britannica encyclopedia came out (see table on page 8 of the PDF)
2. The Three B's are all no longer alive. Also Beethoven wrote Peanuts
3. Elizabeth Lutyens, Arthur Bliss, William Walton and Humphrey Searle have totally sold out
4. Nicolai Yakovlevich Myaskovsky and Josquin des Prez used to be bigger than Jesus
[/challops]

Wow, "Lost Boy" is really boring. And it's so long. I guess she was praying we would all get younger while listening to it. Billboard has wrongly called it "The Strangest Hit Song On The Please Click This".

HOWEVER, there are mitigating factors:
1. At least there's no ukuleles
2. I had just listened to "Fucked Over", which is some true no 1 contender shit

Is it a kind of "Hotline Bling" rip-off, or is there an entire genre that just sounds like "Fucked Over"?

Nice as it is to hear an inferior version of "HighClass Bling" mixed with Baby Dic, but what you get is actually very annoying, sadly. (Oh wait, there may be a bit of Eamon's "Fuck It" in the mix too.)

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BOv_Zf7I2EA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xrPLAH04ILY

http://imgc.allpostersimages.com/images/P-473-488-90/93/9315/Q697500Z/posters/laurence-cottrell-devo-1981.jpg

http://www.lipsum.com/

http://a1.files.prettymuchamazing.com/image/upload/c_fit,cs_srgb,dpr_1.0,q_80,w_620/MTQwMTk1NTE5MzE3MTU3MDk3.jpg

https://soundcloud.com/thes/007-pleaed-ref-09-21-2015 (video)

https://play.spotify.com/albik5P8OqK

Come Alive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zoLWLsO-ApQ

Pleasure Drive https://soundcloud.com/thejezabels/007-pleasure-drive-revised-ref-09-21-2015 (video)

My Love Is My Disease https://youtu.be/atSmcn0nflo (video)

and
Smile https://youtu.be/EuiOg-lr_AI (video)

https://www.levelostar.fr/fr/stations/liste-des-stations.html

http://www.theblackdogma.com/tbd/2016/07/one-hour-with-the-stars-of-the-lid/

https://www.google.com/search?site=&tbm=isch&source=hp&biw=1440&bih=812&q=psychedelic+office+supplies&oq=psychedelic+office+supplies&gs_l=img.3...19904.23166.0.23310.27.10.0.17.17.0.291.942.9j0j1.10.0....0...1ac.1.64.img..0.15.950...0j0i8i30j0i24.J9HCGNaViC4

https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e6/Ring17.jpg

business, numbers, entertainment

http://www.lunaetenendrinken.nl

circle, square, cross, wave

reckless

and again

!

last?

looks like it

I Love HTML Tests

I Love HTML Tests

I Love HTML Tests

http://tawkify.com
but noooooo

https://s0.2mdn.net/1384245/1470077781140/16P00415_CREPossessed_300x250_DCM/index.html

https://s0.2mdn.net/1384245/1470077781140/16P00415_CREPossessed_300x250_DCM/index.html

House

youtube crap :

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IHh9bPnvm4Y

Tell me about... The Staple Singers

Al Green - Al Green Gets Next to You (1971)
Al Green - I'm Still in Love With You (1972)
Al Green - Let's Stay Together (1972)
Al Green - Call Me (1973)
Al Green - Livin' for You (1973)
Al Green - Al Green Explores Your Mind (1974)
Al Green - Al Green Is Love (1975)
Al Green - Full of Fire (1976)