Untitled

Yesterday evening was a Bowie evening. I watched The Man Who Fell To Earth on French cable, and the documentary that followed, that was mostly a film on the last show of the Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders From Mars tour.

I wish I have seen him on stage in the 70's, but I was a little bit too young back then. Last time I saw David Bowie perform live it was in Bercy stadium, in 2003, for the Reality tour and it was great. It was one of his last gigs before he had heart problems and surgery. I do hope he will tour for the release of the new album.

So far no dates, even though his wife kinda leaked infos about a possible world tour, including France...

His twitter account lately mentioned this article from Open Culture in which there's a recording of David and Freddie Mercury doing an a capella vocal gymnastic for "Under Pressure". It's worth listening!



The article quotes extracts from Mark Blake’s book Is This the Real Life?: The Untold Story of Freddie Mercury and Queen. Apparently, according to Brian May, Bowie "insisted that he and Mercury shouldn’t hear what the other had sung, swapping verses blind, which helped give the song its cut-and-paste feel."

David obviously imposed his views and ruled everyone (the ego clash with Freddie must have been something!). He didn't have Mercury's amazing voice but was still a good vocalist, and, above all, a true artist.

“‘Under Pressure’ is a significant song for us,” May said in 2008, “and that is because of David and its lyrical content. I would have found that hard to admit in the old days, but I can admit it now…."

Stincky Fingers is my favourite album by The Rolling Stones, it has several of my favourite Stones songs ever ("Wild Horses", "Moonlight Mile" and "I Got The Blues" ). I also enjoy songs that are more "pop", like "Sitting on a Fence" or "She's like a Rainbow" but if anyone ever wondered why I prefer The Stones to other bands I'd say that the reason lies somewhere in these songs:

First off a belated happy birthday to comova.

I haven't been on LJ much lately and it will be even quieter in the upcoming days for I found out on Firday that I was summoned to mark Baccalauréat papers for the September session (it's for students who were too ill in June to attend their final exam). I have to retrieve the papers on Tuesday afternoon in the suburb, and will hand them back on the 25th. So I'll have only 6 days to mark them...while going about my usual work in school. Marking Bac' papers beside teaching is a crazy thing...

I am not released from my teaching duty during that marking but I'll have to attend the jury on the 1st of October so I will miss classes then. And on the 4th there will be oral exams for those who nearly failed.

It's a pain in the ass, screwing up with my plans. Not only did I schedule tests for my students this week but I also intended to go back to the library on Tuesday afternoons and to do some thesis writing at home on Thursdays. But with this Bac' marking surprise I have to postpone the tests, and I can't work on my thesis until the whole thing is over.

When I saw the note on Friday I think my face turned green, honest. And later I had a difficult group to teach in the afternoon so I was pretty wrecked in the evening.

On the upside, I received Tom McRae's CD so now I can enjoy listening to his new album, From The Lowlands, on the stereo, which is always much better than listening on the computer or on the ipod. It's a lovely album; Tom's best since All Maps Welcome, although very melancholy and dark.

And I went to the movies and saw Killer Joe which was a lot of fun (in a dark and twisted way).

Also, I'm VERY pleased with John Edward Williams. I'm so glad that Daniel Mendelshon recommended Augustus on twitter and that herself_nyc  told me to read Stoner too. When I finished Augustus I wanted to start reading it again (yeah it's that good!), and earlier today I read the first chapter of Stoner in my bath – I have to say that kindle makes reading in the bath quite easy!– and was already under the spell.

That's about it. Tomorrow I have a big day of teaching ahead (from 9 am to 6.30 pm) and I'm not sure that I'll get to see Copper and Boardwalk Empire in the evening.

Think of me while I'm in Marking Hell!

First weeks are always exhausting, I know it.

And yes I'm exhausted. I'm so glad I haven't got to teach on tomorrow morning! I'm going out with my girlfriends this evening, though.

I'm still reading Williams' Augustus and loving it. Beautiful prose and excellent re-creation of historical events and characters.

I realise that this year has been very Roman for me...I have to post more pictures from Rome. I'll try to do so on Sunday.

BTW here is a link to a website giving the list of Pompeian graffiti (translated into English). Some of them are hilarious or filled with some weird wisdom ("The one who buggers a fire burns his penis"), others show that little has changed over centuries...

As for Augustus, I had another little exchange with Daniel Mendelsohn on twitter – after I thanked him for recommending the book and told him how good the account of the battle of Actium by Agrippa was–, which was very nice. That's the magic of the Internet, talking with an author you love about a book you both like very much.

Also, my dear Tom is releasing a new album (the second part of Alphabet of Hurricanes, finally!) and has an official video clip:

Emily Barker and The Red Clay Halo is a fabulous girls band and it's just so unbelievable that so few people know them. If you are British you may have watched BBC's The Shadow Line or Wallander. Emily composed and sang the music theme of both.

She's extremely talented and her female musicians are excellent too.

Today I'm promoting a song from album, Almanach. it's called "The Witch of Pittenweem". Emily sang in duet with Dom Coyote.

Here is a live version that sounds quite like the album one:

Today my piano teacher and I started working on a new piece. And guess what it was?

A funeral march by Tchaikovsky (the doll's funeral)! And it was her idea, not mine.




I believe there's a trend forming there...

In case you wonder, I still can't hit the comment button on live journals (including my own!), unless it's a customized page, but some LJ users from my flist don't post customized pages (or at least they don't appear customized on my flist page) so I'm doomed to "read but not comment", which doesn't mean I'm ignoring you, people!

For instance, frances_lievens I loved the picture of your daughters and the way Wriggly Bum looked at her big sister! Did you sing for them at Christmas?

Speaking of singing, here's one of my favourite musics ever:

ARTE is broadcasting a live show from Bayreuth. Lohengrin isn't my favourite Wagner's opera but I'd love to be there...