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…."

...and John Hawkes' performance as Teardrop in Winter's Bone does.

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:

Sigur Rós have given a dozen film makers the same modest budget and asked them to create whatever comes into their head when they listen to songs from the band's new album valtari. The idea is to bypass the usual artistic approval process and allow people utmost creative freedom.

Film # 16 features one of the Memorable Men 2012, the New York Times picked, that is the wonderful John Hawkes !!!!!



ETA: I can't resist sharing this song from Winter's Bone, performed by John Hawkes for the soundtrack:

Remember that great tribute to Breaking Bad on The Ecstasy of Gold that I posted before season 5 started?

Well, the vid-maker has edited it so it's longer and now includes several moments from the first 8 episodes of the last season. And it's fantastic!

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:

Remix aren't necessarily my thing but this is wicked!

Can't sleep. Watching the Nasa news on Curiosity Cam.

( Curiosity's shadow and Mount Sharp )


ETA:

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:

If you are a fan of The Wire, just stop whatever you're doing and watch this!!!! It's awesome! Shiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiit

HERE