Comments on Recent Postings
1. My thought about the piece on Wellies: A charming and useful post, but the problem with wellies is that you cannot eat them like leather boots when you run out of food, as Chaplin famously did in The Gold Rush: Click here: Film Listings Archive:
2. A comment on my piece about barbecue: There is a roadside barbecue pit in New England - in fact, in Putney, VT, which is excellent. Go about 1/2 mile or less west off the Putney Exit of Rte. 91, and it's on the right hand side. They run it out of old broken-down trailer homes, and the southern gent named Curtis who owns it is the real deal, with a pet pig. He's open until Oct., when he goes back to North Carolina for the winter. Definitely worth a stop, even if you think you aren't hungry.
3. Paxety had some thoughts about the piece on recorded vs. live music:
"Plus, folks get fewer and fewer places to learn to play - or to play after they've learned. Far too many school systems consider band and orchestra to be outside activities similar to sports. When I taught band many years ago, I had students whose only academic achievement was in music - it was the only thing they "got" and were successful in. Now, those kids aren't allowed to take part in what's now called extra-curricular activity.
Then there's the opportunity of performance. Even when I played professionally, I performed many times for free in local little theater productions and at churches. Now, these venues use recorded music rather than live.
I don't know where future musicians will come from. Perhaps that's why current pop music contains so little of what I would consider original music - it seems to be mostly samples, or chords that make the old rock 'n roll 3-chord turnover seem complex."
