June 14ths
6/14/2004
Americans being taken hostage in Saudi Arabia. (It’s not ideology that we should fear, but rather mutations of ideology and the formation of sects and cults).
[6/2024: That mutation is now in the US]
Made into a lyric from the “music of language”:
6/14/2009
Went to production of The Who’s Tommy, then feeling nostalgic, watched The Who’s performance of it on YouTube. This is an excellent production, and works well in a small black-box theater. It also highlights an important era in pop music, when the resident songwriters were working on the heels of an eclectic mix of music history—a melange of jazz, classical, musicals, etc. pushing it through the grinder of the 60s and 70s. What you have at the other end are well-crafted songs that can be easily re-orchestrated for the stage, mostly because they have melodies and people can sing and dance to them. (A good song is measured by its ability to span at least one generation, and these songs are almost through the second: the entire cast is probably younger than 30.)
[It’s interesting in context with the recent Broadway production, and is going into its third generation].