On The Band’s “The Weight”: “The song’s chorus centers on removing a spiritual load and the narrator’s charitable offer of assuming responsibility for it: ‘Take a load off Fanny, and you put the load right on me.’ Here, you also have the double entendre of ‘fanny’ in the vernacular sense and a rather loose lady. The ‘load’ is the weight of earthliness, of mortality.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
Rock Legends Are Lining Up To Write The Spongebob Squarepants Musical
David Bowie, Cyndi Lauper, Aerosmith, Jonathan Coulton, The Flaming Lips, Panic! At the Disco, and They Might Be Giants are just a few of the folks headed to that pineapple under the sea …
Where Did Soviet Architects Get To Have Fun With Their Designs? Bus Stops
“Just as 18th-century English follies were often try-outs for new architectural styles, some of these roadside pavilions may have been experiments for bigger things. As such, they were opportunities for local sculptors, architects and builders to flex their creative muscles – and boy did they let rip.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 09.02.15
By The Numbers, Good Museum News in Virginia
AJBlog: Real Clear Arts Published 2015-09-02
Politics and music
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2015-09-02
Hamilton‘s Universal Appeal: A Writer’s Writer, Immigrant’s Immigrant (and a Christie’s Market Tie-In)
AJBlog: CultureGrrl Published 2015-09-02
I’m Weird
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2015-09-02
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Six Questions About The Future Of Television
With ever more material out there, how do viewers find what’s good? How do you get people to keep paying for what they watch instead of getting it from torrent sites and/or blocking ads? And what will and won’t constitute success?
Five Television Shows They’ll Never Stop Making
“What about the things that come back year after year, with slight variations, sometimes to great acclaim and sometimes to quick cancellation? Let’s take a tour of some of the conceptual habits that seem hardest to break” – such as item one, “The Adventures Of Mr. Superabilities And Detective Ladyskeptic.”
Blondell Cummings, Who Made Dance From Floor-Scrubbing And Shirt-Folding, Dead At 70
“[Her] work, which fused dance, theater, mime, spoken word and video into small quasi-narrative worlds, … mined quotidian experiences like washing, cooking and building to yield works celebrated for their rich characterizations and dramatic momentum.”
The 101 Greatest Plays (Chosen By The Guardian’s Theatre Critic)
Michael Billington’s list, though it limits itself to the western tradition, runs all the way back to Aeschylus (The Persians) and right up to last season (King Charles III). Of course, there’s lots to argue over.
Here’s How To Revitalize Classical Music, Says Wunderkind Music Director Of Louisville Orchestra
Teddy Abrams: “All major arts organizations should not only have musicians on staff but there should also be a department of composition; people who are composing for the moment. In Bach’s time there was a department of composition in every church and state office; there was a constant need for new music. … Granted that might be a huge expense. But think of the effect.”
There Is No Third Harper Lee Novel In That Safe-Deposit Box
“That’s the finding of James S. Jaffe, a rare-books expert brought in to review the contents of the safe-deposit box at a bank in Ms. Lee’s hometown of Monroeville, Ala.”