Today, I spent much of the day with Bernie Leadon (formerly of the Eagles) and Glyn Johns (producer with Eagles, Rolling Stones,The Who). There are worse ways to pass a few hours.
This week Elisabeth Sladen (Sarah Jane in Sarah Jane Adventures) and Roger Nichols (sound engineer with Steely Dan) passed from this world. They will be missed.
There’s been a lot of nonsense written about Bob Dylan and his trip to China – as though him singing “Blowin’ in the Wind” would have caused the Chinese government to change their ideals and allow democratic elections and political freedoms.
I grew up in a coal mining town in Yorkshire. Descendant of a long line of coal miners. In 1979 / 80 or thereabouts, I would have been playing Subbuteo on my Mum’s kitchen table with my friend, Andrew Spence. He’d always be Barnsley, I’d always be Leeds. At the side of the pitch on a chair, I’d have a cassette player set up where I would force Andrew to listen to my taste in music. Around that time it would be Sad Cafe’s “Facades” album. He didn’t rate it. That year he got me into John Foxx, Gary Numan, David Bowie. I got him into precisely nothing. Last time, I was in Barnsley, I called in on him as a a surprise. I looked through his cd racks. I spotted “Aja” by Steely Dan which was one of the albums I would have recommended back in the day. He just said he’d got it because he’d read about it in the music press but he couldn’t see what all the fuss was about.
Before we turn our attention to 2011 Spring Training…….
In 2008 and 2009, we did something fun called the “Twilight Dawning Baseball Awards”. Once again we’re going to repeat it
When the only bright light in your starting rotation during the last weeks of the season and the playoffs is Andy Pettitte and then Andy Pettitte decides to retire then it is hard to be optimistic:
The post-season and the end of the season were a grim time for New York Yankees fans. First of all some dubious decisions from Joe Girardi saw us blow the American League East title and left us qualifying by Spring Training and then a great series against Minnesota in the ALDS (3-0) was eclipsed by a 4 games to 2 defeat against Texas in the American League Championship Series. Here’s how the batters performed over the last few games of the regular season and those two contrasting post-season series:
Somewhere along the line life became too busy and my opportunities for posting here became too infrequent. Consequently, I never got to post last season’s Yankees October and post-season reports here (and I’m secretly glad that some of you noticed) and didn’t get to award my TWiD player of the season prizes. Over the next few days I am definitely going to rectify that before posting about Spring Training and the 2011 season.
We packed up our tour bus and we toured the local schools. Having stolen the name “The Shakespearience” from a long-forgotten tourist project in Stratford-Upon-Avon, I produced a two-hour presentation of the highlights of “Romeo and Juliet”, “Merchant of Venice” and “Macbeth”, complete with narration to explain the full story. Largely directed by Richard Evans but with input from the whole acting company, we produced a truly collaborative venture which we performed to audiences aged from 9-15. Our largest round of applause (and standing ovation) came from a crowd of 220 fifteen year olds so we must have done something right.
It seems like only the other day that I was talking about the variety of roles that life throws up for me and here comes another unusual experience.
twilightdawning 