Masters

I was going to call this entry “Finale” -- not to describe my last blog entry, but the title of the last CD piano album I will record, my fourth one over the years.  However, on the good advice of an old friend who warned me never to say “never” (as I had said when I wrote about my penultimate CD, Music Makes Us) I’ve changed the title to Masters.  Also, “Finale” sounds maudlin – and I don’t intend it as such whereas “Masters” is a better description of the composers I showcase in this latest CD. 

Nonetheless, I am fairly certain that this is my last recording as I've now covered most of my favorites as well as the different kinds of music I enjoy playing (although all fall under the “Great American Songbook” rubric). Masters is intended to "fill in" some of the blanks in my Broadway repertoire, having already included thirty four songs that were performed on Broadway in my previous CDs.

The "missing" songs are by the composers I feel dwarf all, George Gershwin (with his lyricist, his brother Ira) Richard Rodgers (with Oscar Hammerstein) and Stephen Sondheim.  Masters addresses that lacuna by including twenty-three other songs by these celebrated Broadway innovators.

In an interview by PBS' Great Performances the daughter of Richard Rodgers, Mary Rodgers, related that "Noël Coward once said that Daddy just 'pissed melody.'” She also revealed that "Gershwin was a close friend. If he was ever jealous of anyone — and I don’t mean 'jealous' in any nasty or competitive way — it was Gershwin."  No wonder, Gershwin wrote in all musical genres, Broadway being just one. (And some of the Gershwin songs in this CD were actually written for Hollywood, but written in the Broadway vein.) Who knows where he might have moved music if he hadn't suddenly died so young.   So there is continuity here -- Gershwin knew Rodgers & Hammerstein, and Hammerstein, the lyricist, was a mentor to Sondheim – who naturally began as one as well, but would go on to become a composer of intricate, urbane songs, as well as writing the lyrics.  George Gershwin and Richard Rodgers always had a lyricist to rely on (although after Hammerstein died, Rodgers wrote his own lyrics for the show No Strings).

I should footnote that the music for the last song in the program, Maria, was written by Leonard Bernstein, although I include it here as Sondheim wrote the lyrics and I think his collaboration with Bernstein helped launch his long-time career. Sondheim is now the senior statesman of Broadway and I can't imagine anyone touching his legacy.

There is another reason I decided to work on this album.  This is the first year I've been without a regular “gig,” normally performing at retirement homes during the season.  My contacts at previous intuitions had changed and my season started with adverse health news. I had other things on my mind. So, instead, I turned more inward, playing these songs and others, writing some fiction.  .

It is restricting, just so much time to play the piano, and having a studio recording session one has a tendency to practice these songs more, to the detriment of other piano music.  I'm looking forward to no such responsibilities in the future (other than my “senior circuit” engagements) so I feel this will be my last such recording.

Masters: 

George and Ira Gershwin

Summertime / I'll Build a Stairway to Paradise / Somebody Loves Me / The Man I Love / Embraceable You / Who Cares? / Love Walked In

           

Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein

People Will Say We're in Love / The Carousel Waltz / What's the Use of Wond'Rin' / If I Loved You / You'll Never Walk Alone / Bali Ha'i / Some Enchanted Evening / Hello Young Lovers / We Kiss in a Shadow / The Sound of Music / It Might as Well Be Spring  

Stephen Sondheim

Send in the Clowns / Sorry – Grateful / Being Alive / I Remember / Maria (Music by Leonard Bernstein)

Bane of the Blue Screen

They call it the “Blue Screen of Death,” usually an overburdened computer seized by malfunctioning hardware.  Sometimes there are ways to recover from this near death experience; sometimes not, resulting in a desktop that can be used as a massive paperweight.

 

Peering at an unwelcome blank blue screen

For me, it started more than a year ago, my several-year-old desktop happily chugging along with the Win 7 Operating System.  Win 8 had been introduced and I went for a test drive at my local computer store and after a few minutes knew it was not designed for my needs.  Images, video, graphical interfacing, social networking, now seem to dictate everything.  Keyboards will soon disappear (as well as us folks who use them).  One wonders where today’s generation has time to watch all these movies, YouTube ditties, and indulge in multifarious forms of social networking.  What kind of a future does this portend?  Perhaps it is inevitable that computer chips will be implanted in the brain at birth.  No other hardware required, just think a thought and Google reality!

 Back to my blue screen saga.  After witnessing the Win 8 graphics, I was thrilled to stay with my Win 7 computer.  I figured that as I practice sound computer practices, running required updates, actively using antivirus and malware programs, never opening unknown links, cleaning out my computer with an air can, why shouldn’t it just last longer than me?  My Office 2003 programs worked fine, along with Adobe Photoshop and MS Money Sunset Edition, Firefox working efficiently, email accounts flawlessly operating, my printer and scanner in perfect sync.  I was in computer pig heaven.

Soon after my disheartening Win 8 test drive, a sudden warning shot across the bow of battleship desktop.  It would not boot, even in safe mode.  Nerds USA to the rescue.  Turned out to be an enigmatic hardware issue.  One of the memory chips would not work in the slot it’s been in since the computer was new and somehow this failure impacted start up (go figure said Dr. Nerd).  By moving the memory chip to another open slot, voila, back to normal.  However Dr. Nerd said the mysterious nature of the problem led him to believe it might not only happen again, but shuffling the memory chip might not work again as well -- there may be another unknowable hardware issue.

Oh no, Dr. Nerd, I asked, how long does the patient have?  Hard to tell he replied, maybe a month, maybe years!  We discussed Win 8.  He hated it too.

What to do?  First, I have a laptop (Win 7, everything compatible of course), and I regularly back up files an external hard drive, so I can at least function if the computer goes.  But once that happens, it would seem than Win 8 will inexorably invade my life.

An epiphany  --  get a new Win 7 desktop – they should be cheap thanks to the introduction of Win 8!  So I started my search for a good machine at a reasonable price until I discovered new desktops with Win 7 preinstalled were no longer available.  Absolutely no one seemed to be selling one at the time.  I don’t remember how, but I traced one through a HP website link.  It had the bare minimum hard drive and internal memory I require, but it was available!  So I bought it (and it was cheap). 

When it arrived I debated when to set it up.  My old computer was functioning fine, so why fix something not broken?  I put the new computer in a closet thinking that after the summer (that’s last summer) I’d get to it.  Summer came and went.  Lethargy set in.  Wondering whether my old computer would last (forever was my hope) I imagined I heard its hard drive whisper “I think I can, I think I can.”  New game plan:  just make sure everything is backed up.  I now looked at the desktop in my closet as merely an insurance policy.

At the end of February, another warning shot, getting "you have logged on with a temporary profile" on Windows 7“ at start up.  I waited and then restarted the computer and everything worked, but it reminded me that the last full back up to the external hard drive was a couple of months before (doing interim backups on USB thumb drives).  But all these backups were done manually, dragging files to the storage device.  I decided to use the full backup program that comes with Windows 7 and initiated that.  My understanding is that would allow me to restore my files on my existing machine in the exact same configuration.

It took hours to back up to the hard drive, but mission accomplished.  I then resumed the use of thumb storage USBs for interim backups

Then early last week, the dreaded blue screen with a message that begins "A problem has been detected and Windows has been shutdown to prevent damage to your computer…”  From there, nothing seemed to work, even safe mode start up although I was able to get into the HP diagnostic program which indicated a hard disk failure.

Breathe easy, I thought, you have back up files, a new (actually by now, old) computer in your closet.  It just means time reinstalling programs and data.  But to be on the safe side, I called my Nerd guy.  Think you can do an old disk to new disk transfer even though I’m getting this fatal message?  Don’t know until I try.  So we fixed a time for his visit, with the understanding I first set up the “new desktop” and install the programs I need, not to mention the updates.

So finally I unpacked a computer I had received more than a year before.  Everything was there.  After connecting, power up!  Eureka, everything functions, went through all the preliminaries, rejecting the temporary “free” programs such as Norton Anti-virus, and after such a long slumber, Windows initially had 138 updates to install.  It ran all day.  I installed my software, and got my printer/scanner to sync.  Everything set up for Dr. Nerd.

The next day he showed up with his magic tools, popped out the old hard drive, slipped it into his hard drive reader and plugged it into the “new computer” USB.  It got half way through the transfer and then stopped.  Indeed, a bad disk drive.  So we had to resort to my Win 7 complete backup.  It worked even though it was now restoring to a different computer.  All is now well, except for several lost days to all this Sturm und Drang. 

However, Win 8 possibly looms in my future, unless this machine outlasts me. 

I was amused by a tongue in cheek “news article” that appeared in the New Yorker not long ago, about Bill Gates recently “returning to work” being confounded by Windows 8.   The picture of Gates is priceless.

This satirical article was actually picked up by a number of “news sources.”   (If it’s on the Internet it must be true!)  Here’s one such echo published on the “Voice of Russia” web site. (Of all places.)

Nonetheless the basis of all good humor is a full measure of truth. 

Weekend Thoughts

Can you imagine the effrontery of what Georgia's legislature euphemistically calls the "Safe Carry Protection Act"?  Just ask any parent of a child who was at the Sandy Hook Elementary School slaughter.

Georgia "Cracker" takes on a new meaning. Crack! Pow! Rat-tat-tat!  To what extreme and at what cost of lives do we take the interpretation of the Second Amendment?  When the Second Amendment became part of the Bill of Rights the reigning weapon was the Musket, accurate perhaps up to the length of a football field, and if you were experienced, perhaps you could get two shots off per minute.  Compare that to today's weapons.  Is that what our Founding Fathers meant, the right of every citizen to carry AK-47s which can fire 600 rounds per minute with a maximum range of 30 football fields?

Georgia takes this to another level. Bring your gun to your favorite bar, have a few drinks, and shoot 'em up!  Then, go to church with your fellow gun-toting religious zealots and pray!  And, bonus time, give a gun to your kid to take to college!

Georgia now joins twenty two other infamous states with some form of "stand your ground" laws as opposed to eighteen states that have laws imposing "a duty to retreat," seemingly a more civilized law that puts the burden on the threatened individual to avoid deadly force where reasonable (like getting the f**k outta there!), only resorting to deadly force where unavoidable, such as being in one's home during an armed home invasion.

I've written about this before, ad nausea. Here's but one of several on the subject that makes the point.  It just seems that in the wake (sadly and certainly no pun intended) of the Newtown, CT tragedy, the NRA has simply put state governments in its powerful lobby cross hairs (pun intended).  Frankly, although I support the second amendment for hunting and target practice, it's dispiriting that we can't have stronger laws to outlaw automatic weapons and institute laws that mandate registering weapons as we must register automobiles (which can be equally lethal).  It's a stain on our legislative resolve (or lack of it to be precise).

On to more amusing reading, actually an extended book review of A Left Hand Turn Around the World: Chasing the Mystery and Meaning of All Things Southpaw by David Wolman.  I am among the 10-12% of the world's lefties, and I wear my anomaly with pride.  When younger, they tried to change me to a righty as my handwriting was abysmal.  (Still is.)  But I rebelled in the 5th grade, and almost was "left" back as punishment.  Back then I learned from a Dick Tracy comic book how easily it is to spot a lefty (we normally, but not necessarily, wear our watches on our right wrist). I'm grateful to be a lefty, which was an advantage in many competitive sports, particularly (for me) tennis, baseball and basketball.  Lefties seem to be more prevalent today in those sports. Cream to the top!

Although God himself is obviously right handed (“The right hand of the Lord is exalted. The right hand of the Lord doeth valiantly.” Psalms 11), I proudly join my fellow lefties, crazy though some claim us to be. But at least I'm in good company with Albert Einstein and Barack Obama.  It was a fun article to read, certainly more intellectually salubrious than anything relating to the "Safe Carry Protection Act."

On even a more personal note, today is our 44th wedding anniversary.  We were married at the New York Ethical Culture Society, only blocks from Ann's apartment at 33 West 63rd Street and mine at 66 West 85th Street.  Another milestone to be celebrated by a special dinner out tonight.