SOUNDTRACK: BURT BACHARACH & DANIEL TASHIAN-Tiny Desk (Home) Concert #75 (September 3, 2020).
Obviously, Burt Bacharach needs no introduction. He has written hundreds of songs that everyone knows. It’s rankly amazing that he is still living given his long and storied history. Well, it turns out he is 92 (!). And he can still play and compose.
I don’t know who Daniel Tashian is, but I see that he is a songwriter who seems to have written for a lot of country singers.
For this Tiny Desk Home Concert, the two have written music together for an EP called Blue Umbrella and they perform three songs while far apart: “Bells of St. Augustine,” “Blue Umbrella,” and “We Go Way Back.”
The melodies are lovely, as you’d expect. Tashian is a lyricist, so the lyrics are very good as well. I guess the one unknown turns out to be Tashian’s voice. I found that I liked it quite a lot. He reminded me a lot of Jim James in his delivery. It’s also fascinating to watch his beard grow over the three songs.
In between songs, first Daniel addresses us. he says that music is an oasis of calm and peace. He says, seriously that he hopes this time next year we’re looking at a different picture of where this country is headed.
A love of songcraft brought these tremendous talents together, writing songs of friendship, songs that have been a comfort for both of them in these challenging days.
Bacharach talks about what it’s like being 92 and being sequestered like this. He’s been out of his house once–to a small party at a friend’s house. But he is happy to be at home with his wife.
And he has a direct message to the anti-maskers out there.
It’s okay to wear a mask. You’re not proving anything walking around without a mask like some kind of hero. You’re not. You know who the heroes are. They’re all walking masks and working in hospitals.
[READ: September 11, 2020] “End of the Line”
This is an excerpt from Franzen’s The Corrections.
The Corrections is a large book that covers, in depth, a large family. I enjoyed the novel very much and this refresher (I read the novel nine years ago), was a nice reminder of the novel.
The family has three adult children: Gary, a banker in Philadelphia who is (more or less unhappily) married with three children; Chip, a former school teacher and current playwright who sponges off of his younger sister while he tries to live the high life in New York City; and Denise, a very successful chef who also lives in Philadelphia.
This excerpt is about Denise.
It is a story about her as a youngish woman working in her father’s railroad office. She is a strong, hard-working young girl in an office full of men. And they don’t know what to do about her.
They marvel at how hard she works–her father told her never to ta ea coffee break, it as like stealing from the company.
She was smart and funny and despite being a young woman, they grew to respect her. Everyone was nice to her except one man, Don. He was distant and cold to her.
Then one afternoon while she was eating lunch, he sat next to her and was clearly flirting with her. Don was married with three children and Denise found her self enjoying talking to him now that he let his guard down.
The story then reveals that this was all part of Don’s playbook–ignore her, be boastful and rude around her and then, when he finally talked to her, be full of self-pity. He knew she’d be thinking about him. So that later when he invited her to dinner she accepted.
Her parents were away for the weekend and she brought him home to her room.
This excerpt is very sad, although Denise doesn’t seem to feel that way initially.
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