Happy Birthday to Me!

My birthday isn't actually until April, but that's when Diana Krall is coming to Strathmore.

Until then, recordings will have to do. These are some beautiful videos. Sorry about all the ads & crap on the screen, it't the price for free content to have to click the stuff away when it pops up. :/

Blackbird

Why you wanna fly Blackbird you ain't ever gonna fly
No place bif enough for holding all the tears you're gonna cry
Cos your mama's name was lonely and your daddy's name was pain
And they call you little sorrow cos you'll never love again
So why you wanna fly Blackbird you ain't ever gonna fly
You ain't got no one to hold you you ain't got no one to care
If you'd only understand dear nobody wants you anywhere
So why you wanna fly Blackbird you ain't ever gonna fly

No vid, just the song:

Bonobo (& Andreya Triana)

(no vid in this last one, sorry)

Gotan Project

And finally, Antonio Banderas proving to some would-be delinquents that dancing is not necessarily for sissies...(this one's a remix of the movie clip with Gotan Project's music & a very nice fit, IMO, altho' of course way schmexy)

Can't Let Fat Tuesday Pass...

This is Mardi Gras in New Orleans, where Mom was born, 2 years before her birth:




And this is in the early 1950's, the way she might have remember it:




Here it was in 1962, the year Mom met Dad:




Here's someone's sightseeing footage of New Orleans in 1978, the year we went to Egypt and Greece:




Here's some video footage of New Orleans in the 1980's (the decade in which Mom's 3 children graduated from high school), year not specified. It's apparently part of a documentary called "Yeah You Rite" ("I just don't think people in the Garden District have any accent."), but the audio was disabled for some reason:




We can represent the 90's with Stevie Ray Vaughan's performance at the 1990 jazz & heritage festival (3 years before the tumor was found and her left kidney was removed), something Mom would not have appreciated in the least, alas:




Here's a photo montage of New Orleans shortly before Hurrican Katrina hit in 2005 (the year we found out the cancer was back, this time in Mom's brain):




And here's a video of the Fat Tuesday costumes just last year, after the first of the Scary Emergency Room Visits, but before the HellaScary Hospitalization and hospice intake and everything that has passed since:

Life is just a bowl of cherries
Don't take it serious,
Life's too mysterious
You work,
You save,
You worry so
But you can't take your dough
When you go, go, go

So keep repeating "It's the berries."
The strongest oak must fall
The sweet things in life
To you were just loaned
So how can you lose
What you've never owned

Life is just a bowl of cherries
So live and laugh,
Laugh and love
Live and laugh at it all!

So keep repeating "It's the berries."
The strongest oak must fall
The sweet things in life
To you were just loaned
So how can you lose
What you've never owned

Life is just a bowl of cherries
So live and laugh, aha!
Laugh and love
Live and laugh,
Laugh and love,
Live and laugh at it all!

Miss you, Mom...

Nat King Cole New Year

OK, so I know it's Losar, but it's also Valentine's Day, and my wish for all beings in the Iron Tiger Year is L-O-V-E:





Let there be love...





...for sentimental reasons.





Love in the New Year & Tashi Delek!

Girl from Ipanema

With lame animation, but a good version musically:

Not Ruben Gonzalez

...but not bad. See, I was looking for Ruben Gonzalez's Almendra b/c I heard it on Pandora and it rocks, but I can't find it, and I thought this sextet was quite good, so here they are, Sexteto Latino Moderno:

Tito Puente Makes Happy

We can transition from the cartoons to Tito Puente via Sesame Street:





On to Montreal (1980):







Happy, right?

A bit of Wednesday musical fun

Smiling? I am. :)