Podcasts about artistically

Talking in-depth with author, publisher, and academic Udith Dematagoda, on his intellectual journey from post-punk bands to postwar literary writers, from international development contracts to pursing a PhD on Nabokov, from Scottish council estates to the specter of Marxist ghosts. A romantic, Udith shares his biography, the crossroads of class, diasporic experience, being driven not by ideology, but by aesthetic integrity. The son of a Sri Lankan political exile in Scotland, code-switching between posh-accented academia and the swear-punctuated slang of the personal, discovering reading as a lifeline from juvenile delinquency. On Agonist, his novel of post-internet disintegration, the imagination flooded by the digital hose. On the aesthetics of fascism, the dialectic between technology and masculinity, and the enduring value of Conrad. On the flattening tendencies of ideology and longing for transcendence. From literary engineering to integrity, on Neruda to Nabokov's politics. On cosmopolitism, hybridization, from Vienna to Tokyo and back to novel publishin. On transgression and techno-pessimism, the diabolic nature of AI….ExcerptsOn Artistic IntegrityI'm an extremely romantic and impractical person, right? Artistic integrity is probably the most important thing to me, I think, because, my, as I said, my ambitions are just very like, artistic, right?On Techo-Pessimism They just come from the depths of hell. The true face of this horrid, diabolical kind of thing….I'm a complete technological pessimist.I would describe myself as a sort of Luddite in the original sense, in the sense of I insist like the, just because one is you're able to do something. There's no sense. I think a lot of people. techno optimists are really motivated by hatred and raison du monde of human nature of creativity, of, everything that's human, right? And then this is a secret kind of motivation, but one that's really apparent to me…I think it's because the people that are driving these things really have a sort of fundamental  raison du monde towards something which they feel alienated by for whatever reason…On Agonist I was very frustrated about being on the internet and taking away from what I had to do.Artistically, intellectually, et cetera, wasting time on the internet…  And then I just decided I'm gonna write everything I see that's annoys me into this notebook. And I just filled that notebook up over a year. [Agnoist] is a fever dream of the internet, which tries to confront how people try to communicate and just are not able to, and what underlies this thing, this kind of collective text that we're all offering, whether we like it or not. And how diabolical it is.On Masculinity, Fascism, and Technology So this is the book I've been working on for six years now on masculinity, fascism, and technology. The general thesis of the book is that fascism is equally an aesthetic philosophy as it is in ideology. It's why it describes an ideological aesthetic.On International Development And this isn't a controversial position to say that, international development is just rear guard colonialism, that's all it is. It's just soft power for rear, for the type of colonialism, which no longer requires colonial administrators with boots on the ground.It just requires technical assistance and expertise and con consultants, et cetera. USAID in particular, when I worked within that world was absolutely known to be not even thinly disguised kind of front for the securities state, the projects that they funded, et cetera. That's not that was common knowledge. USAID was just front basically for the American State Department and also the CIA and NSA, et cetera.On Readership I'm happy that there's people that read my work and they enjoy it, and that's fine. I don't really need to have the validation of what, whatever it is. I don't know, like the sort of journalistic class or like the academic class or what, whatever it is, I don't really care.I'm not really that bothered by that. Honestly I would like that people read my work and that's fine, I think but attaining ambitions for me is setting it to accomplish something that I think is interesting artistically in getting as close to that as possible…AgonistHyperidean PressUdith Dematagoda Get full access to Leafbox at leafbox.substack.com/subscribe

If you're tripping your way around Europe independently, travelling by train is the incomparable transport mode of choice. It's the fast, efficient and faff-free way to travel, with the added bonus of depositing you in the absolute heart of dream European destinations. But across Europe, their grand and venerable railway stations also house some remarkable restaurant experiences – the real hidden treasures housed within these grand-scale transport hubs. So why settle for an underwhelming grab-and-go sandwich when Europe's busiest stations host some brilliant trackside brasseries and bistros? They're also a great way to herald your arrival or departure from some glittering destinations. More and more of these station restaurants have really upped their culinary game in recent years. So where should you go to sample some of the best in class? Starting in London, Booking Office 1869 is located within St. Pancras Station. As the name suggests, it was originally the vast ticket office for the station. Four years ago, the space was redesigned as a Victorian-style winter garden, with towering palm trees and plant-themed chandeliers. Each one of features 275 hand-cut brass leaves! Backed by exposed brickwork, a superb 22-metre-long bar, carved from marble and walnut. Dining? Expect British classics alongside nods to far-flung destinations. The Scottish charcuterie board is perfect for lunch. It's also a great spot for high tea. Paris? You cannot beat Le Train Bleu at Gare de Lyon. Dating back to 1901, this explosion of Belle Époque grandeur fast became a meeting place for artists, poets and playwrights, and the decor was inspired by the Mediterranean coast's most glamorous destinations. The walls are lined with priceless watercolour paintings, while chandeliers, gilt-framed mirrors, frescos and leather banquettes ramp up the luxury. Headlining the delectable menu, Provençal-style octopus stew and the roast leg of lamb, carved tableside. You may recall this is the restaurant from the Bean Movie, where Mr Bean had some trouble trying to swallow the king prawns. For a memorable first-class dining experience in Amsterdam, the Grand Café Restaurant 1e Klas is located by Platform 2 of the Centraal Station. It also embodies the timeless romance of rail travel, with the restaurant preserving its original look and elegant style of the 19th century. It was originally the first-class waiting hall. The extensive menu offers quick turnarounds, while the croquette and bitterbal tasting is very popular. True to the weird and eclectic Dutch sense of humour, a rather talkative cockatoo called Elvis, perched by the bar. Tripping to Spain? Estación Barcelona-Sants station is home to La Mundana. This recent Bib Gourmand recipient serves up masterful takes on Spanish, Japanese and French classics, tapas-style. Artistically plated, it's a stirring dining experience, but also sharply-priced and unpretentious. For steeply-priced posh nosh in Brussels, La Brasserie de la Gare Brussels Midi has earned the Michelin Guide's stamp of approval. But aside from the cuisine, it's the décor that is the big draw, with antique train lanterns, train timetables and railway workers' hats richly adorning the restaurant. For a bite that won't weigh too heavily on your wallet, whistle up some shrimp croquettes. If you're Itay-bound and find yourself at Stazione Centrale in Milan, check out All'AnticoVinaio. This exuberantly decorated eatery and its owner has become a Tik Tok sensation, with videos galore of him constructing his double-decker Italian subs. Made using the freshest schiacciata bread, sink your teeth into the ‘Favolosa' sandwich, which is stacked with salami, pecorino cheese, artichoke spread and spicy eggplants. If you're after a Golden Arches experience to blow your hair back, Nyugati Railway Station in Budapest, Hungary, is home to what is claimed to be the world's most beautiful McDonald's. It has just reopened after a tip-to-toe restoration to the 150 year old building. The antique lamps and painted stucco ceilings have been refreshed, keeping the vintage designs in place, including the huge glass windows that go around the entire building, as well as copper-covered light fixtures. Amid all the neo-Classical glory from the Hapsburg empire, the touch-screen ordering kiosks look curiously out of place. Finally, a newcomer to the star-factor scene of railway restaurants can be found in Athens at Rouf Station. Greek actress Tatiana Ligari founded Wagon Restaurant restoring several vintage train carriages - including the original dining car from the 1926 Simplon Orient Express. A century later, the carriage is a fabulous restaurant and bar once again. The evocative romance of rail lives on. Spending some time in some of these restaurants is virtually worth missing your train for. Grab a ticket to ride on the European railway network with a Eurail Pass. On popular rail routes, it certainly pays to make a seat reservation in advance. Lock in your rail plans ahead of your trip, by booking tickets or a rail pass to suit with Eurail direct. The mobile pass is the way to go. The Eurail app is easy to navigate, packed with helpful information and benefits, network disruption notifications, and enabling you to check timetables, lock-in and change bookings on the go, via your phone. www.eurail.com Mike Yardley is Newstalk ZB's resident traveller and can be heard every week on Saturday Mornings with Jack Tame.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Amiga, if you love writing and are on a healing journey, you will LOVE this week's cafecito chat with Ellie Gonzalez Stone! She is here to share with us how writing can be powerful and important in our healing seasons. Whether you are a writer, a creative, or just love to journal, this will inspire you to go deeper with your words. Grab your cafecito and let's dive into this episode. You can find out more about Ellie and Lost Poet Lounge @LostPoetLounge Other Social Links for Ellie: @thedentonvibe @curveculturewithdivagirlellie @divagirlellie More About Ellie: Ellie is a Latina Poet, Artist/Creative, and Podcaster. She is the founder of Lost Poet Lounge, was established in January of 2014. Ellie produces events for her community in Denton and Dallas to provide a poetic platform for local poets and those who support the poetic arts. She strives to provide a safe environment where local poets can grow, shine, feel supported, encouraged, and celebrated but can find their true voice through poetry. Ellie also shares her personal poetry on her podcast, Lost Poet Lounge – found on all major podcast platforms. Ellie lives life colorfully and surrounds herself with people who enhance the colors of her world! Artistically, Creatively, Musically, Spiritually – inviting people and things that inspire, motivate, enhance, and bring joy into her life. Follow The Fearless Mujer Podcast on IG @fearlessmujerpodcast Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

https://music.amazon.com/artists/B0B2L4VCYM/justhutchSpotifyYoutube InstagramDrummer and songwriter JustHutch never set out to launch a career as a recording artist—it simply happened. Her debut album, Maze, features nine tracks that span hip-hop, rap, and various other genres. With a conversational and melodic rap style, she also incorporates her vocal talents, blending rap with singing. Some tracks even include actual conversations, further adding to the album's unique charm.The album's melodies are diverse, ranging from blues and hip-hop to orchestral and funk influences. As a drummer, Hutch brings a distinctive flavor to the beats, which she creates herself as part of her wider musical portfolio. “It's kind of all over,” she explains, reflecting on her genre-bending approach. “But that's just the thing. It's cool to play in different genres and showcase different things.”Thematically, Maze delves into Hutch's personal experiences, particularly her toxic relationships. "A lot of those songs were in the vault, and I just wanted to push them out," she reveals. "I wasn't going to do anything with those songs, but then I thought, I might as well put them out and see where it goes.”The album opens with "Drums Intro," which holds special significance for Hutch, as it marks the moment her musical journey as an artist began. The track was created spontaneously in a friend's studio. "We were just jamming," she recalls, "I didn't even know it was being recorded. I was just having fun with it." After the session, her friend encouraged her to pursue music, and Hutch realized she had something special.Although she's primarily known for her drumming, Hutch has performed with bands, including at LA's Peppermint Club, a venue where Justin Bieber has performed. She also runs Icebox Studios LLC, where she produces and creates her own beats. Despite her extensive background in music, venturing into artist work and songwriting is a new endeavor for her. “This is new to me,” she admits. “I didn't even know I had the potential."Maze is a reflection of her exploration into new artistic territory. The album's varied sounds, unexpected transitions, and eclectic use of instruments, such as the haunting flute in “Drill,” make it a dynamic listening experience. Hutch is also working on other projects and hints that her next album will explore more R&B influences. "Sometimes it's rap, sometimes it's R&B, sometimes it's hip-hop," she shares. “Artistically, I can play guitar, I can play drums, I can produce anything that comes my way. I'm just going to keep doing this and see how much better I can get.”Maze marks the beginning of JustHutch's exciting journey as an artist, and she's eager to continue experimenting and perfecting her craft.Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/creator-to-creators-with-meosha-bean--4460322/support.

A novice podcaster and the host of 'Eat, Play, Laugh with Debbie Messenger' podcast. Prior to launching her podcast, Debbie unleashed her creativity by performing in local theater, teaching primary-aged children, and producing culinary art in her "Homemade Tastes Great" kitchen. A proud graduate of Columbia College of MO, where she attained a BS degree in Psychology. She is currently exploring a new entrepreneurial adventure of assisting podcasters in overcoming their failure to "LAUNCH"! She's also an aspiring TedX speaker & YouTuber, in the meantime, she is accepting gigs that allow her to speak on overcoming limiting beliefs and 'fixed' mindset challenges. Contact Debbie Messenger: Sparkle Arts Studio on YouTube https://youtube.com/@sparkleartsstudio?si=c369_zL7eHQ0XD2Q Dr. Kimberley Linert Speaker, Author, Broadcaster, Mentor, Trainer, Behavioral Optometrist Event Planners- I am available to speak at your event. Here is my media kit: https://brucemerrinscelebrityspeakers.com/portfolio/dr-kimberley-linert/ To book Dr. Linert on your podcast, television show, conference, corporate training or as an expert guest please email her at incrediblelifepodcast@gmail.com or Contact Bruce Merrin at Bruce Merrin's Celebrity Speakers at merrinpr@gmail.com 702.256.9199 Host of the Podcast Series: Incredible Life Creator Podcast Available on... Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/incredible-life-creator-with-dr-kimberley-linert/id1472641267 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6DZE3EoHfhgcmSkxY1CvKf?si=ebe71549e7474663 and on 9 other podcast platforms Author of Book: "Visualizing Happiness in Every Area of Your Life" Get on Amazon: https://amzn.to/3srh6tZ Website: https://www.DrKimberleyLinert.com The Great Discovery eLearning platform: https://thegreatdiscovery.com/kimberley

2024-07-21 | Artistically Moulded | "Question & Mission" by Rob Good by Promise Church

SEASON 2 EPISODE 215: COUNTDOWN WITH KEITH OLBERMANN A-Block (1:44) SPECIAL COMMENT: It is now my expectation that if by next week President Biden has not withdrawn from the presidential race, a coterie of key Democrats led by Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and Hakeem Jeffries will publicly announce that they and their caucuses cannot support his candidacy. The first true dam break in that process occurred Saturday, but only became known last night when ABC News reported that Schumer went to the president's Delaware home and "forcefully made the case that it would be better for Biden, better for the Democratic party, and better for the country if he were to bow out of the race." The Schumer office issued something less than a non-denial denial and the White House press office put its head down and shouted full steam ahead. But the Schumer news followed a day in which it became more and more apparent that those key Democrats no longer care if this becomes public. Congressman Adam Schiff, soon to be Senator from California, publicly called for Biden to step aside. More and more ugly details emerged from a Zoom call between the president and House Democrats. A really startlingly tepid defense of Biden's continuing on the ticket by Bernie Sanders was published by The New Yorker. And it was revealed that Schumer and Jeffries working in concert got that "virtual roll call" confirming Biden's nomination delayed into August. There was also new polling (65% of Dems want a new candidate, Associated Press) that wasn't so new (66% of them wanted one in April, Pew Research).  And then there was that weirdly timed presidential positive test for COVID yesterday in Las Vegas forcing the cancellation of a speech and a trip back east. From all I can tell that's what it is: the virus. Your willingness to compare it to the "cold" President Kennedy suddenly developed while on a campaign tour during The Cuban Missile Crisis is up to you. ALSO: Five days after the assassination attempt and we now have to assume that Trump is LYING about getting shot. That he was SHOT AT, is not in doubt. That the blood came from - in the unfortunate phrase he himself chose – his EAR BEING PIERCED, by a bullet – has been verified… by absolutely nobody. Nothing from Butler Memorial Hospital in Pennsylvania. Nothing from the Secret Service. Nothing from the Department of Justice. Nothing from ANY branch of government. Nothing from the FBI even though it has gone to unusual lengths of confirming the INVESTIGATION is of an assassination attempt AND domestic terrorism AND they've broken into the shooter's phone AND they know there were eight shots AND they know who ELSE was shot AND they released names AND Nothing from ANY news organization, each of which has cleverly and almost ARTISTICALLY avoided saying Trump WAS shot and avoided saying Trump WASN'T shot.  The entire official medical report from the Trump campaign is that he is quote “fine,” unquote. 100 hours and they can't get an anonymous statement from a hospital. We now have to assume he's lied about something about the attempt. B-Block (25:00) THE WORST PERSONS IN THE WORLD: It's been awhile. Time for Ted Cruz to make a jackass out of himself again. The Washington Post editorial writer with the unfortunate name of "Shadi" asks if Trump not dying was "God's will." And CNN must fire Van Jones. Its remaining 837 viewers will accept no less. C-Block (37:10) THINGS I PROMISED NOT TO TELL: The onetime American counter-culture soccer star Alexi Lalas is now just another D-list "celebrity" at the Republican Convention. But once he was the straight man in an ESPN commercial that rings through the ages.    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

2024-07-14 | Artistically Moulded | "Follow & Question" by Danielle Van Ee by Promise Church

2024-07-07 | Artistically Moulded | "Trust & Follow" by Rob Good by Promise Church

2024-06-30 | Artistically Moulded | "Promise & Trust" by Danielle Van Ee by Promise Church

Melissa sits down with the incredibly talented jazz singer, songwriter, and winner of the Z Theater's 2023 Proteus Music Contest, Chloe Youtsey, for a heartfelt chat about her musical journey. From the early days of finding her voice to the thrilling moments of performing on stage, Chloe shares it all, encouraging all artists, no matter where they find themselves, to embrace the beauty in every moment they've been given. Don't forget to follow & leave a review! Got any questions or things you'd like to discuss on the podcast? Send me a message on Instagram or visit the PODCAST page.This episode is also available on the MVC Performance YouTube channel. REFERENCES & SOURCES: Chloe Youtsey website Tickets to her April 19 show Zieders American Dream Theater Join the ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠START SINGING™ mini-program⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow @mvcperformance on Instagram, TikTok, Facebook & YouTube ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.mvcperformance.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ MUSIC: "Cafecito with the Coach" Theme Music by Melissa V. Cartwright © 2022 "Fashion Pop Background Modern" Royalty Free Music © 2019 331 --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/melissa-v-cartwrigh/support

Hooray! My book got published! Ummm so what now? This week, hosts/authors Steve Diamond and Larry Correia tackle this question submitted from members of the WriterDojo Facebook group. Artistically, what do you do after your first book is finally pushed out of the nest? Do you need to try to recapture the magic of the first one? What are the 'do's and 'don't's for new writers? All this and more on this week's episode of the WriterDojo!  If you would like to join our supporters, you can support this podcast with a small monthly donation to help sustain future episodes at: https://anchor.fm/writerdojo _____________________________________________________________ This week's episode is sponsored by *Son of SilverCon 2* (Las Vegas Jun 19-21, 2024) For more details visit: https://sonofsilvercon.wordpress.com/__________________________________________________________ "Word Mercenaries" (the WriterDojo theme) is by Craig Nybo https://craignybo.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/writerdojo/support

Join us for Part 2 my interview with the creative multi-passionate artist Chelsea Elliot, where we discuss The Artist's Way, morning pages, permission to explore artistically, morning rituals and the dark magic of Scotland! View and watch the ENTIRE video interview on the Patreon. Follow Chelsea Elliot at @forestfig on Instagram. The NEW website for The Creative Heroine is at ⁠www.thecreativeheroines.com⁠ . Explore the site for courses, coaching, community and more! Creative Heroine Instagram: @thecreativeheroines Join the free discord for the Creative Heroines here: ⁠⁠⁠https://discord.gg/3PX5zEhh67⁠⁠⁠ Explore my patreon (The Patron's Palace) here for full access to all episodes starting in Season 3, ad free: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://patreon.com/jessicalibor⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow me on Instagram at @jessicaliborstudio for my art and @thecreativeheroines for creative community and coaching. See my artwork and collect at ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠www.jessicalibor.com⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠. Reach out to me for inquiries to collect my art or work with me in a creative coaching capacity at jlibor@jessicalibor.com --- Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/thecreativeheroine/support

Artistically creating something can lift your mood.Let's Connect:You can join the Grief and Happiness Alliance which meets weekly on Sundays by clicking hereYou can order the International Best Selling The Grief and Happiness Guide by clicking here.You can order Loving and Living Your Way Through Grief by clicking here at Amazon:You can listen to my podcast, Grief and Happiness, by clicking hereRequest your Awaken Your Happiness Journaling Guide hereSee acast.com/privacy for privacy and opt-out information. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Episode 91. Join host Troy Saunders as he chats with Washington, DC-based, New Haven, CT-born vocalist, songwriter, and so much more, Debórah Bond! Debórah is one of the bright lights in indie soul. She has worked with the greats like Incognito, Foreign Exchange, Ledisi, Melba Moore, Frank McComb, and more! Her sounds is a fusion of music from R&B, jazz, soul, Brazilian, hip hop, and house. Tune in and hear the essence of one of Troy's favorite artists, Debórah Bond.Launching from her longtime home base of Washington, DC and taking flight to the rest of the world, Debórah Bond has become an integral part of the fabric of the worldwide indie-soul scene.Debórah grew up absorbing the golden-age sounds of the '70s and '80s soul music that bellowed through her childhood home in New Haven, CT. Artistically, she stands at the intersection of Anita Baker, Sade and Chaka Khan, though she also credits Luther Vandross, Whitney Houston and Stevie Wonder (among many others) for inspiring her to pursue a career as a recording artist.Upon her arrival in D.C. to pursue a degree in journalism at American University, Debórah quickly fell in lockstep with the top musicians of the local scene. Eventually, she formed a life-changing partnership with the production team Third Logic, comprised of bandmates and songwriting partners Robbie McDonald, Aaron "Funky Chuck" Evans and Kinard Cherry. This partnership yielded two studio albums: DayAfter (2003) and the critically-acclaimed follow-up Madam Palindrome (2011). Playing for eager and excited audiences, she headlined packed houses around the US and EU including: Warner Theater, 9:30 Club, Kennedy Center Millennium Stage, Blues Alley, Blue Note NYC, Cobb Performing Arts Center in Atlanta, and Jazz Café in London. In 2015, she headlined a four-week international residency for Jazz At Lincoln Center in Doha.An accomplished radio personality and voiceover artist, she hosted a weekly Sunday afternoon radio show at Sirius XM, where she worked for ten years. She recently composed and performed the theme song for a brand new podcast, The Suga, hosted by actresses Tika Sumpter and Thai Randolph. For the past decade she's been doing radio jingle and voiceover work for Amsterdam-based PURE Jingles.In addition to her career as a performing artist, she's a pillar of the D.C. music community, having served six terms as D.C. GRAMMY Chapter Governor. As an educator, she's been a mentor and voice coach to many aspiring vocalists, and since 2018 has served on the faculty of the Richardson School of Music. She also offers private teaching and coaching sessions.Listen and subscribe to the BAAS Entertainment Podcast on Spotify, Amazon Music, Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Deezer, iHeartRadio, Pandora, Podchaser, Pocket Casts and TuneIn. “Hey, Alexa. Play the BAAS Entertainment Podcast.”

It's time for a psychedelic podcast extravaganza, five years and two recordings in the making! The album Chips from the Chocolate Fireball by XTC's alter-egos the Dukes of Stratosphear was supposed to be our fifth episode, but technical difficulties turned the episode into a splendid cream bun. But Rich, Ben, and Mike are finally back for a second round discussing a collection that perhaps isn't XTC's definitive artistic achievement, but it's possibly the most pure fun you can have in their discography. Artistically adrift in the mid-'80s, the band adopted goofy pseudonyms and recorded a loving tribute to the '60s music of their youth, produced by psychedelic engineering wizard John Leckie. If you enjoy Pink Floyd, the Byrds, the Small Faces, the Kinks, the Yardbirds, and especially the Beatles – which you most likely do, because you're listening to this podcast – you owe it to yourself to take a bike ride to the moon with the Dukes.Cohosts: Rich Bunnell, Ben Marlin, Mike DeFabioComplete show notes: https://discordpod.com/listen/130-the-dukes-of-stratosphear-chips-from-the-chocolate-fireball-1987Discord & Rhyme's merch store: http://tee.pub/lic/discordpodSupport the podcast! https://www.patreon.com/discordpod

Welcome to Art is Awesome, the show where we talk with an artist or art worker with a connection to the San Francisco Bay Area. Today, Emily chats with Javiera Estrada, a Los Angeles based photographer with roots in Acapulco. She currently has an exhibit running at the Jonathan Carver Moore gallery in San Francisco entitled Back to the Future: Life in Technicolor. About Artist Javier Estrada:Multi-media artist, Javiera Estrada, was born in Acapulco, Mexico, in 1981 and emigrated to the United States in 1989. Javiera's broad scope of work, which includes photography, mixed media, photograms, film, and textiles, is influenced by her memories of growing up in Acapulco—a tropical paradise of vibrant colors, steeped in spiritual ritual and magical realism.  Estrada's mystical affinity for bridging the gap between the conscious landscape of reality and the subconscious world of the spiritual can be seen throughout her work. Philosophically, Estrada rejects Cartesian dualism and its compartmentalization of the whole, embracing a worldview of interconnectivity and unity consciousness. Artistically, she seeks to unify the mundane and the sacred.  Javiera examines the theme of interconnected consciousness in a multitude of ways. From incorporating female bodies as sculptural forms in organic communion with nature, to creating galactic primordial environments with inks—fluid and formless, structures representing the “prima materia,” original essence of existence. The juxtaposition of shadow and light play a recurring role in Estrada's explorations as well, representing the internal struggle between the spiritual and the physical.  Estrada describes her artistic process as both frenzied and laborious. The work is multi-layered and time-consuming, a technique she sees as inducing presence, while moving away from the high-speed nature of the digital age. The initial messy, chaotic stage of unknowing is essential to Estrada's process, as it allows for connection with the deeper, subconscious elements wanting to emerge through the work.     Estrada has exhibited in the United States, Europe (London, Germany, China, Switzerland) and Singapore. In 2020, her solo show in Las Vegas received a Certificate of Special Congressional Commendation for the Arts from the United States Congress. Recently, she was commissioned to create a site-specific piece for the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland. Estrada currently lives and works in Los Angeles.Visit Javiera's Website: JavieraEstrada.comFollow Javiera on Social Media: @JavieraEstradaArtistFor more info on her exhibit Back to the Future: Life in Technocolor visit the Jonathan Carver Moore Gallery. --About Podcast Host Emily Wilson:Emily a writer in San Francisco, with work in outlets including Hyperallergic, Artforum, 48 Hills, the Daily Beast, California Magazine, Latino USA, and Women's Media Center. She often writes about the arts. For years, she taught adults getting their high school diplomas at City College of San Francisco.Follow Emily on Instagram: @PureEWilFollow Art Is Awesome on Instagram: @ArtIsAwesome_Podcast--CREDITS:Art Is Awesome is Hosted, Created & Executive Produced by Emily Wilson. Theme Music "Loopster" Courtesy of Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 LicenseThe Podcast is Co-Produced, Developed & Edited by Charlene Goto of @GoToProductions. For more info, visit Go-ToProductions.com

The tiger wanders into the digital realm with gaming director Sam Warner and his new, independent, release “The Foglands”.Like any good adventure story, this simulation shooter is the fruition of extensive research and painstaking attention to detail. Sam breaks down the lengthy development process Well Told Entertainment went through to make this a reality. From early concepting, to pitching, and production design, it is a lengthy process to say the least to reach the point of market release. And then there's everything that comes after! If it takes a couple good creators to make a comic, then it takes an entire team to create a good video game (video game…damn I sound old). Like any good comic book, “The Foglands” emphasis is its narrative. A gothic themed sci-fi western, The player is immersed in a post-apocalyptic world as a runner who's motivation is the survival of their isolated underground community. As one explores the bizarre and hellish world they are faced with monstrous creatures and a gauntlet of challenging obstacles. All while trying to out run “the FOG” and gather enough supplies and loot to help the community hang on just a bit longer!Artistically its cool as hell. The environments are rich and interesting with details that lend a very fresh visual perspective to the post apocalyptic landscape. It's like “Bravestarr” meets “Aliens.” The creatures and characters encountered are wonderfully bizarre while still remaining subconsciously familiar. The Foglands is a Playstation hybrid for VR and FPS, so there's a version for whatever your preferred method of play may be. In stores now and available for download, so keep the tiger milk fresh during these winter months and check it out!A note from Tadd: The “NOW” is the resurgence of the independent creator through crowd sourcing and self-publishing availability. As the veil gets pulled back ever further and the predatory practices of the corporate models get revealed, it is more and more important to support those who actually create the stories and art that we as consumers enjoy. So SUPPORT INDIE PROJECTS. Help make the indies the mainstream. Even the smallest of gestures can be of the biggest help.Have you experienced the elusive and majestic energy of the Blue Tiger? Had a sighting in the wilderness of the eternal forest? Tasted the blue milk of it's revenge? Then let the people know it exists!Get caught up on BTR's webcomic, “Operation: B.L.U.E.” at GNAR PIG. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit bluetigerrevenge.substack.com

Lord Richter and Lady Toast return this week to come up with a better title for the episode they're reviewing than the guys did before mocking Alex's reading comprehension and digressing into a discussion about comic books after comparing Tioblith to Superman. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

Where we're going, we don't need keys. When faced with a door that we don't have the capacity to unlock, just go through the wall. Oh, look, an ominous hole in the floor that descends to unseen depths. Nothing we haven't seen before. In we go! It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

Lord Richter and Lady Toast are back this week to discuss the murderhobo status of the guys and their lack of use of nonlethal tactics in their current mission. Then, Richter tells us what he really thinks about the Harley Quinn TV show before circling back to the episode at hand. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

So after a brief bout of murder, it's time to hide the bodies to obfuscate our presence in the Blue Gardens of Tlil. Luckily, the denizens of the place don't seem terribly perturbed by our presence anyway. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

Artistically ambitious, a rare woman in a male dominated scene, taking the road less travelled, or even the road never travelled, and with her feet well on the ground business-wise side to ensure her artistic independence, Carla Bley played a key role in giving today's music scene the shape we know. This week we concentrate on some of her signature compositions, focusing on her Church side, her Big Band side, her catchy side, her electric side, and some of the musicians that embraced her work early on. The playlist features Conjure, Kip Hanrahan; Orrin Evans; Howard Tate; Masabumi Kikuchi, Gil Evans; Espoo Big Band; George Russell; Jimmy Giuffre, Paul Bley, Steve Swallow; Jaco Pastorius, Pat Metheny, Paul Bley, Bruce Ditmas; and John McLaughlin. Detailed playlist at https://spinitron.com/RFB/pl/18060273/Mondo-Jazz [from "The Wardrobe Master of Paradise" onwards]

Lord Richter and Lady Toast return this week to discuss topics Alex is banned from discussing for good reason. Then they get into the fun flashback from the recent episode and dig into just how much Toast's dice hate the players. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

There was an attempt (kind of) at diplomacy. Now we're back to doing what we do best: busting in doors and kicking ass. At least, we would, if these scientists weren't so damn blurry. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

Lord Richter and Lady Toast return this week to figure out just who the bargain bin podcast really is. Then they get into spelling issues and a diplomatic attempt as they discuss the most recent episode of the Inspired Incompetence Podcast. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

Stealth is certainly not our strong suit as we went and immediately alerted the entirety of the Bleu Gardens of Tlil to our presence. Now we get to do what we do best: kick in the door and bust some heads. Diplomatic solutions? What are those? It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

Lord Richter and Lady Toast return this week so Richter can start to hedge his bet on his conspiracy theories and they can fully admit they can't tell different members of a race apart from one another. Then, Toast presumes some stuff about emerging tentacles that thankfully turn out to be mistaken. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

Miraina finally convinced us to go and investigate the Blue Gardens of Tlil after we dragged our feet for days convinced that all of the attacks on Jolizpan were unconnected. Now we're here and are immediately accosted by the wyrwood guards that surely have no connection to the wyrwoods we fought in the city. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

Lord Richter and Lady Toast return this week to make movie references and discuss the finer points of whether a corpse counts as an object for rules purposes or not. Then they actually manage to discuss the episode at hand while being in awe of the crit dealt by Uhtred. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

It keeps getting harder and harder to deny that Jolizpan is under a concerted attack. With several instances of wyrwood assailants harassing and terrorizing the city, and now a gigantic boar rampaging through entire buildings, it's clear something needs to be done. First, though, let's deal with the gigantic boar with some musical help. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

Lord Richter and Lady Toast return this week to speak some fluent Spanish before getting into more conspiracy theories. They're new conspiracy theories at least, so that's fun. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

We had a nice picnic lunch, briefly interrupted by a little slaughter, and now it's time to get back to work. Argenus heads back to his day job as the rest of us continue looking into these strange attacks on the city, and stumble into one more. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

Episode 168 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at “I Say a Little Prayer”, and the interaction of the sacred, political, and secular in Aretha Franklin's life and work. Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-five-minute bonus episode available, on "Abraham, Martin, and John" by Dion. Tilt Araiza has assisted invaluably by doing a first-pass edit, and will hopefully be doing so from now on. Check out Tilt's irregular podcasts at http://www.podnose.com/jaffa-cakes-for-proust and http://sitcomclub.com/ Resources No Mixcloud this week, as there are too many songs by Aretha Franklin. Even splitting it into multiple parts would have required six or seven mixes. My main biographical source for Aretha Franklin is Respect: The Life of Aretha Franklin by David Ritz, and this is where most of the quotes from musicians come from. Information on C.L. Franklin came from Singing in a Strange Land: C. L. Franklin, the Black Church, and the Transformation of America by Nick Salvatore. Country Soul by Charles L Hughes is a great overview of the soul music made in Muscle Shoals, Memphis, and Nashville in the sixties. Peter Guralnick's Sweet Soul Music: Rhythm And Blues And The Southern Dream Of Freedom is possibly less essential, but still definitely worth reading. Information about Martin Luther King came from Martin Luther King: A Religious Life by Paul Harvey. I also referred to Burt Bacharach's autobiography Anyone Who Had a Heart, Carole King's autobiography A Natural Woman, and Soul Serenade: King Curtis and his Immortal Saxophone by Timothy R. Hoover. For information about Amazing Grace I also used Aaron Cohen's 33 1/3 book on the album. The film of the concerts is also definitely worth watching. And the Aretha Now album is available in this five-album box set for a ludicrously cheap price. But it's actually worth getting this nineteen-CD set with her first sixteen Atlantic albums and a couple of bonus discs of demos and outtakes. There's barely a duff track in the whole nineteen discs. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript A quick warning before I begin. This episode contains some moderate references to domestic abuse, death by cancer, racial violence, police violence, and political assassination. Anyone who might be upset by those subjects might want to check the transcript rather than listening to the episode. Also, as with the previous episode on Aretha Franklin, this episode presents something of a problem. Like many people in this narrative, Franklin's career was affected by personal troubles, which shaped many of her decisions. But where most of the subjects of the podcast have chosen to live their lives in public and share intimate details of every aspect of their personal lives, Franklin was an extremely private person, who chose to share only carefully sanitised versions of her life, and tried as far as possible to keep things to herself. This of course presents a dilemma for anyone who wants to tell her story -- because even though the information is out there in biographies, and even though she's dead, it's not right to disrespect someone's wish for a private life. I have therefore tried, wherever possible, to stay away from talk of her personal life except where it *absolutely* affects the work, or where other people involved have publicly shared their own stories, and even there I've tried to keep it to a minimum. This will occasionally lead to me saying less about some topics than other people might, even though the information is easily findable, because I don't think we have an absolute right to invade someone else's privacy for entertainment. When we left Aretha Franklin, she had just finally broken through into the mainstream after a decade of performing, with a version of Otis Redding's song "Respect" on which she had been backed by her sisters, Erma and Carolyn. "Respect", in Franklin's interpretation, had been turned from a rather chauvinist song about a man demanding respect from his woman into an anthem of feminism, of Black power, and of a new political awakening. For white people of a certain generation, the summer of 1967 was "the summer of love". For many Black people, it was rather different. There's a quote that goes around (I've seen it credited in reliable sources to both Ebony and Jet magazine, but not ever seen an issue cited, so I can't say for sure where it came from) saying that the summer of 67 was the summer of "'retha, Rap, and revolt", referring to the trifecta of Aretha Franklin, the Black power leader Jamil Abdullah al-Amin (who was at the time known as H. Rap Brown, a name he later disclaimed) and the rioting that broke out in several major cities, particularly in Detroit: [Excerpt: John Lee Hooker, "The Motor City is Burning"] The mid sixties were, in many ways, the high point not of Black rights in the US -- for the most part there has been a lot of progress in civil rights in the intervening decades, though not without inevitable setbacks and attacks from the far right, and as movements like the Black Lives Matter movement have shown there is still a long way to go -- but of *hope* for Black rights. The moral force of the arguments made by the civil rights movement were starting to cause real change to happen for Black people in the US for the first time since the Reconstruction nearly a century before. But those changes weren't happening fast enough, and as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", there was not only a growing unrest among Black people, but a recognition that it was actually possible for things to change. A combination of hope and frustration can be a powerful catalyst, and whether Franklin wanted it or not, she was at the centre of things, both because of her newfound prominence as a star with a hit single that couldn't be interpreted as anything other than a political statement and because of her intimate family connections to the struggle. Even the most racist of white people these days pays lip service to the memory of Dr Martin Luther King, and when they do they quote just a handful of sentences from one speech King made in 1963, as if that sums up the full theological and political philosophy of that most complex of men. And as we discussed the last time we looked at Aretha Franklin, King gave versions of that speech, the "I Have a Dream" speech, twice. The most famous version was at the March on Washington, but the first time was a few weeks earlier, at what was at the time the largest civil rights demonstration in American history, in Detroit. Aretha's family connection to that event is made clear by the very opening of King's speech: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Original 'I Have a Dream' Speech"] So as summer 1967 got into swing, and white rock music was going to San Francisco to wear flowers in its hair, Aretha Franklin was at the centre of a very different kind of youth revolution. Franklin's second Atlantic album, Aretha Arrives, brought in some new personnel to the team that had recorded Aretha's first album for Atlantic. Along with the core Muscle Shoals players Jimmy Johnson, Spooner Oldham, Tommy Cogbill and Roger Hawkins, and a horn section led by King Curtis, Wexler and Dowd also brought in guitarist Joe South. South was a white session player from Georgia, who had had a few minor hits himself in the fifties -- he'd got his start recording a cover version of "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor", the Big Bopper's B-side to "Chantilly Lace": [Excerpt: Joe South, "The Purple People Eater Meets the Witch Doctor"] He'd also written a few songs that had been recorded by people like Gene Vincent, but he'd mostly become a session player. He'd become a favourite musician of Bob Johnston's, and so he'd played guitar on Simon and Garfunkel's Sounds of Silence and Parsley, Sage, Rosemary and Thyme albums: [Excerpt: Simon and Garfunkel, "I am a Rock"] and bass on Bob Dylan's Blonde on Blonde, with Al Kooper particularly praising his playing on "Visions of Johanna": [Excerpt: Bob Dylan, "Visions of Johanna"] South would be the principal guitarist on this and Franklin's next album, before his own career took off in 1968 with "Games People Play": [Excerpt: Joe South, "Games People Play"] At this point, he had already written the other song he's best known for, "Hush", which later became a hit for Deep Purple: [Excerpt: Deep Purple, "Hush"] But he wasn't very well known, and was surprised to get the call for the Aretha Franklin session, especially because, as he put it "I was white and I was about to play behind the blackest genius since Ray Charles" But Jerry Wexler had told him that Franklin didn't care about the race of the musicians she played with, and South settled in as soon as Franklin smiled at him when he played a good guitar lick on her version of the blues standard "Going Down Slow": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Going Down Slow"] That was one of the few times Franklin smiled in those sessions though. Becoming an overnight success after years of trying and failing to make a name for herself had been a disorienting experience, and on top of that things weren't going well in her personal life. Her marriage to her manager Ted White was falling apart, and she was performing erratically thanks to the stress. In particular, at a gig in Georgia she had fallen off the stage and broken her arm. She soon returned to performing, but it meant she had problems with her right arm during the recording of the album, and didn't play as much piano as she would have previously -- on some of the faster songs she played only with her left hand. But the recording sessions had to go on, whether or not Aretha was physically capable of playing piano. As we discussed in the episode on Otis Redding, the owners of Atlantic Records were busily negotiating its sale to Warner Brothers in mid-1967. As Wexler said later “Everything in me said, Keep rolling, keep recording, keep the hits coming. She was red hot and I had no reason to believe that the streak wouldn't continue. I knew that it would be foolish—and even irresponsible—not to strike when the iron was hot. I also had personal motivation. A Wall Street financier had agreed to see what we could get for Atlantic Records. While Ahmet and Neshui had not agreed on a selling price, they had gone along with my plan to let the financier test our worth on the open market. I was always eager to pump out hits, but at this moment I was on overdrive. In this instance, I had a good partner in Ted White, who felt the same. He wanted as much product out there as possible." In truth, you can tell from Aretha Arrives that it's a record that was being thought of as "product" rather than one being made out of any kind of artistic impulse. It's a fine album -- in her ten-album run from I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You through Amazing Grace there's not a bad album and barely a bad track -- but there's a lack of focus. There are only two originals on the album, neither of them written by Franklin herself, and the rest is an incoherent set of songs that show the tension between Franklin and her producers at Atlantic. Several songs are the kind of standards that Franklin had recorded for her old label Columbia, things like "You Are My Sunshine", or her version of "That's Life", which had been a hit for Frank Sinatra the previous year: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "That's Life"] But mixed in with that are songs that are clearly the choice of Wexler. As we've discussed previously in episodes on Otis Redding and Wilson Pickett, at this point Atlantic had the idea that it was possible for soul artists to cross over into the white market by doing cover versions of white rock hits -- and indeed they'd had some success with that tactic. So while Franklin was suggesting Sinatra covers, Atlantic's hand is visible in the choices of songs like "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" and "96 Tears": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "96 Tears'] Of the two originals on the album, one, the hit single "Baby I Love You" was written by Ronnie Shannon, the Detroit songwriter who had previously written "I Never Loved a Man (the Way I Love You)": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Baby I Love You"] As with the previous album, and several other songs on this one, that had backing vocals by Aretha's sisters, Erma and Carolyn. But the other original on the album, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)", didn't, even though it was written by Carolyn: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] To explain why, let's take a little detour and look at the co-writer of the song this episode is about, though we're not going to get to that for a little while yet. We've not talked much about Burt Bacharach in this series so far, but he's one of those figures who has come up a few times in the periphery and will come up again, so here is as good a time as any to discuss him, and bring everyone up to speed about his career up to 1967. Bacharach was one of the more privileged figures in the sixties pop music field. His father, Bert Bacharach (pronounced the same as his son, but spelled with an e rather than a u) had been a famous newspaper columnist, and his parents had bought him a Steinway grand piano to practice on -- they pushed him to learn the piano even though as a kid he wasn't interested in finger exercises and Debussy. What he was interested in, though, was jazz, and as a teenager he would often go into Manhattan and use a fake ID to see people like Dizzy Gillespie, who he idolised, and in his autobiography he talks rapturously of seeing Gillespie playing his bent trumpet -- he once saw Gillespie standing on a street corner with a pet monkey on his shoulder, and went home and tried to persuade his parents to buy him a monkey too. In particular, he talks about seeing the Count Basie band with Sonny Payne on drums as a teenager: [Excerpt: Count Basie, "Kid From Red Bank"] He saw them at Birdland, the club owned by Morris Levy where they would regularly play, and said of the performance "they were just so incredibly exciting that all of a sudden, I got into music in a way I never had before. What I heard in those clubs really turned my head around— it was like a big breath of fresh air when somebody throws open a window. That was when I knew for the first time how much I loved music and wanted to be connected to it in some way." Of course, there's a rather major problem with this story, as there is so often with narratives that musicians tell about their early career. In this case, Birdland didn't open until 1949, when Bacharach was twenty-one and stationed in Germany for his military service, while Sonny Payne didn't join Basie's band until 1954, when Bacharach had been a professional musician for many years. Also Dizzy Gillespie's trumpet bell only got bent on January 6, 1953. But presumably while Bacharach was conflating several memories, he did have some experience in some New York jazz club that led him to want to become a musician. Certainly there were enough great jazz musicians playing the clubs in those days. He went to McGill University to study music for two years, then went to study with Darius Milhaud, a hugely respected modernist composer. Milhaud was also one of the most important music teachers of the time -- among others he'd taught Stockhausen and Xenakkis, and would go on to teach Philip Glass and Steve Reich. This suited Bacharach, who by this point was a big fan of Schoenberg and Webern, and was trying to write atonal, difficult music. But Milhaud had also taught Dave Brubeck, and when Bacharach rather shamefacedly presented him with a composition which had an actual tune, he told Bacharach "Never be ashamed of writing a tune you can whistle". He dropped out of university and, like most men of his generation, had to serve in the armed forces. When he got out of the army, he continued his musical studies, still trying to learn to be an avant-garde composer, this time with Bohuslav Martinů and later with Henry Cowell, the experimental composer we've heard about quite a bit in previous episodes: [Excerpt: Henry Cowell, "Aeolian Harp and Sinister Resonance"] He was still listening to a lot of avant garde music, and would continue doing so throughout the fifties, going to see people like John Cage. But he spent much of that time working in music that was very different from the avant-garde. He got a job as the band leader for the crooner Vic Damone: [Excerpt: Vic Damone. "Ebb Tide"] He also played for the vocal group the Ames Brothers. He decided while he was working with the Ames Brothers that he could write better material than they were getting from their publishers, and that it would be better to have a job where he didn't have to travel, so he got himself a job as a staff songwriter in the Brill Building. He wrote a string of flops and nearly hits, starting with "Keep Me In Mind" for Patti Page: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Keep Me In Mind"] From early in his career he worked with the lyricist Hal David, and the two of them together wrote two big hits, "Magic Moments" for Perry Como: [Excerpt: Perry Como, "Magic Moments"] and "The Story of My Life" for Marty Robbins: [Excerpt: "The Story of My Life"] But at that point Bacharach was still also writing with other writers, notably Hal David's brother Mack, with whom he wrote the theme tune to the film The Blob, as performed by The Five Blobs: [Excerpt: The Five Blobs, "The Blob"] But Bacharach's songwriting career wasn't taking off, and he got himself a job as musical director for Marlene Dietrich -- a job he kept even after it did start to take off.  Part of the problem was that he intuitively wrote music that didn't quite fit into standard structures -- there would be odd bars of unusual time signatures thrown in, unusual harmonies, and structural irregularities -- but then he'd take feedback from publishers and producers who would tell him the song could only be recorded if he straightened it out. He said later "The truth is that I ruined a lot of songs by not believing in myself enough to tell these guys they were wrong." He started writing songs for Scepter Records, usually with Hal David, but also with Bob Hilliard and Mack David, and started having R&B hits. One song he wrote with Mack David, "I'll Cherish You", had the lyrics rewritten by Luther Dixon to make them more harsh-sounding for a Shirelles single -- but the single was otherwise just Bacharach's demo with the vocals replaced, and you can even hear his voice briefly at the beginning: [Excerpt: The Shirelles, "Baby, It's You"] But he'd also started becoming interested in the production side of records more generally. He'd iced that some producers, when recording his songs, would change the sound for the worse -- he thought Gene McDaniels' version of "Tower of Strength", for example, was too fast. But on the other hand, other producers got a better sound than he'd heard in his head. He and Hilliard had written a song called "Please Stay", which they'd given to Leiber and Stoller to record with the Drifters, and he thought that their arrangement of the song was much better than the one he'd originally thought up: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Please Stay"] He asked Leiber and Stoller if he could attend all their New York sessions and learn about record production from them. He started doing so, and eventually they started asking him to assist them on records. He and Hilliard wrote a song called "Mexican Divorce" for the Drifters, which Leiber and Stoller were going to produce, and as he put it "they were so busy running Redbird Records that they asked me to rehearse the background singers for them in my office." [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Mexican Divorce"] The backing singers who had been brought in to augment the Drifters on that record were a group of vocalists who had started out as members of a gospel group called the Drinkard singers: [Excerpt: The Drinkard Singers, "Singing in My Soul"] The Drinkard Singers had originally been a family group, whose members included Cissy Drinkard, who joined the group aged five (and who on her marriage would become known as Cissy Houston -- her daughter Whitney would later join the family business), her aunt Lee Warrick, and Warrick's adopted daughter Judy Clay. That group were discovered by the great gospel singer Mahalia Jackson, and spent much of the fifties performing with gospel greats including Jackson herself, Clara Ward, and Sister Rosetta Tharpe. But Houston was also the musical director of a group at her church, the Gospelaires, which featured Lee Warrick's two daughters Dionne and Dee Dee Warwick (for those who don't know, the Warwick sisters' birth name was Warrick, spelled with two rs. A printing error led to it being misspelled the same way as the British city on a record label, and from that point on Dionne at least pronounced the w in her misspelled name). And slowly, the Gospelaires rather than the Drinkard Singers became the focus, with a lineup of Houston, the Warwick sisters, the Warwick sisters' cousin Doris Troy, and Clay's sister Sylvia Shemwell. The real change in the group's fortunes came when, as we talked about a while back in the episode on "The Loco-Motion", the original lineup of the Cookies largely stopped working as session singers to become Ray Charles' Raelettes. As we discussed in that episode, a new lineup of Cookies formed in 1961, but it took a while for them to get started, and in the meantime the producers who had been relying on them for backing vocals were looking elsewhere, and they looked to the Gospelaires. "Mexican Divorce" was the first record to feature the group as backing vocalists -- though reports vary as to how many of them are on the record, with some saying it's only Troy and the Warwicks, others saying Houston was there, and yet others saying it was all five of them. Some of these discrepancies were because these singers were so good that many of them left to become solo singers in fairly short order. Troy was the first to do so, with her hit "Just One Look", on which the other Gospelaires sang backing vocals: [Excerpt: Doris Troy, "Just One Look"] But the next one to go solo was Dionne Warwick, and that was because she'd started working with Bacharach and Hal David as their principal demo singer. She started singing lead on their demos, and hoping that she'd get to release them on her own. One early one was "Make it Easy On Yourself", which was recorded by Jerry Butler, formerly of the Impressions. That record was produced by Bacharach, one of the first records he produced without outside supervision: [Excerpt: Jerry Butler, "Make it Easy On Yourself"] Warwick was very jealous that a song she'd sung the demo of had become a massive hit for someone else, and blamed Bacharach and David. The way she tells the story -- Bacharach always claimed this never happened, but as we've already seen he was himself not always the most reliable of narrators of his own life -- she got so angry she complained to them, and said "Don't make me over, man!" And so Bacharach and David wrote her this: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Don't Make Me Over"] Incidentally, in the UK, the hit version of that was a cover by the Swinging Blue Jeans: [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "Don't Make Me Over"] who also had a huge hit with "You're No Good": [Excerpt: The Swinging Blue Jeans, "You're No Good"] And *that* was originally recorded by *Dee Dee* Warwick: [Excerpt: Dee Dee Warwick, "You're No Good"] Dee Dee also had a successful solo career, but Dionne's was the real success, making the names of herself, and of Bacharach and David. The team had more than twenty top forty hits together, before Bacharach and David had a falling out in 1971 and stopped working together, and Warwick sued both of them for breach of contract as a result. But prior to that they had hit after hit, with classic records like "Anyone Who Had a Heart": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Anyone Who Had a Heart"] And "Walk On By": [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "Walk On By"] With Doris, Dionne, and Dee Dee all going solo, the group's membership was naturally in flux -- though the departed members would occasionally join their former bandmates for sessions, and the remaining members would sing backing vocals on their ex-members' records. By 1965 the group consisted of Cissy Houston, Sylvia Shemwell, the Warwick sisters' cousin Myrna Smith, and Estelle Brown. The group became *the* go-to singers for soul and R&B records made in New York. They were regularly hired by Leiber and Stoller to sing on their records, and they were also the particular favourites of Bert Berns. They sang backing vocals on almost every record he produced. It's them doing the gospel wails on "Cry Baby" by Garnet Mimms: [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms, "Cry Baby"] And they sang backing vocals on both versions of "If You Need Me" -- Wilson Pickett's original and Solomon Burke's more successful cover version, produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "If You Need Me"] They're on such Berns records as "Show Me Your Monkey", by Kenny Hamber: [Excerpt: Kenny Hamber, "Show Me Your Monkey"] And it was a Berns production that ended up getting them to be Aretha Franklin's backing group. The group were becoming such an important part of the records that Atlantic and BANG Records, in particular, were putting out, that Jerry Wexler said "it was only a matter of common decency to put them under contract as a featured group". He signed them to Atlantic and renamed them from the Gospelaires to The Sweet Inspirations.  Dan Penn and Spooner Oldham wrote a song for the group which became their only hit under their own name: [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Sweet Inspiration"] But to start with, they released a cover of Pops Staples' civil rights song "Why (Am I treated So Bad)": [Excerpt: The Sweet Inspirations, "Why (Am I Treated So Bad?)"] That hadn't charted, and meanwhile, they'd all kept doing session work. Cissy had joined Erma and Carolyn Franklin on the backing vocals for Aretha's "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Never Loved a Man the Way I Love You"] Shortly after that, the whole group recorded backing vocals for Erma's single "Piece of My Heart", co-written and produced by Berns: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] That became a top ten record on the R&B charts, but that caused problems. Aretha Franklin had a few character flaws, and one of these was an extreme level of jealousy for any other female singer who had any level of success and came up in the business after her. She could be incredibly graceful towards anyone who had been successful before her -- she once gave one of her Grammies away to Esther Phillips, who had been up for the same award and had lost to her -- but she was terribly insecure, and saw any contemporary as a threat. She'd spent her time at Columbia Records fuming (with some justification) that Barbra Streisand was being given a much bigger marketing budget than her, and she saw Diana Ross, Gladys Knight, and Dionne Warwick as rivals rather than friends. And that went doubly for her sisters, who she was convinced should be supporting her because of family loyalty. She had been infuriated at John Hammond when Columbia had signed Erma, thinking he'd gone behind her back to create competition for her. And now Erma was recording with Bert Berns. Bert Berns who had for years been a colleague of Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers at Atlantic. Aretha was convinced that Wexler had put Berns up to signing Erma as some kind of power play. There was only one problem with this -- it simply wasn't true. As Wexler later explained “Bert and I had suffered a bad falling-out, even though I had enormous respect for him. After all, he was the guy who brought over guitarist Jimmy Page from England to play on our sessions. Bert, Ahmet, Nesuhi, and I had started a label together—Bang!—where Bert produced Van Morrison's first album. But Bert also had a penchant for trouble. He courted the wise guys. He wanted total control over every last aspect of our business dealings. Finally it was too much, and the Erteguns and I let him go. He sued us for breach of contract and suddenly we were enemies. I felt that he signed Erma, an excellent singer, not merely for her talent but as a way to get back at me. If I could make a hit with Aretha, he'd show me up by making an even bigger hit on Erma. Because there was always an undercurrent of rivalry between the sisters, this only added to the tension.” There were two things that resulted from this paranoia on Aretha's part. The first was that she and Wexler, who had been on first-name terms up to that point, temporarily went back to being "Mr. Wexler" and "Miss Franklin" to each other. And the second was that Aretha no longer wanted Carolyn and Erma to be her main backing vocalists, though they would continue to appear on her future records on occasion. From this point on, the Sweet Inspirations would be the main backing vocalists for Aretha in the studio throughout her golden era [xxcut line (and when the Sweet Inspirations themselves weren't on the record, often it would be former members of the group taking their place)]: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Ain't Nobody (Gonna Turn Me Around)"] The last day of sessions for Aretha Arrives was July the twenty-third, 1967. And as we heard in the episode on "I Was Made to Love Her", that was the day that the Detroit riots started. To recap briefly, that was four days of rioting started because of a history of racist policing, made worse by those same racist police overreacting to the initial protests. By the end of those four days, the National Guard, 82nd Airborne Division, and the 101st Airborne from Clarksville were all called in to deal with the violence, which left forty-three dead (of whom thirty-three were Black and only one was a police officer), 1,189 people were injured, and over 7,200 arrested, almost all of them Black. Those days in July would be a turning point for almost every musician based in Detroit. In particular, the police had murdered three members of the soul group the Dramatics, in a massacre of which the author John Hersey, who had been asked by President Johnson to be part of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders but had decided that would compromise his impartiality and did an independent journalistic investigation, said "The episode contained all the mythic themes of racial strife in the United States: the arm of the law taking the law into its own hands; interracial sex; the subtle poison of racist thinking by “decent” men who deny they are racists; the societal limbo into which, ever since slavery, so many young black men have been driven by our country; ambiguous justice in the courts; and the devastation in both black and white human lives that follows in the wake of violence as surely as ruinous and indiscriminate flood after torrents" But these were also the events that radicalised the MC5 -- the group had been playing a gig as Tim Buckley's support act when the rioting started, and guitarist Wayne Kramer decided afterwards to get stoned and watch the fires burning down the city through a telescope -- which police mistook for a rifle, leading to the National Guard knocking down Kramer's door. The MC5 would later cover "The Motor City is Burning", John Lee Hooker's song about the events: [Excerpt: The MC5, "The Motor City is Burning"] It would also be a turning point for Motown, too, in ways we'll talk about in a few future episodes.  And it was a political turning point too -- Michigan Governor George Romney, a liberal Republican (at a time when such people existed) had been the favourite for the Republican Presidential candidacy when he'd entered the race in December 1966, but as racial tensions ramped up in Detroit during the early months of 1967 he'd started trailing Richard Nixon, a man who was consciously stoking racists' fears. President Johnson, the incumbent Democrat, who was at that point still considering standing for re-election, made sure to make it clear to everyone during the riots that the decision to call in the National Guard had been made at the State level, by Romney, rather than at the Federal level.  That wasn't the only thing that removed the possibility of a Romney presidency, but it was a big part of the collapse of his campaign, and the, as it turned out, irrevocable turn towards right-authoritarianism that the party took with Nixon's Southern Strategy. Of course, Aretha Franklin had little way of knowing what was to come and how the riots would change the city and the country over the following decades. What she was primarily concerned about was the safety of her father, and to a lesser extent that of her sister-in-law Earline who was staying with him. Aretha, Carolyn, and Erma all tried to keep in constant touch with their father while they were out of town, and Aretha even talked about hiring private detectives to travel to Detroit, find her father, and get him out of the city to safety. But as her brother Cecil pointed out, he was probably the single most loved man among Black people in Detroit, and was unlikely to be harmed by the rioters, while he was too famous for the police to kill with impunity. Reverend Franklin had been having a stressful time anyway -- he had recently been fined for tax evasion, an action he was convinced the IRS had taken because of his friendship with Dr King and his role in the civil rights movement -- and according to Cecil "Aretha begged Daddy to move out of the city entirely. She wanted him to find another congregation in California, where he was especially popular—or at least move out to the suburbs. But he wouldn't budge. He said that, more than ever, he was needed to point out the root causes of the riots—the economic inequality, the pervasive racism in civic institutions, the woefully inadequate schools in inner-city Detroit, and the wholesale destruction of our neighborhoods by urban renewal. Some ministers fled the city, but not our father. The horror of what happened only recommitted him. He would not abandon his political agenda." To make things worse, Aretha was worried about her father in other ways -- as her marriage to Ted White was starting to disintegrate, she was looking to her father for guidance, and actually wanted him to take over her management. Eventually, Ruth Bowen, her booking agent, persuaded her brother Cecil that this was a job he could do, and that she would teach him everything he needed to know about the music business. She started training him up while Aretha was still married to White, in the expectation that that marriage couldn't last. Jerry Wexler, who only a few months earlier had been seeing Ted White as an ally in getting "product" from Franklin, had now changed his tune -- partly because the sale of Atlantic had gone through in the meantime. He later said “Sometimes she'd call me at night, and, in that barely audible little-girl voice of hers, she'd tell me that she wasn't sure she could go on. She always spoke in generalities. She never mentioned her husband, never gave me specifics of who was doing what to whom. And of course I knew better than to ask. She just said that she was tired of dealing with so much. My heart went out to her. She was a woman who suffered silently. She held so much in. I'd tell her to take as much time off as she needed. We had a lot of songs in the can that we could release without new material. ‘Oh, no, Jerry,' she'd say. ‘I can't stop recording. I've written some new songs, Carolyn's written some new songs. We gotta get in there and cut 'em.' ‘Are you sure?' I'd ask. ‘Positive,' she'd say. I'd set up the dates and typically she wouldn't show up for the first or second sessions. Carolyn or Erma would call me to say, ‘Ree's under the weather.' That was tough because we'd have asked people like Joe South and Bobby Womack to play on the sessions. Then I'd reschedule in the hopes she'd show." That third album she recorded in 1967, Lady Soul, was possibly her greatest achievement. The opening track, and second single, "Chain of Fools", released in November, was written by Don Covay -- or at least it's credited as having been written by Covay. There's a gospel record that came out around the same time on a very small label based in Houston -- "Pains of Life" by Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio: [Excerpt: Rev. E. Fair And The Sensational Gladys Davis Trio, "Pains of Life"] I've seen various claims online that that record came out shortly *before* "Chain of Fools", but I can't find any definitive evidence one way or the other -- it was on such a small label that release dates aren't available anywhere. Given that the B-side, which I haven't been able to track down online, is called "Wait Until the Midnight Hour", my guess is that rather than this being a case of Don Covay stealing the melody from an obscure gospel record he'd have had little chance to hear, it's the gospel record rewriting a then-current hit to be about religion, but I thought it worth mentioning. The song was actually written by Covay after Jerry Wexler asked him to come up with some songs for Otis Redding, but Wexler, after hearing it, decided it was better suited to Franklin, who gave an astonishing performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] Arif Mardin, the arranger of the album, said of that track “I was listed as the arranger of ‘Chain of Fools,' but I can't take credit. Aretha walked into the studio with the chart fully formed inside her head. The arrangement is based around the harmony vocals provided by Carolyn and Erma. To add heft, the Sweet Inspirations joined in. The vision of the song is entirely Aretha's.” According to Wexler, that's not *quite* true -- according to him, Joe South came up with the guitar part that makes up the intro, and he also said that when he played what he thought was the finished track to Ellie Greenwich, she came up with another vocal line for the backing vocals, which she overdubbed. But the core of the record's sound is definitely pure Aretha -- and Carolyn Franklin said that there was a reason for that. As she said later “Aretha didn't write ‘Chain,' but she might as well have. It was her story. When we were in the studio putting on the backgrounds with Ree doing lead, I knew she was singing about Ted. Listen to the lyrics talking about how for five long years she thought he was her man. Then she found out she was nothing but a link in the chain. Then she sings that her father told her to come on home. Well, he did. She sings about how her doctor said to take it easy. Well, he did too. She was drinking so much we thought she was on the verge of a breakdown. The line that slew me, though, was the one that said how one of these mornings the chain is gonna break but until then she'll take all she can take. That summed it up. Ree knew damn well that this man had been doggin' her since Jump Street. But somehow she held on and pushed it to the breaking point." [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Chain of Fools"] That made number one on the R&B charts, and number two on the hot one hundred, kept from the top by "Judy In Disguise (With Glasses)" by John Fred and his Playboy Band -- a record that very few people would say has stood the test of time as well. The other most memorable track on the album was the one chosen as the first single, released in September. As Carole King told the story, she and Gerry Goffin were feeling like their career was in a slump. While they had had a huge run of hits in the early sixties through 1965, they had only had two new hits in 1966 -- "Goin' Back" for Dusty Springfield and "Don't Bring Me Down" for the Animals, and neither of those were anything like as massive as their previous hits. And up to that point in 1967, they'd only had one -- "Pleasant Valley Sunday" for the Monkees. They had managed to place several songs on Monkees albums and the TV show as well, so they weren't going to starve, but the rise of self-contained bands that were starting to dominate the charts, and Phil Spector's temporary retirement, meant there simply wasn't the opportunity for them to place material that there had been. They were also getting sick of travelling to the West Coast all the time, because as their children were growing slightly older they didn't want to disrupt their lives in New York, and were thinking of approaching some of the New York based labels and seeing if they needed songs. They were particularly considering Atlantic, because soul was more open to outside songwriters than other genres. As it happened, though, they didn't have to approach Atlantic, because Atlantic approached them. They were walking down Broadway when a limousine pulled up, and Jerry Wexler stuck his head out of the window. He'd come up with a good title that he wanted to use for a song for Aretha, would they be interested in writing a song called "Natural Woman"? They said of course they would, and Wexler drove off. They wrote the song that night, and King recorded a demo the next morning: [Excerpt: Carole King, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman (demo)"] They gave Wexler a co-writing credit because he had suggested the title.  King later wrote in her autobiography "Hearing Aretha's performance of “Natural Woman” for the first time, I experienced a rare speechless moment. To this day I can't convey how I felt in mere words. Anyone who had written a song in 1967 hoping it would be performed by a singer who could take it to the highest level of excellence, emotional connection, and public exposure would surely have wanted that singer to be Aretha Franklin." She went on to say "But a recording that moves people is never just about the artist and the songwriters. It's about people like Jerry and Ahmet, who matched the songwriters with a great title and a gifted artist; Arif Mardin, whose magnificent orchestral arrangement deserves the place it will forever occupy in popular music history; Tom Dowd, whose engineering skills captured the magic of this memorable musical moment for posterity; and the musicians in the rhythm section, the orchestral players, and the vocal contributions of the background singers—among them the unforgettable “Ah-oo!” after the first line of the verse. And the promotion and marketing people helped this song reach more people than it might have without them." And that's correct -- unlike "Chain of Fools", this time Franklin did let Arif Mardin do most of the arrangement work -- though she came up with the piano part that Spooner Oldham plays on the record. Mardin said that because of the song's hymn-like feel they wanted to go for a more traditional written arrangement. He said "She loved the song to the point where she said she wanted to concentrate on the vocal and vocal alone. I had written a string chart and horn chart to augment the chorus and hired Ralph Burns to conduct. After just a couple of takes, we had it. That's when Ralph turned to me with wonder in his eyes. Ralph was one of the most celebrated arrangers of the modern era. He had done ‘Early Autumn' for Woody Herman and Stan Getz, and ‘Georgia on My Mind' for Ray Charles. He'd worked with everyone. ‘This woman comes from another planet' was all Ralph said. ‘She's just here visiting.'” [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman"] By this point there was a well-functioning team making Franklin's records -- while the production credits would vary over the years, they were all essentially co-productions by the team of Franklin, Wexler, Mardin and Dowd, all collaborating and working together with a more-or-less unified purpose, and the backing was always by the same handful of session musicians and some combination of the Sweet Inspirations and Aretha's sisters. That didn't mean that occasional guests couldn't get involved -- as we discussed in the Cream episode, Eric Clapton played guitar on "Good to Me as I am to You": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Good to Me as I am to You"] Though that was one of the rare occasions on one of these records where something was overdubbed. Clapton apparently messed up the guitar part when playing behind Franklin, because he was too intimidated by playing with her, and came back the next day to redo his part without her in the studio. At this point, Aretha was at the height of her fame. Just before the final batch of album sessions began she appeared in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade, and she was making regular TV appearances, like one on the Mike Douglas Show where she duetted with Frankie Valli on "That's Life": [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin and Frankie Valli, "That's Life"] But also, as Wexler said “Her career was kicking into high gear. Contending and resolving both the professional and personal challenges were too much. She didn't think she could do both, and I didn't blame her. Few people could. So she let the personal slide and concentrated on the professional. " Her concert promoter Ruth Bowen said of this time "Her father and Dr. King were putting pressure on her to sing everywhere, and she felt obligated. The record company was also screaming for more product. And I had a mountain of offers on my desk that kept getting higher with every passing hour. They wanted her in Europe. They wanted her in Latin America. They wanted her in every major venue in the U.S. TV was calling. She was being asked to do guest appearances on every show from Carol Burnett to Andy Williams to the Hollywood Palace. She wanted to do them all and she wanted to do none of them. She wanted to do them all because she's an entertainer who burns with ambition. She wanted to do none of them because she was emotionally drained. She needed to go away and renew her strength. I told her that at least a dozen times. She said she would, but she didn't listen to me." The pressures from her father and Dr King are a recurring motif in interviews with people about this period. Franklin was always a very political person, and would throughout her life volunteer time and money to liberal political causes and to the Democratic Party, but this was the height of her activism -- the Civil Rights movement was trying to capitalise on the gains it had made in the previous couple of years, and celebrity fundraisers and performances at rallies were an important way to do that. And at this point there were few bigger celebrities in America than Aretha Franklin. At a concert in her home town of Detroit on February the sixteenth, 1968, the Mayor declared the day Aretha Franklin Day. At the same show, Billboard, Record World *and* Cash Box magazines all presented her with plaques for being Female Vocalist of the Year. And Dr. King travelled up to be at the show and congratulate her publicly for all her work with his organisation, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference. Backstage at that show, Dr. King talked to Aretha's father, Reverend Franklin, about what he believed would be the next big battle -- a strike in Memphis: [Excerpt, Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech" -- "And so, as a result of this, we are asking you tonight, to go out and tell your neighbors not to buy Coca-Cola in Memphis. Go by and tell them not to buy Sealtest milk. Tell them not to buy—what is the other bread?—Wonder Bread. And what is the other bread company, Jesse? Tell them not to buy Hart's bread. As Jesse Jackson has said, up to now, only the garbage men have been feeling pain; now we must kind of redistribute the pain. We are choosing these companies because they haven't been fair in their hiring policies; and we are choosing them because they can begin the process of saying, they are going to support the needs and the rights of these men who are on strike. And then they can move on downtown and tell Mayor Loeb to do what is right."] The strike in question was the Memphis Sanitation Workers' strike which had started a few days before.  The struggle for Black labour rights was an integral part of the civil rights movement, and while it's not told that way in the sanitised version of the story that's made it into popular culture, the movement led by King was as much about economic justice as social justice -- King was a democratic socialist, and believed that economic oppression was both an effect of and cause of other forms of racial oppression, and that the rights of Black workers needed to be fought for. In 1967 he had set up a new organisation, the Poor People's Campaign, which was set to march on Washington to demand a program that included full employment, a guaranteed income -- King was strongly influenced in his later years by the ideas of Henry George, the proponent of a universal basic income based on land value tax -- the annual building of half a million affordable homes, and an end to the war in Vietnam. This was King's main focus in early 1968, and he saw the sanitation workers' strike as a major part of this campaign. Memphis was one of the most oppressive cities in the country, and its largely Black workforce of sanitation workers had been trying for most of the 1960s to unionise, and strike-breakers had been called in to stop them, and many of them had been fired by their white supervisors with no notice. They were working in unsafe conditions, for utterly inadequate wages, and the city government were ardent segregationists. After two workers had died on the first of February from using unsafe equipment, the union demanded changes -- safer working conditions, better wages, and recognition of the union. The city council refused, and almost all the sanitation workers stayed home and stopped work. After a few days, the council relented and agreed to their terms, but the Mayor, Henry Loeb, an ardent white supremacist who had stood on a platform of opposing desegregation, and who had previously been the Public Works Commissioner who had put these unsafe conditions in place, refused to listen. As far as he was concerned, he was the only one who could recognise the union, and he wouldn't. The workers continued their strike, marching holding signs that simply read "I am a Man": [Excerpt: Stevie Wonder, "Blowing in the Wind"] The Southern Christian Leadership Conference and the NAACP had been involved in organising support for the strikes from an early stage, and King visited Memphis many times. Much of the time he spent visiting there was spent negotiating with a group of more militant activists, who called themselves The Invaders and weren't completely convinced by King's nonviolent approach -- they believed that violence and rioting got more attention than non-violent protests. King explained to them that while he had been persuaded by Gandhi's writings of the moral case for nonviolent protest, he was also persuaded that it was pragmatically necessary -- asking the young men "how many guns do we have and how many guns do they have?", and pointing out as he often did that when it comes to violence a minority can't win against an armed majority. Rev Franklin went down to Memphis on the twenty-eighth of March to speak at a rally Dr. King was holding, but as it turned out the rally was cancelled -- the pre-rally march had got out of hand, with some people smashing windows, and Memphis police had, like the police in Detroit the previous year, violently overreacted, clubbing and gassing protestors and shooting and killing one unarmed teenage boy, Larry Payne. The day after Payne's funeral, Dr King was back in Memphis, though this time Rev Franklin was not with him. On April the third, he gave a speech which became known as the "Mountaintop Speech", in which he talked about the threats that had been made to his life: [Excerpt: Martin Luther King, "Mountaintop Speech": “And then I got to Memphis. And some began to say the threats, or talk about the threats that were out. What would happen to me from some of our sick white brothers? Well, I don't know what will happen now. We've got some difficult days ahead. But it doesn't matter with me now. Because I've been to the mountaintop. And I don't mind. Like anybody, I would like to live a long life. Longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He's allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over. And I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight, that we, as a people, will get to the promised land. So I'm happy, tonight. I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."] The next day, Martin Luther King was shot dead. James Earl Ray, a white supremacist, pled guilty to the murder, and the evidence against him seems overwhelming from what I've read, but the King family have always claimed that the murder was part of a larger conspiracy and that Ray was not the gunman. Aretha was obviously distraught, and she attended the funeral, as did almost every other prominent Black public figure. James Baldwin wrote of the funeral: "In the pew directly before me sat Marlon Brando, Sammy Davis, Eartha Kitt—covered in black, looking like a lost, ten-year-old girl—and Sidney Poitier, in the same pew, or nearby. Marlon saw me, and nodded. The atmosphere was black, with a tension indescribable—as though something, perhaps the heavens, perhaps the earth, might crack. Everyone sat very still. The actual service sort of washed over me, in waves. It wasn't that it seemed unreal; it was the most real church service I've ever sat through in my life, or ever hope to sit through; but I have a childhood hangover thing about not weeping in public, and I was concentrating on holding myself together. I did not want to weep for Martin, tears seemed futile. But I may also have been afraid, and I could not have been the only one, that if I began to weep I would not be able to stop. There was more than enough to weep for, if one was to weep—so many of us, cut down, so soon. Medgar, Malcolm, Martin: and their widows, and their children. Reverend Ralph David Abernathy asked a certain sister to sing a song which Martin had loved—“Once more,” said Ralph David, “for Martin and for me,” and he sat down." Many articles and books on Aretha Franklin say that she sang at King's funeral. In fact she didn't, but there's a simple reason for the confusion. King's favourite song was the Thomas Dorsey gospel song "Take My Hand, Precious Lord", and indeed almost his last words were to ask a trumpet player, Ben Branch, if he would play the song at the rally he was going to be speaking at on the day of his death. At his request, Mahalia Jackson, his old friend, sang the song at his private funeral, which was not filmed, unlike the public part of the funeral that Baldwin described. Four months later, though, there was another public memorial for King, and Franklin did sing "Take My Hand, Precious Lord" at that service, in front of King's weeping widow and children, and that performance *was* filmed, and gets conflated in people's memories with Jackson's unfilmed earlier performance: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Take My Hand, Precious Lord (at Martin Luther King Memorial)"] Four years later, she would sing that at Mahalia Jackson's funeral. Through all this, Franklin had been working on her next album, Aretha Now, the sessions for which started more or less as soon as the sessions for Lady Soul had finished. The album was, in fact, bookended by deaths that affected Aretha. Just as King died at the end of the sessions, the beginning came around the time of the death of Otis Redding -- the sessions were cancelled for a day while Wexler travelled to Georgia for Redding's funeral, which Franklin was too devastated to attend, and Wexler would later say that the extra emotion in her performances on the album came from her emotional pain at Redding's death. The lead single on the album, "Think", was written by Franklin and -- according to the credits anyway -- her husband Ted White, and is very much in the same style as "Respect", and became another of her most-loved hits: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "Think"] But probably the song on Aretha Now that now resonates the most is one that Jerry Wexler tried to persuade her not to record, and was only released as a B-side. Indeed, "I Say a Little Prayer" was a song that had already once been a hit after being a reject.  Hal David, unlike Burt Bacharach, was a fairly political person and inspired by the protest song movement, and had been starting to incorporate his concerns about the political situation and the Vietnam War into his lyrics -- though as with many such writers, he did it in much less specific ways than a Phil Ochs or a Bob Dylan. This had started with "What the World Needs Now is Love", a song Bacharach and David had written for Jackie DeShannon in 1965: [Excerpt: Jackie DeShannon, "What the "World Needs Now is Love"] But he'd become much more overtly political for "The Windows of the World", a song they wrote for Dionne Warwick. Warwick has often said it's her favourite of her singles, but it wasn't a big hit -- Bacharach blamed himself for that, saying "Dionne recorded it as a single and I really blew it. I wrote a bad arrangement and the tempo was too fast, and I really regret making it the way I did because it's a good song." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "The Windows of the World"] For that album, Bacharach and David had written another track, "I Say a Little Prayer", which was not as explicitly political, but was intended by David to have an implicit anti-war message, much like other songs of the period like "Last Train to Clarksville". David had sons who were the right age to be drafted, and while it's never stated, "I Say a Little Prayer" was written from the perspective of a woman whose partner is away fighting in the war, but is still in her thoughts: [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] The recording of Dionne Warwick's version was marked by stress. Bacharach had a particular way of writing music to tell the musicians the kind of feel he wanted for the part -- he'd write nonsense words above the stave, and tell the musicians to play the parts as if they were singing those words. The trumpet player hired for the session, Ernie Royal, got into a row with Bacharach about this unorthodox way of communicating musical feeling, and the track ended up taking ten takes (as opposed to the normal three for a Bacharach session), with Royal being replaced half-way through the session. Bacharach was never happy with the track even after all the work it had taken, and he fought to keep it from being released at all, saying the track was taken at too fast a tempo. It eventually came out as an album track nearly eighteen months after it was recorded -- an eternity in 1960s musical timescales -- and DJs started playing it almost as soon as it came out. Scepter records rushed out a single, over Bacharach's objections, but as he later said "One thing I love about the record business is how wrong I was. Disc jockeys all across the country started playing the track, and the song went to number four on the charts and then became the biggest hit Hal and I had ever written for Dionne." [Excerpt: Dionne Warwick, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Oddly, the B-side for Warwick's single, "Theme From the Valley of the Dolls" did even better, reaching number two. Almost as soon as the song was released as a single, Franklin started playing around with the song backstage, and in April 1968, right around the time of Dr. King's death, she recorded a version. Much as Burt Bacharach had been against releasing Dionne Warwick's version, Jerry Wexler was against Aretha even recording the song, saying later “I advised Aretha not to record it. I opposed it for two reasons. First, to cover a song only twelve weeks after the original reached the top of the charts was not smart business. You revisit such a hit eight months to a year later. That's standard practice. But more than that, Bacharach's melody, though lovely, was peculiarly suited to a lithe instrument like Dionne Warwick's—a light voice without the dark corners or emotional depths that define Aretha. Also, Hal David's lyric was also somewhat girlish and lacked the gravitas that Aretha required. “Aretha usually listened to me in the studio, but not this time. She had written a vocal arrangement for the Sweet Inspirations that was undoubtedly strong. Cissy Houston, Dionne's cousin, told me that Aretha was on the right track—she was seeing this song in a new way and had come up with a new groove. Cissy was on Aretha's side. Tommy Dowd and Arif were on Aretha's side. So I had no choice but to cave." It's quite possible that Wexler's objections made Franklin more, rather than less, determined to record the song. She regarded Warwick as a hated rival, as she did almost every prominent female singer of her generation and younger ones, and would undoubtedly have taken the implication that there was something that Warwick was simply better at than her to heart. [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] Wexler realised as soon as he heard it in the studio that Franklin's version was great, and Bacharach agreed, telling Franklin's biographer David Ritz “As much as I like the original recording by Dionne, there's no doubt that Aretha's is a better record. She imbued the song with heavy soul and took it to a far deeper place. Hers is the definitive version.” -- which is surprising because Franklin's version simplifies some of Bacharach's more unusual chord voicings, something he often found extremely upsetting. Wexler still though thought there was no way the song would be a hit, and it's understandable that he thought that way. Not only had it only just been on the charts a few months earlier, but it was the kind of song that wouldn't normally be a hit at all, and certainly not in the kind of rhythmic soul music for which Franklin was known. Almost everything she ever recorded is in simple time signatures -- 4/4, waltz time, or 6/8 -- but this is a Bacharach song so it's staggeringly metrically irregular. Normally even with semi-complex things I'm usually good at figuring out how to break it down into bars, but here I actually had to purchase a copy of the sheet music in order to be sure I was right about what's going on. I'm going to count beats along with the record here so you can see what I mean. The verse has three bars of 4/4, one bar of 2/4, and three more bars of 4/4, all repeated: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] While the chorus has a bar of 4/4, a bar of 3/4 but with a chord change half way through so it sounds like it's in two if you're paying attention to the harmonic changes, two bars of 4/4, another waltz-time bar sounding like it's in two, two bars of four, another bar of three sounding in two, a bar of four, then three more bars of four but the first of those is *written* as four but played as if it's in six-eight time (but you can keep the four/four pulse going if you're counting): [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer" with me counting bars over verse] I don't expect you to have necessarily followed that in great detail, but the point should be clear -- this was not some straightforward dance song. Incidentally, that bar played as if it's six/eight was something Aretha introduced to make the song even more irregular than how Bacharach wrote it. And on top of *that* of course the lyrics mixed the secular and the sacred, something that was still taboo in popular music at that time -- this is only a couple of years after Capitol records had been genuinely unsure about putting out the Beach Boys' "God Only Knows", and Franklin's gospel-inflected vocals made the religious connection even more obvious. But Franklin was insistent that the record go out as a single, and eventually it was released as the B-side to the far less impressive "The House That Jack Built". It became a double-sided hit, with the A-side making number two on the R&B chart and number seven on the Hot One Hundred, while "I Say a Little Prayer" made number three on the R&B chart and number ten overall. In the UK, "I Say a Little Prayer" made number four and became her biggest ever solo UK hit. It's now one of her most-remembered songs, while the A-side is largely forgotten: [Excerpt: Aretha Franklin, "I Say a Little Prayer"] For much of the

Lord Richter and Lady Toast are back this week and are joined by Nick to discuss Richter's theory concerning Miraina's origins and motives before delving into Lady Toast's favorite part of the episode: combat! It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

It's time for a nice picnic in the park with a minor side of ulterior motives as there just happens to be a jumble of Kumaru roots there for Miraina to test us against. Then some verdant plant growth interrupts an idyllic afternoon in the park.  It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

In this episode, Hunter and Ericka sit down in the breakroom with SUPERSTAR activist, educator, and FOUNDER of Texture Vs. Race, and Kolor Kulture. We discuss a certain episode we did with a certain "hairlebrity" and we just gotta set the record straight real quick. we hope you enjoy this episode! FOLLOW OUR PATREON: https://www.patreon.com/breakroombanter?fan_landing=true FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL: https://www.instagram.com/erickatheredhead/ https://www.instagram.com/hairxhunter/ https://www.instagram.com/breakroombanterpod/ --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/breakroombanter/message Support this podcast: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/breakroombanter/support

Lord Richter and Lady Toast return this week to rehash a conversation about gaslighting and ponder the heroism of first responders. Then they discuss the merits of unconventional interrogation methodology and its practical application. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

We managed to save the day once again, even if we couldn't quite save the harbor itself. All in a day's work for us, so now we get to enjoy another day about town while Argenus has some meaningless conversations and plans a picnic lunch. It's time, once more, for our annual Art Contest! If you are artistically inclined in any way, send us a submission that's related to the podcast for your chance to win a Mini Spellbook from Elderwood Academy pre-loaded with a set of LR Power Dice from Fanroll. "Artistically inclined" does not mean simply a picture, too. Want to write us a song? Go for it! Want to make a paper mache version of Tar Baphon's ridiculous helmet? Do it up! Want to write fanfiction shipping Rogyar and Kishokish? Why not?! Whatever artistic expression you have relating to our Tyrant's Grasp, War for the Crown, or Skull & Shackles content is acceptable as a submission for the contest. Just submit it to us through our Discord or via our email and you'll be entered! As always, you can find us on Twitter (@inspired_incomp) and on Facebook to follow along with our exploits, you can shoot us an email at InspiredIncompetence@gmail.com if you're so inclined. You can find out more about us at InspiredIncompetence.com and join our Discord server from the link at the bottom, where we are always around to chat with our fans (or whoever wants to chat, we're not picky). Lastly, if you're enjoying the show, we humbly ask that you consider supporting us on Patreon to let us know that our efforts are not in vain. Thanks everyone, and enjoy the show!

"Artistically Attacking" (Poem) by Ko Aung Hmai, Nway Oo Moe.This item belongs to: audio/opensource_audio.This item has files of the following types: Archive BitTorrent, Item Tile, Metadata, PNG, Spectrogram, VBR MP3

#107: The Future of RPG's | Artistically Satisfying Video Games

Toby Bozzuto brilliantly shares his creative approach to leadership that comes across in almost every answer to my questioning. Please relish!

Dr. Debbie Mueller thought she was not interested in painting or the arts and one day on a whim tried painting and found joy. She is now a prolific and accomplished painter and tells her story in this episode. About Dr. Mueller from her website: Late Bloomer Artist  This is the story of an accidental artist, the story of an Obstetrician/Gynecologist, Mother, and Wife, who discovers, at the age of 56, that she is a painter.  I am the daughter of an artist mother, and crafty father, and had always seen myself as having received my father's genes.  I pursued hobbies of mosaic making, pottery, and even photography, leaving the fine art to my mother.  However, when visiting my parents in Sarasota, Florida in February of 2016, my life changed.   On a rainy afternoon, with nothing else planned, a set of acrylic paints appeared, and I produced my first painting of a dock at dusk.  My life was forever changed. Since then, I have not stopped learning, and have not stopped painting. I have studied with generous teachers, and have taken away important lessons from each. I have fallen in love with painting from life, and have embraced plein air and still life painting, as well as painting the figure.  I delight in having discovered this hidden passion, and look forward to living the rest of my life as an artist. While I am drawn to the still life and landscape in all their wardrobe, my heart sings when I can paint the dance between light and shadow.  Debbie Mueller About the artist: https://www.debbiemuellerart.com/about Paintings: https://www.debbiemuellerart.com/works Cards and Calendars: https://www.debbiemuellerart.com/collections/132532

Steve doesn't believe Adam is any good at being a racing driver, so he's brought in an experienced BMW racer to teach Adam a thing or two, and to discuss which BMW race car was the best of all time. For some reason, Steve is allowed to have an opinion on this, despite never having been to a race track.

Most of us would probably agree that there is a lot of frustration and anger going on in America these days that didn't start with the pandemic but certainly was exacerbated by it. Our next guest is a working artist that has decided to address this situation with a participatory art project entitled “Just Let It Rip”. Mike Switzer interviews Melinda Hoffman, an artist who works and lives in Mauldin, SC.

Carley Rudd is a 34-year-old second generation artist and Travel Photographer from Portland, Maine. Her work has taken her across the globe and has been featured in Vogue, Condé Nast Traveller, National Geographic, Architectural Digest, and Travel & Leisure. Ms. Rudd suffered from Lyme disease for 10 years before she was diagnosed in 2021. She balanced her pre-diagnosed symptoms and travel by visiting over 50 United States (US) and international doctors. Eventually her body said no to her rigorous professional schedule, and she was forced to put her career on pause. Knowing her body was out of balance, she pursued a wide variety of medical diagnostic testing; including, bio-resonance, blood, and clinical. After locating a diagnosis, Ms. Rudd tapped into her artistic skill set to build a healing plan. She utilized multi-sensory treatment tools such as blue, red, and sun light, diffused lavender oil, 54321 sensory exercises, adaptogen herbs, ozone, parasite and mold cleanses, meditation, Qigong, and energy healing. Today, Ms. Rudd continues treatment, but she has returned to work and her social life. If you would like to learn more about how an artistic mindset can be used to accelerate healing from Lyme disease, then tune in now!

In the Valley of the Kings, Horemheb commissioned a magnificent tomb. Artistically innovative, it has one foot in the past and one in the future. This tomb introduced a new style of decoration, developed on recent trends, and reshaped the model of royal burials…Episode Details:Date: c. 1323 BCE.Intro and break music: Keith Zizza.Outro music and interludes: Luke Chaos.Learn more about the tomb of Horemheb at the Theban Mapping Project.See Prof. Geoffrey Martin's description of the tomb at YouTube.Logo: Unfinished scene from the tomb of Horemheb. Hornung 1971. Our GDPR privacy policy was updated on August 8, 2022. Visit acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Everyone, in this episode we will talk all about artistry. Is it something you can teach? is it something we can learn? How can we improve it? Follow me on social media @balletwithisabella - Facebook, YouTube, Instagram --- Send in a voice message: https://anchor.fm/a-dancers-mindset/message

HT1247 - Are We Artistically Greedy? We hope our prints are sold and placed on display in the homes of our buyers. That's a nice thought, but what other art media are consumed continually, every day like this? Paintings, yes. Not novels, not movies, not dance performances. Even music that might be listened to over and over will eventually wear thin. Maybe we photographers should assume our work should "turn over" frequently like all other media.

Choreographer Melissa Riker joins the show to discuss running a non profit dance company in Seattle and New York City.    Topics: ⭐️ Melissa's IRS audit ⭐️ Paying dancers 1099 or W2 ⭐️ Writing and applying for grants ⭐️ Financially responsible. Artistically wild. ⭐️ Cost of public permits versus renting a venue ⭐️ Arts grants via city funding and federal funding ⭐️ To become a non profit or partner with a fiscal sponsor   In the bonus episode: ⭐️ Paying freelancers in a timely manner   Bonus Episode: https://www.patreon.com/posts/65884179   Kinesis Project Dance Theatre: https://www.kinesisproject.com/   Melissa Riker: https://www.linkedin.com/in/mriker/   Zoe | Juniper: https://zoejuniper.org/   Celeste Cooning - Visual Artist: https://www.celestecooning.com/   Netta Yerushalmy - Choreographer: https://www.nettay.com/   Fractured Atlas - Fiscal Sponsor: https://www.fracturedatlas.org/fiscal-sponsorship   The Field - Fiscal Sponsor: https://www.thefield.org/fiscal-sponsorship-for-artists/   Broadway Grosses: https://www.broadwayworld.com/grosses.cfm   Bond Investing: https://www.artisticfinance.com/episode/Ls2svcghok0FemQVcNBp/Bond-Investing-with-Maithreyi-Gopalakrishnan   Caite Henver - Projection Design of Kristina Wong, Sweatshop Overlord: https://www.artisticfinance.com/episode/aPgbdZm90cIzyISPGXvN/Caite-Hevner-Projection-Designer   Lap Chi Chu - Lighting Designer of Morning Sun: https://www.artisticfinance.com/episode/a28i0vVANKirBQ1nR324/Lap-Chi-Chu-Lighting-Designer   Patreon - Kinesis Project: https://www.patreon.com/kinesisproject   Links from the patron bonus episode:   Brooklyn Navy Yard https://brooklynnavyyard.org/   Interview by Ethan Steimel   Become a patron: www.patreon.com/artisticfinance   www.artisticfinance.com