Podcasts about Colombo

Grab the ATLAS VPN CHRISTMAS deal for $1.70 USD per month + 6 months EXTRA using my link: https://get.atlasvpn.com/Shaun MICHAEL FRANZESE UK TOUR TICKETS: http://tiny.cc/MF-remademan SHADY RAYS: Go to http://shadyrays.com and use code SHAUN for 50% off 2 or more pairs of polarized sunglasses. Sitdowns with Gangsters book by Shaun Attwood UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Sitdowns-Gan... USA: https://www.amazon.com/Sitdowns-Gangs... Worldwide: https://books2read.com/u/4970wJ Untouchable Jimmy Savile Book by Shaun Attwood UK: https://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0CNZJ8HD5 USA: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CNZJ8HD5 Shaun Attwood sits down with CRIME STACK to discuss the life and mafia career of Salvatore “Sammy The Bull” Gravano. From his time as a tough kid on the streets of Bensonhurst, Brooklyn to becoming an associate in the Colombo family. Sammy was traded to the Gambino Family. Gravano linked up with John Gotti to assassinate Boss, Big Paul Castellano. Sammy The Bull would rise to Underboss before snitching to the federal government and bringing down Gotti and a bevy of other top mobsters. Gravano would later move to Arizona and build a pill distribution ring with his daughter, son, and wife. Sammy's outfit would bump up against the English Family, Shaun Attwood's pill distribution organization.

Ce sont des stars, le plus souvent à poil et à quatre pattes. Certains animaux atteignent des sommets de notoriété qui assurent à leurs propriétaires de confortables revenus. « La Story », le podcast d'actualité des « Echos », vous propose d'écouter ou de réécouter cet épisode de janvier sur les animaux stars où Pierrick Fay et Léa Colombo reviennent sur le destin des animaux les plus riches du monde. Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

#PRC: #SRILANK:  India and the US, working with Adani, seek to contest Beijing's String of Pearls ports across the Indo-Pacific. Arif Rafiq, GlobelyNews.com https://globelynews.com/south-asia/us-adani-group-colombo-port/ 1879 Colombo

Known as the “biggest money earner in the mob since Al Capone,” Michael Franzese grew up as the son of the notorious Underboss of the Colombo crime family. Michael's story is nothing short of extraordinary. He's the only high-ranking figure from a major crime family to walk away without protective custody and live. We welcomed Michael back to the RUN GPG Podcast again for a third time to talk about his riveting life and the very intriguing parallels and applications between the world of organized crime in the mafia and entrepreneurship and business. We covered the following topics: The Secret To Longevity Is ... Join The Mafia The Machiavellian Philosophy Weaponizing The Justice System Ray Liotta & Henry Hill Giuliani Wanted To Put Me In Prison For 100 Years From Enemies To Friends Is John Gotti Responsible For The Downfall Of The Mob? The "Hit" On Paul Castellano  What Is The "Mafia Commission"?  Franzese Will Get Whacked!  Why The Witness Protection Program Was Created Frank Sinatra's Mob Connection Was The Mafia Responsible For JFK's Assassination? "There's No Such Thing As The Mafia" - J. Edgar Hoover Where Is Jimmy Hoffa's Body? Marlon Brando & The Godfather The Godfather & Lessons For Leaders The Easiest Sports To Fix Franzese Wines They Won't Let Me In Canada! The Importance Of Gratitude From A Former Mob Boss  The "Son Of Sam" Murders

COLOMBO & KATIE  SEG 1: Daryl Hall is suing John Oates…so I guess they aren't performing together anymore. Yikes! SEG 2: Happy Thanksgiving from Colombo & Katie! FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.com    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COLOMBO & KATIE SEG 1: A terrorist attack happened with a car bomb at the New York/ Canada border. We have closed all the northern borders in proximity. SEG 2: Another trans athlete switches to the women's team their Senior year of college and becomes a champion. On the men's team, they were mediocre and did not place. SEG 3: Rodney Boyd on the latest news at our northern border and a flash mob ransacking a Nike store in LA. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.com    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

A eleição de Javier Milei, no domingo (19), encerrou um processo eleitoral marcado pela polarização entre o peronismo e a vontade da sociedade argentina, sobretudo a parcela jovem, por uma mudança. O outsider venceu, o "mercado" gostou e até as relações internacionais já estão em ebulição. O que a vitória da do extremismo liberal de Milei representa para nossos vizinhos? A jornalista Sylvia Colombo, colunista da Folha de S. Paulo, é a convidada de Flávia Tavares no Conversas com o Meio desta semana para decifrar os principais enigmas às margens do Rio da Prata.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

I ragazzi di Sparta della 2'C, in questo episodio speciale, hanno deciso di parlare della popolazione conquistata da Colombo. Buon ascolto :) --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/radiomatta9/message

COLOMBO & KATIE SEG 1: Ron Klutho, Brad Wos, and Raymond Gharabeyghi from St Louis Cup of Nations, which connects refugee kids and Americans through soccer. Raymond is from Iran and is the pastor of a local Iranian church: https://cupofnationsstl.org/ SEG 2: MO Supreme Court declines Ashcroft's ballot language appeal  FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.com    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COLOMBO & KATIE  Ron Klutho, Brad Wos, and Raymond Gharabeyghi from St. Louis Cup of Nations, which connects refugee kids and Americans through soccer, joined Colombo & Katie today to discuss the impact the organization has had on youth in the St. Louis area.  TO FIND OUT MORE: https://cupofnationsstl.org/See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Episode 170 of A History of Rock Music in Five Hundred Songs looks at "Astral Weeks", the early solo career of Van Morrison, and the death of Bert Berns.  Click the full post to read liner notes, links to more information, and a transcript of the episode. Patreon backers also have a forty-minute bonus episode available, on "Stoned Soul Picnic" by Laura Nyro. 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/ Errata At one point I, ridiculously, misspeak the name of Charles Mingus' classic album. Black Saint and the Sinner Lady is not about dinner ladies. Also, I say Warren Smith Jr is on "Slim Slow Slider" when I meant to say Richard Davis (Smith is credited in some sources, but I only hear acoustic guitar, bass, and soprano sax on the finished track). Resources As usual, I've created Mixcloud playlists, with full versions of all the songs excerpted in this episode. As there are so many Van Morrison songs in this episode, the Mixcloud is split into three parts, one, two, and three. The information about Bert Berns comes from Here Comes the Night: The Dark Soul of Bert Berns and the Dirty Business of Rhythm and Blues by Joel Selvin. I've used several biographies of Van Morrison. Van Morrison: Into the Music by Ritchie Yorke is so sycophantic towards Morrison that the word “hagiography” would be, if anything, an understatement. Van Morrison: No Surrender by Johnny Rogan, on the other hand, is the kind of book that talks in the introduction about how the author has had to avoid discussing certain topics because of legal threats from the subject. Howard deWitt's Van Morrison: Astral Weeks to Stardom is over-thorough in the way some self-published books are, while Clinton Heylin's Can You Feel the Silence? is probably the best single volume on the artist. Information on Woodstock comes from Small Town Talk by Barney Hoskyns. Ryan Walsh's Astral Weeks: A Secret History of 1968 is about more than Astral Weeks, but does cover Morrison's period in and around Boston in more detail than anything else. The album Astral Weeks is worth hearing in its entirety. Not all of the music on The Authorized Bang Collection is as listenable, but it's the most complete collection available of everything Morrison recorded for Bang. Patreon This podcast is brought to you by the generosity of my backers on Patreon. Why not join them? Transcript Before we start, a quick warning -- this episode contains discussion of organised crime activity, and of sudden death. It also contains excerpts of songs which hint at attraction to underage girls and discuss terminal illness. If those subjects might upset you, you might want to read the transcript rather than listen to the episode. Anyway, on with the show. Van Morrison could have been the co-writer of "Piece of My Heart". Bert Berns was one of the great collaborators in the music business, and almost every hit he ever had was co-written, and he was always on the lookout for new collaborators, and in 1967 he was once again working with Van Morrison, who he'd worked with a couple of years earlier when Morrison was still the lead singer of Them. Towards the beginning of 1967 he had come up with a chorus, but no verse. He had the hook, "Take another little piece of my heart" -- Berns was writing a lot of songs with "heart" in the title at the time -- and wanted Morrison to come up with a verse to go with it. Van Morrison declined. He wasn't interested in writing pop songs, or in collaborating with other writers, and so Berns turned to one of his regular collaborators, Jerry Ragavoy, and it was Ragavoy who added the verses to one of the biggest successes of Berns' career: [Excerpt: Erma Franklin, "Piece of My Heart"] The story of how Van Morrison came to make the album that's often considered his masterpiece is intimately tied up with the story we've been telling in the background for several episodes now, the story of Atlantic Records' sale to Warners, and the story of Bert Berns' departure from Atlantic. For that reason, some parts of the story I'm about to tell will be familiar to those of you who've been paying close attention to the earlier episodes, but as always I'm going to take you from there to somewhere we've never been before. In 1962, Bert Berns was a moderately successful songwriter, who had written or co-written songs for many artists, especially for artists on Atlantic Records. He'd written songs for Atlantic artists like LaVern Baker, and when Atlantic's top pop producers Leiber and Stoller started to distance themselves from the label in the early sixties, he had moved into production as well, writing and producing Solomon Burke's big hit "Cry to Me": [Excerpt: Solomon Burke, "Cry to Me"] He was the producer and writer or co-writer of most of Burke's hits from that point forward, but at first he was still a freelance producer, and also produced records for Scepter Records, like the Isley Brothers' version of "Twist and Shout", another song he'd co-written, that one with Phil Medley. And as a jobbing songwriter, of course his songs were picked up by other producers, so Leiber and Stoller produced a version of his song "Tell Him" for the Exciters on United Artists: [Excerpt: The Exciters, "Tell Him"] Berns did freelance work for Leiber and Stoller as well as the other people he was working for. For example, when their former protege Phil Spector released his hit version of "Zip-a-Dee-Do-Dah", they got Berns to come up with a knockoff arrangement of "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?", released as by Baby Jane and the Rockabyes, with a production credit "Produced by Leiber and Stoller, directed by Bert Berns": [Excerpt: Baby Jane and the Rockabyes, "How Much is that Doggie in the Window?"] And when Leiber and Stoller stopped producing work for United Artists, Berns took over some of the artists they'd been producing for the label, like Marv Johnson, as well as producing his own new artists, like Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, who had been discovered by Berns' friend Jerry Ragovoy, with whom he co-wrote their "Cry Baby": [Excerpt: Garnet Mimms and the Enchanters, "Cry Baby"] Berns was an inveterate collaborator. He was one of the few people to get co-writing credits with Leiber and Stoller, and he would collaborate seemingly with everyone who spoke to him for five minutes. He would also routinely reuse material, cutting the same songs time and again with different artists, knowing that a song must be a hit for *someone*. One of his closest collaborators was Jerry Wexler, who also became one of his best friends, even though one of their earliest interactions had been when Wexler had supervised Phil Spector's production of Berns' "Twist and Shout" for the Top Notes, a record that Berns had thought had butchered the song. Berns was, in his deepest bones, a record man. Listening to the records that Berns made, there's a strong continuity in everything he does. There's a love there of simplicity -- almost none of his records have more than three chords. He loved Latin sounds and rhythms -- a love he shared with other people working in Brill Building R&B at the time, like Leiber and Stoller and Spector -- and great voices in emotional distress. There's a reason that the records he produced for Solomon Burke were the first R&B records to be labelled "soul". Berns was one of those people for whom feel and commercial success are inextricable. He was an artist -- the records he made were powerfully expressive -- but he was an artist for whom the biggest validation was *getting a hit*. Only a small proportion of the records he made became hits, but enough did that in the early sixties he was a name that could be spoken of in the same breath as Leiber and Stoller, Spector, and Bacharach and David. And Atlantic needed a record man. The only people producing hits for the label at this point were Leiber and Stoller, and they were in the process of stopping doing freelance work and setting up their own label, Red Bird, as we talked about in the episode on the Shangri-Las. And anyway, they wanted more money than they were getting, and Jerry Wexler was never very keen on producers wanting money that could have gone to the record label. Wexler decided to sign Bert Berns up as a staff producer for Atlantic towards the end of 1963, and by May 1964 it was paying off. Atlantic hadn't been having hits, and now Berns had four tracks he wrote and produced for Atlantic on the Hot One Hundred, of which the highest charting was "My Girl Sloopy" by the Vibrations: [Excerpt: The Vibrations, "My Girl Sloopy"] Even higher on the charts though was the Beatles' version of "Twist and Shout". That record, indeed, had been successful enough in the UK that Berns had already made exploratory trips to the UK and produced records for Dick Rowe at Decca, a partnership we heard about in the episode on "Here Comes the Night". Berns had made partnerships there which would have vast repercussions for the music industry in both countries, and one of them was with the arranger Mike Leander, who was the uncredited arranger for the Drifters session for "Under the Boardwalk", a song written by Artie Resnick and Kenny Young and produced by Berns, recorded the day after the group's lead singer Rudy Lewis died of an overdose: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Under the Boardwalk"] Berns was making hits on a regular basis by mid-1964, and the income from the label's new success allowed Jerry Wexler and the Ertegun brothers to buy out their other partners -- Ahmet Ertegun's old dentist, who had put up some of the initial money, and Miriam Bienstock, the ex-wife of their initial partner Herb Abramson, who'd got Abramson's share in the company after the divorce, and who was now married to Freddie Bienstock of Hill and Range publishing. Wexler and the Erteguns now owned the whole label. Berns also made regular trips to the UK to keep up his work with British musicians, and in one of those trips, as we heard in the episode on "Here Comes the Night", he produced several tracks for the group Them, including that track, written by Berns: [Excerpt: Them, "Here Comes the Night"] And a song written by the group's lead singer Van Morrison, "Gloria": [Excerpt: Them, "Gloria"] But Berns hadn't done much other work with them, because he had a new project. Part of the reason that Wexler and the Erteguns had gained total control of Atlantic was because, in a move pushed primarily by Wexler, they were looking at selling it. They'd already tried to merge with Leiber and Stoller's Red Bird Records, but lost the opportunity after a disastrous meeting, but they were in negotiations with several other labels, negotiations which would take another couple of years to bear fruit. But they weren't planning on getting out of the record business altogether. Whatever deal they made, they'd remain with Atlantic, but they were also planning on starting another label. Bert Berns had seen how successful Leiber and Stoller were with Red Bird, and wanted something similar. Wexler and the Erteguns didn't want to lose their one hit-maker, so they came up with an offer that would benefit all of them. Berns' publishing contract had just ended, so they would set up a new publishing company, WEB IV, named after the initials Wexler, Ertegun, and Berns, and the fact that there were four of them. Berns would own fifty percent of that, and the other three would own the other half. And they were going to start up a new label, with seventeen thousand dollars of the Atlantic partners' money. That label would be called Bang -- for Bert, Ahmet, Neshui, and Gerald -- and would be a separate company from Atlantic, so not affected by any sale. Berns would continue as a staff producer for Atlantic for now, but he'd have "his own" label, which he'd have a proper share in, and whether he was making hits for Atlantic or Bang, his partners would have a share of the profits. The first two records on Bang were "Shake and Jerk" by Billy Lamont, a track that they licensed from elsewhere and which didn't do much, and a more interesting track co-written by Berns. Bob Feldman, Richard Gottehrer, and Jerry Goldstein were Brill Building songwriters who had become known for writing "My Boyfriend's Back", a hit for the Angels, a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Angels, "My Boyfriend's Back"] With the British invasion, the three of them had decided to create their own foreign beat group. As they couldn't do British accents, they pretended to be Australian, and as the Strangeloves -- named after the Stanley Kubrick film Dr  Strangelove -- they released one flop single. They cut another single, a version of "Bo Diddley", but the label they released their initial record through didn't want it. They then took the record to Atlantic, where Jerry Wexler said that they weren't interested in releasing some white men singing "Bo Diddley". But Ahmet Ertegun suggested they bring the track to Bert Berns to see what he thought. Berns pointed out that if they changed the lyrics and melody, but kept the same backing track, they could claim the copyright in the resulting song themselves. He worked with them on a new lyric, inspired by the novel Candy, a satirical pornographic novel co-written by Terry Southern, who had also co-written the screenplay to Dr Strangelove. Berns supervised some guitar overdubs, and the result went to number eleven: [Excerpt: The Strangeloves, "I Want Candy"] Berns had two other songs on the hot one hundred when that charted, too -- Them's version of "Here Comes the Night", and the version of Van McCoy's song "Baby I'm Yours" he'd produced for Barbara Lewis. Three records on the charts on three different labels. But despite the sheer number of charting records he'd had, he'd never had a number one, until the Strangeloves went on tour. Before the tour they'd cut a version of "My Girl Sloopy" for their album -- Berns always liked to reuse material -- and they started performing the song on the tour. The Dave Clark Five, who they were supporting, told them it sounded like a hit and they were going to do their own version when they got home. Feldman, Gottehrer, and Goldstein decided *they* might as well have the hit with it as anyone else. Rather than put it out as a Strangeloves record -- their own record was still rising up the charts, and there's no reason to be your own competition -- they decided to get a group of teenage musicians who supported them on the last date of the tour to sing new vocals to the backing track from the Strangeloves album. The group had been called Rick and the Raiders, but they argued so much that the Strangeloves nicknamed them the Hatfields and the McCoys, and when their version of "My Girl Sloopy", retitled "Hang on Sloopy", came out, it was under the band name The McCoys: [Excerpt: The McCoys, "Hang on Sloopy"] Berns was becoming a major success, and with major success in the New York music industry in the 1960s came Mafia involvement. We've talked a fair bit about Morris Levy's connection with the mob in many previous episodes, but mob influence was utterly pervasive throughout the New York part of the industry, and so for example Richard Gottehrer of the Strangeloves used to call Sonny Franzese of the Colombo crime family "Uncle John", they were so close. Franzese was big in the record business too, even after his conviction for bank robbery. Berns, unlike many of the other people in the industry, had no scruples at all about hanging out with Mafiosi. indeed his best friend in the mid sixties was Tommy Eboli, a member of the Genovese crime family who had been in the mob since the twenties, starting out working for "Lucky" Luciano. Berns was not himself a violent man, as far as anyone can tell, but he liked the glamour of hanging out with organised crime figures, and they liked hanging out with someone who was making so many hit records. And so while Leiber and Stoller, for example, ended up selling Red Bird Records to George Goldner for a single dollar in order to get away from the Mafiosi who were slowly muscling in on the label, Berns had no problems at all in keeping his own label going. Indeed, he would soon be doing so without the involvement of Atlantic Records. Berns' final work for Atlantic was in June 1966, when he cut a song he had co-written with Jeff Barry for the Drifters, inspired by the woman who would soon become Atlantic's biggest star: [Excerpt: The Drifters, "Aretha"] The way Berns told the story in public, there was no real bad blood between him, Wexler, and the Erteguns -- he'd just decided to go his own way, and he said “I will always be grateful to them for the help they've given me in getting Bang started,” The way Berns' wife would later tell the story, Jerry Wexler had suggested that rather than Berns owning fifty percent of Web IV, they should start to split everything four ways, and she had been horrified by this suggestion, kicked up a stink about it, and Wexler had then said that either Berns needed to buy the other three out, or quit and give them everything, and demanded Berns pay them three hundred thousand dollars. According to other people, Berns decided he wanted one hundred percent control of Web IV, and raised a breach of contract lawsuit against Atlantic, over the usual royalty non-payments that were endemic in the industry at that point. When Atlantic decided to fight the lawsuit rather than settle, Berns' mob friends got involved and threatened to break the legs of Wexler's fourteen-year-old daughter, and the mob ended up with full control of Bang records, while Berns had full control of his publishing company. Given later events, and in particular given the way Wexler talked about Berns until the day he died, with a vitriol that he never used about any of the other people he had business disputes with, it seems likely to me that the latter story is closer to the truth than the former. But most people involved weren't talking about the details of what went on, and so Berns still retained his relationships with many of the people in the business, not least of them Jeff Barry, so when Barry and Ellie Greenwich had a new potential star, it was Berns they thought to bring him to, even though the artist was white and Berns had recently given an interview saying that he wanted to work with more Black artists, because white artists simply didn't have soul. Barry and Greenwich's marriage was breaking up at the time, but they were still working together professionally, as we discussed in the episode on "River Deep, Mountain High", and they had been the main production team at Red Bird. But with Red Bird in terminal decline, they turned elsewhere when they found a potential major star after Greenwich was asked to sing backing vocals on one of his songwriting demos. They'd signed the new songwriter, Neil Diamond, to Leiber and Stoller's company Trio Music at first, but they soon started up their own company, Tallyrand Music, and signed Diamond to that, giving Diamond fifty percent of the company and keeping twenty-five percent each for themselves, and placed one of his songs with Jay and the Americans in 1965: [Excerpt: Jay and the Americans, "Sunday and Me"] That record made the top twenty, and had established Diamond as a songwriter, but he was still not a major performer -- he'd released one flop single on Columbia Records before meeting Barry and Greenwich. But they thought he had something, and Bert Berns agreed. Diamond was signed to Bang records, and Berns had a series of pre-production meetings with Barry and Greenwich before they took Diamond into the studio -- Barry and Greenwich were going to produce Diamond for Bang, as they had previously produced tracks for Red Bird, but they were going to shape the records according to Berns' aesthetic. The first single released from Diamond's first session, "Solitary Man", only made number fifty-five, but it was the first thing Diamond had recorded to make the Hot One Hundred at all: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Solitary Man"] The second single, though, was much more Bert Berns' sort of thing -- a three-chord song that sounded like it could have been written by Berns himself, especially after Barry and Greenwich had added the Latin-style horns that Berns loved so much. Indeed according to some sources, Berns did make a songwriting suggestion -- Diamond's song had apparently been called "Money Money", and Berns had thought that was a ridiculous title, and suggested calling it "Cherry Cherry" instead: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Cherry Cherry"] That became Diamond's first top ten hit. While Greenwich had been the one who had discovered Diamond, and Barry and Greenwich were the credited producers on all Diamond's records  as a result, Diamond soon found himself collaborating far more with Barry than with Greenwich, so for example the first number one he wrote, for the Monkees rather than himself, ended up having its production just credited to Barry. That record used a backing track recorded in New York by the same set of musicians used on most Bang records, like Al Gorgoni on lead guitar and Russ Savakus on bass: [Excerpt: The Monkees, "I'm a Believer"] Neil Diamond was becoming a solid hit-maker, but he started rubbing up badly against Berns. Berns wanted hits and only hits, and Diamond thought of himself as a serious artist. The crisis came when two songs were under contention for Diamond's next single in late 1967, after he'd had a whole run of hits for the label. The song Diamond wanted to release, "Shilo", was deeply personal to him: [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Shilo"] But Bert Berns had other ideas. "Shilo" didn't sound like a hit, and he knew a hit when he heard one. No, the clear next single, the only choice, was "Kentucky Woman": [Excerpt: Neil Diamond, "Kentucky Woman"] But Berns tried to compromise as best he could. Diamond's contract was up for renewal, and you don't want to lose someone who has had, as Diamond had at that point, five top twenty hits in a row, and who was also writing songs like "I'm a Believer" and "Red Red Wine". He told Diamond that he'd let "Shilo" come out as a single if Diamond signed an extension to his contract. Diamond said that not only was he not going to do that, he'd taken legal advice and discovered that there were problems with his contract which let him record for other labels -- the word "exclusive" had been missed out of the text, among other things. He wasn't going to be recording for Bang at all any more. The lawsuits over this would stretch out for a decade, and Diamond would eventually win, but the first few months were very, very difficult for Diamond. When he played the Bitter End, a club in New York, stink bombs were thrown into the audience. The Bitter End's manager was assaulted and severely beaten. Diamond moved his wife and child out of Manhattan, borrowed a gun, and after his last business meeting with Berns was heard talking about how he needed to contact the District Attorney and hire a bodyguard. Of the many threats that were issued against Diamond, though, the least disturbing was probably the threat Berns made to Diamond's career. Berns pointed out to Diamond in no uncertain terms that he didn't need Diamond anyway -- he already had someone he could replace Diamond with, another white male solo singer with a guitar who could churn out guaranteed hits. He had Van Morrison: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] When we left Van Morrison, Them had just split up due to the problems they had been having with their management team. Indeed, the problems Morrison was having with his managers seem curiously similar to the issues that Diamond was having with Bert Berns -- something that could possibly have been a warning sign to everyone involved, if any of them had known the full details of everyone else's situation. Sadly for all of them, none of them did. Them had had some early singles success, notably with the tracks Berns had produced for them, but Morrison's opinion of their second album, Them Again, was less than complimentary, and in general that album is mostly only remembered for the version of Bob Dylan's "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue", which is one of those cover versions that inspires subsequent covers more than the original ever did: [Excerpt: Them, "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue"] Them had toured the US around the time of the release of that album, but that tour had been a disaster. The group had gained a reputation for incredible live shows, including performances at the Whisky A-Go-Go with the Doors and Captain Beefheart as their support acts, but during the tour Van Morrison had decided that Phil Solomon, the group's manager, was getting too much money -- Morrison had agreed to do the tour on a salary, rather than a percentage, but the tour had been more successful than he'd expected, and Solomon was making a great deal of money off the tour, money that Morrison believed rightfully belonged to him. The group started collecting the money directly from promoters, and got into legal trouble with Solomon as a result. The tour ended with the group having ten thousand dollars that Solomon believed -- quite possibly correctly -- that he was owed. Various gangsters whose acquaintance the group had made offered to have the problem taken care of, but they decided instead to come to a legal agreement -- they would keep the money, and in return Solomon, whose production company the group were signed to, would get to keep all future royalties from the Them tracks. This probably seemed a good idea at the time, when the idea of records earning royalties for sixty or more years into the future seemed ridiculous, but Morrison in particular came to regret the decision bitterly. The group played one final gig when they got back to Belfast, but then split up, though a version of the group led by the bass player Alan Henderson continued performing for a few years to no success. Morrison put together a band that played a handful of gigs under the name Them Again, with little success, but he already had his eyes set on a return to the US. In Morrison's eyes, Bert Berns had been the only person in the music industry who had really understood him, and the two worked well together. He had also fallen in love with an American woman, Janet Planet, and wanted to find some way to be with her. As Morrison said later “I had a couple of other offers but I thought this was the best one, seeing as I wanted to come to America anyway. I can't remember the exact details of the deal. It wasn't really that spectacular, money-wise, I don't think. But it was pretty hard to refuse from the point of view that I really respected Bert as a producer. I'd rather have worked with Bert than some other guy with a bigger record company. From that angle, it was spectacular because Bert was somebody that I wanted to work with.” There's little evidence that Morrison did have other offers -- he was already getting a reputation as someone who it was difficult to work with -- but he and Berns had a mutual respect, and on January the ninth, 1967, he signed a contract with Bang records. That contract has come in for a lot of criticism over the years, but it was actually, *by the standards in operation in the music business in 1967*, a reasonably fair one. The contract provided that, for a $2,500 a year advance, Bang would record twelve sides in the first year, with an option for up to fifty more that year, and options for up to four more years on the same terms. Bang had the full ownership of the masters and the right to do what they wanted with them. According to at least one biographer, Morrison added clauses requiring Bang to actually record the twelve sides a year, and to put out at least three singles and one album per year while the contract was in operation. He also added one other clause which seems telling -- "Company agrees that Company will not make any reference to the name THEM on phonograph records, or in advertising copy in connection with the recording of Artist." Morrison was, at first, extremely happy with Berns. The problems started with their first session: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl (takes 1-6)"] When Morrison had played the songs he was working on for Berns, Berns had remarked that they sounded great with just Morrison and his guitar, so Morrison was surprised when he got into the studio to find the whole standard New York session crew there -- the same group of session players who were playing for everyone from the Monkees to Laura Nyro, from Neil Diamond to the Shangri-Las -- along with the Sweet Inspirations to provide backing vocals. As he described it later "This fellow Bert, he made it the way he wanted to, and I accepted that he was producing it... I'd write a song and bring it into the group and we'd sit there and bash it around and that's all it was -- they weren't playing the songs, they were just playing whatever it was. They'd say 'OK, we got drums so let's put drums on it,' and they weren't thinking about the song, all they were thinking about was putting drums on it... But it was my song, and I had to watch it go down." The first song they cut was "Brown-Eyed Girl", a song which Morrison has said was originally a calypso, and was originally titled "Brown-skinned Girl", though he's differed in interviews as to whether Berns changed the lyric or if he just decided to sing it differently without thinking about it in the session. Berns turned "Brown-Eyed Girl" into a hit single, because that was what he tended to do with songs, and the result sounds a lot like the kind of record that Bang were releasing for Neil Diamond: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] Morrison has, in later years, expressed his distaste for what was done to the song, and in particular he's said that the backing vocal part by the Sweet Inspirations was added by Berns and he disliked it: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] Morrison has been very dismissive of "Brown-Eyed Girl" over the years, but he seems not to have disliked it at the time, and the song itself is one that has stood the test of time, and is often pointed to by other songwriters as a great example of the writer's craft. I remember reading one interview with Randy Newman -- sadly, while I thought it was in Paul Zollo's "Songwriters on Songwriting" I just checked that and it's not, so I can't quote it precisely -- in which he says that he often points to the line "behind the stadium with you" as a perfect piece of writing, because it's such a strangely specific detail that it convinces you that it actually happened, and that means you implicitly believe the rest of the song. Though it should be made very clear here that Morrison has always said, over and over again, that nothing in his songs is based directly on his own experiences, and that they're all products of his imagination and composites of people he's known. This is very important to note before we go any further, because "Brown-Eyed Girl" is one of many songs from this period in Morrison's career which imply that their narrator has an attraction to underage girls -- in this case he remembers "making love in the green grass" in the distant past, while he also says "saw you just the other day, my how you have grown", and that particular combination is not perhaps one that should be dwelt on too closely. But there is of course a very big difference between a songwriter treating a subject as something that is worth thinking about in the course of a song and writing about their own lives, and that can be seen on one of the other songs that Morrison recorded in these sessions, "T.B. Sheets": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "T.B. Sheets"] It seems very unlikely indeed that Van Morrison actually had a lover die of tuberculosis, as the lover in the song does, and while a lot of people seem convinced that it's autobiographical, simply because of the intensity of the performance (Morrison apparently broke down in tears after recording it), nobody has ever found anyone in Morrison's life who fits the story in the song, and he's always ridiculed such suggestions. What is true though is that "T.B. Sheets" is evidence against another claim that Morrison has made in the past - that on these initial sessions the eight songs recorded were meant to be the A and B sides of four singles and there was no plan of making an album. It is simply not plausible at all to suggest that "T.B. Sheets" -- a slow blues about terminal illness, that lasts nearly ten minutes -- was ever intended as a single. It wouldn't have even come close to fitting on one side of a forty-five. It was also presumably at this time that Berns brought up the topic of "Piece of My Heart". When Berns signed Erma Franklin, it was as a way of getting at Jerry Wexler, who had gone from being his closest friend to someone he wasn't on speaking terms with, by signing the sister of his new signing Aretha. Morrison, of course, didn't co-write it -- he'd already decided that he didn't play well with others -- but it's tempting to think about how the song might have been different had Morrison written it. The song in some ways seems a message to Wexler -- haven't you had enough from me already? -- but it's also notable how many songs Berns was writing with the word "heart" in the chorus, given that Berns knew he was on borrowed time from his own heart condition. As an example, around the same time he and Jerry Ragavoy co-wrote "Piece of My Heart", they also co-wrote another song, "Heart Be Still", a flagrant lift from "Peace Be Still" by Aretha Franklin's old mentor Rev. James Cleveland, which they cut with Lorraine Ellison: [Excerpt: Lorraine Ellison, "Heart Be Still"] Berns' heart condition had got much worse as a result of the stress from splitting with Atlantic, and he had started talking about maybe getting open-heart surgery, though that was still very new and experimental. One wonders how he must have felt listening to Morrison singing about watching someone slowly dying. Morrison has since had nothing but negative things to say about the sessions in March 1967, but at the time he seemed happy. He returned to Belfast almost straight away after the sessions, on the understanding that he'd be back in the US if "Brown-Eyed Girl" was a success. He wrote to Janet Planet in San Francisco telling her to listen to the radio -- she'd know if she heard "Brown-Eyed Girl" that he would be back on his way to see her. She soon did hear the song, and he was soon back in the US: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Brown-Eyed Girl"] By August, "Brown-Eyed Girl" had become a substantial hit, making the top ten, and Morrison was back in the States. He was starting to get less happy with Berns though. Bang had put out the eight tracks he'd recorded in March as an album, titled Blowin' Your Mind, and Morrison thought that the crass pseudo-psychedelia of the title, liner notes, and cover was very inappropriate -- Morrison has never been a heavy user of any drugs other than alcohol, and didn't particularly want to be associated with them. He also seems to have not realised that every track he recorded in those initial sessions would be on the album, which many people have called one of the great one-sided albums of all time -- side A, with "Brown-Eyed Girl", "He Ain't Give You None" and the extended "T.B. Sheets" tends to get far more love than side B, with five much lesser songs on it. Berns held a party for Morrison on a cruise around Manhattan, but it didn't go well -- when the performer Tiny Tim tried to get on board, Carmine "Wassel" DeNoia, a mobster friend of Berns' who was Berns' partner in a studio they'd managed to get from Atlantic as part of the settlement when Berns left, was so offended by Tim's long hair and effeminate voice and mannerisms that he threw him overboard into the harbour. DeNoia was meant to be Morrison's manager in the US, working with Berns, but he and Morrison didn't get on at all -- at one point DeNoia smashed Morrison's acoustic guitar over his head, and only later regretted the damage he'd done to a nice guitar. And Morrison and Berns weren't getting on either. Morrison went back into the studio to record four more songs for a follow-up to "Brown-Eyed Girl", but there was again a misunderstanding. Morrison thought he'd been promised that this time he could do his songs the way he wanted, but Berns was just frustrated that he wasn't coming up with another "Brown-Eyed Girl", but was instead coming up with slow songs about trans women. Berns overdubbed party noises and soul backing vocals onto "Madame George", possibly in an attempt to copy the Beach Boys' Party! album with its similar feel, but it was never going to be a "Barbara Ann": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Madame George (Bang version)"] In the end, Berns released one of the filler tracks from Blowin' Your Mind, "Ro Ro Rosey", as the next single, and it flopped. On December the twenty-ninth, Berns had a meeting with Neil Diamond, the meeting after which Diamond decided he needed to get a bodyguard. After that, he had a screaming row over the phone with Van Morrison, which made Berns ill with stress. The next day, he died of a heart attack. Berns' widow Ilene, who had only just given birth to a baby a couple of weeks earlier, would always blame Morrison for pushing her husband over the edge. Neither Van Morrison nor Jerry Wexler went to the funeral, but Neil Diamond did -- he went to try to persuade Ilene to let him out of his contract now Berns was dead. According to Janet Planet later, "We were at the hotel when we learned that Bert had died. We were just mortified, because things had been going really badly, and Van felt really bad, because I guess they'd parted having had some big fight or something... Even though he did love Bert, it was a strange relationship that lived and died in the studio... I remember we didn't go to the funeral, which probably was a mistake... I think [Van] had a really bad feeling about what was going to happen." But Morrison has later mostly talked about the more practical concerns that came up, which were largely the same as the ones Neil Diamond had, saying in 1997 "I'd signed a contract with Bert Berns for management, production, agency and record company,  publishing, the whole lot -- which was professional suicide as any lawyer will tell you now... Then the whole thing blew up. Bert Berns died and I was left broke." This was the same mistake, essentially, that he'd made with Phil Solomon, and in order to get out of it, it turned out he was going to have to do much the same for a third time.  But it was the experience with Berns specifically that traumatised Morrison enough that twenty-five years later he would still be writing songs about it, like "Big Time Operators": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Big Time Operators"] The option to renew Morrison's contracts with Berns' companies came on the ninth of January 1968, less than two weeks after Berns' death. After his death, Berns' share of ownership in his companies had passed to his widow, who was in a quandary. She had two young children, one of whom was only a few weeks old, and she needed an income after their father had died. She was also not well disposed at all towards Morrison, who she blamed for causing her husband's death. By all accounts the amazing thing is that Berns lived as long as he did given his heart condition and the state of medical science at the time, but it's easy to understand her thinking. She wanted nothing to do with Morrison, and wanted to punish him. On the other hand, her late husband's silent partners didn't want to let their cash cow go. And so Morrison came under a huge amount of pressure in very different directions. From one side, Carmine DiNoia was determined to make more money off Morrison, and Morrison has since talked about signing further contracts at this point with a gun literally to his head, and his hotel room being shot up. But on the other side, Ilene Berns wanted to destroy Morrison's career altogether. She found out that Bert Berns hadn't got Morrison the proper work permits and reported him to the immigration authorities. Morrison came very close to being deported, but in the end he managed to escape deportation by marrying Janet Planet. The newly-married couple moved to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to get away from New York and the mobsters, and to try to figure out the next steps in Morrison's career. Morrison started putting together a band, which he called The Van Morrison Controversy, and working on new songs. One of his earliest connections in Massachusetts was the lead singer of a band called the Hallucinations, who he met in a bar where he was trying to get a gig: [Excerpt: The Hallucinations, "Messin' With the Kid"] The Hallucinations' lead singer was called Peter Wolf, and would much later go on to become well-known as the singer with the J. Geils Band. He and Morrison became acquaintances, and later became closer friends when they realised they had another connection -- Wolf had a late-night radio show under the name Woofa Goofa, and he'd been receiving anonymous requests for obscure blues records from a fan of the show. Morrison had been the one sending in the requests, not realising his acquaintance was the DJ. Before he got his own band together, Morrison actually guested with the Hallucinations at one show they did in May 1968, supporting John Lee Hooker. The Hallucinations had been performing "Gloria" since Them's single had come out, and they invited Morrison to join them to perform it on stage. According to Wolf, Morrison was very drunk and ranted in cod-Japanese for thirty-five minutes, and tried to sing a different song while the band played "Gloria". The audience were apparently unimpressed, even though Wolf shouted at them “Don't you know who this man is? He wrote the song!” But in truth, Morrison was sick of "Gloria" and his earlier work, and was trying to push his music in a new direction. He would later talk about having had an epiphany after hearing one particular track on the radio: [Excerpt: The Band, "I Shall Be Released"] Like almost every musician in 1968, Morrison was hit like a lightning bolt by Music From Big Pink, and he decided that he needed to turn his music in the same direction. He started writing the song "Brand New Day", which would later appear on his album Moondance, inspired by the music on the album. The Van Morrison Controversy started out as a fairly straightforward rock band, with guitarist John Sheldon, bass player Tom Kielbania, and drummer Joey Bebo. Sheldon was a novice, though his first guitar teacher was the singer James Taylor, but the other two were students at Berklee, and very serious musicians. Morrison seems to have had various managers involved in rapid succession in 1968, including one who was himself a mobster, and another who was only known as Frank, but one of these managers advanced enough money that the musicians got paid every gig. These musicians were all interested in kinds of music other than just straight rock music, and as well as rehearsing up Morrison's hits and his new songs, they would also jam with him on songs from all sorts of other genres, particularly jazz and blues. The band worked up the song that would become "Domino" based on Sheldon jamming on a Bo Diddley riff, and another time the group were rehearsing a Grant Green jazz piece, "Lazy Afternoon": [Excerpt: Grant Green, "Lazy Afternoon"] Morrison started messing with the melody, and that became his classic song "Moondance": [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Moondance"] No recordings of this electric lineup of the group are known to exist, though the backing musicians remember going to a recording studio called Ace recordings at one point and cutting some demos, which don't seem to circulate. Ace was a small studio which, according to all the published sources I've read, was best known for creating song poems, though it was a minor studio even in the song-poem world. For those who don't know, song poems were essentially a con aimed at wannabe songwriters who knew nothing about the business -- companies would advertise you too could become a successful, rich, songwriter if you sent in your "song poems", because anyone who knew the term "lyric" could be presumed to know too much about the music business to be useful. When people sent in their lyrics, they'd then be charged a fee to have them put out on their very own record -- with tracks made more or less on a conveyor belt with quick head arrangements, sung by session singers who were just handed a lyric sheet and told to get on with it. And thus were created such classics prized by collectors as "I Like Yellow Things", "Jimmy Carter Says 'Yes'", and "Listen Mister Hat". Obviously, for the most part these song poems did not lead to the customers becoming the next Ira Gershwin, but oddly even though Ace recordings is not one of the better-known song poem studios, it seems to have produced an actual hit song poem -- one that I don't think has ever before been identified as such until I made a connection, hence me going on this little tangent. Because in researching this episode I noticed something about its co-owner, Milton Yakus', main claim to fame. He co-wrote the song "Old Cape Cod", and to quote that song's Wikipedia page "The nucleus of the song was a poem written by Boston-area housewife Claire Rothrock, for whom Cape Cod was a favorite vacation spot. "Old Cape Cod" and its derivatives would be Rothrock's sole evident songwriting credit. She brought her poem to Ace Studios, a Boston recording studio owned by Milton Yakus, who adapted the poem into the song's lyrics." And while Yakus had written other songs, including songs for Patti Page who had the hit with "Old Cape Cod", apparently Page recorded that song after Rothrock brought her the demo after a gig, rather than getting it through any formal channels. It sounds to me like the massive hit and classic of the American songbook "Old Cape Cod" started life as a song-poem -- and if you're familiar with the form, it fits the genre perfectly: [Excerpt: Patti Page, "Old Cape Cod"] The studio was not the classiest of places, even if you discount the song-poems. Its main source of income was from cutting private records with mobsters' wives and mistresses singing (and dealing with the problems that came along when those records weren't successful) and it also had a sideline in bugging people's cars to see if their spouses were cheating, though Milton Yakus' son Shelly, who got his start at his dad's studio, later became one of the most respected recording engineers in the industry -- and indeed had already worked as assistant engineer on Music From Big Pink. And there was actually another distant connection to Morrison's new favourite band on these sessions. For some reason -- reports differ -- Bebo wasn't considered suitable for the session, and in his place was the one-handed drummer Victor "Moulty" Moulton, who had played with the Barbarians, who'd had a minor hit with "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?" a couple of years earlier: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Are You a Boy or Are You a Girl?"] A later Barbarians single, in early 1966, had featured Moulty telling his life story, punctuated by the kind of three-chord chorus that would have been at home on a Bert Berns single: [Excerpt: The Barbarians, "Moulty"] But while that record was credited to the Barbarians, Moulton was the only Barbarian on the track, with the instruments and backing vocals instead being provided by Levon and the Hawks. Shortly after the Ace sessions, the Van Morrison Controversy fell apart, though nobody seems to know why. Depending on which musician's story you listen to, either Morrison had a dream that he should get rid of all electric instruments and only use acoustic players, or there was talk of a record deal but the musicians weren't good enough, or the money from the mysterious manager (who may or may not have been the one who was a mobster) ran out. Bebo went back to university, and Sheldon left soon after, though Sheldon would remain in the music business in one form or another. His most prominent credit has been writing a couple of songs for his old friend James Taylor, including the song "Bittersweet" on Taylor's platinum-selling best-of, on which Sheldon also played guitar: [Excerpt: James Taylor, "Bittersweet"] Morrison and Kielbania continued for a while as a duo, with Morrison on acoustic guitar and Kielbania on double bass, but they were making very different music. Morrison's biggest influence at this point, other than The Band, was King Pleasure, a jazz singer who sang in the vocalese style we've talked about before -- the style where singers would sing lyrics to melodies that had previously been improvised by jazz musicians: [Excerpt: King Pleasure, "Moody's Mood for Love"] Morrison and Kielbania soon decided that to make the more improvisatory music they were interested in playing, they wanted another musician who could play solos. They ended up with John Payne, a jazz flute and saxophone player whose biggest inspiration was Charles Lloyd. This new lineup of the Van Morrison Controversy -- acoustic guitar, double bass, and jazz flute -- kept gigging around Boston, though the sound they were creating was hardly what the audiences coming to see the man who'd had that "Brown-Eyed Girl" hit the year before would have expected -- even when they did "Brown-Eyed Girl", as the one live recording of that line-up, made by Peter Wolf, shows: [Excerpt: The Van Morrison Controversy, "Brown-Eyed Girl (live in Boston 1968)"] That new style, with melodic bass underpinning freely extemporising jazz flute and soulful vocals, would become the basis of the album that to this day is usually considered Morrison's best. But before that could happen, there was the matter of the contracts to be sorted out. Warner-Reprise Records were definitely interested. Warners had spent the last few years buying up smaller companies like Atlantic, Autumn Records, and Reprise, and the label was building a reputation as the major label that would give artists the space and funding they needed to make the music they wanted to make. Idiosyncratic artists with difficult reputations (deserved or otherwise), like Neil Young, Randy Newman, Van Dyke Parks, the Grateful Dead, and Joni Mitchell, had all found homes on the label, which was soon also to start distributing Frank Zappa, the Beach Boys, and Captain Beefheart. A surly artist who wants to make mystical acoustic songs with jazz flute accompaniment was nothing unusual for them, and once Joe Smith, the man who had signed the Grateful Dead, was pointed in Morrison's direction by Andy Wickham, an A&R man working for the label, everyone knew that Morrison would be a perfect fit. But Morrison was still under contract to Bang records and Web IV, and those contracts said, among other things, that any other label that negotiated with Morrison would be held liable for breach of contract. Warners didn't want to show their interest in Morrison, because a major label wanting to sign him would cause Bang to raise the price of buying him out of his contract. Instead they got an independent production company to sign him, with a nod-and-wink understanding that they would then license the records to Warners. The company they chose was Inherit Productions, the production arm of Schwaid-Merenstein, a management company set up by Bob Schwaid, who had previously worked in Warners' publishing department, and record producer Lewis Merenstein. Merenstein came to another demo session at Ace Recordings, where he fell in love with the new music that Morrison was playing, and determined he would do everything in his power to make the record into the masterpiece it deserved to be. He and Morrison were, at least at this point, on exactly the same page, and bonded over their mutual love of King Pleasure. Morrison signed to Schwaid-Merenstein, just as he had with Bert Berns and before him Phil Solomon, for management, record production, and publishing. Schwaid-Merenstein were funded by Warners, and would license any recordings they made to Warners, once the contractual situation had been sorted out. The first thing to do was to negotiate the release from Web IV, the publishing company owned by Ilene Berns. Schwaid negotiated that, and Morrison got released on four conditions -- he had to make a substantial payment to Web IV, if he released a single within a year he had to give Web IV the publishing, any album he released in the next year had to contain at least two songs published by Web IV, and he had to give Web IV at least thirty-six new songs to publish within the next year. The first two conditions were no problem at all -- Warners had the money to buy the contract out, and Merenstein's plans for the first album didn't involve a single anyway. It wouldn't be too much of a hardship to include a couple of Web IV-published tracks on the album -- Morrison had written two songs, "Beside You" and "Madame George", that had already been published and that he was regularly including in his live sets. As for the thirty-six new songs... well, that all depended on what you called a song, didn't it? [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Ring Worm"] Morrison went into a recording studio and recorded thirty-one ostensible songs, most of them lasting one minute to within a few seconds either way, in which he strummed one or two chords and spoke-sang whatever words came into his head -- for example one song, "Here Comes Dumb George", just consists of the words "Here Comes Dumb George" repeated over and over. Some of the 'songs', like "Twist and Shake" and "Hang on Groovy", are parodying Bert Berns' songwriting style; others, like "Waiting for My Royalty Check", "Blowin' Your Nose", and "Nose in Your Blow", are attacks on Bang's business practices. Several of the songs, like "Hold on George", "Here Comes Dumb George", "Dum Dum George", and "Goodbye George" are about a man called George who seems to have come to Boston to try and fail to make a record with Morrison. And “Want a Danish” is about wanting a Danish pastry. But in truth, this description is still making these "songs" sound more coherent than they are. The whole recording is of no musical merit whatsoever, and has absolutely nothing in it which could be considered to have any commercial potential at all. Which is of course the point -- just to show utter contempt to Ilene Berns and her company. The other problem that needed to be solved was Bang Records itself, which was now largely under the control of the mob. That was solved by Joe Smith. As Smith told the story "A friend of mine who knew some people said I could buy the contract for $20,000. I had to meet somebody in a warehouse on the third floor on Ninth Avenue in New York. I walked up there with twenty thousand-dollar bills -- and I was terrified. I was terrified I was going to give them the money, get a belt on the head and still not wind up with the contract. And there were two guys in the room. They looked out of central casting -- a big wide guy and  a tall, thin guy. They were wearing suits and hats and stuff. I said 'I'm here with the money. You got the contract?' I remember I took that contract and ran out the door and jumped from the third floor to the second floor, and almost broke my leg to get on the street, where I could get a cab and put the contract in a safe place back at Warner Brothers." But the problem was solved, and Lewis Merenstein could get to work translating the music he'd heard Morrison playing into a record. He decided that Kielbania and Payne were not suitable for the kind of recording he wanted -- though they were welcome to attend the sessions in case the musicians had any questions about the songs, and thus they would get session pay. Kielbania was, at first, upset by this, but he soon changed his mind when he realised who Merenstein was bringing in to replace him on bass for the session. Richard Davis, the bass player -- who sadly died two months ago as I write this -- would later go on to play on many classic rock records by people like Bruce Springsteen and Laura Nyro, largely as a result of his work for Morrison, but at the time he was known as one of the great jazz bass players, most notably having played on Eric Dolphy's Out to Lunch: [Excerpt: Eric Dolphy, "Hat and Beard"] Kielbania could see the wisdom of getting in one of the truly great players for the album, and he was happy to show Davis the parts he'd been playing on the songs live, which Davis could then embellish -- Davis later always denied this, but it's obvious when listening to the live recordings that Kielbania played on before these sessions that Davis is playing very similar lines. Warren Smith Jr, the vibraphone player, had played with great jazz musicians like Charles Mingus and Herbie Mann, as well as backing Lloyd Price, Aretha Franklin, and Janis Joplin. Connie Kay, the drummer, was the drummer for the Modern Jazz Quartet and had also played sessions with everyone from Ruth Brown to Miles Davis. And Jay Berliner, the guitarist, had played on records like Charles Mingus' classic The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady: [Excerpt: Charles Mingus: "Mode D - Trio and Group Dancers, Mode F - Single Solos & Group Dance"] There was also a flute player whose name nobody now remembers. Although all of these musicians were jobbing session musicians -- Berliner came to the first session for the album that became Astral Weeks straight from a session recording a jingle for Pringles potato chips -- they were all very capable of taking a simple song and using it as an opportunity for jazz improvisation. And that was what Merenstein asked them to do. The songs that Morrison was writing were lyrically oblique, but structurally they were very simple -- surprisingly so when one is used to listening to the finished album. Most of the songs were, harmonically, variants of the standard blues and R&B changes that Morrison was used to playing. "Cyprus Avenue" and "The Way Young Lovers Do", for example, are both basically twelve-bar blueses -- neither is *exactly* a standard twelve-bar blues, but both are close enough that they can be considered to fit the form. Other than what Kielbania and Payne showed the musicians, they received no guidance from Morrison, who came in, ran through the songs once for them, and then headed to the vocal booth. None of the musicians had much memory of Morrison at all -- Jay Berliner said “This little guy walks in, past everybody, disappears into the vocal booth, and almost never comes out, even on the playbacks, he stayed in there." While Richard Davis later said “Well, I was with three of my favorite fellas to play with, so that's what made it beautiful. We were not concerned with Van at all, he never spoke to us.” The sound of the basic tracks on Astral Weeks is not the sound of a single auteur, as one might expect given its reputation, it's the sound of extremely good jazz musicians improvising based on the instructions given by Lewis Merenstein, who was trying to capture the feeling he'd got from listening to Morrison's live performances and demos. And because these were extremely good musicians, the album was recorded extremely quickly. In the first session, they cut four songs. Two of those were songs that Morrison was contractually obliged to record because of his agreement with Web IV -- "Beside You" and "Madame George", two songs that Bert Berns had produced, now in radically different versions: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Madame George"] The third song, "Cyprus Avenue", is the song that has caused most controversy over the years, as it's another of the songs that Morrison wrote around this time that relate to a sexual or romantic interest in underage girls. In this case, the reasoning might have been as simple as that the song is a blues, and Morrison may have been thinking about a tradition of lyrics like this in blues songs like "Good Morning, Little Schoolgirl". Whatever the cause though, the lyrics have, to put it mildly, not aged well at all: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Cyprus Avenue"] That song would be his standard set-closer for live performances for much of the seventies. For the fourth and final song, though, they chose to record what would become the title track for the album, "Astral Weeks", a song that was a lot more elliptical, and which seems in part to be about Morrison's longing for Janet Planet from afar, but also about memories of childhood, and also one of the first songs to bring in Morrison's fascination with the occult and spirituality,  something that would be a recurring theme throughout his work, as the song was partly inspired by paintings by a friend of Morrison's which suggested to him the concept of astral travel: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] Morrison had a fascination with the idea of astral travel, as he had apparently had several out-of-body experiences as a child, and wanted to find some kind of explanation for them. Most of the songs on the album came, by Morrison's own account, as a kind of automatic writing, coming through him rather than being consciously written, and there's a fascination throughout with, to use the phrase from "Madame George", "childhood visions". The song is also one of the first songs in Morrison's repertoire to deliberately namecheck one of his idols, something else he would do often in future, when he talks about "talking to Huddie Leadbelly". "Astral Weeks" was a song that Morrison had been performing live for some time, and Payne had always enjoyed doing it. Unlike Kielbania he had no compunction about insisting that he was good enough to play on the record, and he eventually persuaded the session flute player to let him borrow his instrument, and Payne was allowed to play on the track: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] Or at least that's how the story is usually told -- Payne is usually credited for playing on "Madame George" too, even though everyone agrees that "Astral Weeks" was the last song of the night, but people's memories can fade over time. Either way, Payne's interplay with Jay Berliner on the guitar became such a strong point of the track that there was no question of bringing the unknown session player back -- Payne was going to be the woodwind player for the rest of the album: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Astral Weeks"] There was then a six-day break between sessions, during which time Payne and Kielbania went to get initiated into Scientology -- a religion with which Morrison himself would experiment a little over a decade later -- though they soon decided that it wasn't worth the cost of the courses they'd have to take, and gave up on the idea the same week. The next session didn't go so well. Jay Berliner was unavailable, and so Barry Kornfeld, a folkie who played with people like Dave Van Ronk, was brought in to replace him. Kornfeld was perfectly decent in the role, but they'd also brought in a string section, with the idea of recording some of the songs which needed string parts live. But the string players they brought in were incapable of improvising, coming from a classical rather than jazz tradition, and the only track that got used on the finished album was "The Way Young Lovers Do", by far the most conventional song on the album, a three-minute soul ballad structured as a waltz twelve-bar blues, where the strings are essentially playing the same parts that a horn section would play on a record by someone like Solomon Burke: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "The Way Young Lovers Do"] It was decided that any string or horn parts on the rest of the album would just be done as overdubs. It was two weeks before the next and final session for the album, and that featured the return of Jay Berliner on guitar. The session started with "Sweet Thing" and "Ballerina", two songs that Morrison had been playing live for some time, and which were cut in relatively quick order.  They then made attempts at two more songs that didn't get very far, "Royalty", and "Going Around With Jesse James", before Morrison, stuck for something to record, pulled out a new lyric he'd never performed live, "Slim Slow Slider". The whole band ran through the song once, but then Merenstein decided to pare the arrangement down to just Morrison, Payne (on soprano sax rather than on flute), and Warren Smith Jr: [Excerpt: Van Morrison, "Slim Slow Slider"] That track was the only one where, after the recording, Merenstein didn't compliment the performance, remaining silent instead – Payne said “Maybe everyone was just tired, or maybe they were moved by it.” It seems likely it was the latter. The track eventually got chosen as the final track of the album, because Merenstein felt that it didn't fit conceptually with anything else -- and it's definitely a more negative track than the oth

COLOMBO & KATIE SEG 1: A child rapist found in Martha's Vineyard came here illegally from Brazil. He was part of the “getaways” that crossed with nothing that could track us to him. SEG 2: Crane Durham, Host of Nothing But Truth, on EV car sales going way down. Durham says don't plan my economy around electric cars SEG 3: Crane Durham conversation continued! FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.com    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

HIT THE BELL You don't want to miss ANY of this interview with my friend from the old neighborhood, Larry Mazza. He's got some BIG NEWS on projects he's working on, "connections" past and present, and some gruesome stuff as well and how he deals with it day to day now. Do you have friends who enjoy MOB STUFF? Share the link to this channel.https://larrymazza-thelife.com/https://themobmuseum.org/events-posts/may-17-not-glamorous-life-larry-mazza-wiseguy-speaker-series/

COLOMBO & KATIE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COLOMBO & KATIE See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

What I love most about being a productivity strategist is finding unique ways to achieve our goals that fit with who we are and how we work. Today's guest helps us do just that as we explore how we can use art as a form of meditative practice. This week, episode 184 of the Positively Living Podcast is about how to meditate easily through creative expression!Jennifer Faye Colombo is an artist, creative guide, and designer of card decks and journals. She believes we are all creative and have the ability to use art to gain insights, for self-care, to tap into the creative flow and more no matter one's level of experience. In addition to empowering others to tap into their creativity, Jen helps coaches, energy healers and other entrepreneurs to create products to support their client's journeys outside of sessions.In this episode of the Positively Living Podcast, Jennifer Faye Colombo reminds us that we are all creative beings–no matter how we choose to express it–and she gives actionable steps you can take right now to use creative expression as a supplement or a replacement to common meditation practices. Jennifer and I cover the following topics:Letting go of any perfectionism and leaning into the flow you might feel. Simple and specific steps for a fast practice (i.e., 3-5 minutes of your day). Prompts to use when reflecting on your practice. The best times and circumstances to bring this practice out of your toolbox.If you're a DIY dynamo looking for simplicity and productivity support, you'll find it in the Positively Productive Resources Vault. It's packed with the worksheets, checklists, workbooks, and recordings I use with clients. Go to http://www.positivelyproductive.com/podcastvault where the promo code PODCAST will give you a special listener discount.CONNECT WITH JENNIFER FAYE COLOMBO:WebsiteInstagramCONNECT WITH LISA ZAWROTNY:FacebookInstagramResourcesWork with Lisa! LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS EPISODE:(Find links to books/gear on the Positively Productive Favorites Page.)PLP 169: Advantages of Visual Thinking with Brandy Agerbeck PLP 47: Accessing Creativity through Mindfulness with Izolda Trakhtenberg PLP 131: Manage Stress through Rest and Play with Gary WarePLP 137: How to Create a Vision Board That Works Dance Song Playlist V1, V2, V3Music by Ian and Jeff ZawrotnyStart your own podcast with Buzzsprout!

HIT THE BELL You don't want to miss ANY of this interview with my friend from the old neighborhood, Larry Mazza. He's got some BIG NEWS on projects he's working on, "connections" past and present, and some gruesome stuff as well and how he deals with it day to day now. Do you have friends who enjoy MOB STUFF? Share the link to this channel.https://larrymazza-thelife.com/https://themobmuseum.org/events-posts/may-17-not-glamorous-life-larry-mazza-wiseguy-speaker-series/

HIT THE BELL You don't want to miss ANY of this interview with my friend from the old neighborhood, Larry Mazza. He's got some BIG NEWS on projects he's working on, "connections" past and present, and some gruesome stuff as well and how he deals with it day to day now. Do you have friends who enjoy MOB STUFF? Share the link to this channel.https://larrymazza-thelife.com/https://themobmuseum.org/events-posts/may-17-not-glamorous-life-larry-mazza-wiseguy-speaker-series/

COLOMBO & KATIE SEG 1: Gabe Phifer discussed Bethlehem choosing to not put up Christmas trees of Christmas decorations around the city to celebrate the birth of Jesus. They are doing this to show solidarity with Palestine. SEG 2: Ken Williams talks AI, space exploration, and new polling for the GOP Presidential election with Gabe, Tony, and Katie SEG 3: Steve Templeton with the weekend weather forecast FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.com    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

HIT THE BELL You don't want to miss ANY of this interview with my friend from the old neighborhood, Larry Mazza. He's got some BIG NEWS on projects he's working on, "connections" past and present, and some gruesome stuff as well and how he deals with it day to day now. Do you have friends who enjoy MOB STUFF? Share the link to this channel.https://larrymazza-thelife.com/https://themobmuseum.org/events-posts/may-17-not-glamorous-life-larry-mazza-wiseguy-speaker-series/

COLOMBO & KATIE SEG 1: Dr. Randy Tobler on clashing between Capital Police and pro-Palestinian protesters in front of the DNC headquarters SEG 2: TikTok under fire after pro-Palestinian influencers and users share Osama bin Laden's “Letter to America” on the platform FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.comSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COLOMBO & KATIE SEG 1: Joe Biden ‘joked' that Gavin Newsom could have the job he is looking for during the APEC Summit in San Francisco SEG 2: Rep Justin Sparks on what Missouri will do about the abortion debate and House Democrats holding a roundtable meeting on the idea of a ‘Nationwide Gun Emergency' act. SEG 3: Rep Justin Sparks's conversation continues FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.com    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COLOMBO & KATIE SEG 1: Rodney Boyd on The Kim Gardner Report posted by Missouri AG and possibly more entering the race along with Wesley Bell for Cori Bush's seat SEG 2: Nikki Haley might have stepped in it after making a comment about not allowing anonymous users on social media SEG 3: Xi, Biden, and Blinken met today for the APEC Summit in California… Let's hope Biden doesn't trip on a walk or stumble over his words while representing the US. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.com See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COLOMBO & KATIE SEG 1: Taylor Swift fatigue HAS to set in at some point, right? Who is more famous, Taylor Swift or Travis Kelce? SEG 2: FBI Director Wray gets questioned about terrorists entering the United States at the border. It's sad to say but he, along with many people at the FBI has no clue how many criminals or terrorists have crossed into the United State illegally. FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.com    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COLOMBO & KATIE  SEG 1: Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey released the ‘Kim Gardner Report' SEG 2: Crane Durham on Democrats shooting down a single aid package to Israel because it did not attach or have ties to Ukraine SEG 3: Crane Durham conversation continued about a possible fist fight between a Senator and labor leader https://www.foxnews.com/politics/gop-sen-mullin-union-boss-almost-come-to-blows-senate-hearing-stand-your-butt-up FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.com    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COLOMBO & KATIE  FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.com    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

COLOMBO & KATIE  SEG 1: Aaron Tarlow from Southern Armory commented on this article: Gun purchases by Jewish Americans surging since Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack https://www.foxnews.com/media/gun-purchases-jewish-americans-surging-oct-7-hamas-terror-attack-store-owner SEG 2: Tony has an issue with a prying neighbor! FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/NewstalkSTL FOLLOW TONY ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/tonycolombotalk FOLLOW KATIE ON TWITTER: https://twitter.com/kfitztalks WEBSITE: newstalkstl.com    See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Kathleen from Plenty of Sunshine Travel met with Tammy from MSC for this week's cruise chat. If you found value in this video and wish to help this channel. You can send a donation using this link ~ https://bit.ly/KathleenPenner. I have had the privilege of meeting with MSC several times. Here is the playlist. Welcome to a World of Privacy and Luxury. From its elegant suites to its round-the-clock butler service and concierge reception, the MSC Yacht Club offers the kind of first-class experience expected by the most discerning travellers. Environmental excellence Self-sufficient with potable water production, advanced wastewater treatment, solar panels and zero single-use plastic. Year-round cruises in the Caribbean with four ships in summer 2024, three embarkation ports, and brand-new itineraries Caribbean cruises from Port Miami (MSC Seascape and MSC Magnifica) New itineraries to Bermuda or Canada/New England from New York City (MSC Meraviglia) 3 to 7-night cruises from Port Canaveral/Orlando (MSC Seashore) All ships from Northern American ports call at Ocean Cay MSC Marine Reserve. Year-round in the Western Mediterranean. 10 Ships in the summer of 2024, up to 21 Embarkation Ports New Itineraries with Various cruise lengths, from mini to 7-night and longer. Ships in the Med. from April 2024: MSC World Europa MSC Seashore MSC Fantasia MSC Grandiosa MSC Orchestra MSC Poesia MSC Seaside MSC Splendida MSC Seaview MSC Sinfonia . Grand Voyages in 2023 & 204 in a nutshell. There are 37 Voyages vs 2024 Voyages in 2022 & 2023 17 Ships vs 15 Ships in 2022 & 202310 to 30 Nights vs 13 to 30 Nights in 2022 & 2023 Asia, Africa, Europe America 35 Countries vs 50 Countries in 2022 & 2023. The Chance to make a dream come true! MSC World Cruise 2025. On MSC Magnifica. You will visit these ports. AITUTAKI, MOOREA PAPEETE, MARSEILLE, BARCELONA, CASABLANCA, MINDELO, GENOA, CIVITAVECCHIA, NAPLES MESSINA, ALEXANDRIA, SUEZ CANAL TRANSIT, AQABA, SHARM EL-SHEIKH, SAFAGA, BOUNTY, BAY PASSAGE, HANGA ROA VALPARAISO, RAROTONGA, SALVADOR DE BAHIA/RIO DE JANEIRO, BUENOS AIRES, PUERTO MADRYN, PHUKET PENANG, COLOMBO, PORT KLANG, TAURANGA, SINGAPORE, AUCKLAND, BROOME, BAY OF ISLANDS, CHRISTCHURCH, FREMANTLE, SYDNEY, PUERTO MONTT, PUERTO CHACABUCO, USHUAA, STANLET PENNESHAW, ADELAIDE MELBOURNE, EDEN, MILFORD SOUND (cruising Fiordland Park), NAPIER, BUNEDIN. 116 nights, 4 continents, 50 destinations, 7 overnights. The MSC World America is Debuting in Miami in spring 2025, but Reservations for her are open! . Quick Facts of World America Number of staterooms: 2,626 Number of guests: 6,762 Length | Beam | Height: 1,093ft| 154ft|220ft Public space: 430,000 ft Speed (Max): 21.8/22.7 knots. MSC WORLD AMERICA 7 NIGHTS OR 14 NIGHTS From Miami On Saturdays April to October 2025 Miami (Florida) Ocean Cay, MSC Marine Reserve, Bahamas, Cozumel Mexico, Costal Maya, Puerto Plata, Dominican Republic, Isla De Roatan, Honduras, san Juan, Puerto Rico. . Cruise Hospitality and Formula 1 Packages in Abu DhabiCabin Only PackageCabin + F1 Ticket PackageCabin + F1 Experience PackageCabin + F1 Premium Hospitality Package. If you want to learn more about MSC or any other cruise lines I have met with. Please get in touch with me at info@PlentyofSunshineTravel.com. You can also fill out this simple form https://bit.ly/3mxFUNd, and I will get back to you. . Subscribe to our channel and hit the notification bell to ensure you catch all upcoming cruise videos. Click HERE to see the images on this week's episode. Search #PlentyofSunshineTravel on Facebook or Instagram to see our posts. . . . #MSC #formula1 #msccruise #msccruises #mscandformula1 #CruiseSpecialist #Cruise #CruiseGuru #TravelAgent #luxurytravel --- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/cruisingthewavespodcast/message

This talk is republished with permission by Metta Centre, teaching retrieved from http://Dhamma Talks – Metta Centre. In this panel, three respected monastics will discuss the question of responsibility for our own happiness and suffering to shed light on the causes of misery. The panelists will examine how our own thoughts, speech and actions can shape our experience of the world and influence our well-being. One encompassing method of purifying the mind to overcome the causes of misery is through the cultivation of the Brahma Viharas, namely loving kindness (metta), compassion (karuna), joyful appreciation (mudita), and equanimity (upekkha), known as the Four Sublime Abodes. However, these wholesome mental states are widely misinterpreted and misused to justify unwholesome actions and thoughts, often under the disguise of spirituality by way of spiritual bypassing. Such misunderstandings may potentially lead to harmful consequences. This panel will discuss how to identify the causes of these misconceptions and explore ways to truly nurture and grow the pure four immeasurable qualities of the mind for the benefit of oneself and others. Ajahn Nissarano was born in 1952 in Perth, Western Australia. In 1997, he was ordained by Ajahn Brahm as a novice monk and a year later took full ordination. This year was his 26th Rain's Retreat, Vassa. He lived in Sri Lanka from 2006 to 2019, for a total of 13 and half years. During that time, he lived for 8 years in a cave on the side of a mountain, surrounded by forest and going for alms round to the village below. He returned to Australia regularly to teach, primarily at the Buddhist Society of Victoria. In January 2021 he became the Senior Monk at Newbury Buddhist Monastery, outside Melbourne, which is run by the Buddhist Society of Victoria. Bhikkhuni Ayya Kārunikā is currently the senior resident monastic at Santi Forest Monastery and has been in monastic life for over 12 years. She received her full ordination as a bhikkhunī in 2014 at Dhammasara Nuns monastery in Western Australia where she lived and trained for over a decade with Ajahn Hāsapaññā. She is also a student of Ajahn Brahm and Ajahn Brahmali. Ayya Kārunikā is able to articulate the Buddhist teachings in a way that is practical and comprehensible to people of all ages and has experience in conducting day retreats for both adults and youth. While she has a PhD in Microbiology and worked as a scientist, she has also been the building project manager for the construction of Dhammasara main monastery complex and has worked with many volunteers over the years. Ayya Kārunikā was born in Sri Lanka but has been living and working in Australia for over 2 decades. She has a passion to share her experience and knowledge and loves working with people and also doing creative projects. Venerable Bhante Sanathavihari Bhikkhu is a Mexican-American Theravāda monk at the Sarathchandra Buddhist Center in North Hollywood, a Sri Lankan center. He is a student of the late Dr. Bhante Punnaji, and the director of Casa De Bhavana – an outreach project to bring the Dhamma to the Spanish-speaking world. He is also the co-author of Buddhism in 10 Steps. He represents a new generation of Spanish-speaking monastics who are extensively employing digital communication methods and social media, which is turning out to be extremely effective for spreading the Dharma in Spanish. Bhante is a U.S. Air Force veteran and served in the army for 9 years. After three deployments to Afghanistan, he was ordained as a novice in the Theravada tradition, at the age of 30, in the lineage of the Amarapura Nikaya monastic fraternity. In 2015, he received higher ordination at the Sarathchandra Buddhist Center of the Maharagama Bhikkhu Training Center (Maharagama Dharmayathanaya) in Colombo, Sri Lanka. Today, Bhante Sanathavihari is the leader of Casa de Bhavana, a Theravada organization devoted to spreading the Dharma and promoting the practice of meditation. Bhante Sanathavihari has a B.A. in Religion, and is a Mindfulness researcher at Mount St. Mary University, Los Angeles, and a Graduate Student in Counseling Psychology at Mount St. Mary University. More info can be found at https://www.buddhistdoor.net/features... ** About Metta Centre ** To find out more about the Metta Centre & how you can support us you can visit https://www.mettacentre.com #buddhism #dharmatalk #dhammatalk Please support the BSWA in making teachings available for free online via Patreon. To find and download more precious Dhamma teachings, visit the BSWA teachings page: https://bswa.org/teachings/, choose the teaching you want and click on the audio to open it up on Podbean.

Today's returning guests are Colombo Crime Family soldier Carmine Imbriale and his co author Craig McGuire. Carmine was a mafia street soldier in Carmine and Michael Sessa's crew. This is part 2 of our interview we did a month ago. We covered his life in the mafia as a criminal in the first one. Now we will cover the day Carmine was busted, why he cooperated with the FBI, and what life in witness protection was like. Carmine and Craig have written a whole book on Carmine's life. Carmine is on the phone during this interview due to not waiting for his face to be seen. He is still somewhat In hiding. Please subscribe for more interviews like this. Buy Craig & Carmine's book- CARMINE AND THE 13th AVENUE BOYS: Surviving Brooklyn's Colombo Mob https://a.co/d/7pudhLB Find all of our Invest In Yourself Platforms Subscribe to Salvatore Polisi & My Patreon Channel-  https://patreon.com/user?u=93654095 Clothing Website- https://iiyclothing.bigcartel.com/products YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6wGSATB9uusaUCvICpJZ_Q Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/6d5D4lauoKHeQ1obygbOhM?si=s37hThFuQACwN1EDZKFQfg&fbclid=IwAR2WNDWcwAJe-SaFOQT6AwW2P0TcntJzOy9inskcULxIswBY9dZniUYjki0&nd=1 Apple Podcasts- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-i-y-podcast/id1577114137 Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/invest_in_yourself_2020/ TikTok- https://www.tiktok.com/@invest_in_yourself_2020?lang=en Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/IIYCLOTHING Email- iiypodcast2021@gmail.com #mafia #truecrime #gangster #carmineimbriale #crime #joecolombo #sammythebull #johngotti #johnalite #michaelfranzese #sonnyfranzeze #carmineandthe13aveboys #investinyourselfpodcast 

Today on Crime & Entertainment I had the privilege of speaking with Chris Colombo, the son of the late Joe Colombo Sr. You might remember the name Joe Colombo as a prominent figure in Italian-American history. Back in 1971, a tragic event unfolded during a massive rally at Columbus Circle when Joe Colombo Sr. was shot. Chris, who was just 9 years old at the time, witnessed this shocking incident. After that period of his life Chris would go on to become one of the most successful bookmakers in New York City, taking 100's of 1000's of dollars of action a day.  After a brief stint in prison Chris is now taking the podcast world by storm with his own show Taking Action with Chris Colombo. The Link can be found below. Chris cover sports picks, interviews with celebrities and he warns the youth of América about the dangers of sports betting. This is a fantastic interview with one of the most powerful speakers I've ever had on this show. Enjoy!!!! Follow Chris Colombo belowYouTube - Taking Action with Chris Colombo https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCufDMHdw2f_M0JkJEPUlcAgIGhttps://www.instagram.com/thechriscolombo/Links to Crime & Entertainment Like us on Facebook -  https://www.facebook.com/crimeandentertainment/Follow us on Instagram -   https://www.instagram.com/crimenentertainment/Listen on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/4T67Bs5... Listen on Apple Music - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast... Listen on Stitcher - https://www.stitcher.com/show/crime-e... Listen on Google Podcast - https://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0... Listen on Amazon Music - https://music.amazon.com/podcasts/9cd...

On this episode of the Racket Report, Frank Morano and Criminal Defense Attorney / Mob Lawyer Gerald McMahon discuss processing the crimes of the late Vincent Asaro, if there's any vindictiveness from the Department of Justice going after people that beat them in trial, if being an actor helped as a trial attorney, if all cooperators lie, the trial of Colombo crime family associate Francis Guerra, being sentenced on acquitted conduct, and so much more.- Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Il #milan si fa rimontare due gol dal #napoli nella decima di #seriea, con #giroud e #leao che non prendono bene i cambi di #pioli . Cosa sta succedendo nello spogliatoio #rossonero ?Questo show fa parte del network Spreaker Prime. Se sei interessato a fare pubblicità in questo podcast, contattaci su https://www.spreaker.com/show/2355694/advertisement

Leitura bíblica do dia: Romanos 1:1-6 Plano de leitura anual: Jeremias 9–11; 1 Timóteo 6; Os táxis de três rodas do Sri Lanka, conhecidos como “tuk tuks”, são um meio de transporte conveniente e agradável. Lorraine, moradora da capital Colombo, chegou à conclusão de que são também um campo missionário. Certo dia, ao pegar um tuk, ela percebeu que o motorista estava muito receptivo para conversar sobre religião. Disse a si mesma que na próxima vez falaria com ele sobre as boas-novas. A carta aos Romanos começa com Paulo se declarando “chamado para […] anunciar as boas-novas de Deus” (v.1). A palavra grega para “evangelho” é evangelion, que significa “boas-novas”. Paulo estava dizendo que seu objetivo principal era contar as boas-novas de Deus. O que são essas boas notícias? Romanos 1:3 diz que elas “se referem a seu Filho”. A boa notícia é Jesus! É Deus quem quer dizer ao mundo que Jesus veio para nos salvar do pecado e da morte, e Ele nos escolheu para ser Seu meio de comunicação. Que lição de humildade! Compartilhar as boas-novas é um privilégio dado a todos os cristãos. “Recebemos a graça” para chamar outros a essa fé (vv.5-6). Deus nos escolheu para levar as emocionantes notícias do evangelho àqueles ao nosso redor, seja em tuk tuks ou onde quer que estivermos. Que nós, como Lorraine, busquemos oportunidades para revelar aos outros a boa notícia que é Jesus. Por:  Asiri Fernando

In a recent conversation at the Open Source Summit in Bilbao, Spain, Gabriel Colombo, the General Manager of the Linux Foundation Europe and the Executive Director of the Fintech Open Source Foundation, discussed the potential impact of the Cyber Resilience Act (CRA) on the open source community. The conversation shed light on the challenges and opportunities that the CRA presents to open source and how individuals and organizations can respond.The conversation began by addressing the Cyber Resilience Act and its significance. Gabriel Colombo explained that while the Act is being touted as a measure to bolster cybersecurity and national security, it could have unintended consequences for the open source ecosystem, particularly in Europe. The Act, currently in the legislative process, aims to address cybersecurity concerns but could inadvertently hinder open source development and collaboration.Jim Zemlin, the Executive Director of the Linux Foundation, had previously mentioned the importance of forks in open source development, emphasizing that they are a healthy aspect of the ecosystem. However, Colombo pointed out that the CRA could create a sense of unease, as it might deter people and companies from participating in open source projects or using open source software due to potential legal liabilities.To grasp the implications of the CRA, Colombo explained some of the key provisions. The initial drafts of the Act proposed potential liability for individual developers, open source foundations, and package managers. This raised concerns about the open source supply chain's potential vulnerability and the distribution of liability.As the Act evolves, the liability landscape has shifted somewhat. Individual developers may not be held liable unless they consistently receive donations from commercial companies. However, for open source foundations, especially those accepting recurring donations from commercial entities, there remains a concern about potential liabilities and the need to conform to the CRA's requirements.Colombo emphasized that this issue isn't limited to Europe. It could impact the entire global open source ecosystem and affect the ability of European developers and small to medium-sized businesses to participate effectively.The conversation highlighted the challenges open source communities face when engaging with policymakers. Open source is not structured like traditional corporations or industry consortiums, making it more challenging to present a unified front. Additionally, the legislative process can be slow and complex, which may not align with the rapid pace of technology development.The lack of proactive engagement from the European Commission and the absence of open source communities in the initial consultations on the Act are concerning. The understanding of open source, its nuances, and the role it plays in the broader software supply chain appears limited within policy-making circles.What Can Be Done?Gabriel Colombo stressed the importance of awareness and education. It is vital for individuals, businesses, and open source foundations to understand the implications of the CRA. The Linux Foundation and other organizations have launched campaigns to provide information and resources to help stakeholders comprehend the Act's potential impact.Being vocal and advocating for open source within your network, organization, and through public affairs channels can also make a difference. Engagement with policymakers, especially as the Act progresses through the legislative process, is crucial. Colombo encouraged businesses to emphasize the significance of open source in their operations and supply chains, making policymakers aware of how the CRA might affect their activities.In the face of the Cyber Resilience Act, the open source community must unite and actively engage with policymakers. It's essential to educate and raise awareness about the potential impact of the Act and advocate for a balanced approach that strengthens cybersecurity without stifling open source innovation.The Act's development is ongoing, and there is time for stakeholders to make their voices heard. With a united effort, the open source community can help shape the legislation to ensure that open source remains vibrant and resilient in the face of evolving cybersecurity challenges.Learn more from The New Stack about open source and Linux Foundation Europe:At Open Source Summit: Introducing Linux Foundation EuropeMaking Europe's 'Romantic' Open Source World More PracticalEmbracing Open Source for Greater Business Impact

El presidente Joe Biden prometió durante la campaña de 2020 que no construiría “ni un pie más” del muro fronterizo que separa los Estados Unidos y México, pero a principios de octubre el presidente Biden dijo que la ley le exigía continuar con la construcción. Así que para hablar sobre las más recientes decisiones invitamos al abogado de inmigración Carlos Colombo, socio fundador de Colombo & Hurd.

Esta semana falamos do Papa Pio II, por ocasião dos 618 do seu nascimento, e do humanista português João de Barros, pelos 453 anos da sua morte. Sugestões da semana 1. Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones - Os Persas. A Era dos Grandes Reis. Lisboa: Desassossego, 2023. 2. Edward Wilson-Lee - O Memorial dos Livros Naufragados. O filho de Colombo e a demanda de uma biblioteca universal. Lisboa: Bertrand, 2023. ----- Obrigado aos patronos do podcast: Andrea Barbosa, Oliver Doerfler, Isabel Yglesias de Oliveira, NBisme; Pedro Ferreira, Vera Costa, João Cancela, Rui Roque, Pedro Espírito Santo, João Pedro Tuna Moura Guedes, Hugo Picciochi, Jorge Filipe, Daniel Murta, Francisco; João Diamantino, Joel José Ginga, Nuno Esteves, Carlos Castro, Simão Ribeiro, Tiago Matias, João Ferreira, João Canto, António Silva, Gn, André Chambel, André Silva, Luis, João Barbosa, António Farelo, Fernando Esperança, Tiago Sequeira, Rui Rodrigues, João Félix, Soraia Espírito Santo, Thomas Ferreira, Miguel Oliveira, Miguel Gama, João Pedro Fonte, Tope Steffi, Andre Mano. ----- Ouve e gosta do podcast? Se quiser apoiar o Falando de História, contribuindo para a sua manutenção, pode fazê-lo via Patreon: https://patreon.com/falandodehistoria ----- Músicas: "Hidden Agenda” de Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com); Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0 A edição de áudio é de Marco António.

Today's  guest is former mobster Frank Dimatteo. During Frank's life in the mob he was with 3 different crime families. The first one was the Colombo Crime Family with Joey Gallo's Crew. The second one was the Genovese Crime Family when Vincent “The Chin” Gigante was boss. The last one was the DeCavalcante Crime Family with Anthony Rotondo crew. Frank talks about his life after the Gallo crew. He wrote a whole book about it called “We're we really cowboys?” Please subscribe to my YouTube channel for  more interview's like this. Please subscribe to my Patreon Channel to hear a story about Frank's encounter with the boss of the DeCavalcante Crime Family. I just started it for $3 a month.  Frank's website- https://www.mobcandymag.com Find all of our Invest In Yourself Platforms Subscribe to Salvatore Polisi & My Patreon Channel-  https://patreon.com/user?u=93654095 Clothing Website- https://iiyclothing.bigcartel.com/products YouTube- https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC6wGSATB9uusaUCvICpJZ_Q Spotify- https://open.spotify.com/show/6d5D4lauoKHeQ1obygbOhM?si=s37hThFuQACwN1EDZKFQfg&fbclid=IwAR2WNDWcwAJe-SaFOQT6AwW2P0TcntJzOy9inskcULxIswBY9dZniUYjki0&nd=1 Apple Podcasts- https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/i-i-y-podcast/id1577114137 Instagram- https://www.instagram.com/invest_in_yourself_2020/ TikTok- https://www.tiktok.com/@invest_in_yourself_2020?lang=en Facebook- https://www.facebook.com/IIYCLOTHING Email- iiypodcast2021@gmail.com #mafia #frankdimatteo #mobcandymagazine #screwmagazine #mobster #colombocrimefamily #colombocrimefamily #joeygallo #vincentgigante #johngotti #investinyoursefpodcast #adrianmartinez #mafiahistory #truecrime

In this episode of Gangland Wire, Gary Jenkins delves into the story of Donnie Brasco, aka Joe Pistone, and his introduction to the mob through a minor criminal named Jilly Greca. Jilly, whose real name was Angelo J. Greca, was a member of the Colombo family and owned a store in Brooklyn called Acerg that … Jilly Greca – The Man Who Cleared the Way for Donnie Brasco Read More » The post Jilly Greca – The Man Who Cleared the Way for Donnie Brasco appeared first on Gangland Wire.

Welcome back to the Bishop and Bear. We are fast gearing up to cover the World Cup which all kicks off on Thursday with, of course, England vs New Zealand. A definite sense of déjà vu there, but we don't think it will feel that way when they trot out at Ahmedabad. Unless it rains of course, but fingers crossed on that front even in Monsoon season.   For one of our guests on the barstools of bravado, all World Cup chat is a bit like the quiz show guest getting the old “lets see what you could have won” treatment. It's Ireland's Dave Sihra whose lads not only missed out, but also had to watch the rain fall for much of the recent series against England's hopefuls.   Our other guest is the former coach of Hong Kong, but very much Sri Lankan, Bennett Olegasegram, who runs the rule over his lads and we end up thinking they have a punchers chance. Do tell us if you agree or not.   Loads to chat about and we plunge into and around all the below:   ·     England and Ireland wrap up. Did we learn anything? ·     Who are the travelling reserves now? (There is only 1) ·     What next for Ireland? ·     Sri Lanka o  How will they recover from the battering in the Asia Cup final? o  All wickets fell to pace – what was going on in Colombo? o  Chances in World Cup? ·     Conditions and Challenges in India ·     World Cup Predictions – our favourites, dark horses and tips for an upset here or there     Grab yourself a drink at the bar and settle in to enjoy the chat. Don't forget, you can help us keep cricket free and global by becoming a patreon, with loads of benefits by way of our thanks. If you can, do join us here.   And don't forget to message us and let us know what you think.     Cheers!   Your Ursine Landlord and Episcopal Barman Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

My guest today is Michelle Hervy.Michelle is a Menopause Awareness Speaker and Midlife Coach.  After having her own less than perfect entry into the world of menopause, Michelle is dedicated to guiding individual and businesses through the transformative midlife stage.  Her work emphasizes self-care, lifestyle assessment, and the profound impact of mental and physical health on work and family life.  Michelle is a staunch advocate for gender equality in the workplace and society, actively promoting women's empowerment.  Her expertise extends to being a Menopause Wellbeing Practitioner and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and Coaching for Performance and Success, but first and foremost, years of managing a family, a career, moving countries, and a major hormone imbalance!Michelle and I met through a book club here in Colombo, Sri Lanka, where we both live because of our spouse's work.Michelle's energy and enthusiasm is bright and delightful.  Her sense of humor always keeps me laughing!Michelle's work with menopause awareness and education meets a tremendous need in our societies.  I'm appreciative of her practical and understandable explanations of things and wisdom of questions to ask health care professionals, as well as recommendations of what to pay more attention to in the journey of menopause and midlife.Michelle, thank you so much for the work you do.  Thank you for sharing about menopause and midlife, normalizing the challenges associated with this season of life, and helping other women know they are not alone!Connect with Michelle:LinkedIn Make Life Less Difficult

This week on the show we delve into the life of Colombo mobster Michael Franzese. Franzese was a visionary and a huge earner for the Mob and was a part of one of the biggest schemes in the history of the Mafia. I also discuss his arrests, leaving the Mob, his cooperation and his life now as a successful entrepreneur and YouTuber. Like cigars? Check out our friends at www.privadacigarclub.com If you enjoy the show, please make sure you leave us a 5 star rating and a review! FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: @sitdowncrimepod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This week on the show we delve into the life of Colombo mobster Michael Franzese. Franzese was a visionary and a huge earner for the Mob and was a part of one of the biggest schemes in the history of the Mafia. I also discuss his arrests, leaving the Mob, his cooperation and his life now as a successful entrepreneur and YouTuber. Like cigars? Check out our friends at www.privadacigarclub.com If you enjoy the show, please make sure you leave us a 5 star rating and a review! FOLLOW US ON TWITTER: @sitdowncrimepod Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

José Manuel Garcia doutorou-se em História pela Universidade do Porto. Pertence à Academia Portuguesa da História e à Academia de Marinha, sendo presentemente investigador no Gabinete de Estudos Olisiponenses da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa. Investiga sobretudo sobre temas de História de Portugal e dos Descobrimentos, tendo publicado livros sobre o infante D. Henrique, Cristóvão Colombo, D. João II, D. Manuel, Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral, Afonso de Albuquerque — e ainda o livro Fernão de Magalhães - a história do primeiro homem a abraçar o mundo, que foi o pretexto para este episódio. Foi também Único português a participar no melhor documentário sobre o tema, «A Odisseia de Fernão de Magalhães» (cujo título roubei para este episódio), uma grande produção da televisão francesa difundida em vários países.  -> Apoie este podcast e faça parte da comunidade de mecenas do 45 Graus em: 45grauspodcast.com -> Registe-se aqui para ser avisado(a) de futuras edições dos workshops. _______________ Índice (com timestamps): (1:49) Início da INTRODUÇÃO ao episódio  (8:02) INÍCIO do episódio. Quem era Fernão de Magalhães? (15:07) De onde veio a ideia da viagem? | Francisco Serrão | Rui Faleiro | Paolo Toscanelli | João de Lisboa  (32:13) Havia mesmo um anti-lusitanismo na oposição dos nobres espanhóis a Magalhães? | Juan de Cartagena, Bispo Juan Rodríguez de Fonseca (47:49) A passagem do estreito de Magalhães. | O mapa que Magalhães usou. | António Pigafetta  (1:02:38) Porque eram tão importantes as especiarias? (1:07:10) Foi uma proeza ter conseguido passar o estreito à 1ª tentativa? (1:10:43) A 2ª fase da viagem: como foi o processo de decisão de avançar e atravessar o Oceano Pacífico? (1:12:52) Como era a personalidade de Magalhães? (1:22:44) Chegada às Filipinas e a estranha morte de Magalhães (1:32:28) A 3ª e última fase da viagem. | O pós-morte de Magalhães. A traição. A separação da armada em duas. | A chegada de Elcano  Livro recomendado: Damião Peres - A História dos Descobrimentos _______________ Como sabem, o 45 Graus é para mim, em grande medida, um pretexto para aprender mais sobre temas que me interessam. E há um tema da nossa História — e, mais importante, da História Mundial — que já há muito tinha vontade de explorar melhor: a viagem de circunavegação de Fernão de Magalhães.  Todos nós aprendemos os factos básicos na escola: que Magalhães foi a primeira pessoa a dar a volta ao Mundo, e assim ficar a conhecer a verdadeira extensão da Terra, e, de caminho, a perceber que o Mundo é muito mais água do que terra. Mas quando começamos a escavar o tema, percebemos que há nesta história muito mais do que esses factos.  Para além de dar a volta ao Mundo, a armada liderada por Magalhães conseguiu a proeza de passar à primeira o estreito que contorna o sul da América (hoje ‘Estreito de Magalhães'), um estreito desconhecido, labiríntico e cheio de correntes traiçoeiras. É argumentável dizer que foi um feito maior do que a ida à Lua. Basta pensar que o equivalente do lado norte do continente americano, a chamada Passagem do Noroeste, no Canadá, só foi atravessada no início do século XX! Além disso, aqueles marinheiros foram também os primeiros europeus a atravessar o oceano Pacífico, um oceano desconhecido até então. Por isso, é fácil de adivinhar que a ideia de Magalhães que deu origem à viagem -- chegar às ilhas Molucas, hoje na Indonésia, pelo Ocidente -- foi vista por muitos, à época como inusitada e lunática.  Só isto já tem os ingredientes de uma grande história. Mas há também os contornos políticos em torno da viagem. O facto de Magalhães ter ido propor o projecto aos reis de Castela causou escândalo e foi visto por muitos em Portugal como traição. Ao mesmo tempo, muitos em Espanha viam-no como um agente duplo, na verdade ao serviço da coroa portuguesa.  E depois há os detalhes da viagem em si, recheada de grandes façanhas, mas também de obstáculos, privações, violência, motins, traições e mesmo aspectos bizarros -- tudo condimentado pela personalidade ‘larger than life' de Magalhães, um homem visionário e determinado, mas também autoritário e com tiques de loucura, disposto a tudo para conseguir o objectivo. Tudo isto está, portanto, mesmo a pedir ser transformado num filme — ou numa série de televisão, como fez a Amazon que lançou no ano passado a série Sem Limites, com Rodrigo Santoro no papel de Magalhães (com um sotaque português irrepreensível!). Mas, mais do que isso, tudo isto está mesmo a pedir… um episódio do 45 Graus. Foi por isso que decidi convidar uma das pessoas que mais sabem sobre a viagem de Fernão de Magalhães. Durante a nossa conversa, percorremos vários aspectos da viagem, desde o contexto às várias etapas, e fui perguntando ao convidado várias dúvidas que me surgiram ao ler o seu livro e ver o documentário. Espero que gostem. ______________ Obrigado aos mecenas do podcast: Francisco Hermenegildo, Ricardo Evangelista, Henrique Pais João Baltazar, Salvador Cunha, Abilio Silva, Tiago Leite, Carlos Martins, Galaró family, Corto Lemos, Miguel Marques, Nuno Costa, Nuno e Ana, João Ribeiro, Helder Miranda, Pedro Lima Ferreira, Cesar Carpinteiro, Luis Fernambuco, Fernando Nunes, Manuel Canelas, Tiago Gonçalves, Carlos Pires, João Domingues, Hélio Bragança da Silva, Sandra Ferreira , Paulo Encarnação , BFDC, António Mexia Santos, Luís Guido, Bruno Heleno Tomás Costa, João Saro, Daniel Correia, Rita Mateus, António Padilha, Tiago Queiroz, Carmen Camacho, João Nelas, Francisco Fonseca, Rafael Santos, Andreia Esteves, Ana Teresa Mota, ARUNE BHURALAL, Mário Lourenço, RB, Maria Pimentel, Luis, Geoffrey Marcelino, Alberto Alcalde, António Rocha Pinto, Ruben de Bragança, João Vieira dos Santos, David Teixeira Alves, Armindo Martins , Carlos Nobre, Bernardo Vidal Pimentel, António Oliveira, Paulo Barros, Nuno Brites, Lígia Violas, Tiago Sequeira, Zé da Radio, João Morais, André Gamito, Diogo Costa, Pedro Ribeiro, Bernardo Cortez Vasco Sá Pinto, David , Tiago Pires, Mafalda Pratas, Joana Margarida Alves Martins, Luis Marques, João Raimundo, Francisco Arantes, Mariana Barosa, Nuno Gonçalves, Pedro Rebelo, Miguel Palhas, Ricardo Duarte, Duarte , Tomás Félix, Vasco Lima, Francisco Vasconcelos, Telmo , José Oliveira Pratas, Jose Pedroso, João Diogo Silva, Joao Diogo, José Proença, João Crispim, João Pinho , Afonso Martins, Robertt Valente, João Barbosa, Renato Mendes, Maria Francisca Couto, Antonio Albuquerque, Ana Sousa Amorim, Francisco Santos, Lara Luís, Manuel Martins, Macaco Quitado, Paulo Ferreira, Diogo Rombo, Francisco Manuel Reis, Bruno Lamas, Daniel Almeida, Patrícia Esquível , Diogo Silva, Luis Gomes, Cesar Correia, Cristiano Tavares, Pedro Gaspar, Gil Batista Marinho, Maria Oliveira, João Pereira, Rui Vilao, João Ferreira, Wedge, José Losa, Hélder Moreira, André Abrantes, Henrique Vieira, João Farinha, Manuel Botelho da Silva, João Diamantino, Ana Rita Laureano, Pedro L, Nuno Malvar, Joel, Rui Antunes7, Tomás Saraiva, Cloé Leal de Magalhães, Joao Barbosa, paulo matos, Fábio Monteiro, Tiago Stock, Beatriz Bagulho, Pedro Bravo, Antonio Loureiro, Hugo Ramos, Inês Inocêncio, Telmo Gomes, Sérgio Nunes, Tiago Pedroso, Teresa Pimentel, Rita Noronha, miguel farracho, José Fangueiro, Zé, Margarida Correia-Neves, Bruno Pinto Vitorino, João Lopes, Joana Pereirinha, Gonçalo Baptista, Dario Rodrigues, tati lima, Pedro On The Road, Catarina Fonseca, JC Pacheco, Sofia Ferreira, Inês Ribeiro, Miguel Jacinto, Tiago Agostinho, Margarida Costa Almeida, Helena Pinheiro, Rui Martins, Fábio Videira Santos, Tomás Lucena, João Freitas, Ricardo Sousa, RJ, Francisco Seabra Guimarães, Carlos Branco, David Palhota, Carlos Castro, Alexandre Alves, Cláudia Gomes Batista, Ana Leal, Ricardo Trindade, Luís Machado, Andrzej Stuart-Thompson, Diego Goulart, Filipa Portela, Paulo Rafael, Paloma Nunes, Marta Mendonca, Teresa Painho, Duarte Cameirão, Rodrigo Silva, José Alberto Gomes, Joao Gama, Cristina Loureiro, Tiago Gama, Tiago Rodrigues, Miguel Duarte, Ana Cantanhede, Artur Castro Freire, Rui Passos Rocha, Pedro Costa Antunes, Sofia Almeida, Ricardo Andrade Guimarães, Daniel Pais, Miguel Bastos, Luís Santos _______________ Esta conversa foi editada por: Hugo Oliveira _______________ Bio: José Manuel Garcia doutorou-se em História pela Universidade do Porto. De entre as suas atividades destacam-se as que manteve na Comissão Nacional para as Comemorações dos Descobrimentos Portugueses e na Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, além de ter colaborado com universidades portuguesas e estrangeiras. Pertence à Academia Portuguesa da História e à Academia de Marinha, sendo presentemente investigador no Gabinete de Estudos Olisiponenses da Câmara Municipal de Lisboa. Participou na organização de numerosas exposições e congressos; na edição de catálogos e atas; proferiu inúmeras conferências; publicou abundante bibliografia sobre temas de História de Portugal e dos Descobrimentos, em que se contam nomeadamente livros sobre o infante D. Henrique, Cristóvão Colombo, D. João II, D. Manuel, Vasco da Gama, Pedro Álvares Cabral, Fernão de Magalhães, Afonso de Albuquerque, Fernão Mendes Pinto, o Tratado de Tordesilhas, cartografia, fortalezas no Oriente, forais manuelinos e Lisboa.