Podcasts about Nessun dorma

It is tournament time again in the Nessun Dorma marathon and this time we revisit one that was, in the words of one writer, 'the greatest tournament you never saw'. That writer was Aidan Williams and he joins Rob and Martyn in the first of two parts that tell the remarkable story of qualification for Euro '84, a tale that is almost as dramatic as the Finals themselves. If you want weekly exclusive bonus shows, want your episodes without ads and a couple of days earlier or just want to support the podcast, then head over to patreon.com/NessunDormaPodcast where you can subscribe for only $3.99 a month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Never before or since, has one league been as strong throughout European football. Author and friend of the show, Dominic Hougham joins Martyn to talk about his upcoming new book charting the years between 1988/89 and 1998/99 when Serie A bestrode the continent like a colossus. Owners were as famous as the galaxy of star managers and players as mega clubs and those more provincial managed to get their hands on European prizes and this book takes us through how it happened and, mainly through Channel 4, how we were seduced by its glamour. This excellent book is available to pre-order here before its general release on 2 June. https://amzn.eu/d/9hixGsO Our 8-part series on Euro '84 will start next week. If you want weekly exclusive bonus shows, want your episodes without ads and a couple of days earlier or just want to support the podcast, then head over to patreon.com/NessunDormaPodcast where you can subscribe for only $3.99 a month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

NESSUN DORMA. None shall sleep. The old guard is dead. A new dawn for The United States of America and humanity has arrived.   Music credit: Prologue, Fallen Stars, Alex Mason: Free Music Archive, Copyright free use non-commercial   Turandot, Atto III: "Nessun Dorma" Jonas Kaufmann https://rumble.com/embed/v6r5qm1/?pub=2peuz

A Coimbra, Mario Draghi lancia un appello forte all'Europa: serve un'azione rapida e concreta su competitività, difesa e decarbonizzazione. Il contesto globale - con il declino dell'ordine multilaterale e il ricorso a dazi unilaterali - impone una svolta. Draghi sottolinea che il debito comune UE è cruciale per finanziare spese condivise, soprattutto per la difesa. I prezzi alti dell'energia e le lacune infrastrutturali minacciano la tenuta industriale e la transizione green. Il presidente Mattarella, intervenuto dopo, rilancia l'urgenza citando Puccini: “Nessun dorma” deve essere il motto dell'Europa. Il commento è di Mario Deaglio, professore emerito di Economia Internazionale, Università di Torino.Ex Ilva, con stop altoforno 1 sale subito la cassa integrazioneDopo l'incendio all'altoforno 1 dello stabilimento ex Ilva di Taranto, la cassa integrazione straordinaria nel gruppo Acciaierie d'Italia sale subito a 4.046 lavoratori. Il blocco dell'impianto, sequestrato dalla Procura, incide su produzione e indotto. L'azienda segnala ritardi nei permessi per la messa in sicurezza e valuta un'ulteriore estensione della cassa, che potrebbe arrivare fino a 5.500 dipendenti. Il ministro Urso assicura che i 100 milioni per l'integrazione del prestito ponte sono in arrivo. Ne parliamo con Domenico Palmiotti, Il Sole 24 Ore, TarantoA NetZero Milan si parla della sfida della decarbonizzazioneParte oggi a Milano NetZero Milan 2025, evento internazionale sulla decarbonizzazione promosso da Fiera Milano. In programma fino al 16 maggio, ospita oltre 140 speaker e 12 conferenze verticali. L'obiettivo è creare un dialogo tra imprese, istituzioni e finanza per accelerare la transizione green. Per centrare i target 2030 serviranno 480 miliardi l'anno in investimenti sostenibili. Crescono intanto gli investimenti privati: nel 2024 il private equity italiano ha toccato i 14,9 miliardi, +83% rispetto al 2023. Interviene: Carlo Cici (nella foto), Partner & Head of Sustainability Practice, The European House - Ambrosetti

A Coimbra, Mario Draghi lancia un appello forte all’Europa: serve un’azione rapida e concreta su competitività, difesa e decarbonizzazione. Il contesto globale - con il declino dell’ordine multilaterale e il ricorso a dazi unilaterali - impone una svolta. Draghi sottolinea che il debito comune UE è cruciale per finanziare spese condivise, soprattutto per la difesa. I prezzi alti dell’energia e le lacune infrastrutturali minacciano la tenuta industriale e la transizione green. Il presidente Mattarella, intervenuto dopo, rilancia l’urgenza citando Puccini: “Nessun dorma” deve essere il motto dell’Europa. Ne parliamo con Mario Deaglio professore emerito di Economia Internazionale, Università di Torino.Ex Ilva, con stop altoforno 1 sale subito la cassa integrazione Dopo l’incendio all’altoforno 1 dello stabilimento ex Ilva di Taranto, la cassa integrazione straordinaria nel gruppo Acciaierie d’Italia sale subito a 4.046 lavoratori. Il blocco dell’impianto, sequestrato dalla Procura, incide su produzione e indotto. L’azienda segnala ritardi nei permessi per la messa in sicurezza e valuta un’ulteriore estensione della cassa, che potrebbe arrivare fino a 5.500 dipendenti. Il ministro Urso assicura che i 100 milioni per l’integrazione del prestito ponte sono in arrivo. Interviene Domenico Palmiotti, Il Sole 24 Ore, Taranto.A NetZero Milan si parla della sfida della decarbonizzazioneParte oggi a Milano NetZero Milan 2025, evento internazionale sulla decarbonizzazione promosso da Fiera Milano. In programma fino al 16 maggio, ospita oltre 140 speaker e 12 conferenze verticali. L’obiettivo è creare un dialogo tra imprese, istituzioni e finanza per accelerare la transizione green. Per centrare i target 2030 serviranno 480 miliardi l’anno in investimenti sostenibili. Crescono intanto gli investimenti privati: nel 2024 il private equity italiano ha toccato i 14,9 miliardi, +83% rispetto al 2023. Approfondiamo il tema con Carlo Cici, Partner & Head of Sustainability Practice, The European House - Ambrosetti.

Joshua Conyers is an Assistant Professor of Voice at the Eastman School of Music at the University of Rochester, and a Grammy-nominated Baritone who is known for his captivating performances and recognized as one of the leading dramatic voices of today. He has performed with The Metropolitan Opera, Seattle Opera, Washington National Opera, Lyric Opera of Chicago, English National Opera, New York Philharmonic, National Symphony Orchestra, Carnegie Hall, and many others. His recordings include the Grammy-nominated “X: The Life and Times of Malcolm X” his debut solo album is “A Miracle in Legacy.” He says it tells his story of his “being born into the crucible of poverty, haunted by the specter of addiction and abuse.” He says “yet, amid the shadows, I found my guiding light in the melodies of classical music.” SONG 1: “I’ll Make Love to You” by Boyz II Men from their Album II released in 1994. https://youtu.be/USR_0iImpcM?si=VDXE1s_O2toNwRkJ SONG 2: “Nessun Dorma” by Giacomo Puccini from the opera Turandot...performed here by Franco Corelli from the 1958 film of Turandot.https://youtu.be/fWokel5YxM8?si=_D9UEH6jKbz1Bo2G SONG 3: “Cleanin’ Out My Closet” by Eminem off his 2002 album The Eminem Show. https://youtu.be/4t2ETI2Lrjg?si=pgmx0aGLs4Tag6HASee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

#realconversations #composer #musician #royalcollegeofmusic#violinist #animation  CONVERSATIONS WITH CALVIN WE THE SPECIESMeet ROS GILMAN; winner of the Music Movie Competition,Garden State Film Festival, composer, ‘The Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess'(short animation). “Live from England, I spoke with Ros Gilman, talking abouthis world of accomplished music, dedication, composing, and conducting.Earlier, I found his website, rosgilman.com. An accessible place of brilliantmusic, categorized for easy listening. A new home for me to celebrate myemotions and energies. We talked broadly, ranging from Ode to Joy, JohnWilliams, Nessun Dorma, and Ros' musical contribution to the animated film (atGSFF) ‘The Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess.' This was that perfect interview.”Calvinhttps://www.youtube.com/c/ConversationswithCalvinWetheSpecIEs471 Interviews/Videos  8500 SUBSCRIBERSGLOBAL Reach. Earth Life. Amazing People.  PLEASE SUBSCRIBE**ROS GILMAN, MA; winner Music Movie Competition, GSFF,composer, ‘The Wedding Veil of the Proud Princess' (short animation)YouTube: https://youtu.be/Vf_sR-EUY9YBIO: Ros is a classically trained, award-winning,British-German composer, music producer, conductor, and violinist. His workincludes HBO, ARTE, ZDF, France 5, and BAFTA/BIFA-qualifying independent films,showcased at festivals like Locarno Film Festival. Trained at the University ofMusic, Vienna and the Royal College of Music, London, Ros' music has receivedover 19 million streams, airplay on major radio stations like BBC, NPO, NDR,and has been featured in BBC Music Magazine and The JC. His portfolio rangesfrom large orchestral scores to intimate electronics and solo piano.LINKS:  Website:rosgilman.comSocial Media Handle: @rosgilman (Instagram, Facebook,YouTube)**WE ARE ALSO ON AUDIOAUDIO “Conversations with Calvin; WE       the SpecIEs”ANCHOR https://lnkd.in/g4jcUPqSPOTIFY https://lnkd.in/ghuMFeCAPPLE PODCASTSBREAKER https://lnkd.in/g62StzJGOOGLE PODCASTS https://lnkd.in/gpd3XfMPOCKET CASTS https://pca.st/bmjmzaitRADIO PUBLIC https://lnkd.in/gxueFZw 

As we have a break in between seasons, Martyn sits down with the football writer Chris Evans to chat about his current book, a biography of one of English football's most revered sons. They discuss the extent to which Lineker evolved as a player, how difficult it was to hold onto that England role, how forgotten so much of his playing career is and his next career move onto our screens. Gary Lineker: A Portrait of a Football Icon is available now here. If you want to support the podcast or want your episodes without ads and a couple of days earlier then head over to patreon.com/NessunDormaPodcast where you can subscribe for only $3.99 a month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

We finish our series on the 1982 World Cup in true Nessun Dorma fashion by subjecting the tournament to a draft. Rob, Gary and Mac are joined by Dominic Hougham to see who knows their Socrates from their Sammy McIlroy. If you want to support the podcast or want your episodes without ads and a couple of days earlier then head over to patreon.com/NessunDormaPodcast where you can subscribe for only $3.99 a month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Mit "Nessun dorma" enthält diese Oper Puccinis wohl größten Hit. Doch die Geschichte von der eiskalten Prinzessin und ihren lebensgefährlichen Rätselfragen ist keine leichte Kost: Unter der Oberfläche lauern die Abgründe. Mit seiner letzten Oper suchte der Komponist Anschluss an die Moderne und hinterließ ein geniales Fragment. Von Michael Lohse.

As the nights grow longer and colder, settle in with some blistering Spanish sun as Nessun Dorma goes back to the 1982 World Cup for eight episodes. This week, Martyn is joined by Gary Naylor and Rob Bagchi to look back at England's campaign. Ron Greenwood's management, a stumbling qualification, the injured talismen and how it could have been better starting a little slower are all on the agenda. If you want to support the podcast or want your episodes without ads and a couple of days earlier then head over to patreon.com/NessunDormaPodcast where you can subscribe for only $3.99 a month. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Extrait : « … Mais là où Pavarotti devient une véritable légende, c'est dans sa capacité à transcender les frontières de la musique classique. Avec le projet "Les Trois Ténors" dans les années 90, aux côtés des Espagnols Placido Domingo et José Carreras, il rend l'opéra accessible au grand public, atteignant des audiences impensables, 100 millions de disques, ça claque. En parallèle, il se met à collaborer avec des stars de la pop, on le voit aux cotés de Michael Jackson et de Bono, une audace qui bien entendu ne manque pas de faire grincer des dents, mais aussi de Barry White, pour lequel il éprouve une affection particulière, linguine alle vongole contre Big Mac sauce barbecue … »Pour commenter les épisodes, tu peux le faire sur ton appli de podcasts habituelle, c'est toujours bon pour l'audience. Mais également sur le site web dédié, il y a une section Le Bar, ouverte 24/24, pour causer du podcast ou de musique en général, je t'y attends avec impatience. Enfin, si tu souhaites me soumettre une chanson, c'est aussi sur le site web que ça se passe. Pour soutenir Good Morning Music et Gros Naze :1. Abonne-toi2. Laisse-moi un avis et 5 étoiles sur Apple Podcasts, ou Spotify et Podcast Addict3. Partage ton épisode préféré à 3 personnes autour de toi. Ou 3.000 si tu connais plein de monde.Good Morning Music Hébergé par Acast. Visitez acast.com/privacy pour plus d'informations.

Martyn sits down with the legendary Elton Welsby and Gary Cook of Retro Football Network fame to discuss a fascinating career anchoring English football in the 1980s. Elton's new book 'Game For A Laugh' is available for sale at eltonwelsby.com and this episode looks at his breakthrough into the media, international tournaments, the pressure of live television, ITV's coverage of the Football League, the impact of Sky and his friendships in football. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

durée : 00:14:12 - Le Disque classique du jour du mercredi 30 octobre 2024 - Le deuxième album du ténor samoan Pene Pati rassemble des airs célèbres de l'opéra mais aussi des raretés, dont deux premières mondiales.

durée : 00:14:12 - Le Disque classique du jour du mercredi 30 octobre 2024 - Le deuxième album du ténor samoan Pene Pati rassemble des airs célèbres de l'opéra mais aussi des raretés, dont deux premières mondiales.

Horpen up your gorp and slorp it orp, friend, it's a new episode of Regular Features, the podcast that just won't stop. If we stop doing it, we die! In this episode, Steve experiences a sensory deprivation tank. Log's friend visits a mysterious horny island. And Joe translates opera for our swine-ears, our uncultured hog-brains. Meep.

The Draft is back on Nessun Dorma and this time with a sporting twist. Gary, Mac and Mike join Martyn to try and convince him and then you the listener, that they have the strongest draft card that best captures the world of sport in 1980. But, there can be no crossover in the six categories whatsoever. Male, Female, Team, Single Achievement, Surprise and Minute of Action are all required. In this episode we have Borg v McEnroe, Coe v Ovett as well as some speed skating, a foul that changed the laws of football and an obscene gesture to fans. You can vote for your winner on Thursday at patreon.com/NessunDormaPodcast for free. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rev Bill Crews talks to Paul Potts who was born in Bristol, England on this day in 1970. He's 54 The Welsh singer and Winner of the first series of Britain's Got Talent TV program. He first sang a condensed version of Puccini's Nessun Dorma, which impressed the judges and received a standing ovation.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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Interpreten: Jonas Kaufmann uvm. Label: Sony ClassicalEAN: 198028067126 „Ich kriege von Puccini nie genug. Ich bin heute von seiner Musik genauso fasziniert, wie damals als Kind.“ Sagt Jonas Kaufmann über die Opernmusik von Giacomo Puccini. Mitreißende Liebesduette mit einer herausragenden Sängerinnenbesetzung gibt es auf Puccini: Love Affairs zu hören, und zwei der Arienklassiker aus Puccinis Feder schlechthin. Michael Gmasz hat wieder genauer hingehört. Neun Jahre, nachdem sich Jonas Kaufmann mit „Nessun Dorma“ für Sony erstmals mit Puccini ins Studio begeben hat, ist nun, anlässlich des bevorstehenden 100. Todestages des großen italienischen Opernkomponisten, Kaufmanns zweites Puccini Album erschienen. Auf Love Affairs geht er den Liebesgeschichten der unterschiedlichsten Opernpaarungen bei Puccini nach – von Manon und Des Grieux über Butterfly und Pinkerton bis hin zu Minnie und Dick Johnson in La fanciulla del West. An der Seite Kaufmanns sind hier die gefragtesten Sängerinnen ihres Faches zu hören, Anna Netrebko, Pretty Yende, Sonya Yoncheva, Malin Byström, Maria Agresta und Asmik Grigorian. Nach einigen Ausflügen in andere Genres, denen ich zugegeben teilweise sehr kritisch gegenüber gestanden bin, kehrt Jonas Kaufmann mit dieser CD wieder zurück zur großen Oper. Er liebt, seit einer Butterfly Familienaufführung in seiner Kindheit, die Musik Puccinis und die Musik Puccinis scheint Kaufmann zu lieben. Sein baritonales Timbre schmiegt sich perfekt an die jeweiligen Arien und Duette, seien sie lyrisch verliebt oder dramatisch aufregend. Jonas Kaufmann ist hier bestens bei Stimme, stemmt Spitzentöne mit Lockerheit und ausgesprochen obertonreich. Und die Auswahl an Sängerinnen an seiner Seite? Was soll man dazu sagen. Viel besser geht in unseren Tagen gar nicht. In Sachen Italianitá bringt das Orchestra del Teatro Communale die Bologna unter Asher Fish in den kurzen Orchesterzwischenspielen immer wieder ordentlich Schwung ins Geschehen. (mg)

En este episodio de La Teoría de la Mente, nos sumergimos en una de las óperas más fascinantes de todos los tiempos: Turandot de Giacomo Puccini, y reflexionamos sobre temas universales como el orgullo, las pruebas que imponemos a los demás y la disonancia cognitiva. Primero, hablaremos sobre cómo el orgullo puede convertirse en una armadura emocional que nos protege del dolor, pero que también nos aísla del amor y las conexiones genuinas. Inspirados en la figura de la princesa Turandot, exploraremos las razones detrás de esta actitud y cómo podemos reconocer este comportamiento en nuestras propias vidas. Luego, reflexionaremos sobre la tendencia a poner pruebas a los demás para validar su amor o merecimiento. A través de ejemplos como los pretendientes de Turandot, analizaremos por qué nos cuesta confiar y cómo esta necesidad de control solo genera ansiedad, frustración y relaciones poco saludables. Finalmente, abordaremos el concepto de disonancia cognitiva, explicando cómo nuestras creencias y acciones muchas veces entran en conflicto, y cómo esto puede bloquear nuestro crecimiento personal. Compartiremos estrategias prácticas para enfrentar estos conflictos internos y aprender a aceptar tanto nuestras imperfecciones como las de los demás. Acompáñanos en este episodio lleno de lecciones poderosas sobre el orgullo, el amor y la autenticidad. ¡No te lo pierdas! ✨ 25 palabras clave: Turandot, Giacomo Puccini, Nessun Dorma, disonancia cognitiva, orgullo, relaciones, pruebas, ansiedad, autoconocimiento, vulnerabilidad, confianza, control, amor, sacrificio, ópera, Calaf, Liù, enigmas, crecimiento personal, autoaceptación, Groucho Marx, Cervantes, Rostand, Salinger, Pasternak. Hashtags: #Turandot #Ópera #NessunDorma #CrecimientoPersonal #Autoexploración #TeoríaDeLaMente Enlaces útiles : Nuestra escuela de ansiedad: www.escuelaansiedad.com Nuestro nuevo libro: www.elmapadelaansiedad.com Visita nuestra página web: http://www.amadag.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/Asociacion.Agorafobia/ Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amadag.psico/ YouTube Amadag TV: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC22fPGPhEhgiXCM7PGl68rw

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found Click On Picture To See Larger PictureGermany's green new scam failed, companies are realizing that this was the wrong move, layoffs have begun. The [CB] has now cut the rate, history shows that when this is done the market comes down, it's only a matter of time. Trump pays using Bitcoin. The [DS] is now prepping the election interference narrative. It's the Iran, Iran, Iran narrative. Trump hints at change of batter, will they remove [KH] her poll numbers are dropping like a rock. The [DS] has two plans for the election, one before the election and one after. They need to stop Trump at all costs. Expect a cyber attack, chaos and war. We might have an event similar to the movie Sum of All Fears. Trump sent a message to the [DS], he played Nessun Dorma at the end of his rally, at dawn I win.   (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); Economy https://twitter.com/disclosetv/status/1836751092165562698 https://twitter.com/DougAMacgregor/status/1836574128964333726 state-of-the art food processing plants? For more than three decades Washington has engaged in a series of open-ended conflicts with unattainable political-military objectives; armed struggles disguised as crusades for democracy that were designed to achieve American military hegemony. Thirty years later, the outcome is a world full of nations brimming with hatred for the American People, a ruined economy and a military establishment that American men refuse to join. Former President Donald Trump recognizes the tragedy of the warfare state said so quite clearly: “The United States should not reject cooperating with Russia and China, Republican Presidential Candidate Donald Trump said. "Doing business with China is a good thing, but you need a fair deal. Doing business with Russia - they have so much raw minerals... We can do great business and keep everybody happy," Trump said during a rally in Flint, Michigan. He reiterated that he had good relations with Russian President Vladimir Putin and Chinese leader Xi Jinping. On September 16, Trump said in an interview that he does not consider Russia and China enemies of the United States. He promised to get along with these countries if he gets elected as a president.” If President Trump pursues this path he will save America and win the Nobel Peace Prize! https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1836752544640475193   https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1836552447768301648   https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1836552451685519474   https://twitter.com/KobeissiLetter/status/1836552456479584563 https://twitter.com/BehizyTweets/status/1836565850687406158 TAKE A LISTEN https://twitter.com/KanekoaTheGreat/status/1836561599794168152   building in the USA. One way you do that is through tariffs." "You say, if you're going to manufacture all your stuff in China, we will penalize you for trying to access American markets with goods made in China or some other country." "Finally, you unleash America's energy markets because that drives down the cost of goods. You do all those things in tandem, and you actually get America into a much more sustainable fiscal situation."  Political/Rights 'Ghost' cybercrime platform dismantled in global operation, 51 arrested  An international law enforcement operation has dismantled an encrypted communication platform, known as Ghost, notorious for enabling large-scale drug trafficking and money laundering, Europol said on Wednesday. The investigation led to the arrest of 51 suspects from multiple countries,

We first cover a film analysis of Sum of All Fears which has lots of symbolism: Freemason Cryptocracy, Nazi Deep State, Nessun Dorma and more 93 symbolism! Then we bring it home with Trump's RNC acceptance speech which I somehow made the prediction of his verbiage about the New Golden Age, Blackrock of Saturn, Twin Peak's BOB connection to Trump and more!LAST CHANCE FOR 80% OFF VIP SECTION: Sign up today and unlock 100s of BONUS episodes (*including Trump Conspiracy Part 2), go ad-free, get books and more! 80% off VIP Section still good for July! Coupon code “badboy”, details: https://illuminatiwatcher.com/coupon-code-for-80-off-vip-section-limited-to-first-100-people-expires-july-1st-2024/Links:Trump Conspiracy Pt 1: https://illuminatiwatcher.com/trump-assassination-conspiracy-symbolism-illuminati-death-ritual-rnc-satanism-antichrist-bohemian-grove-and-crowley/BONUS Trump Assassination Conspiracy Pt 2: Hulk Hogan, Blackrock 93 & 66, Epstein, Maxwell, Apollo & AI Cyberattack! https://illuminatiwatcher.com/bonus-trump-assassination-conspiracy-pt-2-hulk-hogan-blackrock-93-66-epstein-maxwell-apollo-ai-cyberattack/Show sponsors- Get discounts while you support the show and do a little self improvement!*CopyMyCrypto.com/Isaac is where you can copy James McMahon's crypto holdings- listeners get access for just $1WANT MORE?... Check out my UNCENSORED show with my wife, Breaking Social Norms: https://breakingsocialnorms.com/GRIFTER ALLEY- get bonus content AND go commercial free + other perks:*PATREON.com/IlluminatiWatcher : ad free, HUNDREDS of bonus shows, early access AND TWO OF MY BOOKS! (The Dark Path and Kubrick's Code); you can join the conversations with hundreds of other show supporters here: Patreon.com/IlluminatiWatcher (*Patreon is also NOW enabled to connect with Spotify! https://rb.gy/hcq13)*VIP SECTION: Due to the threat of censorship, I set up a Patreon-type system through MY OWN website! IIt's even setup the same: FREE ebooks, Kubrick's Code video! Sign up at: https://illuminatiwatcher.com/members-section/*APPLE PREMIUM: If you're on the Apple Podcasts app- just click the Premium button and you're in! NO more ads, Early Access, EVERY BONUS EPISODE More from Isaac- links and special offers:*BREAKING SOCIAL NORMS podcast, Index of EVERY episode (back to 2014), Signed paperbacks, shirts, & other merch, Substack, YouTube links & more: https://allmylinks.com/isaacw *STATEMENT: This show is full of Isaac's useless opinions and presented for entertainment purposes. Audio clips used in Fair Use and taken from YouTube videos.

Aloha mai kakou, Please enjoy this broadcast of new Hawaiian music, most of which you have probably never heard before. Click here to support the show: Hawaiian Concert Guide Tip Jar Aloha ʻāina ʻo Kauaʻi Nei Kupaoa Kalama O Kauaʻi: The Songs of Nathan Kalama, Volume One E Kuʻu Lei Hulu Manu ʻulaʻula Hoku Zuttermeister Kalama O Kauaʻi: The Songs of Nathan Kalama, Volume One Eo Nathan Aweau Ho'omana'o Hale-Hale Ke Aloha Nathan Aweau Ho'omana'o Hinahina KuKahakai Waipuna Uluwehi Sunshine Daisy Waipuna Uluwehi Maui Chimes Maika "Mike" Keli'iahonui Hanapi History of Hawaiian Steel Guitar Kauoha Mai Sol Ho'opi'i History of Hawaiian Steel Guitar Sweet Lei Mamo Keola Beamer Mauna Kea White Mountain Journal Keiki Dream (Child Dream) Keola Beamer Mauna Kea White Mountain Journal

#SumOfAllFears #GodMoving #TheNationMustRepent Flemingsburg Bards Nation Center Fundraising... Buy A Brick: Buy A Brick Warrior Essentials: https://recoverwithbards.com EMF Solutions to keep your home safe: https://www.emfsol.com/?aff=bards 3-Month Emergency Food Kit. My Patriot Supply>>> PrepareWithBards.com BIRCH GOLD Infokit:  >>>Text BARDS to 989898 EMPShield protect your vehicles and home. Promo code BARDS: Click here Treadlite Broadforks...best garden tool EVER. Promo code BARDS: Click here MYPillow promo code: BARDS Go to https://www.mypillow.com/bards and use the promo code BARDS or... Call 1-800-975-2939.  Founders Bible 20% discount code: BARDS >>> https://thefoundersbible.com/#ordernow DONATE: https://bardsfm.com/donate/#donate-content Mailing Address: Xpedition Cafe Attn. Scott Kesterson 591 E Central Ave, #740 Sutherlin, OR  97479

Watch The X22 Report On Video No videos found Click On Picture To See Larger Picture More and more studies are coming out proving the climate agenda is fake, they lied again. The unemployment numbers are skewed, the GDP and inflation are manipulated, the economy is not what it seems. Trump is getting ready to free us from the chains of the [CB]. The [DS] has now moved onto the next phase of their plan which will bring the country to war. They are now setting the stage for a cyber attack on the computer system around the globe. Crowdstrike is back in the news. The [DS]/Obama is leaking information trying to force Biden out. The D's are now battling each other. Biden is not going to step down, he will most likely be the nominee. The [DS] will use their insurance policy to remove him. Trump played Nessun Dorma at the end of the RNC, at dawn we will win.   (function(w,d,s,i){w.ldAdInit=w.ldAdInit||[];w.ldAdInit.push({slot:13499335648425062,size:[0, 0],id:"ld-7164-1323"});if(!d.getElementById(i)){var j=d.createElement(s),p=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0];j.async=true;j.src="//cdn2.customads.co/_js/ajs.js";j.id=i;p.parentNode.insertBefore(j,p);}})(window,document,"script","ld-ajs"); Economy Top study confirms carbon dioxide has zero impact on 'global warming' A major new study has debunked the narrative that increased carbon dioxide in the atmosphere from human activity is causing so-called "global warming."The study, published in Science Direct, confirms what "climate scientists" should have told the public a long time ago.The warming effect of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere is naturally limited, according to the new study.In fact, that limit has already been reached, decades ago.The study found that carbon dioxide emissions have zero impact on the Earth's global temperatures.Even if we dug up all the world's coal and extracted all the world's oil and burned it in one giant pyre, its CO2 emissions wouldn't heat the planet.The findings of this study directly conflict with the globalist "climate crisis" narrative being promoted by the United Nations-funded "science" community.   Source: sott.net More Than 10 Million Illegal Immigrants Under Joe Biden and the Real Employment Numbers Since He Took the White House  the claims of illegal immigrants taking jobs and lowering wages are 100% true. To cover for the negative impact of immigration on jobs and wages, Biden lies about his job numbers, and Democrats and the mainstream press support his false claims. As of June 2024,  approximately 6.8 million Americans were unemployed. In fiscal year 2023, the United States hit a record of 3.2 million encounters with illegal immigrants nationwide, including more than 2.4 million encounters at the Southwest border alone. The Biden administration claims that unemployment is at the lowest level in fifty years. However, the unemployment rate is currently 4.1%, which is higher than during most of the Trump administration. During the first three years of Trump's administration, the unemployment rate averaged around 3.9% in 2018, 3.7% in 2019, and 3.5% in early 2020 before the pandemic struck. The Biden administration claims to have created nearly 14.8 million jobs since taking office in January 2021. However, the raw numbers, which support Biden's claim of record job gains, gloss over the reality that the U.S. economy remains about 5 million jobs under its pre-pandemic peak. Furthermore, approximately 2.5 million of the jobs created have been part-time positions, accounting for about 17% of the total job gains. Using raw numbers of job gains also ignores population growth. During the same period, the official U.S. population increased by 3 million citizens, plus 10 million illegal aliens. The sectors most affected by illegal immigration include agriculture, construction, hospitality, service, and manufacturing. Ironically,

We're back! After a six month absence to deal with newborn babies and fight with schedules, Nessun Dorma returns to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the 1994 World Cup with an eight-part deep dive. Martyn is back on hosting duties as he speaks to Rob Fletcher about where the world of football was in the summer of ‘94, Mac Millings on how the US won the bid and prepared to host the greatest show on earth and Gary Naylor on the sneering cynicism at home.Romario, Baggio, Bergkamp all feature alongside Daryl Hall, Leonard Bernstein and Richard Littlejohn. Thanks to all for the support and kind requests for a return to the air. The final episode will be a normal ‘roundtable' discussion on the Final and the tournament's legacy but it was impossible to get diaries in sync to ensure that this was the norm for all so these episodes are a little different from how we've done things in the past. We hope that you still enjoy this summer retrospective and our plans for the coming season and beyond. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

The danger continues. The big boys are up there messing with mother nature while I'm brushing my teeth in the suburb with no name. And entire towns are disappearing in the downpours and fires... But one person's Nessun Dorma is another person's Screaming Mountain Gopher. One person's Thus Spake Zarathustra is another person's Go Away Bird. The shadow of the final storm sweeps across  the land of oppositions...

Prieteni, iar am avut multe să ne spunem, sunteți în fața unui episod de aproape patru ore. Avem povești din vacanțele de Paște, vă reamintim de conferințele „Despre lumea în care trăim” de la Ateneul Român din acest weekend, 18–20 mai, și am revenit cu noutățile promise despre lansarea cărții lui Radu, Libertatea de depresie. Invaluiri si dezvaluiri de pe la noi. Vă așteptăm. Ovidiu Vanghele, cel mai bun baterist dintre jurnaliști, este invitatul nostru în acest al 83-lea episod. I-am spus superstarul momentului și nu am glumit. Avem vreme să vorbim pe îndelete despre câteva dintre anchetele sale celebre ”Azilele groazei”, abuzurile sexuale petrecute la vârful eparhiei BOR și nu în ultimul rând, ”Cartelul din Carpați”. Avem și cărți faine, este episod și cu Diana Popescu în platou și ne amintim de plăcerile culinare din vacanțele recente.   00:00 Am avut o energie senzațională și am început cu niște bancuri bune. S-a râs mult în culise. Anunțăm despre ce vom vorbi: Gala Puccini, un porumbel într-o sală de spectacole, zile de vacanță în Italia și Ungaria. 15:06 V-am promis detalii despre lansarea cărții lui Radu, ”Libertatea de depresie”. Aceasta va avea loc la Bookfest, pe 1 iunie, la ora 15,30, de Ziua copilului și a finalei Champions League, dacă vreți să ne și vedem. Sau ne mai putem vedea pe 11 iunie, la Humanitas Cișmigiu, unde va avea loc a doua lansare.  54:17 Vangheleon jurnalistic 2:29:33 Neașteptări cu trupa Eyedrops, aria Nessun Dorma cu Luciano Pavarotti, Placido Domingo și Jose Carreras   2:39:58 Spuma filelor vine cu titluri tare faine: Michel Bussi - Nimic nu mi te poate șterge din minte, Giorgio Bassani - Ochelarii cu ramă de aur, J.M. Coetzee - Polonezul, Laura Imai Messina- Viețile secrete ale culorilor, Jonathan Coe - Bournville 3:15:19 Diana Popescu ne aduce recomandări culturale pentru viitorul apropiat - RAD - cel mai mare târg de artă contemporană, în premieră în România, 16-19 mai, spectacolul de dans imersiv In Between la Mina Museum, cele mai bune filme documentare de după 1990 la ARCUB, între 17 și 20 mai 3:36:02 Oale, ulcele și tigăi cu mâncăruri alese din ultimele vacanțe

The Michelin starred chef and restaurateur Angela Hartnett likes crisps, prefers cheese to dessert, and her favourite pasta is spaghetti in a tomato sauce. Simple tastes for someone who's famous for giving people fine dining experiences. A protegee of Gordon Ramsay, Angela cheffed in some of the best restaurants in the world before opening her own Murano in Mayfair.She's famous and in demand for her TV appearances and hosts the excellent and entertaining podcast Dish along with Nick Grimshaw. Whilst growing up, she inherited the values of wholesome food and the importance of the family meal from her Italian grandmother. So we askes her to share the music that she's inherited with us.Inherited: Simply the Best by Tina Turner Passed on: Nessun Dorma by Giacomo Puccini, performed by Luciano PavarottiProducers: Ben Mitchell and Catherine Powell

Welcome to Episode 103 of The Good Night Podcast, hosted by the charismatic duo, Amer Rez and Gabriel Omassi! In this hilariously insightful episode, titled "How to RUIN the Opera," our hosts dive into the whimsical world of opera with their unique comedic twist. Imagine Luciano Pavarotti in "Nessun Dorma," but with a twist that only Amer and Gabriel can provide! If you're a fan of podcasts that blend comedy, storytime, and a touch of musical flair, this episode is your perfect listen. Whether you're an opera lover or someone who just enjoys a good laugh, Amer and Gabriel's exploration into how to (comically) ruin an opera will keep you entertained. This episode is part of our Montreal podcast series, known for its funny moments and engaging content. We also discuss some iconic figures in comedy and podcasting, drawing inspiration from the likes of Theo Von and Shane Gillis. Expect anecdotes, side-splitting scenarios, and an irreverent take on opera classics. As always, The Good Night Podcast is your go-to for the funniest comedy podcast experience. Our episodes are not just listenable but are also packed with engaging stories and laughs. Don't forget, this is a recently uploaded episode, so you're getting the freshest content straight from our Montreal studio. We encourage all our listeners to subscribe for more funny podcasts like this and to leave us a comment. Your feedback helps us create content that you love. Join us on this comedic journey and let's explore the lighter side of life together! Tags: #montrealpodcasts #comedypodcasts #funnypodcasts #podcasts #gabrielomassi #amerrez #comedy #listenable #comedypodcaststolistento #podcastlistenable #recentlyuploaded #comedypodcast #funniestcomedypodcast #GoodNightPodcast #montrealpodcast #funnymoments #storytimepodcast #funnypodcast #theovonpodcast #comedypodcastlistenable #shanegillispodcast #funny #103 #lucianopavarotti #ruintheopera #lucianopavarottinessundorma #howto #operalover #podcast

New general director of Anchorage Opera Ben Robinson directed the recent production of Donizetti's The Elixir of Love. We talk about the bold choices he made with that production. We also discuss Anchorage Opera's upcoming production of Scalia/Ginsburg which explores the friendship between the late US Supreme Court justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Antonin Scalia. In addition to serving as General Director of Anchorage Opera, Ben is also the artistic director of Opera Ithaca in New York and Raylnmor Opera in New Hampshire. He is the managing director of LyricFest in Philadelphia.   Opera News called his Julia Child inspired film version of the Humberdinck opera Hansel and Gretel, “moving, visually daring.” That film joined the Opera Philadelphia Channel and was streamed last summer in a series of outdoor events. His production of Gianni Schicchi for Opera Ithaca in 2020 was described by Opera Magazine as “the deftest use of covid-era technology as part of modern operatic reality.”To purchase tickets to Anchorage Opera, visit AnchorageOpera.org Links to Clips in the show:Puccini's "Nessun Dorma" from Turandot sung by Luciano PavarottiPuccini's "Si, mi chiamano Mimì" from La Bohème sung by Martina Arroyo Donizetti's "Una furtiva lagrima" from L'elisir d'amore  sung by Juan Diego FlorezWagner's "Hojotoho!" from Die Walküre sung by Alexandra LoutsionComposer/librettist Derrick Wang's "TED Talk" on Scalia/GinsburgSupreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg discusses Scalia/Ginsburg

Our last draft of the year goes back to 1984-85, the season when the greatest team in Everton's history romped to glory. Martyn, Gary and Mac Millings select their XIs from Division One that season. As you can imagine, Gary is like a pig in Chardonnary throughout. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

Martyn and Rob are joined by Rob Fletcher (aka 90s Football Writer) to pick their England XIs from a storied decade. As well as reaching the semi-finals of Italia 90 and Euro 96, England were involved in a true World Cup classic at France 98 and reached Euro 92 when it was still an eight-team tournament. Let's not dwell on what happened when they got there).Some players were mainstays for large parts of the 1990s: Paul Gascoigne, Alan Shearer, David Platt, Stuart Pearce, David Seaman, Paul Ince and Tony Adams. Others burned brightly and briefly at either end of the decade: Gary Lineker, Michael Owen, Chris Waddle, Paul Scholes and Mark Wright.You can listen the pod and then vote for the winning team @nessundormapod. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

With the 2023 World Cup entering its final week, Martyn, Gary and Rob are joined by Jonathan Hungin and Andrew Miller for another cricket draft - this time the fondly remembered 1992 edition in Australia and New Zealand.It was the first World Cup with coloured clothing, white balls and Powerplays at the start of the innings. After a wretched start to the tournament, Pakistan's cornered tigers roared to victory, beating England in a memorable final at the MCG.This was a different era of ODI cricket, with only eight centuries scored in the entire tournament. But it was chockfull of legends of the past, present and future, from 39-year-old Imran Khan to 18-year-old Sachin Tendulkar, not to mention some celebrated one-tournament wonders.These are the rules of the Nessun Dorma draft:* Each player can only be picked by one person. When Wasim Akram has gone, he's gone.* Players are judged solely on their performances in the 1992 World Cup. So, for one draft only, Eddo Brandes is a better pick than Malcolm Marshall.* You decide who wins the draft. Go to Twitter/X (@nessundormapod) on Wednesday morning to choose which team you think is the best. The poll will close at 5pm on Friday (UK time). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

Nessun Dorma ventures into new territory this week, with Martyn and Rob joined by two special guests for our first ever cricket episode. Jonathan Hungin and Andrew Miller, who worked with Rob at Wisden.com at the turn of the century, join us to draft their XIs from the memorable 1999 World Cup.The list of players includes all-time greats hitting the heights (Shane Warne, Steve Waugh, Glenn McGrath, Rahul Dravid, Wasim Akram, Allan Donald) and unheralded players having the best month of their careers (Gavin Hamilton, Neil Johnson, Geoff Allott).Somewhere in the middle was Lance Klusener, who dominated the tournament to a frightening degree before a devastating twist in the semi-final against Australia.These are the rules of the Nessun Dorma draft:* Each player can only be picked by one person. When Klusener has gone, he's gone.* Players are judged solely on their performances in the 1999 World Cup. So, for one draft only, Moin Khan and Ridley Jacobs are better picks than Adam Gilchrist.* You decide who wins the draft. Go to Twitter/X (@nessundormapod) on Wednesday morning to choose which team you think is the best. The poll will close at 5pm on Friday (UK time). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

Martyn and Rob are joined by Rob Fletcher, author of 1992: The Birth of Modern Football, and Ally Bain of Retro Football Analysis to pick their teams from a classic European season. Marquee picks include Raul, Oliver Kahn, Gaizka Mendieta, Fernando Redondo, Patrick Kluivert, Mario Jardel, Roy Keane, Luis Figo, Rivaldo and Jaap Stam.A reminder of the rules of the Nessun Dorma draft:* Each player can only be picked by one person. When Raul has gone, he's gone.* Players are judged solely on their performances in the Champions League in 1999-2000. So, for one season only, Ivan Campo is a better pick than Tony Adams.* You decide who wins the draft. Go to Twitter/X (@nessundormapod) on Wednesday morning to choose which team you think is the best. The poll will close at 5pm on Friday (UK time). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

Martyn, Gary and Rob are joined by Rob Fletcher, author of the superb 1992: The Birth of Modern Football, to draft their teams from the inaugural Premier League season. Marquee picks include Eric Cantona, Alan Shearer, Paul Ince, Paul McGrath, Les Ferdinand, Steve Staunton, Roy Keane and Ryan Giggs.A reminder of the rules of the Nessun Dorma draft:* Each player can only be picked by one person. When Eric Cantona has gone, he's gone.* Players are judged solely on their performances in the Premier League in 1992-93. So, for one season only, Micky Quinn is a better bet than Ian Rush.* You decide who wins the draft. Go to Twitter/X (@nessundormapod) on Wednesday morning to choose which team you think is the best. The poll will close at 5pm on Friday (UK time). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

It's a big one this week: France 98, a tournament full of great games and all-time-great players. Martyn, Gary and Rob are joined by the Guardian's Jacob Steinberg - who worked with Glenn Hoddle on his autobiography, Playmaker - to draft their XIs from the balmy, barmy summer of 1998.A reminder of the rules of the Nessun Dorma draft:* Each player can only be picked by one person. When Ronaldo has gone, he's gone.* Players are judged solely on their performances at France 98. Thus: Jose Luis Chilavert good, Teddy Sheringham not so good.* You decide who wins the draft. Go to Twitter/X (@nessundormapod) on Tuesday morning to choose which team you think is the best. The poll will close at 5pm on Friday (UK time). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

This week's draft is a challenge: picking an XI from England internationals of the 1980s. Martyn, Gary and Rob are joined by… nobody, and that's probably a good thing because it's hard enough finding 33 players, never mind 44.A reminder of the rules of the Nessun Dorma draft:1. Each player can only be picked by one person. When Bryan Robson and Gary Lineker have gone, they've gone.2. Players are judged solely on their form for England in the 1980s. Greatness at club level, or for England at Italia 90, is worth bugger all.3. You decide who wins the draft. Go to Twitter/X on Tuesday morning to choose which team you think is the best. The poll will close at 5pm on Friday (UK time). This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

We're going draft daft over the next few weeks, with a mini-series devoted to arguing over the best XIs from various tournaments, seasons and eras.We start with English football's summer of love, also known as Euro 96. Martyn and Rob are joined by Mike Gibbons, whose When Football Came Home is the best book around on that tournament, and Jonathan O'Brien, author of the definitive European Championship history.The rules of the draft are simple:* Each player can only be picked by one person. When Matthias Sammer has gone, he's gone.* Players are judged solely on their form during Euro 96. Thus: Dieter Eilts good, Zinedine Zidane not so good.* You decide who wins the draft. Go to Twitter/X on Tuesday morning to choose which team you think is the best. The poll will close at 5pm on Friday (UK time).* All the Euro 96 squads in full* Euro 96 statistics, awards and team of the tournamentThe first rule of Draft Club is… YOU MUST TALK ABOUT DRAFT CLUB. The more people who listen to the podcast, the more of these we can do, so please spread the word. And send your ideas for future drafts to @nessundormapod. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

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

Ekaterina Shelehova is a singer, performer, and composer who started her career at an incredibly young age -- 4 years old! In 2013, she released her debut album MOONLIGHT (Katya), which can be found on all streaming platforms. A Masters Graduate from Conservatory Giuseppe Verdi in Milan, Ekaterina has performed all over the world (China, Mexico, Russia, Hungary, Bulgaria, and more) with lyrical repertoire, as well as her own compositions. She has made numerous appearances on TV, including a mainstream show in Beijing, the show Nessun Dorma in Italy (where she shared the stage with Ted Neely, the original Jesus in Jesus Christ Superstar), and the show I Soliti Ignoti, a popular show in Italy. This led to her viral performance on Italy's Got talent, where she presented her own unique composition, which has garnered over 500 million views online. She also participated in Bulgaria's Got Talent, where she performed her original tracks, which exploded online as well. These performances brought her to exciting new experiences, composing of the soundtrack for The Tempest, an Italian movie based on Shakespeare's play of the same name, and becoming the lead vocalist for a world-renowned music group, ERA. Since then, she has released an EP, and is currently working on a full album. Besides singing, Ekaterina can speak fluently in 4 languages (English, Italian, Spanish, and Russian), is a former gymnast (8 years) and is an avid fitness enthusiast. She loves studying psychology and adores animals. Peter and Ekaterina discuss her life plans before going viral, training as an opera singer, pros and cons of being social media famous, life outside of music, goals for the future, and much more. Please welcome Ekaterina Shelehova.

Join Trevor and his buddy Brad from the Cinema Speak podcast, as they chat about "Notable Needle Drops" e.g. noteworthy uses of licensed music in film. Brad's Picks: 6:00 - Inglourious Basterds (2009) - Cat People (Putting Out Fire) by David Bowie 24:00 - The Batman (2022) - Something in the Way by Nirvana 43:30 - Red Rocket (2021) - Bye Bye Bye by NSYNC 1:05:45 - Boogie Nights (1997) and Magnolia (1999) - Best of My Love by The Emotions and One by Aimee Mann 1:24:00 - Dazed and Confused (1993) - Slow Ride by Foghat Trevor's Picks: 18:00 - Bullet Train (2022) - Sukiyaki by Kyu Sakamoto 33:00 - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 (2017) - The Chain by Fleetwood Mac 52:30 - Street Fighter II: The Animated Movie (1994) - Ultra by KMFDM 1:16:00 - Goon (2011) - Nessun Dorma from Turandot, by Giacomo Puccini 1:40:30 And stick around for speed round, where Trevor and Brad briefly talk about runner up picks that they didn't have time to spotlight, including songs from films like: Beetlejuice The Graduate Beavis and Butt-Head Do America The Cable Guy Top Gun Zodiac Mortal Kombat American Psycho Scarface Lost in Translation Spider-Man 2 Shaun of the Dead Bloodsport Garden State Check out Brad's podcast, Cinema Speak on ⁠Libsyn at ⁠Cinema Speak⁠⁠, or on ⁠⁠Twitter⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠Instagram⁠⁠. Follow us on ⁠Instagram ⁠@catchinguponcinema⁠⁠ Follow us on ⁠Twitter ⁠@CatchingCinema

We were ecstatic to have Chris, lead guitarist of the Manchester-based indie rock band The Cavs, join us for a conversation filled with music, memories, and a few laughs. In this spectacular episode, we discuss the remarkable story behind their walk-on song, a rendition of the opera classic 'Nessun Dorma', and how it's become an unforgettable part of their first gig back after the long lockdown.Growing up with diverse musical influences from Guns N' Roses and AC/DC to Westlife and Ronan Keating, Chris shares how artists like Slash fueled his passion for guitar and even inspired his on-stage hat-wearing. With an extensive cover song repertoire, we delve into the challenges of selecting the perfect tunes for gigs, striking a balance between crowd pleasers and lesser-known B sides, and the fun experiences at wild live gigs.Dive into the vibrant music scene of Manchester with us as we explore the impact it's had on The Cavs' music and their sold-out show experience when the audience sang along to their tunes. We also share insights into the band's pre-gig rituals and their heartwarming connection with the city's music lovers. Don't miss this episode that's packed with stories from the heart of Manchester's indie rock scene and words of wisdom from Chris and the Cavs.Follow them on YouTubeThe Cavs Website Follow them on IG Watch the full episode on YouTubeCheck out the Playlist on SpotifyFollow us EverywhereMake sure to HIT that LIKE BUTTON and SUBSCRIBE to our Channel to be notified of new episodes! Please share our page with your friends! The new EP is out every MONDAY at 12 pm Rock onSupport the show

We continue our miniseries on the 1980s movies distributed by Miramax Films, with a look at the films released in 1988. ----more---- TRANSCRIPT   From Los Angeles, California, the Entertainment Capital of the World, it's The 80s Movies Podcast. I am your host, Edward Havens. Thank you for listening today.   On this episode, we finally continue with the next part of our look back at the 1980s movies distributed by Miramax Films, specifically looking at 1988.   But before we get there, I must issue another mea culpa. In our episode on the 1987 movies from Miramax, I mentioned that a Kiefer Sutherland movie called Crazy Moon never played in another theatre after its disastrous one week Oscar qualifying run in Los Angeles in December 1987.   I was wrong.   While doing research on this episode, I found one New York City playdate for the film, in early February 1988. It grossed a very dismal $3200 at the 545 seat Festival Theatre during its first weekend, and would be gone after seven days.   Sorry for the misinformation.   1988 would be a watershed year for the company, as one of the movies they acquired for distribution would change the course of documentary filmmaking as we knew it, and another would give a much beloved actor his first Academy Award nomination while giving the company its first Oscar win.   But before we get to those two movies, there's a whole bunch of others to talk about first.   Of the twelve movies Miramax would release in 1988, only four were from America. The rest would be a from a mixture of mostly Anglo-Saxon countries like the UK, Canada, France and Sweden, although there would be one Spanish film in there.   Their first release of the new year, Le Grand Chemin, told the story of a timid nine-year-old boy from Paris who spends one summer vacation in a small town in Brittany. His mother has lodged the boy with her friend and her friend's husband while Mom has another baby. The boy makes friends with a slightly older girl next door, and learns about life from her.   Richard Bohringer, who plays the friend's husband, and Anémone, who plays the pregnant mother, both won Cesars, the French equivalent to the Oscars, in their respective lead categories, and the film would be nominated for Best Foreign Language Film of 1987 by the National Board of Review. Miramax, who had picked up the film at Cannes several months earlier, waited until January 22nd, 1988, to release it in America, first at the Paris Theatre in midtown Manhattan, where it would gross a very impressive $41k in its first three days. In its second week, it would drop less than 25% of its opening weekend audience, bringing in another $31k. But shortly after that, the expected Oscar nomination for Best Foreign Language Film did not come, and business on the film slowed to a trickle. But it kept chugging on, and by the time the film finished its run in early June, it had grossed $541k.   A week later, on January 29th, Miramax would open another French film, Light Years. An animated science fiction film written and directed by René Laloux, best known for directing the 1973 animated head trip film Fantastic Planet, Light Years was the story of an evil force from a thousand years in the future who begins to destroy an idyllic paradise where the citizens are in perfect harmony with nature.   In its first three days at two screens in Los Angeles and five screens in the San Francisco Bay Area, Light Years would gross a decent $48,665. Miramax would print a self-congratulating ad in that week's Variety touting the film's success, and thanking Isaac Asimov, who helped to write the English translation, and many of the actors who lent their vocal talents to the new dub, including Glenn Close, Bridget Fonda, Jennifer Grey, Christopher Plummer, and Penn and Teller. Yes, Teller speaks. The ad was a message to both the theatre operators and the major players in the industry. Miramax was here. Get used to it.   But that ad may have been a bit premature.   While the film would do well in major markets during its initial week in theatres, audience interest would drop outside of its opening week in big cities, and be practically non-existent in college towns and other smaller cities. Its final box office total would be just over $370k.   March 18th saw the release of a truly unique film.    Imagine a film directed by Robert Altman and Bruce Beresford and Jean-Luc Godard and Derek Jarman and Franc Roddam and Nicolas Roeg and Ken Russell and Charles Sturridge and Julien Temple. Imagine a film that starred Beverly D'Angelo, Bridget Fonda in her first movie, Julie Hagerty, Buck Henry, Elizabeth Hurley and John Hurt and Theresa Russell and Tilda Swinton. Imagine a film that brought together ten of the most eclectic filmmakers in the world doing four to fourteen minute short films featuring the arias of some of the most famous and beloved operas ever written, often taken out of their original context and placed into strange new places. Like, for example, the aria for Verdi's Rigoletto set at the kitschy Madonna Inn in San Luis Obispo, where a movie producer is cheating on his wife while she is in a nearby room with a hunky man who is not her husband. Imagine that there's almost no dialogue in the film. Just the arias to set the moments.   That is Aria.   If you are unfamiliar with opera in general, and these arias specifically, that's not a problem. When I saw the film at the Nickelodeon Theatre in Santa Cruz in June 1988, I knew some Wagner, some Puccini, and some Verdi, through other movies that used the music as punctuation for a scene. I think the first time I had heard Nessun Dorma was in The Killing Fields. Vesti La Giubba in The Untouchables. But this would be the first time I would hear these arias as they were meant to be performed, even if they were out of context within their original stories. Certainly, Wagner didn't intend the aria from Tristan und Isolde to be used to highlight a suicide pact between a young couple killing themselves in a Las Vegas hotel bathroom.   Aria definitely split critics when it premiered at the 1987 Cannes Film Festival, when it competed for the festival's main prize, the Palme D'Or. Roger Ebert would call it the first MTV opera and felt the filmmakers were poking fun at their own styles, while Leonard Maltin felt most of the endeavor was a waste of time. In the review for the New York Times, Janet Maslin would also make a reference to MTV but not in a positive way, and would note the two best parts of the film were the photo montage that is seen over the end credits, and the clever licensing of Chuck Jones's classic Bugs Bunny cartoon What's Opera, Doc, to play with the film, at least during its New York run. In the Los Angeles Times, the newspaper chose one of its music critics to review the film. They too would compare the film to MTV, but also to Fantasia, neither reference meant to be positive.   It's easy to see what might have attracted Harvey Weinstein to acquire the film.   Nudity.   And lots of it.   Including from a 21 year old Hurley, and a 22 year old Fonda.   Open at the 420 seat Ridgemont Theatre in Seattle on March 18th, 1988, Aria would gross a respectable $10,600. It would be the second highest grossing theatre in the city, only behind The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which grossed $16,600 in its fifth week at the 850 seat Cinerama Theatre, which was and still is the single best theatre in Seattle. It would continue to do well in Seattle, but it would not open until April 15th in Los Angeles and May 20th in New York City.   But despite some decent notices and the presence of some big name directors, Aria would stiff at the box office, grossing just $1.03m after seven months in theatres.   As we discussed on our previous episode, there was a Dennis Hopper movie called Riders on the Storm that supposedly opened in November 1987, but didn't. It did open in theatres in May of 1988, and now we're here to talk about it.   Riders on the Storm would open in eleven theatres in the New York City area on May 7th, including three theatres in Manhattan. Since Miramax did not screen the film for critics before release, never a good sign, the first reviews wouldn't show up until the following day, since the critics would actually have to go see the film with a regular audience. Vincent Canby's review for the New York Times would arrive first, and surprisingly, he didn't completely hate the film. But audiences didn't care. In its first weekend in New York City, Riders on the Storm would gross an anemic $25k. The following Friday, Miramax would open the film at two theatres in Baltimore, four theatres in Fort Worth TX (but surprisingly none in Dallas), one theatre in Los Angeles and one theatre in Springfield OH, while continuing on only one screen in New York. No reported grosses from Fort Worth, LA or Springfield, but the New York theatre reported ticket sales of $3k for the weekend, a 57% drop from its previous week, while the two in Baltimore combined for $5k.   There would be more single playdates for a few months. Tampa the same week as New York. Atlanta, Charlotte, Des Moines and Memphis in late May. Cincinnati in late June. Boston, Calgary, Ottawa and Philadelphia in early July. Greenville SC in late August. Evansville IL, Ithaca NY and San Francisco in early September. Chicago in late September. It just kept popping up in random places for months, always a one week playdate before heading off to the next location. And in all that time, Miramax never reported grosses. What little numbers we do have is from the theatres that Variety was tracking, and those numbers totaled up to less than $30k.   Another mostly lost and forgotten Miramax release from 1988 is Caribe, a Canadian production that shot in Belize about an amateur illegal arms trader to Central American terrorists who must go on the run after a deal goes down bad, because who wants to see a Canadian movie about an amateur illegal arms trader to Canadian terrorists who must go on the run in the Canadian tundra after a deal goes down bad?   Kara Glover would play Helen, the arms dealer, and John Savage as Jeff, a British intelligence agent who helps Helen.   Caribe would first open in Detroit on May 20th, 1988. Can you guess what I'm going to say next?   Yep.   No reported grosses, no theatres playing the film tracked by Variety.   The following week, Caribe opens in the San Francisco Bay Area, at the 300 seat United Artists Theatre in San Francisco, and three theatres in the South Bay. While Miramax once again did not report grosses, the combined gross for the four theatres, according to Variety, was a weak $3,700. Compare that to Aria, which was playing at the Opera Plaza Cinemas in its third week in San Francisco, in an auditorium 40% smaller than the United Artist, grossing $5,300 on its own.   On June 3rd, Caribe would open at the AMC Fountain Square 14 in Nashville. One show only on Friday and Saturday at 11:45pm. Miramax did not report grosses. Probably because people we going to see Willie Tyler and Lester at Zanie's down the street.   And again, it kept cycling around the country, one or two new playdates in each city it played in. Philadelphia in mid-June. Indianapolis in mid-July. Jersey City in late August. Always for one week, grosses never reported.   Miramax's first Swedish release of the year was called Mio, but this was truly an international production. The $4m film was co-produced by Swedish, Norwegian and Russian production companies, directed by a Russian, adapted from a Swedish book by an American screenwriter, scored by one of the members of ABBA, and starring actors from England, Finland, Norway, Russia, Sweden and the United States.   Mio tells the story of a boy from Stockholm who travels to an otherworldly fantasy realm and frees the land from an evil knight's oppression. What makes this movie memorable today is that Mio's best friend is played by none other than Christian Bale, in his very first film.   The movie was shot in Moscow, Stockholm, the Crimea, Scotland, and outside Pripyat in the Northern part of what is now Ukraine, between March and July 1986. In fact, the cast and crew were shooting outside Pripyat on April 26th, when they got the call they needed to evacuate the area. It would be hours later when they would discover there had been a reactor core meltdown at the nearby Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. They would have to scramble to shoot in other locations away from Ukraine for a month, and when they were finally allowed to return, the area they were shooting in deemed to have not been adversely affected by the worst nuclear power plant accident in human history,, Geiger counters would be placed all over the sets, and every meal served by craft services would need to be read to make sure it wasn't contaminated.   After premiering at the Moscow Film Festival in July 1987 and the Norwegian Film Festival in August, Mio would open in Sweden on October 16th, 1987. The local critics would tear the film apart. They hated that the filmmakers had Anglicized the movie with British actors like Christopher Lee, Susannah York, Christian Bale and Nicholas Pickard, an eleven year old boy also making his film debut. They also hated how the filmmakers adapted the novel by the legendary Astrid Lindgren, whose Pippi Longstocking novels made her and her works world famous. Overall, they hated pretty much everything about it outside of Christopher Lee's performance and the production's design in the fantasy world.   Miramax most likely picked it up trying to emulate the success of The Neverending Story, which had opened to great success in most of the world in 1984. So it might seem kinda odd that when they would open the now titled The Land of Faraway in theatres, they wouldn't go wide but instead open it on one screen in Atlanta GA on June 10th, 1988. And, once again, Miramax did not report grosses, and Variety did not track Atlanta theatres that week. Two weeks later, they would open the film in Miami. How many theatres? Can't tell you. Miramax did not report grosses, and Variety was not tracking any of the theatres in Miami playing the film. But hey, Bull Durham did pretty good in Miami that week.   The film would next open in theatres in Los Angeles. This time, Miramax bought a quarter page ad in the Los Angeles Times on opening day to let people know the film existed. So we know it was playing on 18 screens that weekend. And, once again, Miramax did not report grosses for the film. But on the two screens it played on that Variety was tracking, the combined gross was just $2,500.   There'd be other playdates. Kansas City and Minneapolis in mid-September. Vancouver, BC in early October. Palm Beach FL in mid October. Calgary AB and Fort Lauderdale in late October. Phoenix in mid November. And never once did Miramax report any grosses for it.   One week after Mio, Miramax would release a comedy called Going Undercover.   Now, if you listened to our March 2021 episode on Some Kind of Wonderful, you may remember be mentioning Lea Thompson taking the role of Amanda Jones in that film, a role she had turned down twice before, the week after Howard the Duck opened, because she was afraid she'd never get cast in a movie again. And while Some Kind of Wonderful wasn't as big a film as you'd expect from a John Hughes production, Thompson did indeed continue to work, and is still working to this day.   So if you were looking at a newspaper ad in several cities in June 1988 and saw her latest movie and wonder why she went back to making weird little movies.   She hadn't.   This was a movie she had made just before Back to the Future, in August and September 1984.   Originally titled Yellow Pages, the film starred film legend Jean Simmons as Maxine, a rich woman who has hired Chris Lemmon's private investigator Henry Brilliant to protect her stepdaughter Marigold during her trip to Copenhagen.   The director, James Clarke, had written the script specifically for Lemmon, tailoring his role to mimic various roles played by his famous father, Jack Lemmon, over the decades, and for Simmons. But Thompson was just one of a number of young actresses they looked at before making their casting choice.   Half of the $6m budget would come from a first-time British film producer, while the other half from a group of Danish investors wanting to lure more Hollywood productions to their area.   The shoot would be plagued by a number of problems. The shoot in Los Angeles coincided with the final days of the 1984 Summer Olympics, which would cut out using some of the best and most regularly used locations in the city, and a long-lasting heat wave that would make outdoor shoots unbearable for cast and crew. When they arrived in Copenhagen at the end of August, Denmark was going through an unusually heavy storm front that hung around for weeks.   Clarke would spend several months editing the film, longer than usual for a smaller production like this, but he in part was waiting to see how Back to the Future would do at the box office. If the film was a hit, and his leading actress was a major part of that, it could make it easier to sell his film to a distributor.   Or that was line of thinking.   Of course, Back to the Future was a hit, and Thompson received much praise for her comedic work on the film.   But that didn't make it any easier to sell his film.   The producer would set the first screenings for the film at the February 1986 American Film Market in Santa Monica, which caters not only to foreign distributors looking to acquire American movies for their markets, but helps independent filmmakers get their movies seen by American distributors.   As these screenings were for buyers by invitation only, there would be no reviews from the screenings, but one could guess that no one would hear about the film again until Miramax bought the American distribution rights to it in March 1988 tells us that maybe those screenings didn't go so well.   The film would get retitled Going Undercover, and would open in single screen playdates in Atlanta, Cincinnati, Dallas, Indianapolis, Los Angeles, Nashville, Orlando, St. Louis and Tampa on June 17th. And as I've said too many times already, no reported grosses from Miramax, and only one theatre playing the film was being tracked by Variety, with Going Undercover earning $3,000 during its one week at the Century City 14 in Los Angeles.   In the June 22nd, 1988 issue of Variety, there was an article about Miramax securing a $25m line of credit in order to start producing their own films. Going Undercover is mentioned in the article about being one of Miramax's releases, without noting it had just been released that week or how well it did or did not do.   The Thin Blue Line would be Miramax's first non-music based documentary, and one that would truly change how documentaries were made.   Errol Morris had already made two bizarre but entertaining documentaries in the late 70s and early 80s. Gates of Heaven was shot in 1977, about a man who operated a failing pet cemetery in Northern California's Napa Valley. When Morris told his famous German filmmaking supporter Werner Herzog about the film, Herzog vowed to eat one of the shoes he was wearing that day if Morris could actually complete the film and have it shown in a public theatre. In April 1979, just before the documentary had its world premiere at UC Theatre in Berkeley, where Morris had studied philosophy, Herzog would spend the morning at Chez Pannise, the creators of the California Cuisine cooking style, boiling his shoes for five hours in garlic, herbs and stock. This event itself would be commemorated in a documentary short called, naturally, Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe, by Les Blank, which is a must watch on its own.   Because of the success of Gates of Heaven, Morris was able to quickly find financing for his next film, Nub City, which was originally supposed to be about the number of Vernon, Florida's citizens who have “accidentally” cut off their limbs, in order to collect the insurance money. But after several of those citizens threatened to kill Morris, and one of them tried to run down his cinematographer with their truck, Morris would rework the documentary, dropping the limb angle, no pun intended, and focus on the numerous eccentric people in the town. It would premiere at the 1981 New York Film Festival, and become a hit, for a documentary, when it was released in theatres in 1982.   But it would take Morris another six years after completing Vernon, Florida, to make another film. Part of it was having trouble lining up full funding to work on his next proposed movie, about James Grigson, a Texas forensic psychiatrist whose was nicknamed Doctor Death for being an expert witness for the prosecution in death penalty cases in Texas. Morris had gotten seed money for the documentary from PBS and the Endowment for Public Arts, but there was little else coming in while he worked on the film. In fact, Morris would get a PI license in New York and work cases for two years, using every penny he earned that wasn't going towards living expenses to keep the film afloat.   One of Morris's major problems for the film was that Grigson would not sit on camera for an interview, but would meet with Morris face to face to talk about the cases. During that meeting, the good doctor suggested to the filmmaker that he should research the killers he helped put away. And during that research, Morris would come across the case of one Randall Dale Adams, who was convicted of killing Dallas police officer Robert Wood in 1976, even though another man, David Harris, was the police's initial suspect. For two years, Morris would fly back and forth between New York City and Texas, talking to and filming interviews with Adams and more than two hundred other people connected to the shooting and the trial. Morris had become convinced Adams was indeed innocent, and dropped the idea about Dr. Grigson to solely focus on the Robert Wood murder.   After showing the producers of PBS's American Playhouse some of the footage he had put together of the new direction of the film, they kicked in more funds so that Morris could shoot some re-enactment sequences outside New York City, as well as commission composer Phillip Glass to create a score for the film once it was completed. Documentaries at that time did not regularly use re-enactments, but Morris felt it was important to show how different personal accounts of the same moment can be misinterpreted or misremembered or outright manipulated to suppress the truth.   After the film completed its post-production in March 1988, The Thin Blue Line would have its world premiere at the San Francisco Film Festival on March 18th, and word quickly spread Morris had something truly unique and special on his hands. The critic for Variety would note in the very first paragraph of his write up that the film employed “strikingly original formal devices to pull together diverse interviews, film clips, photo collages, and” and this is where it broke ground, “recreations of the crime from many points of view.”   Miramax would put together a full court press in order to get the rights to the film, which was announced during the opening days of the 1988 Cannes Film Festival in early May. An early hint on how the company was going to sell the film was by calling it a “non-fiction feature” instead of a documentary.   Miramax would send Morris out on a cross-country press tour in the weeks leading up to the film's August 26th opening date, but Morris, like many documentary filmmakers, was not used to being in the spotlight themselves, and was not as articulate about talking up his movies as the more seasoned directors and actors who've been on the promotion circuit for a while. After one interview, Harvey Weinstein would send Errol Morris a note.   “Heard your NPR interview and you were boring.”   Harvey would offer up several suggestions to help the filmmaker, including hyping the movie up as a real life mystery thriller rather than a documentary, and using shorter and clearer sentences when answering a question.   It was a clear gamble to release The Thin Blue Line in the final week of summer, and the film would need a lot of good will to stand out.   And it would get it.   The New York Times was so enthralled with the film, it would not only run a review from Janet Maslin, who would heap great praise on the film, but would also run a lengthy interview with Errol Morris right next to the review. The quarter page ad in the New York Times, several pages back, would tout positive quotes from Roger Ebert, J. Hoberman, who had left The Village Voice for the then-new Premiere Magazine, Peter Travers, writing for People Magazine instead of Rolling Stone, and critics from the San Francisco Chronicle and, interestingly enough, the Dallas Morning News. The top of the ad was tagged with an intriguing tease: solving this mystery is going to be murder, with a second tag line underneath the key art and title, which called the film “a new kind of movie mystery.” Of the 15 New York area-based film critics for local newspapers, television and national magazines, 14 of them gave favorable reviews, while 1, Stephen Schiff of Vanity Fair, was ambivalent about it. Not one critic gave it a bad review.   New York audiences were hooked.   Opening in the 240 seat main house at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas, the movie grossed $30,945 its first three days. In its second weekend, the gross at the Lincoln Plaza would jump to $31k, and adding another $27,500 from its two theatre opening in Los Angeles and $15,800 from a single DC theatre that week. Third week in New York was a still good $21k, but the second week in Los Angeles fell to $10,500 and DC to $10k. And that's how it rolled out for several months, mostly single screen bookings in major cities not called Los Angeles or New York City, racking up some of the best reviews Miramax would receive to date, but never breaking out much outside the major cities. When it looked like Santa Cruz wasn't going to play the film, I drove to San Francisco to see it, just as my friends and I had for the opening day of Martin Scorsese's The Last Temptation of Christ in mid-August. That's 75 miles each way, plus parking in San Francisco, just to see a movie. That's when you know you no longer just like movies but have developed a serious case of cinephilea. So when The Nickelodeon did open the film in late November, I did something I had never done with any documentary before.   I went and saw it again.   Second time around, I was still pissed off at the outrageous injustice heaped upon Randall Dale Adams for nothing more than being with and trusting the wrong person at the wrong time. But, thankfully, things would turn around for Adams in the coming weeks. On December 1st, it was reported that David Harris had recanted his testimony at Adams' trial, admitting he was alone when Officer Wood stopped his car. And on March 1st, 1989, after more than 15,000 people had signed the film's petition to revisit the decision, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals overturned Adams's conviction “based largely” on facts presented in the film.   The film would also find itself in several more controversies.   Despite being named The Best Documentary of the Year by a number of critics groups, the Documentary Branch of the  Academy of Motion Pictures Arts and Sciences would not nominate the film, due in large part to the numerous reenactments presented throughout the film. Filmmaker Michael Apted, a member of the Directors Branch of the Academy, noted that the failure to acknowledge The Thin Blue Line was “one of the most outrageous things in the modern history of the Academy,” while Roger Ebert added the slight was “the worst non-nomination of the year.” Despite the lack of a nomination, Errol Morris would attend the Oscars ceremony in March 1989, as a protest for his film being snubbed.   Morris would also, several months after Adams' release, find himself being sued by Adams, but not because of how he was portrayed in the film. During the making of the film, Morris had Adams sign a contract giving Morris the exclusive right to tell Adams's story, and Adams wanted, essentially, the right to tell his own story now that he was a free man. Morris and Adams would settle out of court, and Adams would regain his life rights.   Once the movie was played out in theatres, it had grossed $1.2m, which on the surface sounds like not a whole lot of money. Adjusted for inflation, that would only be $3.08m. But even unadjusted for inflation, it's still one of the 100 highest grossing documentaries of the past forty years. And it is one of just a handful of documentaries to become a part of the National Film Registry, for being a culturally, historically or aesthetically significant film.”   Adams would live a quiet life after his release, working as an anti-death penalty advocate and marrying the sister of one of the death row inmates he was helping to exonerate. He would pass away from a brain tumor in October 2010 at a courthouse in Ohio not half an hour from where he was born and still lived, but he would so disappear from the spotlight after the movie was released that his passing wasn't even reported until June 2011.   Errol Morris would become one of the most celebrated documentarians of his generation, finally getting nominated for, and winning, an Oscar in 2003, for The Fog of War, about the life and times of Robert McNamara, Richard Nixon's Secretary of Defense during the Vietnam War era. The Fog of War would also be added to the National Film Registry in 2019. Morris would become only the third documentarian, after D.A. Pennebaker and Les Blank, to have two films on the Registry.   In 1973, the senseless killings of five members of the Alday family in Donalsonville GA made international headlines. Four years later, Canadian documentarian Tex Fuller made an award-winning documentary about the case, called Murder One. For years, Fuller shopped around a screenplay telling the same story, but it would take nearly a decade for it to finally be sold, in part because Fuller was insistent that he also be the director. A small Canadian production company would fund the $1m CAD production, which would star Henry Thomas of E.T. fame as the fifteen year old narrator of the story, Billy Isaacs.   The shoot began in early October 1987 outside Toronto, but after a week of shooting, Fuller was fired, and was replaced by Graeme Campbell, a young and energetic filmmaker for whom Murder One would be his fourth movie directing gig of the year. Details are sketchy as to why Fuller was fired, but Thomas and his mother Carolyn would voice concerns with the producers about the new direction the film was taking under its new director.   The film would premiere in Canada in May 1988. When the film did well up North, Miramax took notice and purchased the American distribution rights.   Murder One would first open in America on two screens in Los Angeles on September 9th, 1988. Michael Wilmington of the Los Angeles Times noted that while the film itself wasn't very good, that it still sprung from the disturbing insight about the crazy reasons people cross of what should be impassable moral lines.   “No movie studio could have invented it!,” screamed the tagline on the poster and newspaper key art. “No writer could have imagined it! Because what happened that night became the most controversial in American history.”   That would draw limited interest from filmgoers in Tinseltown. The two theatres would gross a combined $7k in its first three days. Not great but far better than several other recent Miramax releases in the area.   Two weeks later, on September 23rd, Miramax would book Murder One into 20 theatres in the New York City metro region, as well as in Akron, Atlanta, Charlotte, Indianpolis, Nashville, and Tampa-St. Petersburg. In New York, the film would actually get some good reviews from the Times and the Post as well as Peter Travers of People Magazine, but once again, Miramax would not report grosses for the film. Variety would note the combined gross for the film in New York City was only $25k.   In early October, the film would fall out of Variety's internal list of the 50 Top Grossing Films within the twenty markets they regularly tracked, with a final gross of just $87k. One market that Miramax deliberately did not book the film was anywhere near southwest Georgia, where the murders took place. The closest theatre that did play the film was more than 200 miles away.   Miramax would finish 1988 with two releases.   The first was Dakota, which would mark star Lou Diamond Phillips first time as a producer. He would star as a troubled teenager who takes a job on a Texas horse ranch to help pay of his debts, who becomes a sorta big brother to the ranch owner's young son, who has recently lost a leg to cancer, as he also falls for the rancher's daughter.   When the $1.1m budgeted film began production in Texas in June 1987, Phillips had already made La Bamba and Stand and Deliver, but neither had yet to be released into theatres. By the time filming ended five weeks later, La Bamba had just opened, and Phillips was on his way to becoming a star.   The main producers wanted director Fred Holmes to get the film through post-production as quickly as possible, to get it into theatres in the early part of 1988 to capitalize on the newfound success of their young star.    But that wouldn't happen.   Holmes wouldn't have the film ready until the end of February 1988, which was deemed acceptable because of the impending release of Stand and Deliver. In fact, the producers would schedule their first distributor screening of the film on March 14th, the Monday after Stand and Delivered opened, in the hopes that good box office for the film and good notices for Phillips would translate to higher distributor interest in their film, which sorta worked. None of the major studios would show for the screening, but a number of Indies would, including Miramax. Phillips would not attend the screening, as he was on location in New Mexico shooting Young Guns.   I can't find any reason why Miramax waited nearly nine months after they acquired Dakota to get it into theatres. It certainly wasn't Oscar bait, and screen availability would be scarce during the busy holiday movie season, which would see a number of popular, high profile releases like Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, Ernest Saves Christmas, The Naked Gun, Rain Man, Scrooged, Tequila Sunrise, Twins and Working Girl. Which might explain why, when Miramax released the film into 18 theatres in the New York City area on December 2nd, they could only get three screens in all of Manhattan, the best being the nice but hardly first-rate Embassy 4 at Broadway and 47th. Or of the 22 screens in Los Angeles opening the film the same day, the best would be the tiny Westwood 4 next to UCLA or the Paramount in Hollywood, whose best days were back in the Eisenhower administration.   And, yet again, Miramax did not report grosses, and none of the theatres playing the film was tracked by Variety that week. The film would be gone after just one week. The Paramount, which would open Dirty Rotten Scoundrels on the 14th, opted to instead play a double feature of Clara's Heart, with Whoopi Goldberg and Neil Patrick Harris, and the River Phoenix drama Running on Empty, even though neither film had been much of a hit.   Miramax's last film of the year would be the one that changed everything for them.   Pelle the Conquerer.   Adapted from a 1910 Danish book and directed by Billie August, whose previous film Twist and Shout had been released by Miramax in 1986, Pelle the Conquerer would be the first Danish or Swedish movie to star Max von Sydow in almost 15 years, having spent most of the 70s and 80s in Hollywood and London starring in a number of major movies including The Exorcist, Three Days of the Condor, Flash Gordon,Conan the Barbarian, Never Say Never Again, and David Lynch's Dune. But because von Sydow would be making his return to his native cinema, August was able to secure $4.5m to make the film, one of the highest budgeted Scandinavian films to be made to date.   In the late 1850s, an elderly emigrant Lasse and his son Pelle leave their home in Sweden after the death of the boy's mother, wanting to build a new life on the Danish island of Bornholm. Lasse finds it difficult to find work, given his age and his son's youth. The pair are forced to work at a large farm, where they are generally mistreated by the managers for being foreigners. The father falls into depression and alcoholism, the young boy befriends one of the bastard children of the farm owner as well as another Swedish farm worker, who dreams of conquering the world.   For the title character of Pelle, Billie August saw more than 3,000 Swedish boys before deciding to cast 11 year old Pelle Hvenegaard, who, like many boys in Sweden, had been named for the character he was now going to play on screen.   After six months of filming in the summer and fall of 1986, Billie August would finish editing Pelle the Conquerer in time for it to make its intended Christmas Day 1987 release date in Denmark and Sweden, where the film would be one of the biggest releases in either country for the entire decade. It would make its debut outside Scandinavia at the Cannes Film Festival in May 1988, where it had been invited to compete for the Palme D'Or. It would compete against a number of talented filmmakers who had come with some of the best films they would ever make, including Clint Eastwood with Bird, Claire Denis' Chocolat, István Szabó's Hanussen, Vincent Ward's The Navigator, and A Short Film About Killing, an expanded movie version of the fifth episode in Krzysztof Kieślowski's masterful miniseries Dekalog. Pelle would conquer them all, taking home the top prize from one of cinema's most revered film festivals.   Reviews for the film out of Cannes were almost universally excellent. Vincent Canby, the lead film critic for the New York Times for nearly twenty years by this point, wouldn't file his review until the end of the festival, in which he pointed out that a number of people at the festival were scandalized von Sydow had not also won the award for Best Actor.   Having previously worked with the company on his previous film's American release, August felt that Miramax would have what it took to make the film a success in the States.   Their first moves would be to schedule the film for a late December release, while securing a slot at that September's New York Film Festival. And once again, the critical consensus was highly positive, with only a small sampling of distractors.   The film would open first on two screens at the Lincoln Plaza Cinemas in midtown Manhattan on Wednesday, December 21st, following by exclusive engagements in nine other cities including Los Angeles, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Seattle and Washington DC, on the 23rd. But the opening week numbers weren't very good, just $46k from ten screens. And you can't really blame the film's two hour and forty-five minute running time. Little Dorrit, the two-part, four hour adaptation of the Charles Dickens novel, had been out nine weeks at this point and was still making nearly 50% more per screen.   But after the new year, when more and more awards were hurled the film's way, including the National Board of Review naming it one of the best foreign films of the year and the Golden Globes awarding it their Best Foreign Language trophy, ticket sales would pick up.   Well, for a foreign film.   The week after the Motion Picture Academy awarded Pelle their award for Best Foreign Language Film, business for the film would pick up 35%, and a third of its $2m American gross would come after that win.   One of the things that surprised me while doing the research for this episode was learning that Max von Sydow had never been nominated for an Oscar until he was nominated for Best Actor for Pelle the Conquerer. You look at his credits over the years, and it's just mind blowing. The Seventh Seal. Wild Strawberries. The Virgin Spring. The Greatest Story Ever Told. The Emigrants. The Exorcist. The Three Days of the Condor. Surely there was one performance amongst those that deserved recognition.   I hate to keep going back to A24, but there's something about a company's first Oscar win that sends that company into the next level. A24 didn't really become A24 until 2016, when three of their movies won Oscars, including Brie Larson for Best Actress in Room. And Miramax didn't really become the Miramax we knew and once loved until its win for Pelle.   Thank you for joining us. We'll talk again soon, when Episode 117, the fifth and final part of our miniseries on Miramax Films, is released.     Remember to visit this episode's page on our website, The80sMoviePodcast.com, for extra materials about the movies we covered this episode.   The 80s Movies Podcast has been researched, written, narrated and edited by Edward Havens for Idiosyncratic Entertainment.   Thank you again.   Good night.

Welcome to the Nessun Dorma Book Club, a kind of sporting Late Review but without Tony Parsons.The premise this week is simple: Mike, Gary and Martyn bring a football book that made an impact on their lives and explain why.From the definitive and myth-shattering history of West German football and the instant window into the past provided by Panini to a delve into the world of sports psychology at a time when Sven-Göran Eriksson was still considered to be a Svengali and not a Scandi Benny Hill, there is something here for everyone. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

Welcome to the inaugural Nessun Dorma Draft, in which we each pick an XI from a particular tournament, season or era. Given the name of our podcast, we had to start with a trip back to Italia 90.Martyn, Gary and Rob are joined by Mac Millings to pick their XIs from a tournament full of superstars.These are the rules:1. Each player can only be picked by one person. When Andy Brehme has gone, he's gone.2. Players are judged solely on their form during Italia 90. Thus: Salvatore Schillaci good, Marco van Basten bad.3. Managers must announce their planned formation before the draft begins.4. You decide who wins the draft. Go to Twitter, X or whatever it's called today to choose which team you think is the best. The poll will close at midday on Friday (UK time).As well as giving four ageing men a frankly disproportionate thrill, the draft is an excuse to rhapsodise the players we love from Italia 90, and to make snide comments about each other's selections.You can view our teams in formation by clicking here, though you may want to leave that until after you've listened to the pod. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com

By the final round of group games, Euro 88 was effectively a six-team tournament. Denmark and England were already eliminated and barely had any pride left to play for.Group A was concluded with simultaneous games on Friday night, just a week – and a lifetime – after the tournament had begun. The hosts West Germany played Spain in Munich, with the likelihood that the semi-finals wouldn't be big enough for the both of them. West Germany needed a draw, Spain a win.Italy, who many felt had been the best team in the tournament to date, needed only a draw against Denmark to guarantee qualification.Group B was settled the following afternoon, with the BBC deciding to show Republic of Ireland's decisive match against the Netherlands instead of England v USSR. Assuming a collectively depressed England side didn't win that game (spoiler alert…), Ireland knew they would reach the semis with a draw. The Netherlands had no such luxury; if they didn't win, they were almost certainly going home.Martyn, Gary and Rob chat about all four games… and Bryan Robson taking our his frustrations on Peter Shilton's chin. Oh, and Rob's dog Margot makes an unscripted appearance.If you like the podcast, please spread the word and rate/review us on your podcast app. The more people who listen to Nessun Dorma, the greater our chances of one day telling The Man where he might like to deposit his 9-5. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit nessundorma.substack.com