And...

A belated Happy Chanukah, on this last night of the holiday...

December 25th

Merry Christmas!

Dino Danelli

Dino Danelli was a tremendous drummer, playing with one of rock and roll's best bands, The Rascals (known earlier in their career as The Young Rascals).  He died on Thursday, at age 78. 

The Rascals, as a group, had a full, rich, soulful sound.

The following is a video I enjoy very much; it is a live performance of one of the group's many hits, 1968's "A Beautiful Morning."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zewzkHBCcVM

Felix Cavaliere--an extraordinary singer and organist--sings the lead vocal in the above performance; Eddie Brigati sings, and plays the conga; Gene Cornish plays the guitar and sings; and Mr. Danelli is at the drums.  The song was co-written by Mr. Cavaliere and Mr. Brigati; the two co-wrote many of the group's best-known songs, in addition to "A Beautiful Morning"--including  "Groovin'," "I've Been Lonely Too Long," "A Girl Like You," "People Got to Be Free," and "How Can I Be Sure."  Mr. Brigati sang a beautiful lead vocal on the latter recording.

Mr. Danelli had great style as a drummer.  He was, for example, known for twirling, deftly, his drumsticks (sometimes one stick, as in the video above; sometimes both) during performances.  

I also like the following detail, in the above video: within the first several seconds of the song, Mr. Danelli, in pauses between left-handed beats, drops his left arm abruptly, a few times, his hand out of sight. I'm not sure I've seen another drummer do this, and while this is not, certainly, a matter of enormous significance, it is nonetheless eye-catching, stylistically. 

His drumming, all told, was vibrant, skilled, electric.

Here is an earlier Rascals video--from 1966--of the group performing "Good Lovin'" on Ed Sullivan's program (a song the group did not write). The odd outfits (perhaps schoolboy-like?) the group wears in the video, and which they wore on other occasions in the earlier part of their career (outfits The New York Times, in its obituary of Mr. Danelli, refers to as "foppish"), may, unfortunately, distract from the terrific performance of the song--which includes, incidentally, multiple enjoyable instances of Mr. Danelli twirling both drumsticks, simultaneously.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OUNJbVFW5Pw

Here is the Times's obituary of Mr. Danelli:

https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/17/arts/music/dino-danelli-dead.html

Watching the snow, 1979

The picture below, a linocut, is from late 1979, when I was living in Providence, Rhode Island.  

It was made from linoleum backed by a wooden block, and using a grooved, gouging-type tool (the only linocut I recall ever making).  I made prints of the image using a small (and rather beautiful) manual printing press, a letterpress, that I had at the time.

The picture is of my cat Moby, who was a very small kitten when she came to live with me in 1977, two years before the picture was made.  She was all-white (like Melville's whale; thus her name) and lived with me until 1994, when she died.  I loved her very much.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

(Image © Andrew Fielding)

Brittney Griner

It is very good news that the U.S. secured the release of Brittney Griner, held prisoner for ten months by Vladimir Putin's Russia.

One hopes that Paul Whelan, still imprisoned there--as well as other Americans held in Russia and elsewhere--will also return to the U.S., sooner rather than later.

Kanye West

Am too nauseated by Kanye 'Ye' West's latest burst of Jew-hatred, yesterday (including his repeated praising of Hitler and Nazism, and his Holocaust denial), to write, at the moment, at any length about it.  I'll be posting further about the subject at another time.

As of this writing, a day after West's appearance on conspiracist Alex Jones' program (along with West's virulently bigoted friend Nicholas Fuentes), Donald Trump (not surprisingly) has said nothing publicly about his friend West's sickening comments.

West, Fuentes, and Trump:  all three are dangerous, revolting, and morally depraved.

(This post was edited, slightly, on January 9, 2023.)