"Let the boys have the damn song." How "Over the Rainbow" almost didn't make the cut for "The Wizard of Oz." A look back at a "sacred" song in the American canon, on the occasion of a down-and-dirty music video version by the boys.
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The Art of the Song Lyric
The hand-transcribed song lyric considered as a work of art. Bouncing around Paris and the volcanic heartland of Gaul before easy access to printers and scanners, you had to make do when you wanted to travel with lyrics to the songs you hoped to sing.
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‘A Dream of Perfect Motion’
I've spent years collecting footage of trains rumbling through West Virginia's hills, dales & valleys. I also scribble poems that play on Buddhist allusions. And there's this electronic music maestro I know named Lucas the Flow, who composes ethereal tunes. Mix them together and this is what you get ...
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“And we’ll all go together …”
What to keep an eye upon come what may on the political scene and in our lives: beauty. A one-minute harmonically converged reminder ...
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“Dragon Ramble” by Douglas Eye and The Scribblers
To finesse and regulate some troubled energy, I fire up a jacked-up classical guitar, get the Garageband Foundry roaring, and hunker down. The result is "Dragon Ramble" by Douglas Eye and The Scribblers.
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‘A Hoeft Marsh Melody’
Hoeft Marsh in Greenbottom WV is where I get off to when I want to get off the timeline of the world's news. Here's a short musical visit there. It's a little fishy, too.
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‘All These Pages’
As a writer, purveyor, and publisher of creative works, I am constantly wrestling with my ego’s desire to see such work as of lasting significance, a hedge against my own mortality. Yet such works, too, will soon pass on by and melt away, swallowed by the river of time. Here’s a video-poem about that.
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“The Green, Green Hills of Earth”
When the azaleas burst into bloom around a Buddha given me by a dear, departed, harmonic soulmate, it was time to set her memorial song to imagery of the green, green hills of Earthh ...
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‘The Difference Is’
There is a difference / between people who do things / and people who don't ...
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Listen to an “Appalachian Round”
The song "Appalachian Round" is one of the prettiest, most evocative group songs in the English language. Here is a 2009 four-part harmony version a bunch of fellow travelers and I recorded down in Princeton, WV.
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‘Something for Nothing’
I want to see / if it is possible / to be a nobody / from nowhere. / Creating something / out of nothing …
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“Sonata for Piano & West Virginia, No. 1”
I invite you to take five minutes from feeling harassed by the news or our own hectic heads for "Sonata for Piano & West Virginia No. 1." It offers another way of looking at West Virginia and those parts that remain uncorrupted, fresh, and true.
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“Chasing Birds in Snow”
Take a 2-minute excursion into the heart of the heart of Nature, as a bunch of birds play leapfrog in the midst of a West Virginia snow squall.
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Three Not-the-News, Under-a-Minute Videos
When you are suffering from an overdose of dire news, may we suggest spending a minute with a happy dog tooling down the road, a koto-fueled Japanese fire, and bird upon a Buddha's head?
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A Few Op-Ed Limericks for the Times
When all else fails in trying to understand the current American political regime, there's always the art of the Op-Ed Limerick. A new collection of four recent animations.
