:: Ray's Periodic Rantings ::

:: Thursday, November 11, 2004 ::

Nocturnal urbanity from Japan

From most of the silly pap I have seen over the past few years, I had all but given up on music videos as a form of media that held any interest for me. Then I stumbled across this via POP! Music Videos. It's the video for a song called Late At Night by a band called Futureshock. Put together with these images (via Metafilter) and the nightclubbing scenes from last year's Lost in Translation, it's making me want to visit Japan...after dark. Enjoy.
:: Ray 7:32 PM [+] ::
...

Sigh.

Yeah, we lost the election. Bush seems to have actually won this time, by the narrowest of margins. This is not the stuff of mandates (ncidentally, if you want a good laugh, google "bush mandate" and go to the first result - via Atrios). Anyway, damage will be done. Deficits will run like hemorrhaging wounds. Actual blood will run in Iraq, and who know where else...Iran, perhaps? With any luck, the liberals on the Supreme Court will be able to hang on for another four years, though a lot of conservative hacks will be appointed to the lower judiciary. Things will suck, but we will survive.

No, what I am really sighing about is that I just learned that Lester Lanin has left us, dying in his home on Wednesday, October 27. "Who is Lester Lanin?" you ask. Obviously, you didn't attend society balls during the fifties. His orchestra, with its peppy medleys, kept people dancing at some of the most exclusive events in the world, and his 36 albums sold more than 10 million copies.

To be honest, I didn't even know he had still been alive. I've never seen any releases of his more recent than the fifties, and I have never heard of him playing at a local event. It turns out he was 97, and had just stopped conducting three years ago. That is some serious longevity.

I knew of him because my father liked him. He had a few of Lanin's records, which he would always drag out at parties, along with his Scott Joplin. The music was torture to my child's ears, and it was horribly out of place in the late seventies, but as an adult I have come to genuinely like it and appreciate its place in musical history. It's a different kind of cool than the stuff that typifies the Space-Age Bachelor Pad genre, such as Juan Garcia Esquivel. It is reserved and staid, but always upbeat and happy, and the musicianship is impeccable. I doubt there will be a Lester Lanin revival any time soon, which is just fine with me, because I enjoy liking things that other people don't know about.

It's been a while since I dragged out the old albums and gave them a listen. Maybe tonight is the night.
:: Ray 2:58 PM [+] ::
...