The old days - Aboard the Apollo - 1973

[Auditor's Toad]

since the line is, "pearls before swine," and your former avatar was a flying pig, I can only point out the obvious...........

Yes, when pigs fly

Sometimes obvious sometimes oblivious

My own foibles I find amusing.

[Antony A Phillips]

Dear reader of this thread,

I have now set up a thread for the Pilot's Posts (excerpts from), and have just posted this Wednesday's excerpt. It is from his Post 26 -- March 1998 and is entitled "OT Research – Affinity Defined, Wavelength Drill"

Here is a little trailer: "I began by trying to expand the Axioms and it yielded a wild little trick that doubles exterior perception".

For the rest of it, go to:
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthrea...300#post710300

It is unlikely that I will refer on this thread every time I post to the new thread. If you are really interested you can look there every Wednesday, or (if you are a member) you can tick a little box at the bottom and have any new things on the thread emailed to you.

There was a suggestion that I put these excerpts on a blog. I still do not understand blogs well enough enough, but will look further into it.

All best wishes,

Ant(ony)

[I told you I was trouble]

Anthony,

I had a quick look for you ... it looks really simple.

1. Go to your profile page (its called My Profile and is at the top right of this page)
2. Click on view entries ... (just above your 'join date').
3. Click on create new post (top right and coloured blue).


A little page appears where you can post to what will then be your blog.

Interested people can subscribe to it and there is a section at the bottom where you can choose whether to allow comments or not (if you don't allow them you will receive zero trolling and your blog will read like a book).

Could be perfect for all concerned.

[FoTi]

Anthony,

I had a quick look for you ... it looks really simple.

1. Go to your profile page (its called My Profile and is at the top right of this page)
2. Click on view entries ... (just above your 'join date').
3. Click on create new post (top right and coloured blue).


A little page appears where you can post to what will then be your blog.

Interested people can subscribe to it and there is a section at the bottom where you can choose whether to allow comments or not (if you don't allow them you will receive zero trolling and your blog will read like a book).

Could be perfect for all concerned.

Or just click on Blogs (at the top of this page) and then click on Create a New Post (up in the right hand corner) and a page will come up for you to blog whatever you want to. It's real easy.

[CarmeloOrchards]

It is hard to believe that I've been humming this song for 50 years.



http://www.sfgate.com/news/article/T...#photo-3217963

'The Girl from Ipanema' turns 50
JULIANA BARBASSA, Associated Press
Updated 09:28 a.m., Friday, July 20, 2012

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — "Tall and tan and young and lovely..." You've heard of her. The Girl From Ipanema.

You might have come across the bossa nova classic while on hold on the phone, during a long elevator ride, or in a cafe in Beirut or Bangkok — but you've heard it. It's been recorded by everyone from Frank Sinatra to Amy Winehouse, and survived bad lounge singers and Muzak incarnations to become, according to Performing Songwriter magazine, the second most recorded song in the world.

The quintessential bossa nova tune, inspired by a young woman who passed the songwriters in a beachside bar on her way to the sea, introduced Rio de Janeiro to the world. Now, it's turning 50, and to its legions of fans, the decades have only heightened its allure, adding a wash of nostalgia to this hymn to passing youth and beauty.

"I love this music, and had been searching for this place," said Venezuelan tourist Xiomara Castillo, who with her husband was taking pictures inside the bar where the song's authors watched their muse saunter by in the song's eponymous neighborhood. "For me, Rio de Janeiro is this song, is bossa nova; the city has this rhythm, this charm, this sensuality."

Indeed, the song carries within its chords and lyrics an image of a city that's light and easy, palm trees and blue sky, a sun-kissed life without care.

Rio is in "the levity of the song, its absolute elegance, the way it doesn't take itself seriously" said Ruy Castro, a writer and journalist who has chronicled the city, its music and its nightlife.

This girl who "swings so cool and sways so gently" first stepped out in public on August 1962, in a cramped Copacabana nightclub.

On stage together, for the first and only time, were the architects of bossa nova: Tom Jobim on piano and Joao Gilberto on guitar, with help from the poet Vinicius de Moraes, who gave "The Girl" her lyrics. Also performing was the vocal group Os Cariocas.

Bossa nova was still young then, somewhat of a novelty even in Rio. The name meant "new trend" or "new way," and that's what it was: a fresh, jazzy take on Brazil's holiest tradition, the samba.

The rhythm was the same. But where samba was cathartic, communal, built on drums and powerful voices, bossa was intimate, contemplative, just a singer and a song. The melody, on guitar or piano, stepped up to the front. Percussion receded, played sometimes with brushes for a softer texture reminiscent of surf washing on the sand.

The 1962 show at the club Au Bon Gourmet established bossa nova, wrote Castro in his book about the genre. It didn't just introduce the Jobim-penned "Girl"; other bossa classics, such as "So danco samba" and "Samba da bencao," also were played publicly for the first time.

The small club — 20 by 130 feet — sold out every night as patrons realized something extraordinary was happening on the cramped little stage.

Severino Filho was there when it happened. As an original member of Os Cariocas, he was one of the first to ever hear the song.

"Tom and Vinicius had just composed it; it was still on a scrap of paper. Only later did they write it out on a clean sheet," he said. "At first, people in the audience just listened. But they'd come back, and would start to sing along. After that, bossa nova just exploded."

That was also the year most Americans first heard bossa nova. The 1962 record "Jazz Samba," by Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd, took the sound of Brazil and filtered it through the sensibility of American musicians, making it palatable to the country's listeners. Although an instrumental jazz album, it remained on the Billboard charts for 70 weeks.

After that, everyone wanted a bit of Brazil. Jazz greats such as Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and Ella Fitzgerald made bossa-inspired recordings. Performing Songwriter magazine says only The Beatles' "Yesterday" has been recorded more often.

Still, it wasn't until 1964 that "The Girl" came to the U.S., with its English lyrics written by American Norman Gimbel. The words are different from the original Portuguese ones but remain true to their spirit.

It could have been a dud.

Astrud Gilberto, Joao Gilberto's then-wife, sang the English words in the album "Getz/Gilberto." It was her first professional gig. Her voice is young, breathy, but there's a little hesitation; she trips over her English oh-so-lightly.

As it turns out, she was perfect: exotic but accessible, sultry and innocent at once. Like the girl in the song, Astrud's voice suggested a beauty that was enticing but just out of reach: "Each day, when she walks to the sea, she looks straight ahead not at he."

American Tryg Sletteland, for one, fell under the song's spell from the moment he first heard it while in college in the early 60s, he said during a recent walk along Ipanema beach.

In fact, "The Girl from Ipanema" primed him for romance, Sletteland said amid the beach's bustle.

When he met Sonia Madeira de Ley, who'd gone from Rio to Vermont to study English, he felt like he'd found his own "Girl from Ipanema."

"She was the embodiment of the song: long dark hair to the middle of her back, big dark eyes, and this 'morena' skin," he said. "And she was so graceful ... She was exotic and beautiful. I'd never met anyone like that."

Their whirlwind romance ended when she returned to Rio. More than 30 years later, with help from the Internet, the two reconnected. Now they're finally together, and split their time between Rio and California.

"He still calls me his Girl From Ipanema," said Sonia, who now goes by her married name, Sletteland.

The "Getz/Gilberto" album eventually won the 1965 Grammy for best album of the year, and suddenly, everyone was talking about "The Girl."

Except the girl herself. Because there was a girl: Heloisa Eneida Menezes Paes Pinto, then 17 years old, known among her friends as Helo.

The teenager's days were spent between home, school and the beach, a path that often took her by the bar where de Moraes and Jobim spent long hours nursing their drinks. Their eyes would follow Helo when she passed, entranced with her glowing skin and long dark hair.

Helo had no idea. When she first heard the hit on the radio, she liked it. She'd whistle it sometimes. But she never suspected she'd inspired the lyrics.

There were rumors from the guys at the bar, but she wouldn't believe them. Finally, in 1965, Moraes offered the definitive proof, writing in a magazine that Helo was the beauty behind the song, "the golden girl, mix of flower and mermaid, full of light and grace, but whose sight is also sad because it carries within it, on the way to the sea, the sense of youth that passes, of beauty that doesn't belong only to us."

In spite of the stir she created, Helo had a traditional upbringing, and the song did little to change that, she said. Between her strict parents and her fiance, then husband, she turned down invitations to do films and shows on TV.

"I was flattered, of course. But it left me wondering, do I really deserve all this?" she said. "It was a weight, trying to please everyone, to show these characteristics that the song called for."

Her fiance, who had been her high-school boyfriend, pushed for a quick wedding, and she spent the next decade as a housewife. Now, at 68, she's far more comfortable with her notoriety, doing two TV shows and planning to launch a book in English about her past.

"Back then, I never thought I'd get old," she said. "But youth passes. We have to live each moment."



http://performingsongwriter.com/girl-from-ipanema/



Summer 1962. Rio de Janeiro. At the Veloso Bar, a block from the beach at Ipanema, two friends—the composer Antonio Carlos Jobim and the poet Vinícius de Moraes—are drinking Brahma beer and musing about their latest song collaboration.

The duo favor the place for the good brew and the even better girl-watching opportunities. Though both are married men, they’re not above a little ogling. Especially when it comes to a neighborhood girl nicknamed Helô. Eighteen-year-old Heloisa Eneida Menezes Pais Pinto is a Carioca—a native of Rio. She’s tall and tan, with emerald green eyes and long, dark wavy hair. They’ve seen her passing by, as she’s heading to the beach or coming home from school. She has a way of walking that de Moraes calls “sheer poetry.”

Legend has it that Jobim and de Moraes were so inspired by this shapely coed, they wrote a song for her right on the bar napkins. It’s a good story, but it’s not quite true.



Following their success composing songs for the 1959 film Black Orpheus, the writers began work on a musical comedy. Conceived by de Moraes, it was called Blimp and concerned a Martian who arrives in Rio during the height of Carnaval. And what might impress a little green man the most about our planet? A beautiful girl in a bikini, of course.

Jobim and de Moraes were stalled two verses in on the song they called “Menina que Passa” (“The Girl Who Passes By”). They needed a fresh breeze of inspiration, something vivid to stir their alien visitor’s blood. Conjuring up the vision of their favorite hip-swaying distraction, they poured out all their secret longing and lust into the newly titled “Garota da Ipanema.”

Though Blimp never got off the ground, the tune became not only a hit in Brazil, but the international calling card for a style of music that charmed the world—bossa nova.

While Helô inspired the song, it was another Carioca who carried it beyond Rio. Astrud Gilberto was just the wife of singing star João Gilberto when she entered a NYC studio in March 1963. João and Jobim were making a record with tenor saxman Stan Getz. The idea of cutting a verse on “Ipanema” in English came up, and Astrud was the only one of the Brazilians who spoke more than phrasebook English.

Astrud’s child-like vocal, devoid of vibrato and singerly mannerisms, was the perfect foil for her husband’s soft bumblebee voice. Jobim tinkled piano. Getz blew a creamy smooth tenor. Four minutes of magic went to tape.



A year later, the song was casting its quiet spell of sea and sand on the charts, washing past the Beatles’ “I Want To Hold Your Hand.” It peaked in mid-June at No. 5, selling over two million copies.

“The Girl From Ipanema” went on to become the second-most recorded popular song in history, behind “Yesterday.” Covered by an A-Z gamut of performers, it’s become the ultimate cliché of elevator music—shorthand for the entire lounge revival of the ’90s.

Over the years, Helô Pinheiro (her married name) enjoyed country-wide fame, ranking with Pelé as one of the goodwill ambassadors of Brazil. She never settled on an occupation, dabbling in acting, then running a modeling agency. In 1987, she posed nude for Playboy (and again in 2003, with her daughter Ticiane). In 2001, Helô opened the Girl From Ipanema clothing boutique in a Rio shopping center.

Shortly after, the heirs of Jobim (who died in 1994) and de Moraes (who died in 1980) filed a lawsuit, claiming Helô was only inadvertently involved in the song’s creation and didn’t have the right to use it for commercial purposes.

Helô says, “I never made a cent from ‘The Girl From Ipanema,’ nor do I claim that I should. Yet now that I’m using a legally registered trademark, they want to prohibit me from being the girl from Ipanema. I’m sure that Antonio and Vinícius would never question the use of the name.”

After much ugliness in and out of court, Helô was able to keep the name for her boutique. Today, she reflects on the early ’60s in Ipanema with nostalgia. “I like the time when everything was prettier because of love, as it says in the Portuguese version of the song. I am still touched when somebody plays the song in my honor.”

—By Bill DeMain

From Performing Songwriter Issue 98, December 2006

[Mark A. Baker]

It is hard to believe that I've been humming this song for 50 years.


....

Was 'inspired' by the former and written for The Mad Show by Stephen Sondheim & Mary Rogers (Richard's daughter).


Mark A. Baker

[Auditor's Toad]

<snip>
Mark A. Baker

Mark, serious question, do you post stoned ?
&
Do you advocate posting stoned ?

[Antony A Phillips]

Many thanks for the responses regarding the posting of the Pilot's excerpts.
I got to look at the question of a blog, and went so deep into thinkingness that I decided to put it on the new thread and you can see it at:
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthrea...731#post710731

All best wishes,

Ant

[lkwdblds]

Dear reader of this thread,

I have now set up a thread for the Pilot's Posts (excerpts from), and have just posted this Wednesday's excerpt. It is from his Post 26 -- March 1998 and is entitled "OT Research – Affinity Defined, Wavelength Drill"

Here is a little trailer: "I began by trying to expand the Axioms and it yielded a wild little trick that doubles exterior perception".

For the rest of it, go to:
http://www.forum.exscn.net/showthrea...300#post710300

It is unlikely that I will refer on this thread every time I post to the new thread. If you are really interested you can look there every Wednesday, or (if you are a member) you can tick a little box at the bottom and have any new things on the thread emailed to you.

There was a suggestion that I put these excerpts on a blog. I still do not understand blogs well enough enough, but will look further into it.

All best wishes,

Ant(ony)

Thanks Ant! I checked out your entire article and loved it. I like you Axiom X-2. Interesting experiment with those playing cards. You doubled your rate of success which would be expected through random guessing and yet failed to achieve even one perfect hit. That mix of results is an unexpected outcome.

Your post has many tie ins to music. Excellent musicians seem to intrinsically be able to apply some of the data you present as evidenced by their heightened ability to put out vibrations which connect with large groups of people. To be able to do that, they probably have to first perceive their public and what vibrations they most resonate with. Skilled musicians, whether a composer, or a performer are then either able to match the publics' vibrations or often raise the publics' vibration to match their own.
Lakey

[Mark A. Baker]

Mark, serious question, do you post stoned ?
&
Do you advocate posting stoned ?

Seriously ...

A. No

B. No


Mark A. Baker