Tuesday 1/1/19
There is much happening at the moment and more important things going on, but before I fit in a quick run on this New Year's morning, I will put up some works worth spending some time with on this first day of 2019, if you are perhaps laying low, or recovering.
A musical treat: Ernest Tomlinson's Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne, with plenty of other tunes woven in. But note how sturdy the familiar melody is when you really listen hard to it. One of the sturdiest of all melodies. That is why Jimmy Stewart, in It's a Wonderful Life, can sing it off-key and not only does it work, but it adds another level of emotion without compromising the melody.
This game between the Canadiens and Soviet Red Army team--a 3-3 draw--occurred on New Year's Eve, 1975. It is considered one of the finest hockey games ever played.
Let us say goodbye to Father Christmas with Duke Ellington's Nutcracker suite:
This is a solid doc about Robert Burns, who was so much more than the author of "Auld Lang Syne"--he's one of the handful of best poets--but at least he cycles back through pop culture once a year.
Here's a New Year's-centric Gunsmoke radio program. Dude lose's a foot, gets an idea for a new job. There's just one way to handle the spoilers, you know.
1936's After the Thin Man, the sequel to 1934's The Thin Man, is centered around New Year's. Here's a radio adaptation of the film with William Powell and Myrna Loy in their familiar roles as Nick and Nora.