Sunday: Hili dialogue

April 2, 2017 • 6:30 am

by Grania

Good morning!

Two music legends share a birthday today, Marvin Gaye (1939) and Emmylou Harris (1947).

Emmylou Harris’s Folk and Country career has spanned four decades and has an appeal that transcended the borders of her genre.

Marvin Gaye epitomised Motown and was one of the architects of its sound. Here’s a live performance of Heard it through the grapevine.

A picture of domestic bliss from Poland.

A: Look, what a funny picture.
Hili: Indeed. I’m enlightened and Cyrus just a bit.

In Polish:

Ja: Patrz jaka zabawna fotografia.
Hili: Rzeczywiście. Ja jestem oświecona, a Cyrus tylko troszkę.

Finally, don’t miss the BBC’s collection of the best of yesterday’s April Fools pranks and the people who fell for them, including Google Gnome, Amazon’s PetLexa, and Emirates who got nearly 10,000 people with their three storey airplane.

37 thoughts on “Sunday: Hili dialogue”

  1. I remember first coming across Emmylou Harris when she collaborated with Jack White a while back. It may be a reductive thing to say about such a talented musician but she is also quite preposterously beautiful, and, like Bowie and the grey-haired guy from Mad Men, has only gotten more beautiful and statuesque as she’s aged.

    1. O my, Mr Sorrell – Till, I so concur. And, too, what a lyricist is Ms Emmylou, sometimes collaborating with others and at very many other times solo on the songs she sings so extraordinarily passionately.

      Two of such favored ones of hers are
      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tX_R8k11p8 and https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tX_R8k11p8

      “ a ‘49 Indian ”
      “ up around the Moon and back ”

      ” And be the one beside you when you fell
      Could you tell ”

      ” I meant to ask you how when everything seemed lost
      And your fate was in a game of dice they tossed
      There was still that line that you would never cross
      At any cost ”

      That one she wrote for her Daddy ? Whoa. Tears.

      Blue

        1. Those are a lovely couple of songs. Stately and elegant, with a hint of something ethereal. Thanks.

  2. I applaud WEIT writers for not “doing” April Fools jokes. That I was fooled by, anyways… perhaps there was a really really good one I didn’t get?

    1. O yes, a mighty fine talent, Randy, I agree and so sadly and outrageously gone far, far too soon.

      Anyone else within the USA receive back on Ms Grania’s suggested youtube of Mr Gaye’s thus … … instead of him ? “This video contains content from Eagle Rock. It is not available in your country. Sorry about that ?” Just wondering ?

      Blue

  4. I agree that Emmylou Harris is wonderful. However, a YouTube search will find a number of duets she does with Mary Black, and to be honest, she is is simply not in the same league as Mary Black.

    1. True, she does not have Mary Black’s power, but they are both good in their own way. And so are others–for example Dolly Parton, who has probably the best pitch of any singer in any genre I’ve heard. You can slow her down (like from 45 rpm to 33, as someone did with “Jolene”) and there is no decline of pinpoint accuracy. That’s quality!

  5. Would Grania please tell me in a personal email message how she obtained a Lithuanian surname? I have some information about the name. Bill Morrison Vermont, U.S.A.

    >

  6. That first by Emmylou is a cover of the late, great Chuck Berry. Every time I hear that tune, I wanna kick off my shoes, get up with Mia Wallace, and win the twist contest trophy at Jack-Rabbit Slim’s.

    Funny, how a song, even one that was around as long before as “You Never Can Tell,” can become so closely associated with a scene from a movie. Tarantino has a knack for that. I mean, has anyone heard Stealers Wheel’s “Stuck in the Middle with You” since Reservoir Dogs and not thought of Michael Madsen’s smooth little shuffle preliminary to slicing off the cop’s ear?

  7. By the way, 100 years ago today, the president (Wilson) asked congress to declare war on Germany (WWI).

  8. Yes, been “in love” with ELH for years. She has only gotten better with age. Steve Earle tells a story of when he was a down-and-out musician waiting outside a recording studio (maybe getting ready to cut a demo?). Emmylou walked by and, taking pity on him, gave him half her cheeseburger. He said “I wasn’t the same for weeks.”

  9. Always been a big Emmylou Harris fan, since she was a backup singer. (Check out Neil Young’s “Star of Bethlehem” or Dylan’s “Mozambique”.)

    You can find some vintage video of her on YouTube, like this version of Pancho and Lefty:

    Emmylou

  10. IIRC, the last time the original members of The Band played together was this performance of Evangeline with Emmylou, filmed for the Last Waltz. Knowing that, there’s a sense of finality in the footage after they stop playing.

  11. Emmylou Harris- the ONLY recording artist to do a Beatles cover that I like a lot more than the original Beatles version.

    “For No One”- it’s from her first album (first appearing on the Beatles “Revolver”)

    Here she is singing it at the White House at a tribute to Paul McCartney. (P McN is in the audience.)

    https://youtu.be/SKESQd-yxLI

    1. P.S. Best of the actual April Fools jokes I thought was the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs proposed phone-answering message for embassies – “To arrange a call from a Russian diplomat to your political opponent, press 1; To engage the services of Russian hackers, press 2; to request election interference, press 3, and wait until the next election campaign”.

      cr

    2. Ethylene glycol and ethanol are both broken down by ethanol dehydrogenase. Unfortunately, glycol is converted to oxalic acid which is toxic and causes permanent kidney damage. Ethanol is a competitive inhibitor that slows the rate of catalysis of glycol, hence slows production of oxalic acid, giving the body time to excrete the glycol. A retired MD in my area told me they used to do the same thing for methanol poisoning after somebody got into some adulterated moonshine.

      1. So *that’s* how it works! That is fascinating. Effectively they’re using a milder ‘poison’ (ethanol) to swamp the processing of the stronger one. (Hope I haven’t mischaracterised that too badly).

        Thanks for explaining it.

        cr

  13. With it being the “you didn’t get me, really” day, my only comment on the triple-decker airliner joke is that I’ve played pool on several rigs with local rules about dealing with table movement. Some you’re only allowed to “address the cue” for 30 seconds before fouling by delay. Some you are allowed to re-take your shot if you call “move” between hitting the cue and it hitting or passing another ball. And some, if the balls slew to one end of the table, you run for the downhill lifeboats.
    I don’t see any intrinsic problem with playing pool on an airplane. Snooker – no show stoppers, but the smaller pockets would make it far far harder.

      1. Not just splashy ones either. Water is (a) bloody heavy, (b) acquires considerable momentum, and so (c) would do bizarre things to the centre of gravity, to which planes are highly sensitive. Quite aside from its ability to short out electronics.

        As even ships have found, notably vehicle ferries with huge enclosed open spaces i.e. vehicle decks, when the sea has got into them.

        Just think if a pool-full of water found its way into the cockpit…

        Actually, I rather think, if that pool-full of water sloshed in either direction (forwards or aft), it might acquire enough momentum to burst the nose (or tail) right off. Quite aside from the CG shift rendering the plane completely un-flyable.

        cr

        1. First thing I thought when I saw the photo of the APR001 pool was “Hang on, what’s going to happen to that water when the plane just backs up from the gate, or taxis down the runway?” I’ve see enough micro-demonstrations in pickup trucks, transporting large plastic tubs or bins of water for horses and other livestock. In one memorable incident, I saw a large cylindrical container of water launch itself over the closed back gate of a moving pickup, and smash onto the highway – the water drenched the following car, but fortunately didn’t cause an accident.

          1. Yes, ‘slosh’ can be extremely forceful and also extremely hard to control since attempts to stop it are likely to result in a slosh in the opposite direction.

            I recall travelling on an excursion train behind a NZR JA class steam loco with a ‘Vanderbilt’ tender, in which the water is contained in a cylindrical tank – I was standing on the front open platform of the leading old wooden carriage – down the grade from Okahukura tunnel towards Taumarunui, watching the tender lurching violently a foot each way as the water inside sloshed from one side to the other. It wasn’t a regular sinusoidal swaying, more like a wild jerk to one side as the water climbed up that wall of the tank, then a gentler sway back to mid-point, then a wild jerk the other way. Quite alarming, actually.

            (As an aside, I wonder if airliners have baffles in their wing tanks? I think they must have).

            cr

      2. Mass – not fixable. Slosh – you can reduce it, but the hydrodynamic free surface is going to be a killer (literally) unless you’re talking about a single-lane pool. Probably a killer then, too.

        1. Raises the question of what those forest-fire-fighting tanker planes have in the way of tank arrangements. The pickup and water-dumping arrangements and the positioning of the tanks must be very carefully located relative to the CG. I would imagine they must have a crew member dedicated to managing the water handling (and not just the pilot flipping a switch).

          cr

          1. No idea what they do use, but one option to keep open is using flexible rubber bladders hooked up to a rack of pumps. No especial structural requirements on the plane (a couple of days to retrofit to a convenient freighter?), and a very mature technology. I’ve certainly seen military logistics people using the same bladders for fuel depots, so they’re a known quantity to aviation.

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