Charles Farley
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Resurrection

4/27/2022

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The Mark C. Smith Concert Hall, in downtown Huntsville, Alabama, is a big, resonant, barn of a venue where even the sounds of large, multi-instrumental, electrified rock bands like those of B.B. King, Trucks and Tedeschi, and the Temptations can bounce around like over-excited toddlers.
The 2,100-seat place was built more for larger symphony, ballet, and musical theater orchestras.  So it was a delight to hear the Huntsville Symphony Orchestra and the 100+ voice Huntsville Community Chorus perform Gustav Mahler's Symphony No. 2 in C minor, also know as the "Resurrection," last Saturday night in the grand, cavernous hall.  You have to give it up for Gregory Vajda, the Symphony's Music Director and Conductor, and for Ian Loeppky, the Chorus' Artistic Director, for packing the stage with as many talented performers as it could possibly hold, including the huge choir behind a full orchestra of seven timpanis, five double basses, two harps, a plethora of horns, strings, and other assorted instruments that, in the piece's most stirring moments, sounded as if they could indeed raise the dead.
"One is first beaten down and then raised on angels' wings to the greatest heights," Mahler wrote following rehearsals for the symphony's premiere in 1895.  "The whole thing sounds as if it came to us from some other world.  I doubt anyone will be able to resist it."  Indeed!


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Faster

4/21/2022

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Drove down to Birmingham last night to have dinner with my daughter and her new husband at a Latin joint called Luna.  Pretty tasty.  Then around the corner at a club called Saturn to hear Samantha Fish out on tour to promote her new album "Faster."  Which it is!
Stood with a crowd of mostly middle-age+ white people who may have been expecting the more bluesy Samantha of former days.  What they got instead was pretty much straight-ahead rock 'n' roll, played by a pared down band of bass, drums, keyboard, and, of course, Fish's flashy guitar, sans horns.  Which, surprisingly, they didn't seem to mind.  I think because Fish is such an exuberant performer who manages to throw herself into whatever she plays with increasing power, precision, and professionalism.  And, of course, since rock is so rooted in the blues, you hear it in whatever she sings.  Regardless, the audience ate it up.  One gray-haired guy behind me yelling at her, "I think I love you!" despite his female partner's cold look of displeasure.
There were only a couple of glitches in the show, to be expected as Fish quickly transitioned from one tune to the next while changing guitars, keys, and tempos, all in a matter of seconds.
One note of caution, if you go, show up about an hour late to avoid the opening act, if it's a guitarist named Django, who played last night with a booming sound machine, sort of like guitar karaoke, and who apparently never heard of the dictum "less is more."  As my wife was apt to quip about these showoff guitar slingers:  "I do believe that boy is a bit too much in love with that there guitar."
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The Blog is Back

4/12/2022

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Apologies for abandoning the Blog for the past few months.  I've been busy putting the finishing touches on my sixth book.  Entitled Then Come Kiss Me, it's a coming-of-age novel set in Kansas during the "Swinging Sixties," and features firsthand concert accounts of some of the period's best performers, including:  Count Basie, Marilyn Maye, the Drifters, B.B. King, Bobby "Blue" Bland, James Brown, and Nancy Wilson, not to mention some regional favorites who some of you Kansas old-timers might remember:  Spider and the Crabs, Little Jimmy Griffin, and Roger Calkins and the Fabulous Silver Tones.
I'll keep you posted on the books plodding progress toward publication.  Meanwhile, here's a blast from the past, the Fabulous Flippers, a tantalizing
teaser of what's to come:
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    Charles Farley is an author who lives and writes in Huntsville, Alabama.

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