Divamensch

Here's Howard: The impact of performance is often heightened by the date on the ticket. For example, I once saw Diamanda Galás on Easter Sunday. Billy Bragg on Labor Day. The Orb on New Year’s Eve. Except for Diamanda maybe, no other show lined up with the stars like seeing The Cramps on Halloween. Crazy fun. Sacramento Psychobilly legends, The Cramps were formed by wife and husband, Lux Interior and Poison Ivy. They were raw and erotic, retro and porno, all mashed together i

We had a funny situation with the Tony for Best Actor in a Musical in 1952. Diva: Yul Brynner Mensch: Best Supporting Actor in a Musical? They really thought that was a supporting role? My litmus test is - - who is it about? Like when What's Love Got To Do With It? was up for Oscars they gave both Angela Bassett and Laurence Fishburne nominations for leading performances. Ike Turner IS the leading male figure in the movie but from my point of view, who is it about? The movie

Here's Howard: Perhaps no woman on this list embodies the feminist ideal of independence in rock and roll like the dear Polly Jean Harvey. A fearless front person and an accomplished musician and songwriter, PJ always commands the room. I’ve seen her quite a few times over the course of her long career, from small venues in the 90s to larger halls in this century. I always know I am in for a seething sonic adventure with a few cherished intimate moments of heartbreak and long

Happy New Year, everybody! The Best Actress winners for 1951 make a tidy pair: Diva: Best Actress in a Musical - - Ethel Merman in Call Me Madam Mensch: Best Actress in a Play - - Uta Hagen in The Country Girl Merm, was she ever anything but a diva? It was baked in with that girl. Here she is doing one of the show-stopping numbers in that show, "You're Just In Love." Russell Nype is so nerdy a cute, a perfect foil for the human steamroller known as Merman. And his voice is so

My brother Howard just alerted me to the death of Brigitte Bardot at the age of 91. She’s a major icon of the middle of the 20th century. Is it possible I’ve only seen one of her movies? I watched this preview and I want to see it again. I wonder if, like Marilyn Monroe, she was actually a gifted actor who couldn’t break out of the box in which she was placed.

Here’s Howard: Born in Detroit, Suzi Quatro was a part of the great Mickie Most, Chinn-Chapman UK power pop hit machine in the 1970s (Sweet, The Knack), big across Europe and Australia. She was powerful performer, platform boots and wild stage outfits while kicking ass on bass and vocals. Besides the smash hit, Stumbling In, most stateside know her as Leather (and Punky) Tuscadero from the 70s sitcom, Happy Days. Legend has it, Garry Marshall asked her to be on the show becau

Wait a minute!!! I was SURE I sent this out on Wednesday… Ah well, no biggie. South Pacific swept the Tonys in 1950. They say it was the song "You've Got To Be Carefully Taught" and its overt criticism of racism led to the show getting the Pulitzer Prize. But Rodgers and Hammerstein knew that such a controversial song would need to be couched in the context of something easier to take so they followed it with a gorgeous love song, "This Nearly Was Mine." Clever. Diva: "This

Here’s Howard talking about The Slits: Any survey of British punk and post-punk music would be remiss to omit The Slits. German born singer Ari Up decided to form a band with her friend, Palmolive after meeting Patti Smith in 1976. Their staccato sound was dub-infused and Ari’s quivering yelp was an unmistakable force in a music just forming the future of modern rock. A bit of a nepo baby, Ari’s Mom was a close friend of Jimi Hendrix and married John Lydon (Johnny Rotten of T

We're at the third year of the Tonys, 1949. It's lazy to use a musical as a diva and a play as a mensch so I'll try not to do that often. But this year it was just so perfect. Here are the winners for Best Musical and Best Play: Diva: Kiss Me Kate Mensch: Death of a Salesman Here's the original Broadway leading pair doing a number on TV a few years later. I love the super stagey operetta flavor of their performances, very old school. And wow, YouTube has a complete TV product

I was shocked to see the news of the murder of Rob Reiner and his wife Michele. He was 78 years old. His father was the great Carl Reiner. Rob hit the scene as Mike aka Meathead on All in the Family. Here's a hilarious scene between him and Archie Bunker. This discussion about socks and shoes feels like Seinfeld to me, a big to-do about nothing. He made a pivot to become a director in the early 80s. His first film is a classic, This is Spinal Tap. He directed so many other

Dave and I heard the Chamber Music Society of Lincoln Center on Sun Dec 7, 2025. It was an all-Baroque program culminating in Vivaldi's *The Four Seasons.* The program started with two short pieces for organ by J. S. Bach, would you believe NEW pieces by that desiccated old corpse? These pieces were unsigned and thought to be by Anonymous until just a month ago. A group of musicologists and music sleuths decided they could say they're by Bach, largely through connecting the m

Here's Howard: The way a singer holds a microphone has always fascinated me. Some crooners hold it intimately by only the tips of their fingers, curling the extra cord around their other hand over and over. Rock singers often hold it clenched in a tight fist. Lemmy from Motorhead famously sang into a mic bent down above his head on a too tall mic stand. Roger Daltrey liked to swing the mic from the cord high above the crowd's head before snapping it back to his hand right whe

There were three winners for Best Actress in a Play at the 1948 Tonys: Diva: Judith Anderson ( Medea ), Katharine Cornell ( Antony and Cleopatra ) Mensch: Jessica Tandy ( A Streetcar Named Desire ) No one will argue that Medea and Cleopatra are divas down to their toes. You might think that Blanche in Streetcar is a diva, and she's often played that way, but not by Miss Tandy. In Miss Tandy's portrayal she was natural, fragile, delicate, withdrawn, confused. Stanley Kowalski

Karen, Bruce, and I heard Les Arts Florissants at BAM on Dec 5, 2025. They performed a program of two sacred works by Marc-Antoine Charpentier, the *Messe de Minuit* and *Pastorale de Noël.* Les A F are a French ensemble that mostly does French Baroque opera and similar works. Karen and I saw their production of Lully's *Atys* at BAM in 2011, a performance that was one of the greatest things I've seen in my life. We've seen them a handful of times since then and they're alway

I'll hand it over to Howard: People always talk about a record that “changed my life”. As a decades-long record junkie, I will tell you that Every record changes my life, but there was one that really set me reeling forever. In 1976 I was a Partridge Family fan and listened to a lot of WLS AM radio. Then Patti Smith was on Saturday Night one week and my musical world imploded. That next week I snuck some of my silver dollar collection out of the house and bought her debut, Ho

I'm starting a new long-term series today - - I've gone through the Oscars and the Grammys, next up is the Tonys. I hope you enjoy it. I'll start with the very first year, 1947. There were two winners for Best Choreography: Diva: Michael Kidd, Finian's Rainbow Mensch: Agnes de Mille, Brigadoon Kidd's choreography was vigorous, athletic, showy, exciting. De Mille's had elements of all of those but it was rooted in the storytelling, the supported the show rather than became a s

My brother Howard alerted me to the death of English playwright Tom Stoppard, age 88. The play that established his reputation was Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a dazzling riff on Shakespeare first staged in 1966. Here’s a scene from the 1990 film, directed by Stoppard: He won the Tony Award for Best Play for R and G and won it another four times, more than any other playwright. He had a side hustle writing screenplays. I first encountered his work in Brazil : That

Look up the word FIERCE in the dictionary and there's Miss Tina Turner. An icon, an American original, a killer singer and dancer, a survivor, she checked so many boxes. Here’s my experience of her, coming of age in the 80s - - she was a solo artist because that's what she was doing at the time, she was on the charts and at the top of her game doing solo work. I had no idea of her Ike and Tina years until I dug a little deeper. Maybe someone younger than me would know the who

My brother Howard alerted me to two celebrity deaths, one person I didn't know, one I did. The unknown person (for me) was Jimmy Cliff (age 81). I'll quote the jam-packed first sentence of his NY Times obit: "Jimmy Cliff, a onetime choirboy who emerged from the rough quarters of Kingston, Jamaica, riding a rebel spirit and a fierce sense of social justice to help make the supple, bobbing sounds of reggae a global phenomenon with songs like 'You Can Get It If You Really Want'

This week we're looking at another recent hot word: Diva: brat Mensch: bratwurst Here's a handful of CNN broadcasters discussing the term "brat" and the then-current holder of the title of most brat, Kamala Harris. The brat discussion starts at around 3:55. But to me, the Wisconsin boy, the letters B-R-A-T mean one thing and one thing only: