Steven Rajam

Patient, sobbing: But Doctor, I AM Pagliacci!
ChatGPT: Apologies. I didn't realise when recommending Pagliacci's epic show to cure your depression that you were the genius himself. I'm impressed! With regards to your initial question, I can recommend seeing the Great Clown Pagliacci.

There's something slightly off about Haydn's Cello Concerto no.1 in C. It was rediscovered in the 20th century and every time I hear it I'm hella suspicious of a bit of artful forgery

ROSÉ dammit sorry

I like this a lot. You'd get some composers (Reynaldo Hahn?) extremely effective but niche, like Derek Underwood on a turning wicket, or Kuldeep Yadav.

Joe Root bowls like Rameau. Lots of nondescript stuff to hold up an end - but with an uncanny knack of pulling out a blooter when you need it.

The opening of the finale of Lalo's Symphonie Espagnole is one of the most exhilaratingly charming, naughty and genuinely lean-in first 30 secs of anything ever written. Then big Édouard screws it up.

(In this way it's not unlike the Blackpink song APT before Bruno Mars opens his stupid mouth)

The older I get, the more I have the nagging suspicion that there is only one composer who literally ALWAYS nails it, and that composer is Dvorak.

But we don't pay him enough kudos because we like angst and profundity in an artist rather than them just being *ruddy good at everything*

Almost no-one realises that If you were to rank the most fascinating British composers of the last 100 years, Howard Skempton would be in the top 5.

(Maybe in the top 3)

Philip Glass is a way better composer than you think he is (Songs and Poems; Einstein; Belle et La Bete; Usher), he just chooses not to show it often because he couldn't give a solitary about pleasing you and he likes making coin.

This I quite like.

Sibelius is one of the most innovative and brilliant musical minds of the 20th century but his most popular stuff (the Violin Concerto, Karelia Suite) absolutely sucks ass. No-one, not even Beethoven or Shostakovich or Prokofiev, has a worse genius to balls ratio

One like, one niche opinion about classical music history

ehhh 304 for effort

There is an online review of the new Fantastic Four film that whales on its "short runtime" of 1h55 and I would like to invite the author quite fervently to get in the sea

Apart from Chloe Kelly's which may be the greatest penalty I've ever seen.

THE FOOTBALL

THE *ABSOLUTE* FOOTBALL

@m-f-g-r.bsky.social

BBC will no longer broadcast "high risk" performances

Saw it on TV in the late 90s and enjoyed it - but my understanding was that the rompy campy tone was felt to be a bit insensitive to the real-life victims (some of whom were still alive at the time of making IIRC)

Cancel the internet, we have a winner

Gael Monfils, GAEL ABSOLUTE MONFILS

What a player, what a character, what a man.

#wimbledon

Movie you've watched more than six times with a gif. Hard mode: no Star Wars, Star Trek, LotR, Marvel.

I second this heartily. An extraordinary, strange, beautiful, and intensely moving film without a single word spoken.

🎶 Mary McAleese I think it's Mary McAleese I really think so (think so think so think so) 🎶

I can't hear the Vapors' Turning Japanese without thinking of former Irish President Mary McAleese

ohh I'm as tired as an egg

I cannot emphasize this enough that for YEARS:

-trans women played various women’s sports.

-trans kids got medical assistance as they and their parents needed.

-trans folk could get accurate documents.

-trans folk used the bathrooms that felt appropriate.

AND NOTHING BAD HAPPENED.

This is what I tell people when they say “trans people overreached, they asked for too much.”

No. We asked for a reasonable amount, we got a lot of it, things were fine with all of that for years, and then the demons of the right decided to make everyone hate us and put a ton of resources into it.

The ball that just did for Crawley:

a) very nearly clips Crawley's pad right in front of the stumps
b) clips the bat
c) very nearly then clips the bails
d) is caught in the slips.

ie. BUMRAH NEARLY GOT CRAWLEY OUT THREE DIFFERENT WAYS IN A SINGLE BALL

What an absolutely magnificent, magnificent, magnificent bowler Jasprit Bumrah is. Just extraordinary.

okay and here is my ‘sounds like a shitpost but it’s genuine’ UK heatwave tip: if there is a Saxon or Norman church near you, and it’s open, go sit in it. not gothic, they have too many windows, get you some thick stone walls with some high up tiny windows. they stay cold. and you can just sit there

I once was part of a TV crew that interviewed Quincy Jones, and afterwards he made a beeline for me - as the only other brown guy in the room - and with a huge smile, clapped me on the back and asked me "so where are your people from?"

This was lovely, though it probably helped he was Quincy Jones.