Sri Lanka News Updates with Discussions

TC,

[are you going on your annual pilgrimage!]

Sorry for getting you involved in this mate, but I thought I`ll use your query to say a few things as I feel I owe an explanation to you and a few others whose names I`ll keep out.

You must be wondering what the hell is going on.

A lot of people have written a lot of things. I appreciate the people whom I have interacted with and have not commented and not got involved in this. Sometimes what people don`t write, says more about themselves.

Saxophone legend John Coltrane`s 1964 recording, A Love Supreme, is one of the masterworks in the canon of jazz: most musicians know it. Many have performed parts ? if not all ? of the 32-minute suite.

A Love Supreme: The Story of John Coltrane`s Signature Album. Its author, Ashley Kahn,

`John Coltrane is one of those rare musical figures who transcends both his time and category,` Kahn says. `Today, in addition to jazz fans, rockers and rappers, head-bangers and hip-hoppers all swear their allegiance to him. And no album in his catalog reaches a wider audience than A Love Supreme, what he called his `humble offering to God.`

Bedtime for Bonggo.

Preface to The Stranger
by Albert Camus
January 8, 1955


I summarized The Stranger a long time ago, with a remark I admit was highly paradoxical: `In our society any man who does not weep at his mother`s funeral runs the risk of being sentenced to death.` I only meant that the hero of my book is condemmed because he does not play the game. In this respect, he is foreign to the society in which he lives he wanders, on the fringe, in the suburbs of private, solitary, sensual life. And this is why some readers have been tempted to look upon him as a piece of social wreckage. A much more accurate idea of the character, or, at least one much closer to the author`s intentions, will emerge if one asks just how Meursault doesn`t play the game. The reply is a simple one he refuses to lie. To lie is not only to say what isn`t true. It is also and above all, to say more than is true, and, as far as the human heart is concerned, to express more than one feels. This is what we all do, every day, to simplify life. He says what he is, he refuses to hide his feelings, and immediately society feels threatened. He is asked, for example, to say that he regrets his crime, in the approved manner. He replies that what he feels is annoyance rather than real regret. And this shade of meaning condems him.

Saturday Night

Who do you love?
Who do you really love?
Who are you holding on to?
Who are you dreaming of?

Who do you love?
When it`s cold and it`s starlight
When the streets are so big and wide
I love you
An ordinary girl
Can make the world alright
Love me all the way
Saturday night
Saturday night

Quarter to five
When the storefronts are closed in paradise
Meet me outside the Cherry Light
You and I walk away
An ordinary girl

Wrecking Ball is a 1995 Emmylou Harris album that found the country music singer veering away from the traditional acoustic sound for which she`d become known, to team up with rock producer Daniel Lanois (most commonly associated with U2). The album has been noted for its murky, atmospheric feel, and featured guest performances by Steve Earle, Larry Mullen, Lucinda Williams, and Neil Young (who wrote the title song). Though her choice of songs had always been eclectic, the album was regarded as a departure for Harris who, by the age of 48, had become something of an elder stateswoman in country music. It received almost universally positive reviews, making many critics` year-end `best of` lists, and pointed Harris` career in a somewhat different direction, where she would incorporate a harder, albeit plaintive edge that would single her out from the complacent, country music mainstream. As a career-redefining album, Wrecking Ball was likened to Marianne Faithfull`s 1979 Broken English album and Johnny Cash`s later American Recordings. Wrecking Ball won the 1995 Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Folk Recording.

Never asked nor incited others to die for my wars

Win or lose, if the need be, I`ll fight my own battles

And die a obscure death with the head held high

Four Last Songs

The Four Last Songs (German: Vier letzte Lieder) for soprano and orchestra were the final works of Richard Strauss, composed in 1948 when the composer was 84. The premiere was given in London on 22 May 1950, featuring soprano Kirsten Flagstad accompanied by the Philharmonia Orchestra, conducted by Wilhelm Furtwängler. Strauss did not live to hear it.

Strauss had recently come across the poem Im Abendrot (At Sunset) by Joseph Eichendorff, which he felt had a special meaning for him. He set its text to music in May of 1948. Strauss had also recently been given a copy of the complete poems of Herman Hesse, and he arranged three of his works ? Frühling (Spring), September, and Beim Schlafengehen (Going to Sleep) ? for soprano and orchestra. (According to Arnold, a fifth song was unfinished at Strauss` death.)

My Back Pages


In a soldiers stance, I aimed my hand
At the mongrel dogs who teach
Fearing not that Id become my enemy
In the instant that I preach
My existence led by confusion boats
Mutiny from stern to bow.
Ah, but I was so much older then,
Im younger than that now.

Yes, my guard stood hard when abstract threats
Too noble to neglect
Deceived me into thinking
I had something to protect
Good and bad, I define these terms
Quite clear, no doubt, somehow.

For obvious reasons!

For daily warnings about the dangers of sax and relationships!

`Good girls go to heaven, but bad girls get to go everywhere.`

SBC, LC, BC, women have for decades been encouraged to form a bastion of sexual repression. They have been significant guardians of sexual propriety and puritanism in western societies. It is notable that it was women in particular, and no less feminists, who formed campaigns in the 1920s against alcohol. This movement is paralleled by more recent feminist campaigns against pornography and even the depiction of women in advertising as partially naked and sexual. Christine Wallace, in her biography of Germaine Greer, indicated that in the 1950s the nuns in Australian Catholic Schools, where girls were educated, promoted the idea that only men could enjoy sex. Women could not.

Happy B`day to all of us!

Marantz Model 9 Vacuum Tube Power Amplifiers.
A pair manufactured in 1964 sold for $15,300.

http://tinyurl.com/2gvc2v


`The model 9 is a single-channel 70 watt amplifier with highly professional performance characteristics. The precision and ruggedness of its internal and external construction speaks for itself---it is of a quality which will assure its owner the utmost in reliability. Two model 9 amplifiers will provide the very finest stereophonic performance.`
From the Marantz Model 9 Instruction Manual

Sri Lankan stars in Lancashire leagues

Pathirana smashes 277 in Twenty20 onslaught

September 5, 2007

Sri Lankan first-class player Dhanuka Pathirana scored a remarkable 277 off 72 balls in a Twenty20 match in Lancashire`s Saddleworth League to steer his Austerlands side to 366 for 2 and an easy win over Droylsden. Pathirana smashed 29 sixes and 18 fours in his onslaught.

`Everything seemed to hit the middle,` Pathirana, who had to borrow a bat as he had left his at home, said. `I was seeing it like a football. It was like a dream ... I think I did some serious damage to some of the vehicles in the car park.`