Steven Blier and James S. Russell
“I’ve seen how their relationship has grown, how it has matured but never staled,” Robert J. Hughes, a friend ordained by the Universal Life Church, said as he led the ceremony. “I’ve seen the proof that love at first sight can be love for long-term.”
Love love, thank you spring!
Temperament by Stuart Isacoff
Temperament by Stuart Isacoff is an exhilarating journey through centuries of sublime thought, argument, invention, and progression guided by the search for a true structure of harmony.
Radiohead’s “Creep,” Sung by Prince and Carrie Manolakos
But the song was suddenly rehabilitated when, over the weekend, a video of a singer named Carrie Manolakos singing “Creep” at small concert in New York went viral.
Manolakos, whose background is in musical theatre, performs the song with perfect earnestness, closing her eyes and choking back tears. She floats lightly over the soft notes and reaches up to a stringent wail towards the middle of the song. She takes all the qualities that made “Creep” moving in 1992—what Nick Hornby, writing in this magazine in 2000, called the song’s “unnerving sincerity,” its “mournful anguish,” and “the brilliance of [its] conceit”—and repackages them in an old-fashioned night-club singer’s torch song.
Manolakos’s version does what covers ought to do; it picks up a song that has sunken into throwback territory, dusts it off, and treats it like a classic.
- Andrea DenHoed writes about the arc of Radiohead’s “Creep”: http://nyr.kr/IbOg2h
Warrior by Frank Perero
Warriors line, the pages of history,
Proudly standing, where heroes have stood.
Bravely defending, those most at risk-
The weak and the helpless, the misunderstood.
I take their lead, in defending the honor,
Of those spiritual outcasts, caught up in life’s’ war.
For all these I fight, with a sternness of purpose,
My faith is my shield; my words are my sword.
Quick, come to the window, life’s forces are massing,
Waiting to mount, a vicious attack.
Advance scouts have been out, searching for weakness,
At every corner, and crossroad they’re at.
So we must remain diligent, we must remain calm—
To compromise our emotions, we cannot afford.
If we reason things out, we can defeat them,
Our faith is our shield; our reason’s our sword.
Predators line, the streets where we live,
They conspire and block, the paths that we take.
They’re an arrogant band, who too often find,
For all their crimes, they never will pay.
But they’re in my vision, I know who they are,
As I take a vow, for your just reward.
And in the battle, I’ll have the edge-
For my faith is my shield; and courage my sword.
