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PBS's "A Salute to Vienna" November 15: Fun, but Way Too Much Whipped Cream

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night (Saturday, November 15) I watched a rather odd show on KPBS called A Salute to Vienna , which is apparently a revue-type show that has been touring the world for 25 years even though I’d never heard of it before. I’d seen the promos for it on KPBS previously and it seemed mildly interesting, and since there was nothing else on I wanted to watch (Lifetime is showing Terry McMillan-produced romantic dramas and Turner Classic Movies was running an absolute masterpiece, Akira Kurosawa’s 1963 film noir High and Low – recently remade by Spike Lee – but my husband Charles was scheduled for a 1 to 10 p.m. shift, he’d be getting home in the middle of it, so instead of watching it last night I chose to order the Criterion Collection Blu-Ray so he and I can watch it together) I decided to take my chances with it. It became clear early on that this show’s “salute to Vienna” wouldn’t be about the tr...
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John Lennon’s and Yoko Ono’s “Power to the People”

The Legendary August 30, 1972 One-to-One Concerts Finally Get Their Just Due on CD – Sort Of by MARK GABRISH CONLAN • © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan “The streets of our country are in turmoil. The universities are filled with students rebelling and rioting. Communists are seeking to destroy our country. Russia is threatening us with her might and the Republic is in danger. Yes, danger from within and without. We need law and order. Yes without law and order our nation cannot survive. Elect us and we shall restore law and order." – Adolf Hitler, Hamburg, Germany, 1932; quoted by Yoko Ono, One-to-One Concerts, New York City, August 30, 1972 On August 30, 1972, John Lennon, Yoko Ono, and the New York-based Left-wing political band Elephant’s Memory gave two concerts at Madison Square Garden in New York City. These were the only full-scale concerts Lennon ever gave between the breakup of The Beatles in April 1970 and his murder in December 1980. Ironically, Lennon had actually b...
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November 2: A Sunday Afternoon at the Organ Pavilion That Didn't Go According to Plan but Was Nice Anyway

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Yesterday afternoon (Sunday, November 2) my husband Charles and I went to an unusual concert at the Organ Pavilion in Balboa Park. The original plan had been to have San Diego civic organist Raúl Prieto Ramírez play with the Navy and Marine Bands, but Raúl got called away to play a concert in Palm Desert and the military bands were unavailable due to the seemingly endless government shutdown. (Donald Trump gave an interview to 60 Minutes last night in which he made it clear that his price for ending the shutdown is total capitulation by the Democratic Party. No surprise there.) So Russ Peck was called in to throw together a program for the U.S. Navy’s “Fleet Week,” and naturally he relied on patriotic material as well as some of the medleys he’d played at his last Organ Pavilion appearance, when he performed on the “Not-So-Silent Movie Night” August 25, where he played live behind three Laurel and...
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Sue Palmer Brings Her Infectious Blues/Swing/Jump Sound to the Belly Up Tavers with her Motel Swing Orchestra

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Later last night (Friday, October 17) my husband Charles and I watched an entertaining Live at the Belly Up episode featuring local musician Sue Palmer and her Motel Swing Orchestra: Sue Palmer on a Korg electric keyboard; Liz Ajuzie, lead vocals; April West, trombone and second vocals; Jonny Viau, tenor and baritone saxophones; Steve Wilcox, electric guitar; Pete Harrison, upright acoustic bass (he was previously a bass guitarist and he learned the stand-up bass specifically for this band); and Sharon Shufelt, drums, who also suggested the band’s name. They played 11 songs during the course of the one-hour set, and while I was a bit disappointed that only the opener, Lou Donaldson’s “Blues Walk,” was an instrumental, Ajuzie is an excellent blues shouter and a far subtler singer than Kim Wilson of The Fabulous Thunderbirds, who’d played the show two weeks ago. She’s also a Black woman who dyes her...
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Lovely Afternoon of Beethoven Chamber Music at St. Paul's October 4

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Yesterday (Saturday, October 4) I got two reviews done for Fanfare magazine, and in between I went to a nice concert at St. Paul’s Episcopal Cathedral featuring the Rev. Penny Bridges, who in addition to pastoring the church is also a quite good amateur viola player (no viola jokes, please!). She led a concert featuring two chamber works by Beethoven, one little known and one well known. The little-known piece was a duet for viola and cello officially called “Duet mit zwei obligaten Augengläsern,” which means “Duet with two obligatory eyeglasses.” Apparently Beethoven gave that title because the violist and cellist for whom he wrote it were both nearsighted and needed glasses to read the music – which caused the audience at the church to chuckle when both Bridges and her cello partner, Janet White, put on glasses so they could read the music. The piece is usually believed to have been written in t...
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The Fabulous Thunderbirds on "Live at the Belly Up": Great Blues Band, but Could Use a Better Singer

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved On Friday, October 3 I took advantage of my husband Charles’s relatively late work call (1 to 10 p.m.) to watch the latest installment of Live at the Belly Up on KPBS featuring a blues band called The Fabulous Thunderbirds. They’ve existed since 1974 and came as close as they ever got to the brass ring of stardom in 1986 with a song called “Tuff Enuff” [sic] that was featured in a movie called Gung Ho . Their Wikipedia page tells a rather sad tale of record contracts signed and then canceled as the band’s personnel changed over the years. The original lineup included Jimmie Vaughan, Stevie Ray Vaughan’s older brother, on guitar, but last night’s lineup was a simple four-piece: vocal, guitar, electric bass, drums. I’ve often judged Live at the Belly Up episodes by the number of songs the band crowds into their one-hour (less intro, outro and the inevitable interstitial interview segments) time slo...
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"Live at the Belly Up" Presents 1960's Cover Band Back to the Garden

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2025 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night (Friday, September 26) I watched a Live at the Belly Up episode on KPBS which attracted my attention not only because it was a new one featuring a band I hadn’t heard of, but the band was a group called Back to the Garden that does covers of 1960’s rock songs. It seemed odd that Live at the Belly Up was presenting a cover band, though the band’s Web site is rather defensive about their status. Their Facebook page insists, “This is not a ‘tribute band’ impersonating the looks/costumes of famous musicians. Instead, Back To The Garden puts their focus entirely on the music.” They also insist that they’re not just presenting the music but incorporating it as part of a “theatrical experience.” As such, one of their band members is a self-proclaimed “storyteller” named Robert John Hughes who delivers historical lectures between some of the songs to offer the context in which they were first ...
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