Music Magg

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2026 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night (Sunday, February 1) I watched the 68th annual Grammy Awards on CBS, hosted by Trevor Noah (the not-very-interesting Black South African Comedy Central brought to the U.S. as a replacement for Jon Stewart, who’s now returned). Noah began the show by announcing that this would be the last Grammy Awards show broadcast on CBS. He didn’t say what’s going to happen to it after that, though my fear is it’s going to end up on one of those abominable and expensive “streaming” services that have systematically destroyed all the media through which I prefer to experience entertainment. Noah also said it was the last time he would host it, which is fine by me. The show was the usual lumbering beast; it was slotted for three hours (5 to 8 p.m. Pacific Time so the East Coast media mavens can have it on so-called “prime time” in their part of the country, though at least starting it at 5 is better th...

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2026 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved Last night (Sunday, February 1) my husband Charles and I watched a Turner Classic Movies showing of one of the most delightful movies ever made: Ingmar Bergman’s 1975 film of Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart’s 1791 opera The Magic Flute. This was originally produced for Swedish television, though it was released theatrically elsewhere in the world. Charles and I both saw it in the late 1970’s in its initial U.S. theatre run. I’m not sure if this was the first time I saw it, but I remember a screening at San Francisco State University when both my then-girlfriend Cat and my first boyfriend Bruce were students there. I invited both of them to attend it with me and read them a synopsis of the plot, and Bruce started giggling every time the synopsis contained the word “gay.” Cat got irked with him and said, “The word ‘gay’ does not always mean ‘homosexual’!” Bergman cast his opera with then little-known singer...

by Mark Gabrish Conlan • Copyright © 2026 by Mark Gabrish Conlan • All rights reserved The main event last night (Saturday,Jaunary 31) was the fascinating tribute concert to Johnny Cash, We Walk the Line: A Celebration of the Music of Johnny Cash , given in Austin, Texas at the same theatre where the Austin City Limits show takes place on April 20, 2012 as a commemoration of the 80th anniversary of Johnny Cash’s birth. (Johnny Cash was actually born on February 26, 1932 in Kingsland, Arkansas, but never mind.) I suspect that we were getting just a portion of the full program shot in Austin and released on DVD in 2012, partly because imdb.com give 107 minutes as the total running time (KPBS slotted it for two hours but burdened it with the interminable “pledge breaks” that afflict all too many of PBS’s music shows) and partly because the cast list on imdb.com included people like Amy Lee and the stunning Rhiannon Giddens who weren’t featured on the portion we got to see. Most of the ...