Back in the day, there were things called Cinema Organs. They were behemoths, monsters, with rows and rows of keys. They could make all manner of sounds besides a pipe note. You know the expression “all the bells and whistles”? That came from these organs: the biggest and most expensive models had extra pipes which, […]
Category: Exotica
To most of the Anglophone world, the name Manuel evokes the harried Spanish waiter who had the misfortune to work at Fawlty Towers. But before John Cleese created Basil Fawlty, Manuel must have been a bit exotic, a name with a hint of the Latin Lover about it. How else to explain an act called […]
A little while ago I wrote about the Pizza Principle: do not judge the music of a country by the pizza named after it. The principle applies most obviously to Hawaii, where tourist clichés obscure a rich musical tradition. Discovering the wonderful steel guitar playing of Sol Ho’opi’i inspired me to be more open minded […]
Planet Vinyl 