This week’s award goes to Billy Joel. I have chosen “Piano Man” as the feature song.
It’s nine o’clock on a Saturday
The regular crowd shuffles in
There’s an old man sitting next to me
Makin’ love to his tonic and gin
He says, son, can you play me a memory?
I’m not really sure how it goes
But it’s sad and it’s sweet and I knew it complete
When I wore a younger man’s clothes
La la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da
Chorus:
Sing us a song, you’re the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we’re all in the mood for a melody
And you’ve got us feelin’ alright
Now John at the bar is a friend of mine
He gets me my drinks for free
And he’s quick with a joke or to light up your smoke
But there’s someplace that he’d rather be
He says, Bill, I believe this is killing me.
As the smile ran away from his face
Well I’m sure that I could be a movie star
If I could get out of this place
Oh, la la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da
Now Paul is a real estate novelist
Who never had time for a wife
And he’s talkin’ with Davy who’s still in the navy
And probably will be for life
And the waitress is practicing politics
As the businessmen slowly get stoned
Yes, they’re sharing a drink they call loneliness
But it’s better than drinkin’ alone
Chorus:
Sing us a song, you’re the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we’re all in the mood for a melody
And you’ve got us feelin’ alright
It’s a pretty good crowd for a Saturday
And the manager gives me a smile
’cause he knows that it’s me they’ve been comin’ to see
To forget about life for a while
And the piano, it sounds like a carnival
And the microphone smells like a beer
And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar
And say, man, what are you doin’ here?
Oh, la la la, de de da
La la, de de da da da
Chorus:
Sing us a song, you’re the piano man
Sing us a song tonight
Well, we’re all in the mood for a melody
And you’ve got us feelin’ alright
I previously mentioned that Wayne Mac will be on 6PR tonight, he has since informed me that he will also be on 2UE tonight with Mike Williams (aka Shirl from the Mike Walsh Show).
I don’t know the exact time of Wayne’s 2UE appearance, but it should be sometime between 6PM and 9PM Sydney time (7AM-10AM GMT). 2CC (and possibly some other regional stations) relay Mike Williams, so you might be able to hear it locally, if not, the 2UE webstream is available on the 2UE website.
Wayne will also be on 6PR’s “The Way We Were” program from 10PM-11PM Perth Time (1AM-2AM Canberra Time, 2PM-3PM GMT). Again, some stations may relay this, but if you can’t receive it locally, the 6PR webstream is available on the 6PR website.
I’ll do my best to bring you recordings of the 2UE and 6PR interviews, although I can’t guarantee anything.
In response to the allegations that Wayne is an undisclosed advertiser on this website and/or my podcast…no, I just enjoy hearing his interviews, and where possible try to get copies for his benefit, he is not an advertiser or sponsor of this website and/or my podcast, just a friend.
A few nights ago, after an episode of Without A Trace which featured a couple bomb scares, I had a rather odd dream.
I was sitting in my bed, looking out the door of my bedroom, where a TV image was situated much like a hologram. This TV image was showing the SBS program “Toyota World Sports”, which was interrupted by a WIN News Update (which makes no sense considering that WIN is a regional relay for most Channel Nine programming, not SBS) where they announced that the Woolworths store in Manuka had been blown up. This was interrupted by some bagpipe music with people line dancing, and then “Toyota World Sport” resumed. Interestingly, in reality there is no Woolworths in Manuka, there is a Coles though.
This might be a good dream to attach a “Don’t try to emulate my dreams” statement to.
Every now and then, when I take a look at the blogs that have linked to this site, I notice comments about this site and its content. A couple days ago Thomas Baxter was talking about Ricky Gervais’ decision to charge for his podcast (a topic I covered here) and started talking about the podcasts he listens to. Whilst he didn’t exactly mention a reason for listening to Samuel’s Persiflage, he did mention that he likes the audio quality. I’ll let him explain.
But, thanks to the medium of podcasting, many many people are able to grasp the technology and put things from utter tripe on the net, to well crafted and presented podcasts – Samuel’s podcast is a fine example of the latter purely from the perspective that even though he is doing it himself, he puts out a podcast that has very good (compared to many others) audio quality, another example of a similar podcaster (however he has fallen by the wayside in recient times) is Andy Grace.
Thanks for the feedback, it is good to see people talking about the audio quality of Samuel’s Persiflage, especially considering the amount of work I put into it. Naturally, if somebody has a gripe about my podcast, I’m more than happy to entertain it as long as it is constructive, there is no point emailing me to inform me that my podcast is “the worst waste of the internet” and not tell me why or what you think would make it better, as one anonymous correspondent did a couple weeks ago via the contact form.
For the record, my aim with all audio in Samuel’s Persiflage is to create something which sounds decent, is legible, and doesn’t having annoying sudden variances in volume, preferably remaining roughly the same for the entire duration. Where possible I try to do this without audio compression or excessive processing. In some cases, such as the phone interview with Danny O’Brien from the Electronic Frontier Foundation in the last episode, it was necessary to do a fair bit of processing to even out the volume, even if it wasn’t particularly successful, in the end, it came out a lot better than it originally sounded.