A Lark Ascending

Can't see it! Or is it obscured by steam?

The obvious choice:

Eroica - BBC4 drama doc about the first rehearsal.

I wonder if the cleaner used one of these:

Makes a change to find an art critic cleaning something off an art object instead of projecting things onto it. I once walked straight across an exhibit in the Koln art museum. I thought it was the floor. Turned out to be the thing I was supposed to be admiring.

I download but burn to CD-R and then listen in horse-and-cart fashion. I also love the i-Pod allowing me to carry a huge range of music with me and play it wherever I go - I have 4! Also great for early in the morning - I can potter around with the iPod on and not worry about the music seeping through walls and waking the neighbours. I've dabbled with Spotify but found I used it less than I expected. I only buy CDs now if I can't get the music via download. Interesting little snippet in this month's Gramophone about some Hi-Fi company which is training its vendors not to sneer at customers when they mention their iPod - instead tell them just how wonderful it will sound when linked through the gadget being sold.

Me too!

The word always sounds in my head in the accent of: [brian Sewell - upper-crust British guardian of the portals of civilisation] I also get constant visions of: [especially the Wine Club episode]

Quite horrible what this thread makes you dredge up from your memory.

Can't identify with most of your post. But I do share your apprehension of 'Art'.

Saxophones that require you to buy two seats on an air flight:

There used to be a great classical shop on the outside of that centre (St. John's?)...10 years gone, I suspect.

The Italian one with the great sandwiches? I used to drive up to Leeds once a month because the record shops were so good. Haven't been for 4 or 5 years in recent times.

It's been discussed many times before. That's exactly what I see happening. Except...I'd imagine the sure fire sellers will still come out on CD to sell to people who don't buy many recordings, never venture onto iTunes but might pick a CD up in the supermarket.

Why myth? I really don't get your dismissive response to the idea that, yes, there are great artists, and yes, they do create from themselves, and no, they don't do audience polling ahead of time. It's something not just confined to...ahem...'Art'. In general you can engage people more if you tell a story biographically. The Second World War in Britain engages far more if you put Winston Churchill as the hero figure; the Civil Rights Movement generally gets hung round the personality of Martin Luther King; and, of course, WWII in Europe was all about the ambitions of Adolf Hitler. It's not hard to see why the tale is told that way; but if you really want to analyse those events then something much more complex emerges. Similarly, the tale of Bebop is easier to tell hung round a few juicy personalities (Parker or Powell or whoever); the origins of jazz...Louis Armstrong, Sidney Bechet, Bix Beiderbecke etc of course. That's not to deny the enormous influence individual musicians can have on shunting things one way or another. But the 'myth' of the great artist (or the great man in history) is just a winning way of telling the tale, not what really happened.

Quite. I'd say it's inevitably an interaction. Performers grow from the people who surround them; the best also draw something distinctive from within (or from the ricocheting of external influences that creates something new). Some superb performers have locked themselves away in a bubble and created something wonderful; but I suspect most feed off interaction with an audience (live, on record or whatever). Think of all those composers who premièred a new work, didn't like the reaction and then revised it. There's a dialectic at work. Allowing the reactions of an audience to influence you is not the same as pandering to that audience.

Yeah Yeah Yeah

Deliberately so in the books. Enjoyed the TV versions but they don't quite catch the tongue-in-cheek of the novels. I'm planning on reading at least one of the books, so I'll found out what the differences are. You need to read them as if Atkinson is saying 'now how can I make the next step even more preposterous'. She's got a wicked sense of humour and the characters are beautifully drawn. I loved the relationship between the Scottish girl, the professor and the baby in one of the novels. The films miss out one of the daftest concepts - Brodie is bequeathed a fortune by a strange woman at the end of book 1; by book 3, after relocating to France, he's lost it all after marrying a woman who promptly absconds with all the money. You just have to suspend your disbelief and enjoy the ride - a bit like opera!

Deliberately so in the books. Enjoyed the TV versions but they don't quite catch the tongue-in-cheek of the novels.