Wednesday, August 08, 2012

That's Entertainment

I was saddened to hear that Marvin Hamlisch has died. I wasn't a huge fan of his chat show schtick, but he did have prodigious musical gifts. I have always thought that "What I did for love" is a wonderful understated song, for example.

It has also reminded me that an apology to my family is overdue for all the abuse I gave their eardrums when I was a kid teaching myself The Entertainer on the piano after he popularized it in The Sting. When I site down at a keyboard my neurons fire in a pattern that reflects what the playing is supposed to sound like. Audience members can only hear what it actually sounds like, so my juvenile attempts at rag-time syncopation must have been particularly trying.

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