Quiet Hedgehog looking up

Dear readers, I haven't gone away, but I have taken on a very difficult extended project this year that is taking up a lot of my time and energy. One of the reasons for doing it was to get out of my comfort zone and do various kinds of work I'm not used to, and I'm certainly getting that from it. But I don't have the quiet internet time that I used to have. Hopefully the project should be more or less wrapped up by mid-October. At which point I may just go and lie on a beach and look at stars.

It's my birthday today :)

In 1996, they pointed the Hubble Space telescope at a tiny patch of sky - the size of a grain of sand held out at arm's length - in which no-one had ever managed to see anything at all. Over several sessions, they collected photons, practically one by one, for a total of ten days. Measured them, mapped them, noted their colour, to build a picture.

In the picture were some very faint stars that no-one had ever seen before - and three thousand galaxies.

Will someone please

Will someone please arrange, perform, and record a cover of Pharell Williams' "Happy", as a milonga?

There's quite a bit of live tango music about, but my experience with it has been that either the forces are simply too weak, or the band are just not at the level that makes it come together and sound good, or the band is good but they are either too classical (and just don't make me want to dance at all) or concentrate on rhythm at the expense of melody to such a degree that the heart of tango music is lost. This last one is less of a problem in milonga and vals, which is why I like Sexteto Milonguero's milonga much more than their tango.

I adore the best stuff of Orquesta Típica Victor. Yes, it's a house band. But I'm a dancer, not a musician. It's deeply professional dance music; great tunes arranged and played with a purpose - for dancers.

There is no reason why someone couldn't arrange a good song as a tango, milonga, or vals criollo right now. There are loads of people who'd like to dance to it. Maybe start with milonga and vals.

Three illustrations.

Postmodern Jukebox performing their leader's own arrangement of "Careless Whisper".



Cacareando.



Happy.



Come on!