[Genuine Realist]

Ugh. The data is still there. Try starting a reply to a post that appears blank, and you'll see it in the quotation as you're composing, but if you post it'll still be blank.

This issue is related to the outage we had, possibly somehow caused by upgrading to a newer php version (which was the solution George found to get us back online), or possibly still part of the original issue.. Sadly I'm useless at debugging issues with the board software we're using.

Well, not totally useless. I have worked around the issue by deactivating the audio/video embedding plugin. So now the posts are visible again, but the YouTube (etc.) links are just links, not embedded. Hopefully one of us will have time to fix the plugin or find one that works later.

Having left Top 40 and FM music nearly 50 years ago, I"m very grateful for a thread like this, since my only contact with a lot of solid contemporary music is when some song is used in a musical track in a popular show, e.g., this Regina Spektor song from The Leftovers.

However, in the last year, I've had a lot of fun with David Bennett, a young musicologist on You Tube. He looks like he's about 12, but really knows him stuff and applies the skills to popular songs.  Four videos you might enjoy;

(1) One Beatles Song ("Norwegian Wood") in Seven Different Modes. This either fascinates or bores you witless (my wife). I'm in the first camp.

(2) Analyzing the Beach Boys' Greatest Song. What's going on musically in 'Good Vibrations'? Quite a bit, it turns out.

(3) Did the Beatles Know Music Theory? Of course not, in a formal sense, but many of the songs show a supreme practical knowledge, which is why they have staying power.

(4) How Can This Superb Melody Ever Be A Variation Of This Banal One? Every one knows the almost magical melody that Rachmaninoff derived out of a theme by Paganini. (It's variation 18, I come to learn.) But how on earth did such an incredibly lovely passage emerge from the original Paganini theme, which is almost trivial? A small question that has perplexed me for years. At 12:34 of this video, Bennett explains how. Thanks.

[Genuine Realist]

Ugh. The data is still there. Try starting a reply to a post that appears blank, and you'll see it in the quotation as you're composing, but if you post it'll still be blank.

This issue is related to the outage we had, possibly somehow caused by upgrading to a newer php version (which was the solution George found to get us back online), or possibly still part of the original issue.. Sadly I'm useless at debugging issues with the board software we're using.

Well, not totally useless. I have worked around the issue by deactivating the audio/video embedding plugin. So now the posts are visible again, but the YouTube (etc.) links are just links, not embedded. Hopefully one of us will have time to fix the plugin or find one that works later.

Having left Top 40 and FM music nearly 50 years ago, I"m very grateful for a thread like this, since my only contact with a lot of solid contemporary music is when some song is used in a musical track in a popular show, e.g., this Regina Spektor song from The Leftovers.

However, in the last year, I've had a lot of fun with David Bennett, a young musicologist on You Tube. He looks like he's about 12, but really knows him stuff and applies the skills to popular songs.  Four videos you might enjoy;

(1) One Beatles Song ("Norwegian Wood") in Seven Different Modes. This either fascinates or bores you witless (my wife). I'm in the first camp.

(2) Analyzing the Beach Boys' Greatest Song. What's going on musically in 'Good Vibrations'? Quite a bit, it turns out.

(3) Did the Beatles Know Music Theory? Of course not, in a formal sense, but many of the songs show a supreme practical knowledge, which is why they have staying power.

(4) How Can This Superb Melody Ever Be A Variation Of This Banal One? Every one knows the almost magical melody that Rachmaninoff derived out of a theme by Paganini. (It's variation 18, I come to learn.) But how on earth did such an incredibly lovely passage emerge from the original Paganini theme, which is almost trivial? A small question that has perplexed me for years. At 12:34 of this video, Bennett explains how. Thanks.