Free Republic

As much of the world descended into the Dark Ages after the fall of Rome, one civilization shone brilliantly: the Byzantine Empire... Season 1, Episode 11. Engineering An Empire: The Great Walls of Constantinople (S1, E11) | 44:47 History | 14.8M subscribers | 352,819 views | August 31, 2023

“Bread and circuses,” the poet Juvenal wrote scathingly. “That’s all the common people want.” Food and entertainment. Or to put it another way, basic sustenance and bloodshed, because the most popular entertainments offered by the circuses of Rome were the gladiators and chariot racing, the latter often as deadly as the former. As many as 12 four-horse teams raced one another seven times around the confines of the greatest arenas—the Circus Maximus in Rome was 2,000 feet long, but its track was not more than 150 feet wide—and rules were few, collisions all but inevitable, and hideous injuries to the...

It’s a safe bet that most of you reading these words have been to a professional football game. Many of you—particularly those who live in Philadelphia—have probably witnessed the occasional brawls between the home crowd and those foolish enough to wear an opposing team’s colors. A few of you, I dare say, have been involved in such altercations. But how often have you witnessed football fans actually kill opposition partisans? Well, perhaps I should qualify that by saying American football fans. When was the last time you heard of agitated sports nuts rioting in the streets and burning down half...

“The nine most terrifying words in the English language are: ‘I’m from the Government, and I’m here to help.'” That is one of President Ronald Reagan’s most famous quotes — a declaration of war on the bloated bureaucracy of the Great Society. Conservatives are used to hearing that quote cited as the ultimate example of what we believe, or are meant to believe: that the government is responsible for our problems, crushing individual initiative and traditional values. I had reason to reconsider that quote this week, when Secretary of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) Scott Turner visited the Pacific Palisades...

The grim lesson of the devastating wildfires in California over the past week, which turned my community into ruins, is clear: private services work, and public services do not. I live in Pacific Palisades. My house is the last one standing on the corner. There is rubble in every direction. The streets along the route my wife and I used to walk in the evening are a post-apocalyptic scene. Every beautiful house we admired is destroyed; every child our kids played with is gone. A mile away, the center of town — which we call the “village” — is a...

Some known, some obscure, but all fun.

Imagine a record label where the heads of preeminent brass (classical), jazz, and blues labels collaborated with Beezwax Records, LLC to issue one release per year in their respective genres. Imagine a record label whose A&R vetting was guided in part by a select group of visually impaired, eclectic audiophiles tilting toward the same. Imagine a record label that limits its market exclusively to a set of prequalified subscribers who eagerly await their next Beezwax Record, and when they get it it has their name on it. Imagine a record label that dovetails seamlessly with the manufacturers of physical...

Beezwax Records was established in 1997 as a sole proprietorship dedicated to the recording and distribution of brass, jazz, and blues music. Their home base is Elkhart, Indiana, where more brass instruments have been manufactured than anywhere else in the world. When the first Beezwax Record came out on October 31, 1997, it was in CD form. It was also date stamped, serialized, embossed, personalized, and registered into a database as a way to honor the passion that exists between artist and audience. The same holds true for the tens of thousands of CDs that were shipped since that day....

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5NpOZMZr5iU

Neil Young and Charles Manson have a bizarrely intertwined history. The two men once shared a jam session at a time when Manson was an up and coming talent, one that had started to make waves in California and caught Young’s attention. Their paths then diverted, as Young became one of the most revered artists on the planet and Manson became the world’s most notorious cult leader. Manson would then later become the muse for Young’s track, ‘Revolution Blues’.

There’s a growing list of veteran pop and rock acts who’ve announced an end to touring — Paul Simon, Joan Baez, Elton John — and we can now add another: John Mayall. The godfather of the British blues scene, who will turn 88 next month, has announced an end to his “epic road-dog days”: “I have decided, due to the risks of the pandemic and my advancing age, that it is time for me to hang up my road shoes,” he says.

Eric Clapton was visibly intoxicated onstage at a concert in Birmingham on Aug. 5, 1976. But the message he spoke at the mike was clear. As he advocated his support for Enoch Powell, a controversial right-wing British politician well-known for his anti-immigration views, the guitarist took things even further, asking the audience if there were any foreigners present. “I don’t want you here, in the room or in my country,” Clapton said. “Listen to me, man! I think we should vote for Enoch Powell. Enoch’s our man. I think Enoch’s right, I think we should send them all back." His...

You might think that you’d do a lot to support your favorite artists, but chances are your story wouldn’t match that of Bruce Iglauer’s. When he wanted to hear an album by his favorite Chicago blues act that didn’t actually exist, he created an entire record label just to have something to put on his home stereo and to spread the word on the artist. Now, more than 350 releases later, Alligator Records will mark its 50th anniversary this month with a 3-CD label anthology 50 Years of Genuine Houserockin’ Music. It comes out on June 18, the same day...

Watching American cities burn across the map all summer long is a little dispiriting for those of us foreigners whose first acquaintance with these burgs was through American songs. I have been to St Louis a handful of times, but, if you sneak up on me unawares and yell the name at me, I'm more likely to eschew my limited personal experience and burst into a few bars of "Meet Me in St Louis" or "The Saint Louis Blues" - notwithstanding that the former renders the town exclusively as "St Louiee" and the latter does likewise in all but a...

Still got the blues.

Things went a bit sideways this week, but it's all good.

Just some blues I have been booting up lately. Enjoy. Or not.

It rained on their parade. And they didn't care. After 52 years, a little liquid sunshine wasn't going to stop the long-suffering hockey fans in St. Louis from celebrating their team's first-ever Stanley Cup win in euphoric fashion. The city’s director of special events was expecting about 500,000 people to attend Saturday’s downtown parade and rally at the Gateway Arch. Afterward, Jeremy Rutherford of The Athletic reported that city and team officials revised that estimate to “more than one million.” It was par for the course for a fanbase that had shown up in a big way as the Blues’...

In overtime, Bobby Clarke scores the game winning goal to give the Flyers their first win on Boston Garden ice since November 12, 1967 and, more importantly, send the Series to the Spectrum tied at one game each.The call by Gene Hart and Don Earle.

Legendary blues great born Albert Nelson this date in Indianola, MS. Listen to his recording of the Englishman - German - and Jew Blues, performed with Albert Brooks here.