The late Jimmy Johnstone was a star football player for Glasgow-based Celtic F.C. during the 1960s and early 70s. Standing just 5’4″ tall and weighing barely 130 pounds, “Wee Jinky” – who was recently voted by the club’s famously diehard fans as the greatest Celtic player of all time – was famous for his toughness and for the jaw-dropping dribbling skills that enabled him to maintain ball possession in hostile packs of opposing players. Turns out he could sing pretty good, too: in tonight’s tippity amusement, recorded in 1969 as the b-side to a song called “Celtic We Are”, the wee scamp who the French dubbed “The Flying Flea” delivers a heartfelt rendition of a ballad called Passing Time.
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In tonight’s Tips music, recommended by SDA commenter Rita, Swedish tenor Jussi Björling and American baritone Robert Merill, along with the RCA Victor Symphony Orchestra under the conductorship of Renato Cellini, perform the duet Au fond du temple saint from Georges Bizet’s 1863 opera Les pêcheurs de perles (The Pearl Fishers).
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Everybody knows that carefully crafted optical illusions can cause us to misperceive what’s real – the relative straightness of a line, for example, or the relative size of objects – but what’s less commonly known is that visual cues can cause you to hear – to clearly hear – a different vocal sound than the one actually being made: Check out the remarkable and strange McGurk effect. If you don’t believe what you’re hearing, wait for the split-screen bit.
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Jay Wilbur and his band say Smile, Darn Ya’, Smile.
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Most of us can only hope to be as stylish and happening as five-year-old twins Justin and Jeremy.
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“Enter the Kiambu Municipal Fire Brigade to the rescue.” Oh dear.
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h/t

In tonight’s musical amusement en route to the Tips the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band remind us that – I love this line – No Matter Who You Vote For The Government Always Gets In.
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“That’s odd, I could have sworn I saw a…”
h/t K.A.R.
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So, buddy, describe to us exactly what happened…
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A brief look at the trajectory of Barack Obama’s presidency, starting with his inauguration.
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Sometime in the late seventies Bob Dylan became a born again Christian, much to the chagrin of many of his fans, who had considered him a standard-bearer for various social and protest movements. His 1979 album Slow Train Coming was much maligned at the time for what were considered to be its harsh and unforgiving Old Testament-type themes, but is now recognized as one of his greatest works. From that album, accompanied by the lovely solo guitar work of Mark Knopfler, here’s I Believe In You.
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In 1959 American songwriter Paul Clayton wrote a tune called “Who’s Gonna Buy You Ribbons When I’m Gone” (cover version here) that took its melody directly from an old public domain folk song called “Who’s Gonna Buy You Chickens When I’m Gone.” In 1962 Bob Dylan re-borrowed Clayton’s borrowed melody, as well as several key lines from the lyric (their respective publishing companies would later settle out of court) to write his subsequently oft-covered classic Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright. The following year Johnny Cash borrowed Dylan’s borrowed melody – and the same lyrical theme, and the same chord progression – to write a song, uniquely his own, called Understand Your Man.
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You probably think that the deer is alive, and the coyote is alive, and the pheasant is alive. Nope! They’re not!.
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The sort of things that bother you didn’t bother French actor, singer, and inveterate bottom pincher Maurice Chevalier one little bit, at least not when he was singing Living In The Sunlight.
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In tonight’s Tippity amusement The New Hot Five, led by Dr. Steve Call on Tuba, perform in front of a rapt audience in rural France.
h/t David Thompson
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What is that persistent clapping sound? Why, it’s Angie Dickinson, vigorously and involuntarily playing American minimalist composer Steve Reich’s Clapping Music on a 1967 Lee Marvin. Say what?
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Robert W. recently recommended via email this neat POV video showing rush hour traffic in Calgary.
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In tonight’s video, from Brooklyn-based oral history project StoryCorps, Richie Pecorella remembers his fiance Karen Juday.
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George W. Bush pays tribute to the victims of 9/11, their families, and the courageous passengers on United Airlines Flight 93 in a memorial speech in Shanksville, Pennsylvania.
h/t Robert of Ottawa
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In our Friday night tips music Kentucky-born singer, guitarist, and songwriter Merle Travis — who is perhaps most famous for writing “‘Sixteen Tons” — cheerily catalogs the multiple benefits of being with his Fat Gal.
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