Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Sunday night classical music show, here are Mariss Jansons and the St. Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra performing, a capella, Pavel Grigorievich Chesnokov‘s funeral service for male choir Γ (7:45).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Saturday night distinguished lecture, documentary & interview series, here is Dr. Walter Lewin, professor of physics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is well known for his M.I.T. OpenCourseWare lectures for their first and second physics courses: 8.01 ~ Classical Mechanics and 8.02 ~ Electricity and Magnetism. Prof. Lewin is also well known for his shtick, his love of his subject matter, and his devotion to his students’ quest for knowledge. Before digging further into 8.01 and 8.02, you might like to check out this interview with Walter.

Needless to say, I’ve watched all 72 lectures, totaling about sixty hours (partly because I like them better than many other so-called forms of entertainment, partly for old-times’ sake, and partly because they apply every day to every-day life), and while it’s difficult to pick favourites, I will say that one of my favourite lectures is 8.01-28: Hydrostatics, Archimedes’ Principle, & Bernoulli’s Equation, in the Goldilocks sense: it’s not too hot, it’s not too cold: it’s just right (sort of like my lecture on the 30’th anniversary of the Peng-Robinson Equation of State). Anyway, without further ado, here are the lectures:

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Friday night old-time television crime-detective show, here are Jack Webb as Sergeant Friday, et al, in The Big Bounce, II & III episode of Dragnet (1955).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Thursday night wild-card show, here is Mr. Stephen Gordon Hendry, MBE, performing his ninth Perfect 147 Score & II in his competitive career, at the 1999 World Snooker Championship. In this case the big question is, for £157,000: What about the pink?

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Welcome to the Wednesday edition of SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight we feature Egyptian star Sha’ban ‘Abd-al Rahim, who is perhaps best known abroad for his songs “Hey People, It Was Only a Tower and I Swear by God that They Are the Ones Who Pulled it Down” and “I Hate Israel.” In the Egyptian context ‘Abd-al Rahim — who was recently commissioned to compose a jingle for McDonald’s’ new McFalafel sandwich — is a veritable singing catalogue of other, smaller, topical issues as well, and has”released a number of songs…about the dangers of smoking cigarettes and marijuana (‘Abd al-Rahim admits to smoking both), unjust taxes, pollution of the Nile..” and so on. No topic is too quotidian or particular for his lamentational advice. In “Beware of Avian Flu” he sings:
Go and empty the coop of all its ducks and pigeons.
Ducks and pigeons
If you see a dizzy goose, beware of it
or pick up the phone and report it.
Report it.

Even when he’s singing about something as politically charged as the Jyllands-Posten cartoons —

These are crazy people, and their top guy is an idiot
Denmark? They are nothing but pagans.

— he comes across as not angry, but more like a fatalistic cab driver chatting about how the world has gone to hell in a handbasket. Ethnomusicologist James Grippo writes:
“In present-day Egypt, popular music can be discussed as falling into two overlapping categories: sha‘bi and shababi (youth music). Sha‘bi, literally ‘popular,’ but more accurately understood as ‘of the people,’ is the quintessential ‘music of the people,’ a sometimes populist and sometimes popularized manifestation of urban folk music conventionally performed in lower class life-cycle celebrations such as weddings and circumcisions.
“As the reigning sha’bi superstar, Sha’ban ‘Abd al-Rahim is a cultural phenomenon who maintains a delicate balance between ‘fool’ and ‘hero.’ The archetypal ‘fool’ in Middle Eastern culture is Joha, or Goha in Egypt, known endearingly as the wise fool or trickster. Like ‘Abd al-Rahim, Goha ‘is portrayed as either very stupid or miraculously clever.”
Here he is, then: Sha’ban ‘Abd al-Rahim, resplendent in his “gaudy shoes that match either his belt or his outfit (which he says often matches his upholstery and curtains)” performs his catchy Swine Flu Song on Egyptian TV.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Tuesday night open music show, here are Béla Fleck and the Flecktones performing Big Country (8:05). Fleck has received Grammy nominations for country, pop, jazz, bluegrass, classical, folk, spoken word, composition, and arranging. To date, he is the only artist to receive nominations in so many categories.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Monday night jazz show, here are Woody Herman & his Swingin’ Herd, with Paul Fontaine, Gerry Lamy, Bill Chase, Dave Gale, Billy Hunt, Phil Wilson, Henry Southall, Bob Rudolph, Sal Nistico, Jackie Stevens, Bobby Jones, Frank Hittner, Nat Pierce, Chuck Andrus, and Jake Hanna, performing Taste of Honey (1963, 3:24).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Sunday night classical music show, here are the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra performing Ludwig van Beethoven‘s Symphony No. 6 in F Major, Herbert Von Karajan conducting (35:50).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Saturday night distinguished lecture, documentary & interview series, here from Trains Unlimited is their most excellent Steam Trains, II, III & IV documentary. For those of you keeping score at home, that’s the Union Pacific 3985, a four-cylinder simple articulated 4-6-6-4 Challenger type of steam locomotive owned by Union Pacific Railroad, shown in the image to the right, and which is shown in the videos, and there is a lovely twist at the end of the videos, involving the 4-8-4 UP 844. Interestingly, perhaps, the UP 3985 locomotive, which was built in 1943 by the American Locomotive Company of Schenectady, New York, is currently the largest operational steam locomotive in the world.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Friday night old-time television crime-detective show, here are Raymond Burr as Perry Mason, Barbara Hale as Della Street, and William Hopper as Paul Drake, with guest stars David McCallum & Jackie Coogan, performing The Case of the Fifty-Millionth Frenchman, II, III, IV, V & VI, in 1964.

Update: I forgot to mention, tonight’s Cheese Selection here in
the SDA LNR studio is Kirkham’s Lancashire from Neal’s Yard.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

With a tip o’ the hat to Robert W in Reader Tips, here is Iowahawk‘s I Guess You Had To Be There (The Barack Obama Celebrity Roast). [Might not be suitable for work prudes.] Old-timers will no doubt recall Iowahawk‘s ground-breaking Interwebothique work ca. September, 2004, when he wrote My Teleprompter is Deadly (Excerpts from the new Inspector Dan Rather Mystery), which opens with the infamous line, “My name is Rather. And I’m a dick.” When the written word alone can make one laugh so hard that one has to leave the room to catch one’s breath: I think that’s notable.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Thursday night wild-card show, here are Nova Fronteira performing Irmao (2001, 5:27).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening, welcome to the Wednesday edition of SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your musical enjoyment, electrifying Cajun performer Doug Kershaw plays and sings his signature tune Diggy Diggy Lo. Turn it up, and feel free to dance.
Your Reader Tips are always welcomed in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Tuesday night open music show, here with our old friend Mr. Cab Calloway and his big band, in what Fred Astaire once called “the greatest dance number ever filmed”, are Fayard Nicholas & Harold Nicholas, the Nicholas Brothers, in their famous performance of Jumpin’ Jive, from the movie Stormy Weather, in 1943 (4:48).

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Vladimir Horowitz once said that if Art Tatum ever took up classical music seriously, Horowitz would quit the next day. Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Monday night jazz show, here is Mr. Art Tatum performing Antonín Dvořák‘s Humoresques No. 7, in G-flat major, Op. 101, B. 187 (2:46). I wonder what Dvořák would have thought of what Tatum does at 0:48 &c ?-)

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Saturday night distinguished lecture, documentary & interview series, here is Lucille Ball‘s interview on the Dick Cavett Show in 1974: Part I, II, III, IV, V, VI, VII, VIII, & IX.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Friday night international espionage show, here are Leo G. Carroll as Mr. Alexander Waverly, Robert Vaughn as Napoleon Solo, and David McCallum as Illya Kuryakin, with guest stars William Shatner, Leonard Nimoy, and Werner Klemperer, performing The Project Strigas Affaire, II, III, IV, V, & VI episode of The Man from U.N.C.L.E., from which you surely no doubt recall that United Network Command for Law and Enforcement are battling their archenemy: Technological Hierarchy for the Removal of Undesirables and the Subjugation of Humanity; in 1965.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Thursday night wild-card show, here is a video of Unicat‘s MXXL 24 AH, a MAN TGA-41.480 based 8 x 8 vehicle, negotiating some difficult terrain (5:06). Now, it occurs to me that you may well ask, what’s with the dune buggy, Vitruvius? Ah, well, pace the nine air conditioners and the links supra, then, perhaps some images from the inside might be of assistance:

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening, welcome to the Wednesday edition of SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight we present a song from troubled musical genius Jerry Lee Lewis, whose early music, at least, demonstrated his natural abilities in the essential skill which underlies (real) rock ‘n’ roll’s primal power: the seamless combining of swung and straight rhythms.
Lewis’ parents, members of the Assembly of God church, were devout Pentecosts who believed that “music to dance to from came from the devil,” and that “drinking and carousing with women would send him to hell.” This schism between his upbringing and his music might partially explain why Lewis — who was Jimmy Swaggart’s first cousin — seemed to be his own worst enemy; he often came across in interviews as being defensive and pointlessly arrogant at the same time. In performance, he seemed to be almost crawling out of his skin as he hammered out brilliantly off-timed, jacked beats on the piano and created a primal, prurient din of forward energy invigorated with a sense of can’t-stop-it-now straight-to-hell wrongdoing.
Without further ado, then, here’s Jerry Lee Lewis, a true iconoclast and one of the brilliant few who helped create and nail down rock ‘n’ roll’s distinct and unmistakable fusion of different idioms, in a 1965 performance of Breathless.
Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.

Good evening ladies and gentlemen, welcome to SDA Late Nite Radio. Tonight, for your delectation and pursuant to our Tuesday night open music show, here are The Flamingos performing Rock & Roll (3:07). According to the Wikipedia link supra: The foundation for the Flamingos was laid when cousins Jacob Carey and Ezekial Carey, bass and 2nd tenor, formed the group in Chicago, after meeting cousins baritone Paul Wilson and first tenor John Carter, at a black Messianic Jewish synagogue.

Your Reader Tips are, as always, welcome in the comments.