A Certain Point of View: Writing, Film and Stuff

© 1994 The Baseball Project/PBS/Elektra Nonesuch In our sun-down perambulations of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing ‘base,’ a certain game of ball…. Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms…. The game of ball is glorious. - Walt Whitman, 1846 On September 6, 1994 - at the height of that year's season-ending Major League Baseball players' strike - Elektra Nonesuch released Baseball: A Film by Ken Burns: Original Soundtrack, a 31-track album featuring music and selected audio clips from Ken Burns' nine-part documentary about America's national pastime. Featuring performances by Count Basie and His Orchestra, Carly Simon, Dr. John, Natalie Cole, Lester Young (with Count Basie), Les Brown, the Big League Orchestra, Jacqueline Schwab, Betty Bonney, Harvey Hindemeyer, Duke Ellington, Mabel Scott, Branford Marsalis, and many more,  Baseball: A Film by Ken Bur...

On October 9, 2012, 50 years and four days after the premiere of Harry Saltzman and Albert R. Broccoli's production of Dr. No, Capitol Records released Best of Bond...James Bond: 50 Years - 50 Tracks, a two-CD compilation of title songs and other music from the first 22 EON films based on Ian Fleming's iconic British Secret Service agent with a license to kill: "Bond...James Bond."  Dropped to coincide with the premiere of director Sam Mendes' Skyfall - even though Adele's rendition of the eponymous title song was not included - this album (which was made in collaboration with MGM Music and EMI Records) is an update of 1999's 19-track disc Best of Bond...James Bond, an album that only presented the "main title" songs of the series up to director Roger Spottiswoode's Tomorrow Never Dies even though Michael Apted's  The World is Not Enough was released that same year. For Bond's 50th Anniversary, Capitol and MGM Music went b...