Batiste at his home in New Jersey, playing one of his hand-painted melodicas.
Jon Batiste’s professors at the Juilliard School in New York were so disturbed by it that they called in a psychotherapist. One of his hometown mentors, the jazz icon Wynton Marsalis, was likewise appalled. “Get that thing off the stage,” he’d gripe. Even workaday subway riders, herding past Batiste’s underground performances, might’ve thought something was off-kilter, unusual, all that incredible virtuosity funneled into…what’s that thing even
called, anyway?
“Melody horn, melodion, harmonichord, mouth piano…” Batiste is inventorying the names for the peculiar instrument in his hands, the source of all that former tension but also, more important, almost lifelong delight. “If you look online,” he says, “there’s even more.” Indeed there are: pianica, melodihorn, triola, hooter, piano horn, and the rather sultry-sounding orgamonica. But most players, Batiste included, ca
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Middle age hasn t been kind to the members of the girl band Girls5Eva. Wickie, the diva of the one-hit-wonder group, is paying the bills by shooting geese at an airport. Summer misses her celebrity husband so much that she purchases a Cameo greeting from him. Gloria s current claim to fame is that she s one-half of New York s first gay divorce. Ashley died in an infinity pool accident.
Doesn t the gang who once harmonized on the unforgettable lines, We re your dream girlfriends / cause our dads are dead, deserve better?
They do. And they get it in Girls5Eva, a promising new sitcom from the folks behind 30 Rock and The Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
University of Texas Press
On September 29, 2001, just a little over two weeks after the terrorist attack on 9/11, the New York Friars Club and Comedy Central went ahead with a planned “roast” of Hugh Hefner. As expected, some of the comedians slipped in references to recent events.
UT Press book cover
Social activist Dick Gregory made an inspirational plea for unity. TV host Drew Carey took some potty-mouthed potshots at Osama Bin Laden. Both very easy. But then when the unpredictable screamer Gilbert Gottfried took the stage, his material included this bit: “I have to leave early tonight. I have to fly out to L.A. I couldn’t get a direct flight. I have to make a stop at the Empire State Building.”
Rolling Stone ‘New York Lonely Boy’: Inside That ‘Girls5eva’ Simon & Garfunkel Homage
How the sitcom’s creators and the folk duo the Milk Carton Kids came up with the show’s breakout song
By Heidi Gutman/Peacock
Early this year, Joey Ryan, half of the indie folk duo the Milk Carton Kids, received a text from his friend Sara Bareilles. No surprise there she, Ryan and Ryan’s musical partner Kenneth Pattengale have known each other for over a decade. This time, Bareilles asked if she could pass Ryan’s contact info along to some TV people she was working with. “I said, ‘Sure, of course, what is it?’ ” he recalls. “And she goes, ‘They want someone to do this song and it’s supposed to sound like Simon and Garfunkel.’ And we were like, ‘
While Oliver s comments from both segments actually were trending as "entertainment" on Twitter, it is clear from the various responses from viewers that it was seen more as a news item.