Royal Oak

"Hey Mischa, we RULE" "Damn right Lenny!"

As smug as you'll get 'em......... Holy crap!

I'm with Bev here - the classical realm has this thread sewn up.....

Check out HvK out front

Any UK members watching "Utopia" on Channel 4? Certainly has me hooked.

I like to think I would eat horse if offered.

All of them? Nah - just the one, but a good one.

Arrived today, very nice. Thanks Michael

None taken; I knew that was the reason. We prefer our sports odd and complicated. Now that cricket thing has some possibilities; I can't figure it out for shit. I don't really get the scoring, but a sport where a guy can score 100 runs in one at-bat is intriguing. The ball they use is hollow, which I found out by chance while walking by a cricket game and picking up an errant ball to toss back to the players. Cricket is pretty big in Brooklyn because we have a large number of folks from the Caribbean who all played it in their home countries. No cricket ball I ever got hit by whilst batting inadequately was ever anything but solid and very hard. Not sure where the hollow Brooklyn-ball comes from. Always happy to derail a thread with cricket talk and I can't believe I missed the opportunity here earlier and now back to what I suspect will be an excrutiating and cringe-making performance by LA - how can it be anything but? Cricket's got it's own scandals, of the match-fixing variety. And yes, cricket balls are indeed solid. The one which broke my (now permanently dysfunctional) finger in 2009 felt particularly so.

Stockport's HMV was never much good to me. A big unit, but a very small jazz section. Stockport's town centre has one of the UK's highest percentage of empty shops. Now it's lost Comet and Jessop's and quite probably HMV (that's assuming it does close down).

Great pictures. Doesn't it beggar belief that such places existed?

Kind of sad, but utterly inevitable IMO.

Mine arrived yesterday, as described, very well packed. Thanks Hans

Hi Hans - I've sent a PM

Samuel Barber's "Adagio" is another melancholy one.

Me too! Though it always has me thinking of bombed cities - I've read one too many liner notes. Seek out a recording of Strauss' prelude to 'Capriccio' (for string sextet) which is full of the same 'longing' and sense of loss. Actually, if you don't know it already, try that Schoenberg too - it's an early work which comes from a similar world. Yes, it does kind of suggest bombed cities, but I too made the mistake of reading the liner notes first. I have the Schoenberg somewhere, will have a listen tonight.

I like Richard Strauss's "Metamorphosen". Don't bother asking me why - I just like the way it sounds.

A 'clever' remark but completely inaccurate. Part of the misconception with Wagner is just hearing the grander overtures and 'bleeding chunks' which only tell a tenth of the story. The piece that completely undermined my prejudice against Wagner a good 35 years ago was a recording of the prelude to Act III of Tristan - an incredibly haunting piece of music with a cor anglais pining out over a desolate shoreline. I too used to think of Ride of the Valkyries and all that loud stuff, but then I heard the Adagio for clarinet and string quartet and Siegfried Idyll, both of which are beautiful.

My daughter is....the only one in my family.

The Klemperer is too slow. I much prefer the foreboding of the Schuricht and the bombast of Toscannini..

Maestro fetishism is something I'm intrigued by. If I occasionally watch a concert on Sky Arts or the BBC proms, I often wonder if , when the conductor is bowing and scraping to the audience, the players aren't thinking to themselves "who does this prick think he is?" I mean, one would expect orchestral musicians to be able to play the right notes in the right places, no?

Alan Partridge Paul Calf Fat Bob

Mr Brooks Royal Academy Machiavellian None of the above are people, they were racehorses. Does this count?

I always liked "The Jimmy Giuffre 3" on Atlantic for my naps. I don't nap to music any more, as there is no comfortable chair / sofa / bed where the stereo is.

The Ice Cream man, according to an article in yesterday's Times.