Moving Again

Yes, if all goes as planned, three months after tragedy struck my present housing situation and after months of dealing with the petty actions of the latest lousy landlord, I’ll be dragging my stuff to a new place tomorrow.

The new landlord couple (the landlady and her husband) seem much nicer.  They’re even helping me move.  Compared to other situations of late, it seems almost too good to be true. (It still is a “share,” but my new room is cut off from everyone else’s place in the big apartment and relatively speaking, the room is huge!)  I don’t really know much about the new landlady, except that she is from Indonesia and has mentioned it a lot.  This is a little further east, in Elmhurst - just a dozen or so blocks away – but here, many of the residents come from places a little further east than the South Asians who were so prevalent in the neighborhoods that I’ve been in over the past few years. Quite a few people in this part of Elmhurst are from Indonesia and surrounding areas.

Assuming the next place works out OK, the next challenge will be to try to find steadier work before the Unemployment extensions run out. As you all know, I’m always in fear of ending up on the Footpath. Though the Footpath might not be all bad…maybe I’ll meet someone nice while I’m there.

Meanwhile, I’ve fallen dreadfully behind on answering comments here. Sorry about that… It always takes me too long to pack, and if I really had any extra time at my disposal (it being questionable whether it really was extra time), I spent those few precious moments writing long comments on other people’s blogs! But assuming there’s no trouble with the Internet connection when I move into the next place (though there always seems to be, at least for a short time)…I should get back to you in the comments (you know who you are!) in a day or two. [Currently looking for appropriate clip of harried writer unable to catch up with projects because of distractions/pressures around him or her...]
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P.S. For various reasons, this is probably a temporary post also – now you see it, probably in a few days, you won’t.

“Ya Qurban” from Kabuliwala (1961)

(Just a great find… Music by Salil Chowdhury)

A Web Site With an Incredible Collection of Vintage Soundtrack MP3s

Tracing back URLs from the Khurshid Anwar tribute site in my last post, I discovered the most incredible site for old Hindi soundtrack MP3s (also with soundtracks in Punjabi and Urdu)…  It’s the Songs section of Surjit Singh’s Hindi / Urdu / Panjabi Film / Movie / Photo / Song Area.  There are soundtracks from the 1930s up to at least the ’60s, but I think this is especially great for finding soundtracks to films from the 1940s (which is now my favorite decade for Hindi film music).  All of this material, being in MP3 format, is easy to download as well as just listen to.  And the selection is so overwhelming, I don’t know where to start.  Actually, I’m starting with the Noor Jehan film soundtracks, because I saw that it has Mirza Sahiban, Khandan, Village Girl, Jugnu, Lal Haveli, and Zeenat.  It has a couple of very early Naushad soundtracks too (yes, I’m going to download Ratan!), and countless other goodies from that decade that look positively delicious. 

The site is not perfect, and the lists are very confusing (which is why I’m not adding all the URLs to everything I mentioned – too much work!)…  They are listed by dates added and the names of the people to whom the collections belong(?), so you have to browse a few sections to find anything in particular.  Some of the soundtracks also have one or two songs that are not playable in my Windows Media player (it says they are missing “codecs,” whatever that means).  But these are minor flaws in a site that offers numerous soundtracks that I could not find in other searches that I’ve conducted over a period of many months.  The MP3s are also listed song by song, so it takes a little while to download most soundtracks (you can’t download a whole album at once, as far as I can tell), but it can be very pleasant if you also listen to them while you’re doing it.  I know it will take me a while, but it will be well worth it.

Today is the 25th Death Anniversary of Khurshid Anwar

So, a good excuse to post a few more of his songs!

This is another fine song from Intezar, which is a musical masterpiece in Pakistani cinema. I posted my favorite songs from this film earler, here.

This is one of the songs that I listen to a lot on my homemade Noor Jehan compilation.  I’ve posted a few links to another song from Koel before – this film has several songs that are absolutely beautiful.

A nice song by Suraiya in 1947, when she was just 18.  Parwana  was also the last film starring K.L. Saigal (I’ll have to post more of K.L. Saigal sometime…).

I like the songs that Geeta Dutt (or, rather, Geeta Roy) sang in Nishana (1950).  Unfortunately, I couldn’t find a video clip, but it’s certainly worth posting just for the audio.

There’s a good Khurshid Anwar tribute site, with lots of MP3s. The main link contains only his earlier, Hindi film music, but then if you go to the added links, you’ll find a lot of his Pakistani film music, too.

More of That Other Kind of Swing

More fabulous stuff from Nagina (1951). I posted this one once before too, but the clip was removed, and besides, now we get to see it with subtitles, thanks to Tom’s post at Dailymotion. (You might notice that I just replaced the clip in the last post with his subtitled version too.)

Here’s That Boogie Woogie Song Again!

I posted it a while ago but I think it disappeared and it’s definitely worth a rerun now that I found it again…

Megha Mujra: “Mera Pya Ghar Aya”

Taking A Day Off from Bollywood…

This venture to the Gold Diggers of 1933 was inspired by an interesting obituary for the Busby Berkeley chorus girl Dorothy Coonan-Wellman that appeared in the blog History Is Made At Night.  I think it has striking relevance for the victims of the current Great Recession (myself included).   Also, aside from the obvious connections between Busby Berkeley and a whole bunch of Bollywood dance scenes, I see a special connection in the segment beginning at about 0:46 – is that a reference to Lakshmi?  (It certainly would fit…)

Sandhya, You May Have Won a Very Tough Competition

No, I’m not talking about the fictional one that you danced with Gopi Krishna at the end of Jhanak Jhanak Payal Baaje; I’m talking about the competition for best peacock dance. Hypothetically, if I had to pick one most favorite, I think I might say that you beat out Vyjayanthimala and Padmini. Though maybe not as skilled as those two goddesses of classical cinema dance, you do have a great style and you have the most wonderful expressions. Add to that fantastic costumes and set designs (credit the hubbie?), a few seconds of dancing at the end by Gopi Krishna (who was amazing throughout this film as both a dancer and dance director), and some very uplifting and addictive music by Vasant Desai, and… Well, these are all reasons why this may be my favorite peacock dance…possibly.

P.S. My overall opinion of this movie: Dance performances breathtaking and main performers great, music very enjoyable, visuals often fantastic, story a mixed bag, and most of the main characters just a bit irritating. I might elaborate sometime…

I Walked Into a Deli on 65th Place and Queens Boulevard at 1 AM, and This is What the Night Shift Guy Was Playing on the TV

This isn’t Little India, it’s about a dozen blocks away, much closer to my present house (where my neighbors play salsa more than anything else)… And it’s just the regular old deli I stop in to get soda late at night. I had just taken the bus home, and I’d been listening on my headphones to the Madhosh soundtrack. So then I walked into this regular old deli and I heard young Lata’s voice again, very loud and clear. It was very disorienting… I hadn’t looked at the TV yet when the guy was ringing up the soda (the screen was behind me) and so I asked him “What film is that?” And then I knew in a second but at the same time he told me “Barsaat,” and then he started to explain that Barsaat was an old, classic Indian film and I was saying, “I know, I know,” but he went on explaining a little because, you know, I’m just a white guy (sigh)… [Note a couple of hours later: OK, I was just being funny here. There was nothing frustrating about this exchange. It wasn't like those experiences in my sem-famous Tales of Two White Men post. And I'm looking forward to getting Diet Pepsi there again soon, so I can see what the next cinema treat will be. I'll just have to make sure to go in at about 1 am - and I'll be sure to report afterwards.]