#Martin Sexton

[popentertainmentconcertreviews]

KT Tunstall & Martin Sexton – Keswick Theatre – Glenside, PA – May 4, 2023

Folk-based singer songwriters KT Tunstall and Martin Sexton turned out to be a perfect pairing in their recent co-headlining gig in the Philly suburbs. Their individual styles both meshed and contrasted, making for a fine evening of smart and funny stories and tunes. Each artist performed solo, mostly on acoustic guitar (each artist did one song on piano, Sexton did a few on banjo and Tunstall also did some electric songs). Each did about 12 songs in their set, and then got together for a two-song encore.

Sexton took the stage first, mixing his homey storytelling with his sturdy voice and gentle guitar plucking. He luxuriated through a nice cross-section of his songbook, warbling (and as he pointed out, periodically yodeling) through the likes of “There Go I,” “Diggin’ Me,” “Freedom of the Road,” “Happy” and “Virginia.” Most relatable was one of his newest songs, the life-during-the-pandemic ballad “Hold On,” in which he sweetly catalogued all the things he did in his home with his family because suddenly the outside world had pretty much stopped.

Perhaps Sexton’s finest moment though was when he played his song “Hallelujah” (not to be confused with Leonard Cohen’s standard of the same name) and acknowledged that it followed a chord structure that was pretty much ubiquitous in pop music, and he proceeded to sing snatches of several other songs that had basically the same flow, including U2’s “With or Without You,” Cheap Trick’s “Surrender,” Bob Marley’s “No Woman No Cry” and the Beatles’ “Let It Be.”

Sexton wasn’t the only one who acknowledged that sometimes songs can be – consciously or unconsciously – inspired by other songs. In fact, in her set, Tunstall said that she’d never really acknowledged something before, but in the Philadelphia area, the home of Rocky, she felt it was the right time. Therefore in the middle of her performance of her own song “Miniature Disasters,” Tunstall demonstrated how if you change a note or two you would get “Eye of the Tiger,” and she happily sang out a couple of verses and the chorus of that song for the audience.

“Eye of the Tiger” was only one of several pop covers that Tunstall weaved into her set, some of which were done as mashups of her own songs. When doing “Dear Shadow,” a new song that she had written with popular songwriter Cathy Dennis, she played a bit of Dennis’ hit Britney Spears composition “Toxic.” When doing her own hit “Black Horse and a Cherry Tree,” Tunstall incorporated a short break from The White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army.” And when she asked the audience if they would like a new song or a classic cover, she decided on both, playing her own “All The Time” and following it up with a propulsive run through Don Henley’s “The Boys of Summer.”

However, Tunstall did not skimp on her own music. She played a drop-dead-gorgeous version of “Other Side of the World,” as well as a spiky run through the forementioned “Miniature Disasters,” and the lovely new “All the Time.” By the time she closed her set with a propulsive version of her smash hit “Suddenly I See,” Tunstall had the crowd eating out of her hand.

Then, after a short call for an encore, Tunstall and Sexton came out together and duetted on sweet acoustic versions of the traditional standards “This Little Light of Mine” and “You Are My Sunshine.” It was an enlightening end to a wonderful night.

Jay S. Jacobs

Copyright ©2023 PopEntertainment.com. All rights reserved. Posted: May 6, 2023.

Photos by Jim Rinaldi © 2023. All rights reserved.

[popentertainment-concertphotos]

KT Tunstall & Martin Sexton – Keswick Theatre – Glenside, PA – May 4, 2023

Photos by Jim Rinaldi © 2023

[krispyweiss]

Song Review: Martin Sexton - “A Day in the Life” (Live, Oct. 8, 2022)

Of all the songs Martin Sexton could’ve chosen to perform in honor of John Lennon, he opted for “A Day in the Life.”

He erred.

For while Sexton and his band of acoustic and electric guitars, keys, rhythm section and sax succeeded by transforming Paul McCartney’s bridge into a playfully slow lope, they were unable to fit Lennon’s bookends into their wheelhouse.

Despite his game efforts at the 42nd Annual John Lennon Tribute, Sexton couldn’t sing Lennon’s “Life” and it was only late in the track that a helpful echo effect began working on his mic. The arrangement was also off - hitting the mark only on the building up to waking up and falling out of bed and on the closing chord.

Judging from the reaction at the Oct. 8, 2022, event, the audience loved it. Sound Bites, watching the recently released video on Jan. 25, 2024, merely tolerated it.

Grade card: Martin Sexton - “A Day in the Life” (Live - 10/8/22) - C-

1/25/24

[3garcons]

Martin Sexton at Troy Music Hall Sat Night April 2023

early edition

[gravalicious]

“Afro-pessimism mobilizes a cluster of tropes—wretchedness, social death, flesh, afterlife of slavery—to update, revise, and unsettle how we think about blackness and its relationship to humanity, existence, politics, and the world as a whole. To think about the implications of Afro-pessimism, or what is at stake in this discourse, it is helpful to think through several domains that this discourse interrupts: Human recognition, ontology, and political agency. We are usually told that racial difference can be overcome if we abandon the illusory, divisive category of race and recognize the common humanity that blacks and non-blacks share. On this reading, the Human is the site of racial transcendence and reconciliation; one simply needs to acknowledge and see the universal Human qualities behind the veil of race. This well-intentioned approach denies how the domain of the Human has been fabricated and organized in opposition to certain beings, desires, and qualities. It denies how the attributes that belong to the ideal Human (property accumulation, whiteness, settlement, freedom, law, progress) rely on contrasting qualities that are marked as undesirable: blackness, enslavement, excess, dispossession, and instability. Here we might think of how Zimmerman’s responsibility to “stand his ground” relates to his accusation that Trayvon Martin was wandering aimlessly and up to no good. In this case, Zimmerman was protecting property and the domain of the Human against the menace of blackness. This general predicament leads Jared Sexton to ask the following question: “what is the nature of a Human being whose Human being is put into question radically and by definition, a Human being whose being Human raises the question of being Human at all” (Sexton 2011, pp. 6–7)? To ask this in another way, what is the status of a being that is positioned at the threshold of the Human and the non-human?”

Joseph Winters - Afro-Pessimism

Heike Paul (ed.) - Critical Terms in Futures Studies (2019: 7-8)

[bones-ivy-breath]

You, Doctor Martin by Anne Sexton

[sanya888]

#For My Brother Alex

[stuff-diary]

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri

Movies watched in 2023

Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri (2017, USA/UK)

Director & Writer: Martin McDonagh

Mini-review:

I liked this much more than The Banshees of Inisherin, but it still left me with mixed feelings. On the one hand, the acting is simply phenomenal and the script has some biting social commentary. The story also packs a few twists that took me by surprise, which I always appreciate. However, some of its dark humor didn't really work. I feel like it was trying to criticize or parody certain types of people, but sometimes it ended up doing the exact same things it seems to criticize. In this regard, the comedic parts of the movie were somewhat confusing. At this point, I'm starting to think that Martin McDonagh's movies are just not my thing. They're obviosly well-made and he can direct the hell out of his actors, but his sense of humor and his choice of dramatic beats are too hit or miss for me.

[tamsoj]

Anne Sexton, "You, Doctor Martin," from To Bedlam and Part Way Back

[willgaham]

SUCCESSION 2018-2023 the roy siblings + quotes

3.02 / franz kafka, letters to milena / 4.09 / dawn lundy martin, good stock strange blood / 4.10 / marie howe, the teacher / 4.09 / vievee francis, forest primeval / 4.10 / anne sexton, a self-portrait in letters / 3.09 / @tullispink

[mournfulroses]

Anne Sexton, from a letter to Dr. Martin Orne, featured in “Anne Sexton: A Biography,” by Diane Wood Middlebrook

[manderleyfire]

“Myself. I killed the old me so I could come with you.” She plucked the splinter free. “There. Well, I hope old you doesn’t haunt new you. We’ve already got enough ghosts us.”

"Haunt Me" from There Is No Death, There Are No Dead by Gemma Files // "Killing the Love" from The Divorce Papers by Anne Sexton // "The Valley Song (Zoo Lullaby)" from The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes by Lucy Gray Baird Suzanne Collins // "Wuthering Heights" by Emily Brontë // "Herakles" by Euripides (Anne Carson's translation) // "The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes" by Suzanne Collins // "A Game of Thrones" by George R. R. Martin // "Crime and Punishment" by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

[popentertainment-concertphotos]

Martin Sexton – Keswick Theatre – Glenside, PA – May 4, 2023

Photos by Jim Rinaldi © 2023

[psalmsofpsychosis]

And Without You;

// "Postcard from Gone", Leila Chatti / "Sweet the Sound", Clementine Von Radics / "You, Dr Martin", Anne Sexton / Solaris (1972) dir. Andrei Tarkovsky / "Casandra: A Novel And For Essays", Christa Wolf / Did You Forget Everything I'll Always Remember? – JacObAllTrades / Emily Dickinson, from a letter to Mary Bowles / “Know We Could Be So Happy Baby (If We Wanted To Be)", Jeff Buckley /

[tubborucho]

Team Soulfire – A story about a Home

taglist: @smallz-o @salineroses @animator-vs-animation @deadfishisyeq @snyland @missstrawberry @frubbotoxicyuri @haloberry @thecardboardbutterfly @avianchorus @qtubbo @an-egghead @codaattheend @mikaikaika @radio-zephyr @routeriver @luminouslotuses @lionheartedmusings

dm me if you want in or out of taglist

credits:

1. N/A

2. screenshot by me

3. lorde – buzzcut season // phoebe bridgers – chinese satellite // ethel cain – sun bleached flies // julien baker – go home // taylor swift – my tears ricochet

4. @.crowsandtrinkets

5. @.thesmpisonfire

6. screenshots by me

7. @.magpigment

8. N/A

9. https://www.schlage.com/blog/categories/2020/11/meaning-of-home.html

10. “Mabel: Matryoshka” Becca De La Rosa and Mabel Martin

11. screenshots by me

12. https://www.instagram.com/p/C1XRngRMUdQ/?igsh=MXdkZ2JtaTZ2YXhsOQ==

13. “A Self-Portrait in Letters” Anne Sexton

[emiliosandozsequence]

house of the dragon (2022-present) cr. george r.r. martin & ryan condal / letters to dr. y, anne sexton