John Shirley-Quirk (1931-2014)

it saddens me so deeply that my first post of this year here is about this. last night John Shirley-Quirk passed away at his home in Bath. he was 82. 

today was a day filled with sadness, reflection, memories -- as it always is when someone who has touched so many leaves us. and i personally was surprised at how incredibly sad i was. it was a sadness for which i was not prepared. so i thought about it a lot (after i listened to Schwanengesang & Songs of Travel); he lived at a strange nexus in my life, where my life as a Britten scholar and my life as a Peabody student and alumna meet. both of those communities are some of the strongest and most special to me and it's tough to see them both hit so hard. 

some of my sadness was from regret: the regret that i never got a chance to speak with him the way i yearned to. we had met and exchanged pleasantries but i was still in transition mode, so very new to my scholarship, so very new to Britten, and i felt i had no right to approach him, to pick his brain. i realize in hindsight how incredibly foolish and silly that was, knowing what i know (and knew) about him.

but i think what makes me saddest is that it's strange to study a composer who has not been dead for very long (not even 40 years) with the people he worked with surviving him and living and working. you become attached to them the more you learn about them and their lives. sometimes you get to meet them, hear them speak. and then sometimes, they die. and you grow attached as we always do…watching them pass away is like losing loved ones who have impacted your life, changed it for the better. sure, musicologists whose work is composer-centric become attached to their composer even if they and their contemporaries are long dead. but this is different. many of the men who i write about and who were alive at the beginning of my studies have passed away and each one feels like a blow -- not because i'm losing a subject, but because i've lost someone i care about deeply. 

and of course, there's the fact that we've lost a great artist and great teacher and mentor. i want to thank my Peabody community for sharing all of their beautiful moments and memories of him. he was truly loved.

so many of my friends have spoken so beautifully about him and they do it best, i think. this is a way for me to process my grief in whatever form it chooses to take. i'm sure i will think about him more for the next days to come and i will definitely be listening to him. so i leave you with the piece that's been playing all day in my home, his recording of Schubert's Schwanengesang which, of course, has absolutely wrecked me. how incredibly fitting. rest in peace.

Google Play is giving away some great albums released this year for free & with heavy discounts. included in this list is Decca's Britten: The Masterpieces, a 4-CD set, for $5.99. if you're in the US, go grab this now -- it's a great deal.

and so, my friends, i cease.

this weekend has been a very busy one, probably one of the busiest on record for me. after a year of concerts, exhibitions, conferences, and films this was the centenary weekend — and boy was it a doozy.

first off, BBC Radio 3 must be acknowledged for the fantastic programming they did all weekend long. they were in residence at Snape and played Britten’s music all weekend long as well as great interviews and live performances (and Tom Service recreating BB’s early morning swim in the North Sea!) i think the highlight for me was the live broadcast of Noyes Fludde in Lowestoft, conducted by Paul Kildea (who you’ll remember, i had the pleasure of meeting in Illinois two weeks ago) Noyes Fludde will always be special to me because there’s nothing like it. hearing children sing and play, hearing an audience participate, it speaks to my favorite great musical tradition of sacred communal singing. though far removed from the works of Bach and Mendelssohn, Britten does it in his own very specific, very East Anglian way and the result, for me at least, is a joyousness that’s unmatched. the professional performers sang and performed fantastically and the only thing i could have wanted was to be there in person. 

it was fantastic just to have BBC Radio 3 in the background as well as Q2’s all day Britten-fest on friday hosted by Nico Muhly (and as someone who spends a lot of time in her car, it was a welcome radio respite) 

on my end, i had a little Britten birthday party attended by many of my friends. in addition to the usual party fare, we listened to a little Peter Grimes and War Requiem (requests!) and sang happy birthday before my toast and blowing out the candles on the birthday cake.

earlier that week, i went through with a promise i made many years ago to myself and got a Britten tattoo. as i’ve said many times, hearing the Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings changed my life in so many ways and so it only seemed fitting that i commemorate that moment permanently. i’m super pleased with the outcome and i have to give huge props to T.J. at Dogstar Tattoo in Durham for doing such a great job & just being an overall cool guy. i know people feel differently about tattoos but all i can say is, in this very short period of time, every moment that i wake up and look at it, i feel something so strongly in my heart. how could i ever regret it?

though the Centenary weekend is over, this is by no means the end for Britten (or for us here at A Birthday Hansel); i think it was John Bridcut that noted that unlike other events like it, this is more a beginning than an end. people are discovering Britten’s music, people are writing about him, productions are being staged (i just read yesterday that Glyndebourne’s production of Billy Budd is coming to New York in 2014) — i think this is exactly what his music needed and i don’t see an end anytime soon. 

so while things have slowed down for me (thank god) i’m still excited about everything that’s on the horizon. and don’t jump ship yet, we’ve got a lot more to cover!

a 100th birthday hansel

the day is finally here. and before i get to all of my birthday festivities, it's time to get a little serious.

Britten came into my life in 2007 by accident. while researching for a paper on Ligeti's Horn Trio, i came across Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings (which i'm listening to right now) and in stumbling upon it, a feeling came over me that i still am unable to explain. "The splendour falls/on castle walls" resonated in my mind and the most perfect two lines of text i had ever heard in the sense that the way they were set made the line clear and easy to visualize as if the sentence were not some abstract, poetic text. it was beautiful and unabashedly so. well i've been listening to music all of my life, especially vocal music so why is it that i hadn't felt that feeling until then?

i took the recording home with me. the next thing i knew, i was checking out more Britten recordings. and then, during an errand at the Juilliard bookstore, I saw a small Britten biography on sale. i bought it immediately. i've never devoured a book so. everything about him, his life, his music, his personality, reached me at my very core. it was so visceral that i knew it couldn't be a fluke. 

and it wasn't.

shortly after, i went to school for musicology and the more i studied, the more i realized i wanted to make Britten scholarship my life's work. five years later, i find myself in a PhD program, having talked and written about Britten extensively, meeting amazing people as a result (including my partner) and with those very words i first heard all those years ago tattooed on my arm. they still have the same effect on me they did that spring day. and that's what matters to me.

i could talk about how great of a composer i believe Britten to be but i'm not here to convince you. i hope that you have an opportunity to listen to some of his music at some point and are able to make your own conclusions. i hope your experience with Britten is a happy one (or at least a thoughtful one). but i will say that nothing makes me happier than the exposure he's received. i do think the world should know him and maybe, just maybe, someone will come to love him as i have. i have been profoundly lucky in that regard.

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i hope you've been able to hear a little Britten today, if not, check out Q2's 24-hour stream of Britten's music hosted by Nico Muhly, he's been playing some absolutely fantastic stuff.

i will be back tomorrow with pictures from my Britten birthday party tonight, including my Serenade tattoo. 

happy 100th birthday, Ben. you are missed and loved.

Britten's Endgame

last night, I watched John Bridcut’s new film, Britten’s Endgame, on BBC 4 and all I can say is if you are able to watch it, I highly suggest it.

okay that’s not all I can say about it. the film, which examines the last years of Britten's life, including the writing of Death in Venice, seems very personal. maybe not for Bridcut (maybe so) but personal in the sense that this is more than just about Britten's music or maybe even his life. i think this can be seen in the many interviews with those who were around Britten in the 60s and 70s. their responses to listening to certain pieces like Phaedra, the Third String Quartet and, yes, Death in Venice -- closeups of profiles of their faces in the moment of listening, watching their visages become transfixed and transfigured upon hearing certain notes, certain chords -- it translates into something else, something more than listening, something personal.

and yes, okay, i'm a big softie, and yes i'm a Britten scholar but i found myself at the end in tears, incredibly moved. and of course, i've spent the last few months thinking and writing about Britten and lateness so this film spoke to a lot that had been on my mind.

so catch it if you can, it's on BBC iPlayer for the next week.

always it woke him, even in France.

so after a busy few weeks & a trip to the hospital, i can finally update about Brittenmania, especially the conference at Illinois State.

before i say anything else, I have to give a huge congrats to Justin Vickers & Vicki Stroeher for putting this conference together -- it was a mighty undertaking and they made it look like child's play.

i had been looking forward to this conference all year; all of my favorite people would be there and everything about the conference looked interesting and exciting. it really started for me when i was semi-stranded at the Normal train station with Paul Kildea (we ended up sharing a cab, talking to a very enthusiastic cabbie about the sights of Bloomington-Normal).

(before i go on, can i just mention how incredibly cold it was? i left 70° North Carolina & it was a shock to the system)

a quick dinner was eaten before piling on to the big yellow school bus that would take us to Illinois State. first on the docket was a performance of the War Requiem, the forces pulled from the university and its environs. it was a laudable performance with lots of beautiful and moving moments and i hope that it was an experience for those performing it. this was a long night that followed; lots of drinks and lots of conversations. the conference officially started the next day with an onslaught of papers, including my own. Justin also asked me to chronicle the whole conference so in addition to preparing and giving my paper, i livetweeted the whole thing (check it out here https://twitter.com/brittenatisu; also look for the #bb100usa hashtag on twitter & instagram) -- what followed included great papers, performances from the ISU faculty and students and an ACDA conference focusing on Britten's choral works. it really was a great way to end my conference season and it gave me a LOT to chew on. the field of Britten scholarship is so rich and has come so far in the past 15-20 years. i think, compared to other areas of musicological scholarship, we're quite young and we're just getting to that point to where we can branch out. (remember, Britten's only been dead for 37 years…) and the diversity of topics and approaches to Britten's life and works, be they musicological, theoretical, interdisciplinary, or all of the above, makes me excited for what's to come. 

i wish i could talk about every paper and every performance but that would take far more than this blog post. i really recommend checking out the #bb100usa hashtag -- lots of people contributed and there's lots of good information there.

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in total, i went to three conferences presenting papers on Britten this year and its been an amazing (and chaotic) experience. just trying to keep up on all of the scholarly bits floating around out there plus performances overwhelms me (i wish i could report on it all!) and i'm so glad that this centenary year has been so involved.

in the past week or so, A Midsummer Night's Dream opened at the Met to great reviews (i listened to the livestream of the premiere, loved it) and the War Requiem has been performed a handful of times, in Baltimore, London, and in New York. there was also another performance of the complete Canticles at Carnegie Hall with Ian Bostridge, Iestyn Davies (who was also Oberon in Midsummer), and Julius Drake. i was supposed to be at that performance (backstage and everything) but at the last minute it fell through. i heard it was amazing, of course, and i have a recording from earlier this year coming my way, which of course, i'll talk about here. performances are ramping up as we get closer and closer to the day itself. my hope is that the fever will continue past Nov. 22nd -- and i think it will. across the pond, performances of Death in Venice, Curlew River, & Noyes Fludde are all happening and/or taking shape and it kills me not to be a part of them…luckily, i have a man on the inside & i can live vicariously through him.

i hope to do an interview with my dear friend and piccolo/third flute with the Oregon Symphony Zachariah Galatis on his experience rehearsing and performing the War Requiem for you guys and now that things are quieting down, i hope to get some more interviews up here. also, i hope to have pictures from my upcoming Britten Birthday Bash (including -- hopefully -- a new tattoo) happening on the 22nd, i can't wait. 

Benjamin Britten at 100: An American Symposium, Illinois State University, Oct 24-27, 2013

our echoes roll from soul to soul

so a few months back i wrote about the announcement that Britten would be on a 50 pence coin. well a few days ago, the design was revealed and was i surprised to see that the design revolved around the text from Tennyson's Blow, Bugle, Blow, the Nocturne movement from Britten's Serenade for Tenor, Horn, and Strings.  and while i have spent some time musing on the design, i spent more time thinking about the Serenade. 

for those who don't know, it was the Serenade that brought me to Britten, specifically the Nocturne movement. and what i think is so amazing is that still, after all of these years, hearing that movement (and the Serenade in general) still fills me with the same sense of awe and wonder. no matter how many times i hear it, it sounds fresh and clear and rings out like a bell.

there's a reason i decided to get that text permanently placed on my body.

in other news, the cinema version of Grimes on the Beach is out throughout the UK (the trailer is down below), if you can check it out, i highly suggest it.

here are pictures of my signed War Requiem score; the autographs on the inside page are (from t to b): Philip Ledger, Benjamin Britten, Peter Pears, Thomas Hemsley, and Mary Wells; the small signature on the instrumentation page is Jimmy Blades

the only word that comes to mind is blessed. (thanks again to my darling boyfriend for sharing this amazing treasure with me)

the wildest beauty in the world

this is a love letter. but unlike other love letters, there is more than one recipient. this is dedicated to a book and to its owner.

several years ago, i struck up a friendship online, bonded by our shared love of classical music. this friendship grew stronger when i confessed my bourgeoning love of Benjamin Britten. this confession led to this man with whom i had become friends to tell me of his time spent with Britten as an adolescent. this, of course, seemed like a gold mine of information to me. i wanted to sit at his digital feet and listen. the first thing he told me was that he had sung in a performance of the War Requiem in Norwich with Britten and Pears and that afterwards, they, and others, signed his score. it seemed unfathomable to me, that whole progression of events, and i marveled in it but i shortly put it out of mind as it was not my story.

years later, this man and i met in person. that meeting led to the beginning of a beautiful relationship and he has been my partner for the last three years. people joked in the beginning that it was Britten that brought us together and while our love and our relationship is built on other, far stronger ground, some very special moments in our lives have centered around Britten. i was able to go with him back to Aldeburgh, a place he had not been since he sang at Britten's funeral, and share that moment with him, one that touched me to my very core. 

at the beginning of our relationship, i was visiting him in Portland. one morning, in bed, he asked me to reach over and pull a leather-bound book off of his bookshelf and open it. to my surprise, it was his War Requiem score. and as i opened it, there i saw Britten's signature on the inside page along with that of Pears, Philip Ledger, and others. Norwich, 1967. and something very unusual for me occurred: i started crying. i traced my fingers along the impression of the signatures and wept. i never felt closer to Britten, the person, the man. it stopped being about my work as a scholar and something far deeper. and i was sharing that moment with the man i loved; a moment unparalleled. 

in three years, my private and public life have had somewhat of an upward yet tumultuous climb. and here i am now, in the middle of the centenary year, writing reviews, speaking at conferences, sharing with colleagues, all the while falling more and more in love with England. and out of nowhere, my boyfriend says to me that he wants me to have his War Requiem score now, as opposed to it leaving it to me in his will as we had previously discussed. i can only imagine what coming to that decision must have been like for him. this was more than just a score, more than just a signed score. it represents a part of his life that not only is very special but is slowly ebbing as all of those who he watched perform pass away.

this morning, it arrived at my door. i can't believe it's here, that it's mine. i feel like a caretaker, like a steward. but isn't that what our job is as historians, to be stewards? what i know i can do is share the love that's in this score with him and with others. 

i said at the beginning that this was a love letter to a book and to its owner and it is. this score is so much more than an inanimate thing in my possession or a way to further my scholarly credentials. it's a testimony, a living vessel. it's something given to me in such confidence and love that i have no choice but to take care of it. it brings me closer to everything that inspired me to embark upon this career. and in the end, it's another thing that i share with my partner that connects us deeply. i was reticent to write this because i knew there was no way i could talk about this score without talking about him. as amazing as this score is, for me, it's imbued with so much because of him: his love and his memories. 

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i'll be posting pics of it soon, and let me tell you guys, it's beautiful.

Peter Grimes on Aldeburgh Beach - Official Trailer (by PicturehouseCinemas)

a birthday (birthday) hansel!

well according to Tumblr, A Birthday Hansel is one year old today! so thanks for reading and hanging out with me this past year…it's been fun and we still have a whole bunch more celebrating to do!

i am native, rooted here.

well i've just returned from a whirlwind three weeks in the UK and there's a lot to talk about. i've slept very frantically for the past two days (i hasten to call it jet lag) and now i'm kind of back into the swing of things. i always knew i'd save this entry till i got back to the states but i have been grappling with some of the things i experienced so be patient while i work all of this out.

Grimes on the Beach

it's very difficult to not set expectations when you've been planning on seeing something for almost a year. so was the case with Grimes on the Beach, a production i'd been anticipating from the moment i heard about it. so much so that when my travels were in peril and i thought that i wasn't going to make it out of the country in time for this performance that i had a *slight* breakdown (no need to revisit that ugliness). well i did make it and my boyfriend and i had no idea what waited for us. 

we turned up to the beach at Aldeburgh, nice and early as we had been instructed and this was waiting for us:

that's right, a full rainbow stretched out in front of us over the North Sea (and conveniently placed behind the set); some pointed out maybe inappropriate for Grimes but i thought it just right. it was chaos as this was the final of only three performances -- the audience totalled at about 1500 (it was completely sold out, as were the other two performances and the projected totals came to over 5,000 attendees) and everyone was incredibly excited. nowhere was any cynicism to be seen and the production could have been a huge target for it: mic'ed singers, pre-recorded orchestra but for me that was never a problem. this was not a typical performance in a concert hall where having all of those things would be blasphemous. this was something elemental, rugged, unexpected. and understanding that made the whole thing a lot easier to swallow.

(courtesy of Stephen Llewellyn)

the production of Grimes was set in WWII Suffolk, reminding me how incredibly adaptable this story actually is, given all of its very specific elements. the stage was massive and the opera started off in grand style with a Spitfire flying overhead. now there are lots of reviews that will give you the nuts and bolts of the performance (which are incredibly important -- if you're interested, check out my boyfriend's blog at leboyfriend.tumblr.com) but i want to talk about something else. there are things that really struck me about all of this that the organizers of this event could have only dreamed would have occurred.

the opera starts off in the daytime, right before dusk. this change from day to very dark night, enhanced by the blackness of the North Sea behind the stage, framed the entire conception of the opera. opera has its own little tricks to imitate the passage of time but feeling the real passing of time, whether or not it corresponded with the story, had a profound effect. as the opera descended into darkness, so did we. when the moon came out from behind a veil of clouds (and yes, it happened during the Moonlight interlude), it created its own emotion. and then there were the waves. there are many silent moments in Grimes and that becomes even more noticeable when they are punctuated by the sounds of the waves crashing upon the beach. the moon was full and it was high tide so you could see them growing wild, coming closer, threatening and menacing --- unstoppable. The Sea has always been a character in Grimes, perhaps an overlooked one. this production brought it to the fore.

and then there was one very special moment, for me at least. at the end of the first scene, Grimes walks off the set and onto the beach. he continues walking down the beach, to the sea as if he were to walk right into it. at that very moment, my heart broke and i thought i would cry right there on the spot. in retrospect, i suppose it reminds me of the moment when James Mason's character walks into the ocean at the end of A Star is Born, all the while Judy Garland sings "A New World", only accompanied by the sound of the waves crashing onto the beach. it was as if it were already over for the fisherman and we were looking at what we knew what would come, what was inevitable. there's no way that this could have been done on a stage.

the way the cast used the surroundings was magnificent, breaking a sort of fourth wall between the stage and the beach, walking into our world but yet remaining in their own…it was incredibly powerful. and something that struck me: my boyfriend said to me, after it was all over, "you know, i don't think Ben would have let this happen." and he's right which is why i said, "well it's a good thing he's dead, then." because we needed this and are better for it. so kudos to EVERYONE at Aldeburgh Music, it was a resounding success and you have much to be proud of.

skipping forward a few weeks from Aldeburgh to London and on to…

Gloriana

now this one is a little more difficult. we struggled over whether or not we were actually going to go (the tickets were incredibly expensive) but we were able to find great seats, plus there were so many reasons as to why we should go. i had read a little bit about people's reactions to the production (read: not great) and i had spent the majority of this trip consumed with Gloriana (i had just submitted an abstract on the opera) so there was a lot bouncing around in my mind.

still, now, weeks later, i cannot tell you with confidence that i understood the production. and i don't mean in some weird, Continental, Regie sort of way. i just didn't get it. well i thought i did and maybe i get more than most but that's up for debate. i think it's very interesting that when watching this opera, i thought of two films: Kiss Me Kate (for its play within a play setup) and The Private Lives of Elizabeth and Essex (featuring Bette Davis and Errol Flynn); the latter because the opera could have been taken from the movie frame by frame and because it works/ed better as a movie. the opera itself is fragmented and strange in its use of pastiche. there's not a beginning, middle, and end and this, in itself, is no crime but things just seem to…happen. this was not aided by the production which takes place during the time of Elizabeth II's coronation. apparently, the opera (this is the play within the play) is being staged for Her Majesty to view in some town hall as part of the Coronation festivities (we see the Queen twice, once at the beginning and again at the end), as a result, the performance seems slapdash and we see the inner workings: the moving of set pieces, the repititeur, the on-stage musicians, and the director all walking around, interacting with the performance. this was not so much an issue for me as it was for others. what this premise was supposed to represent, however, is where you find me at a loss. again, i go back to the Private Lives movie with its vignetted nature. maybe Britten drew from this type of idea so understandable in plays and movies, who knows. and while i found myself continually head scratching (especially at the brief moment of racism in the middle of the opera involving Morris dancing), the music is quite good at times and the last act (especially the last scenes where Elizabeth is dying) is captivating. 

other miscellany

at the end of this trip was the other thing i came for, the Britten on Stage and Screen conference at the University of Nottingham. it was a fantastic conference with great papers and similarly great performances including The Golden Vanity, The Ascent of F6 and lecture-recitals featuring music from The Turn of the Screw and Poulenc's Les Mamelles des Tiresias. my paper on Billy Budd went extremely well and i was extremely pleased with the outcome. there's a lot of really fantastic scholarship going on out there and i'm pleased to be a part of it.

the very first thing i did on this trip was take a tour of the Adnams brewery, courtesy of head brewer Fergus Fitzgerald. as a result, i got to sample their Britten centenary beer Native Britten and let me tell y'all, it is fantastic! if you're ever in Suffolk, absolutely take this tour and if you get a chance to get your hands on Native Britten this year, definitely do so.

other little tidbits include seeing Ian Bostridge and Julius Drake give a great masterclass on Britten song (those two are champions right there), seeing Maggi Hambling at Grimes on the Beach, watching Instruments of the Orchestra and Love from a Stranger and laughing hysterically, and having great conversations. of course there were other things, too but they have nothing to do with Britten.

so what's next? i'll keep bringing any new information your way -- i'm currently nose deep in the Kildea (which is fantastic) and will be back in the UK in september for the Music Since 1900 conference. hopefully by then, i will have had some Festival of Britten Aspall cyder and have my hands on a 50p coin with Britten's face on it.

Pimp your life with some Britten & Pears stash and let us know! Celebrate the Centenary in Style.

so this is a thing. a real thing. not created by me. should i send them all my stuff? it might overwhelm them ;)

in June, i'll change my tune…

so last week, i travelled to New York to hear my choir, Cerddorion Vocal Ensemble, give a concert of Poulenc and Britten. it was great and i had a fantastic time. I loved the Vox Nova Children's Choir's performance of Friday Afternoons (a very special piece in my heart) and I thought they were the best part of Voices for Today (a piece I've never really cared for) and while listening to it, i had some thoughts.

i think we see the best of Britten in the music he writes for kids and i think one of the reasons why that might be is because the music he writes may be simple, but it's not easy, or vice versa. he doesn't write down for children; he writes for their strengths and gives them music that (as far as I can tell) they like to sing. a great example, for me, is in the 2008 recording of The Turn of the Screw which features a young girl soprano singing Flora (something that's not common) -- her voice plays so well against the boy treble voice of Miles that it seems unthinkable to do it any other way.

in other news, I'll be on my way to the UK in less than a week which means we're getting even closer to Grimes on the Beach. there's been lots of talk about it (some good, some not so good) but i think those that have a problem with the idea of an opera with pre-recorded orchestral sound are being short-sighted and elitist. why be resistent to this? so much about this opera is about the environment -- the sea, the waves, the storm clouds. the darkness that surrounds and envelops you, it brings that metaphorical, internal darkness inside the opera becomes that much more palatable. this opera, more than any other that comes to mind, needs this environment. so yes, i'm not generally a fan of pre-recorded tracks (i've played over one, much to my chagrin) but we're not in the concert hall. WE'RE ON THE BEACH. and how the singers react to that experience, i think, will only enhance the power of this story. i cannot wait.

another awesome thing: Decca announced that they are releasing a boxed set of 65 CDs and 1 DVD entitled Britten: The Complete Works. instead of trying to tell you how awesome it is, why don't you just watch this awesome video made by Decca:

yeah. so if you're poor like me and you want this, you might want to try to win it here, courtesy of Sinfini Music. 

so there's a lot going on and coming up and you'll all here about it in the next few weeks but my one last awesome tidbit to share is that I've been invited on a tour of the Adnams Southwold Brewery! they are the fine people putting out the Native Britten beer and with a little help from my boyfriend, we got an invite. there will be tons of pictures and i'll try my best to explain how it tastes.

as you might imagine, i'm up to my neck in stuff to do so i'll end it here but you'll be hearing from me real soon.

I thought my EMI 37-disc boxed set that came out last year was impressive. now I don't know what to do.

I told you there was swag. behold my Great Britons stamps & postcards, featuring the man himself.