TVD Ticket Giveaway | Antonia Bennett, Friday (8/27) at Wolf Trap w/Tony Bennett

Photo: Annette Navarro

It's perhaps easy to say "like father, like daughter" when one hears that Antonia Bennett, Tony Bennett's daughter, is forging quite the career in her own right as a jazz vocalist. But whereas I always feel Tony embraces a song with a warm, welcoming bear hug, Antonia sidles up to a melody—insinuating her arching, breathy vocals ever so nuanced, yet romantic and warm. And knowing.

And within a week where we're pitching past life's travails, I found listening to Antonia's new 6-song EP 'Natural' in preparation for this ticket giveaway to be quite the breath of fresh air—a welcome vocal approach, reminiscent of Chet Baker's recordings with whom she shares a cover in "The Thrill Is Gone."



Using the American Songbook as her foundation, Antonia explains, “I take each of the songs that I do as a story, with a beginning, middle and end – like a monologue – and I try to do my best to tell that story,” says Antonia. "I grew up listening to the American Songbook, and a variety of artists singing those songs. Singing these songs is like a home-cooked meal, like comfort food, something that is a part of me. The way I grew up, if you were going to take a song that was done by many of the great artists, you should bring a piece of yourself into it. Interpretation is an art form.”

She goes on to say, “We wanted to find wonderful standards that haven’t been overdone. In fact, none of these have been in my show repertoire. I used to sing “Puttin’ On the Ritz” when I was a little kid on stage with my Dad. I grew up singing it and love it. And if you’ve ever seen Young Frankenstein, you gotta love it!”

So, convince yourself as we have a pair of tickets to see Ms. Bennett along with her legendary father at Wolf Trap, this coming Friday night, 8/27.

To win, simply leave a response in the comments to this post as to why you should be awarded the pair of tickets. We'll choose the most convincing response by 5PM Thursday evening, 8/26.

Remember to leave us a contact email address too!

TVD | Spiritual Malaise

There's the line in The Style Council track The Paris Match:

"I'm only sad in a natural way / And I enjoy sometimes feeling this way..."

...which seems like a narcissistic dip into Lake Me.

But what the hell.


Ian Gomm - Hold On (Mp3)
Jim Croce - Operator (Mp3)
King L - Two Cars Collide (Mp3)
Jeff Buckley - If You See Her, Say Hello (Mp3)
Queen - These Are The Days Of Our Lives (Mp3)

TVD's Twitter Music Monday

That's right - it's a rerun. Allyson's on vacation this week but she'll return next week to give ol' #MusicMonday the finger. Or the whole fist. Who knows. Enjoy this gem from the archives. —Ed.


Snoop Dogg made a True Blood-themed music video. Twitter is a-buzz: all day yesterday, Twits (alt: Tweeps) obediently retweeted the following:

@TrueBloodHBO: #MM #musicmonday "Oh Sookie" by @snoopdogg http://itsh.bo/ohsookie #trueblood

Let’s parse this. I’m unfamiliar both with True Blood and the oeuvre of Snoop Dogg, so I need to take things slow.

Snoop Dogg (proper noun): A West-coast rap icon, guided to ascendance in the mid-90s by Dr. Dre; Snoop’s real name (Cordozar Calvin Broadus) is empirically more awesome than his stage name. If you have ears and went into or past a school dance, a nightclub, or bar between 1994 and 2004, you have heard “Gin and Juice” or “Drop it Like it’s Hot,” two of Snoop’s inescapable hits.

True Blood (proper noun): An HBO drama based on Charlaine Harris’s Sookie Stackhouse novels. Like every popular thing in the world, the show and the novels feature vampires.

Sookie Stackhouse (proper noun): The main character on True Blood, played by Anna Paquin, who, to me, will always be Rogue or that chick with the geese in Fly Away Home.

Fanfic (noun): Abbreviation of “fan fiction,” a genre of storytelling in which devoted fans write stories about their favorite fictional characters (and in which SHIT GETS WEIRD YO).

Snoop Dogg has created the music video version of fanfic about Sookie Stackhouse, using the True Blood set, and this music video is being promoted, on Twitter, by HBO.

Now that I know what’s happening, here are some thoughts on the video:

First, THE LICENSE PLATE HAS FANGS. Now I kind of want a car. To give it fangs.

Second, the whole backlit dance sequence looks an awful lot like the Sparkle Motion performance in Donnie Darko. I’d like to think that means this video contains fanfic-within-fanfic, but more likely the choreographer just got lazy. (I'd link to the Sparkle Motion dance, but the only video on YouTube has dumb 4chan captions with pedobear references Do not want.)

Third, is this song supposed to be…good? I don’t know hip hop well, but “I wanna do bad things to you,” and “You ever been to LA?” just seem lazy. I don’t hear a single clever line. Maybe this is just what happens when one listens to the Beastie Boys to the exclusion of everything else for a few months in high school, but I rather expect all such music to contain gems like “I got stories like J.D.’s got Salinger,” or “I got the girlies in the coop like the Colonel’s got chickens.”

Fourth, while we’re talking about lyrics and chickens: “I got a whole lotta eggs for her to eat, and these eggs come with a lot of cheese and grits.” Maybe I’ve got my anatomy wrong, but…I don’t think Snoop Dogg has eggs. I very much hope this is a reference to something that happens on the show, because otherwise this metaphor is unthinkably gross.

Role #mmodel: twimomof3: I am listening to "Total Eclipse of the Heart (Glee Cast Version) [feat. Jonathan Groff]" by Glee Cast ? http://bit.ly/c4jZgo #musicmonday. Of course you are, twimomof3.

My #musicmonday pick: Shadrach, the Beastie Boys song quoted above. I know every word, and for a while, I thought that meant I could rap.