Boston's Museum of Fine Arts Receives Art Seized by Nazis

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston is receiving a major gift of 186 works seized by Nazi forces in 1938. It’s taken decades for the donor’s family to recover the famed collection that includes fine jewelry, rare books and paintings. The objects have taken a fascinating journey between Vienna and Boston.

Some were taken by the Nazis in 1938/39, and then recovered by the real Monuments Men after the war, and eventually came back to the family - referring to the members of the Allied force’s Monuments, Fine Arts and Archives program, who were charged with finding, preserving and returning culturally important works confiscated by Hitler’s forces. [more...]

Silence is the Healer

Silence is the Healer is a long time coming.... dedicated to my mother, Elizabeth Baron, who thought it was a very special song and on her death bed asked me to record it.... Here it is in her honor - listen here.

These are the lyrics:

Silence is the Healer

I am the ghost, the ghost of war
and I can feel the pain no more
and now I observe, I haven’t a prey.
I’m just shadowing the lives
standing in my way.

We sent our troops in harm’s way.
Few will live to fight another day.
I was a ravaged angel in the storm
and now I’m home, safe and warm.

Silence is the healer…
to inspire the better angels of our nature.
With these gifts, the harm’s in us.
Yet prayer can overcome.
Let the doors they open open doors for you.

Out of nothing
I’ll always rise above it all
and traffic in souls that reinvent time.
I am the daughter of the gods
and I know where I stand.
I harbour no remorse, no bloodlet
on my hand—
Silence!

The wounds lie deep, but tomorrow renews
and with that promise, we can’t lose.

Baptized Again

I've been busy working on this song for the last 2 months.  I really wanted to go back to my roots and sing about what inspired me to be a songwriter in the first place.  

I hope you enjoy it.  Go to SoundCloud to post ratings and read the lyrics below.

Baptized Again

Born from a bad beginning,
I played the Chicago blues.
When everyone failed me and left me alone,
I’d nothing left to lose.
My radio kept me from losing my mind.
I heard what I understood
to be the first music of its kind
from the Delta and the backwoods.

Baptize me again
each time I slide back down.
I wanna be baptized again -
my lower self I must drown.

Elvis taught me gospel and heart;
his rhythm and soul bled through.
Impassioned holy-rollers pulsed
as songs in my heart, they grew.
In tiny, white-worn chapels
where music raised the dead
rejoiced in jubilees of hope.
The preacher man was led.

The preacher man’s dark cries,
with fire blazing in his eyes,
and the rhythm of tambourines
was moving through my veins.
On the long dirt Blues Highway
I paid my dues this way
I shot emotions through my guitar
and said what I needed to say.

Gospels, hymns and the spirit of song

arms raised to heaven’s gate
borne of pain and sensual tales,
sprang from broken hearts and hate.
Baptize me in my music
to overcome hardships and pain.
Its waters filled with a soul force;
got down in a torrent of rain.

Love & Light, Elizabeth

PRESS RELEASE August 20, 2014  For Immediate Release Contact: Sandy Frazier 516-735-5468

An Autobiography of the Most Documented Modern Day Mystic of Our Time On what would have been her 77th birthday, we are proud to present the long-awaited story of world renowned psychic/trance medium and paranormal researcher, Elizabeth Baron. LOVE AND LIGHT, ELIZABETH - An Autobiography of the Most Documented Modern Day Mystic of Our Time is not only the story of Elizabeth's personal search for enlightenment but is also the record of the most incredible experiences any medium on this earth has ever encountered. You will travel with Elizabeth in these pages to the most unusual places, from the Palace Theatre on Broadway to the White House where she was privileged to assist in thwarting the assassination of President Reagan. She will take you on her journey performing the first televised exorcism on the Geraldo Show as she cleansed a Manhattan building of its sordid past. Go with her as she assisted law enforcement in some of the most documented cases of the past 30 years. Elizabeth not only lived these experiences, but presents documentation to prove the validity of her research. To Elizabeth, the most exciting experience she shares with you is the Divine intervention God brought about by sending her one of his greatest angels, St. Catherine of Siena, a 14th Century saint who rose out of the Catholic Church to be the co-patron saint of Italy, sharing that title with the Great St. Francis of Assisi. Catherine was one of the two saints ever to be given the title of Doctor by the church. The most phenomenal part of this story is that Elizabeth was raised a devout Baptist, who had been taught to avoid Catholics because they worshiped the Virgin Mary. You will marvel at her life story in page after page in which she shared in intimate detail what it was like to travel such a difficult and disciplined pathway. You will find yourself reading this book over and over, referring back to it as one of the most fascinating mystical testimonials with insights into the tremendous strides she was able to make in the field of the paranormal. [more...] GO HERE TO ORDER your copy of "Love & Light"  Read a review by Sandy Frazier LIKE Elizabeth on Facebook NOTE: Elizabeth's audio meditations will be available on Amazon for download very soon! ABOUT THE AUTHOR: In her lifetime, Elizabeth Baron was perhaps the world's most famous gifted psychic medium, having spent over three decades researching the paranormal and was featured on radio and television shows and in newspapers all over the world.  During her lifetime, she was considered to be "The World's Most Documented Psychic Medium" with much of her life's work preserved in writing, audiotaped and/or filmed.  Her many clients all over the world have attested that her life readings helped to lift many from the burden of addictions and depression into knowing who they really are - a Divine child of God. One of the most respected mediums in the world, she is the author of several books on the paranormal, including The Art of Silence: Meditating the Western Way and Unfinished Business.  She lectured to audiences throughout America and was a consummate teacher of meditation.  She worked closely with law enforcement, FBI and Secret Service agents, and used her gift as a prolific artist to sketch missing people and criminals in the many cases she worked on over the years.  Since the early '80s, she channeled messages for the world once a month bringing through her guardian angel, the spirit of St. Catherine of Siena. Elizabeth passed away on January 20, 2014, but her legacy lives on through her paintings, meditation CDs (soon to be available as downloadable MP3s), her books and teaching courses. [more...]

LoveandLightElizabeth.com

A Very Private Person

My new song, "A Very Private Person" was a long time coming!  That is to say the least!  I never imagined it would turn into an Internet hit, but everyone seems to really like it!  Here is an interview I did about the song as featured artist on Studio Pros.  You can listen to the song on Soundcloud... or YouTube.  Here are the lyrics, for you modern blues aficionados out there:

I'll be on The Fix in Charleston on Aug. 3, 2014 - 10:00pm ET

I’m going down to the corner store.
I always remember to lock and bolt my door.

’cause I’m a very private person
and I don’t want anyone.
I make a cold, hard living
and I work from sun to sun. Oh, yeah.

Don’t want anyone in, no one to call.
It’s my artificial personality, my brick wall.

Insincere visitors have so much to hide.
They want so to come on the inside.
They know that I’m paying a hard hard price.
But never want to offer any good advice, oh, no!

’cause I’m a very private person
and I don’t want anyone.
I make a cold, hard living
and I work from sun to sun
and I ain’t got no time to mess with anyone, oh, no!

Devilish Women: The Tramp, The Flapper and the Naughty Vamp

I was watching Mae West recently in several of her clever films where she is the take-charge woman - in the movie AND behind the scenes - and marveled at her flair, her self-confidence, her forward ways and most of all, her charismatic yet cheeky approach to having her own way with everyone in her midst all the while making them all fall in love with her - from her maids to her men.  She was decades ahead of her time (a scene from "My Cousin Vinny" was lifted right out of "I'm No Angel").  I remembered my good friend George Putnam telling me in our many conversations about the way she wrapped him around her little finger more times than he could recall.

I have a friend who loves Madonna (who many sometimes thought of as the modern day Mae West).  I admire my friend for her marvelous way of charming everyone in HER midst, much in the same way Mae West did back in the early part of the 20th century.  But why has society through the generations been so intimidated by women who make their own rules as they live their lives unapologetically?

"A vampire is a good woman with a bad reputation, or rather a good woman who has had possibilities and wasted them." --Florenz Ziegfeld

Liberated women were clearly so frightening one hundred years ago that equating them to undead, bloodthirsty creatures borne of Satan didn't seem so unusual.

In the late 1910s, women were on the verge of winning the right for equal representation in the voting booth. Women were asserting power in unions, and, in the wake of disasters like the Triangle Factory Fire, those unions were influencing government policy. They were taking control of their destinies, their fortunes, even their sexuality (Margaret Sanger's first birth control clinic opened in 1916).

This surging independence came just as the entertainment industry heralded the female form as one of its primary attractions. Ziegfeld's sassy, flesh-filled Follies -- and its many imitators -- defined the Broadway stage, mixing  music, sex and glamour with a morality-shattering frankness.

But it was the birth of motion pictures that gave the allure of female bodies an unearthly, flickering glow, as nickelodeon shorts became feature-length films, and the first era of the movie siren was born.

Combine the power of liberation with the erotic potential of cinema, and in the late 1910s, you got the vampire (or as we would come to know, the 'vamp'). [more...]

I was 'Like a Rolling Stone'

One of the most popular songs of all time, Bob Dylan's "Like a Rolling Stone," could bring between $1 million and $2 million at auction. A working draft of the finished song in Dylan's own hand is being offered by Sotheby's on Tuesday.

The draft is written in pencil on four sheets of hotel letterhead stationery with revisions, additions, notes and doodles: a hat, a bird, an animal with antlers. The stationery comes from the Roger Smith hotel in Washington, D.C.

I was never "a debutante who becomes a loner when she's cast from upper-class social circles," but I did sing this song as a teenager at The Earl of Old Town and Somebody Else's Troubles in Chicago... and I remembered every verse! [more...]

More fascinating links to the history of The Earl of Old Town:

Items Belonging to Owner of ‘The Earl Of Old Town’ Folk Bar Go Up For Sale

The Death of The Earl of Old Town

The Earl's Junk

Steve Goodman

John Prine

Yours truly

Yours truly... again...

Remembering Robert De Niro, Sr.

"I felt I had to.  I felt obligated," Robert De Niro, the famous actor, says of the new short documentary, Remembering the Artist: Robert De Niro, Sr.  "It was my responsibility to make a documentary about him.  I was always planning on doing it, but never did. Then Jane Rosenthal, my partner at Tribeca [Enterprises], said, ‘We should start doing that now.'  It was just something I wanted to do." 

But why wait until WAY after his father's death on his own birthday in 1993?  Throughout the film, the actor is obviously wracked with painful memories and guilt over having eclipsed his father whose lack of recognition gnawed away at him, his life and his art... and eventually gnawed away as much at his son.

In Wikipedia, Robert De Niro, Sr., the artist, is listed as being known for: "Painter, School of Paris."  But is that a fact?  I think I'm very knowledgeable about culture and the arts but never heard a thing about the actor's father until this.

After seeing the film, I walked away thinking Robert De Niro, Sr. was a mediocre painter; the actor, an unforgettable superstar.  De Niro, Jr. felt obligated to get his father recognized, though his delivery does not convince us that he really believed his father was a great artist.  Rather, he's sentimental about his father's work and even preserved his father's gallery intact for future generations of De Niros to appreciate.  The actor is not ACTING in this film; he's being himself and appears to be serving a penance for not having paid enough attention to his father in his lifetime.  An entry they chose from the artist's own journal calls his son, the actor, "an angel" - for having saved him from himself, perhaps for having brought him home from Paris where he was ill and failing as an artist, or for having physically shopped his paintings around to galleries in Paris with no results.

The oft-mentioned quote about the artist receiving the recognition he deserves after death makes us think of Vincent van Gogh who, reportedly, only sold one painting in his lifetime.  It took Vincent's industrious sister-in-law's (Johanna Bonger) tenacity to make him famous... or at least to start the ball rolling.  The rest, as they say, is history.  But how will the ages and passing of time treat De Niro, Sr.?

History is being rewritten, in this film before our very eyes.  I got the impression that the actor was being his father's good son by convincing himself that his father was a great artist - true to himself, not like any other, unable to fit into any movement or category, moody, depressive, uncompromising - all the makings of the cliché artist.  This is evidenced by the obvious omission of quality footage, being that the actor had access to all the cameras in the world and the artist did live into the '90s.  Since the actor became world famous back in '73, that would have given him 20 years to document his father's so-called accomplishments as an artist!  The actor obviously only recently felt an appreciation for his father's life work enough to prompt him to participate in this film.

Another glaring omission is that they never mention what the artist really did to make a living.  It was obvious that he was broke most of the time, yet he should have been blessed by his superstar son's meteoric rise to fame and could have spent most of his 50s and all of his 60s painting to his heart's content AND being documented for staying the course!  They, instead, fill the frames with images of artists and Garbo (he painted her obsessively) - those famous icons the artist admired.  He was in an elevator with Garbo and never said a word to her?  That set the tone for the entire "victim of his time" theme.  He was a lost soul who had rotten timing?  I think not.  He was an emulator, an imitator, and too much of a loner.  There's too much more to this story that we don't - and probably never will - know.

One "newsmaker" stated that Robert De Niro was opening up about his "openly gay father."  What better way to start a buzz - world famous actor reveals his dad is gay!  However, the short film about his father never reveals that he was openly gay.  In fact, his own journal writings reflect a man who was somewhat ashamed and conflicted about his sexuality.

Okay, so the actor did dedicate one of his movies ("A Bronx Tale") to the memory of his father - after he died; but I think the more interesting story that was not revealed in this film is what REALLY happened to De Niro, Sr., the artist, from 1973 to 1993.  Now THAT would make a great movie!

An Actual Recording Of Arthur Conan Doyle's "Spirit" From A 1934 Séance

Sir Arthur Conan Doyle often wished that he would be remembered for his writings on Spiritualism rather than his Sherlock Holmes novels. That didn't happen. But he would no doubt be pleased that the British Library has provided a unique public service — posting rare recordings of the author, both before and after his death.

More than 80 years after he passed away, it's still hard to reconcile that the man who created the literary embodiment of empirical thinking would become a prominent global figure in the Spiritualist movement. Read all about it in Sandy's "The Mystic Artist" - second edition now available here.  [more...]

Remember. Love. John Lennon.

Even though they left out #9 Dream - arguably my most favorite solo Lennon song - this is a great article from 2010 reminding us to give another listen to some of John Lennon's best songs. Go here.

Auctioning a letter from John. Go here.

Never-before-heard John Lennon interviews from 1968. Go here.

John Lennon as guitarist: "I'm not technically good, but I can make it fucking howl and move. I was rhythm guitarist. It's an important job. I can make a band drive." Go here.

John Lennon's last days. Go here.