Yesterday, I posted a video of a wonderful young singer Sara Niemiez enthusiastically performing with the PostModern Jukebox with a lively big band-like arrangement of the song, "Love Yourself."  Well, one good turn deserves another.  And here she is with them again with the same song.  But there's a reason for it.

I had come across this second version, which is an in-concert performance, before posting the official music video and was unsure which to use.  I went with the music video since it's the most professional video with the best sound, best lighting, visuals and pure vocals.  

But this concert version may well be the best performance,

There's something about singing in front of a live audience that can bring out the best in a performer, and it sure does here with Ms. Niemietz.  Perhaps it's helped by her being a trained stage actress.  Perhaps it's because by comparison the music video wants her to largely stand in front of the microphone and just sing.  But cut free of that constraint and with a big crowd in Austin, Texas, there -- she just lets loose and takes control of the entire stage.  And the result is just an exuberant, joyous performance.  One that recognizes there's an audience there and plays to them.

(Know that at one point, it looks like the performance is over.  But it's just a dramatic pause, in part too because it waits for applause, and in part as well I suspect to give her a chance to catch her breath.  You'll see.)

And so...this second version of the same song.  Hey, one good turn deserves another.

As I noted yesterday, if you live here in Los Angeles, Ms. Niemietz will be having a launch concert for her new CD on July 7 in Hollywood.  Ticket information is here.

So, why post the same singer, band and song two nights in a row?  From the moment of her entrance on stage, you can see that this will be different.

It turns out that the song is from Justin Bieber, one that he performed and co-wrote about an unnamed ex-girlfriend.  (I know it gives his name in the heading, but that didn't appear in the version I saw.)  Also, what this article relates, it seems that someone (maybe the group itself, but it isn't clear) put out a black-and-white version of this video and used filters to make it look old, saying that it came from the Library of Congress Archive and that the Bieber version was actually a cover of this original.  And it got -- according to the article -- 5 million views!  (This color version didn't do nearly as well, though still well enough to have 700,000 hits.)

The video was recorded last year when Sara Niemitz was all of 24.  She grew up in Chicago -- yes, yes, I know, I was surprised and pleased about that, but hey, we don't make this stuff up... in fact I think she was even born in the northern suburbs! -- where he also did some acting.  When she was nine, she played a character based on 7-year-old Carol Burnett in the play, Hollywood Arms, based on Burnett's memoirs -- and stayed with the production when it went to Broadway.  And when she was a young teenager, she had a role in the film, Akeelah and the Bee, among other things.  But music has been her main focus.  However, her performing background shows in all her videos.  (And I checked out quite a few on her website.  Her songs range from her own original material to some absolutely fresh covers.)

I'll be posting a few others upcoming.  But for those in the Los Angeles, you might like to know that she has a new album being released in about a week, and will be having a "release concert" in Hollywood at the Hotel Cafe on July 7.  How's that for good timing?  You can get more information here.

You may recall two weeks ago when I had my "Taking the Class Out of Classical" rant here about the generally very-good KUSC classical music station, and how they are dumbing down aspects of their broadcasting.

I also went off onto a side-tangent, bringing up their similarly-annoying "Off to School" Requests in the morning -- and how after six weeks it became clear that these had virtually nothing to do with kids making classical request.  Or kids.  Or even classical (but rather movie themes).  Yet they've continued this way, as "Off to School" Requests for the past year.  And I noted how twisted the station's effort have become to justify calling these "Off to School" Requests, rather than just simply Morning Requests.

I explained what their convoluted introduction now was when time for their "Off to School" requests -- but I did it from memory, and knew that I didn't do it justice, only mentioning a small portion of how bizarre the introduction had become.  Besides which, I suspected most people probably thought I was joking that it not only was this stupid, but actually even worse.  So, to be fair, I carefully listened to the introduction and took notes and marked it all down.  I've corrected and updated the original post, and this is now how it reads --

Okay, just a brief personal bugaboo here.

Yesterday, I heard once again described on the news about how Trump has had no major legislative successes with the sole exception nominating Neil Gorsuch and getting him onto the Supreme Court.

Sorry, but I do not consider that a success for Trump.  In fact, in some ways it bordered on a disaster.  There's a notable factor that keeps getting left out of the telling.

Up to this nomination, Supreme Court nominees had to get 60 votes in the Senate.  The reasoning generally was that for a lifetime appoint to the Supreme Court, it was important that a president couldn't just nominate an ideologue and ram the person through with majority party support.  It was seen as being a position that required a certain consensus.  

With Neil Gorsuch, however, it became clear that he would not get that consensus and wouldn't be able to reach that 60-vote threshold.  And the Trump nomination would be rejected.  So, for the first time in United States history, the Republican Senate changed standards -- perhaps forever -- and voted for the "Nuclear Option" to allow a Supreme Court nominee to only need 50 votes to get approved.

And even with that, even with changing the tradition of the United States Senate, Trump's nominee Neil Gorsuch barely sneaked through.  But ONLY because Republicans changed the rules.

This is not what I consider a legislative success.  It was a victory, but it's a victory in much the same way that a team rests all its starters in the first half so that they'll be fresh to finish the game, and yet are only losing by three points at halftime -- when suddenly the opposing team decides that games shall henceforth only be 30 minutes, not an hour, and so they go into the record books as the winner.  They won.  It counts as a win.  But it took changing the rules in a historic way never-before done to accomplish it.

It was a victory -- the same way it's a victory to get your determined opposition to agree to sign a contract by holding a gun to his head.  You won.  You just didn't convince anyone of the merits of your position, including yourself.

Trump got his Supreme Court nominee.  But make no mistake:  no matter what gets said, it was not a successful legislative tour-de-force that won the day.  He could not and did not get his nominee by the rules that existed when the nomination was made.  It was a back-alley blind mugging because they brought 51 guns to what had been agreed to be a fistfight.