Free Republic

Just ...

Click the link for live stream: From 8 until 11 p.m. EST, the air is filled with vintage jazz, swing, and big band recordings from the '20s, '30s, and '40s.

A 22-year-old Islamic gospel singer, Monsurat Yusuf, alias Alhaja Saudi, is currently in the custody of the Ogun State Police Command after she allegedly stabbed her boyfriend, Moses Eric, to death over a dream she had where the 20-year-old boyfriend attacked her. According to the state Police Public Relations Officer (PPRO), Muyiwa Adejobi, the incident happened on March 17, 2015, at the ICT Polytechnic where the two lovers were students. The couple who were said to be very much in love before the devil stepped in between them, were said to have had a quarrel over a dream Yusuf had...

Rhythm isn't something most babies are born with. But this one - which is yet to be born - seems to have it in abundance. In this incredible video of an ultrasound scan, the 14-week-old foetus appears to clap its hands together, as the mother sings If You're Happy And You Know It Clap Your Hands. The parents can be heard laughing in the background as the doctor then rewinds the tape to make it look like that baby was clapping along to their singing. The 15-second video that was uploaded to YouTube yesterday by Jen Cardinal, who is based...

Bill Black's son Louis Black passed away at 3AM this morning from complications from COPD. Please pray for his wife Janet and family.  Arrangements pending. If you would like to send sympathy cards, the address is: 295 Starnes Road Munford, TN 38058

NEW YORK, NY (CBS) – Is Taylor Swift the world’s greatest female leader? Fortune magazine thinks so. The publication released its second annual Top 50 World’s Greatest Leaders, and the Berks County native is the first female on the list at number six.

Should President Barack Obama just “shake it off?” Taylor Swift ranked sixth on Fortune Magazine’s second annual list of the world’s 50 greatest leaders—people who are “transforming business, government, philanthropy, and so much more.” But the president was omitted entirely from the list. Fortune Editor Alan Murray explained why: “I voted for Barack Obama in 2008 largely because of his call to unite blue states and red states behind a politics of hope. But it hasn’t happened. At home our politics are as divided—and our federal government is as dysfunctional—as they were when he took office.” …

Spectre trailer

The hills were alive with the sound of music this week after hikers in search of sweeping views of Southern California were surprised to find a piano on a lookout in the Santa Monica Mountains. The piano was discovered on top of Topanga Lookout, near Stunt Road in the Santa Monica Mountains Recreation Area. Several photos posted to Instagram indicated the piano was hauled up Tuesday to the ridgeline for a music video shoot involving Seatlle-based artist Rachel Wong. Wong was a finalist in Ford's 2012 "Gimme the Gig II" contest, according to her biography.

A local radio legend has passed away. John Ed Willoughby died this morning after a long illness. Willoughby’s career spanned parts of five decades. He got started in radio as Tommy Charles' sidekick on Birmingham's WSGN-AM in 1975. He "retired" 30 years later but continued to host a Saturday morning sport talk show with Doug Layton until 2012. He retired then due to health issues. Willoughby was 80 years old. A funeral will take place 11 a.m. Saturday at Vestavia Hills United Methodist Church.

I still remember the day I met Pierre Boulez for the first time, more than twenty years ago. It was an unnerving prospect. This was after all the Chief Commissar of musical modernism, the man who believed that “one must liquidate the past to move forward”. He once declared that any composer who did not follow the new musical grammar invented by Arnold Schoenberg was “USELESS”, and suggested the world’s opera houses should be blown up. When he conducted his own music it was like watching a precise form of musical semaphore: a twitch of the left hand, an imperious...

Bill Murray is a man of great taste, that's well known by now. He's appeared in a film with Wu-Tang Clan's RZA and GZA, shared a stage with Eric Clapton and even hung out with Leeds punks Eagulls (who got a tattoo especially to mark the occasion). The celebrated actor also likes to mix it with the general public - and these moments, as well as urban legends regarding his prank antics, are becoming even more well known in this increasingly digitalised age. Now, just like Danny DeVito before him at last year's Coachella, Murray has has been checking out...

The BBC's director general Tony Hall has confirmed that Jeremy Clarkson will not have his Top Gear contract renewed, after a physical assault on one of his colleagues.

Dr. Bob may have invented the first commercial viable keyboard synthesizer, but his first machines were analogue devices. They sounded amazing but had some serious technical limitations. How were they solved? By John Chowning, the inventor of a technology called “FM synthesis.” In the process, he changed music forever. The most famous FM synthesis synth of the 80s was Yamaha’s DX-7, which appeared on the market in 1983. Even if you don’t have a clue about keyboards, you’ll have heard the DX-7 a billion times in your life. Listen. (More classic uses can be found here.) None of this would...

It’s been more than 13 years since “The X-Files” aired on network TV, but on Tuesday Fox announced the spooky sci-fi series is returning for a six-episode run that will begin in the summer of 2015. “The X-Files,” which originally premiered in Sept. 1993, aired for nine seasons and earned 16 Emmy nominations during its run. The series centered on FBI agents Scully, played by Gillian Anderson, and Mulder, played by David Duchovny. Both stars will be reprising their roles for the reboot. “I think of it as a 13-year commercial break,” said Chris Carter, creator and executive producer of...

Mission: Impossible Rogue Nation Trailer

Introducing the KUSC Top 100 Countdown, Southern California’s biggest classical music survey. What’s your favorite piece of classical music ever written? It’s time to vote. Choose from our list of favorites, or write in a title of your choice. You have a total of three votes. Voting ends April 8th at midnight. Then, we’ll tally the votes and start counting down the Top 100 beginning April 22nd.

Before Beyonce, there were the Beatles. Before the Beatles, there was Brahms. And before Brahms was even born, there was the Handel & Haydn Society. America's oldest continuously operating arts organization — which introduced the nation to composers like Chopin and Strauss, the 19th century editions of Top 40 hitmakers like Jay-Z and Lady Gaga — turns 200 on Tuesday.

...The Doggfather’s latest venture, it was announced for the first time, will be an HBO show he is developing with Menace II Society director Allen Hughes and Boondocks writer Rodney Barnes about life on the West Coast during the ‘80s, when gang violence first began to dominate the region’s inner cities, particularly in Snoop’s home of East L.A. “Early in the ‘70s and toward the latter part of the ‘70s everything was beautiful because we had ways to have fun and communicate, and those who were underprivileged, the low economic side of life, the government would provide for us, which...