Barry Manilow Live

Could It Be Magic?

Mark Rushton’s Perseverance in the Arts is a weekly email on Substack where I talk about my ongoing work as a recording artist and visual artist.

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This week’s topics:

• Barry Manilow Live

• New Paintings

• A Beautiful Mural in Downtown Des Moines

• DIYERS

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Barry Manilow Live

I hadn’t planned on going to the Barry Manilow concert on August 1st in Des Moines, but one of my wife’s friends had their “plus one” get sick, and I got asked. I went along with them and my sister-in-law.

My 90 year old mom was at the show, one section above us, although her friend’s daughter drove her. She last saw Barry in Vegas with my dad about 7 years ago.

Barry Manilow is 81. I’m here to say that He Hit All The Notes. Very impressive.

I also have to admit that the first album I bought by any single artist (not a compilation), at 10 years of age, was Barry Manilow Live.

So, yeah, I knew everything he sang, except maybe a couple of things.

Is that a sold out show? If it wasn’t, it was close.

At the end, he made one final wardrobe change, which was perfect for the Iowa audience, especially my mom, who is a big Caitlin Clark fan:

No encore.

I can’t remember the last big concert that didn’t have an encore.

He’s Barry Manilow. He doesn’t have to do an encore.

It was Vegas perfection. I had a good time.

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New Paintings

I’m working on repainting some 36” x 36” canvases.

How that got rebooted, I don’t know.

They’re my usual abstract landscape motif, but with a lot of color throughout.

I look around at new homes and most cars these days, and everything is WHITE or BLACK or GRAY. I’m guilty of this because I have a silver car. Maybe it’s my way of saying that we need some color in our lives.

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A Beautiful Mural in Downtown Des Moines

This week, I was walking in downtown Des Moines and noticed this new mural at 2nd and Court Ave. It has to be very recent because the Google Spy Car drove by this location in May 2024 and it was not started.

That’s a great mural - the cityscape part.

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DIYERS

Not much new on the music side. I have recorded some noises. I am still working on things related to managing my music catalog for The MLC, ASCAP, and CMRRA, but that will take some time to complete.

This next week, I will get back to focusing on sync and libraries. I have some tracks to remaster and to get into my DISCO site to share. It all takes time.

I did receive the Curtiss King “DIYERS” t-shirt that I ordered a while back. That’s a good design.

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