Long talk with Phil last night

Rambling over our usual many topics.  and not failing, as is our wont, to enumerate the women and children butchered this past week in Afghanistan by NATO air-strikes (16)--though we but barely touched on the horrific, Nazi-like genocide being relentlessly prosecuted in the Yemen by US-armed Saudi forces--and spoke (blathered or prattled) blithely instead about the recent celebration of Phil's (55th, I believe) birthday, a somewhat grand affair (I take it--with lots of food and drink), whereat, for the second time (the first being with me as his acompanist, twenty-two long years ago) in public, Phil sang a couple of the four Brahms Serious Songs, including the ever-marvelous O Tod.  And a nice conversation we did have about how Brahms mellows and deepens with age.  Then we grazed briefly over the Bach French suites: Phil saying that he's been working at the D minor; me saying, well, yes, it's very nice, but for sheer elegant prettiness I favor the sharp-key suites, specifically the G Major, B minor and E Major.  Phil says he has not got my knack of playing through them as if they were light, frivolous entertainment; but that, as he grows older, he is acquiring it. Then we passed to the topic of Phil's major public musical endeavour, which is (not, as you might suppose, his singing Bach cantatas in church on Sundays--which of course he does do--but) his participation, as lead singer and (I think he said) rhythm guitarist in a five-piece country-western band, performing his own songs and those of Woodie Guthrie and Willy Nelson. And he's good.  Really good.  With a Western drawl and a Texan twang in his voice that is absolutely authentic-sounding, and, you would think, impossible in anyone as well-educated as he is. At any rate, such Amerikanische music is wildly popular in alt Deutschland, and Phil and his group (whose made-up name I forget) are likely contenders for winning a big upcoming competition in Cologne on the 25th of this month (St. Louis' Day), among some twenty-five bands.  It would be such a hoot if Phil's group won--and, I daresay, very remunerative.