Tohu Bohu

My college roommate was totally into Laurie Anderson. Not my freshman year roommate, but the fellow I roomed with sophomore and junior years; a vaguely remember that my freshman year roommate had decent taste in music but I can’t for the life of me remember any specific bands or even genres he liked.

Anyway, Strange Angels came out in 1989, when I was a sophomore, and my roommate bought it (on CD!) and we listened to it a lot. I mean, a lot. It’s a terrific album, just taken as a pop album. I mean, for a pop album it’s a bit arty, but it’s no artier than, say, Remain in Light. There are melodies, and the songs are more or less the length of songs, at least within the college alternative music sense of songs, where four or five minutes seems like a perfectly reasonable song length.

“Monkey’s Paw” is a fantastic song riffing off the old story and plastic surgery. “The Day the Devil” is a fantastic song about, well, the day the Devil comes to get you. “Beautiful Red Dress” is probably the best pop song there is about menstruation, and “Hiawatha” is probably the best pop song there is about Longfellow poetry. But my favorite, for some reason, is “Baby Doll”, which is about the relationships between people and their brains.

I don’t know about your brain, she says, but mine is really… bossy. It’s bossy, but also condescending, and definitely male. Baby Doll, he calls her, and he interested in what he wants, and not particularly interested in what she wants. The offhand manner in which he comes to her assistance in the letter-writing. The wrinkled little scraps of paper with insulting comments. And striking closest for me is the way that her brain goes away and comes back, without warning, without sticking to a schedule.

And it’s danceable. Well, funkable. The beat is driving, with just a tad of swing and odd sounding percussion like synapses snapping. Yes, eighties synthesizer.

Oh, one more thing: When she says Do you mean… George?, she’s referring to Our Only President’s father. At some point in 2001, I must have heard the song and griped about how it came back. Nice to think that soon we will have a President with a different name.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

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My Gracious Host has posted an enjoyable game he calls Online Encore. In the Encore parlor game, there is a target word and people are trying to come up with lots and lots of lyrics that contain that word. That game works best with words that are moderately common; ideally, the first half-dozen songs shouldn’t take much memory at all, and then the competition really starts. In Jed’s Online Encore, the point is for the Blogger to come up with a list of really hard words, and for the Readers (working as a team) to come up with lyrics that include them. He has listed an atoz, and there are still quite a few targets unhit. YHB has come up with an atoz of target words for Gentle Readers to aim at.

Score: For each word on the list, YHB has in mind one and only one song that contains the word. Gentle Readers (as a team) get one Bragging Unit for each time y’all come up with the song I thought of, but you get two Bragging Units each time you come up with a song I didn’t think of. Up to a maximum of five Bragging Units per word. YHB gets two Bragging Units for having come up with the list. For every word on the list that y’all blank on, I get two more Bragging Units. For any word that y’all can’t come up with any other song than the one I had in mind, I get one Braggin Unit. Any Gentle Reader who posts his or her own list gets two Bragging Units. Jed gets two Bragging Units for having come up with the game. Any Gentle Reader who posts for the first time with a guess gets one extra Bragging Unit. Any Gentle Reader who is able to identify an instance where YHB has screwed up the lyrics again gets one Bragging Unit.

MFQ Rules: Don’t look stuff up and then post it. You don’t have to know the name of the song, but you have to be able to sing (or in this case type) a chunk of the lyric containing the word. It’s better if you sing that chunk of lyric out loud, though, whilst typing. Eight words is the canonical minimum chunk for the Encore parlor game. If you get the lyrics wrong from memory (as I did four of my guesses over yonder), there will be Scorn and Derision, but not so bad as if you looked the lyric up before posting. Don’t just make up shit up, please, and if you do, make it worthwhile. Within that construct, I’m going to rule that songs written by Gentle Readers are not eligible, even if you realio trulio wrote a song with that word in the lyric five years ago. I mean, if you did, let me know, because that’s a whole separate set of Bragging Units. All the songs are primarily in the English Language; no score for translations and multilingual puns, except, you know, anyone who does something really clever gets one Bragging Unit and one S&D unit.

The List: I'll try to keep this up-to-date. If a word is in bold, nobody has come up with nothing. If a word is in italics, at least one Gentle Reader has come up with at least one song containing it. If a word is struck through, some Gentle Reader has come up with the song that YHB was thinking of. If a word is both italicized and struck through, then y'all have maxed out the five BUs available.

• astonished
• captivate
• ghettology
• Jeddah
• laceration
• Occidental
• parquet
• revenue
• Sorbonne
• yardstick
• zooming
• bathing
• distributor
• elevation
• housewife
• ichthyosaur
• kindling
• narwhal
• monkish
• quintessence
• tax-deductible
• unemployment
• vichysoisse
• wheelchair
• X-Files

At the end of the game, we can all take our Bragging Units and exchange them for valuable… er… Look! Isn’t that John McCain over there?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

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So, here’s the thing: it’s 1980, Squeeze (aka Squeeze UK) has put out three albums, and is really hitting its stride. They are beyond any doubt cool for cats. They’ve broken loose from the producer thing, and started to have a really distinctive sound, based in large part on the keyboard work of the incomparable Jools Holland. Who leaves the band.

Chris Difford writes some lyrics about being married and on tour with zillions of available groupies. It’s a melancholy song, full of lists, the narrator seeming to focus on listing whatever he sees in an attempt to fill his mind with banal images so that he doesn’t think about the consequences of his actions. Not very pop. Glenn Tillbrook likes the lyrics but can’t come up with a melody. Eventually he gets something, but isn’t happy with the sound of it.

The recording for the new album isn’t going well. They’ve got a new keyboardist, Paul Carrack, and they’ve got Dave Edmunds producing, and it is going very badly. So they ditch him and get Elvis Costello to produce. He takes over, rearranges the song to sound more R&B, and not only demands that Mr. Carrack take the lead vocals (pissing off Mr. Tillbrook), but takes a good chunk of the vocals himself.

And, somehow, it works.

Although the video is one of the great examples of bad 80s music videos in the category band pretends to be performing in concert whilst lip-synching to the studio recording. It’s particularly egregious due to (a) the sulkiness of the band members as they lip-synch to Mr. Costello’s vocals, and (2) the inexplicable presence of three shimmying women who at first appear to be backup singers, but do not actually sing (or lip-synch) the backup vocals at all. At one point, they appear to be sitting down and having a rest. Well, all that shimmying must take it out of a girl.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

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As it’s Music Monday again, I’ll talk a bit about Naive Melody, “This Must Be the Place”. I love this song. The version I was listening to is off the first CD version of the Stop Making Sense soundtrack; the live version, but remixed, I believe, with the live drumming taken off and a drum machine put in, among other things. Not sure about that, now that I think about it. When did I buy the CD? I suppose I could dig around and find it. I almost never use any of the CDs I’ve purchased over the years. At home I listen to music on my computer, and in the car I listen mostly to library discs or mix CDs I’ve made for myself. Some CDs from my collection, but not a lot.

Anyway, I love the song. I have a terrific cover version by Gunnar (“Bob”) Madsen off The Power of a Hat, and I’ve heard a handful of other great covers, but this is my favorite. There’s something about the affectless voice of David Byrne over the “naive” and endles repetition of the hook together with the slight funk that creeps in. And the backing vocals are just wonderful.

One of the things that I love about the Speaking in Tongues album is the way the lyrics are relentlessly abstract, intended to evoke emotions rather than tell stories. Yes, YHB is a freak for narrative, but that means I am substantially less likely to love a song lyric or story or movie that isn’t narrative, but if I do like it, I like it a lot. Actually, now that I think about it, perhaps I can draw a connection to painting styles: I have little interest in still life or landscape, but I love a lot of truly abstract stuff: Malevich and Still and LeWitt. Perhaps the lyrics of Speaking in Tongues are like Sol LeWitt’s wall paintings: rigorous, abstract and beautiful.

And just a trifle unsettling. I mean, just a bit. It sort of has to be unsettling, just because the concatenation of phrases is unconnected, not only to each other but to the music, and to the expression of the vocals. The bits of phrases evoke home, mostly, both from a sense of longing for the heimishkeit and from a sense of dislocation or disorientation, from which home is a refuge. And of course, home is identified with the you in the song, rather than with an actual place or house.

And then the ending… the idea that somebody will “love me till my heart stops” is both comforting and discomfiting at once, isn’t it, particularly when repeated as “love me till I’m dead”. The eyes in the next line, the “eyes that light up” refer back to the line about having “light in your eyes”, right? But hear at the end of the song the “eyes look through you”; are they the singers eyes, then? Looking through the song’s second-person as in seeing into the soul, or looking through you in the sense of discovering their pretenses? Because the next line is “cover up the blank spots/hit me on the head”, which it’s tricky to force into the mosaic of comfort and love, particularly with the talk about death earlier in the verse. It would be possible to construct out of these disconnected phrases a frightening narrative—but it wouldn’t be consistent with the music. Nor would it be consistent with the clear intent of the lyric, which is to keep the images fragmented, rather than connecting them.

Because it is a beautiful song. For me, the cumulative effect of the whole thing, the lyric and the sound, is one of aching longing for the deep connection between people that constitutes a home, and of the surprised dawning of realization that it exists already.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

Your Humble Blogger has been, as Gentle Readers are aware, scratching about in the dirt for some blog worms. Er, not such a good metaphor. Anyway, I’ve been having a bit of difficulty being inspired to write much of anything for the blog, partially because I lose my temper over the political stuff, and partially because I got into the habit of relying on Pyggie to supply me with topics. So. I’m going to attempt to start a habit of Music Monday! Boy, I should come up with a graphic for that, hunh? Well, the idea is that every Monday (that I actually get off my bottom and do it) I will look at some song I listened to the day before (perhaps I should say over the last 60 hours or so, covering the weekend) and write something about it.

Looking at the songs I listened to yesterday, what floats to the top is the new Jim’s Big Ego album, which is free*, and which I’m not ready to write about yet, having only listened to it the once. For individual sides, it’s “Maman Rosin Au Zydeco Bal” off the BeauSoleil album Live! From the Left Coast. For those of you unfamiliar with BeauSoleil, and were somehow unable to guess from the title of the song, they are a cajun band playing two-step music. Gentle Reader, if you know nothing about cajun music, listen to a taste of some to see if you like it. Gentle Reader, if you like cajun music, or fiddling of any kind, and are unfamiliar with BeauSoleil, go listen to a taste.

I’ve only seen the band once, on a very very odd triple bill. The opening band was the Dirty Dozen Brass Band, BeauSoleil came on second, and the headliner was Geno Delafose, le cowboy creole. Which meant that we could slip out partway through the set, because although he was very good, we were very old, and it was very late, and we’d seen both the bands we had come to see. And we danced to the Dirty Dozen, when the dance floor was almost empty and people were milling around, treating them like the opening act. Which, you know, they were. More people danced to BeauSoleil, and the floor was packed when Mr. Delafose started with his French-rocking boogie; it was during that brief craze for New Jump music and there were young swing dancers just aching to show off their two-step moves.

I don’t know if BeauSoleil played this song during their set. I neither speak nor understand the French language, which hasn’t ever been a problem in my life, but does mean that I don’t associate songs in that language with their titles, nor do I know the songs with the kind of familiarity I do songs in English. My favorite BeauSoleil song is their cover of Fats Domino’s “It’s You I Love”, which they sing in both English and French. Or I assume they are singing a French translation. For all I really know, they are singing about almonds and raisins, or the anti-inflammatory qualities of cod liver oil, or just scatting nonsense syllables.

That total lack of French is part of the reason I love this song so much, I’m afraid. I mean, in addition to the way the band smokes through what is evidently a traditional Acadian tune, in Michael Doucet’s lyric there’s what is either an actual pun or just what sounds like a wonderful pun to my monolingual ears. The chorus, you see, is

O, yaie, donnez-moi des haricots.
He, maman, les haricots sont pas sales.

which by the translation in the liner notes and my own recollection and interpretation means something like Oy, Oy, pass me them there beans/Oh Mama, them beans sure ain’t salty! I’m just assuming they aren’t talking about beans, there. If the song were in Yiddish, they wouldn’t be talking about bupkes.

Anyway, the point is that Mr. Doucet’s accent and my unfamiliarity with that accent and the language makes his hard r sound a trifle like a d, that is, it’s made with the tip of the tongue hitting the palate rather than being curled. There are people who can describe this more clearly than I can, using proper tools and the International Phonetic Alphabet; there are more languages than French Your Humble Blogger doesn’t know. Anyway, with the z sound at the end of the article, and the silent t at the end, les haricots sounds to me exactly like l’zydeco; the song, then, is proclaiming that it’s the zydeco music at the ball that ain’t salty.

Again, I have no idea if this is a deliberate pun, a pleasant accident, or a sort of mondegreen. I suspect it’s a deliberate pun, because I like it better that way.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

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Gentle Readers will recall that YHB asked for help in mixing a CD for Opening Night presents, and just possibly have been waiting to find out the final score. Herewith the opening of the liner notes:

Notes on some recordings of popular music from the Higgins Archive

By W.G. Neppomuck

While it is well-known among scholars of historical linguistics that the Higgins Archive of recordings on wax cylinders includes many fine examples of early-twentieth-century dialects, a complete index of the Archive has only recently been completed. Even many researchers who have used the recordings by courtesy of the Royal Archive are unaware that in addition to the hundreds of recordings of London dialects and scores of recordings of dialects from elsewhere in England, Europe and Asia, there are a handful of cylinders of popular music. Whether Henry Higgins instructed the vocalists in phonetics, recorded them for study, or simply kept them for his own amusement, it is not now possible to know¹.

The purpose of this note is to sketch out the variety of styles, accents and dialects and other matters of phonological interest found in these recordings. The accompanying CD provides scholars an opportunity for close study. It is, perhaps, worth mentioning that some of the recordings lack a modern sense of cultural sensitivity. Higgins himself was, as was typical for his time, profoundly chauvinistic and insensitive²; however, the modern scholar might also keep in mind that he collected many recordings of which he did not approve. We must reserve judgement. However, for the modern listener, this author apologizes in advance for any offense, but persists in hopes that doing so will advance the cause of phonetic science.

¹ The notes kept with the cylinders are in Higgins’ own hand, and are incomplete, illegible and incoherent. Fortunately, the labels are in another hand, meticulous and feminine. The identity of this assistant is another mystery of the Higgins Archive, however, we are grateful to her for the names of the songs and of the vocalists.

² see Higgins 1908, Higgins 1909a, Higgins 1909b, Higgins and Pickering 1913, Higgins and Pickering 1914, Higgins 1915 and Higgins 1919.

The song list is below. There were some good things I had to leave off, and a few lousy things I had to leave off, and there were a few things I couldn’t track down in time. After the fact, a cast member suggested Lonnie Donegan’s My Old Man’s a Dustman, which would have been perfect and probably would have opened the CD, but I had never heard of it before, and although I’m sure I had heard of Lonnie Donegan (as he is a Big Deal influence on a bunch of musicians I like so much that I’ve bothered to read articles about them and their musical influences) I can’t say as I could have pulled his name out of my memory. With that sort of thing in mind, Gentle Reader, please chip in with other stuff that seems missing, as it may be a Learning Experience for YHB, and I can always use one of those.

“Mother’s Lament”, performed by Cream
“ I’m Henery The Eighth”, performed by Harry Champion
“ It’s a Long, Long Way to Tipperary”, performed by Albert Farrington
“ Yes, We Have No Bananas”, performed by Billy Jones
“ I Love Louisa”, performed by Fred Astaire
“ Slow Down Krishna”, performed by The Bobs
“ In the Desert”, performed by Flanders & Swann
“ Rum And Coca Cola”, performed by Andrews Sisters
“ Me Pants Fall Down”, performed by Da Vinci’s Notebook
“ Run Joe”, performed by Louis Jordan
“ Road Man”, performed by Smash Mouth
“ Flat Foot Floogie”, performed by Mills Brothers
“ Angelina - Zooma Zooma (Medley)”, performed by Louis Prima
“ Mambo Italiano”, performed by Rosemary Clooney
“ Thou Swell”, performed by Count Basie & Joe Williams
“ Burlington Bertie”, performed by Julie Andrews
“ Bruces’ Philosophers Song”, performed by Monty Python
“ It’s You I Love”, performed by Beausoleil
“ Dos Geshrey Fun Der Vilder Katshke (The Cry Of The Wild Duck)”, performed by Klezmer Conservatory Band
“ What I Want Is A Proper Cup Of Coffee”, performed by Trout Fishing In America
“ Another Irish Drinking Song”, performed by Da Vinci’s Notebook
“ Autumn Leaves”, performed by Mel Torme

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

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Gentle Readers, a little assistance, if you please.

Your Humble Blogger has started for himself a little tradition (if you do something twice, it’s a tradition, right?) of making a mix CD as opening-night gifts for the cast and crew. For The Man who Came to Dinner, I did a mix of songs from the 1930s, the era the show was set, although I did mix in some other songs that fit the mood, even if they were recorded later. For Les Liaisons Dangereuses, I made an Early Music mix (explaining that after a fair amount of research, I decided that I just don’t like music from the 1780s). For Pygmalion, my idea is a mix of songs where the singers put on funny accents. Or songs about people with funny accents. Probably supplemented by songs where the singers actually have funny accents, to fill up an hour.

Off the top of my head, there’s “Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off”, and probably Noel Coward’s “Has Anybody Seen My Ship”, and either Mel Tormé singing “Autumn Leaves” in a Faux French Accent or Trout Fishing in America singing “Proper Cup of Coffee” in Faux French. There’s Bing Crosby and Bob Hope singing “Hoots, Mon” from the Road to Bali.

I could find “Yes, We Have No Bananas”, either the Irving Kaufman hit or the Spike Jones travesty. Louis Prima, of course, does it in Mock Italian rather than Mock Greek, but I could come up with some other Louis Prima Mock Italian, like “Angelina” or “Felicia No Capicia”.

One problem, of course, is that many of the possibilities are racist, or at least smell of racism, to the point where I’d rather not include them. Is Harry Belafonte putting on the Jamaican accent he lost as a child to sing Calypso racist? No, not really. I could put the Banana Boat song on, or even “Matilda”. What about Nat King Cole singing “Calypso Blues”? I mean, somewhere along the line you get to Al Jolson, yes? Not that “Yes, We Have No Bananas” is not racist. It is. But somehow, now that Southern European isn’t a race anymore, I don’t mind it too much. Of course, there’s the anti-immigrant thing, but isn’t that the whole point of funny-accent music? Perhaps I could put that in the liner notes.

Anyway, I’m looking for suggestions. My own taste leans to mid-century stuff (er, the 20th century, you remember), but I’d be happy to have a ton of rock-and-roll, if we can come up with enough. I find that a mix that is mostly in one (broadly defined) style but has one or two songs from a different style doesn’t work very well, but a mix that swings from style to style can work very well indeed. I am aware that the lead singer of Green Day affects an accent, but I don’t know their stuff, and I would have to put on, I don’t know, Ian Dury’s “Billericay Dickie” to cushion it. Does that count as a fake accent? Mr. Dury wasn’t really from Essex, you know.

Anyway, I’m—did I mention this?—looking for suggestions. Criteria: Song must have at least one verse in accented English, preferably fake, ideally outrageously obviously fake. Song must be reasonably pleasant to listen to anyway. Song should ideally avoid outright racism. It would be nice to avoid vicious mean-spirited mockery, although affectionate mockery would be acceptable. Obscenities are a strike against, although I could presumably make a different disc for the children in the cast. Songs from stage musicals are also a strike against, although later recordings by different singers may well be fine. Sock it to me, Gentle Readers.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 12:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (15) | TrackBacks (0)

One of the good things about doing an interview the way I’m doing it is that I can interpret the questions however I like. F’r’ex, when Matt Hulan asks What is it about Elvis Costello?, rather than answering What is it about Elvis Costello that makes him such an asshole?, I can answer What is it about Elvis Costello that makes him so important to YHB personally? If you would like to try such interpretations for your own set of five questions, simply leave a twenty-pound note between the end of chapter two (The Detection of Leaks) and the beginning of chapter three (Checking the Thoroughness of Mixing) of any nearby copy of Radio Isotopes: A New Tool for Industry, by Sidney Jefferson. Or type a note in the comments, if that’s easier for you. Now, on to Elvis Costello.

Gentle Readers will no doubt be shocked to learn that Your Humble Blogger was a nerdy kid. Glasses, asthma, bad skin, special classes for the gifted, social ineptness, poor hand-eye co-ordination, ostracization, the whole bang shoot. And, of course, the rage, envy and self-loathing that is the birthright of the nerd, or at least of the male nerd (I suspect the female feels much the same, only worse). By the time I was in seventh or eighth grade, Elvis Costello was the outlet for those emotions. I listened to My Aim Is True over and over. A big old platter, on an enormous Hi-Fi system, usually alone in the house in the afternoon, or, if my mother were home, perhaps in my sister’s room on her more modern turntable. “Allison”, “Watching the Detectives” and “Mystery Dance” expressed the adolescent inferiority/superiority complex with an eloquence I could not, and with a frankness I could not reach, either. Particularly, this was a rock star who not only had glasses and pigeon toes but sang about a sexual life that existed primarily in twisted fantasies, where fulfillment wasn’t as easily imagined as revenge.

It’s cool now, I promise.

You know what? I’m going to go through the album song-by-song, just to bring back the ugly past:

• Welcome to the Working Week: in my teens, this was a song about a boy whose girlfriend becomes famous, for some reason, and inadequate to the glossy life of a starlet’s boyfriend, and demoted to a sort of assistant/dogsbody. I don’t exactly know where all this came from, but that’s what I got.


• Miracle Man: This, for me, was the song of a man who is losing his struggle with his urges. He’s got a crazy crush on a girl who sees him as just a friend; she teases him casually and he usually pretends not to care, but he’s reaching the breaking point.


• No Dancing: This is a fellow who finally makes it to his girlfriend’s house, expecting to get lucky, but his clumsy advances are such a turn-off that she dumps him. Shudder.


• Blame It On Cain: Just a crazy outsider rant. But fun.


• Alison: Classic dark, jealous threat.


• Sneaky Feelings: The boy in this one prefers his fantasies to the possible realities.
  
• (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes: Another unrequited love story, but with perhaps the Best Ever line: I said “I’m so happy I could die”/She said “Drop dead” then left with another guy. This is the inevitable result of transitory happiness for this frame of mind. Or, perhaps, when anyone is fourteen.


• Less Than Zero: Er, about fascism. Worth bringing up the other point, which is that Elvis Costello songs were not just about sexual longing and inferiority, they were about sexual longing and inferiory expressed in erudite terms. You know, for nerds.


• Mystery Dance: In this song, the boy is not only clumsy, but actually ignorant of the mechanics of sex, for extra humiliation.


• Pay It Back: Here, the boy is putting up a hard front, until the line Until the lights went out, I didn’t know what to do/If I could fool myself, then maybe I’d fool you too, which brings us back to the previous song’s humiliation.


• I’m Not Angry: Oh, yes he is. And jealous. Another is-she-really-going-out-with-him song.


• Waiting for the End of the World: This song is more the aloof nerd, the one who is just better than the circumjacent yahoos, and a little bit afraid of them, too.


• Watching the Detectives: Although it isn’t clear whether the boy in this song is only fantasizing about kidnapping the object of his pathetic crush or whether he has done it, it’s still creepy. Wonderfully creepy.

I think that’s the whole album that I had on vinyl. I could probably sing the whole thing through, word for word, right now (except for the mondegreens, since the album came without a lyrics sheet, and I learned the words off the Singing Dictionary much later and the intellectual knowledge hasn’t replaced the muscle memory of singing the wrong words), and—and this is really important—hum most of the bass lines and guitar solos and tap out the drum parts on a table top. Because in addition to the whole emotional thing, these are really good songs. The lyrics are witty, and funny in places, and powerful, and the tunes are catchy, memorable and enjoyable.

And then there are the other nineteen albums. Mr. Costello (or Mr. MacManus, to use his proper name) has put out a lot of great music, over my entire adult life. He was the first recording artist that I ever sought out information on when a new album was coming out to go and buy it as soon as it was available. Back when they were on big black plates, you know. Actually, the first album I bought on CD I bought was Imperial Bedroom, to replace the cassette that was worn out, and besides cut off partway through “Town Cryer”. That was, coincidentally or not, the first CD I damaged and had to replace. Ah, well. I walked four miles to buy Spike on the first day it was out. Well, it’s more accurate to say that I wandered around Philadelphia lost for an hour until I blundered my way to the Tower Records on South Street, but I was headed there to buy Spike. I have grown less obsessed over time (as I have grown more complacent with my own life), and I haven’t got around to getting the new album, yet. Plus, over the last ten years or so, I’ve started to resent him for being an asshole. But whenever I hear a new album, I want to like it, because that first one was so important to me, way back when.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 3:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (2) | TrackBacks (0)

Bo Diddley has died.

I think a lot of people think of Bo Diddley as a joke, which makes sense, as he was a comic figure. He played a square guitar, for crying out loud. Lots of musicians, lots of performers, lots of people critical in the development of art forms have been comic figures. That doesn’t make them unimportant. The art can still be good.
For me, it doesn’t get much better than that early Bo Diddley, the Chess Records stuff. If I get a choice between listening to Muddy Waters or Bo Diddley, I’ll take Bo Diddley. If I get a choice between listening to Howlin’ Wolf or Bo Diddley, I’ll take Bo Diddley. If I get a choice between listening to B.B. King or Bo Diddley, I’ll take Bo Diddley. If I get a choice between listening to Eric Clapton or Bo Diddley, I’ll take Bo Diddley. If I get a choice between listening to The Rolling Stones or Bo Diddley, I’ll take Bo Diddley.

But that’s a matter of taste, and people, being different one to another, have different tastes, and that’s what makes the world interesting and fun. What is not a matter of taste is how influential his Bo Diddley persona remains, both directly and indirectly. The character of the boisterous, comically arrogant and egotistical (black) man is common, and his technique of making risibly overstated boasts about his sexual prowess and rebelliousness should be instantly recognizable to anyone with a level of cultural literacy above zero, that is, around the level of Your Humble Blogger.

I walk 47 miles of barbed wire,
I use a cobra-snake for a necktie,
I got a brand new house on the roadside,
Made from rattlesnake hide,
I got a brand new chimney made on top,
Made out of a human skull,
Now come on take a walk with me, child,
And tell me, who do you love?

By the way, if anybody wearing a cobra-snake necktie asks you do take a walk with him and tell him who you love, do not walk with this man. This has been your good advice for the day.

Now when I was a little boy,
At the age of five,
I had somethin’ in my pocket,
Keep a lot of folks alive.
Now I’m a man,
Made twenty-one,
You know baby,
We can have a lot of fun.

The lyrics, of course, don’t do justice to the sound. You may see obituaries talking about the shave-and-a-haircut rhythm, or bomp-chicka-bomp-chicka-bomp-bomp rhythm. Writing about music is, notoriously, like dancing about architecture; if you’re inspired to do it, terrific, but don’t expect the audience to learn a lot. I’ll say that once I’d heard that rhythm, the one he didn’t invent but which he popularized, I started hearing in a lot of rock-and-roll, and more to the point, a lot of good rock-and-roll.

I saw Bo Diddley perform in 1994, I think, at the reception of a non-profit/NGO conference. He would have been 66 years old, I guess, or thereabouts. I think the median age of the people in the room was about the same. A handful of young ’uns like myself and my Best Reader, a handful of extremely elderly people, but the bulk of them were in their late fifties, sixties and early seventies. Bo Diddley rocked. He also insisted on being paid in cash, which was a pain in the ass of the conference organizers, but I have come to understand why the man didn’t trust people. Not that the organization’s check would have bounced, but he was sure the cash wouldn’t bounce.

A last note: some of us, I’m afraid, when we sing our children to sleep, can’t help singing it like this:

Hush, little baby, don’t say a word
Papa’s gonna buy you a mockingbird
if that mockingbird don’t sing
Papa’s gonna buy you a diamond ring
if that diamond ring don’t shine
Papa’s gonna take it to a private eye
If that private eye can’t see
dontcha take no ring from me
bomp-chicka-bomp-chicka-bomp-bomp

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 2:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This is a kind of reverse lyrics meme, picked up from Not Really A Link: shuffle all the one-star songs in your library, and list the first lyric for each of the first ten songs. As usual, I left off the instrumentals and the foreign lyrics. Points for song title, lyricist and singer.

1. April Fool, April Fool/This isn't going to fool anyone/not that I like fooling people anyway/or being fooled for that matter
2. He's a two-trick pony/Two tricks are all that horse can do/He does one trick mostly/but the secondary trick is pretty good, too
3. Hip, hip hooray/three cheers for my baby/hip, hip hooray/baby's got three hips
4. Cory loves me/This I know/Cos the Internet tells me so
5. There are lots of things on Moshe Dayan/There are lots of things on Moshe Dayan/There's a spot on Moshe Dayan's tie/There's a patch on Moshe Dayan's eye/Moshe Dayan walks like a chicken
6. Yes, we have no bananas/we have no bananas/but we have half-a-dozen plantains, which are a lot like bananas
7. Fuck fuck fuck fuck/Ow that hurts/Fuck fuck fuck fuck/You little shit/Don't ever do that again/It isn't funny/How would you like it/If it happened to you/Fuck fuck fuck fuck fuck
8. I'm Talkin' Baseball/Ort and Raj and Benji/Giants baseball/Barry Z and Brian Hennesey/Aurilia, Durham Omar and Velez/We're still fans no matter what anyone sez/Talkin' Baseball/The Giants sure suck, don't they?
9. Barney is a dinosaur from our imagination/And when he's tall/He's what we call a dinosaur sensation
10. Farewell, lovely Nancy/Farewell, my own true love/For it's now I must go away and leave ye/Never to see you any more/I'm gonna sail upon that ferry boat/Never to return again/So farewell, lovely Nancy/But you must be safe, and be loyal and constant/Like a sucker

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 8:59 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

“Life During Wartime”, Talking Heads
“Through Being Cool”, Devo
“We’re All Light”, XTC
“At Long Last Love”, Lena Horne
“Oh, Lady, Be Good (Symphony In Swing)”, Artie Shaw
“Bei Mir Bist Du Schön (Means That You’re Grand)”, Andrews Sisters
“ver es hot (One Has Got)”, The Klezmatics
“Jackie Wilson Said”, Van Morrison
“Summer”, Jabbering Trout
“Manteca”, Dizzy Gillespie
“Blue Heaven”, The Pogues
“How’s Your Romance?”, Bobby Short
“Dr. Jazz”, Jools Holland and The Rhythm & Blues Orchestra
“Ev’ry Time We Say Good-Bye”, Ella Fitzgerald
“I Prefer You”, Etta James
“Monkey To Man”, Elvis Costello
“I Can’t Explain”, The Who
“Man In a Hat”, The Klezmatics
“Wave a White Flag”, Elvis Costello
“Funk Pop A Roll”, XTC
“Road to Morocco”, Bing Crosby
“I Need a Doctor”, The Nields
“Has Anybody Seen Our Ship?”, Noel Coward
“Ghost of Stephen Foster”, Squirrel Nut Zippers
“1-2-8”, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones
“Mama, I Wanna Make Rhythm”, Cats & Jammers
“Make a Circuit with Me”, The Polecats
“One Week”, Barenaked Ladies
“(Sittin’ On) the Dock of the Bay”, Otis Redding
“On the Sunny Side of the Street”, Nat King Cole
“Slippery People”, Talking Heads
“My Best Friend’s Girl”, The Cars
“Ring Dem Bells”, Duke Ellington
“Manny’s Bones”, Los Lobos
“Top Hat, White Tie And Tails”, Louis Armstrong
“For Your Love”, The Yardbirds
“I Wanna Be Sedated”, Ramones
“Jumpin’ Jack”, Big Bad Voodoo Daddy
“Black Coffee in Bed”, Squeeze
“It’s You I Love”, Beausoleil
“Beat Me Daddy, Eight To The Bar”, Andrews Sisters
“Girlfriend Is Better”, Talking Heads
“Tempted”, Squeeze
“Rock the Casbah”, The Clash
“Ring of Fire”, Johnny Cash
“Industrial Disease”, Dire Straits
“Caldonia (Live)”, B.B. King
“Gonna Get Through This World”, The Klezmatics
“Verdi Cries”, 10,000 Maniacs
“Roam”, The B-52’s
“Lullaby of Birdland”, Ella Fitzgerald & Duke Ellington
“I’m the Man Who Murdered Love”, XTC
“Not Fade Away”, The Rolling Stones
“Headdy Down”, The Klezmatics

• I like living in the early 21st century. Sure, there are problems, but there are mp3 players, too, which makes up for a lot.
• The French Toast Alert System is clearly the best if not only way to discuss New England Weather. Tomorrow it will be again time to panic buy eggs and bread and milk and cinnamon and sugar and tasty maple-flavored sausages. Mmmmmmmm, storm.
• As long as it is a personal decision, the fact that snowblowers are noisy, inefficient, expensive and polluting will not prevent people from buying them and using them. In fact, the snowblower serves as an excellent illustration of the need for public policy, as well as a problem of rhetoric and suasion. People are reluctant to believe in an oncoming disaster, because believing in it will (in their minds) require them to drastically reduce their standard of living. Bicycling to work, paying more money for less food (local, healthy, and so on, but less in quantity), wearing bulky and itchy sweaters indoors, eating lentil soup, smelling of patchouli oil, and spending hours clearing the damn driveway with a shovel like some sort of wild animal in the wilderness. Not going to happen. And, in fact, for individuals, drastically reducing carbon footprint is tricky without making substantial lifestyle changes or investing some serious money. On the other hand, if we converted our electricity grid to be much, much cleaner, and put some effort into making snowblowers and lawnmowers and chainsaws and cars work off that grid, we could slash co/2 whilst sipping hot cocoa by the fire. Yes, higher taxes for a while, but you get to keep your snowblower. Or a snowblower, anyway.
• Klezmer music is terrific for shoveling, but you know what would be awesome shoveling music? Sea shanties. Wouldn’t that be great? Heave away, haul away.
• OK, how about this for a gadget in one of those gadgetty catalogues: the town’s plows get hooked into a city-wide system with GPS and all, and you get an alert when they are coming to your block. It wouldn’t be in time to move your car (in my imaginary system), but it would be in time to put on your boots and deal with the ridge before it ices in place. Alternately, very small shaped explosive devices for clearing the ridge after it ices. You drill a hole, slip the thing in, go back inside and set it off. You would have to clear the ice rubble, afterward, but wouldn’t it be worth it?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 12:02 PM | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

As a postscript to the earlier conversation—we were looking for rock/pop songs, etc, and I think it’s a good idea to keep Children’s Music out of that whole discussion. There is a lot of good Children’ s Music out there, and it’s a different discussion. So perhaps to start that discussion, and perhaps for other, better reasons, here’s a song I know from a Cathy Fink and Marcy Marxer album, but I think it's by Red Grammer:

On the day that Jamey was born
On the day that Jamey was born
On the day that Jamey was born
The angels sang and they blew on their horns
And they smiled, and they danced
And they raised up their hands
On the day, on the day the Jamey was born!

Today, someone’s being born.
Today, someone’s being born.
Today, someone’s being born.
The angels sing and they blow on their horns
And they smile, and they dance
And they raise up their hands
’cos today, ’cos today, someone’s being born!

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 7:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

A Gentle Reader has asked me to pose the following question to the rest of y’all: what are the best rock/pop/soul/etc. songs about parenthood?

It’s a tough one. I thought I would just open up the music player and easily come up with ten songs for a Parenthood Mix, and then I’d open it up for y’all to fill in the last few tracks. The problem is ... rock songwriters don’t write about raising children. They write about cars, they write about girls, they write about girls in cars, but they don’t write about raising children.

All right, let’s get to it. There are three main categories of Songs About Parenthood that come up in these discussions. First, there’s the category typified by Stevie Wonder’s song for his daughter, “Isn’t She Lovely?” These are songs to celebrate the birth of a baby. Miracle songs, songs of love and awe, songs of near-generic happiness and, occasionally, terror. Songs that come to mind include the Barenaked Ladies’ “When You Dream” and Bob Dylan’s “Forever Young”. Sometimes the child isn’t a baby, like in the Eurythmics’ “Beautiful Child”, but it goes in this category because it’s essentially just an expression of love coupled with a somewhat frustrated urge to protect, that is, a celebration of the existence of the child, not a song about actually raising the child.

The second category is a song of advice, given from a parent to a child, often one who is explicitly too young to yet understand such advice. My favorite of these is the XTC song “Garden of Earthly Delights”, but I’m also fond of a Fred Small song called “Everything Possible” (this may be outside the genre restrictions, being essentially folk, in which genre you will find more such songs). “Sean” by The Proclaimers could be in this category, too, but I’m pretty sure it’s an older sibling giving advice (Sean, I’d say the best one came from Tupelo, Mississippi/I’ll tell you know that grown men cry, and Irish girls are pretty/Though fear and hurt and care can lead me to despair/I saw why I’m here the morning you appeared), not a father.

The third category is songs by Paul Simon.

You’ll notice that the first two categories do not involve any actual parenting. Mr. Simon writes about, oh, taking his nine-year-old son to Graceland, or telling his kids about the first time he met their mother. Or tucking his boy in to bed, or about his hopes for his child’s future. Like that. As my Gentle Reader put it, good songs about being a good parent, or trying to be a good parent and missing the mark occasionally, or what have you. I’d like to have more songs in this category, the Paul Simon category. Not by Paul Simon, but songs about being a good parent, or trying to be.

Well, I’ll mention a few songs that came up in my musing. The first thing that came to mind was “Stay Up Late” by the Talking Heads. It’s from the sibling’s point of view, actually: “Mommy had/a little baby/There he is/fast asleep/He’s just/a little plaything/Why not/wake him up?” It’s not really about parenting, except that it’s really (I think) a parent singing from the pretended point of view of the older siblings. David Byrne also wrote a very odd song called “Now I’m Your Mom” about transgender parenting (“Oh little girl/Please understand/And listen to the words I say/I was your dad/Now I'm your mom/I hope you'll comprehend someday”) but it’s much more about the gender thing than the parenting thing.

Ken Batts (Has anybody heard of this guy? Why do I have his CD?) has a quite lovely song called “Lobster Keychains” about buying his kids, well, lobster keychains, which is absolutely about parenting, but is, you know, folk. Like that. As I mentioned, that does open it up.

Squeeze “Up the Junction” is a wonderful song, and there is just a trifle of parenting in it, enough to have it come to mind, but seriously, no.

Uncle Bonsai has a very depressing song called “In it for the Children”, which is from the point of view of the parents, but has no actual parenting. A powerful song. No. Possible to include “Don’t Put It in your Mouth” in the list, though, but that’s stretching it.

Googling turns out a bunch of songs I don’t know. David Bowie, Kooks? Dar Williams, The One who Knows? Cocteau Twins, Pur? Jimmy Buffett, Delaney Talks to Statues? Do y’all know these tunes? Are they good?

Let’s exclude from consideration (for the purposes of the discussion) songs about parents, but told from the child’s point of view. If we have to include “Cat’s in the Cradle”, we will, but I’d rather not, because the narrator doesn’t actually talk about his experience of parenting (at the end, sort of). But no you were wonderful, mother or what a dad I had songs—they can be great, and when it comes to making an actual mix, my Gentle Reader may be well advised to include one or two, but I’m really looking for songs from the parent’s point of view, about having a kid (or kids) and ... whatever the song is about. Taking a kid to a ballgame. Going shopping with the girl. First day of school. Jamming with your kid’s band. Somethin’.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (13) | TrackBacks (0)

Your Humble Blogger was lucky enough to get to see The Klezmatics in concert last weekend. Well, I was lucky enough to get a babysitter. The tickets we bought, so I’m not sure that luck played a large part in that. It was good fortune, though.

The concert was in the sanctuary of a large conservative shul that looked much like most other large conservative shuls I’ve been in, that is, not quite entirely like a high school auditorium, but with pews and a few panels of very bad stained glass. The sound was muddy, unfortunately, which may have been the mixing but was more likely just the acoustics of the hall. The band was set up on the bimah itself, but the ark was covered by a drape, so it wasn’t quite as odd as it might have been, although the band members occasionally sat down on the big ugly chairs normally occupied by whichever of the rabbi, chazzan, shul president or ritual committee happen to be on the bimah and not active.

The audience was mostly, it seemed, from the host congregation. Mostly middle-aged and elderly people, with a fair sprinkling of thirtyish Hartford hipsters and some teenagers with their parents. On the whole, though, this was not a crowd that had come out to dance in the aisles. This was a crowd who, went they went to hear some klezmorim, wanted to her Di Grine Kusine and Rojinkes mit Mandlen. Or, more likely, didn’t go out to hear klezmorim very often, but felt they should support Jewish Music. The Klezmatics came out and went right into Wheel of Life from the Wonder Wheel album, which had an incredibly heavy, layered sound, very Asian/North African, and was greeted with, shall we say, muted enthusiasm. After that, they went right into Man in a Hat, which is one of my favorite Klezmatics songs, and they freakin’ ripped through it. I mean, they freakin’ ripped through it. Whew. I was completely exhilarated, but I think a lot of the crowd were kinda sitting there with their mouths open.

Then they went into three songs from “Davenen”, their Pilobolus collaboration, which were nice, but not really astonishing. The second of them featured a solo by Richie Barshay, a local boy who is sitting in on drums with them these days. In fact, we were in his home shul, which led to a few jokes about him substituting a drum solo for a d’var torah at his bar mitvah, which would have been, like, six months ago. Seriously, he’s a kid. But he’s (a) terrific, and (2) a local kid, so they gave him lots to do, and it was a Good Thing. They did a number called Spin, Dreidel, Spin from the Happy Joyous Hanukkah album, which was just Mr. Barshay on the drums, Lisa Gutkin on violin, and Matt Darriau on the Jew’s Harp, and it was fascinating and lovely. Ms. Gutkin claimed to have written it from a recording of a six-buttoned shirt tumbling in a clothesdryer, and it had some of that sense to it. The Jew’s Harp actually worked quite well as a sort of drone underneath, surprisingly enough.

After Spin, they did Headdy Down, which is heartbreakingly lovely, and was heartbreakingly lovely in concert. They didn’t attempt to recreate he end of the studio version, with the magnificent layered vocals, but finished with a quiet a cappela chorus that worked well enough. I have been singing the song to the Youngest Member (and to the Perfect Non-Reader, too, sometimes) as a lullaby, so it could be argued that I am bringing more to the song than is there, but I think in truth it’s the song (and the recording) that brought more to my lullaby-singing than was there. They went from that to Happy, Joyous Hanukkah, also with lyrics by Woody Guthrie, and it instantly became my favorite Hanukkah song ever, if only because all other Hanukkah songs stink on ice. Then an instrumental freilich, and then back to Woody for a truly inspirational rendition of Gonna Get through this World, with Ms. Gutkin on vocals.

They decided not to do any more Hanukkah songs (they admitted to a tradition, or more accurately a habit, of doing holiday songs at inappropriate seasons, but sadly they did not do my favorite Simchas Torah song), but did an actual Passover song called Ki Ley Nue, which was a bit repetitive, but like good repetitive songs, went through the bit where it seemed too long to the bit where it seemed like it had built up a lot of steam. This is evidently on their live album with Joshua Nelson, which I don’t have but which clearly Must Be Mine. After another instrumental (which struck me as very SonnyRollinsesque) and then we were heading home with a mellow, almost reggae version of Mermaid Avenue and then a long, slow Shnirele Perele. It wasn’t a great Shnirele Perele, unfortunately; it was very good, but both times I had seem them do it live, it wasn’t just good, it was inspirational. To some extent, I blame the band and their current arrangement, which is long on Lorin Sklamberg’s vocals and low on roof-raising instrumental hysteria. I’m not knocking Mr. Sklamberg, who is freakin’ awesome. To a large extent, his voice defines the band’s sound for me; if he were to leave for a new band, I would certainly buy his new band’s stuff, and only very probably continue buying The Klezmatics albums. But the arrangement of Shnirele Perele that was so mind-blowing balanced his impassioned vocals with the band better, built more gradually, and topped out much higher.

On the other hand, the crowd wasn’t as into it as they were at the other shows I’d been to, and that probably makes it impossible for the band to get quite as high. No dancing, not during this song, and not during any of the others. The applause was appreciative but not rowdy. Rhythmic hand-clapping during the songs was led by Mr. London, rather than emerging from the crowd’s enthusiasm. People were for the most part content to sit and listen. Which is fine, particularly because some of the attendees likely had multiple artificial joints, but still. When Shnirele Perele ended, the audience rose and applauded, and about a third of the crowd headed for the exits. “No,” says I to my Best Reader. “If everybody leaves, they won’t come back and play Ale Brider!” But the rabbi stood up at the front and encouraged loud clapping, and we eventually settled into that demanding rhythm that leads to an encore, and they came back and played Ale Brider. I love that song. Some of us sang along on the chorus (“ai yi yi yi yi/ai yi yi yi yi/ai yi yi yi yi/ai yi yi yi yi”) and there was even one fellow out in the aisle shaking his tzitzis.

A couple of other notes: slightly more than half the men had their heads covered, by my estimation. Some were wearing the lovely embroidered full-head Sephardic-style head-coverings that are more like hats than skullcaps, some had what I think of as the observant Jew’s three-inch tightly-crocheted circle, but most of those who opted to cover their heads seemed to have just picked up a yarmulke from the bin outside the sanctuary, and were wearing the standard-issue purple shiny can’t-keep-it-on-your-head kippah. I left my head uncovered, as I usually do if I’m not davening or studying Torah; the sanctuary isn’t Holy Ground or anything, and I’m going to a concert. At my own Temple Beth Bolshoi, a Reform shul, only about half the men keep their head covered even for services, but the Reform movement is in large measure about getting rid of all that superstitious medieval nonsense. This was a Conservative shul, one that calls itself egalitarian, although I only saw one woman with a head covering, and that might well have been decorative rather than ritual.

Up on the bimah, the band also varied in their approach to head covering. The only woman in the band, Lisa Gutkin, had her head uncovered and her hair loose (unless, of course, that wasn’t really her hair). Richie Barshay had his head bare. Paul Morrissett appeared to have a bare head, although he has dark wavy hair, and might have been wearing one of those small yarmulkes on the back of his head. Frank London had a lovely full Sephardic job, with straggly hair loose behind (Unrelated note: the first time I saw Mr. London on stage, I thought “didn’t I go to summer camp with him?” I didn’t, but the feeling only grows stronger every time I look at him). Lorin Sklamberg was wearing a ratty old Panama hat. He looked good in it, though.

One thing that is fun about the band is that most of the players play more than one instrument. Frank London plays trumpet and keyboards, sometimes simultaneously. Paul Morrissett plays bass guitar and tsimbl (or cimbalom, a sort of hammered dulcimer). Matt Darriau plays saxophone, clarinet and kaval (a sort of wooden flute), Jew’s Harp for one song, and brought out what must have been a bass saxophone at one point. Big sucker. Mr. Sklamberg sings, of course, and plays the accordion, guitar and keyboard. Ms. Gutkin just plays the violin and sings. Mr. Barshay, as the drummer, sat in his kit and mostly played the pieces of that, including heavy use of the cymbals, wooden blocks and some rattly things. The klezmorim move around the stage a lot (except Mr. Barshay), sometimes forming a rhythm section on one side, sometimes lining up across the front. Mr. London and Mr. Morrissett occasionally did the thing that horn players do where they share a microphone, which I assume has some effect on the sound but is certainly fun to watch. Also, Mr. London often plays with the technique of moving the end of the trumpet to different distances from the microphone, sometimes swinging his head back and forth and making a sort of Doppler effect. Sometimes one or another player will walk over to the side during a bit they aren’t playing, coming back to get to the microphone just when the band kicks in. Mr. Sklamberg and Ms. Gutkin appeared to be carrying on a conversation (or a running joke) in snatches in the middle of songs. They don’t choreograph, really, but they are fun to watch.

Wow, that’s a long note. One more observation, though: it’s now been a week since I saw the show, and I’m still humming the tunes to myself.

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 10:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (4) | TrackBacks (0)

I believe I puffed the new album, Wonder Wheel, from The Klezmatics. The album, by the way, won a Grammy for Best Contemporary World Music Album, for whatever that’s worth. I may have also mentioned that The Klezmatics give great show, which they do. And I believe that a substantial percentage of Gentle Readers live in Greater Boston.

My point, you have probably guessed. The Klezmatics are playing a concert on Sunday night at the MFA, which is a nice enough place to see a show. It’s in the Remis, not the courtyard (I hope that’s obvious, considering), so not so much dancing likely, what with the relative paucity of aisles. Still, recommended.

They will also be in Philadelphia tonight, West Hartford at the end of the month, and in DC in early June, for Gentle Readers in those locations or near them. I won’t keep plugging away, but what’s the use of having a blog if I can’t push a fave rave now and then?

Tolerabimus quod tolerare debemus,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Your Humble Blogger has written before about campaign songs, but it appears that Have You Had Enough has not made an appearance on this Tohu Bohu. So y’all may not know anything about it. Which would be bad. So.

It seems that Tom Maxwell, formerly of the Squirrel Nut Zippers and currently of NC-08, was looking for a way to help out his candidate of choice, a fellow named Larry Kissell. He had donated money, and all, but he was a musician, and wanted a way to help, you know, musically. So, what to do. Well, why not take the tune from “Put a Lid On It”, write new lyrics (with Ken Mosher), record it and make it available for candidates he liked to use. Not just Mr. Kissell, either, because through the magic of technology’n’stuff, it’s easy to just slip another name in there. Thus the scalability of nationalizing the campaign. N’stuff. Oh, and they needed a woman to do the lead vocals, so Ricky Lee Jones chipped in. Eventually,a fellow named Mike McIntee did a video, also suitable for localizationage as well as for Teh Utoob.

Now, it may possibly have been mentioned, here and there, that Connecticut is having an odd senatorial election. Historically odd. Not “Hunh, that’s odd” odd, but “some even say that in the last decades of the species called man” odd. Now, it seems, the Had Enough Swing Band is going to be Swingin’ throo CeeTee with Mr. Maxwell, Mr. Mosher, Ms. Jones and friends. I might even get out of the house and go dance on the metaphorical grave of the Connecticut Republican Party.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 11:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

It appears that YHB hasn’t blogged anything nice for a while, and just in case somebody was looking for something other than a gripe, here goes. I’ve listened to the Klezmatics’ Wonder Wheel perhaps ten times in the last couple of weeks, and it is wonderful.

I know some of my Gentle Readers are already familiar with The Klezmatics, and maybe y’all already ran out and bought this album. Or maybe you like the Klezmatics but didn’t know they had a new album, or knew they had one but weren’t sure if it was worth running out and getting. It is.

Some of my Gentle Readers are not (yet) big fans of The Klezmatics or klezmer music, but are fans of Woodie Guthrie. And maybe y’all already ran out and bought this album. Or maybe you like Woodie Guthrie but didn’t know he had a new album, or knew he had one but weren’t sure if it was worth running out and getting. It is.

This is (as GRs may have guessed) another one of those albums where Nora Guthrie lets people into the archive of thousands of Woody Guthrie lyrics to write new music and record the resulting collaboration. I haven’t heard the Billy Bragg/Wilco albums, and I was a little skeptical of the whole process, frankly. But it works. The Klezmatics choose songs from the period Mr. Guthrie was living in Coney Island with his yiddishe in-laws, and some of the lyrics have little yiddishisms, but I think a different band would have heard something very different in the written word. As it turns out, though, the thing is seamless—the album sounds like a Klezmatics album (and, you know, it is a Klezmatics album, and it’s a Woody Guthrie album, too.

Well, mostly. One of the songs, Goin' Away To Sea, was in the archive, and after Matt Darriau had picked out of the thousands and written a rollicking melody for it, and after the band had recorded it and it was finished and through, babe of mine, they were looking through the archive for manuscripts to photograph for the liner notes and came across another copy with a handwritten note on it from Butch Hawes saying “I composed this song you sonofagun.” It’s the folk process.

That song, by the way, is one of a few on this album that on first listen seem to be upbeat, cheerful tunes, but on second listen are kinda scary. This one is pretty straightforward, actually, a song from a soldier to his family, promising to return after he sets this old world free, putting “them fascists in their place/In their long and narrow grave, babe of mine.” On the other hand, his admonitions seem a little scary in themselves:

Don’t you go and leave a light, babe of mine,
Don’t you go and leave a light, babe of mine,
Don’t you go and leave a light
In your window, babe, tonight,
For the enemy to sight, babe of mine.

Don’t go talkin’ out of turn, babe of mine,
Don’t go talkin’ out of turn, babe of mine,
Don’t go talkin’ out of turn,
Don’t let Mister Hitler learn,
‘Cause I never would return, babe of mine.

Even more startling is Come When I Call You, which starts with one for the pretty little baby, two for the love of me and you, and three for the warships at sea. And Pass Away declares that “Heaven and earth they'll pass away” but “ Not a word of mine/Will ever pass away”. That’s a little troubling, isn’t it?

Some of the songs are more straightforward. Headdy Down is a lullaby, and a heartbreakingly beautiful one. Not heartbreaking because of anything except the gorgeousness of the singing. Seriously, even if you don’t shell out for the whole thing, this song is worth a buck at your friendly local internet download establishment. Gonna Get Through This World is what I think of as Guthrie-esqe, anthemic and inspirational. Mermaid Avenue is a wonderful celebration of “the isle called Coney”. There’s also Holy Ground, a sort of answer to the way This Land is Your Land has been taken over the years, and Heaven, which is mostly startling in the way it reveals the lost optimism of America—it’s a song I can’t imagine even Mr. Guthrie writing these days.

As for the music, if you haven’t already decided to purchase the thing, you can hear some tracks and clips on-line various places, and you can hear an interview at World Café with a partial band doing lovely version of three of the best songs on the album. Yes, there are some duds on the album, but we may disagree about which ones they are. But albums have duds, that’s why the whole album thing died, right? My advice is to buy this one anyway.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.

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So. Your Humble Blogger has a friend who is at the right moment in life to really enjoy a Mix Tape on the theme “Men are all Jerks”. At least so I judge. I could well be wrong. Also, I don’t think this friend is a Gentle Reader of this blog, but I could be wrong about that, too. So, I ask your assistance, Gentle Reader, in two areas. First, recommendations for the mix, and second, if you are at the right moment in life to really enjoy a Mix Tape on the theme “Men are all Jerks”, let me know. OK, the criteria. First, I think, is to just accumulate a list of songs, and then we can rank them keep an hours’ worth. Ideally, what we’re looking for are not songs that vilify a particular man (see the Kiss Off mix for some of those), but songs that discuss the generally unsatisfactory nature of the male animal, taken individually or en mass. The quintessential “Men are all Jerks” song is, of course, “Most Gentlemen Don’t Like Love”, by the great Cole Porter: As madam Sappho in some sonnet said, / A slap and a tickle / Is all that the fickle / Male / Ever has in his head. I’m also fond of Uncle Bonsai’s “Boys want Sex in the Morning”: Boys want/Someone who's winsome/Someone to pin some-/-One to undertake/Boys want/Someone to fall on/Someone to crawl on/Someone half awake. I would have to include Johnny Mercer’s “Blues in the Night”:

My momma done told me
When I was in pigtails
My momma done told me, Hon

A man gonna sweet talk
and give you the big eye,
But when the sweet talkin's done

A man is a two face,
A worrisome thing,
Who'll leave you to sing
The blues in the night.

The next category, I think a step down from that, to put on the mix, are songs typifying male jerkosity. The “Hymn to Him” from My Fair Lady (Why can’t a woman/be more like a man) comes to mind, as does “In Praise of Women” from A Little Night Music (Capable, pliable/Women, women.../Understanding and reliable/Knowing their place/Insufferable, yes, but gentle/Their weaknesses are incidental/A functional but ornamental/Race.). Off of Broadway, there’s Louis Jordan’s “Beware, Brother, Beware”: Now listen, if she calls you up on the phone/and says,"Darling, are you all alone?/Tell her, "No, I've got five women with me!" Ideally, Gentle Reader, these would be, you know, jokes, rather than guys talking about manliness in all seriousness. But, hey, whatever you’ve got.

Then there are songs about a particular guy. These can be ok, as long as they’re not too specific. Remember, the point of the mix is not “Your Boyfriend’s a Dick”, but that Men are all Jerks. I might include “Annie doesn’t live here anymore”: That gal was so faithful/She was a pitiful sight/She waited and watched and waited and watched/but you didn’t write. Or Dave’s True Story’s “I’ll Never Read Trollope Again”: I was sitting in a quaint café/With a favorite tome and some cafe au lait/But my luck ran out when you came my way/Now I'll never read Trollope again. Or even a “Frankie and Johnny”, maybe. But these would have to fill up a mix, rather than being the core of the thing.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:39 AM | Permalink | Comments (7) | TrackBacks (0)

Whip out your music program, click the random button, and pick out 10 songs. Alter the name by turning it into a convoluted, wordy synonym. For example: Silent Night = Nocturnal Time Completely Lacking Noise. When someone guesses the title correctly, italicize the convoluted one and put the real title and the person who figured it out.

1. Hazard an inquiry into the identity of the person who has arrived in the metropolitan area: Guess Who’s in Town (recorded by Bobby Short), Kendra/Nao (close enough)
2. This infant of mine has no emotional attachment to persons other than myself: My Baby Only Cares for Me (recorded by Katherine Whalen), Kendra (who missed the possessive, but got the song right)
3. Depart with me: Let’s Go (recorded by the Cars), Michael
4. All terrestrial substances
5. Atop a brume of CuAl₆(PO₄)₄(OH)₈·4H₂O: On a Turquoise Cloud (recorded by Duke Ellington), Stephen
6. Half a fortnight: One Week (recorded by Barenaked Ladies), Melissa R
7. Infused Camellia, Tête à Tête (or, alternately, Don’t bogart that joint, it’s just you and me): Tea for Two (recorded by Duke Ellington), Stephen
8. Hatchway leading down to a subterranean room: Cellar Door (recorded by Laura Cantrell), Melissa R.
9. Withdraw a bit: Get Back (recorded by The Beatles), Michael
10. Impregnable Terpsichore: The Safety Dance, Stephen

As a bonus, because it’s actually quite hard to stop, there’s Mortified Stramineousness, The Sunny Season under Her Majesty Queen Sirikit, and One Has Got.

chazak, chazak, v’nitchazek,
-Vardibidian.

Posted by Vardibidian at 9:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (23) | TrackBacks (0)

One nice thing about memes (ooh! that word!) is that when one is feeling blogblocked, one can blog a meme without much creativity, that is, without deciding what to post about, or what to say about it. It’s blog-by-numbers time, providing momentum to YHB and (I hope) at least a trifle of enjoyment to Gentle Readers all.

1. Elvis Costello
2. Duke Ellington
3. The Beatles
4. Jim’s Big Ego
5. Eddie from Ohio
6. The Pogues
7. Louis Armstrong
8. XTC
9. Ella Fitzgerald
10. The Ramones

We begin with a numbered list of ten, er, “singers or musical groups” that YHB likes. For those of you playing along at home (or, you know, on your portable device), this list is to be made entirely independent of the questions. I made it by taking the ten who have the most sides rated four or five, that is, the singers (or musical groups) who have put out the songs I am least likely to get sick of on repeated hearings. This was an interesting if oddly time-consuming task, since iTunes is not a real database. I suspect that the meme would be more interesting should you take your “artists” randomly from some list of listenables; if you need to, you can always throw out some. Now that I look at the questions, there are quite a few that would be more interesting to answer for groups and singers that you like but about whom you are not stone cold crazy about. whom. about.

And now the questions:

What was the first song you ever heard by 6? I believe this was “If I should fall from Grace with Gd”, on MTV, but then the timing doesn’t actually work out for this very well. I would have guessed that I first heard the Pogues in 1986 or possibly very early 1987, which was before that album came out. At any rate, if I remember correctly (and clearly I do not), I saw a video, noted the name and that the band was completely crazy, and then didn’t think about it much again for years and years and years, until finally purchasing “Peace and Love” in or around 1992.

What is your favorite album of 8? This XTC, which in one way makes it a really good question, as their albums tend to have an identity more than as collections of songs. In fact, their heyday covers, pretty much, the heyday of the album; for anyone much earlier or (I’m predicting) much later, the question makes little sense. What’s your favorite Elvis Presley album? Which one has the singles arranged in the best order? Anyway, as much as I absolutely adore Apple Venus Volume 1, I’m going to name Black Sea, which came along at the right time for me to listen to it again and again and again as an album, and which in addition to working very well as an album, has “Respectable Street” and “Generals and Majors” and “Sgt. Rock” and “Rocket from a Bottle” and other songs that work very nicely on the shuffle.

What is your favorite lyric that 5 has sung? Oh, dear, well, an admission, then, that as much as I like the sound of Eddie from Ohio, I think the lyrics tend to be just good, rather than great. Still, it’s tough to pick a favorite. I’ll lay out a verse or two from “Very Fine Funeral”:

Wednesday morning/my Aunt Sarah died
not many had known her/not many had tried
and there at the funeral/we all sat and lied
and said how much we missed her

you wanna know about Sarah/where do I begin
she had this growth/to the left of her chin
let's all be honest she was ugly as sin
no one recalled having kissed her

How many times have you seen 4 live? I saw Jim’s Big Ego open for the Nields, the day or perhaps the day after I heard them on live on Emerson College radio. They were great. Since them I have seen them, let’s see, twice at Johnny D’s, twice at Passim (the Hallowe’en show), once at the Lizard Lounge, I think, and then there was the time we went to the CD release party at TT’s, if that’s where it was, and bought the discs and left before they went on. Strangely enough, and this did in fact come about totally randomly, Jim’s Big Ego is the band I have seen most often, at least not counting street performances. I don’t go out to shows that much.

What's your favorite song of 7? Oh, well, how do you pick a Louis Armstrong song? I mean, hard not to go with “Wild Man Blues”, right? Or the “St. Louis Blues”, just because, well, it’s the “St. Louis Blues” and one of the best songs ever written. If written is the word I mean. On the other hand, his versions of “Top Hat, White Tie and Tails” and “Solitude” both are just marvelous. I think, for the purposes of moving on to the next question, I’ll pick “I Gotta Right to Sing the Blues”, just because.

What is a good memory you have considering the music of 10? My Best Reader and I saw the Escape from New York tour, with Debbie Harry opening, Jerry Harrison and the Tom Tom Club hitting second, and then the Ramones coming in and kicking ass. The crowd was filled with punk kids who had no idea who these old guys were, and were just waiting around for the Ramones. They were great, just exactly what I’d expected, with the three guys just standing stock still in their spots and slamming out their noise, and Dee Dee occasionally taking a step or two forward and shouting “Marhah arghah hargle margle ONE TWO THREE FOUR!” We’d get to the second chorus before we could figure out which song they were playing. It was brilliant.

Is there a song of 3 that makes you sad?A sad Beatles song? Well, there’s “For No One”, which I listened to again recently for the first time since becoming a parent and found terribly sad. There will be a time, I know, when my Best Reader will be convinced that we are trying to give her only what money can buy, and not, you know, fun. This was the first time I’d listened to it and thought that the parents were totally misrepresented, and that it is inevitable that they will be represented, and that their bewildered hurt at the end is not because they were bad parents, really, but because they were good parents, and that wasn’t enough.

What is your favorite lyric that 2 has sung?Duke Ellington, of course, doesn’t so much sing. But let’s go to my favorite lyric sung by a vocalist with his orchestra, which would be “Every Time We Say Goodbye”. Well, I’m sure at some point he must have played that; it was a big hit, and he played all the big hits. But since I don’t actually have a recording of it, let’s go with the Beale Street Blues:

If Beale Street could talk
If Beale Streak could talk,
Married men would have to take their beds and walk
Except one or two, who never drink booze
And the blind man on the corner says I got my eye on you.

What is your favorite song by 9? By meaning written by? I mean if by means something like associated with or even recorded by then my favorite Ella (today) is “Every Time We Say Goodbye”. If by means written by, then, well, I don’t know that she actually wrote any. Although this may be a good spot to tell the story about how Irving Berlin would complain about jazz singers improvising when they sang his songs, and how they would change his melodies. When asked about Ella’s recording of the Berlin songbook, though, he said, more or less, “It’s different when the singer is a better composer than I am.”

How did you get into 3? How do people my age get into the Beatles? Older siblings, of course. Playing the Red and the Blue collections over and over on an old hi-fi. I mean over and over. Wearing out needles. Do you remember needles?

What was the first song you heard by 1? I have no idea. Seriously, I can’t remember a time before I knew Elvis Costello. I would guess, and this is strictly a guess, that I heard “Allison” first, but then it’s equally likely—more likely, now I think about it—that I heard the album before I heard any tracks on the radio, so it would be the first song on that album, “Welcome to the Working Week”.

What is your favorite song by 4? Well, and I think I’ll go with “Cat Named Boogers”, although I would really really really like to have a copy of “Little Miss Communication”, which I think might be my favorite if I could listen to it enough to know whether I was sick of it. “Boogers”, though, has a great bit where the unrelated verses each wind up contributing a line to the expanding chorus. By the end, the chorus makes no sense at all:

Bomb in the back seat
boogers hanging from you nose
hit the pigeon with the tennis racquet
he gave me a whole ten dollars
bomb in the back seat
veins running underground
on the steps of the art museum
she only gave me two kisses

How many times have you seen 9 live?Oh, never not ever. Not in the prime of Ella, before I was born, not in her later years, when it still would have been a hell of a thing. Missed it. Gone now.

What is a good memory you have concerning 2?A good memory of the Duke? Well ... Jazz History class was where I wound up getting the Duke, and Jazz, and it was kinda revelatory, but I don’t think that’s a specific enough memory. Hm. How about this ... it’s isn’t my memory, really, but my mother saw the Duke at a college dance in, let’s see, it would have been 1957 or so, and at one point when I was home from college, or maybe shortly after, she told me about seeing him, and his enormous hands, and the carpet slippers he was wearing, and it was one of the first times my mother and I had a conversation as two adults.

Is there a song of 8 that makes you sad? Like the Beatles, from the earlier version of this question, sad is not what XTC is best at. They’re, you know, burning with optimism’s flame. I mean, they sing lots of songs on depressing topics, particularly political, but mostly those songs are upbeat sounding and don’t make me sad to listen to. The last time I heard “Dear Gd”, though, I was, briefly, sad about how many people view religion as essentially being about, well, about what the song thinks it’s about, about fooling people into believing things that aren’t true in order to manipulate them.

What is your favorite lyric that 3 has sung?A fave Beatles lyric. Can’t be done, can it? I mean, how do you choose between the magniloquent “Mr. Kite” and the earthshaking “I Saw You Standing There”? I’m afraid I’ll pick the latter. I read an essay once that claimed the moment they changed the line from “a real beauty queen” to “you know what I mean” was when rock and roll really began.

What is your favorite song of 1? Aw, come on. That’s just silly. See, this is why I think it would be more fun to do this with random artists you happen to like rather than with artists that you are completely and inappropriately obsessed with. I couldn’t even do a Top Five Elvis Costello songs. Let me put it this way: I have 463 rock songs rated to let me listen to them at least once a week. Of those, thirty are EC songs. That’s one out of fifteen, right? Here’