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A math guy's random thoughts. |
| A math guy's random thoughts. |
Actually, this one is just four notes, the ones that define the Dies Irae, a Gregorian chant dating to the thirteenth century. More generally, this chant uses Dorian Mode.  , something that turns out to be pretty common in popular music, whether intentional or not. The "la-la-las" from Horse With No Name from last year's soundtrack use Dorian mode, for one example. There's a YouTube video with snippets from fifty popular songs that use Dorian mode. But back to those four notes, the ones in the Dies Irae. One of the longer stories that I wrote last year, "Dreamin' Life Away" , broke into twelve short chapters, and each had a musical theme. This is a slipstream story in which Dante, the point-of-view character, travels to the 1950s via a subway in his basement. Given his name, you can guess another famous literary journey that provides rich fodder the many metaphors in this story. Anyway, the third chapter, "Chapter 4--Danse Macabre" uses a movement from Liszt's Totentantz that quotes those four notes. In this chapter, Dante strikes a deal to get new clothes, playing on the Faust legend. If you're interested in the specific Liszt piece, there's a YouTube video linked at the start of the chapter. Instead of linking to Liszt here, I thought I'd instead link to a more interesting video that gives a half dozen or more examples of where these four notes have appeared in movies, ranging from Star Wars to Fritz Lang's Metropolis to the Capra classic It's a Good Life. Probably the most iconic example, though, appears in the opening credits to Kubrick's The Shining, where Jack and Wendy's VW winds through mounttain passes on the way to the Overlook Hotel. The Dies Irae plays in the background, alerting readers to the horror that's about to come. Watch this video on the Dies Irae. It's worth time. |
| This isn't going to be the best song on this year's list. It's not even Billy Idol's best song--admittedly a low bar. But it did inspire another story of mine, "Alice's Tale" . This story is the second of a sequence of tales about a group of college-age stoners on their way to spring break in Fort Lauderdale. In my head, I'm thinking of this as the "Lauderdale Tales." This particular one is based on the Miller's Tale. Drop me a note if you want to read it and I'll send you the passkey. Anyway, the story is about a snarky ballerina who stays at a B&B on old Route 66 where there happens also to be a "white wedding." The opening pretty much tells you what's coming Once, if my memory serves me well, my life was a banquet where every heart revealed itself, where every wine flowed. Then my journey took me to a white wedding at the Route 66 B&B. The first sentence is from Rimbaud, BTW. Anyway, it devolves into a kind of farce, appropriate given the source material. The phrase "white wedding" is, of course, supposed to invoke Idol's song, which is an ironic deconstruction of the whole idea of a "white wedding." |
| Patsy Cline sang this song in her 1957 appearance on Arthur Godfrey's Talent Scouts. She initially didn't care for the song had planned to perform a different piece, but the producers perfered this one by Alan Block and Don Hecht . It went on to become her breakout hit, reaching number two on the Billboard charts. Her interpretation, a bluesy mix of pop and country, became her signature style and the song one of her signature hits. The song's paean to lonliness inspired this ghost story
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| Get Happy This is the final entry in challenge posed in "The Soundtrack of Your Life" . I puzzled a bit for what song to choose. It's over at last, so I considered the Hallejuh Chorus from the Messiah, but that seemed too obvious. There are other great songs I'd like to put on my personal soundtrack, songs like Mad World , for example, but they didn't fit for the final song on the list. Learning about the history of songs has also been interesting, which brings to mind this video and performance of Someone To Watch Over Me, , but that's more effort than I want to put forth this morning. I admit, I'm klnd of sad it's over. In fact, it's making me downright melancholy --that's Judy Garland singing "Melancholy Baby" if you don't want to follow the link.Listening to Judy Garland's breathtaking performance of "Meloncholy Baby" made me think of another Garland standard, one less, er, melancholy. I finally settled on the one in the title to this blog. The link I chose--see the bottom of this post--is taken from her performance in the 1950 musical Summer Stock, her final MGM film. The song was actually written for the 1930 Broadway musical, The Nineteen-fifteen Reivew. This was the first collaboration between Harold Arlen and the lyricist, Ted Koehler. If Arlen's name sounds familiar, that's because he appeared previously in this set of blogs--he wrote "Somewhere Over the Rainbow," among many other masterpieces he penned for musicals in the three subsequent decades. At least thirty artists have released versions of this song, but Garland's is still my favorite. A close second would be Rufus Wainright's Carnegie Hall performance--in drag as Judy!--which replicate's the choreography and staging of Summer Stock. I've listed a few others below, just for fun. The song itself has gospel elements, both musically and in the lyrics, and can be read as an expression of religious ecstasy for salvation. Me, I think it's "just" an exuberant burst of joy at life and living. After all, as the teacher in Ecclesiastes might remind us, the judgement day is waiting for us all. We may as well get happy in the meantime. I hope you've enjoyed this trather erratic journey through the soundtrack of my life. I've enjolyed writing this set of blogs, but I'm kind of glad they're done. I think I'll spend the rest of the day getting happy doing other things! Links. Judy Garland in Summer Stock Rufus in drag at Carnegie Hall (compare the staging and costumes with Summer Stock) Sometimes the song is paired with "Happy Days Are Here Again," as in this memorable live performance by China Forbes and Storm Large, with Pink Martini providing the instrumentals https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8DrYXdAB8H0d} Even Hugh Laurie gets happy in House, M.D. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X56GPTpgm04 A bluesy version by Frankie Laine https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jxCq7Rb0gs   Whichever version you like, get happy!!!Update Nixie 🦊 out sick   showed me how to embed YouTube videos into posts, so edited I the earlier version of this post. However, it does not seem to work with more than two embeds--all subsequent embeds just repeat the last one regardless of the link. The code is{embed:<YouTube URL>} No {/embed} is needed. |
| Everyday In his short career, Buddy Holly only released about fifty songs. But his influence on Rock and and Roll has been enormous. He was a proflic and multi-talented artist who left behind dozens of manuscripts and session recordings. In fact, Coral Records, his label, continued to release "new" Holly recordings for ten years following his death in 1959, with the last being Giant in 1969. Numerous artitsts have spolken fo Holly's influence. Dan McClean said, "Buddy Holly and the Crickets were the template for all the rock bands that followed." John Lennon and Paul McCartney had only recenlty met and begun their musical collaboration when they heard Holly for the first time when he appeared on Sunday Night at the London Palladium. The two studied his music and deliberately immitated his style when they launched the Beatles--named in an insectoid homage to Holly's band, The Crickets. Eric Clapton has said that after first seeing Holly perform with his Fendr, "I thought I'd died and gone to heaven ... it was like seeing an instrument from outer space and I said to myself: 'That's the future – that's what I want." Elton John was so impressed with Holly that he started wearing Holly's signature horn-rimmed glasses even though John didn't need them. Probably his most famous song is "Peggy Sue," but I've chosen the "B" side of that release, "Everyday," for my Soundtrack. It's a gentle ballad expressing hope for the fulfillment of an incipient romance. In the vocals, harmonys, and cadences you can hear John Denver, Bobby Vee, Johnny Darren, Paul Simon, and Bob Dylan. Indeed, Denver and Vee released their own versions of the song, as did Phil Ochs, James Taylor, and Don McLean. Other groups such as Pearl Jam and Deep Purple have performed the song in concert. Holly's life inspired a Hollywood bio-pic, The Buddy Holly Story, for which Gary Busey was nominated for the Academy Award for playing the eponymous songwriter. However, others felt the movie contained innaccuracies, and Paul McCartney funded a documentary entitled The Buddy Holly Story. A clever fictional rerpesentation of Holly appears in the Quantum Leap episode, "How the Tess Was Won." Season one episode five If you're alert, you'll figure which character is supposed to be Holly, although it's not revealed until the very end. Holly singing the song https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GMezwtB1oCU Lyrics https://genius.com/Buddy-holly-everyday-lyrics John Denver's version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OJilVITrMf0 James Taylor's version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o-2o_vGMYaw Dave McLean's American Pie, an ode to Holly's death--the day the music died. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PRpiBpDy7MQ Max Griffin Please visit my website and blog at https://new.MaxGriffin.net Check out most recent release!
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| A Horse With No Name My best memories of this song are not related to its US release in 1972 when it topped the Billboard charts. Rather, they are from the mid-eighties when my daughter was a little girl. She thought the song was hilarious--the prhase a "horse with no name" made her giggle every time she heard it. Those memories are foremost in my mind when I hear the song even today. The song itself, however, has deeper a meaning for those who care to find it. Indeed, it' can be read as a metaphor for retreating from the bustle of modern life to the simpler world of nature. On the surface, though, it's just a story about a ride through the desert on a nameless horse. In places, the writing seems almost banal: "the heat was hot," or "plants and birds and rocks and things" fill the desert. Just things? And why no name for the horse? And yet...no name adds mystery and the heat is so hot it defies description. "Plants and birds and rocks and things" injects a phantasmagoric indeteterminacy to the text. The music--the spare chords, the minstrel-like vocals--convey the sense of a mythic tale. The overall result makes the song an enigma, one which invites listeners to find their own story and to create their own meaning. The story behind the creation of the song is, itself, an interesting story. All three members of the band America had US roots, having grown up on military bases, yet they were in the UK at the time. Dewey Bunnel, the song's composer--whose mother was from Yorkshire--had just graduated from high school in London. The drizzly, seemingly ever-present, rain made him long for his younger days, when he spent time riding through the deserts of Arizona. He's also cited paintings by Salvador Dali and E.M. Escher as inpsiring the desert images and the horse, respecitively. Indeed, the "things" in the desert could evoke the surrealist images of "The Persistence of Memory" and the Catalan landscape in that painting. Escher's art includes many etchings of repeated, interlaced horses, just as the lyrics repeat the image of the nameless horse. The song's popular persistence affirms that there's more to it than just soft rock. People identify with the horse, wondering why the poor thing has no name? As if a name would somehow imbue the horse with more meaning, perhaps with an agency beyond mere transport. It is the horse, after all, that moves the minstrel through the desert journey. Like any mythic tale, this one is both more and less than the words, more and less than the melody, more and less than the cadences and harmonies. Its minimalism is the source of its strength. For me, it brings to mind the words of Hemingway: "I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea, a real fish, and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough, they would mean many things. The hardest thing is to make something really true and sometimes truer than true." Sometimes, less is more. Sometimes, it's even truer than true. Some links. America singing A Horse With No Name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aBcl8MIyv6w Lyrics https://www.azlyrics.com/lyrics/america/ahorsewithnoname.html Dali's Persistence of Memory (Several Dali paintings include deserts. I have no idea of this is the one that inspired Bunnnel, but it's probably Dali's most famous work The painting "Disintegration of the Persistence of Memory" is another that could have inspired him.) https://www.britannica.com/topic/The-Persistence-of-Memory M.C. Escher etching of horses (Again, I have no idea if this is the image Bunnel said inspired him, but it's typical of Escher's work) https://arthive.com/escher/works/200342~Horse_No_8 Article in The American Songwriter on The Horse With No Namehttps://americansongwriter.com/behind-the-song-horse-with-no-name/ |
| Over the Rainbow The song of the century, at least according to a poll conducted by the National Endowment for the Arts and the Recording Industry Association of America. But did you know that the song almost never made it into The Wizard of Oz? Harold Arlen and Yip Harburg had been hired to write the music and lyrics, respectively, for the movie. Arlen isn't exactly a household name, but you've heard of his songs, like "Stormy Weather" or "That Old Black Magic." Their job included writing a ballad for Judy Garland to sing before she's whisked off to Oz--something catchy like the previous year's hit, "Sometime My Prince Will Come." They finished all the other music for the movie, but the ballad wouldn't come. Then, one day, feeling ill and stopping outside Schaum's drug store on Sunset Boulevard, the Muse hit and Arlen had the melody. But the song still almost didn't make it to the movie. Louis B. Mayer, the head of the studio, hated it and thought that it slowed the movie down. He ordered it cut from the film. Fortunately for everyone, Arthur Freed, who was an uncredited associate producer on the movie, said, "The song stays or I go." Mayer replied, “Let the boys have the damn song. Put it back in the picture. It can’t hurt.” The rest, as they say, is history. This became Garland's signature song; eventually she included in every concert or recital she gave. She varied the pitch, the tempo, the tembre of her voice, finding endless nuances in the music and the lyrics. While she included it in every performance, she almost always made the audience demand it before letting her leave the stage. The song itself is beautiful, but so are the lyrics. The two components work together to give hope to the hopeless. They sing a promise for the troubled, a promise of a time when clouds are far behind us and when troubles melt like lemon drops. In the sixties, gay people were just emerging from the darkness of the closet, and this song became an unlikely anthem for liberation. It can't be entirely a coincidence that the day after Garland's death the Stonewall riots took place, where gay people stood up to police harrassment. This is another song that countless artists have covered. Garland herself had many different performances. One of my personal favorite covers of the song is Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's blending of "Rainbow" with "What a Wonderful World." Some Links. Clip from Wizard of Oz with Judy Garland singing Over the Rainbow https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PSZxmZmBfnU Lyrics https://bpo.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/12/Somewhere-Over-the-Rainbow-Lyrics.pdf... Israel Kamakawiwo'ole's mix of Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U-Ooxpz0Eqk&list=RDU-Ooxpz0Eqk&start_radio=1&rv=... |
| Bridge Over Troubled Water 1969. The best of times and the worst of times. The best because I was 19, starting out on my own, a freshman at college. Live was an unwritten book stretching in front of me. When you're 19, anything is still possible. The worst because, well, everything else. The year before, Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy had been assisinated. Richard Nixon was President. Viet Nam continued unabated. At first, the sixties felt like the Enlightenment and the Renaisance, but then came the violence and the reaction. In many ways, we're sitll enduring that reaction, ever more violent and cruel in its relentless anger. Hope could have died, then, but it didn't. One reason, one small reason, was songs like Bridge Over Troubled Water. It was certainly a song for the times. We all felt down and out, and evening fell so hard. We all needed a companion to be there with us, to help us weather the storm. This song reminded us that our time to shine will come, that our dreams are on the way. Simon said that his inspiration for the song was the gospel hymn, "Mary, Don't You Weep." Indeed, the cadences and chord changes of "Bridge Over Troubled Water" shimmer with the sounds of gospel and tent meetings. The message acknowledges loneliness and despair, and acknowledges a human need for a "silver girl" to be by our side in times of trouble. With help--with human companionship--we can keep on saliling despite adversity. Simon wrote the song, but insisted that Garfunkel sing it on the album. Garfunkel resisted. Simon regretted the decision to force Garfunkel to sing it, not because of the performance, which was magnificent and inspiring. Rather, because it ultimately resulted in the pair breaking up. They reunited on sporadic occassions, but it was never the same. When they did come back together, it was often to assist others in their time of need--to become the silver girl of song. Countless artists of covered this song since its first appearance, from Willie Nelson to Johny Cash to Clay Aiken. Aretha Franklin won a Grammy for her 1972 performance of the song. Some links. From Simon and Garfunkel album of the same name. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4G-YQA_bsOU Lyrics https://www.paulsimon.com/track/bridge-over-troubled-water/ Aretha Franklin's version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pWwaMcj5gqQ Elvis's version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9SlNxUBVQHQ Clay Aiken on American Idol https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QC9SKjdoTXg Mary Don't You Weep, by the Swan Silvertones. Simon said this gospel song inspired him in writing "Bridge." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ICHm7YUDc0M |
| When I'm Sixty-Four In another couple of weeks, I'll turn seventy-four, but that doesn't mean that this song doesn't still speak to me. McCartney wrote the first version of the song in 1956, when he was 14. In one sense, it's a nostalgic looking back at the music of his parents, and in particular the British star of the thirties and forties, Peter Fromsby. But the musical style is more advanced than mere nostalgia, and one can find echos of such diverse composers as Scott Joplin and Johann Strauss. The lyrics pose a young lover's question: will you still love me when I'm old? Will their love for each other survive the ravages of time? The lyrics leave the question unanswered, so the listener can find their own message. Surely, when I turned sixty-four I found solace in the love my partner and I shared, and still share. On the occasion of his sixty-fourth birthday, McCartney's grandchildren recorded a version of the song for him--it's still hard for me to think of McCartney having grandchildren, but we all age. Sadly for him, his first wife had died long before he reached sixty-four. His second marriage had ended acrimoniously just a month before this sixty-fourth birthday, providing an answer of sorts to the question the song raises. But the events of his sixty-fourth year weren't the end of his story, and he eventually found another life partner, a long-time friend. By all accounts, their 2011 marriage continues to thrive. The song appeared in the Beatle's animanted movie, "Yellow Submarine," and played over the opening credits in The World According to Garp. This is one of those songs I enjoyed in 1967 when it came out, and continue to enjoy today. The Beatles were a multi-talented group, and any number of thier songs could be on my personal soundtrack. This one, by McCartney, is as good as any other. Links Lyrics https://www.thebeatles.com/when-im-sixty-four Sergeant Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCTunqv1Xt4 |
| Turn, Turn, Turn The King James Bible is surely one of the most influential English-language texts ever written. It's the most-published version of the most-published book in the English language. Its influence on the culture and the language can't be over-estimated. Whether one is religious or not, its an enormous part of our shared cultural heritage. I've always been struck by the book of Eccesiastes. It's easy to imagine everyone from Machiavelli to Voltaire to Sartre being inspired by the words of the teacher. Certainly, Pete Seeger found inspiration when he wrote the song, "Turn, Turn, Turn," which quotes famous lines from the text. This has always been one of my favorite songs. The gentle mix of folk music and the beautiful poetry of the text imbue the text with a particular sensibilty, that of ageless wisdom. Seeger wrote the song in 1959. Except for the title, which is repeated throughout the song, the lyrics consist of the first eight verses of the third chapter of Ecclesiastes. The song was originally released in 1962 as "To Everything There is a Season," but it was the version by the Byrds in 1965 that we know the best. The song charted on Billboard as number one on December 4, 1965. That version must have been the one I first heard. The song has been used in many movies and TV shows. For example, it appears in Forrest Gump and The Wonder Years. The song plays he closing credits of episode 3 of Ken Burns and Lynn Novick's 2017 documentary The Vietnam War. Here are some links The Byrds 1965 version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4ga_M5Zdn4 The Limelighters 1962 version https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuzE5dwPCd4 Judy Collins and Pete Seeger singing the song in 1966 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qURAnrk30ng Max Griffin Please visit my website and blog at https://new.MaxGriffin.net Check out most recent release!
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