Month: February 2014

Termagant Tuesday: “Atomic Power,” The Buchanan Brothers

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[Editor’s Note: Viewers, take warning – this video shows some fairly difficult visuals of people who survived the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki]

What a bizarre historical relic this song is.  Chester and Lester Buchanan wrote this song in, unsurprisingly, 1946.  The lyrics are a pretty interesting mash-up of war protest and church revival, the tune a blend of 40s/50s-era kitsch and “She’ll Be Comin’ Round The Mountain When She Comes.”  The song on its own is weird, but when put against the visuals of the actual bombing campaign that the song describes, it’s very unsettling.  The movie is “Atomic Cafe,” a documentary made in 1982.  I deliberately chose this YouTube video to portray the song because it hammers home the reality of the lyrics.

Why am I posting this today?  Because today is the first day of seven-party talks in Vienna on the future of Iran’s nuclear weapons program.  The seven countries – Iran, the United States, Britain, France, Germany, Russia, and China (basically the permanent five members of the Security Council, plus Germany and Iran) – hope to arrive at an agreement that will ease sanctions on Iran if Iran agrees to limit uranium enrichment and allow international inspectors, among other more complicated stipulations.  Keep your eyes peeled, Tune-Up fans; this could be interesting.  (More information on what’s going down can be found here and here.)

Modernism Monday: “Knock It Right Out,” Paul Westerberg

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Dudes and dudettes, I’m not going to lie – I’m a little grumpy.  Who has two thumbs and doesn’t have the day tomorrow?  This girl.  I mean, it’s Presidents’ Day, for God’s sake.  It’s a mattress holiday.  Unfamiliar with this term?  I coined it.  Let me explain.  A mattress holiday is one around which every major sleep accoutrement store in the country hawks their mattress for “40, 50, even 60 percent off!”  Just turn on your TV or your radio and sit through an hour and you’ll see what I mean.  It only happens around Presidents’ Day, Lincoln’s Birthday, and other interesting yet minor and ultimately “huh?”-inducing holidays.  So while I am thrilled some of my readership is getting a third day of weekend, you’ll forgive me if I want to make the price of admission a perfect score on a fifty-question test on Chester A. Arthur.

Beyond my annoyance of having to go into work when the rest of humanity will be out buying TempurPedics (as our founders would have us do to observe this most august – oh the hell with it), this is going to be a bananas week for your Yankette.  Work will go into hyperdrive, marathon training will go into hyperdrive, other things will go into hyperdrive – it’s just all going to be a little manic.  I need a good, grounding, up-tempo, pump-up song to get me ready to suit up.  “Knock It Right Out” will do just fine, I believe.  Everything about this song – from the perfect swagger tempo, the shrieking guitars, Westerberg’s growly voice – says, “I got this.”  So – bring it.

Enjoy your mattress.

Sacred Sunday: “Oh Happy Souls,” Robert Shaw

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This piece is an arrangement of an old New England hymn from around 1792.  Originally called “The Slow Traveler,” it was, as far as I’ve been able to discover, published in hymnals regularly for only about a hundred years.  I don’t know enough about Robert Shaw to know how he discovered it, but thank heavens he did.  Robert Shaw and Alice Parker, his frequent collaborator, deserve a Nobel Prize for preserving this style of American music.  There is so much of the American character in this piece.  Its solid, four square construction is brave, unsentimental, and resilient.  It bucks me up whenever I need it.  This is a recording I pinched from my father’s vinyl record collection, which is why it sounds so scratchy.

Salubrious Saturday: “Unexplainable Stories,” Cloud Cult

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Cloud Cult is a fantastic band from Minnesota (doncha know).  This song has a pretty different vibe than some of their other work – this one is much more down-tempo and a little more synthesizer-y.  But I still love the message of the song (“Activate your force fields and just keep going”), and the long brass intro is absolutely gorgeous.  This is a good, calm song for a quiet Saturday after a long, long week.  I hope you enjoy.

Funk Friday: “Make Me Believe In You,” Patti Jo

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Happy Fear Day, Tune-Up fans!  (Or, Valentine’s Day, if you’re committed to living a life of mindless literalism and social norms and having people actually understand what you’re talking about.)

Before you all inundate me with messages about the glories of love and life and birds and bees and whatnot, let me pause for a second.  Love is great.  Love is glorious.  Love is also terrifying, difficult, and a royal pain in the ass.  Think of all the hundreds of billions of inputs that endlessly feed into making you who you are – the person who takes their coffee black, who prefers staying up late to getting up early, who prefers big groups to small gatherings, and will never under any circumstances wear pleat-front pants.  You and everyone you see every day are Olympic-sized swimming pools of memory-infused preferences and experience-born trigger points, some conscious and some so parked in your subconscious you don’t even know it.  In a way, there are seven billion unique languages on the planet.  And yet, in the midst of all of this, we meet people, we fall in love, and, sometimes, we find our languages have a common root.  Amazing.

This is what I ponder every February 14th that rolls around, and it always makes me think of those people who are in the beginning stages of the whole love saga.  No matter how much sang-froid one was born with, it’s impossible not to wonder about the future.  And because, in my mind, V Day is also Fear Day, it does kind of put one on the offensive.  Hit it, Patti Jo.  “You’re gonna be downright in shame if I find that you’re playing any game.  Make me believe in you.”

Throwback Thursday: “Infernal Dance King Kahchei,” Igor Stravinsky

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OHCRAPINABASKETTOMORROWISVALENTINE’SDAY.  

Yes, friend, I’m afraid it is.  This is one of the few holidays that strikes deep, bone-gripping fear into both the singleton and coupleton.

To singletons, it’s about survival.  For the unhappy singleton, you survive another round of Those Who Won’t Die Alone (And I’m Not Talking About Their Cats) getting an “atta-boy” and a UN-sanctioned pat on the head; another round of mooney stories from smug, self-satisfied couples about the amazing flowers/chocolate/card/gift they received until you want to take said flowers/chocolate/card/gift and throw them into a wood chipper.  Even to happy singletons the day is a royal pain – everyone assumes you’re unhappy about being single and you spend the whole day fending off attempts to make you feel better about being so very, very, very alone.

To the newly partnered, it’s Everything Your New Partner Does Or Says Is A Sign Of Your Long-Term Compatibility Day, or, worse, Everything I Do Or Say Will Be A Signal To My New Partner And Soon After This They Will Decide This Was A Bad Idea Day; the day in which you don’t have a blind clue whether to get flowers or not (“I mean, it’s classic, right?  But, they’re dead, and then they start to smell bad in a few days, and it’s also just so cliche, and maybe it’s also, I dunno, clingy?  But I really like her and if I don’t get flowers…”), or chocolate or not (“did he say he was lactose intolerant?  I thought he mentioned lactose once…#$%! I’m such a bad listener…), or a card or not (“Where are the cards that say ‘I really like you and I know it hasn’t been that long but I think we have a future, unless you don’t, in which case, that’s totally cool, I never really liked you anyway?'”).  And to those that have been coupled up for ages, it’s It’s Been Six Years Since The Last Time I Tried To Surprise Him Maybe He Forgot And This Time I’ll Nail It Day, or, way worse, What Was That One Thing She Said She Really Wanted Dammit No Really What Was It Day.

In sum: Valentine’s Day is, basically, Fear Day.  Enter King Kahchei and his infernal dance from Stravinsky’s “Firebird.”

I don’t often post live recordings, as you’ve no doubt noticed, my eagle-eyed, international readership, but this one hooked me.  First of all, the tempo is absolutely perfect; it’s just fast enough to make you think it’s about to go off the rails, but, obviously, never does.  Second of all, it’s in such a bonkers time signature that I always wondered “How on earth do you conduct this?”  So a tip of my hat to Michael Tilson Thomas.  I become entirely mesmerized watching his direction here.  And third and finally, this video gives you a good sense of the immense scale of Stravinsky’s orchestration.  There are not only tons of musical parts, but there are tons of people playing each musical part.  It’s massive – you can kind of see the whole lot of them at 2:34 and 3:52.  (Oh, and the music starts at 0:29.)

To my single and be-coupled readers, enjoy this calm before the storm.  I’ll be back tomorrow with some fresh Fear Day funk to see you through.

Worldly Wednesday: “The Abraham Lincoln Brigade,” John McCutcheon

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I’m taking some liberties with this post, Tune-Up fans, but stay with me.  This pretty little song, though American, tells the very cool story of the involvement of about 2,800 Americans who went to Spain in the late 1930s to help the Spanish fight against Francisco Franco.  That group of volunteers was called the Abraham Lincoln Brigade.  The story of the Abraham Lincoln Brigade is pretty moving.  The Brigade, formed in 1937, was part of a larger group of tens of thousands of volunteers from the international leftist community, and suffered heavy losses during the Spanish Civil War.

And what day is it today?  It is Abraham Lincoln’s birthday.  (“Ohhhh.”  See?)

More information about this song (and the album it comes from) is here.  More information about the Abraham Lincoln Brigade can be found here, and here is an interesting and nuanced overview of US involvement in the war.

 

Termagant Tuesday: “West End Blues,” Jelly Roll Morton

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvZgeuJOg4M

February 11th was a big day in history.  Let’s review:

  • 55 AD: Tiberius Claudius Caesar Britannicus dies under mysterious circumstances.  Nero becomes emperor.  Things start to seriously suck in Rome.
  • 1531: Henry VIII becomes head of the Church in England.  WASPs in boat shoes and elbow patches come out of hiding.
  • 1812: Massachusetts Governor Elbridge Gerry creates a new word and “gerrymanders.”  WASPs of conscience go back into hiding.
  • 1906: Pope Pius X publishes Vehementur Nos.  Reconsiders.
  • 1971: 87 countries, including these United States, sign an agreement outlawing the use of nuclear weapons on the…wait for it…sea bed.  So that’s something.
  • 1983: Ronald Reagan declares February 11 to be “Inventor’s Day,” and calls upon the American people “to observe this day with appropriate ceremonies and activities.”

To celebrate this last bullet especially, The Daily Tune-Up presents Mr. Jelly Roll Morton, one of the inventors of jazz (though, if you asked him, he’d say he birthed jazz all by himself, to which this blog respectfully says, “the hell you say”).  Morton was born Ferdinand Joseph LaMothe in New Orleans in 1890.  His composition, “Jelly Roll Blues,” published in 1915, is the first known jazz publication in American history.  He became renowned for his interpretations of other jazz songs and also for his considerable talent at the piano.   In 1935 Morton moved to Washington, D.C. where he managed a bar at 12th and U, Northwest.  That bar has had many names but my fellow Washingtonians know it as Ben’s Next Door, aka the vaguely nicer joint next to Ben’s Chili Bowl.  Morton died in 1941 in Los Angeles, California.  He was apparently such an arrogant ass throughout his life – going on and on about how he “invented jazz” – that not too many people came to his funeral.  Thankfully, his music continued to be influential, whether people liked the man or not.  So I raise a grateful glass to his memory.  As far as I’m concerned, the world could use more visionary pains-in-the-ass.

Modernism Monday: “Mr. Dabada,” Carlos Jean

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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3JTjWY8RwUQ

Have a good weekend?  That’s nice.  Get some sleep?  Have a few drinks?  Went for a hike, caught up on your scrapbooking, maybe tagged some buildings?  Did you “kick back” and maybe even “chillax?”  Cool, cool.  You know what?  Monday doesn’t care.  Monday thinks your social life – if that’s what you call your improv classes and the occasional “Thirsty Thursday” with those holier-than-thou Levant desk officers – is about as exciting as a Bob Ross marathon.  It’s kind of cute, in a way, how you saunter around on Saturday and Sunday, feeling all pleased with yourself, deliberately choosing to forget that Monday is going to jump off the top rope and drop a knee to your lower back as soon as you crank up your computer.  Five minutes until you present your new project idea?  Printer chokes on the sides.  That thing you delegated to that new guy to do last week?  Not only did he do it wrong, but he undid some of your own work, too.  Like yogurt?  Great!  It’s now all down the front of your black dress.

What Monday doesn’t know is that you have a secret weapon: Mr. Dabada.  Your music shields are up and your phasers are set to stun.  “Hey man – what the hell you doing?!”  “I…I’m going crazy!”  

Okay, Monday… let’s dance.  

Sacred Sunday: “Officum Defunctorum & Missa Pro Defunctis,” Cristobal de Morales

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Some Tune-Up fans might think it a bit of a cop-out to post an entire body of work instead of a song – since this blog is devoted to providing you with the “song of the day” – but I just was incapable of pulling this piece apart.  It needs to be heard in its entirety; it’s just that gorgeous.  Those of you who are up on your Latin will know that these two bodies of work are funereal – “Officum Defunctorum” means the office of the dead (a cycle of prayers), and “Missa Pro Defunctis” is the mass for the dead.  Without knowing the titles and therefore purposes of these pieces, I wouldn’t have guessed they had anything to do with funerals, and that is one of the reasons I love them.  The harmonies are the other reason.  They are simple, accessible, and exquisite.

Cristobal de Morales is rightly considered one of the giants of the Spanish Renaissance, and really one of the great composers of the Renaissance in general.  He was born in Seville, Spain, around 1500 and died in 1553.  I cannot possibly overstate the importance of buying the Jordi Savall recording, if you’re inclined to get a copy of this for yourself.  It is superlative.