lively

Modernism Monday: “War Again,” Balkan Beat Box

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This week, The Daily Tune-Up will be devoted to events unfolding in Ukraine.  I find this all so deeply troubling and what do I do when I find something troubling?  I use music to help me sort it out. This song encapsulates my mood about this entire thing.  Balkan Beat Box is, obviously, not from Ukraine, but rather comprised of musicians from the U.S. and Israel who lean on Balkan, Mediterranean, and Middle Eastern sounds.  The lyrics talk about the awful cycle of war that can only end if enough people choose that it should end.

Here is a good overview article on what’s happening in Ukraine right now, the background of the conflict, and another on what the U.S. could do about it with the assets it has in the region (if I chose to go the military route).

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Here we are like we’re going to get war again
Coming hard, come and get a gun, join the gang
With the bang bang and the same song we sang
Coming over and over again

It’s picking up now, getting more like a game
And it feels real like we learn to fake the fame
And there’s never more then one truth
But you can always tell your better half

Always tell your better half of the story
It goes well with the better side of your face you show on TV
Give me a good reason why I shouldn’t start a revolution
What’s in the constitution? Is this illusion that we bought?
You cut the wings and then you say fly
You say the hero is the one that died
But the true hero is the one who doesn’t live a lie and understands
That there’s an end out of the cycle
Who’s the master? Who’s the disciple?
You can do what you can, but will you do it again?
So what’s the plan?
Looks like we are going to get war again

Here we are like we’re going to get war again
Coming hard, come and get a gun, join the gang
With the bang bang and the same song we sang
Coming over and over again

It’s picking up now, getting more like a game
And it feels real like we learn to fake the fame
And there’s never more then one truth
But you can always tell your better half

Look out
Going to get war again, going to get wrong again
Gone again, with the same song again, on again
Can’t be born again, who’s gone again?
Who’s going to gain out of this war again?
Hooligan in a tie rule again
Soon again you will see it all begin again
Sink again, and that will make you think again

And when they call you go
When they are wrong you know
And u will follow, and you will swallow
Again like long ago and the bomb will blow
So sit back relax and enjoy the show
‘Cause you are as cold as snow and I am here below
I’m going to speak out, scream out
Here we go, got the fresh flow
So before it’s over
Then you are going to find a different kind of war to start again

Going to get war again

Salubrious Saturday: “Mountain Dew,” The Stanley Brothers

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If I had to pick just one style of music to listen for the rest of my life, bluegrass would make the short list, and the Stanley Brothers would definitely be one of the groups I’d pick.  I particularly love this song a) because the lyrics are a riot (below), and Ralph’s voice is so smooth.

Ralph and Carter Stanley were born in the Clinch Mountains of Virginia in the 1920s (if the name Clinch Mountains means anything to you like it did to me, it’s probably because there’s a bluegrass song called Clinch Mountain Backstep that the the Holy Modal Rounders covered.  But I digress.).  They were a pretty popular bluegrass group for their time up to Carter’s death in 1966.  Ralph continued to play and got a prominent spot in the O Brother, Where Art Thou? soundtrack.  You know that a cappella song, “O Death?”  That, my friend, is Ralph Carter.  He won a Grammy for that song – Best Male Country Performance – in 2002, and, I’m happy to report, is still picking his banjo today.

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Down the road here from me there’s an old holler tree
Where you lay down a dollar or two.
Go on around the bend, when you come back again,
There’s a jug full of that good old mountain dew

They call it that good old mountan dew,
And them that refuse it are few.
I’ll hush up my mug if you’ll fill up my jug
With that good old mountain dew.

Now Mr. [Franklin] Roosevelt told ’em just how he felt
When he heard that the dry law’d gone through:
If your liquor’s too red, it will swell up your head.
Better stick to that good old mountain dew

They call it that good old mountan dew,
And them that refuse it are few.
I’ll hush up my mug if you’ll fill up my jug
With that good old mountain dew.

The preacher rode by with head high, stood high,
Said that his wife had been down with the flu
He thought that I ought to sell him a quart
Of my good old mountain dew.

They call it that good old mountan dew,
And them that refuse it are few.
I’ll hush up my mug if you’ll fill up my jug
With that good old mountain dew.

Well my uncle Snort, he is sawed off and short,
He measures four feet two,
But he thinks he’s a giant when you give him a pint
Of that good old mountain dew.

They call it that good old mountan dew,
And them that refuse it are few.
I’ll hush up my mug if you’ll fill up my jug
With that good old mountain dew.

Throwback Thursday: “Prelude and Fugue No. 3 in C-sharp Major,” J.S. Bach

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These two pieces together sound like three friends going on a road trip.  The Prelude is all of them excitedly discussing where they want to go.  Some voices are heard more than others at which point they start getting into a minor (ha ha…hm) disagreements that are quickly resolved amicably.  The Fugue is the trip itself.  Friend One gets in his car and drives to Friend Two’s house, picks up Friend Two at 1:10, then they pick up Friend Three (who’s gone and gotten them all coffee) at 1:15.  These friends then tootle on their way.  There’s a bit of backseat driving after they take a wrong turn (1:34), but they finally get to their destination (2:27) and happily natter on about how great it is for a while until it gets dark (2:47) and they turn for home.

At least, that’s what it sounds like to me.

Worldly Wednesday: “Decent Days and Nights,” The Futureheads

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Oh man this song is such a trip.  The Futureheads are a great punk-oriented group from Sunderland, England, and so far, this is my favorite song of everything they’ve put out.  I am a complete sucker for weird changes in time signatures, and the lyrics are interesting and funny.  It’s a happy, lively song for the middle of the week, and the driving rhythm has earned it a top spot in my running playlist.

Termagant Tuesday: “Tokyo Traffic,” Dave Brubeck

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Classic Brubeck sound meets classic Japanese tonality = super cool.  This song is off the 1964 album “Jazz Impressions of Japan,” and while it obviously draws on international sounds, it wasn’t the first Brubeck record to do so.  That record was “Time Out,” and was released five years earlier in 1959.  The idea for “Time Out” came from a trip Brubeck took around Eurasia in (I believe) the late ’50s, sponsored by the U.S. Department of State.  Evidently, he heard a group of musicians in Turkey playing in 9/8 time, filed it away, and came back determined to devote an entire album to odd time signatures – hence the title, “Time Out.”

I know, you’re wondering why I didn’t post a song from that album, and when I’m going to get back to “Tokyo Traffic.”  Hang with me, Tune-Up fans.

Columbia Records was extremely leery of letting Brubeck issue an album only in wacky time signatures and made him do an album of Southern folk standards first.  You know what the biggest hit off of “Time Out” was?  You guessed it – “Take Five.”  That song off that album launched a whole oeuvre of globally-inspired jazz music – Brubeck in Amsterdam, Brubeck in Berlin – which brings us to “Tokyo Traffic.”   (Told you this would all make sense.)

As much as I love “Take Five,” and I adore it (it’s on my Funeral Music list), there’s something really fun and exciting about “Tokyo Traffic.”  It’s the first song off the album so it sounds like his very first day off the plane, wandering around.  Brubeck in the liner notes talks about how overwhelming and wonderful it was to be in Japan, and I feel that when I hear this piece – it’s the musical equivalent of a guy being unable to stop swiveling his head around to look at everything.  It makes me want to travel.

Imagine if the State Department hadn’t organized that trip for Brubeck; that he’d never heard Turkish musicians playing in 9/8 time; that, for whatever reason, the idea of doing an album of odd time signatures hadn’t occurred to him.  No “Take Five,” no “Tokyo Traffic.”  Pretty lame.  And now imagine if way, way more people got out into the world a whole lot more.  One guy wrote “Take Five” – what would you be inspired to do?

Worldly Wednesday: “Amine,” Gaâda Diwane De Béchar

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I discovered these guys almost ten years ago outside Staoueli, Algeria, where I was spending a few weeks as an assistant trainer at a campaign training school for women political candidates.  The NGO I worked for at the time ran these incredibly cool schools that still help female political party members run for office.  Even though it was almost 11pm, it was finally cool enough to be outside, so dozens of families with young kids wandered around the open-air market eating ice cream.  The kids chased each other into and out of various stalls; parents tried to stop them but were too tired.  A pretty universal scene.  One of my colleagues, a lanky Romanian woman who was approximately nine feet tall, pulled me into a hut filled with CDs and the proprietor had this song playing on his beat-up Sony boom box.  I bought the album immediately.  I have absolutely no idea what the words mean but I sing vigorous phonetic approximations whenever this song comes on my music mixes.  I still don’t know what the lyrics mean but I do know that they play a type of very old Algerian spiritual music called Gnawa.

This song always puts me in a fantastic mood, and brings back wonderful memories of being somewhere sunny, hot, and interesting.

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.

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.