lively

Modernism Monday: “Mr. Dabada,” Carlos Jean

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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.  

Salubrious Saturday: “Living in Colour,” Frightened Rabbit

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Ach, the Scots are the greatest.  Frightened Rabbit is an indie rock band from Selkirk, Scotland, but based mainly these days in Glasgow.  (My sources tell me that the name of the band came from the lead singer’s mother, who called him a frightened rabbit when he was a kid because he was so shy.  I know.)  It’s so hard to pick a song from them to highlight, but this song fits my mentality the best.  This past week was pretty tops, for a whole variety of reasons, and the week sounded like this song: fast-paced, joyous, with shifting tectonic plates producing new, exciting formations.  And now it’s Saturday!  Hooray, weekend!

Funk Friday: “Straight Fire,” The Jive Turkeys

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Damn, I love The Jive Turkeys.  This awesome, relatively new quartet is from Cincinnati, Ohio, one of our funkier states.  There isn’t a single song they’ve put out that’s been dull or sub-par.  I highly recommend going on a YouTube walkabout to discover their other stuff.  “Straight Fire” is a pretty solid place to start.  I mean how can you resist that organ?  You can’t.  It’s not possible.

Worldly Wednesday: “Glasgow,” Shout Out Louds

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Hej, Sverige!  It’s two-for-one day at The Daily Tune-Up!  This fun indie band is from Stockholm, Sweden, and the first half of this track has been going through my head all week.  I love the driving energy of this song, which makes it good for a mid-week pick, and also explains why it’s been in heavy rotation on my running playlist.  The lyrics are amusing, memorable, and fun to belt out when you’re commuting to and from work.  And it also sounds like a song that would be used in a slick TV ad to sell shoes or beer or cardigans or something – so now you can feel even cooler having heard it here first.  You’re welcome.

The second half of this track sounds like what the protagonist in the song would listen to the morning after the adventures in this song take place.  I really like it when artists complete the thought, as it were – when the music switches gears to give you a glimpse into the next part of the story the lyrics portrayed.  It’s like the end of the movie “The Graduate,” when the camera just keeps rolling after the young lovers made a break for it.  It sounds like real life.  There’s always a next stage.

Throwback Thursday: “Piano Concerto No. 1, BWV 1052, First Movement,” J.S. Bach

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One wonders why it took me this long to play Bach, since he is one of the major reasons I adore classical music.  This piece in particular makes me beside myself with happiness.  It’s slightly more constrained than the Schumann piano concerto I posted a few weeks ago – far more regulated – but it still has the same fire underneath.  I especially love Perahia’s interpretation here, which takes it at a wonderfully assertive clip.  The slow build-up beginning at 6:02 is so exciting, and you think it’ll resolve but psych!  There’s more!  Oh, Bach, you card.  You slay me.

Bach and Steve Reich both wrote music that satisfies the same craving: music that sounds like the part of my brain that is constantly jumping up and down, wanting to play.  Putting this energetic piece on allows that part of my brain to go on a play-date, leaving the calmer, quieter side behind to get some work done in peace.  Bach alone got me through about a quarter of grad school.  I should put some flowers on his grave or take one of his descendants out for a beer.  (Aside: how incredibly cool would it be to have a beer with a Bach descendant?)

Modernism Monday: “Giuliano’s Tune, Something, Eleanor Day’s #2,” The Duhks

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I feel a strong urge to post something unabashedly cheerful today to kick off the week, and The Duhks certainly deliver.  The Duhks are from Winnipeg (that’s above North Dakota, for my geography-challenegd friends), but the music they make really sounds like it’s from Newfoundland, or Scotland for that matter.  This song makes me want to participate in some type of organized group dancing that heavily features the swinging of one’s partner round and round.  If any of you have ever been to a ceilidh (Scottish country dancing) and know the dance “Strip the Willow,” this would be absolutely perfect.  Slàinte!

Funk Friday: “Chuck Berry,” Feature Cast

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You know what Friday’s problem is?  Friday’s problem is that it convinces you that the week is over at 12:01AM on Friday morning.  I’m sorry, Tune-Up fans, but that’s wrongedy-wrong-wrong.  But!  Feature Cast has served up a tasty portion of motivation that – are you ready for this? – you can play during the day, and after the day is over.  “Jump up, freak, or hustle – do what you want, but move every muscle.  Ain’t no time for playing around!  Only one thing to do when you hear this sound.”  Consider this song the equivalent of that ever elusive day-to-night outfit that you’ve tried for years to find.  I lost count of how many other funk songs this one samples.  I know for sure there’s “Cissy Strut” by The Meters (that’s the “ahhhhh YAH” vocal).  There are about six others, but I was too busy dancing to identify them.  Party on, y’all!

 

Throwback Thursday: “Maestoso,” from Symphony No. 3, Camille Saint-Saens

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It’s the deepest, darkest part of winter.  It’s cold.  Spring feels like it will never come.  Life is difficult in general, and sometimes really whacks one in the face.  What do we do when this concatenation of suck happens?  I will tell you what we do.  We square our shoulders, count our blessings, tend to our loved ones, and attack the task at hand with even more zeal than before.  Thank the good and gracious Whomever for music, upon which we can rely to be an indefatigable crutch.  This movement from Camille Saint-Saens’s organ concerto is one of the most joyously bracing pieces ever written, and is tailor-made for those moments when you need a pep talk, and/or a sonic kick in the pants.  It has it all: the alarm-clock beginning, the triumphant horns, the gorgeous melody, and the sympathetic minor key interludes that assure you that others have seen the same kind of trying times you’re experiencing, and not only lived through them, but, ultimately, thrived.  It’s pieces like this that inspired me to write this blog in the first place so that I could share them.

“Don’t turn away.  Keep your gaze on the bandaged place.  That’s where the light enters you.”

– Rumi

Termagant Tuesday: “Mumbles,” Clark Terry

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Oh wow, yesterday sucked.  It sucked.  Your plucky heroine got totally hosed, hoisted by her own damn petard.  I made a judgment call that, while totally correct in spirit, was…well…a bit lacking in execution.  Or planning.  Or, really, on some level, logic.  Then I got reamed out by my boss, and in the process of trying to explain why I chose the course of action that ultimately saw me plonked me down in the interrogation jet stream, I, obviously, stumbled just a tad over my words.  Eventually, the great ship of state was righted, the rudder was realigned, and we all sailed off as happy as the little analyst clams we are.  (If clams sailed.  Or, for that matter, had analytical capabilities.  …Leave that aside for now.)  Still, I was left with a lingering “Oh the hell with this” hangover accompanied by flashbacks of cotton-mouthed, inarticulate gooberism.  So, what’s a girl to do?  Have a drink, take a shower, go to sleep, and in the morning, ask my equally mumbly friend Clark Terry if he’d accompany me to work.  Lick ’em tomorrow, right?  Right.  Tuesday, à l’attaque!

Throwback Thursday: “J’ai vu le loup,” Anon.

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To balance out yesterday’s, oh, slightly intense Song of the Day, let’s throw on an old dance track from France.  And when I say “old dance track,” I mean a dance-like song with its origins in medieval France.  I honestly don’t know how old this piece is, or who wrote it, or where, or why, which, as you can imagine, deeply annoys your Yankette.  Be that as it may, I do know the lyrics are probably allegorical.  The song is a story, told in the first person, of chancing upon a wolf, a fox, and a rabbit (or sometimes a weasel) having a grand time dancing, singing, and drinking.  Some sources say that the wolf, fox, and rabbit represent the king, the lord (i.e. the lord whose land you worked on as a serf), and the church.  (I hope you know how much it pains me, as an analyst, to write the essentially meaningless phrase “some sources say,” but it’s the best I got.  If you, gentle reader, have any further information, I would be incredibly grateful.)

English words below!

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J’ai vu le loup, le renard, le lièvre,
J’ai vu le loup, le renard cheuler.
C’est moi-même qui les ai rebeuillés.
J’ai vu le loup, le renard, le lièvre,
C’est moi-même qui les ai rebeuillés.
J’ai vu le loup, le renard cheuler.

J’ai ouï le loup, le renard, le lièvre,
J’ai ouï le loup, le renard chanter.
C’est moi-même qui les ai rechignés,*
J’ai ouï le loup, le renard, le lièvre,
C’est moi-même qui les ai rechignés,
J’ai ouï le loup, le renard chanter.

J’ai vu le loup, le renard, le lièvre,
J’ai vu le loup, le renard danser,
C’est moi-même qui les ai revirés,*
J’ai vu le loup, le renard, le lièvre,
C’est moi-même qui les ai revirés,
J’ai vu le loup, le renard danser.

I saw the wolf, the fox, the hare
I saw the wolf, the fox drinking
I spied on them myself.
I saw the wolf, the fox, the hare,
I spied on them myself,
I saw the wolf, the fox drinking.

I heard the wolf, the fox, the hare,
I heard the wolf, the fox singing
I imitated them myself.
I heard the wolf, the fox, the hare,
I imitated them myself,
I heard the wolf, the fox singing.

I saw the wolf, the fox, the hare,
I saw the wolf, the fox dancing
I made them dance myself.
I saw the wolf, the fox, the hare,
I made them dance myself,
I saw the wolf, the fox dancing.