Asymmetric Music

These Are Special Times

Read more »

Crime against humanity.

I love coffee. My first-ever drink from a cup was coffee. I drank cafe on leche every morning (how's that for parenting?)

After eating, I always ask for a coffee to go. It keeps me busy in between texting and browsing the internet while I'm driving (just kidding- very dangerous- don't do it).

Anyways, about half the restaurants don't have the kind of lid that you can keep on as you sip your coffee. I really dislike having to take out my Leatherman to open a slit in the plastic containers designed for soda.

This rule doesn't discriminate, from the most expensive restaurants to the mom and pop meat loaf dives, it's always 50%. Considering that many people probably finish their meal with coffee and a large percentage of them probably like to do as I do, and that coffee lids are available at Sam's Club or Costco for about 40 cents a ton; there's really no excuse not to have them. Please, coffee addicts, forward this post to your favorite restaurant:

Restaurants: Do this for us. Please. It's a small thing that brings many of your customers great joy.

Anyways, I decided to do a search through my massive mp3 collection for coffee songs. Here's what I came up with:

First, always, when possible, is Bach. His Coffee Cantata- BWV 211 is one of his best. I don't know German, but I'd probably laugh if I could understand it, as the lyrics are one of those wonderful Enlightenment topics, the silly peccadilloes of the modern and wealthy (Rape of the Lock by Bach's contemporary, Alexander Pope, is another one). Here, a young girl is addicted to coffee. I like to watch Classical performances, don't you?

The next song is by Otis Redding who alternates with Sam Cooke, Al Green, and maybe one or two others as my favorite Soul singer and is one of my favorite singers of any genre. He lays down his naturally gruff, yet expressive and melismatic voice to the service of "Cigarettes and Coffee." Otis Redding passed away (RIP) before health studies. It's the podcast.

This one was tough. Both the Andrew Sisters and Frank Sinatra sang what is probably the greatest musical indictment of nations relying on one resource for its income, "The Coffee Song." Addendum: First Bach, then Frank.

Probably the greatest R&B compilation is the 15-disc set, The Chess Story. It has the Muddy, Chuck, Bo, and Willie you're all familiar with plus some of the most marvelous music you've never heard, like this song from a Mr. Danny Overbea, "Forty Cups of Coffee."

The Putumayo collections are hit or miss. Many of the songs are middling, if unusual and fresh, but the collections often have one or two songs that make their purchases worthwhile. Such is "Soltarlo" by Claudia Gomez, recompiled by Putumayo on Music from the Coffee Lands.

I'll do Caribbean/Cuban cafe songs tomorrow.

This song selection is inspired by this act of heroism:

A 26-year old Greek woman has become an overnight national hero after setting fire to the genitals of a 23-year old drunken Briton who allegedly tried to sexually assault her in a crowded bar.

Here.

Jerry Lee Lewis, along with a couple dozen others is one of the pillars of Rock and Roll. He's a colorful performer (some would say "nuts" with his penchant for pyrotechnics) and a genuinely talented musician and singer, both his style and musicianship being unique and inimitable.

Singing "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On" on the Steve Allen Show. I thought the commercials might be interesting.

Besides the scandal surrounding his penchant for young girls, Lewis' downfall resulted from a lack of musical variety. After his piano-pounding steamrollers like "Great Balls of Fire" and "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," the pickings became slimmer, if not altogether poor (impossible, considering his talent).

Lewis' decline saw his increased reliance on music derivative of his great hits and covers of contemporary Rockers Little Richard ("Good Golly, Miss Molly"), Chuck Berry ("Sweet Little Sixteen" and others), and Ray Charles ("What'd I Say"), all of whom, ironically, suffered from a lack of musical variety to some extent or another.

Later, Jerry Lee Lewis turned to Country. I have a two-disc set which includes much of his country singles. Again, talented, but nothing absolutely necessary as far as I can tell (yes, I like Country). "Another Place, Another Time" is his most famous Country song. It's written by Jerry Chestnut.

Being a big music fan, I sometimes associate major events or people in the news with certain songs.

So it happened that as the country briefly became entranced with the phony flight of the Falcon, I wondered what music would accompany such an occasion.

I fired up my Media Center and searched for "Balloon," which took me for a nice ride lasting a couple of hours (the search).

I started with Al Bowlly, a British singer popular in the thirties who sang many Latin-themed songs including "Balloon," based on the Cuban song "Manisero." It's the podcast.

The other balloon song I found in my collection was "Up, Up, and Away" by the Fifth Dimension.

Marilyn McCoo was certainly one of the most attractive singers of the era.

"Hey! Wasn't she on that music-dance show"?

I have a distinct memory of watching Solid Gold 79, although I can't remember exactly what year it was- late seventies or early eighties, I guess. (That program, along with Soul Train is where I learned about the facts of life.) I dug up this video of the Solid Gold Dancers:

Read more »

As usual, Powerline does the blogosphere a service by providing an alternative to the adulatory coverage of Pete Seeger's 90th birtday. It's not like Powerline is ruining the appreciation of good music by considering Seeger's politics: a great deal of Seeger's appeal is his politics.

And what were his politics up until a few years ago, when it was irrelevant: Seeger maintained faithful allegiance to the the second most murderous political group in history (China's holding at #1), reminding us that:

1. For many on the left, feelings trump reality, "Seeger sang about loving each other."

2. Of course, Nazi-Soviet hypocrisy. A Nazi folk singer probably wouldn't have won the Medal of Honor for art (how ironic that he received his award in a building named after JFK who hated Communism and was killed by a Communist) nor gotten a PBS special.

3. Many on the left prefer style over substance. Consider the Che T-shirts, the long say-nothing speeches of President Obama, that they seem much more likely to form opinions based on art.

4. One can admire a brave, principled Communist, sort of, but Seeger refused to say whether he was Communist and withdrew an album because his Soviet puppet masters told him to.

5. In looking for music for this post, I came across this song, called, "What Did You Learn in School?" Well, Pete Seeger, Communist, must be happy that kids today are pretty much learning the leftist ideas he espoused all of his life. The most popular history text on campus is People's History by Communist sympathizer Howard Zinn. Communist libel like the book Obama accepted from Chavez, Open Veins of Latin America
is popular in college as well. Even in my high school, I noticed that Mother Jones graced the magazine rack in the library. No issues of the National Review or Weekly Standard were there to contest it.

Magazine rack at Huntington Park High School.

Here's an album. Please don't reward the capitalist pigs who run the record companies by paying for it:

The Essential Pete Seeger

A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present (P.S.) by Howard Zinn

The Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent by Eduardo Galeano

A little much, no? It's not called "graciousness" when you're begging somebody for peace. If it were Bush, who had a Norwuz message last year (calling the government a "regime"), I'd say he was "brown-nosing" Iran.

We have Iran's response:

TEHRAN, Iran (CNN) -- Iran's supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said Saturday he sees no change in U.S. policy toward Iran despite the U.S. promise of a "new beginning."
Ayatollah Khamenei said Iran would change its policy when the U.S. did so as well.

Ayatollah Khamenei said Iran would change its policy when the U.S. did so as well.

Khamenei said a change in rhetoric is not enough, and Washington must practice what it preaches, according to the English-language Press TV channel in Iran.

He also promised that Iran will change its policy if the United States does so as well, Press TV reported.

To be fair, what Obama says is not nearly as important as what he does. God help us if terrorist-supporting Iran gets a nuclear bomb.

On the other hand, Turkey will let us go through their territory out of Iraq. Good for them.

I'm not a big fan of Richard Strauss. I find his compositions bloated and pretentious, boring. Thus Spake Zarathustra is a good example. A few moments of distinction followed by some very unmemorable music, kind of like Carl Orff's Carmina Burana.

Zarathustra or Zoroaster was the founder of the Iranian religion Zoroastrianism. Nowruz is their New Years. Whereas most Islamic countries adopted Hijra, or the migration of the Islamic prophet Muhammad to the city now known as Medina as the beginning of their calendar, Persians kept Nowruz.

2001 Space Odyssey

Richard Strauss: Thus Spake Zarathustra

2001 - A Space Odyssey (Two-Disc Special Edition)

Ella (above)

Ella Fitzgerald Sings The Rodgers And Hart Songbook

Frank:

Romance: Songs From The Heart

Miles:

The Essential Miles Davis

The nativity by Sandro Botticelli

I don't mind secular Christmas songs if they're kept below a certain percentage of the total. All of that "snow and presents" stuff begins to grate if that's the only kind people play- like they're trying to hide something or are semi-embarrassed by "the reason...." Not the songs in this post: They're open-chested, proud Christian carols. To all of my Christian brothers and sisters (and all of my other brothers and sisters who take it in the way I mean it), Merry Christmas!

The First Noel with Musica Sacra

Brian Kershisnik

Silent Night with Dinah Washington

Read more »

These are the relevant parts for Friday. Different versions of the work exist-including one by Mozart (talk about genius on genius), but I asked senator McCain, and he said that Beethoven would often tell him that he liked the original best. For a scholarly analysis, go here. I added the Korean subtitles for my international audience.

Behold the Lamb of God:

Read more »

Almost as much as I fantasized about having breakfast with Victoria Principal, as a younger man, I longed to attend one of William F. Buckley's famous get-togethers at his apartment- the Elton John after-parties for conservatives. We would have talked, eaten, lit complementary cigarettes from the tobacco industry with $100.00 bills, laughed at the staff's lack of health coverage. No doubt the assemblage of leading lights would have pestered me with questions on the issues of the day, "You're going to have to ask me later, Mr. Kissinger- I'm trying to eat."

We also would have listened to Bach. For years, Firing Line had as its theme song Bach's second Brandenburg Concerto. Bach, of course, along with Beethoven and Mozart (sorry, Michael Bolton) was one of the top three musical geniuses in music history. Bach was the most "mathematical" of the three, by which I mean the most purely musical in the Pythagorean sense and the least emotional in the Tchaikovskian sense. The counter-melody attack from the second horn is one of the glories of music. Trevor Pinnock is the conductor. The part you're looking for is in movement three.

BMV 1047 No. 1:

BMV 1047 No. 2

BMV 1047 No 3

Johann Sebastian Bach: 6 Brandenburg Concertos / 4 Orchestral Suites - The English Concert / Trevor Pinnock

The Essential Michael Bolton

Finally, one of the fine musicians who performed at those soires was the great harpsichordist and pianist Rosalyn Tureck. Here's one short work from her fantastic ablum of Bach keyboard works:

Minuet BMV 116

Bach: The Keyboard Album