Category: Music

Saturday Night at the Oldies: The Dream Theme

In the late '50s the sexual revolution was right around the corner, but hadn't yet arrived.  So those late '50s dudes did more dreaming than doing.  The dream theme is well explored in these 'classics':  Dream Lover (Bobby Darin, 1959), Dreamin' (Johnny Burnett, 1960), In Dreams (Roy Orbison), In Dreams (Orbison, live version), All I Have to Do is Dream (Everly Brothers, 1959).

Sentimentality and schmaltz, you complain?  I won't deny it, but surely it is to be preferred to the crudity and soullessness and outright malevolence of much of what came later.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Peter and Gordon

Peter gordon The Grim Reaper, the ultimate Repo Man, is certainly no slacker.  In recent days he has paid a visit to  Karl Malden, Ed McMahon, Farah Fawcett, Michael Jackson, Billy Mays (America's Pitchman), Walter Cronkite, and today I heard of the passing of Gordon Waller, 64,  of Peter and Gordon fame.  P & G were major players in the 1964 'British Invasion.'  Here is a hit to remember Gordon by.  From 1965.

And here's another.  And another. 


Death is near my friends, right around the corner.  It doesn't take much to send you packing into Kingdom Come: a little food gone down the wrong way, a texting moron of a motorist, a bit of errant plaque lodged in a cerebral artery. . . . So work out your salvation with diligence while the sun shines.  You're burning daylight while hanging by a thread.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: ‘Reason’ Titles

We need a list of 'Reason' titles.  Here are three: You're the Reason I'm Livin; You're the Reason (I Don't Sleep at Night); Reason to Believe.  Last week or so I've been forcing myself to listen to Michael Jackson stuff to see if maybe, just maybe, I may have missed something of merit.  But it's just robotic crap compared to tunes of human meaning like these that can give a man pleasure from 8 to 80.  I can't imagine anyone but a freak relating to Jackson's "Bad" at the age of 80 even if he could relate to it at 8 or 18.

Whittaker Chambers on Beethoven

Whittaker Chambers (Witness, p. 19) on the Third Movement of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony:

. . . that music was the moment at which Beethoven finally passed beyond the suffering of his life on earth and reached for the hand of God, as God reaches for the hand of Adam in Michaelangelo's vison of the creation.

Well, either the adagio movement of the 9th or the late piano sonatas, in particular, Opus 109, Opus 110, and Opus 111. To my ear, those late compositions are unsurpassed in depth and beauty.

In these and a few other compositions of the great composers we achieve a glimpse of what music is capable of.  Just as one will never appreciate the possibilities of genuine philosophy by reading hacks such as Ayn Rand or positivist philistines (philosophistines?) such as David Stove, one will never appreciate the possibilities of great music and its power of speaking to what is deepest in us if one listens only to contemporary popular music.

Saturday Night at the Oldies: Some 40’s Proto-Rock

Freddie Slack and Will Bradley Trio (1940), Down the Road A Piece.

If you like to boogie woogie, I know the place.
It's just an old piano and a knocked out bass.
The drummer man's a guy they call Eight Beat Mack.
And you remember Doc and old "Beat Me Daddy" Slack.

Man it's better than chicken fried in bacon grease
Come along with me, boys, it's just down the road a piece.

Ella Mae Morse (1945), The House of Blue Lights.  Shows that 'square' and 'daddy-o' and 'dig' were already in use in the '40s.  I had been laboring under the misapprehension that this patois first surfaced in Beat/Beatnik circles in the '50s.

Zombie Girl: But She’s Not There!

The Zombies were a 1960's British Invasion rock group that had a couple of smash singles before vanishing into the oblivion whence they sprang. Out and about one Saturday afternoon, surfing the FM band, I came across one of their hits, "She's Not There." I have heard it countless times, and it is probably playing in your head right now, dear reader. (I apologize for the meme infestation.)

Suddenly, after all these years, the song assumed New Meaning, Deep Meaning. The Zombies were singing about a philosophical zombie! The refrain, "But she's not there" referred to the light (of consciousness) being out in the poor lass.  (And how do you know that said light was not out in them as well?)

A Heideggerian could gloss the situation as follows. To be there is to be a case of Dasein, Da-Sein. The girl was vorhanden all right, and perhaps even zuhanden (as a tool for sexual gratification), aber sie war nicht da, nicht ein Fall vom Dasein. She was a Black Forest zombie.

Taxman

I settled accounts with the Infernal Revenue 'Service' a few days ago.  How about you?  I had to pony up, but that's better than a 'refund.' If you let them take too much and hold your money without paying you for the use of it, then you are, shall we say, ordering your temporal affairs suboptimally.   Time now to kick back with this live version of Taxman featuring George Harrison and Eric Clapton.