The Newfangled Four from Southern California can’t sing sober song to save themselves.
Category Archives: Music
Friday Singing: Windsor, All About the Bass
Here’s a whole set from a female quartet Windsor from the 2016 Sweet Adelines International competition. They joke about intending to sing Andrews Sisters trios and that Jenny, the bass, won’t fit in. They sing Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, When I Fall in Love, Daddy, and an adaptation of Johnny One Note.
‘Tidin Rennur’ on my birthday
The title means something like “Time Runs On (like a river).” It’s a beloved hymn of the Faeroe Islands, sung here by the world’s greatest singer, Norway’s Sissel Kyrkjebo. She’s singing in Faeroese, which I understand only a little better than you do. It’s an ancient dialect of Old Norse, and the Faeroese claim that it’s closer to what the Vikings actually spoke than modern Icelandic is. But the gist of the thing is that time runs on like a river, and I am in a little boat. Who will bring me safely home? Only Jesus can do that.
Appropriate thoughts for my birthday. I had a nice day. Went out to lunch with a friend, and reveled in the pleasure of having paying work, and the promise of more to come. Thank you for your friendship here.
Friday Singing: What’ll I Do in Apple Blossom Time
The Main Street Quartet reminds us of love when spring comes again.
In this vein, South Florida’s Signature Quartet asks what they will do without their lovers nearby.
Friday Singing: Saints and Summer Quartets
I know I just shared some music with you, but it occurred to me today that summertime is for happy music. This year has been tough, so I’ll see if I can find some good barbershop quartets to post for the next several Fridays. Here are two.
Passaggio
Passaggio, originally written for piano by Ludovico Einaudi
Voces8: “Be not angry, O Lord”
Ne irascaris Domine satis,
et ne ultra memineris iniquitatis nostrae.
Ecce respice populus tuus omnes nos.
Civitas sancti tui facta est deserta.
Sion deserta facta est,
Jerusalem desolata est.
Be not so terribly angry, O Lord,
and remember not iniquity forever.
Behold, please look, we are all your people.
Your holy cities have become a wilderness;
Zion has become a wilderness,
Jerusalem a desolation. ( Isaiah 64:9-10 ESV)
Imagine No Bad Songs
Inspired by the mayor of New York City, who said the song “Imagine” was an inspirational song about treating each other better, writer Matthew Walther suggests that the unifying banner under which we can all gather could be disdain for this song.
Start with the word salad of Marxism, anarchism, and existentialism. Nowhere is there even the faintest hint of how any of the hypotheticals we are being asked to consider might be realized. Instead Lennon does the political equivalent of telling us that the real magic was inside us all along.
This terrible song offers “a vision of a reality in which ‘lol nothing matters’ is elevated to a first-order principle.”
I’ve always hated “Imagine.” It’s as silly a song as “Simply Having a Wonderful Christmastime.” It’s abyssmal. I can barely listen to Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and “Bewitched, bothered and bewildered” has to be about singing under the influence–does anyone like that one?
Let’s unite in our disdain for overly popular songs. What’s your pick? (via Prufrock)
‘The Mansions of the Lord’
I guess I post this one every year for Memorial Day. Honor to the dead. We were not worthy of them.
A dishonest ad
In the time of quarantine: My private peeve today: A public service ad on IMDb.
I’ve been streaming TV on Amazon Prime, which also gives me limited free access to the IMDb channel. Only you have to put up with ads. I can live with ads.
But there’s one public service ad they’ve been running that annoys me. I don’t know if it’s been running anywhere else.
It’s an ad for some kind of educational organization. It features various colorful vignettes of little kids having a wonderful time learning in school.
My tolerance for cute kids is limited, but I can handle that. It’s the music that annoys me.
What they play over the ad is Pete Seeger’s classic folk/protest song, “What Did You Learn in School Today?”
The overall effect of the ad is to say that public schools are magical places, where the kids learn good, wholesome things.
Which is pretty much the opposite of what the song is about. The song goes back to the 1960s. Pete Seeger, the composer, was the godfather of the American folk music movement, which was really huge in the early ‘60s. I was a big fan. I wasn’t, however, aware back then of the basic purposes and motivations of the movement. Most (if not all) of its leaders (especially Seeger) were communists and fellow travelers.
The lyrics of the full song portray a dialogue between a parent and a little boy who has come home from school. Asked what he learned in school today, the boy tells about how he learned that “Washington never told a lie.” And how war is glorious and relatively safe, and “someday I might get my chance.”
In other words, according to the original song, the public school is a brainwashing center that indoctrinates children into unthinking loyalty to the capitalist system, and prepares them to be cannon fodder in useless, imperialistic wars.
The ad I’ve been seeing on IMDB is dishonest on two levels. First of all, it pretends that the song is not satirical, but sincere.
Secondly, now that the Left has taken over the educational system, it attempts to use a protest song as propaganda for perpetuating a new establishment.