Okay, it’s almost over. Today, we will do “My Favorite Things” from the 1965 film The Sound of Music. I liked the musical very much when I was young. I don’t care for it so much now. I’m not that fond of Christopher Plummer — except when he’s playing a Klingon. But mostly, there is just something offensively earnest about the whole thing.

When I was younger, I always wondered about something. In the play, the new Nazi Youth Rolfe does not summon the Nazis — allowing the family to get away. In the film, he does, leading to a rather stupid car chase. I had wondered if this was an indication of changing ideas about human nature. But later I concluded that it was formal. In a play, you couldn’t have a chase. In a film, you can. Simple as that. I still prefer the non-chase, because I want to believe that people are basically good.

Luckily for you all, I just remembered that John Coltrane did a great version of the song. That’s piano by McCoy Tyner — another of my favorite things.

It is the day — Thanksgiving day. Why didn’t I do something else? Really. I’ve hated doing this. But okay, at least I’ve found a few clever animated parodies. This one is a parody of Gloria Gaynor’s mega-hit “I Will Survive.” In this case, it is a very self-assured turkey singing the song. We have one or more flocks of turkeys around where I live. A lot of people hate them because they cause damage. But I find them quite charming.

Just the same, I don’t think much of them from a culinary standpoint. They don’t taste that great. And if you are going to go to that much trouble for a meal, why not make a prime rib? Still, every year it seems that I find myself fighting with family members who want turkey because it is traditional. It turns out, it isn’t. At the first Thanksgiving, they most likely ate duck. And isn’t it interesting that we make a big deal out of the fowl that were killed by the Pilgrims, but not the five deer that the Wampanoag killed.

This is a very hard week for me. For one thing, I have to go out of town and I’m super busy even while feeling under the weather. And then we have a week’s worth of songs that I don’t especially like. Today I thought I would feature, “Over the River and Through the Wood.” It is based on a poem by Lydia Maria Child. She was an amazing person and so we ought to honor her. But the poem does not exactly inspire me.

Since I am the son of two black sheep, I don’t exactly relate to the song. We almost never visited relatives when I was a kid. And when we did, I mostly remember people arguing. But that is the way of my people. There is nothing worth saying that it is not worth saying loudly and angrily. This may be how it is that I developed a feisty writing style, but am in person very quiet and non-confrontational.

Anyway, I went through dozens of versions of this song and could find almost nothing that didn’t make me suicidal. But I did find this very nice and short ukulele version from Fingerstyle Ukulele Uke Channel. It’s actually pleasant. It could have gone on for another few minutes:

When I found myself listening to Adam Sandler, I figured it was time to listen to Thanksgiving music. He really is one of the most annoying people on the planet. So let’s try to forget about him as quickly as possible. In 1968, the musical Oliver! was released. It is one of the better filmed musicals. The truth is that musicals don’t translate well to the screen. This is because musicals are odd art forms regardless. It’s one thing if people are going to stand in front of you and sing and dance. But film is static. Who are these people singing and dancing for? Obviously, it works best when it is something like Pal Joey, where the numbers are part of the story.

Anyway, Oliver! was directed by Carol Reed, who directed one of my all time favorite movies, The Third Man. And I would rather watch any of that than anything from Oliver! but we do have a schedule, and we must stay on it. Plus, the song “Food Glorious Food” works rather well. And it is a wonderful illustration of inequality of the most unfair kind. This Thursday, I will be eating very well, just as I do every day. But perhaps the universe will equalize things a bit by killing me off soon in a most painful way.

Yes, eventually we might get to some Thanksgiving music. But for now, I’m sticking with comedy. This is from the most recent Thanksgiving episode of Bob’s Burgers. Thanksgiving is Bob’s favorite holiday. Yet every year it is destroyed for him because he is living in a situation comedy. Actually, this episode turns out the best of any of them. Right now, you can watch the whole episode (which you should do): Gayle Makin’ Bob Sled.

We learn in this episode that Linda’s sister Gayle has been dating Phillip (Mister) Frond. But he dumped her, and she fell down and broke her ankle and now Bob has to go pick her up and of course everything goes wrong. In this scene, we see Bob pulling the wounded Gayle in a kid’s pool as he calls Linda and explains to her how to cook the turkey. He had previously called and told her that she would have to baste it. He explained how to baste and Linda responded, “That’s what basting is?!” Yes, like most things involved with cooking, it’s very easy. But this scene is much more tense:

I wrote to Jesse Ferguson asking him if there was any video of him playing a whole set. He seemed to indicate that there wasn’t. It’s remarkable. He has released four albums and he is incredibly talented, but he appears to only partially support himself from performing. That’s not a slight. One of my all time favorite bands (and probably the best punk band ever), Minutemen, did music part time. But it is sad that someone of such talent isn’t a bigger deal. Of course, he’s young and I’m sure he will only become more beloved over time.

He must also do teaching, because he has a number of instructional videos online too. I watched his video on bar chords. It was interesting, because I learned bar chords just over the course of long and painful failures. But he really systematized it. A couple of time while watching it I thought, “Oh, that’s why I do that!” This is particularly interesting given that in most things, I am the king of systematization. But clearly, not in music. I suspect he is a good teacher.

So given that I don’t have a set to offer you, I will go along with his suggestion and present one of his playlists. I’ve decided to go with his 21 Original Songs playlist. But I do wish he would get someone to shoot a 20 minute set at one of the festivals he plays at.

Afterword

Here is the list of the other songs we’ve featured this week:

• Smitten
• She Walks in Beauty
• Farewell to Nova Scotia
• Snowball Earth
• Alabama
• Zombie Love

We also featured him previously: Go Tell Aunt Rhody.

And as I mentioned, he’s released four albums:

1. New Old Songs
2. The Parting Glass
3. SHIFT
4. The Butcher Boy

The last song on Jesse Ferguson’s 2013 album, Shift, is “Zombie Love.” It’s kind of serious at the same time that it is totally silly. I mean, it’s a straight love song. But it is told from the perspective of a zombie. And it includes this wonderful refrain:

I may be dead
But my life began
The day that I bit you.

The video itself shows a playful side of Ferguson that we don’t usually see because the focus is on his gorgeous music. I really wish that I had known about this song for Halloween. I’ll have to remember next year to do a week of Halloween songs — and definitely include this one. Give it a listen. It’s really wonderful.

Over at his website, Jesse Ferguson wrote, “Music brings family and friends together for good times and provides a bond between the generations.” I quote that because it so closely matches what I think about music. I’ve had the experience many times where a bunch of people are visiting and people bring out instruments and have an impromptu jam session. It isn’t an opportunity for anyone to show off (although usually there is one person who stands out); it’s just a communal activity where everyone is bonding over a shared activity. This is why everyone should learn some music.

Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any music of Ferguson playing with other people. But that’s okay. He provides that same feeling with most of his solo work. Here he is performing Neil Young’s classic “Alabama.” The song is controversial. But really, it is just an invitation for the south to embrace modernity. As we saw in the life expectancy map that I posted yesterday, the south continues to lag behind the rest of the nation. And why? Because it hangs onto this notion that it was on the right side of the Civil War. And rather than embrace its changing demographics, Alabama instead tries to stop the “wrong kind” of people from voting.

But I don’t feel a lot of politics while listening to Jesse Ferguson’s version of the song. The emotional core of the song is a call to join modern America and stop pining for the Confederacy. And that is the feeling that comes through in this performance.

Here is another song from Jesse Ferguson’s 2013 album, Shift, “Snowball Earth.” It is nice to hear original folk music. It is a story song. He wrote of it, “The snowball earth theory suggests that snow/ice once covered the entire surface of the earth. This song imagines two lovers surviving it.” Ah, the imaginings of love by the young!

The Snowball Earth hypothesis is the idea that almost a billion years ago, the earth was entirely covered in ice. I don’t accept it. But the earth’s climate has been bizarre over very long time scales. I just don’t see how it all fits in with Milankovitch forcing. Certainly now we live in a period where the earth naturally has four periods: green Greenland; icy Greenland; icy Canada; and icy US. Glaciers over Mexico is hard to imagine. The oceans frozen is even harder to imagine. And there is no obvious mechanism for it to end. This all would have happened before the Cambrian explosion, however. So if the Snowball Earth really did exist, it could have been ended by life itself, giving more credence to the Gaia hypothesis.

Regardless, this is a beautiful song:

I can’t believe how much I’m enjoying listening to Jesse Ferguson this week. Part of it is just that I’m in the mood for that British Isles kind of folk music. Or I guess, in his case, it is Canadian. But it is all very similar to my American ear. Regardless, he does have an absolutely fabulous voice.

Today, we listen to a live version of “Farewell to Nova Scotia” off his 2011 album, The Parting Glass. It is a traditional Nova Scotian song, which he is performing on St Ann’s Bay, Cape Breton, Nova Scotia. He wrote, “It’s a shame I didn’t have the camera set up earlier since a bald eagle swooped over my head shortly before I hit record.” No big deal. I’ve had bald eagles swoop over my head. The music is a greater treat.

When I was around 18 years old, I came upon a piece of paper with my handwriting on it. It was a poem, “She walks in beauty, like the night; Of cloudless climes and starry skies…” I was shocked. Had I written that?! It couldn’t be, because I’ve always had a pretty good idea of just how good I am at whatever I do. And I was not capable of writing something that beautiful.

I soon realized that I had written it down as part of an exercise in a music theory class where I had to write music to a poem. And clearly, I had picked Lord Byron’s “She Walks in Beauty.” I’m sure it has been set to music dozens if not hundreds of times. I was pleased to find that Jesse Ferguson had done the same thing on his 2014 album, The Butcher Boy. It’s as beautiful as the poem itself:

Here we are with another week of morning music. I had an idea for a theme, but I drank a beer, and that is really all that it takes to totally upset my thinking patterns. But last week, I featured Jesse Ferguson singing a beautiful rendition of “Go Tell Aunt Rhody.” And I was so taken with it that I thought he would make a good week’s worth of music. And then commenter Rick encouraged me to do so. I don’t know much about the guy, but I think there is another material from him to just jump in and see what I learn.

So let’s start with his song “Smitten” off his 2013 album, Shift. He says it is a love song based on the “ten plagues of Israel.” I think he means the ten plagues of Egypt, but whatever. This song reminds me a bit of Nick Drake.