Category Archives: Musical Stuff

The Crave Cat Food Challenge

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NoiseMany songs haunt me for days on end. But they are not classics like “A Horse With No Name” and the wrongly maligned “MacArthur Park.” But if one of those songs haunts you for the rest of the evening: you’re welcome! I am different. I normally get television commercials stuck in my head. This makes perfect sense, of course. I suspect that I have heard certain commercial jingles far more than I’ve heard any proper song.

So this last day and a half, I have had the Crave cat food jingle going through my mind. Unfortunately, I have been unable to find the entire song with the lyrics, “My kitty cat craves chicken; my kitty cat craves milk; my kitty cat craves tuna; so my kitty cat craves crave.” You have to be some kind of crazy to write lyrics like that. But it’s been over three decades and I still remember them. So it’s some kind of brilliant too.

Listen, if you dare!

Afterword

For the truly brave, here’s “A Horse With No Name.” Note that Neil Young is not singing!

And “MacArthur Park” from the days when metaphor didn’t embarrass Americans:

And while I’m on the subject, the reason that “A Horse With No Name” sucks so badly is that it pretends to be a metaphor but is, in fact, just meaningless. Of course, that is just perfect for the band that toured apartheid South Africa because, “We have a lot of fans there.”

Morning Music Classics From Joe Tex

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Joe TexGood morning my friends! The other night my sister sent me a text asking if I knew the song “I Gotcha” by Joe Tex. Of course I knew the song! I doubt a week goes by when I don’t sing it. It dates back to those days of my childhood when we used to walk around with a little transistor radio listening to KFRC, San Francisco.

Joe Tex was a really interesting soul musician who you may not have heard of because he prematurely retired and then died of a heart attack just five days after his 47th birthday. He was arguably as great as James Brown. In fact, you can hear and see much of each man in the other. I’m not in a position to say what came from whom, but Tex claimed that Brown stole a number of moves from him.

The two had quite a rivalry. This reached a peak in 1963, when Tex opened for a Macon, Georgia homecoming concert for Brown. “Tex, who opened the show, arrived in a tattered cape and began rolling around on the floor as if in agony, and screamed, ‘Please—somebody help get me out of this cape!'” Brown was understandably not pleased, but as much as I admire Brown, that’s funny as hell. Allegedly, James Brown found Tex later and shot at him.

This all was due to the fact that Tex did largely live in Brown’s shadow. Still, he had a great career. He was a consistent hit producer for over a decade up until his retirement in 1978. I assume, had he lived longer, that he would have gone back to performing at some point. Regardless, he left a lot of great music.

Rather than provide just a single song, I’ve put together a playlist of three of his biggest hits: “Skinny Legs and All” (1967); “I Gotcha” (1972); and “Ain’t Gonna Bump No More” (1977). There are a lot more great ones, but I couldn’t find any live performances of things like “A Sweet Woman Like You.” These songs give you a good idea of Joe Tex’s range and brilliance. They are all great:

Vivaldi’s Opera

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Antonio VivaldiLast year, I wrote about Antonio Vivaldi who was born on this day in 1678. And I’m afraid that I’m forced to do the same thing this year. There are a couple of other interesting people, but I still have a couple of things to say about him. Vivaldi was one of the greatest Baroque composers. As I’ve gotten older, I have found Baroque music less interesting. But when I was younger, I loved his work.

He is mostly known for his instrumental work. The best known of these are the violin concertos The Four Seasons. I was found of his six flute concertos, most especially number 3, “Il gardellino.” I know that concerto so well that I’m pretty sure I still have it memorized, even though I haven’t played it in 30 years. I was surprised to find the following performance of it with James Galway on flute. It isn’t surprising that he would perform the piece, of course. But he’s reading music, and it surprises me that he doesn’t have it memorized. I suppose he isn’t as big a fan as I am. Of course, I never played it (or anything else) like this:

Another surprise to me was that Vivaldi wrote a lot of operas—at least 50, but according to one letter he wrote, 90! So I spent some time listening to some of his work. Now, I have to admit, I wasn’t hopeful. Opera didn’t really come into its all until the Classical period. And indeed, much of it is not terribly compelling. The over-technical aspects of Baroque music that work so well with most instruments sound awfully strained to me in the human voice. Still, there is much to like in Vivaldi’s operas.

Here is a bad video of a wonderful duet from one of Vivaldi’s later operas La Fida Ninfa. I think that translates “The Trusting Nymph.” It sounds playful. I will have to look into it more, but until then, enjoy this couple of minutes:

Happy birthday Antonio Vivaldi!

We All Deserve to Die

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Sweeney ToddAll through the night, I had this going through my head, “We all deserve to die. Even you, Mrs. Lovett; even I.” If you don’t recognize it, it is the song “Epiphany” from Sweeney Todd. I watched the film for the first time a couple of days ago. It is a fine film: your typical “boy who kills people meets girl who uses the bodies to make pies” story. No, honestly, it is a beautiful and engaging film that is very much worth watching if you haven’t already.

But the fact that the song showed up in my dreams is important. It means one thing: Andrew Lloyd Webber did not write the music. Well, that’s going too far. Webber sometimes manages to put a single catchy tune in one of his plays. But the songs in Sweeney Todd were written by Stephen Sondheim and so there are quite a number of winners. But tuneful doesn’t mean sweet. We ain’t talking Sound of Music here:

The film is relentlessly dark. Johnny Depp spends the whole time scowling. Helena Bonham Carter gets the choice role as Nellie Lovett, purveyor of the “worst pies in London”:

She’s the ultimate woman: one who supports your interests, even if they involve the slitting of strangers’ throats.

The wonderful thing about Sweeney Todd is that it is so over-the-top that it is funny despite its subject matter. This is in contrast to Richard III and Othello that we are supposed to take as seriously, even though they are pretty much the same thing. But mostly, the whole thing is just an excuse for a lot of great songs. Sondheim has always been especially good at writing lyrics for unusual subjects. That dates back at least to West Side Story. As for the rest of the film, it is rather typical of Tim Burton. Everything is done straight but without forgetting how silly it all is.

Last night I made two meat pies. I wonder if the film inspired me. Probably not. There was just this transient who died near the house and he was starting to go bad…

Johnny Winter’s Mississippi Blues

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Johnny WinterOn this day in 1685, George Frideric Handel was born. [Actually, that’s old calendar; his actually birthday was on 5 March 1685. -FM] As I’ve gotten older, I’ve become very bored with Baroque period music. I think that Classical period music is perfect because it has far more emotional depth than Baroque without hitting me over the head with it as much Romantic period music does. What we see is mostly a move from highly contrapuntal work of the Baroque period to an emphasis on harmonic structure in the Romantic period. I like all the counterpoint, but I want something more. Still, in the case of Handel, there is much that I still admire. Although I think that Bach is the more important composer, I enjoy listening to Handel more. Here is something great, “Ombra Mai Fu” from Serse:

Other birthdays: philosopher Richard Price (1723); public intellectual W E B Du Bois (1868); painter Kazimir Malevich (1878); philosopher Karl Jaspers (1883); film director Victor Fleming (1889); good hack film director Norman Taurog (1899); film director Claude Sautet (1924); actor Majel Barrett (1932); experimental filmmaker Paul Morrissey (76); actor Peter Fonda (74); humorist Tom Bodett (59); singer-songwriter Howard Jones (59); and actor Tamsin Greig (47).

The day, however, belongs to the great blues guitarist Johnny Winter who is 70 today. Despite the fact that his life is generally a mess, his music is always so finely crafted. I don’t know anyone who surpasses him in terms of his musical ideas. His lead playing is as good as anyone, including Hendrix. But what is most impressive is his rhythm playing. You see him doing both in this version of “Mississippi Blues”:

Happy birthday Johnny Winter!

Russia, Sixteen Tons, and Inequality

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Sixteen TonsLast week, I wrote about the Russian police doing “Get Lucky” at the Olympics. It was mostly just an opportunity to snark at the complicity (Or more!) of Russian law enforcement regarding the country’s anti-gay laws. But Will send me a Yahoo! article, “Get Lucky” and 5 Other Mind-Blowing Covers by the Red Army Choir. I have to say, there is nothing particularly mind blowing about any of the songs, unless you think that no cops can sing.

But one of the songs really stands out: “Sixteen Tons.” The truth is that I think it is a great song regardless of who does it. And thematically it is brilliant. Popular music, then as now, reflects the interests of the power elite. That’s why the vast majority of songs are about love: it appeals to everyone without questioning the status quo. Listening to the radio, you would think that no one needs a job—they just need a nice girl or boy to love them. That’s why I’ve always hated, “All You Need Is Love.” What nonsense.

The idea of the Red Army Choir singing “Sixteen Tons” is itself funny, given its communist history. Even today, after the Boris Yeltsin years of “free market” reform where a small number of well connected business people managed to steal most of the nation’s resources, Russia has slightly less income inequality than the United States. So I like the irony of the very screwed up Russian establishment singing our own song to us.

When it was written in 1946, “Sixteen Tons” was looking back on the bad old days. At that time, inequality was lower than it is today and on a downward trend. Now it continues up and up. And although we no longer have people effectively enslaved to the company store, the overall picture for Americans is as bad or worse.

So enjoy the spectacle of the Russian police singing “Sixteen Tons.” It is very clear in this song that the lead singer does not speak English. And he sings with a wonderful East European accent. It sounds very much like Dracula singing. It is too bad that he doesn’t wear a cape. The truth is that the song is about how capitalist vampires suck the blood of workers. “Hurt at sweek an a bach ats trong!”

Afterword

The common conservative line about low wages is that workers don’t have to take a particular job. They are “free” to do whatever they want. Note that this is exactly what conservatives were saying when people lived in company towns and became enslaved there, “Well, they didn’t have to take the job!” And that was actually more true then than it is now. I get really tired of conservatives always seeing how silly their argues used to be, but never able to see that for the present.

Why Do Concerts Cost So Much?

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Beatles Concert

Matt Yglesias dug up a great bit of data about The Beatles’ first tour of American 50 years ago: the tickets were really cheap. As you can see in the advertisement, tickets ranged from $2 to $4. Adjusted for inflation, this is $15 to $30.

This is really interesting. At that same time, movie ticket prices were about $1 (roughly $8 today). So seeing a live show was about twice the cost of seeing a movie. Intuitively, that seems about right. But today, a big headline show will cost you at least four times that much, and often much more than that.

The reason for this is that movie ticket prices have remained pretty flat in real dollars. The cost of a ticket in inflation adjusted dollars in 1967 was $8.38. In 2012, it was $7.96. In general, that is how things work: the cost of things decreases over time. Clearly, that’s not the case with live concerts.

Now, I can come up with numerous reasons for this. But the most obvious to me is that the big name music acts are already rich. They don’t need to perform live, so they charge a lot when they do. Going along with this idea is the fact that theater ticket prices don’t seem to have gone up. While it is true that Broadway shows are expensive, they always were.

Meanwhile, the price of recorded music has gone down. That’s largely because total volume has gone up. As much as I used to think that the music industry was becoming more open to mid-level acts, that’s not true. It is still a winner-take-all market, where a lot of professional quality bands have to work very hard just to survive.

What I find most interesting about this all is that live shows are no better now than they were when I was a kid. In fact, there is a nauseating trend in rock concerns to include video and other pre-recorded content. And while the shows may be live, they are entirely scripted—many acts might as well be lip-syncing. Of course, I’ve never cared for big shows. I feel like I would be better served by a disc or a concert film at a fraction of the cost. There is a certain magic to seeing great performers at little venues. Two concerts come to mind: Jane Siberry at the Cotati Cabaret and Steve Forbert at Mount Hood Lodge, where a snowstorm caused a total of ten people to be in attendance. Even a performance at a good venue like the Greek Theater can’t compete with that.

I think the reason that the public puts up with these ridiculous concert prices is that live concerts have come to be seen as events. The last big concert I went to was Kid Rock (who has some notion of the pricing problem, even if he puts on a ridiculous show). Watching the people, it was very much like the state fair. Everyone came very early and had picnics. And very few seemed all that involved in the concert. People shelling out hundreds of dollars to see The Rolling Stones are not doing it because they think it is going to be an awesome experience. They just want to be able to say that they saw Mick Jagger before he was confined to the wheelchair.

Russian Police Get Lucky

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Get LuckyWill alerted me to the fact that the Russian Ministry of Internal Affairs choir will be performing a “rousing rendition of Daft Punk’s ‘Get Lucky’ before Friday’s Opening Ceremony.” Don’t be fool by the name, the Ministry of Internal Affairs are cops. I’m sure that Will sent it to me because he thought it was funny. And of course it is. But I can’t help but think that it could be even more than just amusing.

Let’s start with the fact that Daft Funk is a great band. I don’t know what “house” music is. To me, it is just funky pop music. Add to it the brilliance of Pharrell Williams and Nile Rodgers and you really have something. It is a lively, fun song. And you know what cops think of “lively, fun” things: they think they are arrestable. I’m sorry, call me a bigot if you want. But I don’t think of cops as fun loving. People who never lose their inner child just do not become cops. I actually have data on this somewhere. So I think it’s hilarious to see a bunch of cops singing, “We’re up all night ’til the sun; We’re up all night to get some; We’re up all night for good fun; We’re up all night to get lucky!”

But you know police work in the modern Russian Republic. It mostly involves standing by watching as government incited gangs brutalize gay citizens. So it will take on a whole new meaning when the cops sing the lyrics, “We’ve come too far to give up who we are…” Maybe the cops are telling us about who they really are. But truthfully, I always assume that people who are really anti-gay are latent homosexuals. I mean really, why do they care? But I digress…

What I thought about is how they might change the lyrics to “Get Lucky” to be more in keeping with official anti-gay Russian policy. After all, Homem-Christo and Bangalter may not be gay, but their music largely is. So the lyrics could use some tweaking. Something like this:

Like the legend of the phoenix
All ends with beginnings
What keeps the planet spinning
The force of love (but purely the heterosexual kind between a woman and shirtless man on horseback) beginning

We’ve come too far to give up who we are (unless, of course, we are dirty homosexuals who are preying upon kids)
So let’s raise the bar and our cups to the stars (unless, of course, we are dirty homosexuals in which case it is best to hide indoors)

We’re up all night ’til the sun
Beating up each fag as they come
Bloodied gays are key for good fun
We’re up all night to get lucky

I’m sure it will be a hell of a performance, regardless of what lyrics they sing. The truth is that I won’t see it. I have absolutely no interest in the Olympics. Even despite all the politics (and the Olympics are nothing if not politics), all the competitors are so closely matched that the events are meaningless. It’s hard to get too excited about one athlete being a tenth of a percent better than another. Plus, getting excited in that way is against the law in many locations.

Update (7 February 2014 9:51 pm)

Quite by accident, I happened to see a bit of the Olympics. I really needed to make some cookies and it was on the television. Anyway, I got to watch some of the “teams” parade into the stadium. It is shocking that people claim that it isn’t a political event. It is almost nothing but politics. I was also treated to a small group of American athletes bring shaming to our country by chanting, “U-S-A!” I hate that nationalistic crap.

Madeleine Peyroux for a Rainy Day

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Bare BonesGiven the glorious rain that California is finally getting, here is some music to go along with it: Madeleine Peyroux performing live at the Vitoria Jazz Festival in 2009. I can’t really express how much I love her work. The solos are also quite good in this video. I don’t know who any of them are. They didn’t play on the album cut, but they put in performances that are certainly as good. So regardless of the weather where you are, enjoy this fine performance of “Instead” off Peyroux’s album Bare Bones:

Franz Schubert and Norman Mailer

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Franz SchubertIn 1923, the great novelist Norman Mailer was born. It is kind of sad that he is remembered today more for being an egotistical jerk than a great artist. And indeed, he did have that whole Ernest Hemingway thing going on. But my take on him is that it was just his way of dealing with deep feelings of inadequacy. I heard him talk shortly before he died, and I still got that from him, even though he had calmed down a lot. Anyway, in addition to his novels, he was a wonderful nonfiction writer—arguably better than a novelist. Above all, Mailer was an interesting man who could express himself really well. In a world filled with fairly boring people who can’t string a sentence together, that’s saying something.

Two Arrested Development actors have birthdays today. Jessica Walter, who plays the matriarch of the family, is 73. Portia de Rossi, who plays the narcissistic sister, is 41. I’ve known for some time that de Rossi is married to Ellen Lee DeGeneres, who is 15 years older than she is! Who would have thought DeGeneres would be a cradle robber? But in her defense, she doesn’t seem any older. (Of course, I’ve never seen her up close…) Regardless, I love the show and these two actors are a big part of it.

Other birthdays: chemists Theodore William Richards (1868) and Irving Langmuir (1881); ethnomusicologist Alan Lomax (1915); architect E Fay Jones (1921); composer Philip Glass (77); the great comedy writer Connie Booth (70); actor Glynn Turman (68); actor Kelly Lynch (55); actor Minnie Driver (44); and singer Justin Timberlake (33).

The day, however, belongs to the great early Romantic composer Franz Schubert who was born in 1797. He was only 31 when he died—four less than Mozart. This is remarkable given the enormous amount of music he produced. He was one of the best melody creators ever, but it is a mistake to think that this is all he was. He was extremely innovative in his approach to harmonic structure, for example. But more to the point, his mature work is as good as anything that has ever been composed. Here is the Belenus Quartett doing his String Quartet in G major, which is a technical marvel as well as an incredibly beautiful piece of music:

Happy birthday Franz Schubert!

The Ever Clear Mark Eitzel

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Mark EitzelOn this day in 1882, Franklin Delano Roosevelt was born. As you probably know, I don’t do politicians. But FDR wasn’t a politician; he was leader of the free world for 12 years. I’m not a huge fan on the man. (I’m much more a fan of his wife.) I think of him the way that I think of Barack Obama: he was the best president we could reasonably expect. The fact that he was so much better than Obama gives you some idea of just how much our politics has disintegrated.

Computer scientist Douglas Engelbart was born in 1925. He died last year. He is known for having invented the computer mouse, an invention he got no royalties for. I won’t get into the politics of that, because I know what conservatives would say; rest assured, I have a counter argument. But the main reason I mention Engelbart is that he’s dead. How can the inventor of the mouse be dead? Well, there is this:

The World Chess Champion Boris Spassky is 77 today. He still has a FIDE rating of 2548, which is damned good for a man in his late 70s who seems more interested in the good life that chess has allowed him than chess itself. He is the guy who Bobby Fischer beat. But Spassky was a great player who wasn’t a total freak. There is a lot to be said for that. Looking back, I tend to think that Fischer was not as dominant as he appeared. I think that all of Fischer’s bad behavior at the beginning of the tournament had a bad effect on Spassky. I really hate the way that Fischer behaved. And to a large extent because of that, I have a soft spot for Spassky. And face it: if you got to choose which life to lead, it would be Spassky. I’d rather have a great life and be remembered as a great chess player than have a tormented life and be remembered as one of the best chess players.

Dick Cheney is 73 today. I was going to give the day to him. But then I checked and saw that I had not give the day to Hitler on his birthday. Does this mean I think Cheney is is bad as Hitler. I actually do, but in a different sense than you might think. I believe that there are lots of megalomaniacs around today who under the right circumstances would have been Hitler. And just the same, had Hitler been born in Lincoln, Nebraska in 1941, he would have turned out very much like Cheney. Certainly we can all admit that Hitler’s megalomania would not manifest in modern America by an explicit genocide. He would probably be a conservative who claimed that the poor deserved to die of hunger and lack of medical care. It’s a mistake to get too hung up on Hitler. There are plenty of evil men around America today who are well respected and well rewarded. Dick Cheney is one of the best examples of this.

Other birthday: trumpet player Roy Eldridge (1911); film director Michael Anderson (94); film director Delbert Mann (1920); comedian Dick Martin (1922); actor Dorothy Malone (89); actor Gene Hackman (84); actor Vanessa Redgrave (77); singer-songwriter Marty Balin (72); documentary filmmaker Nick Broomfield (66); comedian Brett Butler (56); and actor Christian Bale (40).

The day, however, belongs to singer-songwriter Mark Eitzel who is 55 today. I just wrote an article about one of his songs, I’ve Been a Mess. So I’m not going to add a bunch. The main thing about him is that his songs are deeply felt but with a great sense of humor. There is no better example of this than the American Music Club song “Hula Maiden.” And I got smashed on the beach. Yeah, I was thinking of you… That’s brilliant.

Happy birthday Mark Eitzel!

Humor, Despair, and American Music Club

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American Music Club - MercuryAt one time, I listened to little else but American Music Club. I still think they are one of the best bands ever. They are sometimes referred to as “sadcore,” which Wikipedia defines as having “bleak lyrics, downbeat melodies and slower tempos.” That’s not the greatest definition of the band, however. It is best to think of singer-songwriter and frontman for the band, Mark Eitzel, as a man who is drowning his sorrows but who hasn’t lost his sense of humor. A good example of this is the song “Lonely” off their 1988 album California. The refrain of the song is, “If I have to be this lonely, I may as well be alone.”

But the one AMC song that most haunts me is off their major label debut Mercury, “I’ve Been a Mess.” Here it is:

The first line is typical tragicomic, “Lazarus wasn’t grateful for his second wind.” Any time someone whips out Lazarus, you know you’re in for some fun. And of course Eitzel had to take a contrarian view of it. Everyone else thinks Jesus did his friend a great favor, but Eitzel thinks Lazarus was pissed off. But the whole verse brings the actual theme of the song in two parts:

Lazarus wasn’t grateful
For his second wind
For another chance
To watch his chances
Fade like the dawn and leave
I can barely tell you
Just how pale I get
Without you.

First he makes clear exactly why Lazarus is ungrateful. It’s just another opportunity to be disappointed. Then he moves, without any clear indication from either music or transitional lyrics, to the concrete first person narrative: he misses his lover and it is making him ill. That takes us to the very simple proclamation of the chorus, “I’ve been a mess since you’ve been gone.”

In the second verse, he comes back to Lararus. At this point, the metaphor is clear:

What were the first words
That crowd heard him speak
I’ll bet he was cursing at the sky
I’ll bet he wasn’t
Turning no other cheek.
And was there still hope and desire
Left in his heart
For the last word in love?

Again, this is very funny. He’s hammering so hard on poor Lazarus. You can just image a drunk rant, “I’ll tell you this! Lazarus probably just punched Jesus right in the face. And he’s right!”

Other than the repetition of the chorus, there is only the bridge, which is about as gin-soaked as anything AMC has ever done. In it, he returns to the first person:

Your beauty is just a slap in the face
That’s gonna bring me back to life
Back to another sky that’s blue
It’s gonna turn me into another
Great american zombie
So hungry for you.

As is traditional for a bridge, he provides us with a different way of looking at the rest of the song. There is that concern that once you have survived a breakup and become deadened to the ex-lover, seeing them again will start it all over again. So it circles back very nicely to the beginning. But he can’t resist ending with a joke. So he refers to himself (and thus also the risen Lazarus) as a zombie who is “hungry for you.”

Life may be hell, but it is nice to have company that understands that. And American Music Club is excellent company.