Ukulele

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I wrote not long ago about my stupid notion that I might learn to play the acoustic guitar. Listen, if teenage rockers can do it, why not an old fart like me? But upon consideration, I had an even better idea. Why not the ukulele instead?
 

Reasons:

·        Ukuleles are smaller than acoustic guitars.

·        Ukuleles are cheaper than acoustic guitars.

·        Ukuleles have only four strings compared to six on an acoustic guitar, which ought to make them 33% easier to play.

·        Ukuleles are cuter than acoustic guitars.

·        The sound of a ukulele has far less carrying power than that of an acoustic guitar, which means you irritate less people if you play it badly.

And so forth.
 

So I shopped around online. Being a cheapskate, I bought one from Amazon for thirty-five dollars. It’s adorable. Everyone online warned me that cheap ukuleles go out of tune easily, which has turned out to be true, but it’s shiny and playable, and tuning it is good practice.

In a few days I learned half-a-dozen chords. I am relieved that the instrument has a soft voice; I can go in my room and close the door and strum away – out of tune or not – and not bother a soul, not even Partner in the next room. My arthritic old fingers still refuse to dance up and down the strings, but – with time – who knows?

 

(Now - would anyone like to hear a nice spirited rendition of 'Hawaiian War Chant'?)

(No one?)

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Domenico Scarlatti

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I love complete sets of the music of my favorite composers: Mozart, Beethoven, Bach.  A clever little company, appropriately called Brilliant, has discovered a formula for marketing these: license low-cost but serviceable performers (mostly European), pull everything together, put it all in low-cost but serviceable packaging. It's hard for a natural collector like me to resist these. Sometimes I browse their website and find myself drawn to seventeen-CD sets of the music of people I never heard of.

Most recently I bought the complete keyboard sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti. Mister Scarlatti was the son of a prolific Italian opera composer; Scarlatti Junior moved to Spain where he concentrated on keyboards, writing nearly six hundred tiny sonatas. (I fondly remember Peter Schickele's comment about giving someone the complete Scarlatti sonatas "recorded on convenient 45RPM records and sent out one a week over a period of thirty-five years.")

These sonatas, if you don't know them, are lovely. Each one is a perfect little jeu d'esprit, turning perfectly ordinary scales and arpeggii into something different and new. Some of the sonatas are jumping-bean sprightly; others are grave thoughtful little quasi-marches. Some die away into series of melancholy chords, and others tromp all over the place.

Keyboard players (even sub-amateurs like me) know the pleasures and perils of these sonatas; they run up and down the keyboard, often forcing the player to cross hands so that the left hand is playing on the right-hand keys and vice versa. Scarlatti famously said that he had ten fingers and saw no reason not to keep all of them busy.

Five hundred fifty-five sonatas is a lot, as Schickele reminded us. If you listen to more than half a dozen of these sonatas in succession, your ear will get a wee bit numb. But taken a few at a time, they are wonderful.

This is the soulful B minor sonata, K. 27, played by the late Russian pianist Emil Gilels. It’s one of the slow ballad-like ones; Gilels plays it on a modern piano rather than the more traditional harpsichord, which makes it even richer and more mournful.

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Guitar

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I was pillaging through my stacks of books at home when I found a neat little collection of folk songs edited by Tom Glazer. It's got all the classics - "Crawdad" (which I know as "Froggy Went a-Courting" and also because of a 1940s MGM cartoon, as "Crambone"), as well as "Barbara Allen," and "Shenandoah" - as well as some I'd never heard of, like "The Dodger" (with lyrics like "The lover is a dodger / he'll hug you and he'll kiss you / but look out girls, he's a-telling you a lie").

These are great tunes, simple and straightforward. Some are no doubt European (as "I Know Where I'm Going," which I only knew before as the Scottish-flavored theme song of a movie of the same name starring Deborah Kerr and Roger Livesey); others are more Americanish (is that a word? If not, it is now), as in "The Midnight Special." And there are some others, weirdly cheerful, that might have come from anywhere, like "The Sow's Got The Measles (And She Died Last Spring)."

But, best of all, this book has an appendix called "The Beginner Folk-Guitarist."

If you are as old as me, you will remember that there was a time in the late 1950s / early 1960s during which folk songs and folk singing were Hot Stuff. Groups like the Kingston Trio were all over the radio, singing sweet harmony to the accompaniment of acoustic guitars. Everyone played and sang in those days. A lot of early rock-and-roll singers and guitarists came out of that era. (Donovan, anyone?)

But I never learned to play the guitar.

Tom Glazer, in fifteen short pages, makes it look easy. He gives you the fingering for sixteen chords, and describes three ways to strum. And that's it.

Me for that!

I just saw a commercial for the Guitar Center in which they show a $29 ukulele, and similarly low-priced acoustic guitars. Can you imagine how very irritating I might become if I could strum a few silly chords?

Let's go for it.

All together now:

Oh, Froggy went a-courtin', and he did ride, crambone . . . .

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For Christmas: Fairuz sings "Jingle Bells" in Arabic

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I wasn’t going to put out a Christmas special this year until I happened upon this: Fairuz, one of the most popular Arabic singers, doing “Jingle Bells.” This version has very sweet subtitles which are mainly pretty good, but are charmingly goofy when they go off the rails.

Who is it, do you suppose, who’s delivering all those dates? And what’s with the bracelet? 

Happy Christmas to all.

For Sunday: the Steve Miller Band plays "The Joker" (1973)

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My friend Cathleen and I talked about this song the other day. Then I listened to it again, and man, it’s too much. I need to admit also that Cathleen remembered the lyrics more accurately than I did.

But we were so young in those days!

“I’m a joker, I’m a smoker, I’m a midnight toker . . . “

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For Sunday: "O Fortuna," from Karl Orff's "Carmina Burana"

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If you have a reasonable knowledge of serious music, or movie music, this will make you laugh (and even if you’ve seen this video before; it makes me laugh every time I see it).

The lyrics are in medieval Latin. But people have been puzzling over them ever since Karl Orff set them to music sixty years ago.

Well, now you know what they’re really saying.

Gopher tuna!

Bring more tuna!

Statue of big dog with fleas!

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Ivy

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Providence is full of Ivy. Brown University is Ivy League, after all, and there’s English ivy (Hedera helix) growing all over the place. A friend of mine, freshly arrived in Providence from Montana, plucked some ivy leaves off the wall and mailed them to her family and friends in Billings, to underline the reality of where she was.

Ivy wants to go up, away from the ground, against gravity. There’s a nearby building with two ivy tendrils curling up its walls like arms outspread. And up up up they go!

I always think of my mother when I see ivy. When my father built our new house in the early 1960s, my mother decided that she liked ivy, and planted shoots of it all along the north side of the house and along the roadside.

Those shoots were stubborn. They didn’t die, but they didn’t grow. A few leaves stuck out of the ground, year after year. And then, after five years or so –

They exploded.

The entire north side of the house was engulfed with ivy. And do you know what ivy does to the side of a house, especially one with wooden shingles? It chews it up, om nom nom. If you try to pull the ivy down, you rip away half of the wooden shingles at the same time, and you reveal the dark mottling that the ivy has produced on its way up the wall.

Mom got her wish, and how! But she wasn’t happy that her plan had gone beyond expectations. She managed to get most of it off the shingles, and she repainted, but she couldn’t get the ivy off the brickwork. This picture, taken in May 1971, shows the ivy covering the exposed brickwork:

It looks nice, doesn’t it? Nice rhododendrons in front of the house, and a nice ivy-covered chimney.

But Mom was watching that ivy every moment, to make sure it didn’t leap onto the wooden shingles again.

Ivy is aggressive.

And now, a song:

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For Sunday: John Dowland's "Dear, If You Change" (1597)

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This song, first published in 1597, is (I think) one of the most beautiful ever written: John Dowland’s “Dear, If You Change.”

Enjoy.

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For Sunday: John Cale sings "Paris 1919"

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I bought this John Cale album in 1978 or 1979. I didn’t love the entire album, except for this song, and the song “Graham Greene.”

This song has everything: strings, harpsichord, harp, bizarre elliptical lyrics:

Efficiency efficiency they say
Get to know the date and tell the time of day
As the crowds begin complaining
How the Beaujolais is raining
Down on darkened meetings on the Champs Elysee

You're a ghost la la la la la la la la la la
You're a ghost la la la la la la la la la la
I'm in the church and I've come
To claim you with my iron drum

La la la la la la la la la.

Enjoy.

For Sunday: Buck Owens sings "Cigarettes and Whiskey and WIld Wild Women"

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There was a television show called “Hee Haw” back when I was a kid. It was a real breakthrough: the country/western world went prime-time / nationwide with a variety program, with stupid sketches and lots of music.

The hosts were Buck Owens and Roy Clark.

Buck Owens, bless his steely Republican heart, was a classic C&W performer. This song of his still goes through my head sometimes. Don’t ask me why.

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For Sunday: "You Are My Friend," sung by Mister Rogers

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I think Mister Rogers was a modern saint. His television show – a gentle slowly-paced production, with puppets and people speaking quietly – was distinctly different from all the other children’s television shows of his time.

Fred Rogers wrote almost all of his own material. This song I still know by heart, and I will sing it at the drop of a hat.

But Mister Rogers sings it better 



Click this link if you don't believe me.

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For Sunday: Erik Satie's Fourth Nocturne

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I have a liking for the music of Erik Satie. When Partner and I were in France last October, we visited Satie's childhood home in Honfleur, and one of his residences in the Montmartre district of Paris. He’s one of my favorite composers. He was a complex personality: he could be disagreeable and angry, and was a determined loner for much of his life, making and losing friends (among them Claude Debussy).

He wrote this small piece, his Fourth Nocturne, during the last years of his life. Rollo Myers, who wrote the first English-language biography of Satie, says of this nocturne: “Is there not something Chopinesque about the flowing arpeggios in the left hand which provide, as it were, so reassuring a support for the bare consecutive fifths which outline the melody above?”

Enjoy.

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For Sunday: "Island Magic," from Leonard Bernstein's opera "Trouble in Tahiti"

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This is the best scene (I think) from Bernstein’s early opera “Trouble in Tahiti,” in an excellent staging / performance, with Dawn Upshaw singing the lead.

If you can't make out the lyrics, you can find them here. They’re hysterical.

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For Sunday: Cat Stevens sings "Peace Train" (1976)

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Cat Stevens has always been one of my favorite singer/composers. His first five albums were bliss. He became a little more hit-and-miss after that, but I still find something to listen to on every album.

Cat, born of Greek parentage in England, has been on a long journey: he was a Buddhist for a long time, then Baha’i, and now Muslim. He even changed his name to Yusuf Islam (though Cat Stevens wasn’t his real name either; he was born Steven Demetre Georgiou).

He has always been unapologetic about voicing his beliefs. He got into trouble some years ago for mixing himself up with the whole Salman Rushdie / fatwa thing.

But there has always been a freshness and purity in his music. And he is often strangely profound, and he is also often powerfully spiritual.

This song (in live performance in 1976) is all of the above: fresh, pure, profound, and spiritual. And I still find it powerfully moving.

Ev’rybody jump upon the peace train.

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For Sunday: "I Hate People," from "Scrooge"

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“Scrooge” was an interesting movie. (I know it’s a Christmas movie, but the heat of summer makes me long for midwinter.) It had some decent songs, and a couple of great characterizations (Dame Edith Evans as a starchy grandmotherly un-Dickensian Ghost of Christmas Past, and Kenneth More as a huge Dickensian Ghost of Christmas Present).

This song is one of my favorites. I sing it to myself, under my breath, on most workdays, a little.

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For Sunday: Leon Redbone sings "Mister Jelly Roll Baker"

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I first saw (and heard) Leon Redbone on “Saturday Night Live” in the 1970s. I loved him devoutly upon first hearing him, and listened to his first two albums over and over again.

This song, from “Double Time” (his second album), is a great introduction to his style.

Enjoy.

For Sunday: Three Dog Night sings Laura Nyro's "Eli's Coming"

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Laura Nyro wrote some dynamite songs in the 1960s.

This is one of them.

This is a performance of one of them by Three Dog Night on a TV show in 1969, with the kinds of video blandishments we thought were neat in those days.

Eli’s coming!

Hide your heart, girl!

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For Sunday: Bette Midler sings "Mister Rockefeller"

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The Divine Miss M sang this back in the 1980s, on her album “Songs for the New Depression.”

It’s still relevant.

Enjoy.

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For Sunday: Vampire Weekend performs "Diane Young"

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From their brand-new album: Vampire Weekend’s song “Diane Young.”

Think about the title. But not too long.

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For Sunday: the Velvet Underground performs "Femme Fatale" (featuring Nico)

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I first discovered the Velvet Underground when I was in graduate school in 1978. Their classic album (with the Andy Warhol banana on the cover) was eleven years old, even then. But I still sing the songs to myself, under my breath, in 2013: they’re still fresh and interesting, especially “Sunday Morning” and “Heroin” and “All Tomorrow’s Parties.”

And, naturally, “Femme Fatale.”

Nico (the lead singer) was a model / actress / singer / heroin addict. She had a strong deep voice and a strange accent, which made her interesting to listen to. 

Enjoy.

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