Ring Cycle

When my Grandpa Harry passed away—one year ago this coming Thursday—I inherited his well-worn edition of Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings. He used to read me stories from those books when I was little, and I remember falling asleep with the voices of Bilbo Baggins and company in my head. Recently, thinking about the anniversary of his death, I picked up The Fellowship of the Ring, the first of the LotR trilogy, and thought I'd give it a try—maybe read that one this year, the second one next year, etc. But about half way through Fellowship, the momentum of the story becomes overwhelming, and now I'm well in to The Return of the King, the last of the trilogy.

One thing that has struck me is how musical the various peoples of Middle-earth are. Tolkien's characters frequently supplement the narrative with ballads—some fairly lengthy—that develop the mytho-historical context of the tale and enrich our sense of the Middle-earth's cultures. Tolkien gives us the words, but mostly leaves the melodies to the imagination (most are sung unaccompanied by a single voice). Here's a verse from a song described this way: "Bilbo Baggins had made the words, to a tune that was as old as the hills..."

Upon the hearth the fire is red,
Beneath the roof there is a bed;
But not yet weary are our feet,
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That one have seen but we alone.
Tree and flower and leaf and grass,
Let them pass! Let them pass!
Hill and water under sky,
Pass them by! Pass them by!

He's not criticizing it...He's just saying it's not music.

In this short piece on Spinner.com, Moby uses semantics to reclassify Top 40 artists like Britney, Rihanna, and the Black Eyed Peas, not that he's being critical of them:

"It's fun, but I don't think of it as music...That isn't really even a criticism, but I just think calling it music is a misnomer."

His seems to be an opinion based on authenticity, a notoriously compelling yet nebulous concept in music. Emotional integrity is what gives music its "real-ness," he seems to be saying. This pop stuff might be fun, but it's not "real" music. And if it's not "real" music, then it isn't really music at all.

Then what is it? Moby's answer: "a pop culture phenomenon."

Thanks, Moby! Our sandbox is once again fortified against that dreadful dance-pop. (Oh, wait...)

Bresnick in Prague, 1970

In an NY Times article, composer Martin Bresnick offers a fascinating account of his encounter with the great Italian Marxist modernist, Luigi Nono, at a music conference in Prague, 1970. Nono's scathing critique of Bresnick's work expresses a mentality common to many composers who struggled with musical aesthetics in the wake of the Second World War—and is, more generally, suggestive of a certain stance characteristic of the Cold War Left. Finding a productive way out of this ideological abyss was the great challenge of composers of Bresnick's generation. Bresnick, with whom I've had the pleasure of working on a couple occasions and who is always a great story-teller, remembers,

He said that my score contained many obvious faults: a failure of the music to critique the representational mode of the film; the improper use of tonal or modal materials in an atonal setting, which would lead irrevocably to a regression in critical music thinking and make the music aesthetically and historically irrelevant; and finally, after a long list of other errors, my reliance on a song of the rural peasantry rather than the industrial proletariat could not possibly be progressive because, as Marx had so clearly pointed out, the peasantry could not be revolutionary: they do not form a class; they are shapeless, just as “potatoes in a sack form a sack of potatoes.”

EXPLORING THE NOWHERE

One of the best things about living in the middle of nowhere is exploring the nowhere. Yesterday Becky drove out into the perfect, late-spring morning through fields, hollers, bluffs, towns, farms, woods, and valleys.

We passed through the town of Lathrop, Missouri, which has this dubious distinction:

We stopped at an antique shop in the historic town of Lexington, where I spotted an old music cabinet with some interesting carvings in it:

Somewhat predictably, it has Beethoven there on the left, but on the right is a composer I didn't know very well: H.C. Lumbye.

Apparently Hans Christian Lumbye was a 19th-century Danish conductor and composer of waltzes and other light fare that was popular enough to earn him the moniker, "The Strauss of the North." Perhaps the odd pairing of Beethoven and Lumbye was commissioned by the cabinet's original owner, an enthusiast of both (and a Dane him/herself maybe)?

Here's a recording of Lumbye's A Promenade on the Deer Park Hill by the Tivoli Symphony Orchestra. Most of the music is unremarkably chipper, but the ending has an impressive cacophony of different tunes in different keys all combined together—an interesting precursor of Charles Ives's work decades later.

Our next stop was Excelsior Springs, a 19th-century resort town known for its mineral-water springs. In the 1930s as part of a WPA project, The Hall of Waters combined 10 different springs in an impressive Mayan-inspired bathhouse.

The Hall features a really cool room that boasts the claim, "world's largest water bar," where you can still sample one of the local mineral waters. (See the different mineral types posted above the bar, "soda, iron, manganese, and calcium.")

Last stop was one of our favorite spots, Justus Drugstore in Smithville. In addition to delicious food, they have a spectacular bar. I ordered a cocktail which used their own date-infused bourbon.

"MY 2-YEAR-OLD DOG COULD'VE DONE THAT, AND HE'S BLIND"

Another one of these, preying on our bizarre notions of artistic genius. Crucial that the promo video shows this talented cutie-pie in the act of creating, as other child art prodigies have been plagued with doubts about who is actually making their work. If you enjoy the intrigue of the art world as much as I do, I would highly recommend the 2007 film, My Kid Could Paint That. It's truly mind-blowing—I shan't say any more...

Justin Timberlake Plays Mozart

Funny concept, but I guess the skit didn't quite make it onto the show. Weird twist on the legendary Mozart/Salieri rivalry. Still, I could certainly imagine many actor/musicians less appropriate to portray Wolfie...

Who IS Richard Katz?

In Jonathan Franzen's latest novel, Freedom, there is a character named Richard Katz who forms a band while attending Macalester College and eventually makes his way to rock-stardom. I was chatting with my sister (Macalester, class of '99) about whether Katz might be based on a real person. Her best guess was Bob Mould, leader of the great St. Paul punk band Hüsker Dü in the '80s who actually was a Macalester student. She even remembers some lore surrounding his trials there—apparently Mac students were very proud to honor the place where Mould had attempted suicide.


Mould's age (b. 1960) and the timing of his college years would be a pretty good match for Katz. So would his musical style. Katz's band is called the Traumatics and they play loud and sloppy yet literate and subversive punk songs. Eventually Katz returns to his native New York to go solo and trades his punk rock nihilism for alt-country solipsism, always with an ironic attitude and razor wit. Mould was in fact born in New York and moved back for a time after the Hüskers broke up broke up in the late '80s. As a solo artist, Mould has gone acoustic at times, but never very alt-country as far as I know. 


Katz's becomes semi-famous later in the novel due to his legendary punk rock integrity—his band never reached "main stream" status, he worked a construction job instead of selling out with his music—and to the Traumatics' influence on a younger generation of bands. The clincher might be when Franzen reveals that Katz was a major influence on Jeff Tweedy and Michael Stipe, as I think Hüsker Dü was pretty big for both of them in real life. 


Still, it's certainly not a perfect match—for starters, Mould is gay and Katz is decidedly straight.


Here are some of Katz's classic lyrics from a Traumatics song called "TCBY":


They can buy you
They can butcher you


Tritely, cutely branded yogurt
The cat barfed yesterday


Techno cream, beige yellow
Treat created by yes-men


They can bully you
They can bury you


Trampled choked benighted youth
Taught consumerism by yahoos


This can't be the country's best 
This can't be the country's best

Happy 70th, Terry, Timmy, Bobby, Zimmy, R.J., Ray!

Bob Dylan turns 70 today (the nicknames above are ones he names in “Gotta Serve Somebody”). Though he’s best known for his string of great 60s albums, one of the most amazing things about him is that he’s made remarkable music in every single one of his incarnations since then too. Here are my favorite picks for some lesser-appreciated and lesser-known Dylan albums that worth exploring or revisiting.

BLOOD ON THE TRACKS, ORIGINAL NEW YORK RECORDINGS (????)

Blood on the Tracks (1975) is one of Dylan’s best-loved post-60s works,

but he had actually made solo recordings of several of the songs in New York before he rerecorded them in Minneapolis with a band for the album. For me, these original takes are perhaps the most heartbreakingly soulful music he’s ever made. The version of “Idiot Wind” is a tragic, introspective love song (with an absolutely magical organ part and final harmonica solo), rather than a sarcastic put-down as it ultimately became. As far as I know, these recordings have never been officially released and have made their way around only as bootlegs.

STREET LEGAL (1978)

The album that bridges Dylan’s mid-70s touring in whiteface (try unwrapping that one!) and his late 70s Christian rebirth expresses a state of great confusion in a voice harried and desperate. “Changing of the Guards” and “Señor (Tales of Yankee Power)” are both intriguing songs with apocalyptic undertones (from the latter: “Señor, señor, can you tell me where we’re headed, Lincoln County Road or Armageddon?”) As a bonus, Katey Sagal, who played the mom on Married with Children, sang back-up on some of early takes of the album’s tracks.

SLOW TRAIN COMING (1979)

The first and best of Dylan’s three wrongly-maligned “Christian” albums. Like most fans, I dismissed these as embarrassing oddities until a friend of mine turned me on to them a few years ago (thanks, Matt Blake!). There’s some of his most honest and vulnerable singing on each of these albums, but this one has the coolest-sounding band on it.

OH MERCY (1989)

A hidden gem—and each song on this album is gem-like in its tight-knit construction. I used to think that the rigorous efficiency and craftsmanship of these lyrics made it one of his best albums, but now I find the lack of freedom somewhat of a limitation. Still, it’s a severely under-rated work with a few achingly slow tempos (“What Good am I?”, “Disease of Conceit”) and lush production touches by Daniel Lanois.

GOOD AS I BEEN TO YOU (1992)

The first of two albums of solo recordings of traditional folk tunes that Dylan recorded in the early 90s. The second, World Gone Wrong, is praised in the Sean Wilentz book, Dylan in America, that came out last year, but this one is just as good. And yes, his singing can sound pretty weird on these tunes—like a half-deranged, tattered, old hermit with a beat-up guitar and a story to tell whether you want to hear it or not…but in a good way!

“LOVE AND THEFT” (2001)

This is the second of three stunning and profound albums Dylan made in the decade between the mid-90s and mid-2000s (Time Out of Mind and Modern Times are the other two). It actually took me a few years to “get” this one. At first, I thought the lyrics were long-winded and lacking in focus and the music sounded too “ordinary” in a way. Now it’s one of my all time favorites—an incredible re-creation and collage of Americana in all its craggy weirdness. 

GENIUS IDEA FOR A NEW RESTAURANT

Kind of like Chipotle but for sushi rolls. You go through the line, starting with either a seaweed roll (with rice) or a bowl (bowl of rice), then add whichever fresh components you’d like—cucumber, avocado, crab, fish, etc. Then they roll it up for you or something, I don’t know, you figure out the rest, I’m the ideas guy. Solid gold, that one. 

TELEHARMONIUM???

The Teleharmonium was one of the first electronic instruments—picture a big, primitive electric organ—invented by one Thaddeus Cahill in the 1890’s.

The amazing thing about the Teleharmonium (btw, Cahill later decided he preferred the name “Dynamophone”) was that Cahill’s vision for its use was even more revolutionary than the actual technology of the instrument itself. His concept was that the Teleharmonium would generate electronic music that could then be broadcast via telephone lines into restaurants, hotels, and private homes as formal concerts or background music. 

Cahill was able to attract some subscribers and investors—even partnering with the New York Telephone Company to lay down special telephone lines in parts of Manhattan—but the project was pretty much dead in the water by the time the instrument was featured in a concert at Carnegie Hall in 1912. One of the main problems was "crosstalk" between the Teleharmonium and regular phone calls. Customers got mad and complained when their conversations were interrupted by Rossini overtures.

Newer technology soon usurped the Teleharmonium and Cahill's venture went bankrupt. As far as I know, there are no existing recordings of the instrument (better that way perhaps: from what I can gather about how it worked, it may have sounded pretty rough…). But what an amazingly prescient idea—to stream music via phone lines!

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About music (old and new), St. Joe, and other things.