Tag: music

I think Taylor Marshall May Actually Be the Walrus

Look, I know Taylor Marshall is a good guy.  He is a courageous and clear spoken advocate for the faith (a little bit of “NFP is for when you’re schizophrenic or in a concentration camp” kookiness notwithstanding); and he has that wonderful, alt-universe-Johnny-Cash face:

But this aggression will not stand, man:  Marshall asks,  Did the Beatles Promote Abortion?

Marshall zeroes in the covers for the albums Sgt. Pepper and Yesterday and Today as evidence of the Beatles’ sinister influence.

Let’s look at Sgt. Pepper first.  Now, I will concede that the title song itself is neck deep in the hyper-self-aware, absurdist, non-specific smug condescension that dogged the second half of the Beatles’ career.  It’s technically a good song, but if I never heard it again, I would shed no tears.  Ditto for “She’s Leaving Home” (a “STFU, Paul” moment if ever there was one.)  “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” — meh.  But the rest of the songs are all good, some of them great.

But Marshall (oddly, for someone commenting on musicians) doesn’t mention the music.  Instead, he dutifully lists the names of all the people who appeared on that wretched cover:

 

Ah, the cover.  I’ve read a bit about what it’s supposed to represent, but I think what it really comes down to is a bunch of young guys who started playing in sleazy bars when they were teenagers, and abruptly got pushed around so much by their own talent that they needed to show the world that they’re done being cute.    I remember doing edgy, baffling montages like this when I was about 17.  You want to be taken seriously, and you’re hanging out with a bunch of arty types, and you feel like Making a Statement, even though you don’t exactly have anything specific to say, beyond, “I’m smart! Not like everybody says… like dumb… I’m smart and I want respect!”

Only the Beatles had more money to spend, so this is what they came up with.  That’s the statement they’re making when they stick together Shirley Temple and Oliver Hardy and Aleister Crowley:  hey, lookit us!  It is not, as Marshall says (italics his),”a collage of intellectual poison” — although Marshall struggles manfully to describe everyone in the most sinister terms he can muster, including:

  • Mae West (occultist, actress, sex idol)
  • W. C. Fields (comedian/actor, alcoholic)
  • H. G. Wells (socialist, eugenist, [sic] author, advocate of the “World State”, open critic of Catholic Church)
  • Marlon Brando (homosexual, actor)
  • Lewis Carroll (author, alleged pedaphile) [sic]
  • Marlene Dietrich (bisexual, actress, singer)

“Marlon Brando, homosexual, actor?”   “Lewis Carroll, alleged pedophile?” I ‘m sorry, when you come up with descriptors like that, you gotta turn in your “I understand stuff” card.  I’m relieved, at least, that he didn’t come up with anything bad to say about Johnny Weissmuller.  I love Johnny Weissmuller.

The fact that Weismuller is included here, along with Shirley Temple, Tom Mix, Dylan Thomas and Fred Astaire, says one thing to me:  “Things!  And the other things!  We’re awesome and edgy because look at all the things, oh man!”  But in Marshall’s analysis, this is “an assembly of occultists, political socialists, eugenists, homosexuals, and sexual provocateurs.”

So here is your first clue that Marshall is not going to offer an especially perceptive analysis of the Beatles.  His list reminds me of someone who wants to prove that the American flag has its roots in Freemasonry because, as all scholars know, that odious color blue is so closely associated with Masonic ritual, duh. Never mind the red and white because holy cow, how can we overlook the obvious significance of blue?  Blue!!!

Moving along.  Marshall describes the cover for The Beatles: Yesterday and Today:

Marshall says,

The four Beatles are wearing white doctor’s coats covered with flesh and decapitated babies. John looks mildly pleased. And Paul looks happy, even delighted. Ringo looks depressed (“Am I really doing this?”). George Harrison looks straight up evil. I feel like George is giving me the bird with a dead infant’s head.

This is just gross.

Okay, I’m with him there.  It’s also naively executed.  They were trying a little too hard to be ever so shocky-wocky, leaving us feeling like Ringo looks.  Marshall continues:

Pause. What did this represent in 1966? John Lennon said it was a commentary on the Vietnam War. But I don’t see what physician smocks with dead babies has to do with the war. Yes people are dying in each, but still. Kinda weird.

For what it’s worth, the Parliament legalized abortion in the UK with the Abortion Act  of 1967 on 27 October 1967. Abortion was being hotly debated in the United Kingdom when this photo was taken.

Or, they are wearing butcher’s coats, and it is a commentary on the Vietnam War — something along the lines of “killing is bad; and yet we are rock stars.  Isn’t this edgy as crap?”  Oh, and Harrison looks “straight up evil” because that’s his face, circa 1966.  He had bad teeth and was not yet coked to the gills.

Marshall concludes:

My conclusion is that there is something really dark about the Beatles. It’s not just a happy “Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da Life Goes On” quartet. There is something sinister here. This album cover just screams it. It’s not normal.

I used to think that the great “evil minds” infecting the 20th century were men like Heidegger, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Michael Foucault. However, I think the biggest wrecking ball of Western culture might have been resting in every American’s record collection (or iPod) – John, Paul, Ringo, and George!

Okay. I actually agree with him, if not his analytical technique: as with 99% of musicians, playwrights, painters, poets, novelists, sculptors, and bloggers worth reading, there is something really dark about the Beatles, and some caution is a good idea. I encourage my kids to listen mostly to the earlier stuff, where their technical brilliance can be enjoyed unimpeded with the navel gazing muzziness that came later.  We have discussed how people in Hell are probably holding hands and singing “Imagine” right now; and I have taught them to identify the sitar, when played by a white man, as the sound of bullshit.

But . . . oh, I don’t even know what to say.  I’ve said it so many times, and I don’t know if there’s any way to persuade people who don’t already see it so clearly.  We’re Catholic. Our main job isn’t to apply “censor” bar across everything that doesn’t come straight from the Baltimore Catechism.  We take what is good. We’re supposed to beexperts at identifying what is good.  We’re not supposed to be screaming meemies who bite our lips and blush every time someone dips into a minor key.  We’re supposed to use sifters, not dump trucks, when sorting through culture.

My daughter says that most of her friends only know two Beatles songs:  “Yellow Submarine,” and “Eleanor Rigby.”  Lord, what a shame.  No musical education is complete without:

  • And Your Bird Can sing
  • Blackbird
  • Back In The U.S.S.R.
  • Can’t Buy Me Love
  • Drive My Car
  • Got to get you into my life
  • I feel fine
  • I need you
  • I’ll follow the sun
  • Paperback Writer
  • Revolution
  • You  never give me your money
  • You’ve Got to Hide Your Love Away
  • Something
  • Ticket to Ride
  • Taxman

So much heartache, so much loveliness, so many moments of pure music, written by people who are in love with music.  Did the Beatles confuse its fans and popularize bad ideas?  Sure. But they used their God-given talents to produce music which elevated the world in a real, valuable, irreplaceable way.  Everything that is good sings the praises of God, and the Beatles were good.  Really good.  As long as they were together, they worked in the service of the muse, and they produced something great.

I really do like Taylor Marshall, but I don’t like the world he seems to want to live in.

Is there something wrong with me

. . . that I do not find this irritating at all?

It sounds like a cross between one of those nutty medieval instruments — what is it called, a flageoblat or something —  and those straw kazoos we used to make.  You know how to do that, right?  Just bite down on the end of a plastic drinking straw to flatten it, cut the corners off to make a “reed” to vibrate against itself, and blow hard.  Yeah, like this:

With some experimentation, you can figure out where to cut holes to play an octave.

You can also make a straw trombone — just slightly crush the end of one straw until it fits inside another.  Cut a mouthpiece in the end of the outer straw, and slide the other straw in and out the other end as you blow.  IT IS FUN, okay?

This is the stupidest thing I have ever saw.

I do this all the time when I’m alone. I laughed so hard!

At the Register: The Light of the Child

A poem, a tune, a painting for Christmas.  May the baby who brings us warmth and light bless you all!

Like a lark who is learning to pray

Yesterday, we went to another lovely concert at the public high school that my oldest two kids attend.  As usual, I was stunned at the variety of music presented:  old and new vocal and instrumental jazz, medieval hymns, funny arrangements of secular Christmas songs, even a Sephardic song about the sighting of a star at the birth of Abraham.  And they were good.  They opened with the entire band playing “O Come All Ye Faithful,” and then the various choirs filed in, singing, from both sides.

When I was tried to sneak quietly back into the auditorium after taking the little guys for a bathroom break, the choir director, who was taking a break too, grinned and whispered, “Bless you!”  I don’t even know why.  For dragging little kids out at night in the freezing cold, I guess, just so they could hear some good music.

For the second song on the program, the stage cleared and six high school girls tottered out to the mics — every one of them wearing black or red dresses, some skin tight, some buttcheek-high, some of them constructed of evil-looking lace, straps, and bands.  One girl wore black booties with a stacked wedge, but the others were balancing atop black or red heels so high, it looked like a novelty act when they started to sing:  look, this girl can sustain a high C without breaking an ankle!

There’s no other word for it:  they looked awful.  Too young to look sexy, too sexy to look young.  You know what I mean.

PIC Bratz doll face

 

And what were they singing?  “The Sound of Music.”  They sounded good, sweet, young.  God help me, I cried.  Of course everything makes me cry, but I was just so glad, so glad that someone was teaching these girls music.  You could see what else they had learned about beauty.

To the choir director:  bless you, too.

Seven Quick Takes, In Which I May Be a Bit Dehydrated

1.  Yay, Patheos tech team!  They brought my archives over from my old blog.  My pages, too, which I’ll be updating soon.  Stay tuned for a list of top ten favorite posts, or at least top posts which seem entertaining without triggering any calls to child protective services.

2.  My Register post is up:  The Happiest Voice.  Last week I had The Saddest Voice.  I think I’m onto something here.  Stay tuned next Friday for The Voice Which Best Exemplifies Perfect Indifference.

3.  In a recent bout of economizing, I told my husband I was ready to downgrade on gin. I am now the proud owner of a nice, big bottle of something called New Amsterdam, and for all I know it does taste exactly like New Amsterdam.

But more importantly, stone cheap.

 

(My husband, being a gentleman, did tap on it before he bought it, to make sure the bottle was actually glass.)  It’s not quite as smooth as my favorite Tanqueray, but it tastes fine.  But the next day, I remembered something I used to know:  when you buy liquor, what you’re really paying for is the next day.

 

(Sorry, I just realized this is the second time this week I’ve used an adorable animal to express my inner disposition.  This stops now.)

4.  Speaking of thrift, my son recently showed me his toes.  He was wearing sneakers at the time.  So I had a free moment and headed to the Salvation Army to look for some replacement shoes.  They didn’t have anything for him, but they did have these for $5:

 

which I had no choice but to buy for my 7-year-old daughter.  They have little disks built into the sole, so you can spin around like a beeeutiful spinning ballerina princess ballerina.  Now obviously, a seven-year-old girl is capable of spinning around without the aid of a special shoes; but then you don’t get to be the greatest mother in the world for ten minutes until you say no to a third ice pop.

5.  100 years ago, Igor “Why You Do Me That Way” Stravinsky premiered his insane, herky jerky, dissonant Rite of Spring

It doesn’t get really nutso until about the 3:33 mark.  People were so upset by what they heard and saw that there was a riot.  A RIOT, because the music wasn’t beautiful, and people still wanted and expected art and music to be beautiful.

Now, I’m of two minds here.  I like Stravinsky, and I’m not one of those people who insists on all harmony all the time.  I’ve sat through John Cage concerts, and I listened hard.  I went to Die Alte Pinakothek and did not skip the abstract expressionists, but lavished my eyeballs all over them all afternoon long.  On the other hand, I want to give those concert rioters a medal, because first there was the Rite of Spring, and now there’s this.  Where were the rioters when these folks

 

 

took the stage?  To poop on stage?  Because art, that’s why?  I would make some puns about the heavy load that an artist bears, but I’m too busy weeping until I’m dead.

6.   If you hear anything about whether or not print newspapers can survive, here’s something to keep in mind:  my husband is a reporter, and the other night he emailed me to let me know that he was running late, and that he would be bringing home some cheese.  He said that a cheesemaker owed the paper some money for advertising, and that they had persuaded the ad guy to let them pay their bill in cheese.  So, there you are.  Buy newspapers when you can, before the business acumen leads them to trade in the good camera for a sack full of magic beans and five shares of Enron.

7.  And here is a common potoo:

 

You may think the photographer just caught him at a bad moment, but no — that’swhat the common potoo always looks like.  This particular potoo is named Igor Stravinsky, and he looks like his week has been about as much fun as mine.

Hey, happy Friday!  And happy summer, dammit!  Finally.

Just the basics

Neato!  It’s the isolated vocal track of “Under Pressure” — just the two voices, nothing else.

This song, in its original, familiar form, always gave me hives because it’s like one of those recipes where you combine two fantastic and expensive ingredients, but rather than blending and melding to make something new and great, they just fight with each other.  I love Bowie and I love Freddie Mercury, but I never understood why everyone’s so ga ga about this song.  This stripped down version is a different take on it, anyway, and if it doesn’t exactly make the song work, it’s fascinating to listen to.  Holy cow, what talent.  I forgot how powerful Bowie’s voice is, and how otherworldly Freddie Mercury can sound.

This isolated vocal track of “Under Pressure” is more of a curiosity, but I just found out that there is a stripped down version of The Beatles’ album “Let It Be,” and that is something that really needed doing. (I guess they had brought Phil Spector on board to produce it, and then the main reason they made “Abbey Road” (which was made mostly after “Let It Be,” but released first) was so they could leave the world with one final actual Beatles album, since “Let It Be” kinda wasn’t.)

I grew up listening to a lot of “oldies,” and I like the whole Wall of Sound thing a lot, but setting it up behind The Beatles is like covering the Parthenon in chrome. “The Long and Winding Road,” especially, was just screaming to be left alone, and they had to crap it up with six inches of schmaltz — unforgiveable.  Here is the painful original:

and the stripped-down version, just vocals, guitar, and piano:

Whew!  Much better.

Start your week off right . . .

with some Willie Frickin Nelson!

“There’s more old drunks than there are old doctors, so I guess we better have another round.”  Also, songwriters take note:  two minutes, forty-one seconds, the end.  That’s how you do it.

Music reccomendations?

A mom I know is looking for music to put on her 12-year-old son’s new mp3 player.  She says,

Looking for something reasonably wholesome, of course, but not scrupulously so. He’s 12, but a very young 12.

He is too old for little kids songs like Rafi, but I’m hesitant to introduce him to even good rock music. I’m not really looking for stuff like “Christian rock”–music designed for teenagers who love rock but whose parents won’t let them listen to it.

All we can think of is Roger Miller, the Beatles, and the Kingston Trio.

I suggested Paul Simon’s Graceland and Rhythm of the Saints, and Mumford and Sons.  I was kinda into folk rock in college (The Nealds, The Indigo Girls, etc.) but most if it is just too girly.  Buddy Holly?

(If you please, I’d rather not get into whether or not mothers should let their kids get into rock music!)   Oh, and if you have suggestions for bands or singers, could you write a line or two describing them?  Thanks!

 

Here in Topeka

Sorry for the silence, folks.  I’m suffering from 80% disease:  I have about six posts 80% written, and then I say, “Yeah, that’s pretty much it — I’ll just go back and finish it up tonight.”  And then I dye my hair, change my social security number, and move to Canada so I don’t have to deal with it.

In the mean time, I offer you this Loretta Lynn song that my mother sent me.  I’ve never heard it before, but I love it!  It’s actually named “One’s On the Way,” but I didn’t want to title the post that, because then you would think I’m pregnant, and I’m not.

It seems like a pretty good follow-up to the March for Life, doesn’t it?  You know, that day when hundreds of thousands of ninjas march to show their support of women and babies.  I say “ninjas” because they somehow slip by the attention of the media — amazing!  It’s like they were never there.  And yet they get the job done.

Not everyone marched, but many hundreds of thousands stayed at home and helped the cause in their own way:

Here are the lyrics:

They say to have her hair done Liz flies all the way to France,

And Jackie’s seen in a discotheque doin’ a brand new dance,

And the White House social season should be glittering and gay

But here in Topeka the rain is a fallin’

The faucet is a drippin’ and the kids are a bawlin’

One of them is toddlin’ and one is a crawlin’ and one’s on the way.

I’m glad that Raquel Welch just signed a million dollar pact

And Debbie’s out in Vegas workin’ up a brand new act

And the TV’s showin’ Newlyweds, a real fun game to play

But here in Topeka the screen door’s a bangin’

The coffee’s boilin’ over and the warsh needs a hangin’

One wants a cookie and one wants a changin’ and one’s on the way.

Now what was I doin’ – Jimmy get away from there  – darn there goes the phone

Hello honey. What’s that you say – you’re bringin’ a few ole Army buddies home

You’re callin’ from a bar? Get away from there

No, not you, honey, I was talkin’ to the baby- Wait a minute honey, the door bell

Honey could you stop at the market and –hello? hello? well I’ll be.

The girls in New York City they all march for women’s lib,

And Better Homes and Gardens shows the modern way to live,

And the pill may change the world tomorrow but meanwhile today

Here in Topeka the flies are a buzzin’

The dog is a barkin’ and the floor needs a scrubbin’

One needs a spankin’ and one needs a huggin’ – Lord, one’s on the way.

Oh gee I hope it ain’t twins again