Tag: music

American Anthem

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Today I listened to a delightful program on NPR called American Anthem. Among the songs that the show profiled were:

  • The Star Spangled Banner (naturally)
  • America The Beautiful
  • Fanfare for the Common Man, by Aaron Copeland
  • Born in the USA
  • God Bless The USA
  • America, by Simon & Garfunkel
  • This Land is Your Land
  • The Times They Are a-Changing
  • Get Together, as performed by the Youngbloods
  • Symphony No. 9 in E minor, “From the New World”, Op. 95, B. 178, by Antonín Dvořák
  • Dixie

NPR writes:

Sometimes, a song isn’t just a song: It’s shorthand for an idea. Some songs can rouse and rally huge masses of people at once, whether they’re chanting in a stadium, marching in the streets or sweating it out on the dance floor.

American Anthem: The Playlist. (2019, July 01). Retrieved July 4, 2019, from https://www.npr.org/2019/07/01/736718887/american-anthem-the-playlist

NPR has put together a playlist that not only includes the songs listed above but also songs that have reached “anthemic status.”

I think that this playlist should include Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive.” What other songs do you think should be included?

#MusicMonday Top Ten #Christmas Songs Written by Jews

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The two holidays that celebrate the divinity of Christ—the divinity that’s the very heart of the Jewish rejection of Christianity—and what does Irving Berlin do? He de-Christs them both! Easter, he turns into a fashion show [Easter Parade] and Christmas into a holiday about snow [White Christmas].

That quote from Phillip Roth begins Marc Tracy’s article “From ‘Winter Wonderland’ to ‘White Christmas,’ the Top Ten Christmas Songs Written by Jews” in Tablet magazine and quite frankly, I can’t think of a better way to begin this post.

I’ve assembled a playlist of the de-Christed secularized Christmas songs listed in Tracy’s article:

There’s plenty of Bing Crosby and Frank Sinatra here, but the one video that catches my eye and ear is the video of Mel Tormé and the one, the only Judy Garland singing The Christmas Song (aka Chestnuts Roasting on an Open Fire), which Tormé co-wrote with Bob Wells. Who knew? I didn’t even know that Mel Tormé was Jewish.

If you want to listen to Nat “King” Cole’s iconic rendition of The Christmas Song, visit #MusicMonday Nat “King” Cole “The #Christmas Song”.

Source:

Tracy, M. (2016, December 09). From ‘Winter Wonderland’ to ‘White Christmas,’ the Top Ten Christmas Songs Written by Jews. Retrieved December 21, 2018, from https://www.tabletmag.com/jewish-arts-and-culture/music/22910/have-yourself-a-jewish-little-christmas

#MusicMonday 5 songs from the 80s That You Might Have Forgot

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The article Ten Songs From the ‘80s That You’ve Probably Forgotten About from PJ Media inspired me to put together this short playlist of five songs from the 80s that you might have forgotten (or else don’t know because you were born later):

Source:

Queen, C. (2018, October 2). Ten Songs From the ’80s That You’ve Probably Forgotten About. Retrieved October 8, 2018, from https://pjmedia.com/lifestyle/10-songs-from-the-80s-that-youve-probably-forgotten-about/

#MusicMonday – Taurus – Spirit

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Today’s #MusicMonday feature is the instrumental Taurus by the sixties band Spirit.

Why is this relevant? Notice the riff in Taurus. Does it sound like the beginning of Stairway to Heaven?

Last week, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals overturned a jury’s decision that Led Zeppelin did not plagiarize the chords from Spirit’s Taurus. The ruling stemmed from a lawsuit that accused Led Zeppelin of stealing portions of “Stairway to Heaven” from “Taurus,” which was written by Randy California (né Randy Wolfe) of the 1990s band Spirit. The dispute stemmed from a passage 45 seconds into “Taurus,” which sounds like the opening guitar tones of “Stairway,” which was released three years after “Taurus.”

I won’t comment on the merits of the lawsuit, but it’s unfair to say “if the other guys were any decent, more people would have heard of em.”  No, no, no.  Spirit was great.  Songs like “Fresh Garbage” and “I Got a Line on You” were fixtures of late 1960s FM radio.

Sources:

C. Clarke [Aus4Aus] (2018, September 29). Great, what a crock! Some of the notes sound the same, but they are completely different. Love Led Zeppelin, if the other guys were any decent, more people would have heard of em.. The Artist is dead, just a Greedy estate rep trying to scam $$$$$$$$$ [Tweet]. Retrieved from https://twitter.com/Aus4Aus/status/1045890297241063424.

Dolan, M. (2018, September 28). Court orders new trial over claim that Led Zeppelin stole ‘Stairway to Heaven’. Retrieved September 30, 2018, from http://www.latimes.com/local/lanow/la-me-ln-zeppelin-copyright-9th-circuit-20180928-story.html

Wolfe, R. (1968). Taurus. On Spirit. Retrieved September 30, 2018, from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gFHLO_2_THg

 

#MusicMonday Erma Franklin – Piece of My Heart

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The whole world knows by now that Aretha Franklin died last week of pancreatic cancer.  This is heresy, but I could not get into Aretha.  Is it a cultural thing?

You might remember that Starbucks sold compilation CDs at its counters.  Here’s a gem that I found through those compilation CDs:

You might associate Piece of My Heart with Janis Joplin, but Erma Franklin (Aretha’s sister) recorded it in 1967 before Janis. This video is a live performance from 1992.

#MusicMonday I Got You Babe – Cher with Beavis & Butthead

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Cher is a 2018 Kennedy Center Honoree along with Philip Glass, Reba McEntire, and Wayne Shorter.  In tribute to her selection, I present this cover of ex-husband Sonny Bono’s I Got You Babe featuring Cher and Beavis & Butthead.

Butthead: “Is it true that you used to be, like uh, married to that Bono dude?”

Cher: “Bono. Sonny Bono”

#MusicMonday Keely Smith “When Day is Done”

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Three months ago, I promised a feature on Keely Smith, who died on December 16, 2017.

 

See the source image
Keely Smith

 

This video is taken from the Frank Sinatra show in 1958. It starts with wise-cracking between Sinatra and Keely Smith’s then husband Louis Prima. Keely sings “When Day is Done.”

 

While she put away the crinolines, she wore the same haircut throughout her life. 🙂

#MusicMonday France Gall #France

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France Gall was a French pop singer, one of the yé-yé girls of the 1960s, which included Françoise Hardy and Sylvie Vartan. She died earlier this month, on January 7, 2018, of an infection from cancer. She was age 70.

She shot to prominence when she won the Eurovision Song Contest in 1965, singing Serge Gainsbourg’s song Poupée de cire, poupée de son (wax doll, rag doll):

Wikipedia dissects the meaning of the lyrics of Poupée de cire, poupée de son: for example, poupée de son can also be interpreted as “singing doll.” The lyrics portray her as an ingenue, that is, “an innocent or unsophisticated young woman.”

Seule, parfois je soupire
Je me dis à quoi bon
Chanter ainsi l’amour sans raison
Sans rien connaître des garçons

In English:

Alone, I sometimes sigh
Thinking, what’s the point
Of singing love like this, without reason
Without knowing anything about boys?

Gainsbourg exploited her innocence with Les Sucettes or Lollipops, which is a thinly veiled allusion to oral sex. France Gall apparently wasn’t aware of the double entendre. In this video, she talks about the humiliation she suffered when she found out the double meaning of Les Sucettes:

Next week, I will pay tribute to American singer Keely Smith, who died last month, December 2017.