VIDEO: Anus horribilis 2020: Noted in passing (Music)

Ed. here. 2020 is almost over, thank God, truly an Annus Horribilis if ever there was one. (I know my Latin but Walt insists on leaving the headline as he wrote it.) We were going to combine Sports and Music in one last segment of our yearend review, but Poor Len Canayen got a bit carried away yesterday, so we had to leave Music for today. 

I don't write much about music and musicians, partly because so much of modern/contemporary "music" is shit. Rock'n'roll, for instance, ceased to exist (IMHO) with the "British invasion" of 1964. So to write about that genre is to look back 60 years or more, which we do today as we note the passing of Richard Wayne Penniman, better known as Little Richard, who took his last bow on 9 May 2020, aged 87. 

Little Richard was the self-proclaimed king of Rock'n'roll. His first big hit, "Tutti Frutti", released in October 1955, was wild gibberish -- almost like a "holy roller" speaking in tongues -- from a voice like we'd never heard before. Was this the future of music? Frank Sinatra, Pat Boone, Bobby Darin and the others suddenly became the past! With a few others – Fats Domino, Bill Haley, Elvis Presley, Chuck Berry, Jerry Lee Lewis and Buddy Holly – Little Richard laid down what rock’n’roll was to be like.

Born in Macon GA 5 December 1932, into a Seventh-day Adventist family,  Little Richard, learned the piano and sang gospel in the local church choir, something I can relate to personally. (I could never figure out why we Catholics couldn't have a few of those jumpy, toe-tappin' tunes.) Kicked out of the family  home at age 13, he performed in medicine shows before hitching to Atlanta, where he signed to RCA Records in 1951.

He didn't develop his own unique style, though, for another four years. His piano work, crucial to his sound, was limited to hammered chords and a kind of tuneless riffing, but with that megaphone voice, falsetto squeal, bursting energy and powerhouse band, his songs -- "Long Tall Sally", "Rip It Up", "Ready Teddy", "Jenny Jenny", "Lucille", "Keep A-knockin'" and many others -- became not just classics but powerful influencers on singers who followed, whether they acknowledged it or not.

In 1986, Little Richard was among the first to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and received a lifetime achievement Grammy in 1993. He needed none of these and the many other awards or hall of fame citations he received to tell him who he was or what he had achieved. He knew that all along. He won't be forgotten.

The highly influential singer-songwriter John Prine, whose career spanned five decades, passed away on 7 April 2020, due to complications from Covid-19.. He was 73. His musical style was a sort of crossover of folk and country, with a bit of rock added in. It was his lyrics, however, which defined him and made him the voice of the baby boom generation.

John Prine wrote about the problems of everyday life, about loneliness, the elderly, victims of the Vietnam war and those abandoned by the American dream. He did so with a blend of poignancy, anger and sudden bursts of humour. So he would sing about an injured soldier leaving Vietnam with a morphine addiction "with a purple heart and a monkey on his back", about Christmas in prison, and a letter to an advice columnist, "Dear Abby, Dear Abby … My fountain pen leaks, my wife hollers at me and my kids are all freaks." 

In 1999 he released In Spite of Ourselves, an album of duets with female country stars including Iris DeMent and Emmylou Harris. You'll find some tracks from that album, along with "Souvenirs" (my favourite), here.

   

John Prine won four Grammy awards, including a lifetime achievement award in 2020. John, if you're reading this from wherever you are, please accept the first Wally ever awarded to a musician. You sang so much of what I wanted to say.

VIDEO: Walt's Top Ten Patriotic Songs

Patriotism seems to have fallen out of fashion these days, and nationalism is downright politically incorrect. We are all part of the "global community of nations" (aka "one world"), and must embrace globalism and the concept of the "post-national state". Right? 

Well, I call bullshit on that! I am proud of my home and native land, and happy to wave the flag and sing the national anthem on suitable occasions, or even just for the pleasure of it.

I get the chance to do that, every now and then, when I go with Poor Len to a hockey game between teams from both sides of the World's Longest Undefended Border (TM). More than once, Len and I have debated which national anthem -- The Star-Spangled Banner or Ô Canada -- is best. We argue this as music-lovers, looking at as singability and "ear appeal", but also as patriots, thinking about the song's emotive qualities. 

We allow, though, that even in these days of globalism triumphant, there are 100s of patriotic songs which rouse feelings of national pride (and sometimes anger and the urge to kill) in people from Albania to Zimbabwe. Even our own countries -- Poor Len's and Walt's [and Ed.'s! Ed.] -- have more than one such soul-stirring song. With that in mind, I present my highly subjective list of the Top Ten Patriotic Songs from around the world, with links to videos of each.

I must begin with a couple of honourable mentions. Many (perhaps most) of our American readers will be distressed to find The Star-Spangled Banner absent from the list. It is omitted because it memorializes a battle fought over 200 years ago [which most Americans probably can't name. Ed.] in the first war that the US of A didn't win. Worse, it's just not good music. It's difficult to sing, and the hack job done on it by "singers" at sports events isn't entirely their fault.

Nor is Dixie on the list. I love what that song stands for, but it's just a folk song -- a music-hall ballad in fact -- not the sort of martial music which makes you want to kill or be killed for the cause. (If you're not sure what I mean, check out No. 7 on my list.) And Dixie is just as hard to sing as The Star-Spangled Banner.

Some Canadians will be dismayed that I haven't included The Maple Leaf Forever. The music isn't particularly good, and the lyrics reference the same war as that mentioned in my note about The Star-Spangled Banner. The main problem with The Maple Leaf Forever, though, is that it appeals only to the British-Canadian monarchists -- the "Colonel Blimp" types who think the Union Jack should still be part of the Canadian flag. Poor Len wouldn't wave dat flag, and he wouldn't sing dat song either!

Now the list.

10. Die Stem - National Anthem of South Africa from 1947 to 1994. Mediocre music, but if you admire the pioneer spirit and the idea of other people leaving you alone to live your life as you please, you have to love this one.

9. Deutschland über alles - I know, I know. But it's good music, and the tune (code-named "Austria", but really Joseph Haydn's "Gott erhalte Franz den Kaiser") is still to be found in both Catholic and Protestant hymnals. [A Nazi-era version of this has been removed from YouTube... consigned to the memory hole. Let that be a lesson. Ed.] 

8. March of the Volunteers - the National Anthem of Communist China.  It says "Qilai! Qilai! Qilai!" ("Arise! Arise! Arise!") You'd stand up ("volunteer") too, if you had a bayonet poking you in the back. Good music though. Short, too. 

7. La Marseillaise - "Let the blood of foreigners overflow your gutters!" I love it. But as I said yesterday, such feelings are no longer PC in France. How about a barbershop quartet version?

6. God Bless America - There are lots of great American patriotic songs -- America the Beautiful, My Country `Tis Of Thee, Columbia Gem Of The Ocean -- but  my favourite is this short, easy-to-sing Tin Pan Alley gem, as sung by Kate Smith.

5. Tomorrow Belongs To Me - Not a "real song", but composed for the musical Cabaret. If the Germans get over their guilt complex and start singing it for real, look out!

4. Land of Hope and Glory - The theme song for "Queen for a Day". [You're dating yourself. Ed.] OK, seriously... National anthems asking for God's blessing on a king or dictator are passé. What is wanted is a song praising one's country and people. Sir Edward Elgar's music and A.C. Benson's words are the de facto anthem of England (not Britain). Nana Mouskouri is my all-time favourite female vocalist. 

3. Ô Canada - Good music, easy to sing, but the English lyrics keep changing for reasons of political correctness. The French lyrics, including the part about carrying the cross and the sword (!) are unchanged and great! The typically Canadian compromise at Montréal hockey games is to sing the first half in French and the the rest in English. 

2. The Internationale - Not a national anthem, but an international anthem, that of Comintern, the Communist Party International. It has been used from time to time as an alternate anthem for the Soviet Union and Communist China. Excellent tune -- a real ear-worm -- and stirring words about standing up and throwing off your chains, yada yada yada. I like this performance by a Chinese army orchestra and chorus.

1. Lupang Hinirang - National Anthem of the Republic of the Philippines. Easy to sing, with lyrics in English and Spanish as well as Tagalog. I've chosen this version, with its capsule history of the Filipino struggle for independence, to show why I think it encapsulates everything that a patriotic song should be.

Dear readers... Wave whatever flag you like, sing whatever song you like, but, always and everywhere, stand up for your country!

Wondering where all the new church music comes from?

Walt and other traditional Catholics have been complaining for half a century that the modern hymns and other alleged music used in the Novus Ordo mass in the "mainstream" churches is... not to put too fine a point on it... terrible. IMHO, there hasn't been any good church music written since the day the priests turned `round. (Older Catholics will know what I mean.)

The same complaint is heard in the mainstream Protestant churches, particularly the Episcopalians/Anglicans, Methodists [Do they still exist? Ed.], Lutherans and the like. The few who still attend services find their ears assaulted by 1000 different versions of "Kumbaya", meant to emphasize inclusivity, diversity and the rest of the New Age, we-are-all-one BS. God forbid that Christian music should suggest that ours is the One True Faith and that those who do not believe are somehow excluded from God's plan of salvation.

But where (I hear you ask) does all this quasi-liturgical garbage come from? The Babylon Bee (Your trusted source for Christian satire) has come up with the answer. Yes folks, it's the

Click here to check it out. See you in church!

VIDEO: The hymn Walt hopes never to hear again (after this)

"Amazing Grace" is a Christian hymn, written in 1772 by John Newton, an English poet and Anglican clergyman. The words come from Rev. Newton's personal experience. He grew up without any particular religious conviction, but his life's path was formed by a variety of twists and coincidences that were often put into motion by others' reactions to what they took as his recalcitrant insubordination.

He was pressed (conscripted) into service in the Royal Navy. After leaving the service, he became involved in the Atlantic slave trade. In 1748, a violent storm battered his vessel off the coast of County Donegal, Ireland, so severely that he called out to God for mercy. This moment marked his spiritual conversion but he continued slave trading until 1754 or 1755, when he ended his seafaring altogether and began studying Christian theology.

Thanks to Agent 6 for sending us the link to this beautiful rendition by Monica Narranda, at a concert at Barcelona's Sagrada Familia Cathedral. Ms Narranda is accompanied by the Barcelona Youth Symphony Orchestra, the Catalan Xuntanza Harmonica Band and the Puig-Reig Polyphony.



Now I need to explain the headline. There are three good (IMHO) reasons why I change channels or hit the "mute" button every time I hear the first notes of "Amazing Grace" on TV.

Although it's in the modern Catholic hymnals, "Amazing Grace" isn't sung in the SSPX chapel I go to, because it's not really Catholic, and that's my first reason. The theology is wrong. It was Martin Luther who said one could be saved by grace alone. Saint Thomas Aquinas and Catholic theologians down through the centuries say there's more to salvation than that.

My second reason is the inevitable bagpipe accompaniment. The music lends itself to being played as a lament, and the image of the lone bagpiper playing on a windswept hill is burned into our race memory, or so it seems. IMHO bagpipes should be used to play only marches. Period.

The third reason why I abhor "Amazing Grace" is that it's been done to death in recent years. Every time there's a news clip of the funeral or grieving following some kind of killing or disaster, that's the "music" you hear. It seems people know only that one hymn, so that's the default and it's usually played badly and sung worse. (What's with this modern style of singing, where you waiver through four notes for every one that's written? Listening to the modern interpretation of national anthems before sports events is just excrutiating!) So you hear this terrible caterwauling and the images are of fat women hugging each other and rubbing each other's backs. Bah! Please, people, stop abusing this fine hymn. Stop it, I say!

MUSIC VIDEO: Walt harks to the sound of the nickelodeon

It's been a long time since Walt opened the mailbag to respond to readers' questions. That's because most of the questions are inane or boring. But today I'll answer the most frequently asked query, which is... try reading this aloud with the intonation of Ed McMahon asking Johnny Carson... "How old are you?" Here is the answer.

I am so old that I know three distinct meaning for "CD". Younger folks probably think first of a silvery disc, about 4.75" across, which you stick into some kind of music machine [or the coffee cup holder on your computer. Ed.] to hear music. From their chairs in the home, your parents may remember when "CD" stood for "Certificate of Deposit", which was a fancy piece of paper that banks and S&Ls gave you in return for your hard-earned cash, sometime prior to 2008, and which turned out to be worthless. Their parents may remember being taught in grade school to "duck and cover" in the event of an A-bomb attack. That was part of the "CD", meaning "Civil Defence" drill.

Another word ["CD" isn't a word. Ed.]... OK, another term which has seen its meaning changed over the last century is "nickelodeon". If you're anywhere south of 40, you probably think first (and only) of "Nickelodeon", an American pay television network which was launched on 1 December 1977 as the first cable channel for children. I haven't watched it since they cancelled Ren & Stimpy, having belatedly realized that the excellent cartoon show wasn't really for kids. A poster on YouTube asks, "Why were we allowed to watch this?" Wouldn't happen today. Political correctness...

But I digress. The "nickelodeon" of which I speak is not the "Nickelodeon" mentioned in the first 1000 hits if you search the term on Google. Nooo... The nickelodeon was the first type of indoor exhibition space dedicated to showing projected motion pictures. Usually set up in converted storefronts, these small, simple cinemas charged five cents for admission and flourished from about 1905 to 1915.

"Nickelodeon" was concocted from nickel -- the name of American and Canadian 5-cent coins, and the ancient Greek word ᾨδεῖον [Ōideion], literally "singing place", a roofed-over theatre, the latter indirectly by way of the Odéon in Paris, emblematic of a very large and luxurious theater, much as Ritz was of a grand hotel. But wait... there's yet another meaning.

In 1949 a Tin Pan Alley lyricist incorporated into a popular song ("Music, Music, Music") the refrain "Put another nickel in / in the nickelodeon...", evidently referring to either a jukebox or... wait for it... a mechanical musical instrument such as a coin-operated player piano or orchestrion. That's a generic name for a machine that plays music and is designed to sound like an orchestra or band. Orchestrions may be operated by means of a large pinned cylinder or by a music roll, like that used in a player piano. The sound is usually produced by pipes (smaller and with different voices than those of a pipe organ) as well as percussion instruments, sometimes including the piano.

The sound of the orchestrion is the sound I heard as a child -- yes, I was a child once -- riding the carousel at an amusement park called Sunnyside. You can hear the music of the carousel in an eponymous Folkways LP (LP - ancestor of the CD), or you can watch and listen to this terrific video featuring a restored Wurlitzer 146B carousel organ from Norumbega Park in Newton, MA.



Wurlitzer was the leading name in orchestrions, as well as the organs for which it is still rightly famous. But it wasn't the only name. The The J.P. Seeburg Piano Company of Chicago was the Avis to Wurlitzer's Hertz. In the mid-1920s, a group of Seeburg and Marquette Piano Co. execs formed the Western Electric Piano Company, as a secret subsidiary of the Seeburg company. In late 1926, Western Electric, which had been in a different location in Chicago, moved into the Seeburg factory. The cabinets and piano assemblies, and most of the pneumatic stacks, were made by Seeburg, with pumps, roll mechanisms, extra instruments, controls, and coin mechanisms of different design resembling the earlier Cremona (Marquette) parts.

TMI? OK, here's a fascinating video in which James Pavel Shawcross explores and explains "a piano like none you've ever seen" -- a J.P. Seeburg orchestrion which he found at Bill Kap's Piano in Cleveland OH. I find James a little bit "gee whiz" -- to him, everything is "so cool" -- but I'd probably have the same reaction if I had a chance to see and hear one of these wonderful machines up close and personal. Enjoy.

VIDEO: "Silent Night" debuted 200 years ago

24 December 1818. HRH George III is still kind of Britain, Ireland and all his realms except the former North American colonies. James Monroe was the fifth President of the United States of America, but was over four years away from announcing his doctrine opposing European colonialism in the Americas. And in Oberndorf-bei-Salzburg, Austria, Father Joseph Mohr led his church choir in singing a new song which he had written especially for Christmas Eve, set to music by the local schoolteacher, Franz Xavier Gruber. It was called "Stille Nacht" (= "Silent Night"), and it sounded like this.



The orioginal manuscript was lost, and over the years Father Mohr's name was forgotten. Although Herr Gruber was known to be the composer, the melody was often mistakenly attributed to Haydn, Mozart, or Beethoven. It wasn't until 1995 that a manuscript in Father Mohr's handwriting was discovered and dated by researchers as "c. 1820". It states that the priest wrote the words in 1816 when he was assigned to a pilgrim church in Mariapfarr, Austria, and that the music was composed in 1818. This is the earliest manuscript that exists and the only one in Father Mohr's handwriting.

"Stille Nacht" was declared an intangible cultural heritage by UNESCO in 2011. It has been translated into many languages, and recorded by a large number of singers in nearly every musical style. The version sung by Bing Crosby is the third best-selling single of all-time.

My kind of music

Readers will have noted my sympathy for listeners to CBC Radio whose ears are affronted by "black music". Agent 3 writes to ask what kind of music Walt would choose, were he in charge of programming for a supposedly mainstream radio network.

Obviously the question calls for an audio response. But here on the Inner Net audio without video is ... well ... unthinkable. I mean, it would be OK for Walt's blind readers, but ... errr ...
You get the picture. If not, here's the picture now, to go with the music.



Give it up for multiple Grammy winner, the polka king, St. Catharines' own Walter Ostanek! Say, folks, doesn't that bring back memories? Buffalo TV stations used to have live "polka party" shows every weekend! Yep, sandwiched in between the live bowling shows. Ah, those were the days.

Yes, Walt would definitely put some polkas on the playlist, along with some nice waltzes, and maybe the odd obarek. That would go a long way to satisfying the CBC's demand for multiculturalism too, eh.

Prefer some real down-home American music?



Stanley & Co. from beautiful downtown Townley, AL. Folks, that's what you call gospel bluegrass. When was the last time you heard anything like that on your effete big city rangdeedio? Got the "religious right" base covered too.

If you liked that -- and why wouldn't you? -- you'll find dozens of homespun versions of that fine old gospel song on YouTube. Just Google "I'll Fly Away".

Want to have some fun? Mix yourself up a CD of that kind of music -- the music of the silent majority -- and be silent no longer! Plug the CD in your car stereo, turn the volume up to "deafen" and drive through the `hood.
Don't stop. Have fun.

Footnote: This is post number 700. Had enough yet? Send an e-mail with "More!" or "No more!" in the subject line to walt.whiteman@yahoo.com. The wishes of the majority will be respected. Or maybe not... like the CBC!

Austrian yodeller fined for offending Muslims

From Arutz Sheva (an Israeli news service) via Fark comes this gem. Walt won't even attempt to rewrite it. Telling it straight is enough...

It seems as though in Austria, the popular yodel is an insult to Muslims.

An Austrian court has recently fined a citizen for yodeling while mowing his lawn, according to a report in The Kronen Zeitung newspaper.

The citizen, 63-year-old Helmut G., was told by the court that his yodeling offended his next-door Muslim neighbors, who accused him of trying to mock and imitate the call of the Muezzin.

Helmut's neighbours were in the middle of a prayer when he started to yodel. The Kronen Zeitung reported that he was fined 800 Euros after judges ruled that he could have tried to offend his neighbors and ridicule their belief.

Helmut G. clarified that “It was not my intention to imitate or insult them. I simply started to yodel a few tunes because I was in such a good mood.”

So now you know what to do if the Muslims start building a mosque in your neighbourhood. Crank your stereo (or whatever they call them nowadays) up to "mother" and put on those old Slim Whitman and Wilf Carter records!

CBC Toronto: voice of the ghetto?

Walt listens to CBC Radio. For readers outside of Canada, CBC is the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (sometimes referred to as the Canadian Broadcorping Castration), the government-owned public broadcaster. CBC's Radio One has a number of excellent news and current affairs programs -- As It Happens, The House, The Current -- some of which are picked up by NPR or models for NPR programs.

Since the CBC network stretches over six time zones, from coast to coast to coast -- A mari usque ad mare and all that -- it naturally has local programming suitable to the differing needs of audiences in Toronto and "the regions".

The top programs on Toronto's "flagship station" are Metro Morning (the wake-up show) and Here and Now (the drive-home show). Both programs feature affable hosts, friendly on-air personalities and lots of news and chatter.

In recent years, though, in the CBC's eternal quest to be all things to all people, they've started to include bits of "music" in what used to be an all-talk format. And since CBC Toronto panders shamelessly to its "vizmin" audience (both of them), the so-called "music" is mostly what I would call "ghetto pop". If it's not black African, then it's black American, or African-American (the ultimate oxymoron). Every now and then, for a change, we get some salsa or other Latin-American sounds.

Walt is sick, sore and tired of it! If we must have music (why?), then how about some music for the rest of us? How about some chansons canadiennes? Or down-east fiddling? Or country? Or, if we must "sing with many voices", how about some μπουζούκι? Or a polka or Гопак? Or a tarantella or a Bollywood number or something in Chinese? Anything but this endless stream of "ghetto music" -- another oxymoron!

Memo to Susan Marjetti, Regional Director of CBC Radio: You have listeners outside Toronto's black and Latino ghettos! "Multiculturalism" includes our cultures too!

Susan Marjetti's phone number is 416-205-5791. To send her an e-mail, follow the link on this page.