“I still believe that peace and plenty and happiness can be worked out some way. I am a fool.” - Kurt Vonnegut
"Everybody plays the fool, sometime. There's no exception to the rule, listen baby. It may be factual, it may be cruel, I ain't lying. Everybody plays the fool." - Aaron Neville
I asked The Execrable Bede for a special April Fool's Day song. Bede reminded me April is the Anniversary of Lady Day's birth in Philadelphia, PA, on April 7, 1915.
I have been doing my dance on Plum Street for a decade now. I plan an Anniversary Edition. Time to thank the Artists and Writers who have shared their work here. This is only the beginning. Living Anniversary Edition.
Google decided my blog was pornographic. So Big G said No adsense for you. Bad images, bad! This image is Victorian.
I decided to run ad-free and publish what I liked. See the LABELS in the left column: try FILTH AND DIRT or maybe SEX DRUGS AND ROCK AND ROLL.
Here we are, Cher Readers and Friends. Such fun.
I will add a TIP ME button when I find out how. I need help paying for this place.
In 1942, Aaron Copland's mind was on the past and the present, because he was commissioned by André Kostelanetz write a piece about an "eminent American" for the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra,
Copland -- like Kurt Weill, who was contemporaneously setting several of Walt Whitman Civil War poems to musical accompaniment -- turned to the figure of Lincoln as a means of explaining to his countrymen precisely what they were fighting for in battle against the Axis.
The result was The Lincoln Portrait a work written for full orchestra with narrator. Over the years, many famous actors and Americans have performed the Lincoln Portrait, including Henry Fonda (with Copland himself conducting), Gregory Peck, Charlton Heston, James Earl Jones, Samuel L. Jackson, Marian Anderson, Katherine Hepburn, Esther Rolle, Vincent Price, Walter Cronkite, Carl Sandburg (in a performance that won a Grammy), Gore Vidal, Margaret Thatcher, Neil Armstrong, Julius "Dr. J" Erving and Adlai Stevenson.
Carl Sandburg with André Kostelanetz conducting the New York Philharmonic [winner of the 1959 Grammy for "Best Performance – Documentary Or Spoken Word (Other Than Comedy)"
When the Skatalites reformed in the mid-1980s, they released an incredible album, Return of the Big Guns, which -- for the first time -- gave those of us who never saw them when they were in the process of helping create modern Jamaican music, a chance to hear in high-fidelity what they must've sounded like from the bandstand:
Note: Repeating because of increased interest in the era. Published April 9, 2010
April 9 is the anniversary of the surrender of General Robert E. Lee to General Ulysses S. Grant which ended the military phase of the American Civil War.
To mark the occasion, Bede's Beat brings you a sample of Kurt Weill's settings of four of Walt Whitman Civil War poems.
Shortly after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the German declaration of war against the U.S., Kurt Weill -- who had fled Nazi Germany in 1933 and moved to the U.S. in 1935 -- began to set three of Walt Whitman's Civil War poems to music.
The poems Weill chose form a cycle which was completed by the addition of the setting of a fourth poem in 1947.
The first poem, Beat! Beat! Drums!, begins the cycle with an enthusiastic martial call to arms. The middle part of the cycle is devoted to the inevitable result of war: death.
The second, O Captain! My Captain!, about death of a leader in time of war, proved prophetic.
The third poem, Come Up from the Fields Father uses the imagery of autumn and the harvest to presage the grief of a mother upon learning of her son’s death -- a reminder of the toll of war on the home front.
The cycle concludes with Dirge for Two Veterans, and the contrast of Whitman's lament with the first poem in the cycle is reflected in music for each: while the first movement is sprightly, martial and optimistic, the final poem is set to a funeral march.
UPDATE: The Church of St. John Coltrane may shortly no longer exist. If you can help, through skill or money or passion, please get to work. Send lawyers and money. The merde is about to hit le ventilateur.
UPDATE 2: New Coltrane music has been found. Huzzah! This may solve the money issue?
https://www.newyorker.com/culture/the-front-row/both-directions-at-once-reviewed-the-thrillsand-limitsof-a-rediscovered-john-coltrane-recording
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September 23 marks the 89th anniversary of the birth of John Coltrane. While most people recognize Coltrane's name as that of one of the most important and influential musicians of the 20th century, few know that Coltrane is also a canonized saint of the African Orthodox Church.
There is a Church of St. John Coltrane in San Francisco, which anyone who lives in or near or travels to San Francisco should definitely visit -- no matter what your religious proclivities or lack thereof. The Church of St. John Coltrane is famous for its Sunday Jazz Services, based upon variations upon Coltrane's 1964 landmark recording A Love Supreme, with McCoy Tyner on piano, Jimmy Garrison on bass and Elvin Jones on drums. The work is divided into 4 parts:
Part 1 - Acknowledgement [7:47]
Part 2 - Resolution [7:22]
Part 3 - Pursuance / Part 4 - Psalm [17:50]
The following BBC documentary, Saint John Coltrane, was produced to mark the 50th anniversary of the recording of A Love Supreme, and which examines its origins and influence, and the development of the Church of John Coltrane.
There was a major earthquake 35km NE of Port-Olry on 20 October. Fortunately no casualties and minimal damage was reported.
Flag of Vanatu
But the news that is really grabbing Australasia and Oceania's attention is that -- after being convicted by the Vanuatu Republic's Supreme Court on corruption charges along with 13 other legislators on October 9 -- Vanuatu's Parliamentary Speaker Marcellino Pipite immediately invoked one of his powers as "acting president", since President Baldwin Lonsdale happened to be abroad on the 9th, to pardon himself and the other 13 MPs. Immediately upon his return, President Lonsdale overturned the pardons. On October 21st, the Supreme Court ruled the pardons unconstitutional.
Coat of Arms of Vanuatu
We hear of or read about places such as Vanuatu, but what about the people who actually live there?
Vanuatu is home to the "Jeux d'eau" or "Water Games" -- the highlight of which are Water Percussion competitions and demonstrations.
The following clip contains footage from the Jeux d'eau 2007, shot by videographers from the Museum of Music in Paris.
The following clip contains a demonstration of water percussion filmed at Banks Island, Vanuatu.
It is raw footage filmed by AJ Hickling as part of a self-funded hour-and-a-half film exploring Vanuatuan culture through percussion and rhythms, "Evolving Rhythms - Island Adventures"
The film contains some amazing performances, but the filmmaker's attention span is less than I prefer when i drum with someone, as much of the music is presented in tantalizingly (and maddeningly) short clips of local performers, whose performances are often used as samples rather than featured in full and explained and explored... Perhaps AJ should have done more listening and less smoking during his trip...
Here is an example of a Vanuatuan "stomp dance", filmed at a Chiefmaking ceremony in Bethel Village, Vanuatu. The percussion is provided by slit drums.
The final clip is footage of a ceremonial dance, of a type known as a "kastom dance", performed by the Smol Nambas people of Vanuatu. It was recorded on Maskelynes, one of the very small Vanuatuan islands, located off the coast of the larger island of Peskarus. The percussion instrument being played is a slit gong drum. The dance they are performing is called the "raft dance" and tells of how the Smol Nambas came to live on Maskelynes.
The videographer notes that -- while the ceremonies captured in this video are very sacred and performed at very specific times -- "The men were keen for me to film them and put the footage on the internet for the world to see but I was forbidden to show footage to any villager."
Five years ago, on October 20, 2010, Ariane Daniela Forster -- better known as "Ari Up" -- died of cancer in Los Angeles. She was only 48 years old.
Ari was the very essence of punk. After divorcing her German father, Ari's mother, Nora Forster, moved with Ariane to London and married John Lydon -- who was then in his "Johnny Rotten" incarnation -- making him Ari's step-father. Their household became a focus of intense musical and artistic activities of all sorts during the intensively creative period that followed The Ramones' first tour of the UK in 1976. That tour produced what is now referred to as "first generation punk", as well as "second generation punk", a term which covers bands such as The Buzzcocks, The Clash, The Ruts and The Slits, who were inspired by bands such as The Damned (the first band to record a "punk" single, "New Rose") and The Sex Pistols, which formed in reaction to The Ramones' 1976 tour, to DIY ("Spiral Scratch", the first Buzzcocks EP, was self-produced and self-distributed, which sparked an explosion in DIY labels and projects).
Despite her youth, Ari was an enthusiastic participant in all of this activity, co-founding the seminal punk band "The Slits" at the age of 14, after being taught to play the guitar by Joe Strummer and immediately beginning to compose music to accompany her poetry. Although The Slits are known as the first all-female punk band -- an all-female five-piece founded when Ari met former members of Flowers of Romance and The Castrators at her mum's place -- over the course of their career as a band, their line-up did include some men, including Budgie, who later became famous as the drummer for Siouxsie & The Banshees, and his and his wife Siouxsie's side-project, The Creatures.
As you can hear in "Typical Girls", Ari brought a dub influence to The Slits -- even persuading her band mates to have legendary reggae producer and bassist Denis Bovell produce their first album, "Cut", 1n 1979 (with a teenaged Neneh Cherry on loan from Rip Rig + Panic contributing backing vocals) -- which made them the perfect touring companions for The Clash in the late 1970s. Ari's flamboyance as a performer is well captured in Wolfgang Buld's 1980 documentary "Women In Rock", only a very short clip of which is available online.
Ari's irresistible energy -- and that of the early punk scene -- is featured in a 5-minute segment from another documentary, "Raw Energy", shot in 1978 and released in 1979 -- which alternates between live performances and interviews.
The Slits also made an unforgettable appearance in the 1978 "The Punk Rock Movie", trashing a bloke's car. The live portion of the footage of The Slits in performance included in the movie was shot in 1977 by Don Letts, most famous as a movie-maker and photographer who documented the birth and death of the original punk movement, who was also a member of Mick Jones' post-Clash project Big Audio Dynamite.
One of my favorite post-Slits side-projects of Ari's were her recordings and appearances with Adrian Sherwood's New Age Steppers -- who have been described as a "post-punk reggae supergroup" -- and which was/is comprised of many of the British-born "usual suspects" from the On-U stable of artists and produced by Adrian Sherwood. Here she is performing a reggae standard "My Guiding Star" with The New Age steppers.
Ari's best-selling hit as a solo artist was her infectious "Mi Done" from her 2005 album "Dread More Dan Dead."
Here is a more mellow dubwise version of "Me Done" with the lyrics delivered at a slower pace, recorded live by Ari Up & her band True Warriors live on the radio station that has done more to broaden my musical horizons than anything else in my life, WFMU, the world's oldest free-form radio station.
The Slits reformed in 2006, although Ari was only one of 2 original members to participate in the reassembly. For their initial EP, they recruited Paul Cook, who drummed for The Sex Pistols, and Marco Pirroni, who is best known for being Adam & The Ants lead guitarist and co-writer of most of Adam Ant's 1980s-era hits. As Narnack Records documented at her last label's website, the last project she worked on -- a video for The Slits' song "Lazy Slam" -- was released posthumously at Ari's request.
John William Cummings, better known as "Johnny Ramone," was born on October 8, 1948. The original members of The Ramones each took the surname Ramone to display their solidarity, unity and equality. The name was suggested by Dee Dee, who had heard that it was the surname that Paul McCartney used when he checked into hotels.
In a Guitar Player interview, collected in The Guitar Player Book, Johnny stated: "I guess that before me, people played downstrokes for brief periods in a song, rather than the whole song through. It was just a timing mechanism for me."
On the topic of The Ramones' songbook, Johnny often said that every Ramones song has everything a "regular" pop song has, only it's played really fast without any solos, so they simply end up being short.
On September 15, 2004, Johnny died of prostate cancer. He is buried at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery. Joey Ramone, who developed lymphoma, predeceased Johnny in 2001, Dee Dee Ramone died of a heroin OD in 2002. DeeDee's gravestone isn't far from Johnny's. The last of the original Ramones, Tommy, died, also of cancer, in 2014.
The best way to appreciate Jonny's artistry is to listen to the Ramones live. The "solos" that appear on Ramones records were actually overdubbed by either Ed Stasium, Walter Lure or Tommy Ramone. This is the oldest known footage of The Ramones performing at CBGBs on September 15, 1974:
Here is what was once extremely rare footage of The Ramones practicing a set, filmed at "the Fifth Ramone", Autoro Vega's NYC studio on February 3rd, 1975.
The most famous of The Ramones' live recordings is "It's Alive!" -- a full concert recorded on New Year's Eve 1977 at the Rainbow Theatre in London. The Ramones recorded four full concerts during their 1977 tour of the UK. The band's priority was to provide their fans with an accurate portrayal of their concerts, at which they played every song they'd recorded very very fast. To achieve this, they wanted to use a single, complete concert. Sire Records wanted to hedge its bets and cull the best performances from each concert and edit them together to form a "complete show". After 10 rows of seats were thrown at the stage after The Ramones left the stage for the last time at their New Year's Eve performance, and the London and UK musical press proclaimed it one of the best performances ever held at The Rainbow, Sire decided to use the entire New Year's Eve concert for a double-LP release. A little less than half-an-hour's worth of the New Years' Eve performance which was released on LP was also filmed;
October 8 is also the birthday of Tucker, who has done so very very much to keep we wanderers in the wilderness intact and in contact -- you may have noticed a few of us squatting all over Plum Street. Happy Birthday, Tucker!
I cannot find the extra columns you made for me. I am still searching. We need a new Bede's Beat. And I worry about your raggedy ass. I worry a lot because I heart you.
"Yeah now, if I have to swim a river, you know I will.
And if I have to climb a mountain, you know I will.
And if he's hiding up on a blueberry hill,
You know I'm gonna find that child you know I will.'
Tune in! Turn on! Please do not Drop Out! Hat tip to Timothy Leary.
Szomorú vasárnap was composed by Rezső Seress in 1933.
While the title of Seress' composition was translated into English as Gloomy Sunday, it was popularly known in both the U.S. and the U.K. as "the Hungarian suicide song" due to innumerable press accounts of people who cited the song in their suicide notes.
The song was even locally banned by several radio stations in the interest of "public morals." Seress himself committed suicide in 1968,
Marozsán Erika: Szomorú vasárnap (Gloomy Sunday)
The first person to sing Gloomy Sunday in English was Paul Robeson in 1936,
Robeson's English-language version was quickly followed by many others, perhaps most famously, that recorded by Lady Day:in 1941:
Gloomy Sunday has been recorded in may different styles and remains part of the soundtrack -- and an essential entry in the songbook-- of the 1930s and 1940s, and is still performed to this day.
Editor's Note: Bede was lost and now he's found. Huzzah!
It's a musical cliche to say that Charlie Parker changed the way we listen to music forever. It is also true.
In honor of his birthday, August 29, Bede's Beat presents a comparative listening set comprised of three of Parker's recordings of the same song -- Ray Noble's Cherokee -- which vividly illustrates the impact which Parker had upon the way we hear music and understand rhythm and harmonics today.
from 1941 with The Jay McShann Orchestra, the big band that first brought Parker to national attention:
from 1943, an home-recorded take on Cherokee -- This is bop at its birth:
from the famous Massey Hall Concert in Toronto in 1953, along with Dizzy Gillispie, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus and Max Roach:
As a final point of comparison, here is the original recording of Cherokee by the composer's own band, The Ray Noble Orchestra, from 1938
