Tag: Music

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I am irritated about all the falderal surrounding Macklemore’s Free Palestine comments.

Macklemore has every right to say what he said.

Ed Sheeran, or whoever it is that made the decision, has every right to remove him from the tour for saying what he said. Free speech has consequences. You have every right to say it but then I have every right not to listen. I do not have to provide you with a platform for your free speech.

Macklemore can continue to say Free Palestine in the numerous places willing to give him a platform. Given the controversy stirred up as a result of his actions, he seems to be doing fine with these new options for free speech. So how has Macklemore’s free speech been hindered by his removal from the tour?

He can’t say it in front of Ed Sheeran fans. Well, and I am just guessing here, a good many of them don’t want to hear controversial political statements at a concert. They just want to enjoy some music.

But they really need to hear what Macklemore is saying. Maybe. Maybe not. If, as an audience member I wanted to hear about Palestine, I would have gone to a Free Palestine protest instead of an Ed Sheeran concert so Macklemore is forcing his opinions on an audience who didn’t want to hear a Free Palestine speech. If the concert was advertised as a an Ed Sheeran and Macklemore concert with a little pro-Palestinian speech then I would feel a bit more uncomfortable about the removal of Macklemore from the tour. It wasn’t.

The free speech being practiced here is a one way street. Macklemore is speaking and his captive audience are listening. In this way, concerts are a terrible place to engage in political speech. It is all monologue and no dialogue.

Macklemore rolled the dice and he lost but spare me the tears and the beating of the breast.

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Simon and Garfunkel’s “For Emily, Whenever I May Find Her” isn’t for everyone. The lyrics borders on the saccharine but I still managed to find myself on the side of the border where I can recommend it. Garfunkel is a strong singer and this song gives him an opportunity to show how good a singer he actually is. He nails it and beyond. He is almost too perfect with his tenor voice bordering on the angelic which is where Simon’s guitar playing comes in. Simon blunts some of the sentimentality of this song with some aggressive guitar playing towards the end that redirects the song to a less lofty, more human plain.

I have to admit I need to be in a mood to listen to it but when the mood hits, it is the perfect song for a rainy day when you want to wallow in the sadness of life. You do need those days some day.

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I haven’t been to a concert in quite some time but apparently pooping in your seat so you don’t miss any of the show is now a thing.

Well, I don’t know what to say about this except I don’t think missing a few minutes of a concert, and I am talking about the Beatles here or the Rolling Stones or anyone for that matter, would cause me ever to decide to take a dump on my seat at a concert in front of thousands of other people just because I don’t want to miss “I Want to Hold Your Hand.” What the fucking fuck. WTFF.

And this article is blaming it on kids brought up during COVID. You mean that kids who were brought up to wash their hands a million times a day and wear a face mask to stop the spread of disease are going to find it perfectly OK to spread their diseased filled fecal matter to thousands of unsuspecting music fans? Huh?

GEEZUS.

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I don’t recall ever hearing Aretha Franklin’s version of “I Say a Little prayer for You” when it first came out. I was familiar with the famous Dionne Warwick’s version and, perhaps, because I have always associated the song with Warwick and it was the more well known version, there was no reason to investigate any other singers’ takes on the classic song.

For what ever reason, I just recently stumbled on Aretha Franklin’s version of “I Say a Little Prayer for You” and it is like listening to another song. Warwick’s excellent version is more polished and ethereal while Franklin’s is raw and passionate. Warwick is letting the man know she thinks about him. It is more of a seduction than a declaration of love whereas Franklin is confessing to passionate love.

Franklin’s musical arrangement is clever too. There is a point where she winds the song down so far that you think it is about to end when she ramps it right back up again. It is unexpected and exciting. Also the backup singers take on a bigger role than normally assigned to them. They take over the song at several points while Franklin seems to responding to them instead of the other way around. It gives an almost conversational tone to the song. They ask — he answers your prayers and Franklin answers he answers my prayers all right.

The whole effect is a powerful rendition of standard song. Nobody does female sensuality like Franklin and, if you want to hear her at her most passionate, it is worth a listen.

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Bob and I were discussing Leonard Cohen’s singing the other day and I really couldn’t argue with Bob’s point that Cohen’s singing is a bit strained. I couldn’t say why I liked Cohen’s versions of his songs but I do. To be clear, I also like other singers’ versions as well but Cohen’s problematic singing doesn’t bother me.

I will admit it isn’t great. There is a limited range and rarely goes to far from actual speaking the lyrics. Cohen, like another problematic singer/song writer Bob Dylan, has intriguing lyrics that sometimes can only the singer/song writer can capture. Cohen delivers the tone and emotional depth of what he is trying to say and how he wants to say it. For me, this makes up for any voice limitations. Cohen is very much the every man when he sings. For lack of a better way of saying it he sings like I think I would sing if I could sing.

Here is a link to Cohen singing Suzanne.

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I was watching Mad Men. Near the end of one episode, I thought I heard the lyrics, “He Hit Me (and it Felt Like a Kiss).” At first, I thought I must be wrong. What a terrible thing to say?

So I googled it, and much to my horror, I learned that there was indeed a song with that title. Even more disturbing, this paean to masochism was written by the husband and wife song writing duo Gerry Goffin and Carole King. You heard that right two of the most successful song writers of the 1960’s wrote the damn thing and, to boot, a woman was involved in the process. Not surprisingly, Phil Spector, a known wife beater, produced the original Crystals version.

What struck me most was how much has changed since 1961 when the song was written. Here is a woman realizing that her man loves her because he cares enough to hit her when she is untrue so much so that when he strikes her she feels a kiss. So 65 or so short years ago, a group of people in the music business though enough of a song about physical abuse to produce it and try to sell it to the public.

So whenever some idiot wants to talk about the good old days, you might sing a few line from the song below.

He Hit Me (and it Felt Like a Kiss)

He hit me
And it felt like a kiss
He hit me
But it didn’t hurt me

He couldn’t stand to hear me say
That I’d been with someone new
And when I told him I had been untrue

He hit me
And it felt like a kiss
He hit me
And I knew he loved me

If he didn’t care for me
I could have never made him mad
But he hit me
And I was glad

Yes, he hit me
And it felt like a kiss
He hit me
And I knew I loved him
And then he took me in his arms
With all the tenderness there is
And when he kissed me
He made me his

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One of my new ways to waste time is to search for new music. At least new music to me. So I google 100 best songs and you get a lot of different people’s list of favorite songs, then I pick songs that appeal to me and listen. Lately I have been focusing on outliers, songs that aren’t on everyone’s list as opposed to the ones that are on everyone’s list (think Bohemian Rhapsody by Queen).

This is how I found Paul Weller’s “You Do Something to Me.” His name wasn’t familiar to me and so I looked him and found out he had played in the band the Jam which I was vaguely familiar with. Given I liked “A Town Called Malice,” the one song I knew by the Jam, I decided to see why someone would put it on their top 100 list.

Despite finding the lyrics kind of sappy and confusing, it is a doomed love song — she does something for him but it just isn’t working for her. His voice is soulful and sad and somehow you want to hear his silly story even though you know it isn’t going to end well. Weller transform the song by giving it an emotional wallop it doesn’t quite deserve.

Oddly enough, I read that “You Do Something to Me” is a popular song at weddings. This may be the wrong point in the marriage to play it. A far better time would be the day the divorce papers were signed and you are sitting alone with a glass of wine looking at the photo album of better times. Regardless of your timing, you might enjoy a listen. I did.

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The other night I got reacquainted to Patty Griffin’s song Let Him Fly. It is a song about a woman breaking up with a man who isn’t ready, if he ever would be, to settle down. He isn’t a bad man just a wandering man, he honestly tells her this and she had some hopes of keeping him even though he told her so but she now realizes it is hopeless so she surrenders to her fate and lets him go.

Her lyrics are filled with sadness but absent of anger which carry the heavy weight in most break up songs. There is none of this you are a rotten son of bitch and I don’t know why I put up with you so long which consume most break up songs. It is sad without being vindictive. She loves him but she needs something more than he is willing to give. Two mismatched people instead of one good one and one evil one.

The song is spare — just a guitar and Griffin singing in her clear strong voice. At times you can barely hear her guitar, it follows her singing but does not direct it. I could imagine her singing this song a cappella.

Even though her album cover is for more than one song, it really fits the mood of “Let Him Fly.” It looks like someone crumpled up photograph of Griffin and then, having second thoughts, retrieved it from the trash bin because he decided he wanted to keep it. It certainly captures the spirit of the song.

I highly recommend Patty Griffin’s “Let Him Fly.”

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When I attended the University of Kansas in the late 1970’s, a friend who was an actor got a small role in the Peter Shaffer play Equus. Equus had several nude scenes in it and he was looking forward to blowing the minds of the people in Lawrence, Kansas. Lawrence was playing its own role here instead of a university town with a mostly cosmopolitan population, it was taking on the the role of a small Kansas town rife with closed minds about nudity. I also was taking a course in Modern Theater. The professor encouraged his students to see the play because he thought it would blow our minds. Using almost the exact words as my friend. Hmm.

Blowing the minds of the audience was very much a part of the purpose of this play. To ensure that the damage done to our minds was not so severe, there were warnings about the nudity in the play so everyone who entered the theater was prepared for the genital reveal which , at least to my mind, spoiled the whole shock value of having nudity in the play. I was waiting for it.

Then, the type of person who would wander into a student play at a University is just not your typical small town Kansan. They would be more academic, more cosmopolitan, and more open to nudity in the theater. By 1979, even in Kansas, most people who followed the arts already had seen their fair of nudity before Equus exposed them to some more. But how do you get them into theater to see the nudity? Oh, yeah, why don’t we create a little controversy and, lo and behold, it worked, the controversy brought people into the show.

This is what I think happened with Bad Bunny’s Half-time performance. It was meant to provoke a certain segment of the population. It successfully provoked them. They lost their minds as they do and started demanding all kinds of things which cause the Media to follow the controversy. This created a demand to see the show. It was a genius marketing ploy — hyping the first Spanish language performer at the Super Bowl. The buzz was great, a lot of people watched it because most people had no idea who Bad Bunny was or what they were about to see. The television advertisers got their audience, so the money they paid was well spent.

Everybody is happy — particularly, I imagine, Bad Bunny who got a lot of free press and millions of potential new customers for his music. For the vast majority of people, though, it was a meaningless experience in a life filled with meaningless experiences. But no one’s minds were seriously blown here. It will hardly be a memory in a year or two.

But you have to give credit to the the organizers of the show, they certainly showed they knew what they are doing. If you got something to sell, I certainly would recommend them. Buzz is their middle name.

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I have mixed feelings about Bad Bunny’s Super Bowl Half-time show on Sunday.

I only half paid attention to it. I would look up whenever somebody shouted there is Lady Gaga or there is Ricky Martin but other than that it held half of my attention at best. Before you get all bent out of shape about me not watching the show, I can also make the same admission about every Super Bowl Half-time show I ever witnessed. Half-time shows are a time to refresh my drink, to grab some grub and to go to the bathroom. I can’t recall ever being so mesmerized by a Half-time show to commit one to memory. To be fair, the actual football game falls into that category as well.

Frankly, I am too old for the shows. I rarely, if ever, have any personal knowledge of the entertainer who is flying in from the rafters or appearing in a whiff of smoke. I am also just a little bit bored with the annual outrage of whichever artist gets selected to perform. Nobody they choose is going to please everyone in such a diverse population. The artist will be too niche, too controversial, too sexy, too tame, too boring, too young, too old, and I think you get my point, anyone selected will be too too something. It is a fool’s errand and I think the Super Bowl Entertainment Committee would be best to go back to marching bands instead of big name entertainers.

That said, I do think there was a problem with Bad Bunny. Someone somewhere wanted to deliver a message to Middle America and Donald Trump. Trump obviously received that message given his vitriolic response. He got angry which is what he was supposed to do and like a well tuned clock — he did. Taking their cue from their master, the conservative talking heads screamed their agreement. Does it make any sense though? Putting on a show in which a significant majority of the people watching don’t speak the language seems unnecessarily provocative and more than a little petty.

If you are trying to put on a show that celebrates immigrants, perhaps using a common language would be helpful to the people who you are purportedly trying to influence, otherwise you are missing your target. Oh, but it was the most watched Half-time show in the history. I think “watched” is a pretty strong word here. I would argue it was more background noise and that most of Middle America could care less. It is a quick conversation the next morning and then back to work. By the end of the week, the rest of the country will have forgotten about it and moved on to watching skiers fall at the Winter Olympics.

All we really got out of Bad Bunny was another experience of Donald Trump foaming at the mouth which, lets face it, we could have elicited by any number of pokes in the eye. It isn’t terribly difficult. I can’t wait until next year when the Super Bowl Half-time Entertainment Committee decides to have the best opera singers and classical music artist performs to ensure that Americans get exposed to a culture that they are unaware of.