I have always loved the music of Sibelius, and was tickled to hear that he described the third movement of his violin concerto as “a polonaise for polar bears”. What a visual! It is a sort of lumbering piece. I also love the pieces he has done that are inspired by swans.
Carnival of the Animals and Peter and the Wolf are family favorites. Many composers were inspired by animals, like Delius On Hearing the First Cuckoo in Spring and Vaughan Williams Lark Ascending. Satie wrote about a dreamy fish, and Scarlatti wrote a keyboard sonata called the Cat Sonata. Vivaldi wrote about the goldfinch. Then, of course, there is Gershwin:
What are your favorite animal-inspired musical pieces or songs?
I was listening to a jazz station the other day and a song came on that I remembered.
“Li’l Darlin’”, a 1958 song by Neil Hefti for the Count Basie Orchestra. And I recall hearing it late nights on MPR with Leigh Kamman and the Jazz Image. I went down an internet rabbit hole looking up Leigh and the Jazz Image. He has a Wikipedia page. He even has a website created by his daughter and others.
He was on MPR for 34 years, in radio for 65 years.
Born in Minnesota in1922, he grew up in central Minnesota, and spent time during WWII in the Armed Forces Radio. The last edition of The Jazz Image was September 29, 2007, and he passed away in Edina, MN, at age 92 on Friday October 17, 2014. From the look of things, his contribution to jazz music is severely understated.
He used music of Alice Babs as his ‘filler music’. But Li’l Darlin must have been in there somewhere, how else would I have known it? And that led me to Count Basie, and a recording by the DePaul University Jazz Ensemble, and down the hole I went. I had forgotten how poetic he was on the program. From a substack website by Tyler King called “From Astaire to Sun Ra: A Jazz Journey”, there’s are quotes from some of his broadcasts: “wrapped in honey and floating on a cloud” or “Here we are in pursuit of a timber wolf howling across Miller’s Bay, Leach Lake; and we are headed to Star Route, Walker, Minnesota zip code 56484.” Pretty good imagery!
And in the words of Duke Ellington, “If it sounds good, it is good.”
Thanks for the memories, Mr. Kamman.
It must be spring as the college put out the ‘Ornery Goose’ seasonal email.
The college has several nesting geese. This one has moved to a new spot in the parking lot this year.
At home, I picked up the driveway markers, and I took off the rear blade, but I haven’t taken down the snow fence yet.
I have started picking up sticks, branches, and roots from the dirt work done last fall. It’s a little too muddy in places yet, especially with the rain and snow we’ve been getting lately, but there’s a lot to pick up and we’ll get them eventually.
And before it snowed and rained last week, I cleared a downed tree off the edge of a field and pushed brush back into the trees along the edge. Trying to keep nature at bay. Or least in its place. It’s a yearly battle.
The weather was so nice Friday evening, Kelly and I and the dogs sat out on the veranda for an hour. We didn’t have wine or even chairs; we just sat on the steps and talked and watched the chickens and the clouds and the world go round.
I’ve had three electricians working in the shop this week. One journeyman and two apprentices. There is so much planning and forethought required in this, it is one of those situations where I’m paying for his 20 years of practice, in addition to the 3 days of work. Look at the skill it takes to create concentric 90-degree bends. Plus, all the code requirements, and the cleanest way to get all the wires where they need to be with the least amount of conduit.
Part of me wonders why I hired this out and didn’t do it myself? All the aforementioned is why. Plus, he has a scissor lift.
I did pick up the lift early and mount the lights to the ceiling, and I’ll install the ceiling fans myself, but they’re doing the hard work.
It will be nice to have the large garage door opener hooked up, and outside lights when needed, and better inside lighting, and outlets all over, and a dedicated outlet for the air compressor, and two welder outlets! One inside, one outside!
Can’t wait. It’s gonna be SO COOL! And then really, I’m gonna stop spending money. On this.
I moved some tractors on Tuesday. I was going to hook up the big tractor to the soil finisher, my main spring implement, but decided it wasn’t quite time for that yet.
Moved the scrap metal tote outside so I can get to the grain drill. And it will be time to pick up seed shortly.
It’s interesting the chives growing wild are greening up, but the chives in the pot are not yet. The ground stays warmer than the cold air surrounding the pot I suppose is the reason.
Our community of 28,000 people has four Catholic churches and a very large parochial school system. The churches were originally started for and attended by the various immigrant groups who settled here. The Germans from Russia and the German Hungarians attended St. Joseph’s Church on the south side (less affluent section) of town by the railroad tracks and stockyards. The more affluent Czech immigrants attended St. Wenceslaus, north of the tracks, and the most affluent attended St. Patrick’s Church in the downtown area. The 1970’s oil boom led to a need for another church, Queen of Peace, built in the area of new houses near the interstate.
The Catholic School system has a big Mardi Gras celebration/fundraiser every your during the first weekend of February, ostensibly close to when Mardi Gras happens, although this year it was way earlier than Mardi Gras since Easter is so late this year. The festivities take place at the Catholic High School, just a block from our house. We have never attended, but I understand that every year it is the same with games of chance, big dinners, cakewalks, and fun activities for children. This year, however, they added something quite surprising-dance lessons.
Local dance teachers came to teach Line dancing and Swing dancing, and most surprising, Salsa dancing. We have a fair number of immigrants from Central and South America, and a group of them started a Salsa dance company that is apparently very popular and booked way out for for engagements. They also perform every December 12 at Queen of Peace in honor of Our Lady of Guadalupe. I found a video of Salsa dancing, and it just doesn’t fit the conservative stereotype of our Catholic community.
Can you imagine this happening at a Mass? It sounds like everyone at Mardi Gras had fun learning the moves. What next?
What are your memories of school dances?What is your favorite way to dance?
Yesterday was tiring but satisfying. We played in the bell choir at both morning church services, came home and packed up seven boxes of Dresden Stollen and cookies (one box had a Bremer Klaben instead of a stollen) and got them to the UPS store. We then played bells and sang at the annual Lessons and Carols service at our church in the afternoon. I got to read the Bidding Prayer again. By 5:00 PM we were done and free. We are heartily sick of being town musicians at Christmas.
By town musicians, I mean some of the few people who are active in the musical community in our small town. The majority of town musicians are affiliated in some way with our Lutheran church. Our local college had a vibrant and active music department with a band and a choir. They had music festivals for high school students and hosted lots of concerts. The recent college president decided that the music and theatre departments didn’t have enough student majors, so he closed them down last year. The Education department has enough music education majors and they need to have some sort of music going on, so they have a band of one person and a choir of six singers. Our bell choir played with them two weeks ago at a Christmas concert in the college student center. Had our bell choir not been there, it wouldn’t have been much of a concert. I should add that the decision by the college president was so unpopular he quit. I don’t think they will reinstate the music department, though.
The Lessons and Carols service was lovely, and our church music director had a local classical guitarist, someone I had never heard of, play the following piece.
The guitarist appears to be Spanish. I have no idea how he got to North Dakota, but it was delightful to hear him. We have only one more vocal choir performance next Sunday, and no rehearsals this week, so we are free to relax and chill. Christmas hysteria is over, at least in our house. I may need to order more classical guitar recordings, though.
What musical instrument would you like to hear more of? How is the Christmas hysteria at your abode?
I am not too sure why I started thinking about Dr. Zhivago last week, but I did, and that led to memories of our Italian landlords in Winnipeg.
Angela and Emilio lived in a modest home not too far from the University, and when the house next to them came up for sale, they snatched it up. It was a very tiny, two bedroom home with a large enclosed porch and a nice sized garden in the back. There was an alley that ran in the back, and an unattached garage.
Emilio and Angela were from Calabria and immigrated to Canada in the mid 1960’s. Emilio was a ceramic tile layer and flooring guy. He had invented and perfected a way of laying tile that made him the fastest in the city. He wouldn’t let anyone watch him work because he didn’t want anyone else to learn his method. Angela was a homemaker. They bought the house next door out of an Italian desire to be able to control who lived near them. We were their first renters.
Angela told me that Emilio immigrated first, before they married, and she followed several months later. They married in Winnipeg. She told me her first impression of Winnipeg flying over the city was that the rows and rows of houses looked like rows of grave stones in a cemetery. She said that Lara’s Theme from Dr. Zhivago was “their song” since it spoke of lovers finding a place where they could be together. I thought that quite sweet. They managed to make a good life for themselves.
What are your favorite romantic movies? Did you ever have a song that you considered yours?
During the last two months we have had an unusual number of mechanical failures. The CV joint on my van was leaking, requiring a new front axle. Husband needed new tires on his truck. The kitchen faucet broke, and was replaced. Our big kitchen mixer broke down and was replaced just before Christmas baking started. Last week my blow dryer gave up. I had to go to work on the coldest day of the year with wet hair. It was an expensive couple of months.
Yesterday I felt quite broken down. Monday was my annual checkup. The good news is that I am the picture of health. The bad news was getting both a Covid shot and a flu shot at the appointment. I woke up Tuesday morning feeling as though I had been hit by a truck. I stayed home from work. I felt better as the day progressed. At least that is over for another year.
What are your favorite disaster songs, poems, stories, and movies? Have you had your shots?
When Alice’s Restaurant Massacre by Arlo Guthrie was recorded in 1967, I was 11 years old. I remember it clearly and saved up to buy the record album pretty quickly. I couldn’t find any little clips, so this is the whole thing.
I loved folk music – it made me feel quite part of the times. Not quite rebellious – I didn’t have much to be rebellious about. My folks were quite liberal for the times; once when I was in junior high they excused me from school so I could protest against the war with the Webster College kids (college was between our house and the junior high). Although I don’t know if either of them ever listened to Alice’s Restaurant, I’m pretty sure at least my father would have thought it was quite funny.
In looking up the dates I discovered that the song, sometimes referred to as “talking blues” is also known as a “shaggy dog” story. Wikipedia defines it as “an extremely long-winded anecdote characterized by extensive narration of typically irrelevant incidents and terminated by an anticlimax. In other words, it is a long story that is intended to be amusing and that has an intentionally silly or meaningless ending.” Mark Twain, Gogol and Isaac Asimov were all cited as contributors to this “genre”. Who knew?
Arlo was adamant that he used the name Alice’s Restaurant because he liked it, not because the restaurant in the song was anything like the actual restaurant, owned by a friend of his, Alice Brock.
Alice was an artist, a restauranteur and a writer. She thought the song was funny but did not like the movie. She felt that she was wildly misrepresented in the movie and was fairly vocal about it, hence Arlos’ comments that it wasn’t HER restaurant in the song. One of the movie’s producers apparently made it possible for her to publish a cookbook.
As the years went by she came to appreciate how her role in the song and movie had somehow catapulted her into a 60s icon. Brock even recorded a series of custom introductions to Alice’s Restaurant for stations that regularly play the song on Thanksgiving. She and Arlo also combined their talents for a children’s book, Mooses Come Walking, and they remained friends until her death.
Alice passed away last Thursday, just a week from Thanksgiving, the holiday that inadvertently shoved her life into fame and recognition. I will have to play the whole Massacre tomorrow while I’m getting my vegetarian sourdough sage stuffing ready.
I’m re-reading Fried Green Tomatoes for Sunday – not sure the first time I read it but it was quite some time ago, before the movie.
In the chapter about Stump and his friend Peggy taking a picture of the dead Harold Pinto, Fannie Flagg writes that “Peggy screamed … and Stump squealed like a girl.” I did a double-take and re-wound the CD a bit to make sure I’d heard it correctly. Ticked me off.
That made me think about the end of Sahara, a movie that I adore even though it has so many plot holes that you could strain rice through it, when the Matthew McConaughy characters says “you do throw like a girl”. This pisses me off every time I watch the movie. Since it’s the very end of the movie, often I just turn it off at the beginning of that scene.
Guess I have trouble with phrases ending “like a little girl”. I don’t even like the Bob Dylan song although “she breaks just like a little girl” isn’t quite as derogatory as the usual “like a girl” comment.
Run like a girl, cry like a girl, squeal like a girl, throw like a girl, drive like a girl (one of those Allstate Mayhem commercials) – these all drive me crazy.
I guess don’t really have anything else to say – just ranting today.
Any words/phrases that make you nuts? Anything you need to rant about?
I see that the Badlands Opera Project, our local opera company, is putting on Amahl and the Night Visitors again this December. They staged it last year, with our church choir director and her 12 year old daughter as Amahl’s mother and Amahl. Both have wonderful voices. This year’s production will have a different Amahl and mother, this time a mom and son duo.
All the singers are local, except for the guy who sings the part of the tallest King with the deepest voice. He sings that part and other low, cameo roles such as Zarastro from The Magic Flute, all over the county. I am not sure where he is from, but he isn’t from ND. Imagine having a specialty voice like that. He’ll be back for this year’s production. I guess he really liked singing with our local company.
If I could magically have a voice other than the low alto voice I have, I would want to be a belter like Patti Lupone in Anything Goes. Of course I would also have to be able to dance, which would be a problem, I’m afraid. Oh well, I suppose I could magically make myself a dancer, too.
If you could magically get an operatc or musical theater voice, what roles would you want to perform?
Yesterday was Reformation Sunday, a big day in the Lutheran Church. At our Lutheran congregation it was also the day for the 9th graders to get confirmed. Husband and I are both choir members, and we sang at both services.
I am a lifelong Lutheran, but I have never liked the Lutheran penchant for singing every single verse of every hymn. Even though I am a church musician, singing verse after verse is annoying and exhausting. Yesterday was particularly annoying, since many of the hymns had five verses. We barreled through A Mighty Fortress and Built On A Rock. I was thankful, that the slow, emotionally expressive organist had the day off. When she plays, she takes us slower and slower through each verse and song. She has no understanding of the difficulty of breath support for singers during slow hymns. I was also thankful that for the second service when confirmation was held, they cut all the hymn verses to three to save time. What a relief! Husband and I came home and took three hour naps.
What do you find annoying about the organizations you belong to? What songs do you like to sing?
Trail Baboon 