Still going after all these years.
Another quick link check round:
On Tuesday I wrote about Dave Brubeck’s Christmas recording recalling holiday traditions of people gathered round the piano in the parlor, playing and singing. As I did so, I reflected that this probably isn’t a tradition for everyone. Our family is atypical in a bunch of ways, notably in having musical talent on both sides.
Then again, we’re also atypical in our taste in holiday music. For about twenty-five years, one of our favorite holiday recordings has been an odd record of carols by the Boston Camerata. The repertoire includes Middle English carols (yes, Chaucerian English, and Latin as well) that span the 12th through 15th centuries, and a rich selection of 18th and 19th century carols from England and America. The performances were recorded during a crossroads in early music, when popular performance practice was still introducing primitive instrumental accompaniment (typically viols and rudimentary wind instruments) to choral music that originally would have been performed unaccompanied. But, as on the pivotal Music of the Gothic Era recording, the voices take center stage. Even without understanding Middle English (and the diction here is impeccable), the listener is carried away by the sheer energy and enthusiasm of the singing. And the early American tunes have the same propulsiveness; the shape-note carol “Sherburne” can ring your room and rattle your rafters if you’re not careful.
There are only a handful of carols that will be familiar to most listeners on this disc, including “Sunny Bank” (“I saw three ships”) and “The Coventry Carol,” but the performances are so compelling that you may want to learn Middle English or the Sacred Harp singing style to pick up some new favorites. My friends in the Suspicious Cheese Lords and I did just that with “Nowel, Owt of Your Slepe,” “Nova, nova: Aue fitt ex Eva,” and “Sherburne,” all of which we performed several times during my tenure with the group. A holiday essential that reaches back to earlier times and brings them vibrantly to life. That ever was thralle, now ys he fre; That ever was smalle, now grete is she; Now shall God deme bothe the and me Unto his blysse yf we do wel. Nowell!
(Incidentally, the Camerata’s web site includes a discography page with lo-fi MP3 previews of some of the tracks from this album.)
Weblogs.com hit a new high water mark yesterday; at the peak during the day, 4,851 weblogs updated in a three hour period.
Note the high R-squared value (0.953) for this log normal plot, based on fitting the data with an exponential curve. Compare against the linear R-squared value from the last high water mark in October, which had fallen to 0.784. Based on the data and the steadily decreasing R-squared value for the standard linear regression, I think it’s now safe to say that the data confirms that the high water mark grows at an exponential rate. Source data, as always, is available here under a Creative Commons license.
Fabulous thread on Slashdot about Kermit (the file transfer protocol and application, not the Frog). I remember, back in the day (like, 1993), when using Kermit over a modem was the only way one could deal with the truly astounding line noise on the local phone lines in Charlottesville. Mind, this was over a 2400 baud modem, to which I could actually send Hayes modem codes to improve performance. Remember that? No, of course not. It was in another country, and besides, the wench is dead (Marlowe).
The other thing is, I can’t remember the name of the Macintosh program that I used Kermit over. I know there was a MacKermit, but there were other tools as well, including some that supported the long-demised Communications Toolbox. Man, those were the days.
Today’s holiday album that doesn’t suck is…well, not really a holiday album. This 1960 recording of Ellington and his orchestra collects three big band arrangements of well-known suites, classical and otherwise: Edvard Grieg’s “Peer Gynt” suite, Ellington’s own “Suite Thursday,” and the reason for this disc’s inclusion in my holiday “must listen” pile, Tchaikovsky’s “Nutcracker Suite.”
What Ellington and his band do to this chestnut has to be heard to be believed. Who knew that Piotr Illych could swing this hard? (Well, maybe Piotr Illych did. He was a pretty wacky cat.) The suite takes on new life and color in Duke’s able hands. The orchestration is superb, with melody lines jumping from instrument to instrument and big satisfyingly crunchy chords filling out the corners of the familiar Nutcracker melodies. But the real story is in Duke’s rhythmic innovations around the edges of the melodies. The “Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy,” here recast as “Sugar Rum Cherry,” is played as a slow slinky swinger. The Russian Dance (“Volga Vouty”) is almost funky as a slow burner. And the faster numbers rock out, with the March (“Peanut Butter Brigage”), Entr’act, and Arabesque Dance (“Arabesque Cookie”) swinging so hard that even the most seasoned swing dancer would break a sweat on the ballroom floor.
After years of my sister’s ballet class dancing the Nutcracker, I never thought of the music as a holiday must listen, but this recording changed my mind. Duke and his band turn it into a modern holiday classic.
A month or two back I had a small scrape-up backing out of my garage. We had been parking the wheelbarrow just inside the garage door on my side; no longer. Backing out one morning, in a hurry, I cut it too close. The inside front fender lip caught the stand of the wheelbarrow, and I heard a crunch. When I got out, I found the top of the bumper panel had popped loose. Looking closer, I found I had managed to pull the panel forward until it got pulled off its slide connector, so the panel was now flapping loose. And I couldn’t pull it by my own strength to put it back in place.
Cut to tonight. I found instructions for removing the bumper in my shop manual, and got to work:
I used to futz around on my MG, and actually managed to replace a fuel pump without assistance once, but this is the first modern car repair I’ve done in several years. The fact that it doesn’t involve a critical system of the car is definitely beside the point.
Continuing my review of my personal favorite holiday recordings, today’s disc is A Dave Brubeck Christmas. This latter-day collection of solo piano numbers has a parlor ambience to it, as though Dave were sitting at your grandmother’s old upright piano. Dave covers a set of mostly standards with a few of his own compositions in fine Brubeck style.
Now, when I say “Brubeck style,” don’t expect the thundering blocked chords and odd time signatures of Time Out. The approach here is much less fiery. At his liveliest on this recording, on “‘Homecoming” Jingle Bells” and “Santa Claus is Coming to Town” Dave calls to mind great stride pianists like Fats Waller, with a little Count Basie thrown in for good measure. Most of the other numbers are approached with melodic inventiveness but contemplative tempos. The end result is a hushed anticipation that recalls Brubeck Plays Brubeck, his groundbreaking 1956 solo album recorded at home late at night as he tried to keep from waking his infant children. The comparison is apt: Brubeck says he was trying to recapture some of his favorite holiday memories of playing with his family. The end result is more “drowse by the fire” than “jingle bell rock,” but having a little help to get out of the holiday bustle and into a meditative mood during the season never hurts. Recommended.
One note about the sound: this is a Telarc recording, and like all Telarc discs is recorded with a much quieter playback volume than typical rock or jazz albums. As a result the disc doesn’t really play well in a changer, shuffled among other recordings, unless you have your hand on the volume knob at all times. Better to go ahead and turn up the sound and listen to the album straight through.
One of the groups I sang with Saturday night was a country and bluegrass group whose leader jokingly told me, “You better speak Southern if you want to sing with us.” I told him, “I might could do that,” in my best Appalachian twang, and got in. Today my Tennessean officemate unconsciously used the same construction, so I started wondering where it came from.
I researched the usage and found the following great article by Tom King about might could:
The use of so-called “double modal” constructions is quite common in the
South and Southwest. I come from Dallas originally, and such
constructions as you have cited are common there in everyday speech, and
they serve a real linguistic purpose: modal forms such as ‘could’ and
‘should’ are ambiguous in Modern English, as they have both an
indicative and a subjunctive sense. For example, “I could come” can mean
either “I was able to come” (past indicative of ‘can’) or “I would be
able to come” (subjunctive). In German, the two forms are distinct:
“ich konnte kommen” vs. “ich koennte kommen”. The use of double modal
constructions with ‘may’ or ‘might’ serves to reintroduce this
distinction. Thus, for a Southerner, “I might could come” or “I may
could come” carry the subjunctive meaning, whereas “I could come” is
only indicative in meaning….The use of double
modals in Southern American English fills a gap in Standard English
grammar, namely the loss of inflectional distinction in English between
indicative and subjunctive modals. Dialect or regional forms are often
more progressive in gap-filling than is a standard language. Consider
the sad case of ‘you’, which is ambiguous in Standard English between
singular and plural meanings. Here the regional forms have been quite
productive: “y’all” in the South (***only plural!!!!***) or similar
forms elsewhere.
In other words, twang loud and twang proud.
Today’s holiday recording is a new one, a serendipitous iTunes Music Store find. Who knew that James Brown had recorded not one, but two holiday albums of original Christmas songs? Fortunately, someone saw fit to reissue the stuff on one disc, the Christmas Collection.
So does the world really need another Christmas album full of holiday chestnuts, even from the Hardest Working Man in Show Business? Fortunately James Brown was too smart to waste an opportunity to write great soul music. Most of the tunes are originals, with such super funk material as “Go Power at Christmas Time,” a Motown-flavored soul number; “Santa Claus Go Straight to the Ghetto,” in which James Brown simultaneously hits the holiday theme while pulling at the social conscience; and the slow jams “Merry Christmas Baby” and “Merry Christmas, I Love You.” Other standouts include “Santa Claus is Definitely Here to Stay,” the fabulous six and a half minute slow burn of “Let’s Make Christmas Mean Something This Year,” and the gorgeous cover of “The Christmas Song.” If the strings get a little strong at times, it just sounds like they got swept up by the excitement along with everyone else. A new favorite antidote to the six thousandth playing of “White Christmas.”
Incidentally, for an example of Christmas music by soul artists that just didn’t work out, check out this twofer collection of Christmas albums by Jackie Wilson and Al Green. Oh boy, what a stanker. Wilson badly wants to be singing opera but succeeds only in singing cheese. And the Reverend Green is in good voice, but is smothered by his early-80s backing band, or rather backing tracks. Yes, it sounds like someone went into Circuit City and grabbed every cheap keyboard and drum machine they could find. Skip it.
I almost forgot: my second annual EMP performance went great. I sang tons of backup, including backing up one of the group managers on “My Girl” (he did it with Motown style—actually having been a performing musician at one time; he and his group even opened for the Righteous Brothers once); also backup on a few newgrass/country songs and a classic rock set including “Tumbling Dice” and “The Weight.” “Little Wing” was solid, though there was a little confusion about the song structure at the beginning leading to a 96 bar intro instead of a 64 bar one. But my vocals were actually OK, and I think I finally exorcised some of the Sting influence, taking it a little bit more in my own style. It was a great evening but too short.
The best part was probably coming home to find, even after four hours, that our dogs had kept each other company and weren’t freaked out by our absence. The joys of puppy parenthood…
I alluded on Friday to something keeping me from blogging. The wraps can now be removed. In the last month, we’ve added two new members to the family: two Bichon Frise puppies.
In early November, we welcomed Joy, who was the runt of her litter at about two pounds when we brought her home at 8 weeks old. We worked through toilet training (she can now go on command and ring a bell when she needs to go outside), bite training, “sit” and “lay down” (well, we’re still working on those), and basic leash behavior.
At the end of all that, we felt we were at a point where we needed something or someone else to keep her occupied. We had always wanted two small dogs—they keep each other from getting bored if we can’t be around them, and that way there’s one for each lap. So we were simultaneously saddened and intrigued when our favorite boy dog from the litter, a pup named Madison, was returned to the breeder on Thanksgiving Day. (The previous owner claimed he made her “allergic”—see what the Bichon club FAQ has to say on that point.) After some soul searching, we finally bit the bullet and brought Madison—whom we promoted one president and who is starting to answer to his new name, Jefferson—home on Thursday.
The two dogs are great together, and like their parents have very distinct personalities. Joy is high energy, mischievous, slightly goofy, and a very restless sleeper, while Jefferson is sweet, calm, loves to sleep, and is frequently found snoring. Draw your own conclusions.
My sleep is starting to return to normal, so we decided it was time for full disclosure about our newest family members. More photos to be added soon, but those in this slide show should give you an idea of how much fun we’ve had.
I’m a sentimental fool about Christmas music. Every year I drag out an assortment of discs for the holidays, and each year I rediscover that they span from the sublime to the ridiculous. This year I wanted to put my notes down about the best so that I don’t (and you don’t) make the same mistakes next year.
Today’s disc is Duluth, MN slowcore band Low’s unlikely Christmas EP. You may remember one of the songs, their version of “Little Drummer Boy,” from a Gap Christmas commercial a few years back. But don’t let the commercial association fool you. This is an absolute classic Christmas album of the finest order. From the direct-to-flexi-sounding lo-fi upbeat—nay, downright jangly—original song “Just Like Christmas” that opens the year, to the faithful if slow covers of “Blue Christmas” and “Silent Night,” the disc covers all the expected bases for a holiday album. But the covers subscribe to Low’s uniquely intense, spare vision, and the songs are transformed.
Nowhere is this more evident than in the cover of “Little Drummer Boy.” Here the “rum-pa-pum-pums” are slowed (each verse takes about a minute and a half) and laid over an organ drone, which in turn sounds like it’s laid over about 40db of tape hiss. At that speed, the words (conveyed by the sweet harmonies of Mimi Parker and Alan Sparhawk) stop being trite and start being deeply meaningful.
Add to this the unique originals “If You Were Born Today,” “One Special Gift,” “Long Way Around the Sea,” and “Taking Down the Tree,” which is the only paean to after-holiday-cleanup that I’m aware of, and you have a short but essential holiday classic.
According to email I received from the alumni office this morning, Charles Vest has announced his intention to retire from the presidency of MIT (link to letter).
I didn’t get to see Mr. Vest in action very much in the two years I was in my graduate program, but he certainly presided over a lot of change. It will be interesting to see who follows him in the office; only one other person has served longer as Institute president.
In preparing for this year’s holiday party at the EMP’s Liquid Lounge, we tried to get “Nobody’s Fault” ready but it didn’t quite happen. However, we did find a tune that worked better: Jimi Hendrix’s “Little Wing.” It’s a gorgeous song, with lyrics that, while trippy, don’t get in the way of the beauty of the melody.
I learned the song from Sting’s version on his …Nothing Like the Sun album. His approach to the melody is more sympathetic with my vocal chords, so I’ll end up singing that version while George Bullock and my general manager, Tim Sinclair, do the axework. It should be fun.
I also get to sing backup on some Stones, Springsteen, and other tunes. If I have any vocal cords left by the end of the evening it’ll be a miracle.
All this is by partial apology for the light blogging this week. This has been one of two things keeping me busy. The other? You’ll have to wait another couple of days to find that one out.
As pointed out by Tony Pierce (see his “Nooooooo” at the bottom of the entry) and BoingBoing, BlogShares has gone the way of all websites. Seyed Razavi, BlogShares’ creator, says he came to the decision after recent technical difficulties illustrated for him that keeping the service online required an active developer and operator, and that revenues from the site were declining.
I enjoyed playing the game for a while, but recently only checked in on my portfolio once every few months.