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THE ABSURD TIMES
My break from Insanity AbsurdTimes's Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. by Honest Charlie Jack Smith is a rather establishment type, life-long Republican, and used to prosecute guys like, er, Slabbodan Milosovitch and other war criminals. Frankly, I don't think Trump measures up to his standards. I decided not to download the indictment, despite everyone calling the indictment a "masterpiece". Besides, I haven't finished WAR AND PIECE this time yet. I need some time off from this insanity and absurdity and just had to get away from it. It is said that thinkers laugh and feelers cry at bad events. Well, I just went numb. Now here is what I was thinking of and soon I'll be able to deal with crap again. The world according to Art was simply too accurate for consumption, so that will stop. It's really time for some anecdotes or factoids if that word is OK. When we ask if someone likes music, everyone says yes. That's the general category. However, if we get down to specific examples, things get very diverse. However, most people do not see how so many genres are related, or how specific instances transcend these categories. This is an attempt to illustrate that. Perhaps the most well-known composer of the 20th Century was Igor Stravinsky. His RITE OF SPRING is an amazing bit of work and before that, even more groundbreaking (a "vile phrase" as Shakespeare once put something), was his FIREBIRD, or "Firebird Suite", both, incidentally, for ballets. THE RITE OF SPRING is extremely – I can't think of an appropriate word for its exuberant sexuality. Still, Firebird broke the ground. Yes, Shostakovich, Prokofieff, Schoenberg, and others were important, but FIREBIRD gained attention. It is amazing, or used to be, to go into a record store (yes, they once had them, even with all cd's) and ask for the "Classical section": a Oh yeah, Rolling Stones? B no, I mean a Ah, I know, Hank Williams, Earnest Tubb, them good ol boys? B No, Now I … a Yeah, we got lots a Dixie Land. B Where's the Bach? A Back to what? B Never mnd, just lemme look around. Eventually, you might find what you were looking for. Well, anyway, on with the discussion. We were with Igor, and I hope he now takes his place as a named master of classical music composition. Let's move to another genre. Charlie Parker is undoubtedly the tower, the main icon, of Jazz, and he and his saxophone. His nickname was "Bird" and there are many versions of how he got that nickname and we don't need them here. Suffice it to say that, if you live in a city like New York, Chicago, etc., there is a jazz club named "Birdland".i He was certainly dedicated and respected in all jazz circles. The only comparison I can think of is Babe Ruth in baseball. While people today know that his single-season record has been beaten, perhaps with 72 or more Home Runs by now, the number alone does not quite establish the seriousness of that record. Not only did he hit 60 home runs, but that amounted to more than the entire number of them hit by half of the other league, all teams combined. It is one thing to hit ten more than your nearest rival, but quite another to more than the aggregate of half the rest of the league. Well, it was about this time that Stravinski was working on his RITE OF SPRING, a raucous, syncopated, work and someone told him about Charlie Parker. Igor was working with the New York Philharmonic and was interested in this music as the rhythms were extremely non-classical. He visited the club where Bird was playing and hid in the back, but Parker recognized him during one solo passage. He burst into the theme from The Firebird immediately, and Stravinski was greatly affected. Contemporary accounts vary, but they all agree on his knocking a piece of the tableware off and to the ground in reaction. Another account of Bird has his band looking for him as there was a set coming up and he wasn't there. They frantically looked for him all over nearby New York and finally found him in some Honkey Tonk bar. His band members were shocked to see him listening to Hank Williams Sr., Hank Snow, and others of that genre. They kidded him and scoffed at the music, but Parker said "But listen to the stories, man, listen to the stories," meaning the lyrics. One fact about it, they told of real situations and no fantasies about a boy and girl in high school in love. No, they told of a guy killing his girl because she wouldn't marry him ("Knoxville Girl,") and guys dying of thirst in the desert ("cool water") and so on. Now we have three genres tied together – all through Charlie Parker, but it is possible with others as well. For example, it is easy to dislike Merle Haggard because of his stupid OAKIE FROM MUSKOGY song, but I understand that those who knew him in Nashville found it interesting as he was one of the most loyal to the weed. Another would be Willie Nelson and a song titled SMOKING WILLIE'S WEED was written by another well-known singer "Bye, bye, Miss American … and so on.". In other words, we need to make the distinction between the artist and the audience. Just realize that Willie and Waylon Jennings thought about the Red-Headed Stranger and thought that Charlie Pride would do great job with it just as he did with several Hank Williams songs. Well, they knocked on his door and offered him the song. In case it is news, he was the main black country singer and he said "Are you guys nuts? You want me, a black guy, to go into one of these honkey tonks and sing a song about shooting a white sheriff? No way" and I think he slammed the door on them. I would have. Loretta Lynn died just this year, but she was in the middle of a wild controversy when she recorded her song about THE PILL. They tried to ban her records. How dare she support birth control? It seems like a long time ago, but it is a central issue in modern politics. No, Loretta never even considered "taking it back". They did destroy the Dixie Chicks over Iraq. Ok, some other bits of interesting trivia: Notice that in several very large cities, the one that would first establish commercial television, ABC is on channel 7? You must be familiar with seeing the 7 with a circle around it for the ABC news, as well. How did that happen since the higher the channel, the shorter the range of the signal? Surely, since they were there first, they would have picked 2 or 3? Well, at that time, it was assumed that the other channels would be reserved for the military. Just imagine how paranoid things were back then. Shortly later, only channel 1 seems to be reserved and someone else can explain that. I can tell you that between channels 6 and 7 is the entire FM band. The original one of its inventor was a bit lower in wavelength and he was destroyed. Originally, some AM stations operated at 300Kw (300 thousand Kilowatt effective radiated output). I think the WGN of INHERIT THE WIND was at that power then, also one in Cincinnati. Now it is 50K, but some on the border with Mexico, XERF for example, are much higher still and referred to as "border-busters" as studios were in Del Rio, Texas. (That is the station that actually broadcast the pink and purple plastic Jesus.) The Kennedy administration changed many things for the better. Newton Minnow (yeah) was appointed head of the FCC after he referred to television as a "Vast Wasteland". He started Public television, called "educational", and eventually forced all radio manufacturers to make their radios capable of receiving FM as well as AM stations. The companies fought it, but the Kennedys stuck behind him. Well, so much for nostalgia. I'll be able to deal with absurdity soon. Three indictments and counting. What kind of person really believes that the only thing between them and persecution is Donald Trump? Do we go back to the days (I heard this on a transcription of old-time radio) when they kept "women pregnant in the summer and barefoot in the winter"?) of old-time mentality? Well, I'm not looking forward to it, but I'll get back to the fight! AbsurdTimes's Newsletter is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber.
© 2023 Honest Charlie
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Tuesday, August 08, 2023
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