Philadelphia Ukulele Orchestra, featuring cdm (smiling debonairly at left side of fez-wearing member at top center) and chickenfrank (middle row, center, sporting W.B. Mason Look).
I have been remiss in thoroughly touting and covering the Philadelphia Ukulele Orchestra, the brainchild of our very own Townsman cdm. The band also features chickenfrank and, possibly, others who check into the Halls of Rock on occasion. Thankfully, the Philadelphia Inquirer is on the case!
To listen to a recording of the magical Philadelphia Ukulele Orchestra is one thing. Its eponymously titled CD is a delightful Tin Pan Alley soundtrack to a make-believe movie filled with billing, cooing, and courting.
To listen in a live setting is another thing altogether. The orchestra is an awesome force to behold: 12 men and women, without camp or irony, wearing smoking jackets and fezzes while strumming and plucking their delicate instruments and crooning the most playful of early pop songs.
This CD has been on permanent rotation in our kitchen since its release. Mrs. Moderator has whipped up dozens of amazing meals for both the family and dinner/party guests while singing along. Highly recommended!
Just yesterday I was ranting about the Pompous Rock March of “Eminence Front,” and I made reference to another song I find especially hectoring and unpleasing, Pink Floyd‘s “Have a Cigar.” That song, like a lot of Pink Floyd song, is the aural equivalent, for me, of the rare times I feel nauseous. “What enjoyment do people get out of feeling nauseous?” I ask myself whenever it comes on the radio.
Driving home from a great dinner out with my wife and friends last night the radio punished me with a double-shot of Hectoring Rock Marches: Tom Petty‘s interminable”You Got Lucky” followed by, you guessed it, “Have a Cigar”! I, in turn, punished my wife by complaining through the entire Tom Petty song and the intro of the Floyd song, at which point she called bullshit on me.
“Can you ever shut up through a song?” she snapped at me. “If you like it, I have to hear you point out all the little parts you think are cool, making it impossible for me to hear the song itself. If you don’t like it, I get this.” She drove it home with this crushing aside: “For 22 years…”
I told her I was turning over a new page immediately, and quickly thought to myself how fortunate I am to have you as an outlet.
As the New Me quietly let “Have a Cigar” play—because to change the station on a song that my wife likes less than I do (and doesn’t even get joy in criticizing) would still be tantamount to yet another editorial from me—I started wondering what the point was of being in Pink Floyd after Syd Barrett left and they developed their classic sound. Was there any joy in membership in Pink Floyd? Do they ever sound like they’re having a laugh while playing a song? Do you imagine them sharing inside jokes over pizza during recording breaks? Did they ever high-five each other over a well-played part or performance? Did anyone but Roger Waters even care when the pig took flight?
One of the things I love most about music and about playing in a band is the camaraderie, the communal vibe, the knowing glances. I will grant there are some cool things in even the most nauseating Pink Floyd songs, but they rarely if ever give off the sense that they’re brothers in arms, or whatever corny term might apply. It’s as if they are drab office or factory workers being recorded without their knowledge or regard.
In some ways it’s admirable that they were so dedicated to their craft, so ascetic that they did not allow themselves to whistle while they worked. In many ways, however, I will never relate.
Yesterday, while flipping stations in my car, I was faced with an extremely challenging Morton’s Fork; that is, I was stuck between a rock and a hard place. All of the stations I had programmed in were on commercial break except for our local Oldies station and our local Classic Rock station. The Oldies station was playing Jimmy Buffet’s‘s “Margaritaville”; the Classic Rock station was playing The Who’s‘s “Eminence Front.”
I never thought it possible that a match up of any Who song with Jimmy Buffett would lead me to a Morton’s Form, but compared with the only Who song I despise, the gentle wit of Jimmy Buffett’s anthem had to be considered. Continue reading »
I am neither able nor willing to make out whatever small talk Carl and Brian Wilson are sharing, but this is a nice little display of brotherly love. Check out how tuned in Brian looks. I’m not use to seeing him so tuned into the presence of another human being.
Television sitcoms in the 1960s had a grand tradition of episodes in which the main characters, usually pretty mainstream types, even if they included witches, genies, ghouls, or futuristic space travelers, were dropped into the groovy times of ’60s B-movies. As a kid, I was in heaven when one of those episodes appeared. I felt dropped into a happening scene right along with the characters. Until a friend posted it on Facebook this morning, I’d forgotten about this episode of Max Smart and one of my all-time TV crushes, Agent 99, getting real groovy.
Did television sitcoms in the post-groovy mid-1970s and beyond continue some form of this tradition? Suzi Quatro appearing on Happy Days was pretty cool, but that required some anachronistic reverse grooviness. WKRP in Cincinnati must have featured actual rock musicians inspiring Bailey to cut loose the way we knew she could. Pretty please?
I know The Doobie Brothers dropped in on the cast of some ’70s sitcom, but I don’t remember instances of of Meathead and Gloria getting down with The Dictators. I don’t recall the episode of Welcome Back, Kotter in which Vinny Barbarino and the Sweat Hogs totally rocked out to Brownsville Station. Where’s the episode of Good Times in which J.J., Thelma, and Willona get down to Curtis Mayfield‘s surprise appearance at the Cabrini-Green block party, with Michael joining the band on cowbell? Did I miss these episodes?
I shudder to think of the “groovy” TV episodes I missed in the 1980s, but please fill me in.
When you think “TV gone groovy,” what’s the first episode that comes to mind? Which “straight” character most benefited from getting groovy? Which character had no business getting groovy?
To take it to the next level, what groovy TV episode should have been written? I’m hopeful that the likes of alexmagic will deliver the would-be goods!
Popular music goes through its cycles, just like anything else. I look around, and it seems that blue-eyed British soul has once again come to the surface. The last time I remember this happening big time, was around the mid- to late-’80s, when the coolest music was coming from England, and everything had to be stamped with passion and neo-soul. The airwaves were ruled by the likes of Simply Red, The Style Council, Dexy’s Midnight Runners, The Blow Monkeys, Paul Young, Boy George, Alison Moyet, Phil Collins, Prefab Sprout…everything was redolent of Marvin Gaye and Aretha Franklin, and everyone wanted to be a smooth operator.
I can see where the groundwork has been laid for a recent rise in British White Soul. With the exception of some hold-outs, black music has gone all Money, Gats, and Ho’s a long time ago. A lot of White music is taking a Luddite approach, and the jug band look rules the indie coda today. Dance music is ruled by an inane “wub-wub-wub” aesthetic.Continue reading »
