Category Archives: Music

Brown M&Ms

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Back in the early 80s, when Van Halen was the biggest rock band on earth, their contract with performance venues included the requirement there couldn’t be any brown M&Ms backstage. If brown M&Ms were found, the venue forfeited its cut of the gate. Well, come on, right?  That’s ridiculous!  What a preposterous example of rock star ego and excess.  David Lee Roth and Eddie Van Halen; what a couple of puffed-up dolts.

Except maybe not.  In a recent interview, David Lee Roth explained why Van Halen contracts included that rider.

In case you don’t want to watch the whole five minute video, here’s a synopsis:  Van Halen concerts back then featured a spectacular light show; ground-breaking, really.  David Lee Roth, their lead singer, helped design it, and used lighting instruments bigger and more powerful than anyone else was using back then. The band carefully budgeted their tour around what they thought were realistic projections about how much time it would take to load-in.  And when negotiating contracts with the venues, they included page after page of specific details about their technical requirements.  A lot of venues didn’t have, off hand, the technical capacity to accommodate the show.  So the venue would need to bring in extra generators, or plan for extra crew, or make whatever other arrangements they needed to properly prepare for the band.

So Roth included the brown M&M rider in the contract, as a quick check to see that the venue had actually read the whole thing through.  He knew that if he showed up, and found brown M&Ms backstage, it meant venue management hadn’t read the technical specifications, and that meant that load-in time would be longer than anticipated, that the crew costs were likely to go up, probably paying overtime.  All this affected Van Halen’s bottom line.  So he’d trash the dressing room, as a warning, before calling Van Halen’s attorneys.

Now, the brown M&M thing became part of the Van Halen narrative,  symptomatic of rock star hubris and arrogance and ego.  This wasn’t a bad thing for Van Halen’s image–their fan base liked the band, in part, because of the swagger they projected.  But actually, the M&M rider served a far more sensible purpose.  Van Halen was, after all, not just a rock band, but a commercial enterprise: Van Halen Inc..  If load-in took twice as long as it needed to because of venue mismanagement, that cut into the band’s bottom line.  And I imagine there were also safety considerations.

I love the brown M&M story, though, because it reminds me not to draw immediate or facile conclusions.  We do that all the time; hear part of a story–especially a story that feeds our own prejudices and pre-conceptions–and react with what may be misplaced outrage.

I told my son the brown M&M story, and he reminded me of the McDonald’s coffee story. In 1994, a woman named Stella Liebeck spilled a cup of McDonald’s coffee on herself, was badly burned, and sued.  It’s a famous case–usually used to suggest how foolishly litigious our society has become, and how over-the-top juries can get with their judgments.  It’s used all the time by politicians arguing for tort reform; the very definition of a frivolous lawsuit. But the more you study the case, the more convinced you become that the jury verdict in that trial was completely justified.  There’s a terrific documentary, Hot Coffee, on the Liebeck case, and on the whole question of tort reform. Our initial response–she sued over a cup of coffee, outrageous!–turns out, on further examination, to be overly hasty.

A recent internet meme, again, relies on our knee-jerk judgment for its effectiveness.  I couldn’t find the actual graphic, but it shows Jason Collins, the basketball player, who recently came out as gay, and Chris Kyle, a recently deceased Navy SEAL, who was the most effective sniper in US military history.  The meme compares the two men, and points out that President Obama called Collins to congratulate him on coming out, but has not mentioned Kyle in any of his speeches, including the State of the Union.  This is supposed to demonstrate the President’s supposedly unpatriotic priorities–he privileges a gay basketball player over honoring a genuine American hero.

But it’s a false analogy.  It’s not like there was some moment where the President had to choose between which of the men he would honor (“you know, heck with the sniper guy, let’s talk about the basketball player instead”). Of course, the very meme hints at homophobia.  But there’s also a very good reason not to mention Chris Kyle in the State of the Union–he was murdered by a fellow soldier, Eddie Routh, who was suffering from PTSD and who Kyle had befriended.  I think it’s likely that the President weighed the value of honoring Kyle against the very real pain such an honor would cause the Routh family, and chose sensitivity over expediency.

Brown M&M stories abound in the world of politics anyway. We’re constantly hearing stories about 400 dollar wrenches or 600 dollar ashtrays, and they all speak to massive government waste and fraud and mismanagement. They’re all brown M&Ms. We’re constantly reading stories from the Heritage Foundation or Cato Institute specifying inefficient government spending, with headlines like: Top Ten Examples of Government Waste, or Twenty Five Wasteful Government Programs. When you dig deeper, though, it’s often the case that the programs are actually effective.  The expensive ashtray is specifically designed to be used on submarines, for example, or the expensive wrench has to have design features enabling it to be used on certain aircraft.

Remember the brown M&Ms.  The story may be more complicated than you originally thought.

An intriguing suggestion about LDS music

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Out to dinner with a friend last night, we got to talking about the LDS General Conference just concluded.  (Sorry, folks, this post is going to be really Mormon-y).  We basically agreed on which talks really moved us (both of President Uchtdorf’s, Elder Holland’s), which ones we could have lived without (that one by that one guy), and so on.  And, of course, we talked about the Historic Moment, the first woman to say a prayer in General Conference.  Which, we agreed, was something both remarkable and unremarkable, both simultaneously.

And then my friend made what struck me as a most interesting suggestion.  We were talking about the Tabernacle Choir, and that one, uh, interesting ensemble the gals wore, the Pepto-Bismal pink outfits, with the identical costume jewelry.  And my friend said, “what if, instead of a visual backdrop of a choir, wearing identical (unattractive) outfits, we saw empty choir chairs.”

Here’s his thinking: the music in Conference is always, always provided by choirs from Utah.  An MTC choir, a BYU choir, a multi-stake choir; the Tab does most of the music, supplemented by other choirs from Utah.  And usually, the ‘other choirs’ are always much more interesting visually, because they don’t worry about the dresses all being the same.  I mean, I get TV producers wanting that uniformity; all that pink behind the GA seats.  But it’s kind of dull, and the message it sends is maybe a bit unfortunate.  Here’s President Uchtdorf:

Sometimes we confuse differences in personality with sin. We can even make the mistake of thinking that because someone is different from us, it must mean they are not pleasing to God. This line of thinking leads some to believe that the Church wants to create every member from a single mold—that each one should look, feel, think, and behave like every other. This would contradict the genius of God, who created every man different from his brother, every son different from his father. Even identical twins are not identical in their personalities and spiritual identities.

To paraphrase: diversity rules.

And diversity rules even more now, as the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints becomes increasingly international.

I remember a Daily Show some years ago, during the Olympics, when Jon Stewart did a ‘this is Utah’ bit.  We saw a visual of the Tabernacle Choir singing at General Conference, all those white faces and then one lonely black guy, as a voice-over intoned ‘Utah is a state of great diversity.’  It got a big laugh, as it should have done.  To be sure, the Choir has gotten more diverse, at least ethnically/visually, in recent years, but uniformity remains the norm.  But in fact, I live in Utah, I live in PROVO, and in my neighborhood and my ward, I see a lot of diversity.  I think it’s awesome, particularly since nobody makes any big deal of it.

But here’s my friend’s suggestion: why couldn’t one session of General Conference feature music by a choir from Brazil?  Why couldn’t another session feature singers from Ghana?  My friend has, as it happens, spent some time in Ghana, and he tells me that the music in their meetings is terrific–Ghanians are not afraid to really sing.  (That could not really be said of my ward, unfortunately.)  A choir from Ghana would be terrific.

Now, I can see how there might be some financial difficulties with flying 300 singers in from Ghana.  But that doesn’t matter anymore, does it?  The technology to broadcast a choir from Ghana isn’t even all that complicated. Folks in the Conference Center could certainly see that Ghanian choir on the CC video screens, and cutting to Ghana for the Church-wide broadcast would be child’s play.  The only objection would be visual–the long shots would show empty choir seats.  Big deal.

For the Saints in Ghana, or South Korea, or Japan, or Brazil, or Mexico, the opportunity to sing in a choir in General Conference would be an experience they would never forget.  As for the image of the Church, it’s completely win-win.  The reputation of the Church is ‘white-bread conservative Western-American church.’  Which just is flat-out not true anymore.  More LDS people read the Book of Mormon in Spanish than read it in English–the future of the Church is international.  Which is exactly as it should be. You know, ‘stone cut out of the mountain without hands’ and all.

It’s possible that the television producers involved with conference might object.  The conference broadcast has a certain recognizable visual style, one that folks are used to.  The very slow tracking shots sweeping across the faces of the altos fading to three-shots, cross-fading to medium shots, cross-fading to the long shot they use for establishing. The lighting glancing off the bald foreheads of the tenor section.  There may be objections to shaking things up.

But the advantages of actually demonstrating diversity (which exists, which actually does describe where the Church really is these days) surely outweigh what amount to aesthetic objections.  I’ll grant that it’s difficult to make Conference look like good television.  Livening things up with a choir from Brazil could only help.

The Piano Guys

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After airing the LDS General Conference, KSL-TV figures people may stick around and keep watching.  They generally follow conference with other LDS-themed material.  Yesterday, it was a show about The Piano Guys, interviews, excerpts from their videos, footage of the Guys interacting with their kids.

If you’ve never heard of The Piano Guys, check out their website.  Basically, they make music videos, which they release on YouTube. The music mostly features a pianist and a cellist, and the music ranges from classical to pop to movie themes.  They’re all LDS, and they’ve become a YouTube sensation.  And should, because they’re really good.

When I think of The Piano Guys, I generally think of the pianist and the cellist featured on their videos.  In fact, to me, one of the enduring mysteries of their work is why they call themselves ‘The Piano Guys.’  Wouldn’t ‘The Piano Guy and the Cello Guy’ be more accurate?  But it turns out, there are five Guys all told, the Pianist (Jon Schmidt) and the Cellist (Steven Sharp Nelson) , and three other people in the studio and shooting and editing the videos.  That’s their partnership, and the KSL feature gave all five equal time.

They seem like great guys.  Very family oriented, happily married, great kids that they really seem to enjoy playing with.  Focused on their faith and their values.  In fact, after awhile, the KSL feature got a bit boring.  The Guys kept bearing their testimonies, and talking about how many miracles have made awesome video moments possible, and for me, it got a little dull.  Heck, I’d way rather they just showed a bunch of Piano Guys videos.  But it raised a really interesting point, a point I can’t make unless I link to a bunch of Piano Guys videos.  So bear with me.

Check out this one. It’s a Mission Impossible thing they did with Lindsay Stirling.  If you don’t know who Lindsay Stirling is, she’s this amazing prodigy, a BYU student–I actually think she’s now graduated–who on her website says she combines ‘violin, modern dance, and The Legend of Zelda’ in her art.  She’s astoundingly talented, also a YouTube sensation, and cute as can be (I personally know five LDS RM-type guys who confess to having massive crushes on her.)  Anyway, check out the video.  It’s really fun, sort of goofy, with amazing, kind of toss-it-off casual musical virtuosity; it’s a trademark Piano Guys joint.

Then there’s this video. Steven Sharp Nelson playing a love song, the Turtles “Happy Together,” to his cello, in a video featuring him taking the cello grocery shopping, and playing volleyball together, also golf, also soccer. Also skydiving.  Or there’s their Pachelbel riff, amazing, funny, fun, astonishing, and a sly acknowledgement that the cello part in the Pachelbel canon is kinda boring.

Their most popular video ever is a medley of Lord of Rings themes.  But they’ve also done riffs based on Vivaldi (which they combine with the music from the Bourne movies), Beethoven (via One Republic), Mozart (though they make Mozart seem very rock and roll).  The Guys, in other words, are classical musicians, with a great love for the music of the past.  But they also enjoy a pop sensibility.  They are, in fact, musical deconstructionists.  And their music has the richness and sensitivity and invention and imagination of an essentially reverent irreverence.

And man, do they love pop music.  My favorite of their videos, is an Africanized version of Coldplay’s “Paradise.”  But that’s probably just because I really like that song, and like what Alex Boye does with it here.  But I think Taylor Swift’s “Begin Again” is insipid, except in their arrangement.  I would face the gallows rather than attend a One Direction concert, but all Five Guys join in to make “What Makes you Beautiful” amazing.  Christina Perri, or Bruno Mars; they’re really kind of shameless.

And of course, there’s a tradition here.  Classically trained musicians doing pop songs; Ferrante and Teicher.  The Boston Pops.  Andrea Bocelli.  Ah Giorgio, that one horrible movie Pavarotti made.  Sure.

But in that KSL special, the Guys talked over and over about how they hope their music promotes spirituality, how they want to touch people with it. One of their videos begins with this quote:

Don’t only practice your art, but force your way into its secrets, for it and knowledge can raise men to the divine. Beethoven.

And they pray before every video, and while making them, and they are devoted to their God and His gospel.  All that.

And one would think that that would result in music that’s overtly pious, that’s staid and obtrusively reverential.  Slow and quiet and funereal, like every hymn sung in nearly every sacrament meeting in Utah.  Art that never once strays from a standard of (I loathe this word) ‘appropriateness.’

And that’s not what they.  The Piano Guys music is, wow, wildly, insanely inventive and fun.  Goofy and silly and fun.  And also, yes, deeply reverent at times.  But so incredibly virtuosic, even maybe a little show-offy–Jon Schmidt and Steve Nelson are really incredibly proficient musicians.

But is it possible that The Piano Guys are expanding our vision of spirituality in art?  Is it possible that their music is showing us the multitude of ways in which the Spirit manifests itself artistically.  For if the manifestation of the Spirit is given to every man to profit withal, and therefore to one is given by the Spirit, wisdom, and to another knowledge, and to another faith, and to others healing and miracles and prophecy and discerning of spirits and tongues, why then, isn’t it possible that to these five Guys, the spirit manifests itself in musical goofiness?  In giddy musical pleasure?  In incredible virtuosity and an unlimited musical imagination and in videography of extraordinary inventiveness?  And that the Spirit manifests just as much when riffing on Mission Impossible themes as when performing “Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel?”  That creative insight, fearlessness and wit and energy and drive and passion–and fun, and goofy humor–can somehow reveal God too?

Searching for Sugar Man: A review

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When the nominations came out for this year’s Oscars, I went on the Oscar website, and checked out the Best Documentary category. They didn’t show the films, but they did show trailers for them, and I watched ‘em all, thinking they all looked great.  I love documentary films, but they’re not always easy to find–without Netflix, I can’t imagine how anyone could see them.  I remember thinking that Searching for Sugar Man would probably win, and come February, it did.

Here’s the story it tells:  In 1970, a label called Sussex Records signed a little known Detroit singer/songwriter named Sixto Rodriguez to a two-record deal.  Under the name Rodriguez, he released two albums: Cold Fact in 1970, and Coming From Reality in 1971.  They bombed.  Just didn’t sell at all.  Rodriguez was working on a third album, which was never finished or released.  He disappeared from the music world, and worked for the next twenty five years as a common laborer, mostly in construction.

In the meantime, though, completely unknown to him, his records started selling in South Africa.  Who knows how it happened?  An American visited the country, brought a record with her, played it for friends, who recorded in cassettes, passed it on.  A record store, asked about it, contacted Sussex records.  Best estimates are that Cold Fact sold around a half million copies, all in South Africa. Coming From Reality, (which sounds today a shade over-produced) maybe a shade fewer.

South Africa was, of course, was locked into the policy of apartheid.  Strict censorship laws had been opposed.  And Rodriquez’ music began to be seen as subversive, as underground, as politically charged. it circulated. Plus, it’s really really good.  As one of the interviewees in Searching for Sugar Man says, ‘there were three albums you absolutely had to have, three albums that basically everyone had.  Abbey Road.  Simon and Garfunkel’s Bridge over Troubled Water.  And Cold Fact.’

I have to think, though, that part of Rodriquez’ appeal was his mystery.  Even living in South Africa, it wouldn’t have been all that hard to find out all sorts of information about Simon and Garfunkel, for example.  But Rodriquez?  You had this picture of this Hispanic looking guy, wearing sun glasses, smiling out at you from two album covers.  No biographical information at all.  You dig a bit: none can be found.  Liking Rodriquez becomes cool, vaguely subversive.  You were one of the cool kids: in the know.  So rumors filled the information void, and one rumor was that he was dead; that he had killed himself on-stage, after giving a concert.

Anyway, a Swedish filmmaker, Malik Bendjelloul picked up on the story, and interviewed two South African music guys, Stephen “Sugar” Segerman, a record store owner, and Craig Strydom, a music journalists, who spent years trying to track down their favorite performer, the mysterious Rodriguez. They interview various South African musicians from the period, who protested apartheid musically and who confess they were heavily influenced by Rodriguez.  The film that results is a terrific detective story, and like all good detective stories, it comes with a fascinating plot twist.  And, of course, Rodriguez’ music carries the entire film. Those lyrics.  Those tunes.  The guitar playing.  That voice.

One mystery is ‘what happened to the money?’  After all, somebody in America was collecting all kinds of money from these hundreds of thousands of South African record sales, and we see Segerman and Strydom tracing that cash flow.  The South African distributors insisted they’d been sending money all along to Sussex Records.  So where did it go from there?  The film kind of seems to answer that question too.  Not directly, but Motown legend Clarence Avant, who ran Sussex until the label folded in 1975, is interviewed, and his answers couldn’t be more evasive.  Even Avant’s wikipedia entry mentions how suspicious his interview comes across in the film. “Money?  I don’t know about any money.  Not me.”

I don’t want to spoil the ending of this wonderful film.  Just watch it.  You’ll love it.  All the interviewees are delightful, and Rodriguez’ music sparkles.  But what really intrigues me is this: why did his records fail in the early 70s?

Because from 1971-1974, I was in high school.  I had a part-time job, and what I mostly spent my money on was three things–gas for my car, concert tickets, and record albums.  My friends and I shared music all the time.  We recorded albums on cassette tapes and played them in our cars.  We talked music all the time.  I couldn’t tell you how many times someone would say, ‘hey, you guys ever hear of ________? They’re fabulous.’  And the next thing you’d know, we’d all bought all of _______ albums. There were exceptions.  Like, everyone in my high school went through an Alice Cooper phase.  It lasted about three weeks, during which time you listened to nothing but Alice Cooper.  Then it wore off.  So there were, like, five Alice Cooper albums, and you’d just basically hand them off to the next guy going through that phase.

I don’t remember all the bands that we turned each other on to.  Obviously Gentle Giant was one; they were number one; the band you HAD to like.  King Crimson, The Moody Blues, Patto.  Early Genesis. The Small Faces, especially Ogden’s Nut Gone Flake, an album I basically wore out. Moby Grape, the Monks, the Mahavishnu Orchestra, The Thirteenth Floor Elevators.

But not Rodriguez.  And that’s weird to me.  Listen to “I wonder”.  Listen to that opening bass line.  I would have been hooked, if I’d ever heard that.  If that had come on the radio, that bass line, and then the lyric “I wonder how many times you’ve had sex” (hey, I was a teenager), I would have told everyone I knew.  My circle of friends (and I was in a very active high school drama program) would have all been into it.  Follow that with “Crucify your mind”, with those Dylanesque lyrics and that brass in the background–there’s no way I wouldn’t have bought that album.  Add to that, Sugar Man, (even in the oddly-psychedelic version on the album, which I anyway would have dug back in the day); man.  I would have been there.

So it’s a film of three mysteries, two of which it answers.  What happened to the money?  Who was Rodriguez, and what became of him?  And why the heck did I not buy these albums, back when I was young and hip and bought tons of music?

The First Four Notes: A review

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I love books like this.  Smart, sassy, informative, informed.  A really bright person writing about something he loves, something that makes you feel brighter for having read it.  If you like music, and philosophy, and history, get this book.  Treasure it.

Matthew Guerrieri is music critic for the Boston Globe, and also has a music blog, Soho the Dog.  He writes well, and he knows what he’s writing about.  Now, with the The First Four Notes, he has managed to write a wonderful three hundred page book on the history of Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony in C Minor.  On, essentially, the first four notes of that symphony.  Or, to be more precise, on the eighth rest, followed by four notes, capped with a fermata.  Bum bum bum BUM.  That thing. As he puts it in his introduction:

This is a book about Beethoven’s Fifth Symphony.  More specifically, it is a book about the opening notes of that symphony; and more specifically than that, it is a book about what people have heard in those notes throughout history, and how history itself has affected what was heard. It is, then, history viewed through the forced perspective of one piece of music, though to be fair, there are only a handful of pieces of music that could yield a comparable view, and most of them are by Beethoven.

And we’re off.  And what a ride Guerrieri takes us on.  To begin with, bum bum bum BUM.  Does it not sound like a knock on a door?  A knock summoning us to what?  To fate, perhaps?  To death?  Or to something altogether more transcendent?

And so it becomes a piece of music poised on the brink of something, the music racing ahead of us, beckoning us forward, waving to us from in front.  “Come along,” it seems to be shouting.  “Join me.”  And yet that ending, those final chords, Wham wham wham?  A call to revolution? A premonition of violence?

The piece was written just after the French Revolution, in the midst of Napolean’s reign and wars.  So that’s one echo.  It was also written in that turbulent turn of the eighteenth to nineteenth century period, when Romanticism seemed to be ascendent over the values of the Enlightenment.  It was written by Beethoven, that most turbulent of personalities, and the hardest to pin down. And every generation since has found in it confirmation of its fondest values, or the destruction of them.

So, for example, it was greatly beloved at the American Transcendentalist commune of Brook Farm, seven miles outside Boston, where Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne and Louisa May Alcott’s father spent years studying the eccentric socialism of Charles Fourier (who seems to have genuinely believed in a millennial day in which the oceans would turn to lemonade).  Swedenborgian theology was also on the intellectual menu, and of course, generous portions of Beethoven.  It was a 1840s hippie commune, essentially, and the same fate awaited it as generally awaits hippie communes–they couldn’t get anyone to take their turn with the dishes.

But Beethoven’s Fifth would have stranger resonances.  The opening theme would be used to sell Beecham’s Pills, for example, that most generally useful of Victorian home remedies.  Beecham’s Pills were in fact a fairly effective laxative, (and, whisper it quietly, a somewhat reliable abortifacient) but they were sold as having distinctly spiritual qualities.  The farmer-turned-entrepreneur, Joseph Beecham, who made and marketed them became a multi-millionaire, and his heir, Sir Thomas Beecham, became the most celebrated British conductor of the early twentieth century.  He also used his vast fortune to fund and found a number of orchestras, and he would instruct their conductors to program lots of Beethoven, and especially, lots of Beethoven’s Fifth.

Of course, Beethoven’s Fifth became a propaganda tool for both Britain and Germany during the Second World War, with the BBC using a drummed performance of the first four notes to begin its wartime broadcasts.  Short short short long is Morse code for the letter V, probably intentionally (V is the Roman numeral for 5).  V for Victory.

Meanwhile, the Fifth became a subject for philosophy.  From Kant to Hegel through Adorno, the Fifth led some of mankind’s greatest thinkers to contemplate the greatest questions of creation.  Guerrieri is at his best in those passages–he has a knack for making philosophy comprehensible.  I mean, even Hegel. Seriously: Hegel.

So if you like music, or philosophy, or history, or Beethoven, read this book. If you’re just generally into smart writing on unlikely subjects, get this book.  Seriously, it’s great.  And then go home and listen to Beethoven’s Fifth again.  Get the one conducted by John Eliot Gardiner.  He’s the one guy who gets the tempo metronomically right.  And that, it turns out, is important too.

Obama’s Second Inaugural

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I was going to do this historical thing about Inaugural addresses.  Talk about Washington, who thought it might be kind of nice to include a speech after he took the oath–which meant all the subsequent Presidents pretty much had to give one too.  Mention that the ‘so help me God’ bit at the end isn’t in the Constitution and doesn’t have to be included–though things didn’t turn out so well for the first President to not say it, Andrew Johnson.  Maybe say something snarky about William Henry Harrison, who droned on so long in his Inaugural (while not wearing an overcoat on a freezing rainy day), that he caught a cold, which turned into pneumonia, which killed him.  Then finish with some comments on Lincoln’s Second Inaugural, the shortest Inaugural address ever, and by far the greatest.

But there he was, up there on TV, President Obama. A man I campaigned for and voted for and whose campaign I supported financially.  Twice. But also a President I can only regard warily, with ambivalence.  There are still detainees in Guantanamo, and still unmanned drones kill from the sky, and the climate continues to warm and the executive overreach of the Bush years remains policy. He’s been okay on the economy–not better than that, and he still buys into too much of the Beltway deficit hysteria. Too soft on Wall Street, too cozy with corporations.  Give him a B minus. So, my Obama Facebook relationship status remains as it’s been.  It’s complicated.

How many speeches have we seen from him? He’s good, he can handle soaring rhetoric, and though he doesn’t write all his own speeches–heck, neither did Lincoln, Seward wrote a lot of the Second Inaugural–Obama does a final polish that’s pretty eloquent.  Second Inaugurals are about principles more than programs–Presidents lay out their agendas in the State of the Union.

Then he said this:

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths – that all of us are created equal – is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

Seneca Falls and Selma and Stonewall. It rocked me back in my chair, those words: those allusions to our history. Tying Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Harvey Milk to Patrick Henry and Ben Franklin. Making ‘American’ mean ‘everyone.’  Seneca Falls–the founding of feminism, the declaration of equal rights.  Selma, and the height of the Civil Rights movement. The Stonewall inn in Greenwich Village, and the beginning of the historical moment when our gay brothers and sisters stood up to be counted.  And Dr. King, and his dream. That’s America.  That’s what America stands for, every bit as much as Lexington and Concord and the Constitutional Convention.

Obama’s speech began with history, even quoting Lincoln:

Through blood drawn by lash and blood drawn by sword, we learned that no union founded on the principles of liberty and equality could survive half-slave and half-free.  We made ourselves anew, and vowed to move forward together.

But he didn’t just recite historical facts. It was a progressive re-telling of history, an attempt to claim American history to emphasize the best advances of liberalism.

Together, we determined that a modern economy requires railroads and highways to speed travel and commerce; schools and colleges to train our workers.  Together, we discovered that a free market only thrives when there are rules to ensure competition and fair play. Together, we resolved that a great nation must care for the vulnerable, and protect its people from life’s worst hazards and misfortune.

It was the history of legislative progressivism: the Highway Act, anti-trust legislation, Social Security and Medicare.  And, without mentioning it, the Affordable Care Act, still his greatest accomplishment as President.

The whole speech was a challenge to conservatism.  It acknowledged the conservative critique of progressive government (“Progress does not compel us to settle centuries-old debates over the role of government for all time”), while asserting his commitment to a different philosophy and approach (“but it does require that we act, in our time”). But what the speech asserted more than anything is this: progressivism and liberalism are not inconsistent with American values, or with the Constitution, or with our history or with fundamental American patriotism. (“That is our generation’s task – to make these words, these rights, these values – of Life, and Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness – real for every American”).That needs to be said; it can’t be said often enough.  Liberals love America.  Liberals honor the Constitution. The facts of American history can support multiple narratives–we are all Americans together.  We just disagree a bit on some issues.

I support President Obama, because I mostly agree with him, on at least a majority of important issues.  But I also like him, also admire him.  He’s a man of intelligence and grace, an eloquent spokesman for American values.  As he proved today.

And then Kelly Clarkson got up and rocked “My Country ‘Tis of Thee,” turned it into a pop/gospel number, and nailed it to the floor.  And her song, it turned out, was a lot like Obama’s speech. Older verities, given a contemporary sound.  Tradition and history, but with a beat and drums and brass.

Barack Hussein Obama, 44th President of the United States. Michelle up there with him, Sasha and Melia.  A wonderful family, a good and patriotic man, an eloquent vision for a compelling future. It don’t know when I’ve ever been prouder to be an American.

Francis Scott Key and the anthem we’re probably stuck with

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Just read a really good book, thought I’d tell you about it.  The title: Snow-storm in August: Francis Scott Key, Washington City and the Forgotten Race Riot of 1835, by Jefferson Morley.  Great read, illuminating a chapter in American history I’d frankly never heard of.

A lot of the book has to do with Francis Scott Key, and the writing of our national anthem.  The rest of it has to do with a guy I’d never heard of, a restauranteur named Beverly Snow.  Snow was a freed slave, taught by his master the art of good cooking.  Finally freed after his master’s death, he moved to Washington D.C. (known then as Washington City), and, with his wife (also a former slave, she kept the books), opened what may well be the first ‘fine dining’ restaurant in the US.

In addition to being a marvelous chef, Snow was an outgoing, charming guy. He offered great food at a higher price than any of his competitors, advertized brilliantly, and the various diplomats stuck in this American backwater came to appreciate the one place in town they could count on for a decent meal. Snow was also an uppity black guy in what was still essentially a Southern city.  When an inebriated eighteen year old slave named Arthur Bowen woke his spinster mistress, showing up in her bedroom holding an axe in the middle of the night, it set off a race riot, into which Snow somehow got caught up.  Snow barely escaped with his life, and his restaurant was destroyed.  Undeterred, Snow and his wife slipped away to Toronto, started another restaurant, and died a millionaire. Make a great movie–I’m thinking Terrence Howard as Snow.

Bowen was tried for attempted murder, despite his mistress’ certainty that he was just drunk out of his mind, and intended her no harm.  In a second trial, a white abolitionist, Reuben Crandall, found with anti-slavery tracts in his hotel room, was tried for inciting a riot, and (wait for it!) treason. Crandall and Bowen were both tried by the District Attorney for DC, none other than Francis Scott Key.  Yes, the guy that wrote the anthem.

Key was pro-slavery.  He was also quite the moralist, who made shutting down whorehouses the main focus of his time as DA. His best friend was a guy who eventually made it to the US Supreme Court, in large measure because of Key’s support and recommendation. That would be Chief Justice Roger Taney, who would later write the Dred Scott decision, easily the worst in the history of the Supreme Court.  In the Crandall case, Key argued that an abolitionist should receive the death penalty, that arguing against slavery promoted race riots, such as the Nat Turner rebellion.  Fortunately, he lost.  He won the case against Bowen, and the poor kid was sentenced to death.  But Bowen’s owner, a sweet little old lady named Anna Thornton, was convinced Bowen was innocent, and finally persuaded President Andrew Jackson to pardon him.

But Key. I didn’t know anything about Key.  I wasn’t even aware of how immensely popular the Star Spangled Banner was in his day.  He was sort of a national celebrity–the guy who wrote That Poem, celebrated wherever he went, a popular touring speaker.

As Morley describes it, Key wrote the anthem as an act of atonement.  In the war of 1812, he was a militia captain tasked with guarding the main road to Washington.  The British army marched on his position–he held a strong uphill redoubt, and had the Brits outnumbered.  One British volley, though, and Key’s men voted with their feet, a mad sprint in various directions.  And of course the Brits took the capital, burned most of the buildings.

Key felt terrible about the whole thing.  That’s why he volunteered to negotiate on behalf of a captured prisoner, which is why he was there at the battle of Fort McHenry, which led, of course, to the writing of the anthem.

I know a whole of people who love the National anthem, who get choked up when they hear it, who hold their hands over their hearts at ballgames and sing along.  I’m not one of them. I don’t like it, and I wish we had a different one.

I feel like something of a traitor for writing that.  My family has a long history with the anthem.  My Dad’s an opera singer, and sang it before every Indiana University home basketball game, for years.

I don’t exactly hate the anthem; mostly I think it’s funny. “Gave proof through the night, that our flag was still there.”  Well, why wouldn’t it still be there?  Fort McHenry got hit hard in that battle, rockets and mortars, but it’s not like the British really wanted to capture it, any more than they wanted to occupy and hold Washington.  The War of 1812 was a spanking.  The Brits were fighting for their lives against Napoleon–they wanted to teach us a lesson, and get back to the serious job of defeating the French. The National Anthem was written about a battle we essentially lost, during a war we basically lost, which we should never have fought, and on which we were basically on the wrong side.  (Napoleon was the guy who posed an authoritarian threat to international democracy–we should have joined the Brits, not fought them).

And I really hate the fourth verse.  “Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just, And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’  My question is, when will we ever, as a nation, conclude that our cause isn’t just, and that God isn’t with us?  It’s certainly never happened yet, not when we invaded the Phillipines, not in Vietnam, not in Iraq.  I wish our national anthem celebrated something other than militarism.  And didn’t celebrate our blithe assumption that any military intervention, by us, is always just, is always blessed by God.

Do I have a better alternative?  America the Beautiful would be fine, I think.  But how about this song?  “This land is your land,” Woody Guthrie.  I love that song.  Love its inclusiveness.  That should be the message of our Anthem–that America is all of us.  That America means Arthur Bowen and Reuben Crandall, as much as a privileged lawyer like Francis Scott Key.  That America was about Beverly Snow, every bit as much as Roger Taney.

Francis Scott Key was an establishment guy, not a bad guy, but a defender of the status quo, a moralist and a careerist.  Woody Guthrie was a scamp, a commie, a guy who spent his life working with impoverished Okies, learning and honoring their folk music.  Who would you rather have write our National Anthem?

 

Silver Linings Playbook: A Review

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It’s basically a rom-com.  That was what shocked me: really, it’s a romantic comedy.

I mean, this is a David O. Russell film. This is the guy who made Three Kings, still the best Iraq war film ever (well, that or The Hurt Locker, which is so different stylistically it feels wrong to lump them together.) This is also the guy who George Clooney kind of famously duked it out with on the set of Three Kings.  This is the guy who started out with Spanking the Monkey, the guy who made I Heart Huckabees.  This is the guy who some people were seriously comparing to David Fincher and Paul Thomas Anderson and Quintin Tarantino back when they were all Young Turks.  Making a rom-com?  Has his star fallen so low he had to take a studio assignment? But his last film was The Fighter, a terrific Oscar-buzz type of movie.  So that can’t be it.

Here’s the thing with romantic comedies. What you do is you find one of the five actresses in the world who are cute enough and project enough personality to carry a movie. Not a great beauty–I don’t think Charlize Theron’s ever made one.  The target audience is women–you need a leading actress who comes across sufficiently unthreatening. Meg Ryan back in the day, Sandra Bullock, then Drew Barrymore; next, it’ll probably be Emma Stone.  You pay the leading actress 20 million, then her leading man 1 million, and 4 million for everything else, and you spend 20 million to market it, and open it sensibly, and you’re guaranteed 60-70 million box office, more if it hits big.  The formula is simple–set it in a romantic city location, they meet cute, fall for each other, break it off because of some weakness or vulnerability (best if it’s hers), work it out with help of her gay best friend/less attractive sister, and re-unite at the last second, possibly involving a chase scene.

Silver Linings Playbook follows every one of those conventions.  Every one, including the chase. But then, so did, I don’t know, Scott Pilgrim vs the World, a film which kind of re-invented romcoms.

What makes SLP wonderful, though, is just the sheer humanity of it.  It’s not laugh-out-loud funny, exactly, but as I watched it, I did laugh out loud a lot.  It’s R-rated (strange for romantic comedies), because many many F-bombs are dropped, but the language works–it’s how these people talk.

Enough dithering: the story.  Bradley Cooper plays Pat Solitano, a one-time substitute history teacher at the local high school.  As the film begins, he’s in a mental hospital, after nearly beating his wife’s lover to death.  But Pat’s an incurable optimist.  When his mother, Dolores (the wonderful Jacki Weaver) signs him out of the hospital (wondering all the while if she’s doing the right thing), Pat is full of plans.  His wife, Nikki (Brea Bee) has taken out a restraining order against him, but he doesn’t care.  She’s an English teacher, so he gets hold of her syllabi, intending to read every book she assigns her classes, as an act of devotion. (He then wakes up his parents in the middle of the night, shouting about how unfair the ending of A Farewell To Arms was.) Pat’s battlecry is Excelsior; he just intends to keep looking for silver linings wherever he goes.  Cooper’s wonderful as Pat, and I’ve not always been much of a Bradley Cooper fan.  But he’s great; full of cockeyed certainty, a demented Pangloss, sure he’ll be able to win back Nikki’s love.

I’m making his mental illness (he’s bi-polar) sound cute and fuzzy and like the kind of minor relationship-impediment a romcom might include.  It’s not.  He’s seriously impaired.  He loses it one night, and punches his mother, and gets in a fist fight with his father.  He loses it in his psychiatrist’s office.  (His shrink, Dr. Patel, is wonderfully  played by Anupam Kher, as a thoroughly assimilated Indian, and fanatical Philadelphia Eagles’ fan.)  Cooper’s performance shows that element of danger–this is not a stable guy, or safe, or warm-and-fuzzy.

Pat’s Dad is played by Robert DeNiro, and he’s terrific as always–a loving and dysfunctional and not-all-there father, who has lost his job and now makes ends meet by running an illegal sports book out of his study.  Pat Sr. is also convinced that a direct correlation exists between how exactly he propitiates the Sporting Gods who he superstitiously worships, and how well the Eagles do.  He thinks that the Eagles will win if Pat watches the games with him.  But Pat isn’t interested–he runs incessantly, wearing a garbage bag over his grey sweatshirt, trying to get in good shape so Nikki will want him back.

Pat’s best friend, Ronnie (John Ortiz), invites him to dinner, an invitation rather mysteriously seconded by Ronnie’s wife, Veronica (Julia Styles), who has made no secrets of her disdain for that friendship.  But when Pat shows up to dinner, it turns out Veronica has also invited her sister, Tiffany (Jennifer Lawrence).  Possibly on the theory that Tiffany is the one person on earth as crazy as Pat.

Neither Pat nor Tiffany have any social filters, none.  Ronnie introduces them, whispering to Pat that Tiffany’s husband, a cop, recently died, but that she doesn’t like to talk about it.  So Pat immediately says, “Hi!  How did your husband die?”  And everyone at the party is shocked and appalled, except Tiffany, who it turns out kind of likes it.  She and Pat have a fun chat about which anti-psychotics they’ve taken–they hit it off.

And that’s the film, Pat and Tiffany’s relationship.  Again, Tiffany’s illness is not cute, nor is it treated as in any way adorable.  It’s caused her to sleep with all the other people in her office, and got her fired from her job. She’s self-destructive. She’s a mess.  He’s a mess.  They’re messy, hurting, damaged, seriously screwed-up people.  And nothing in the film suggests otherwise.  They do seem right for each other, but if they end up together, as we watch them, a murder-suicide does not seem outside the realm of possible outcomes.

And yet we root for them, we genuinely do.  She has chosen, in a kind of self-imposed therapy, to enter a ballroom dance competition in downtown Philadelphia.  She asks, then begs, then blackmails Pat into partnering her.  She’s not a particularly good dancer, and he’s never danced in his life.  But they do have leisure time to spare, and dance together for hours each day. Coached by Pat’s even crazier friend from the hospital, Danny, (Chris Tucker), who has managed to game the mental health system and get himself released.

Their dancing infuriates Robert DeNiro’s Pat Sr. because it means Pat isn’t able to watch Eagles’ games with him, plus he thinks Pat shouldn’t be dating someone possibly as crazy as he is.  And Pat insists they’re not dating, they’re just friends and dance partners, because, you know, he’s married.  To Nikki.  And just needs to work around that silly restraining order nonsense.

Anyway, it all ends with a confrontation scene, in which Tiffany points out that the Eagles (and also the Phillies–Pat Sr.  also likes baseball, just not as much) have tended to win when Pat dance-rehearses with her, and lose when Pat watches games with Dad.  That he’s gotten the ju-ju wrong–that his superstitions are based on a false reading of the evidence. That the Eagles need Pat to dance, with her. And, in my favorite moment in the film, DeNiro nods sagely, and admits she’s got it right.

Man, I can’t begin to describe how much I loved that moment.  Non-sports-fans wouldn’t get it, not at all.  But we do that–we ascribe the victories and defeats of our favorite sports teams to Something We Did.  I read a few reviews of the film, and one critic said she found this moment, the main turning point in the film, completely implausible.  No rational person could possibly believe in sports superstitions, and certainly not enough to base a major life decision on one.  Me, I’m nodding my head.  I’m on a roll now; my Giants won the World Series last year, and don’t tell me my lucky slippers weren’t the main reason.  I know better.

To win a major (illegal) bet for his Dad, Pat and Tiffany have to score a 5 in the dance competition. A 5 is a very low score, and most of the other dancers are really exceptionally good.  When they dance (and they aren’t really good at all, a detail I’m so delighted about), and see they’ve scored exactly a 5.0, they’re leaping about, celebrating, to the astonishment of all these professional dancers who were bummed when they got an 8.

Anyway, it’s a great film, one of the great romcoms, even though nobody’s going to get that it is one.  I’ve heard people mention Jennifer Lawrence as a possible Oscar nominee; it wouldn’t surprise me if that were to happen.  She’s great in this. So is Bradley Cooper. What a wonderfully human film they’ve made together.

32 years

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My computer was down on my anniversary this past week, preventing me from writing something excessively gooey.  It still astounds me, though, to think that I’ve been married for thirty two years.  32.  Three tens, two ones.  Hard to believe.

I mean, when we got married, Jimmy Carter was still President, Ronald Reagan having just been elected, but not yet inaugurated.  The Iran hostage crisis was still going on–wouldn’t be resolved until mid-January.  Five days after the hostages were released, the Oakland Raiders won Super Bowl XV, the TV coverage for which I remember as a tasteless patriotic orgy.  Actually, what I remember most about that Super Bowl was a question a reporter asked Raiders’ quarterback Jim Plunkett at the Super Bowl media day: “is it your mother who’s blind and your father who’s deaf, or the other way around?” Still the tackiest question asked a professional athlete ever.

It was a great year for movies, and a horrible year for music. Ordinary People would win Best Picture, defeating Coal Miner’s Daughter, Raging Bull, The Elephant Man, and Tess. Terrific movies, all.  Sissy Spacek and Robert DeNiro won Oscars, along with Mary Steenburgen (I forgot she ever won one!) and, (I’m not kidding), Timothy Hutton. The first Muppet Movie came out that year, and we all heard “Rainbow Connection” for the first time, re-kindling the perpetual romance between Miss Piggy and Kermit.  On the other hand, Xanadu also came out that year.  The Electric Light Orchestra was considered cool.  Honest, they were.

Here’s how long ago that was: the music in Ordinary People was Pachelbel’s Canon, which worked in that picture, because most folks didn’t know it; we hadn’t all gotten sick of it yet. I just thought it sounded pretty. But look what won the Grammy for best album: Billy Joel’s 52nd Street.  Billy Joel was considered cool that year.  And Donna Summer (Donna Summer!) won a Grammy for best rock (rock!) performance. Big songs that year included AC/DC’s “Back in Black,” Pat Benetar “Hit Me With Your Best Shot” and Blondie’s “Call Me.”  The big issues back then had to do with disco. Mostly, you had to hate it, but I did see Saturday Night Fever, and liked it a lot. But, boy, stuck in the middle of the disco era–what an awful year for popular music.

1980. The biggest sports news of 1980 involved a hockey game; the USA defeating the Soviet Union in the Olympics, then defeating Finland for the gold medal.  Remember Al Michaels: “Do you believe in miracles?”  I didn’t even like hockey, and I thought that was awesome.  Made all the more poignant by the fact that the US didn’t send a team to the Summer Olympics that year; Jimmy Carter’s response to the Soviet Union’s invasion of Afghanistan.  Remember the Cold War?  When I got married, there was a Cold War.

The San Francisco Giants finished in fifth place that year, in a six team division. Their shortstop was Johnnie LeMaster, fondly remembered by Giants’ fans as Johnnie Disaster.  When I got married in December, the World Series had just concluded, with the Mike Schmidt Phillies finally winning. And the LA Lakers won the 1980 NBA championship, with rookie Magic Johnson playing maybe the greatest game of basketball in history, in a game that wasn’t broadcast.  Can you imagine that today?  That’s how long ago I got married–Magic Johnson had the greatest game of his career, one of the greatest played by anyone ever, in a championship game, and we had to read about in the newspaper the next morning.  Also, we had newspapers.

And how did we follow all that sports news?  We could maybe have barely caught it on ESPN, on Sportscenter.  ESPN started broadcasting in ’79.  But we didn’t have cable TV back then, and when we finally got it, it was still broadcasting stuff like Australian Rules Football.  (Which was awesome, BTW.)  We could also have watched cable news when we got married–CNN began broadcasting in 1980, if we’d had cable then.  But FoxNews?  MSNBC?  CNBC, C-SPAN?  Not a chance.  We watched the three networks for our news.  We watched Dan Rather.

And I owned a leisure suit.  I even wore it, when my wife let me.  I had gnarly sideburns too.  I also had this sports coat, it was sort of brown and green plaid.  I thought it was the bomb.  It was a happenin’ suit.  Later, my oldest son borrowed it; wore it to school one day, for ‘wear something funny’ day.

My wife and I were big sci-fi fans, and that was a good era for sci-fi movies, I remember.  In ’79, we were dating, and did the ‘wait in line all night’ thing to see the first Star Trek movie.  It took us awhile to admit to ourselves that it was kind of a bomb.  But then, the summer before we got married, we got to see The Empire Strikes Back.  Waiting in line to see it, some jerk drove by in his car and shouted ‘Darth Vader’s Luke’s Dad!’  Even that couldn’t ruin what I still think of as the best Star Wars movie ever.  And two years later, in ’82, while my wife was pregnant with our oldest son, Star Trek 2: The Wrath of Khan came out, with Ricardo Montalban as the best Trek villain ever. It was great–Star Trek v. Star Wars was actually a debate you’d have with people.  In ’87, I was in rehearsal for something, and my wife stayed home and watched the first episode of the new Star Trek TV series; The Next Generation. That first season was pretty lame, but we didn’t think so then; we thought Picard was great, loved Riker, loved Data. That’s right, there wasn’t a new Star Trek TV series until we’d been married seven years.

32 years. A lot of jokes, a lot of laughs, a lot of late night giggle-fests.  Four kids, the oldest of whom is now in grad school.  A lot of prayers and a lot of books read and shared, and a lot of TV watched, and music listened to and sung together.  Mostly, laughs.  I figure, between us, we changed around 6,000 diapers, more or less.  And told maybe 30,000 jokes.  Which strikes me as a good enough ratio.

32 years, and I wouldn’t change one of them.  32 years, and counting. And the best, yet to come.

 

 

Christmas Songs

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My wife and I went to a play in Salt Lake on Tuesday, and since we were up there, and it was a nasty cold night, we decided to make a real date of it. First to Trader Joe’s, for cookies, then dinner, then a play.  (Okay, we ran short on time, and dinner involved a Wendy’s, still, it was fun.)  And on the way home, my wife and I turned the radio to a station that plays nothing but Christmas carols.  I have no idea what they play the rest of the year, but starting on Thanksgiving, it’s Yuletide all the time.  And it occurred to me what a deeply weird mix of songs gets played on stations like that.  It seems to me they come in three categories: religious Christmas songs (like “Silent Night” or “Carol of the Bells”), secular Christmas songs (like “White Christmas” or “Jingle Bells”), and sort of generic Holiday songs (like “Frosty the Snowman”), that don’t actually have anything explicitly to do with Christmas per se, but get played a lot this time of year anyway.  And this station just jumbles ‘em all up together.

It makes for an odd driving-and-listening experience.  You’ll hear something sort of sexy and saucy, like the gold-digger anthem “Santa Baby”, which has to go close to the top of the Wildly Inappropriate Christmas Song list, right next to “I saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus”.  Seriously, no kidding, listen to “Santa Baby”: it basically suggests that Santa, if he comes through with the right gifts, could very well get, uh, lucky.  Mrs. Claus, beware!  Then the very next song turns out to be something completely awesome, like Josh Groban singing “Little Drummer Boy”. (Don’t say it: I happen to like Josh Groban, I think he’s got a beautiful voice). Followed by Bing Crosby singing “Mele Kalikimaka“, almost certainly the Christmas song he’s best known for.  (Rimshot!)

But for all the tacky “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer” type novelty songs, Christmas really is about the music. For years, my wife and I were in a terrific BYU alumni choir, Canti Con Brio.  We did two concerts a year, one of them a Christmas concert, and it was amazing. Every Christmas, many many Christmas albums come out, but it seems every year we’ll hear some great new song or arrangement.  The great new addition for this year, for me, is BarlowGirl, doing Carol of the Bells.  Great band, great arrangement. Or the extraordinary (though oddly named, considering they’re mostly about the cello) Piano Guys, doing Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel.

There are always tons of Oh Holy Nights.  That’s a song that’s very close to my heart.  Growing up in Indiana, my Dad always sang it at the Lutheran’s Christmas service, which I loved.  I sort of  dig Mariah Carey’s really splashy gospel version, though I realize that it’s an acquired taste.  But there are many many versions: Kelly Clarkson, Charlotte Church, Jennifer Hudson and Carrie Underwood, Pavarotti and Nat King Cole, Martina McBride and Celine Dion, the cast of Glee and King’s College Choir.  It’s supposed to be sort of showy, what with the high note on ‘oh night, di-VINE.  But I really love this one, by the Celtic Women. Beautifully, and for once, reverently sung.

In the wake of the Newtown Connecticut shootings, Saturday Night Live opened their show last week, not with a comedy sketch as is their wont, but with this, a children’s choir singing “Silent Night.”  A sweet and quietly appropriate gesture.  “Silent Night” is the greatest of Christmas hymns, so deceptively simple.  I love this beautifully haunting version by Sinead O’connor, but there are many other lovely ones, including this one, by cats.  But even Elvis covered it, actually quite beautifully.  And yet, somehow, it’s above all, a song for children’s voices.

Some of the most unlikely people have recorded Christmas songs.  Like, BareNaked Ladies singing “God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen.” And singing it well!  Or Sufjan Stevens singing “Oh Come Oh Come Emmanuel“. With banjo. And it’s great. Sufjan has an entire Christmas album that’s amazing.  Or the Muppets chicken-intensive “Joy to the World”.  Or, (and I’m not kidding, do NOT click on this link), the horrendous “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” by, again not kidding, Twisted Sister. A misogynist, heavy metal “Oh Come all Ye Faithful.” You clicked on the link, didn’t you?  I did warn you.

One of the great Christmas bands touring this time of year is the Trans-Siberian Orchestra.  I’ve never seen them live, to my eternal regret, but they’re incredibly great in recordings, if you like your classical music with electric guitars and rock backbeat, which I very much do. (So why is this great, and Twisted Sister horrendous? Don’t know. It just is.) Try this Christmas Canon, for an appetizer; one of the many Christmas arrangements that uses Pachelbel’s ubiquitous canon to set a Christmas song. (When I was ward choir director, we used an arrangement of “The First Noel,” that also employed Pachelbel.)  Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Carol of the Bells” is pretty awesome too.

What’s the worst Christmas song ever, the ne plus ultra of tacky awfulness?  I’d nominate this: “Baby It’s Cold Outside”. I chose a video version showing the lyrics, on purpose.  “What’s in this drink?”  He slipped her a roofie!  It’s a song that has nothing whatever to do with Christmas; it’s about a jerk seducing a nice girl.  And yet, there it is, in steady rotation on our Christmas station, though at least they use the Zooey Deschenel version from Elf.

And what’s the best, the greatest Christmas song ever?  Aside from “Silent Night,” aside from the Christmas carols, the “Joy to the Worlds” and “Oh Little Town of Bethlehems?”  Of the old Tin Pan Alley songs, songs by (mostly Jewish) songwriters for the Nat King Coles and Mel Tormes and Frank Sinatras for their Christmas albums and TV Christmas specials? Which ones still resonate?  I’d nominate three.

I love the sweet melancholy of “I’ll Be Home for Christmas.” I love Frank Sinatra’s, with overtones of “Silent Night” in the arrangement, but Rascal Flatts has a beautiful version too.

Second, “The Christmas Song,” the “chestnuts roasting on an open fire” song, is sweetly nostalgic.  Justin Bieber (shudder) has covered it, but the classic Nat King Cole version is unsurpassed, though there’s a sweetness to the She and Him cover; love Zooey Deschenel’s phrasing.

Finally, of course, White Christmas.  Bing Crosby’s stardom used to baffle me–I found him neither good-looking, charming or charismatic.  But the voice was beautiful, and there’s a sadness to the song, heard in isolation from the (to me, kind of unwatchable) movie. Shoot me, but I’m also down with a recent cover by, I’m not kidding, Lady Gaga. She even adds an extra verse, which isn’t half-bad, either: “I’m dreamin’ of a white snowman.”

Christmas music makes the season, even more than the lights and the presents and the tree.  Christmas is about the music, nostalgic music, worshipful music, even sometimes sort of playful music.  Merry Christmas everyone.