#333 Musings Beyond the Bunker (Saturday April 23)
Good morning,
MUSIC
The other day I was listening to SiriusXM and they played a Spike Jones piece. Jones was famous in the 1950s for using bells, horns, cowbells and other sounds in his mash-ups of familiar tunes. This got me thinking of the various novelty musical acts over the years. One Saturday a month in April, May and June I’ll share some of my favorites, most that I remember from my childhood…
Spike Jones, “William Tell Overture,”:
Alan Sherman. He had a number of witty new lyrics to existing tunes and the performance chops to pull off the humor. His albums, My Son the Folk Singer and My Son the Celebrity, were classic. This is a version from a TV performance on his own show of his most famous piece, “Hello Muddah, Hello Faddah.”:
Tom Lehrer was a genius (literally), graduating magna cum laude from Harvard. His “National Brotherhood Week” became a classic, but this song about the periodic table, performed on TV in the 50s, is equally magnificent: “The Elements”:
Lehrer worked for the NSA and taught at Harvard, Wellesley and UC Santa Cruz. On his early word-of-mouth records: "Lacking exposure in the media, my songs spread slowly. Like herpes, rather than ebola."
POETRY/QUOTATIONS
In this era of book banning and trying to control school curricula, and the crackdowns on free speech and the media in Russia and China, these words ring true (thanks to Adam Torson for digging them up):
“It is said: the freedom to speak or to write can be taken away from us by the powers-that-be, but the freedom to think cannot be taken from us through them at all. However, how much and how correctly would we think if we did not think in community with others to whom we communicate our thoughts and who communicate theirs to us! Hence, we may safely state that the external power which deprives man of the freedom to communicate his thoughts publicly also takes away his freedom to think, the only treasure left to us in our civic life and through which alone there may be a remedy against all evils of the present state of affairs.”
-- Immanuel Kant, Gesammelte Schriften
“This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself — nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance. In every dark hour of our national life a leadership of frankness and vigor has met with that understanding and support of the people themselves which is essential to victory.”
-- Franklin Roosevelt, First Inaugural Address (March 4, 1933)
Have a great weekend,
Glenn
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