This has been a very music-intensive month.
First off, my father and I have been working to convert vinyl to MP3. The albums are both LP-only: they've never been turned into CDs or released on iTunes or anything like that. The first is Eubie Blake, the great ragtime composer, the other The Eastman Winds Ensemble. Very different, but both very good. I discovered them because each year I check the National Recording Registry and listen to their long-form music inductees. At this point I've tracked down nearly all of them, with a few exceptions:
Second, more substantially, a close friend had a baby, so I dug out an old cassette from my childhood of lullabies, and converted that to MP3. In punchline fashion I started to fall asleep while recording it. Songs I'd not heard since I was very young came back to me almost instantly, a Proustian madeleine moment. A couple I had rediscovered as an adult: Golden Slumbers, I learned, was originally a Beatles song. Autumn to May had been a hit for Peter, Paul, and Mary. Upon investigation some of the tracks are well known, like the Paddle Song / Land of the Silver Birch (a childhood favorite) which apparently is popular with the Canadian boy scouts. Others, though, I've never heard anywhere else. Remarkably, there is a track listing provided by World Cat so I guess the Library of Congress has a copy? Or something? Very odd.
Thirdly, for the past two weekends I have been going from my new home down near Monterey up to San Francisco for Taylor Mac's 24 Decades of Popular Music. I could write volumes on the premise, but a nice job has been done already on SF Gate here. So read that article before continuing... but just in case you're in a tl;dr mood the premise is: 24 hour show, covering popular music in America from 1776 to 2016, starts with 24 musicians onstage and wheedles them down to just Taylor Mac by the final hour, 246 songs, and 24 costume changes. Four, six-hour segments, with no intermissions.
That doesn't begin to cover the experience, though: it's 60% American history lesson through song, 40% audience-participation with 'Hair' overtones. Taylor Mac is in drag (when wearing clothes), there's nudity, burlesque, beer pong in the audience, knitters on stage, pole dancing, on multiple occasions Mac has gone up to the Mezzanine or Balcony for a spell to entertain the plebes - just as he has on multiple occasions rearranged the seating of the entire audience and asked many audience members to be on stage for up to two hours at a time. And then there are the Dandy Minions - his impish, clothing-averse helpers who go throughout the audience and ensure the crowd is participating, and made thoroughly uncomfortable. To paraphrase a statement Mac made during the show:
"I don't like audience participation, you know, because it always feels like they're trying to force their fun on me. And I'm like 'Fuck you I'm not going to have fun!' But when I make you do it, it's different, see, because I want you to be uncomfortable."
Perhaps 40% history and 60% revelry, then.
So I've now been on stage three times, and there's still a fourth six-hour part this upcoming Sunday evening. It's been a blast, and like everyone else I'm sort of stunned that he's able to keep going and remember so many songs, poems, and the overlying narrative. There have been parts I didn't care for (I still maintain hour 11's Mikado set on Mars was stupid) but others have been breathtakingly powerful, and left me astonished. Last night, at the end of the decade/hour which covered 1936-1946 Mac mentioned, almost off-hand, that the War ended when America dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, and then went into the most stunning and overwhelming rendition of 'Ghost Riders in the Sky' that the audience was silenced in reverie of a coupling of song and tragedy I'd never have dreamed of, but complimented each other perfectly. I've been to Hiroshima, and from now on I expect Taylor Mac's plaintive pitch-perfect cries of 'yippee kai-yay, yippee kai-yo' will come to mind whenever considering that devastating moment of post-modern America's birth, and the recognition of our tragic ascendancy to superpower status.
In short: I'm a fan of the show, and September's dedication to music has been most rewarding.
Coda:
At one point Mac was onstage reading Joyce's Ulysses, and I had a thought which nicely sums up my feelings towards 24 Decades: What must it feel like to know you're a genius, reading the words of another genius, as you are in the midst of your own defining artistic endeavor? 24 Decades was one of three works short-listed for the Pulitzer, and has been critically acclaimed, yet it is of a type where you have to be in the room to fully get it, and in a very real sense will die with him - you can't do a revival fifty years from now. This is so very unlike Joyce's art which can be disseminated freely (these days) and will continue to be passed on. After reading the last pages of the book Mac paused, and smiled, and I think he was reminiscing on exactly that - but experiencing it in a way none of us in the audience will likely ever get to feel for ourselves.
First off, my father and I have been working to convert vinyl to MP3. The albums are both LP-only: they've never been turned into CDs or released on iTunes or anything like that. The first is Eubie Blake, the great ragtime composer, the other The Eastman Winds Ensemble. Very different, but both very good. I discovered them because each year I check the National Recording Registry and listen to their long-form music inductees. At this point I've tracked down nearly all of them, with a few exceptions:
- The Cradle Will Rock OBC
- Precious Lord: Thomas Dorsey
- Oklahoma! OBC
- Peace Be Still: James Cleveland
- Azucar Pa’ Ti: Eddie Palmieri
- The Continental Harmony: Gregg Smith Singers
- New Orleans’ Sweet Emma Barrett and Preservation Hall Jazz Band
- Lincoln Mayorga and Distinguished Colleagues
- Carousel of American Music
- It’s My Way: Buffy Sainte-Marie
- People: Barbara Streisand (I thought it was just the song, but apparently it's the album)
- Signatures: Renee Fleming
Second, more substantially, a close friend had a baby, so I dug out an old cassette from my childhood of lullabies, and converted that to MP3. In punchline fashion I started to fall asleep while recording it. Songs I'd not heard since I was very young came back to me almost instantly, a Proustian madeleine moment. A couple I had rediscovered as an adult: Golden Slumbers, I learned, was originally a Beatles song. Autumn to May had been a hit for Peter, Paul, and Mary. Upon investigation some of the tracks are well known, like the Paddle Song / Land of the Silver Birch (a childhood favorite) which apparently is popular with the Canadian boy scouts. Others, though, I've never heard anywhere else. Remarkably, there is a track listing provided by World Cat so I guess the Library of Congress has a copy? Or something? Very odd.
Thirdly, for the past two weekends I have been going from my new home down near Monterey up to San Francisco for Taylor Mac's 24 Decades of Popular Music. I could write volumes on the premise, but a nice job has been done already on SF Gate here. So read that article before continuing... but just in case you're in a tl;dr mood the premise is: 24 hour show, covering popular music in America from 1776 to 2016, starts with 24 musicians onstage and wheedles them down to just Taylor Mac by the final hour, 246 songs, and 24 costume changes. Four, six-hour segments, with no intermissions.
That doesn't begin to cover the experience, though: it's 60% American history lesson through song, 40% audience-participation with 'Hair' overtones. Taylor Mac is in drag (when wearing clothes), there's nudity, burlesque, beer pong in the audience, knitters on stage, pole dancing, on multiple occasions Mac has gone up to the Mezzanine or Balcony for a spell to entertain the plebes - just as he has on multiple occasions rearranged the seating of the entire audience and asked many audience members to be on stage for up to two hours at a time. And then there are the Dandy Minions - his impish, clothing-averse helpers who go throughout the audience and ensure the crowd is participating, and made thoroughly uncomfortable. To paraphrase a statement Mac made during the show:
"I don't like audience participation, you know, because it always feels like they're trying to force their fun on me. And I'm like 'Fuck you I'm not going to have fun!' But when I make you do it, it's different, see, because I want you to be uncomfortable."
Perhaps 40% history and 60% revelry, then.
So I've now been on stage three times, and there's still a fourth six-hour part this upcoming Sunday evening. It's been a blast, and like everyone else I'm sort of stunned that he's able to keep going and remember so many songs, poems, and the overlying narrative. There have been parts I didn't care for (I still maintain hour 11's Mikado set on Mars was stupid) but others have been breathtakingly powerful, and left me astonished. Last night, at the end of the decade/hour which covered 1936-1946 Mac mentioned, almost off-hand, that the War ended when America dropped an atomic bomb on Japan, and then went into the most stunning and overwhelming rendition of 'Ghost Riders in the Sky' that the audience was silenced in reverie of a coupling of song and tragedy I'd never have dreamed of, but complimented each other perfectly. I've been to Hiroshima, and from now on I expect Taylor Mac's plaintive pitch-perfect cries of 'yippee kai-yay, yippee kai-yo' will come to mind whenever considering that devastating moment of post-modern America's birth, and the recognition of our tragic ascendancy to superpower status.
In short: I'm a fan of the show, and September's dedication to music has been most rewarding.
Coda:
At one point Mac was onstage reading Joyce's Ulysses, and I had a thought which nicely sums up my feelings towards 24 Decades: What must it feel like to know you're a genius, reading the words of another genius, as you are in the midst of your own defining artistic endeavor? 24 Decades was one of three works short-listed for the Pulitzer, and has been critically acclaimed, yet it is of a type where you have to be in the room to fully get it, and in a very real sense will die with him - you can't do a revival fifty years from now. This is so very unlike Joyce's art which can be disseminated freely (these days) and will continue to be passed on. After reading the last pages of the book Mac paused, and smiled, and I think he was reminiscing on exactly that - but experiencing it in a way none of us in the audience will likely ever get to feel for ourselves.
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