The documentary’s trailer:
Interview with one of the directors giving background and summary:
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For a couple more videos and background, see Reason.tv’s page on Estonia and the Singing Revolution and the documentary’s website.
I attended Myers Elementary School (suburban Philadelphia) from first grade through fourth grade – autumn 1981 through fall of 1985. I recall our music classes singing some tunes I would not expect to find in the, err, “syllabus,” for such a class. Robert Goltz and Jan Goltz taught the classes I was in. I compile the songs can I remember here:
“Pick a Bail of Cotton”: Video (1945) by Leadbelly:
Yes, a slave song (see bottom of this page). Skiffle musician Lonnie Donegan has a version here.
[google 8130980273497744708]I just burned a CD of Weird Al’s nine polkas, from 1984 to 2006. See, next Sunday, my short-form improv class will finish with a performance. 45 minutes, 6 or 7 games. One of them is “Jukebox,” where we sing a bit of a song that’s somewhat related to a topic suggested by an audience member. Since I’ve been listening to indie-rock (Luna, Belle & Sebastian, Magnetic Fields, The Postal Service) for the past six years or so, I needed to get brain in gear for well-known pop songs.
Weird Al’s polkas do the trick as a crash course in popular songs of an era. He crams a dozen or so songs into a three to four minute polka medley. What’s great is he keeps the lyrics the same, but sings the songs with such positive enthusiasm that he simply mocks all of them.
For example, 1986′s “Polka Party!” ends with a joyously repeated “I’m gonna keep my baby” Madonna’s “Papa Don’t Preach.” Then, 1992′s “Polka Your Eyes Out” ends with a chorus of “Ice Ice Baby” sung in the same style as the Madonna refrain. Both times the tonality is incongrous with the emotional context of the original song, but for different reasons. Nonetheless, they are both funny, and make great driving music.
In an odd and yet meaningless coincidence, the DC-area “classic rock” station was playing the same song (“The Distance”, by Cake) in my car when I left it at 10 AM as when I got back into at more than 12 hours later – almost as if I were listening to the song on a CD and not the radio. Indeed, it’s a catchy tune.
In a subsequent post I should rave on and on about Martin Seligman’s Learned Optimism. He relates some amazing studies on how one’s explanatory style determines our resilience to adversity, achievement, and health. Here’s a paper on how it affects athletes.
This is not the first post of this nature. Anyway, the show included a riff from Jonathan Richman’s “Lonely Little Thrift Store” after a segment on Walmart’s banking service. Good choice! They’ve used this riff before, and the album is sold on the Public Radio Music Store. Speaking of Walmart, I again saw South Park’s Something Wallmart this Way Comes, fabulous social commentary. Still, I should get around to reading Walmart & the Politics of American Retail. Back to radio, I’ve noticed my growing distaste for songs by The Eagles. I can’t think of another band that makes me change the radio station faster and more decisively.
Click on the above link for a nice interview with Yo La Tengo, one of my favorite bands, about their new compilation CD. It’s pretty funny, though I expect many won’t get it. There’s something about the rapport and under-stated satire.
Last night I joined my friend Duff and his friends for karaoke at the Outback Saloon in North Boulder. I’ve been in Boulder for six years, and it’s the first time I’ve done karoke here. (Not including a foiled attempt a few years ago.) The karaoke DJ was great: enthusiastic, affable, participated in songs when needed, and has props (inflatable guitar!). I submitted my usual, a Talking Heads song, but then did “Dancing With Myself” by Billy Idol. Could use some work. Then I joined another guy for the theme to Gilligan’s Island, my request. That was a good one, but for some reason I seemed to be the only one who knew the second verse (at least well enough to get the cadence, the key to karaoke!). People were quite impressed.
until now. I don’t drink coffee, and consider corporations innocent until proven guilty. Still, I don’t go to Starbucks, as I prefer the atmosphere of other places, but I don’t get self-righteous about it. Certainly there are more important things to get self-righteous about, like punctuation (Ironically, as pointed out my an Amazon reviewer, the cover of Eats[,] Shoots, and Leaves is missing a hyphen: “zero-tolerance”!), turning out lights, or the students environmental activists in Boulder this week singing uncritical praises of recycling, as if there were an environmentalist heaven and recycling was always good.
But I digress. My friend Charles, who has admired my song parodies, sent me a link to this story of a song parody performed at the Starbucks Licensed Stores Awards ceremony. (See the Feb. 24 entry.) I’d listened to the song before knowing the context, and thought it to be cute at best, but lacked any edge. I mean, how can it be funny if it’s not at anyone’s expense? Perhaps I’ve seen too much Family Guy, and had recently seen Team America: World Police, where I really did “laugh ’til it hurt.” Then I read the story about it. Ugh. The chorus is “Don’t you remember? … We built this Starbucks on heart and soul!” How can I forget?
P.S. Sure, I am guilty of a corporate song parody, Optics Queen, but that was “peformed” (with two guilty coworkers) in the style of a roast, and we knew it was ridiculous.
I was at a friend Ben’s house to watch the Super Bowl. Eagles almost pulled it out. What’s the percentage of successful on-side kicks, anyway? I read something about that recently. Paul McCartney sure has the head bob thing going when he performs. There’s something a bit off-putting about his style. It’s as if he’s doing a cover of his own songs. The emotions I sense from him do not seem to match the song, rather, they seem to say “Hey look, I’m singing this song now (for the Nth time), isn’t it great?@! Woohoo!” Yet, the guy is still writing songs and is ambitious enough to try different styles. So that’s admirable.
Ben’s friend Pauli will soon be a chef, and Ben says that because of his influence, he can now taste the difference among different types of salt, and “organic” vs. normal milk. Pretty neat. Like anything else, cooking and tasting is a skill to be acquired, and with it, a greater appreciation of life.
