Things I Have to Add

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This was on my list, but no sign anyone’s listened for real. The coda that doesn’t end is normally a joke. This time it’s the whole point.

Nobody’s commented on my list. Odd, given that I started it, don’t you think?

You’re allowed. But I can also change the rules. Maybe the most important thing is what you realize you left off. I have the beginning of that list too. Things not on my iTunes list.

Truth is, I could do a Top 100 of both Stones and Sinatra. I could probably do another hundred of classical, although toward the later stages of WFLN in Philadelphia (before it expired from uninterest) I did come to believe in something called generic classical — all show and no go.

So, today, I’m adding to my list, as I encourage you to do. Which consists of things I just forgot, which nevertheless belong. My wife thinks I’m a pure sentimentalist, which I may be. But I tend to think not.

Rhapsody in Blue, George Gershwin.

Over the Rainbow by Judy Garland. (No. No defense is necessary. Anyone who’s ever had a daughter knows how sweet this is.)

Pavane for a Dead Princess< by Ravel. Un Bel Di from Puccini’s Madama Butterfly.

All Along the Watchtower, Hendrix Version.

Lullaby of Broadway, performed by George Auld. (Good luck finding it. This isn’t the one I remember, which was as languid as a walk home in the dark yellow hours of Manhattan. Oh well.)

The Finale of Mozart’s Marriage of Figaro. (Skip to 3 minutes in if you’re impatient. Sublime.)

Hello Young Lovers, Sinatra.

I Am Here, Where Are You? Harriet Hilliard. (Breaks my heart every time. Al right, all right. It was in a Fred Astaire Ginger Rogers movie, and she fell for a sailor who didn’t mean what he said. A 1930s version of Un Bel Di. And, yeah it was Harriet of Ozzie and Harriet fame. Does that make Lady Laird right? Of course not.) I’m as sentimental as any other Allman Brothers fan. {snicker}

The Lord’s Prayer, Denyce Graves.

Secret Love, Doris Day. (Ignore the clunky movie staging. Her voice is rich and full and effortless throughout its vast range. Alternatively, you could look up her version of Sentimental Journey with Tommy Dorsey. An extraordinary talent.)

Rachmaninov. Variations on a Theme of Paganini, No. 18. In the days before the Internet spent years looking for this piece of music. Taught myself how to tap out the theme on the piano long before a music teacher clued me in.

And, of course, this:

Mick Jagger and Tina Turner. Something about Rock and Roll.

I think that music is about reaching levels of feeling words don’t normally get us to. Not that they can’t. Just that they usually don’t. The heights and depths of joy, sorrow, love, devotion, loss, forgiveness, beauty, rage against obstacles, and the rage to live. Why we listen while we pretend to hunker inside our tunnels of everydayness.

But what do I know?

20 thoughts on “Things I Have to Add”

  1. The 18th variation was a revelation to me in my teens. I had no idea who Rachmaninoff was. My parents brought home a sappy movie starring Christopher Reeve and Jane Seymour called “Somewhere in Time”. The 18th variation features in the soundtrack. I couldn’t get it out of my head. I found the Ashkenazy-Previn recording (purely by accident… no, wait — of course not) of the Rhapsody alongside the 2nd Concerto. It was shortly followed by the 2nd Symphony, which is a thing of exquisite beauty… the longing of the second movement (what is it with Sergei and 2s?)… the exuberant joy of the final movement… I enjoy Chopin and Beethoven and Tchaikovsky and Mahler and Wagner. But my classical heart will belong forever to the wistful Russian.

    • I think it was a movie that hooked me too. The Secret of Three Loves. Anyway, three stories. In one of them a dying ballerina. 18th variation. Breaks your heart into pieces.

      Do you know the secret of the 18th variation? Rachmaninov played the original melody backwards. Paganini should have been so lucky.

      So. Introduced to me in college. Blew my mind. (Already had second concerto in my kit). Here’s the thing. I ALSO remembered that the killer was the second movement. It’s a trick of the twos. The one you remember with infinite longing is the third. Want to hear it again?

      http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xb6mus_rachmaninov-symphony-no-2-movement_music

      • Btw I’ve been meaning to ask somebody, anybody, if there’s any memory of Rachmaninov’s Isle of the Dead? Absolutely amazing piece conjured from this photograph…

        http://www.theislandreview.com/the-isle-of-the-dead/

        Nobody remembers Rach’s tribute to Poe’s The Bells either. Beginning to think I’m the only real Rachy fan here. ‘Course, I’m the only one from Philly.

        • Once upon a time I had an LP of Isle of the Dead, as well as Variations on a Theme of Paganini. I came to Rachmaninoff via Ayn Rand’s recommendation while in high school. Rachmaninoff stuck, Rand not so much. However, I must say her writings about politics/economics, etc., almost seem more relevant today than ever.

          • I gather you’re unaware of a years long war — across three blogs — against my religious faith by a Rand disciple named Brizoni? I smacked her in print and the rockets have been flying at my head ever since. Not anxious to reopen that discussion. Her adherents are as fanatical as Saracens.

        • Only real Rach fan, my ass! At this point, I’ve probably listened to the “All Night Vigil” as many times as I’ve listened to the 2nd Concerto. And not everybody digs that Russian Orthodox church music… I’ve also got the recordings of SR playing his own works in addition to the reconstructed piano roll recordings (among which is SR playing “The Star Spangled Banner”, my favorite performance of the anthem).

          Far be it from me to suggest I’m *more* of a fan than you. But I *am* most definitely a fan.

          (Re: the Vigil, you simply must hear these Estonians performing part of it. Talk about basso profundo…)

      • Ach. You are correct, of course: the “infinite longing” is in the 3rd movement of the symphony, not the second. I was confusing it with the 2nd movement in the 2nd concerto… which is about as wistful as music gets. It’s hard to say which is my absolute mostest favoritest Rachmaninoff piece: symphony 2 adagio or concerto 2 adagio. I guess I’d have to lean towards the concerto, because it is on the piano where Sergei’s true voice is best heard. However, it seems unfair for me to love the adagios so much, given that a Rachmaninoff allegro will leave you breathless and wonderfully alive. You have to take the highs with the lows, the fasts with the slows…

        • All right. You’re more Rachy fan than I am. The Vigil and the piano rolls seal the deal. It’s just that I started early. According to my wife, classical music fans start with two inevitable ladder steps, Tchaikovsky (1) and Rachmaninov (2). Then we’re supposed to advance to Bach, Beethoven, etc, leaving the early crushes behind. She’s convinced my musical taste is inferior to hers except for my slavering devotion to Mozart, with which SHE CANNOT CONTEND. How I can still sneak Rachmaninov into the mix.

          • Hm. Well, I started with Beethoven. The sixth symphony, stuck on repeat (fortunately) in the den of some of my parents friends. They were having adult conversation in the dining room. I was reading (probably some SF book). I think it was the first classical music I ever really listened to. I was in 9th grade, I think. Rachmaninoff came later. I like Beethoven, but I like SR more.

  2. Hey, I commented on your original list. Waitresses in Jersey, remember? Anyway, Rhapsody in Blue is a perfect example of what I was trying to explain in another comment. Absolutely wonderful music and I love it. However, I have no personal connection with it. There’s no accompanying story other than I like it. Does that make any sense?

    And this: “I think that music is about reaching levels of feeling words don’t normally get us to.”

    I agree. I’m curious, did you listen to the Vitamin String Quartet cover of Audioslave’s “Like a Stone”? I don’t have a link handy but if you search Youtube it’ll come up. The original song is quite dull. The strings transform it.

    • PS – Not done commenting, either. Just trying to find the time. Honestly. Thanks for getting this whole discussion started. Been a lot of fun.

    • Nobody is a relative term. I’ve spent hours combing through lists, and it SEEMS like mine is not getting attention. That’s called petulance. : )

      Haven’t listened to the song you mention yet. Is there a story that goes with it?

      I do have stories for most of my picks. Rhapsody in Blue is a case in point. My dad was big band, as I’ve explained, but he didn’t even regard Rhapsody in Blue as jazz. I never heard it until I started looking through my granddad’s record collection, where I first discovered both Rachmaninov and Rhapsody. The latter was more a curiosity than anything I knew about. It was a set of translucent RED .45s. Cool. I played them to hear what a red .45 sounded like. It sounded good. That opening wail of Rhapsody is a revelation to a young kid. Oh. There’s something classical about jazz. It’s like a bridge over a divide you knew existed but never saw before.

      Nobody in my adolescence listened to Rhapsody, but when I got to college my freshman roommate (later my best man) had the most eccentric record collection I’d ever seen. He played Rhapsody all the time. And Laura Nyro of all people. He played his favorites again and again and he didn’t care what anybody thought. He was the one who suddenly informed me we were going into the city to see a new movie. What movie? The Godfather. Never heard of it. Then he got the soundtrack and played it to death. So we had a rotation that included Rhapsody in Blue, Laura Nyro, the Godfather, and my own obsessive repeats, including the last two cuts of one side of Beggars Banquet. Couldn’t stop playing them. They were the soundtrack to my first reading of Fitzgerald’s Tender Is the Night. That music and that book are irrationally and inextricably linked in my mind ever since. And when I hear Rhapsody in Blue, even now, I halfway expect to hear the opening chords of Factory Girl and then Salt of the Earth after that. And I see Dick Diver politely disappearing from the French Riviera into the wilds of upstate New York, broken, disappointed, and lost — his own rhapsody in blue. And underneath I can hear Al Martino singing, “I have but one heart…” Which is as true as anything people say.

      Oh well. See? There’s always a story.

      • “That music and that book are irrationally and inextricably linked in my mind ever since. And when I hear Rhapsody in Blue, even now, I halfway expect to hear the opening chords of Factory Girl and then Salt of the Earth after that.”

        Ha! I know exactly what you mean. Very strange how music can launch a whole sequence of memories.

        About the string quartet song: Like a Stone was played on the radio constantly while I lived in Korea. It’s a dull song, like I said, and it could actually be a contender for theme song of my time spent over there. I volunteered to go to “freedom’s frontier” before 9/11, thinking that would be where all the action was. Instead I found a culture that had been mired in bureaucracy & bullshit for about 50 years. All the training was fake. When we weren’t doing fake training, we were picking up soldiers from the MP drunk tank. Repeat, repeat, repeat.

        Browsing iTunes one day years later, I came across this group called Vitamin String Quartet. They specialize in doing covers of atypical things, like pop & rock songs. I saw they had one for Like a Stone and couldn’t conceive how it could possibly be performed by a string quartet. It blew me away. They give the music a passion & intensity that is absent in the actual song and transformed something I was never fond of from a time in my life I wasn’t fond of into something I really like.

        Plus, I played in a quartet while in band so I know how tricky it can be. Each person has a role to play and no one can hide in the section. From a musical standpoint alone, I think the performance is great.

        • Just listened to your string quartet. Absolutely gorgeous. And scary too. The music they are playing with is eerily, very eerily, similar to the music in my newest post. How does that stuff happen?

          The good news. This can drive the evil trailer music out of my head. I haven’t listened to the original. Should I?

          • The original gives you an appreciation for how the quartet transformed it. Like A Stone is a pretty self-indulgent song. It can be fun to try and hit all the notes while singing it, but only for the singer. Saw someone do this for karaoke once. Hope he had fun, b/c he totally killed the mood in the bar. Glad you liked the string version, though.

        • Have you seen any of the 2CELLOS stuff? They have some fun vids on youtube. Those guys know how to ride strings. They’re hard on bows though…

  3. Actually, I am quite aware of your Rand battle with Brizoni. I’ve been lurking for awhile now. I’m never going to defend Rand in her totality by any means. But her writings were quite prophetic when it comes to the state of the world today when it comes to politics and economics and crony capitalism.

    Now, Streets of Fire. I have to admit up front that I love that movie. The acting is obviously over-the-top but it was intentional. That’s probably why the opening and closing songs written by Jim Steinman were so appropriate, being over-the-top themselves. Bat Out of Hell is over-the-top, but, like you, I love it. Forget the trailer that you linked, find the full videos of the opening and closing scenes. (If I get a chance tonight, I’ll find them and put up the links.) I’m still inclined to think that Paradise By the Dashboard Light might be the best Steinman/Meatloaf collaboration.

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