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What are you listening to? Part III
- Thread starter S.B.G
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Had one from my daughters playlist catch my attention. Not a bad tune.
"Sommarfågel" by Swedish folktronica band Wintergatan.
They're probably best known for one of the members' creation, the Marble Machine, which was made by Martin Molin and has since been the subject of a viral (I think) music video.
The band uses a combination of standard acoustic instruments (drums, bass, guitar, vibraphone, dulcimer, melodica, etc.) and homemade/electronic instruments (theremin, synth, reprogrammable music box, modular synth), and it's not uncommon for them to switch between instruments multiple times in one song.
From left to right, we see: modular synth, vibraphone, keyboard | melodica, keyboard, bass | two synths, vibraphone, and a music box.
They're probably best known for one of the members' creation, the Marble Machine, which was made by Martin Molin and has since been the subject of a viral (I think) music video.
The band uses a combination of standard acoustic instruments (drums, bass, guitar, vibraphone, dulcimer, melodica, etc.) and homemade/electronic instruments (theremin, synth, reprogrammable music box, modular synth), and it's not uncommon for them to switch between instruments multiple times in one song.
From left to right, we see: modular synth, vibraphone, keyboard | melodica, keyboard, bass | two synths, vibraphone, and a music box.
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Another classic from an era - or a time - when even the bands with one-hit-wonders wrote unforgettable music.
On the bright side of Internet rabbit holes, I found this:
Apparently this melody dated to 1920s Russia by songwriter Boris Fomin, whose work was ultimately buried in the political tumult that marked much of that era. Eventually, in the 1950s, it seems, American playwright and musician Gene Ruskin somehow discovered it and wrote entirely new lyrics in English. He gave the song to folk outfit The Limeliters who recorded it in 1962. Several years later, Gene and Francesca [Raskin] performed it in a London club which Paul McCartney frequented. McCartney tried to enlist several artists to record it (presumably since the Beatles now strictly recorded originals), including The Moody Blues (apparently before Justin Hayward joined them). Twiggy, of all people, eventually brought Mary Hopkin to McCartney's attention and, in 1968 (after the Beatles founded Apple Records as both a [failed] tax shelter and label for up-and-coming artists) he produced the song with her on vocals. That's the most famous version. During those recording sessions she also recorded it in several other languages, using Raskins', not Fomin's, lyrics as a basis for translation. In those various iterations the song became a worldwide hit. You can see a contemporaneous "live" TV Hopkin performance here. Per British broadcasting rules of the time, lip-synching was not permitted, so she's singing live to what I presume is a mono fold-down of the backing track.
Flash forward to the late-70s or early-80s, I was introduced to this song with yet another set of lyrics. Sadly, I have no idea who did this adaptation. I learned it in Yiddish school. These lyrics were in English but basically told he story of modern Israel. I remember very little beyond "the tavern" became "the temple." At this same school I first encountered Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" with likewise re-written lyrics (a few more of which I recall). It was nearly a decade before I learned Guthrie's song had been appropriated. It was a decade or more later I learned that Hopkins' song itself was a rewrite and only in the last year or so I became aware that her rewrite was itself a complete rewrite. I suspect that some of my elemental music taste comes from learning these at an early age. Strange that I learned many more songs than that in regular and Yiddish school, but only these resonated... and continue to. If I have any "Rosebud"/"Holy Grails" it's probably the purple mimeographed lyrics of these two songs.
After a long break from my amateur musicology, I've recently been digging more into antecedents of music I'm drawn to. This is the latest example.
Apparently this melody dated to 1920s Russia by songwriter Boris Fomin, whose work was ultimately buried in the political tumult that marked much of that era. Eventually, in the 1950s, it seems, American playwright and musician Gene Ruskin somehow discovered it and wrote entirely new lyrics in English. He gave the song to folk outfit The Limeliters who recorded it in 1962. Several years later, Gene and Francesca [Raskin] performed it in a London club which Paul McCartney frequented. McCartney tried to enlist several artists to record it (presumably since the Beatles now strictly recorded originals), including The Moody Blues (apparently before Justin Hayward joined them). Twiggy, of all people, eventually brought Mary Hopkin to McCartney's attention and, in 1968 (after the Beatles founded Apple Records as both a [failed] tax shelter and label for up-and-coming artists) he produced the song with her on vocals. That's the most famous version. During those recording sessions she also recorded it in several other languages, using Raskins', not Fomin's, lyrics as a basis for translation. In those various iterations the song became a worldwide hit. You can see a contemporaneous "live" TV Hopkin performance here. Per British broadcasting rules of the time, lip-synching was not permitted, so she's singing live to what I presume is a mono fold-down of the backing track.
Flash forward to the late-70s or early-80s, I was introduced to this song with yet another set of lyrics. Sadly, I have no idea who did this adaptation. I learned it in Yiddish school. These lyrics were in English but basically told he story of modern Israel. I remember very little beyond "the tavern" became "the temple." At this same school I first encountered Woody Guthrie's "This Land Is Your Land" with likewise re-written lyrics (a few more of which I recall). It was nearly a decade before I learned Guthrie's song had been appropriated. It was a decade or more later I learned that Hopkins' song itself was a rewrite and only in the last year or so I became aware that her rewrite was itself a complete rewrite. I suspect that some of my elemental music taste comes from learning these at an early age. Strange that I learned many more songs than that in regular and Yiddish school, but only these resonated... and continue to. If I have any "Rosebud"/"Holy Grails" it's probably the purple mimeographed lyrics of these two songs.
After a long break from my amateur musicology, I've recently been digging more into antecedents of music I'm drawn to. This is the latest example.
Great post - and fascinating. I am rather partial to that sort of music, as well.
In any case, I assume that you have come across the rich, complex (and sometimes incredible) klezmer traditions of the old eastern Europe (including Russia).
^^ I love that. Look at 4:39-4:46 -- even a blue and white tile amongst the celebrations.
What's so great about successive waves of technology after the advent of recording music and video, is that far from burying previous generations' cultural recollections (and collections!), those advances have preserved them and widened exposure to them. Yet I can remember great great aunts clucking their tongues and saying it was ruination for singers to be recorded as surely it meant the death of live recitals and concerts. Always wished I could have shown them some DVD of a rock concert in a stadium LOL.
You know, klezmer is one of too many blind spots in my personal music map. I need to rectify that. It's an untested bias I inherited from my mother, who has a disdain for it. We didn't listen to much music in the house, especially from our heritage. My primary exposure to Jewish music is from that school and was rooted in Hasidism. None of it really took. If you've seen the Coen Brothers' A Serious Man you probably have a decent idea of my religious upbringing. But I do love Hasidic melodies. It's no coincidence that they are derived from Eastern Europe and Russia. I'd probably listen to a lot of it but it's been hard to find it with a more folk aesthetic. Wherever I turn, simple instrumentation and modest production are eschewed for busy arrangements and studio polish. Two things that can easily put me off.
As to klezmer itself, if you have a recommended place to start, I'd be "message board indebted to you" ... in other words, thankful.
Great catch at 4:39. I didn't notice. I only watched the first three or so minutes before I copied the link into a YouTube downloader/transcoder and stuffed it into iTunes, where I could listen to it on the stereo instead of the laptop
I absolutely agree with you about technology and its ability to spread preservation. Your forebears' admonition reminds me of Socrates' dread of written language. Sure, there's something to it. And it is sad that we don't congregate around pianos in our parlours and sing along to the latest Jay-Z hit (the clean version in family environments, of course!) but it hasn't killed live music. Our drive for social interaction and sharing may be dehumanized the online landscape of likes and links but that has its place. And this sharing society that has arguably diminished the social significance of music has also reinvigorated the market for live performance. Unique experience makes it special. That said, I do wonder what they'd think about things like concert videos. I remember renting McCartney's Rockshow on VHS in 1990 or so. Terrible blocky VHS and mono sound. Now, though it still doesn't match the enveloping experience of a live show, I can kick back with a friend and watch it in near-film quality with excellent sound and witness performances recorded when I was three. To decontextualize Joni Mitchell, "Something's lost but something's gained."
You know, likewise, if I hadn't stared at small, glossy textbook prints of Michelangelo's "School of Athens" in college then a few years ago I wouldn't have have known what to look for when I was at the Vatican a few years ago. And just because a textbook can't reproduce the dimensional qualities of Van Gogh's brushstrokes doesn't eliminate the value of a facsimile that, once you've seen any of his paintings up close, you can apply in your imagination to his other prints. Returning to music, if we didn't have vast recordings of, say, Billie Holiday's "Strange Fruit" or Judy Garland's "Over the Rainbow" throughout their respective careers, we couldn't appreciate those songs' various shades and how their connection to the songs evolved. Lost to time like all those Greek plays we know solely via passing reference in scraps of documents.
I bet I just convinced all them auntie-ghosts! Take that, cultural elites and/or philistines!
So much of my music knowledge (fading though it is from disuse) is derived not from having listened but from having scoured music reviews back when it was financially onerous to actually explore the music itself. Whether it was things like the old print All Music Guides, books at the library, treating Tower Records like a reading library by skimming and scouring magazines, etc. I could scarcely have imagined spending an hour flipping through sites to find something like that fan-made montage and actually hearing what would otherwise be unavailable.
I remember in the mid-90s when the Smithsonian began offering on-demand CD burning of songs you could look up in their extensive Folkways catalogue. That included the entire Alan Lomax collection of field recordings. It blew me away that it was finally attainable. I could hear Child Ballads instead of reading about them... or sinking funds into something like The Harry Smith Anthology of Folk box set. In early 60s Greenwich Village, that basically bootlegged set of LPS culled from old 78s and categorized into types became the bible of that folk generation. Blues, reels, jigs, spirituals,... stuff that'd've been lost in the 1920s could carry forward traditions that might otherwise be lost to the increasingly industrialized world. Do I love that stuff? Wish I could say yes. Does it help me better appreciate all that it influenced? Infinitely. As the late singer and storyteller Utah Phillips said,
“Time is an enormous, long river, and I’m standing in it, just as you’re standing in it. My elders are the tributaries, and everything they thought and every struggle they went through and everything they gave their lives to, and every song they created, and every poem that they laid down flows down to me – and if I take the time to ask, and if I take the time to see, and if I take the time to reach out, I can build that bridge between my world and theirs. I can reach down into that river and take out what I need to get through this world”
Of course, now there's the converse problem. It used to be impossible to access material; now it's almost as difficult to choose it. So much more sifting; something parallel to what I've found today's students struggle with in academic pursuits. Hopefully sunflares, EMPs, cyber-warfare or lack of backups don't destroy our modern, disorganized library at Alexandria.
But my digressions have digressively digressed. No delete. Post reply.
When I was a child, I acted and spake as a child, but I sang ever so dutifully like every other kid in an Anglican choir and learned all the chants of all the liturgical seasons.... and it's why I'm still (more or less) an Anglican today... so I can turn up stuff like this that makes me realize exactly what your quote is all about... enjoy:
Wen I was a child, I acted and spake as a child, too, but only lip synced in the third grade when we sang at the White House even though my voice would've been drowned out and I knew
Reverted again to my immaturity, I shall now retire from the web to make spitballs that, while hiding in bushes, I will load into a straw and fire at neighbors as they come home. When I was an adult I behaved like a child.
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Today was an R.E.M. kinda day. It seemed a good shield to everything else in the world.
I really enjoy this buoyant song's mix of pure pop and baroque interlude. It's unfairly maligned by Stipe & Buck, though. They seem pretty embarrassed by its absolute earnest, unabashedly unironic jubilance. The world is better for having melodic harmonies and counter-harmonies, too. Given the choice, though, instead of including it on Out of Time, I might've relegated it to a B-Side or a hidden track a la the untitled ditty ending their prior album, Green. I definitely need to be in the right mood for it at this point. Still, in those moments it sounds fantastic when I immerse myself by its shimmering joyous, shiny and happy 5.1 surround mix. It also sounds great on my tinny earbuds.
I'm also fond of this version:
Being my favorite band (along with the Beatles), I greatly respect their amicable break-up and that, even when they've been together, they've resisted (and I believe they always will) doing any reunion performances. Still, I really do wish former drummer Bill Berry had appeared with them on Sesame Street. His dour, dry appearance is missed.
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haha.... R.E.M version sounds better. I'll see the day when they not only take off the song, they also take off the title as well.
Good idea. I prefer loosing my religion though.
love both songs.
and i too love the beatles as well.
ironic, to me anyway, since stipe once referred to the beatles as "elevator music".
love both songs.
and i too love the beatles as well.
ironic, to me anyway, since stipe once referred to the beatles as "elevator music".
True, but Buck's Rickenbacker sound was straight out of the Beatles/Byrds rhythm mold and I sense some McCartney influence in Mills' bass playing (though I couldn't argue it). He also played bass on the soundtrack to Backbeat, a film about the Beatles' leather-clad Hamburg days. The album is very stripped-down, punk-like takes on the early Beatles' catalogue of covers:
I've always wished they'd covered "Dear Prudence" back in the Automatic era. Seemed a perfect vehicle and very Stipe-compatible in tone, childlike imagery and the gentle empathy that increasingly entered into his lyrics. Their cover of Robyn Hitchcock's "Arms of Love" sort of hits that vibe (except it lacks the crescendo and denouement).
While they never did that, near the end of their career, R.E.M. did cover Lennon's dreamlike "#9 Dream" so maybe Stipe came around a li'l bit...
One last bit of fun trivia: For the deluxe edition of 1996's New Adventures in Hi-Fi, the last R.E.M. album with founding drummer Bill Berry and an album that included some live songs and some soundcheck, Peter Buck wrote some liner notes. They opened, if memory serves, with the line, "This is a new phase R.E.M. album." That exact line (save for the band name) was copped directly from text on the back of The Beatles swan song, 1970's Let It Be. That album infamously includes some live and basically soundcheck material. Methinks Berry took care of the, "I hope we passed the audition" reference by retiring.
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