In taste and disposition, we at Popehat are a diverse lot. For example, Ken is on record as an avid aficionado of opera. Patrick, a former college dj to whom the young'uns still turn in a pinch, is known for his enigmatic and challenging sets. After our comrade Ezra withdrew to his special place, Patrick took up the mantle and now offers sporadic and stochastic coverage of the audial scene. Yes, Patrick even covers symphonies and opera to placate Ken. As for me, I'm a fan of John Dowland and Yma Sumac and Radiohead and Ravi Shankar and Fred Astaire. Eclectic, we.

There must be some overlap among us, though we haven't mapped it out. But this much we already know: we are all fans of Marian Call.  Even Ezra, peace be upon him, was a fan of Marian Call.

So my next post will be a deepish dive into Marian's music or, more accurately, her poetry. And in a third post, perhaps we'll have a secret toy surprise. But if you have no patience for close reading and texty-feely artgeek stuff — if you're the Shut Up And Sing type – then this post right here is for you. Here's the Executive Summary/tl;dr version of the Minimum You Oughtta Know™ before venturing forth:

• Marian Call is an independent folk-funky, heartfelt, humorous, jazzy, torchy, quirky singer-songwriter currently thriving in Anchorage, which is really just North-North-North Seattle and thus a super natural fit for a Washington girl with a strong sense of place.
• We at Popehat have a colossal (aggregate) IQ, and yet we're pretty sure she could lap us.
• While majoring in choral composition at Stanford (the axe, the axe), Marian realized that her inner vector was driving or drawing her otherwhere. Recognizing that digital distribution had altered the fundamentals of the music industry, she decided to embrace a newly feasible unsigned, try-before-you-buy, pay-from-the-heart business model. Next thing you know, she's crankin' out compelling music and hoping to roll a hard six on her gamble that educated and motivated consumers of art will sustain the art(ists) they like (and thereby not let her starve).
• Marian Call is a word nerd, but has become the preeminent Geek Chanteuse to a wide and motley array of awkwardly obsessive acolytes. She's more than this, of course, but clearly no less. Her saintly attributes include exotic percussion equipment (a rainstick, a manual typewriter named Madeleine, a tea can containing the cremated remains of Zippy, a story-laden family cat) and measured quantities of dark, malty beer. Her superpower is recognizing paradoxes or antinomies in human experience and distilling them to heart- and mind-moving simplicity without pretending to resolve them.
• Taking seriously the business of enjoying close communion with her fans, Marian successfully completed within the 2010 calendar year a seat of the pants, fan-semi-coordinated tour of all 50 states, several Canadian provinces, and a selection of realms in cyberspace.
• During and after her tour, she worked on her third fully-fledged production piece: Something Fierce. She released this double album into crit-space just a few days ago (fancy lyrics, plain lyrics, music). Give it a listen! If you enjoy it, give it a purchase! (Cool cuts: 3, 4, 6, 8, 12, 18, etc!)
• If you are a MacArthur nominator, I would like to point out that Marian Call is just, verdant, and peaceful.
• ProTip: You can also still listen to/enjoy/buy her album Vanilla and her commissioned Firefly/Galactica album Got To Fly.

That's the wakizashi; the katana comes next time.  Meanwhile, listen to Marian Call. She'll sing for you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIO8nI2C8Z8

… And here's Part Two.

Is "Aqua Boogie" the funniest song ever recorded?  Decide for yourself:

One thing is for sure. Listening to Parliament's "The Motor Booty Affair", the album from which this song is drawn, is like eating two bowls of Count Chocula and four bowls of Frankenberry on Saturday morning, just before a two hour marathon of Roadrunner cartoons.

There aren't many genuinely free-form radio stations left in the country.  I have the good fortune to live in listening distance of two, but you're probably not so lucky.

If you're a music geek, I suggest that you tune in, NOW, to KUSF, which the way things are going is about to be one of the deceased freeform stations.  A nationwide simulcast / death watch is going on. Because the University of San Francisco kicked all of the students out and sold the license to a commercial broadcaster.  A shame. It was a great station, and a far better (and cheaper) investment of  someone's donations California's tax dollars than the $350,00 annual Los Angeles calligraphy budget, in that, you know, it actually trained engineers and radio voice talent, for approximately no money at all.

If you're a music geek cynic, you'll mourn. If you're an optimist, you'll listen and hope. Either way, go to this site and listen now. Trust me, it's better than the pap Clear Channel's offering.

If you can't find the simulcast on the KUSF site, google WXYC, WFMU, or WXDU, all of which are running it.

Here's a devastating cutdown for Andrew Sullivan's poll on the "the smuggest, most pretentious pop song in history."  Smugness and pretension being traits Sullivan embodies all too well.

Sullivan is simply pandering to his new audience of leftists who claim Sullivan as "my favorite conservative blogger," precisely because he hasn't written a conservative word since 2004.  He understands quite well that Merle Haggard was having fun when he sang "Okie from Muskogee," and on his more lucid days (Sullivan, who divides his time between the District of Columbia and the gay beach resort of Provincetown Massachusetts, has never understood middle America too well) might even perceive that Haggard's audience in the 1960s was in on the joke.

Of course, he didn't take on Haggard's far better, funnier (and smugger, more pretentious) song, "The Fightin' Side of Me," because Sullivan, who advocated the most bloodthirsty tortures, praised Guantanamo, and boosted the Iraq war up until the very day George W. Bush came out in favor of a constitutional amendment to prohibit same sex marriage, would have difficulty dealing with complaints about "switchin' sides" and "some squirrelly guy who claims that he just don't believe in fightin'".

The Fightin' Side of Me:

Many great songwriters haven't produced three songs so good in a career.

This is my favorite interpretation of "Funny How Time Slips Away," by Al Green:

I trust you had a productive day.

A classical vocal instructor, who knows virtually nothing about rock, is asked to evaluate the stylings of various heavy metal singers.

I have nothing but admiration for this singer. Listen how he starts off with a soft growl, then moves seamlessly into a well-supported, sustained high full-voice sound that then evolves into an effortless long scream! His diction is easily intelligible, regardless of the range he’s singing in or the effect he’s going for. He achieves an intensely rhythmic delivery of the lyrics without losing legato and musical momentum, something a lot of classical singers struggle with, especially when interpreting the many staccato and accent markings that crowd scores by Bellini, Donizetti, etc.

She wasn't actually asked to evaluate the works of Lemmy Kilmister.  More's the pity.

Fred Astaire, and our friend Windypundit, have said it was the Nicholas Brothers in Stormy Weather.  I beg to differ.

It was the Berry Brothers, perhaps not as technically perfect as the Nicholas Brothers (with whom they were rivals), but far more athletic, in the relatively obscure film Panama Hattie.  Feast your eyes and ears on this.

They're like Jedi in tophats, tails, and canes.

Been awhile since we did a Friday timewaster, but I thought I would toss out some major nostalgia. I am a trove of useless knowledge, and one of my strengths is TV show theme songs. So, imagine how happy I was to find a site dedicated to recordings of 80s shows theme songs. That's right in my wheelhouse!

Sure, there are a few notable absences – She's the Sheriff, Riptide (one of my favorite shows when I was young. Should I admit that?),  or Bring Them Back Alive (still Bruce Boxleitner's finest work) but there is so much to love here. How about the theme to one of my all time favorites – Tales of the Gold Monkey! Or A.L.F.? Who knew the Facts of Life changed their theme song so much?

One of the neatest parts of the site is the old sports show music. Remember the old NBA on NBC theme? The even older CBS one was better. I also recommend the promos section, if just for the awesome clip of Letterman making fun of NBCs promos back in the day.

The site is sort of cluttered, and the audio is Realaudio (unfortunately) but it's still a nice way to waste some Friday time. Now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go enjoy my favorite all time TV theme song – The Scarecrow & Mrs. King (seriously, it's a great theme. And, Boxleitner again…)

Iggy Pop may or may not be the hardest rocking singer of the past fifty years, but he has certainly drafted the finest contract I've ever seen.

It even insults the Insane Clown Posse. Iggy should know.  He's from Detroit too.

There are indeed two Americas: One America, in which Iggy Pop can stage dive, safe in the knowledge that the audience will catch him;

Then there's that other America.

A recent Carnegie Hall audience apparently believed the geriatric punk legend capable of flight and so parted to watch him take wing at a March 1st Tibet House Benefit …

Rather than rise to the rafters, he fell to the floor, a confused audience looking on as … “nobody caught him”…

Pop said of the incident, “When I landed it hurt and I made a mental note that Carnegie Hall would be a good place for my last stage dive. The audience were just like, ‘What are you doing?’”

Now some will say that Iggy Pop, as an old man whose glory days with the Stooges are long past, had no business at Carnegie Hall, much less stage-diving at Carnegie Hall.  I disagree.  A man who began his career screaming incoherent rants like "TV Eye" and "Dirt," who cut himself with glass onstage or played shows half naked and smeared in peanut butter, belongs in Carnegie Hall as much as Otis B. Driftwood belonged at the New York Opera.

But the audience?  What the hell is wrong with these people?  What kind of rich idiot would go to an Iggy Pop show, either not knowing the man would dive, or knowing it and allowing him to fall anyway.

These people are dead inside.

Way back in November I had a song stuck in my head, and blogged it out.  I'm in a similar predicament this morning, so without further ado, here are the lyrics to the old-time / bluegrass / gospel classic "Broadminded," by Charlie and Ira Louvin, the Louvin Brothers:

That word "Broadminded," is spelled S-I-N.
I read in my Bible, they shall not enter in.
For Jesus will answer, "Depart, I never knew you."
That word broadminded is spelled S-I-N.

Some people like to gamble, now and then for pleasure
And drink a little whiskey, just to please a friend.
They say it's really nothing, you've got to be broadminded
That word in my Bible is spelled S-I-N.

That broadminded mother goes out and joins a party.
"There's nothing wrong in drinking, and dancing with a friend."
And then on Sunday morning, she'll say she loves her savior.
She should be begging God to forgive her of her sin.

That word "Broadminded," is spelled S-I-N.
I read in my Bible, they shall not enter in.
For Jesus will answer, "Depart, I never knew you."
That word broadminded is spelled S-I-N.

For to be carnally minded is death,
But to be spiritually minded is life and peace.
Because the carnal mind is enmity against the mind of God,
For it is not subject to the law of God,
Neither, indeed, can be.
You'll find your word "Broadminded" means sin, if you'll read.

That word "Broadminded," is spelled S-I-N.
I read in my Bible, they shall not enter in.
For Jesus will answer, "Depart, I never knew you."
That word broadminded is spelled S-I-N.

Sadly, there are no online videos of the Louvin Brothers, who were a truly great band, performing this counterrevolutionary manifesto. But there is a live performance by the Clampitt Family, recorded in 2007, that captures some of the flavor of the Louvin original.

In olden times I was a member of a band which covered "Broadminded" frequently at small shows and house parties and the like. But I've learned, and realize that the things we did at those shows, and the irony with which we thought we approached this song, wer nothing but sin.  I'm a better man for the realization.

I'm probably the only person apart from Jonathan Adler's mom who enjoys the Volokh Conspiracy's Sunday Song Lyric feature.  This ain't no music blog, but we all have to start somewhere.

The song presently stuck in my head is "Crazy Man" by the duo of Catherine Irwin and Janet Bean, working together as Freakwater.  The song comes from the 1993 album "Feels Like The Third Time".

Freakwater got lost in the shuffle of alt country in the 1990s, perhaps because they were a little too "alt" to appeal to much of the crowd that listens to Wilco today.  Perhaps they were a bit too rustic.  Perhaps because they were women, and most alt country fans are sexist pigs.  Even the women.  Or perhaps because while their music was all sweetness and light, their lyrics read like the unpublished poetry of Edgar Allen Poe.  Witness: Crazy Man.

I heard that your daddy was a crazy man
Left your mama standing with a dishrag in her hand
Snuck out through the back way, let the screen door slam
It's hard to find the words to say, you don't give a damn!

You said that you never saw your mama cry
Maybe she was sneakin' around with another man on the sly
I have met your mama and she's crazy too
You got more from her than just your eyes of blue!

All the words have been spoken
All the bridges have been burned and the promises broken
It's not hard just to have a little baby!
And I won't have far to go when I go crazy

All the words have been spoken
All the bridges have been burned and the promises broken
It's not hard just to have a little baby
And I won't have far to go when I go crazy

I look into your eyes and I think I see
Picture of me smiling, with a baby on my knee!
There in that old photograph you never change
Like the last time that I saw you when you looked so strange

All the words have been spoken
All the bridges have been burned and the promises broken
It's not hard just to have a little baby
And I won't have far to go when I go crazy

And here's a video of Freakwater performing the song, recorded in 2008.

This can only be considered a sign of the apocalypse. Seriously?

I highly recommend reading the reviews for some fine, fine satire. Still, there is no way anyone can think this is a good idea.

Call me suspicious, but I am not comfortable that the District of Columbia Police are taking a prominent role in preparation for security at the Pittsburgh G-20 summit this September.

Security planning for the Group of 20 economic summit in Pittsburgh is a numbers game driven by questions that can't readily be answered: How many police officers will be needed for thousands of protesters and how many arrests can be safely and fairly processed in courts?

Among other things, security will be beefed up by officers and consultants from the DC Police Department: the same DC Police Department which believes it's authorized to conduct military-style police sweeps and to set up barricaded checkpoints to search people entering suspicious neighborhoods.  The G-20 Summit is likely enough to produce craziness without oversight and advice from a department well known for disregarding the constitutional rights of the citizens it serves.  For that matter, Pittsburgh's own preparations for mass arrests against evil anarchists may become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

The right to free speech includes commercial speech, but that's lost on some.  If the Chicago Transit Authority were to ban tasteful ads for say, James Joyce's Ulysses, or an art exhibit featuring the work of some modern Robert Mapplethorpe, would that get more attention than a ban of ads for Grand Theft Auto?

On the other hand, some of the worst threats to free speech come from those who exercise their right to "cry wolf," or to proclaim that "the sky is falling."  Witness this story from Christianity Today, in which Ashley Horne of Focus on the Family warns of the Matthew Shepard Hate Crimes Prevention Act:

if passed, the law could expose pastors to federal prosecution if an attendee of their church committed a crime and blamed it on sermons about homosexuality. The bill does not adequately protect Christians from gay activists, she says. She worries that the prosecution would be based on evidence of motivation.

Poppycock.  The Bill can be read in its entirety here. If passed, the law would punish one who:

willfully causes bodily injury to any person or, through the use of fire, a firearm, a dangerous weapon, or an explosive or incendiary device, attempts to cause bodily injury to any person, because of … actual or perceived religion, national origin, gender, sexual orientation, gender identity or disability …

Causing bodily injury means just that.  A sermon, no matter how hateful, cannot cause bodily injury, nor could it be deemed an attempt to cause bodily injury.  For that matter, despite Ms. Horne's assertion to the contrary, the bill actually provides more protection for the religious than it does to people attacked because of sexual orientation. (It contains identical clauses criminalizing such attacks, both including religion as a protected category but only one including sexual orientation.  This is what's known as a "blue pencil" clause – if a court strikes the second, which includes sexual orientation and religion, the first, which only includes religion, will remain in effect.)

We've had sentencing enhancements based on gender and age for centuries.  In my state and in every other of which I'm aware, a man who strikes a man is guilty of assault.  A man who strikes a woman is guilty of "assault on a female," and gets more time, because men by and large are far stronger than women.  There are plenty of good arguments against hate crime laws, and there are good arguments against federalizing what should be simple state felonies, but willfully distorting the content of a bill, which is what Ms. Horne is doing, doesn't promote those arguments, and doesn't show a regard for freedom of speech or religion.  I'll exercise my freedom of speech to call Ashley Horne a liar.

On a question of genuine conscience, the Foundation For Individual Rights In Education reports on the strange case of Grand Valley State University, which attempted to make state employment dependent on "demonstrated commitment to principles of diversity." An Ashley Horne, who is not demonstrably committed to diversity, could not get the job at GVSU if her beliefs failed to meet the school's litmus test.  This is no more constitutional than an employment offer contingent on "demonstrated commitment to the American Flag," or "demonstrated commitment to the Holy Koran."

What's especially silly about the case is that the job posting which brought the policy to light was "Visiting Assistant Professor of Music (Flute)". Presumably a flute instructor who assaults aspiring flautists based on their diversity would be fired in any event, but the litmus test for beliefs, at a music department, demonstrates the clash between collegiate H.R. culture and the First Amendment.

Suppose a flute professor has mixed feelings about same sex marriage, like Ashley Horne.  Suppose the visiting flute instructor just doesn't give a shit, and grades flute students based on flute talent without regard to flute diversity. Should such an instructor be downgraded in favor a less flautistically inclined, but more demonstratively diverse, visiting flute teacher?

Fortunately we won't find out, as FIRE reports the university has backed down, opening the visiting flute instructor position to anyone qualified to teach the flute without regard to that visitor's beliefs.

Private colleges of course remain free to require a demonstrated commitment to diversity, as opposed to excellence in flute instruction, in their visiting flute instructors.

Tchaikovsky abused his wife, Antonina Milyukova.  He led Milyukova into a loveless marriage based on false pretenses.  He verbally abused her, calling her a "reptile."  He probably beat her.

And so, according to Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich, we should replace children's showings of "The Nutcracker" each Christmas with music by other composers, such as Liszt.  Well, Antonovich doesn't go that far.  He just wants to remove all of Richard Wagner's music from the Los Angeles County Ring festival, and replace it with Mozart.

Los Angeles County Supervisor Mike Antonovich is demanding that Los Angeles Opera discontinue the Ring Festival L.A. planned for next year, calling Richard Wagner a, “Nazi composer.”

“To specifically honor and glorify the man whose music and racist anti-Semitic writings inspired Hitler and became the de facto soundtrack for the Holocaust in a countywide festival is an affront to those who have suffered or have been impacted by the horrors of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialistic Worker Party,” Antonovich said in a statement released today.

Leaving aside that a Ring festival with out Wagner wouldn't be a Ring festival, Wagner is an unfortunate illustration of the truth that great artists are not always great men.  He is doubly unfortunate in that he shows us that genuinely bad men sometimes have good taste in art.  Although Wagner was by most accounts a gentle man who never lifted a hand in anger, he was a vocal anti-semite, which might have played some role in the attraction Hitler felt to Wagner's operas.

Or it might not have.  As an Austrian German, Hitler also appreciated the work of Beethoven, Brahms, Mahler, the Strausses, and other composers whose work isn't proposed for a ban in Los Angeles.  Hitler was born six years after Wagner died.  There is no evidence that Wagner's music or librettos played any role in forming Hitler's anti-semitism.

In fact, what are the allegedly anti-semitic elements of the Ring?  Dwarves.  Wagner's Ring cycle, drawn from German pagan / Norse mythology, concerns in part the fate of a magic ring, forged by a dwarf.  According to those who'd ban Wagner, the dwarf is a stand-in, an allegory for Jewish people, because as we all know, Jews are short people who live underground and love gold.

No doubt that's what the Danes were thinking, all the way over in Scandinavia, when they spun the myth cycles on which The Ring is based.  No doubt that's what Tolkien was thinking, when he, like Wagner, drew on these myths to create his own art based around magic rings and gold-loving dwarves.  As did the Japanese, the pagan Welsh, and the Iroquois, all of whom also had myths of powerful but little people living underground.

Or perhaps The Ring isn't an anti-semitic allegory at all.  As a famous dwarf once said, "sometimes a cigar is just a cigar," and sometimes a 14 hour opera about the end of the world is just a silly mythological story with great music.  In either case, I suspect Mike Antonovich is no more qualified to judge Wagner's music by its aesthetic merit than he is the music of Tchaikovsky because the man mistreated his wife.

We'll have to throw out a lot of great art if we judge work by the character of its producer.  We'll start with Wagner, no doubt, but it won't end there.  We'll have to throw out Tchaikovsky, Shostakovich, Debussy, and more.  We'll move on to literature, pulling Twain, Poe, T S Eliot, Dostoevsky, and Hemingway from the shelves.  Then we'll burn El Greco, Picasso, and Van Gogh.  And so on and so forth.

And finally, when art is purified of bad men, Mike Antonovich and all the good people of Los Angeles can enjoy a county-sponsored exhibition of the works of Thomas Kinkade, followed by a concert featuring the music of Barry Manilow, and a nice glass of lemonade.