The Legendary ?

Ok, so I admit that when I first dove into the music of the Duke I was totally confused, befuddled and not quite sure what was going on. Most of the first disc was instrumental..which was fine..I kinda knew the Duke was a jazz legend so I kinda figured he was playing the trumpet. Of all the instruments in the music it was the strongest and usually the center of most pieces. Then I hit a run of songs with lyrics....was that a lady singing? yeah and then a string of songs each with a different male voice..then a few with no trumpet at all. I had no idea what the hell was going on. As is my habit each month I go in blind to get the music at face value and then after my first impression is formed I back it up with research and digging around about the artist. That left me woefully unprepared this time and set me up for a cool surprise. You see, after my initial bout of cluelessness I did what I always do when I know less then I need to; I Googled it!!!
   What I found was a bit of a shock for a brain that has a certain set of expectations set by a modern understanding of music and how the industry works. You see, Duke Ellington wasn't any of the singers, nor did he play the trumpet and while he did in fact play the piano in most of his works it was usually a tempo setter to show off the stylings of his musicians. You see the Duke was a composer and a conductor. His legendary status is as a band leader. I mean sure I heard of Big band but I never gave it much thought as being anything but an outdated, has been genre that was never that cool to begin with. Man, was I wrong. the Duke IS jazz music and he and his orchestra defined the genre from their pit in Harlem's legendary Cotton Club.
  As a modern music lover I can't say I give much thought to composers. They are all moldy dead guys who used to wear white wigs and say guvner alot, right? Sure, we have a few today but they mostly score our movies or run in tight insular circles that don't really affect pop culture all that much.And conductors? really? Last one I saw was on a train! Goes to show how little I know about music history. It turns out back in the day the composer/conducter was THE man. You could be the best trumpet player in the world, Scott Joplin on the ivory or have a set of pipes like Ella Fitzgerald but if a band leader didn't invite you into his pit then you weren't making music...at least not on a national stage. Of course that changed as the singer/song writer dynamic we know today came to life but the cool thing is that the Duke never sold out. He stuck with his orchestra and led it for 53 years!! he took the hit in popularity and loss of audience in the 60's and kept on going until he came out the other side a living legend.
  Not only are the tunes cool but I also had the chance to question my conception of music and stretch my understanding of the world. If that isn't what this project is all about then I don't know what is.
G

David and the Duke

First, let me apologize for the lateness of this post. A nasty reoccurring flu\sore throat/coughy thing has been taking the household by storm and even when I haven't been down for the count myself Mandy and I have been trying to keep these little kiddos safe despite their coughs and fevers.
 Now we're mostly healthy and I'm back on track. Even though I haven't been posting I have been listening intently to the great Duke Ellington over the last week and a half. It's kind of taken me by surprise but we'll talk about that in our next post. Before we get into the dealings of the Duke I need to talk about how he got on my plate in the first place.
   When I started the project my good friend Katrina contacted me and suggested that I might consider Duke Ellington. Her father David, who is sadly no longer with us, was a huge fan and she even offered to let me borrow his collection of Duke Ellington recordings. How could I say no? Not only was my friend offering me an idea for my blog but she was also offering to share her heart and her dad with me so I could share it with you. I'm thrilled to explore the music of Duke Ellington, not only because he's a legend and one of the all time greats but because David Smith loved him and frankly I can't think of a better reference. I remember David Smith well even though it was over twenty years ago(Really? Yikes!) that I first met him while dating his daughter. He was always laughing and making the worst puns you could imagine. If the joke was bad he loved it, if it was terrible he'd laugh like hell and find a way to make it even worse and afterwards you'd be laughing so hard you wouldn't even know where it started and what you were laughing at. He was a kind, gentle man who always had his nose in a book and his arms around his children. Along with my step father David is one of the templates I aspire to now that I'm a dad.
Through Katrina Duke Ellington is a gift that he's giving to me and I'm honored this month to share it with you. Now go call your dad, tell him you love him and asking him what music he's listening to.
G

Dogg Gone; My Month With Snoop

So March pretty good for me...I'm kinda digging the whole Gangster Rap thing and Snoop was a great showcase, I think, for the genre. Even better then that Snoop isn't a one trick pony. Sure the gritty street level gangsta play is his bread and butter and the foundation for everything else but he also makes a point to slip in all kinds of other goodies that hint at a deeper level beneath his already apparent genius. There are some songs where he sings straight up and I just know if he ever followed it he could do a decent run at modern pop hip-hop or even R&B. His country themed tribute songs are pretty damn cool too and if he ever decided to shelve the same old same old and take a risk he just might be able to create a new genre of Hick Hop Country Rap. He'll always be the D O G and the Big Boss, Uncle Snoop of the rap world. He's great at what he does and I know, I know, you don't go to Pizza Hut for a hamburger but he's shown enough versatility and interest in stretching that I wish instead of a few songs tacked on the back of solid rap we could get a whole album of his alternative, for the rap world, stylings.
  Also, and this is really my only criticism of an artist I hope it's apparent that I like very much, he just plays it safe and sticks with image centric and sometimes superficial topics. Now look, I love me some songs about pimping, banging, puffing and being OG but after twenty albums I feel like that's not enough for me. Don't let his proclivity for herbal recreation fool, this is an intelligent man, a savvy business person and someone whose lived through some shit. I'd give up one track about representing the street if I meant I could have one about what "The Man" on the street thinks about what's going on in the world today. I'd love to hear him blast both the GOP and the Dems and call them on their bullshit. Or what does he think about the wars in the middle east or the obvious war on the poor that's about to happen with all these institutionalized budget cuts about to ravage this countries infra structure. I'd even be interested to hear about things closer to home, the man has several kids including a daughter...pimpin ain't easy but it has to be harder when you have a little angel of your own growing up in the big bad world. I suppose I shouldn't bitch..I love what I heard so far and Snoop will stay in my car for later listening but I just get this itch to see deeper and hope we eventually will.
G

The N Word

Ok, look...we have to talk about it.
I know it's gonna make some of you uncomfortable but it's an important factor in his life and any discussion about Snoop Dogg would be incomplete if we didn't just bite the bullet and talk about...
wait...
why are you looking at me like that?
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh
 You think I'm talking about THAT n word!!
Well, I was thinking "Narcotics", (you know the D O G loves him some ganja) but since you bring it up, yeah, that word IS kind of important too considering 8 out of 10 Snoop songs includes it, and in the majority of those it's said an average of 20 times. I wasn't gonna go there because the word coming from me is ignorant at best and offensive at worst. While Dr. Laura may get some sick pleasure from pressing social boundaries just for fun I try to take every opportunity I get to avoid being a douche bag. So like I say, from me; not so good but from Snoop, that's a different story..it's authentic and not because he's black. Well, yes because he's black but not JUST because he's black. Mostly because it's the language of the streets and Snoop takes on no airs. He knows who his audience is, who he wants them to be, and he speaks to them in their language, his language. The language of the streets. Color may be involved but it's just as likely to be about gang colors or the color of money or ones true colors then it is to be about the color of skin. If Snoop did beg off and censor himself to be politically correct he'd lose his realness and his authentic voice. So few sages take the time to offer wisdom to those in the streets below and what many will see as offensive language, or racial aggression or a point of contention I see as simply being the word on the street.
          Uggh, here I was all set to take about weed and how pot heads in music and Hollywood (Snoop, Seth Rogan, Woody Harrelson, the whole cast and most of the writers of the Big Bang Theory) tend to do better and be less affected by their drug of choice then say those who choose smack (Poor Kurt Cobain), cocaine ( say it with me now...Charlie Sheen!!!) or even alcohol (How you doing, Mel Gibson?) but we need to move on so I guess that will need to wait until Fall when we get to Willy Nelson month!
G

Legacy of Gangsters: My Month With Snoop Dogg Begins

It feels really good to be off the sickly saccharine high of polka and into some honest funk and grime and Snoop certainly offers that with his litany of rhymes. As I do every month I first prepared my self by blasting my brain with a variety of his work to get a feel for what I was dealing with before going back and giving each release a deep and thoughtful listen. As I was doing so I felt a weird deja vu I couldn't put my finger on. I had heard Vato on the weeds sound tarck and I know Snoop is doing a Pepsi commercial but aside from that I haven't had much exposure to his work or even other rap fpr that matter. Still there was something subtle about what I was hearing that caught my attention subliminally and made me like it instinctively. Who did this guy remind me of? I was drawing a blank but thankfully Snoop Doggy Dogg provided me the answer just a few songs later with the following dedication;
"I'd like to dedicate this song to Mister Johnny Cash..a Real American Gangster"
  ..then he launched into one of the best and most inventive rap songs I've ever heard called "My Medicine" and I had my answer.
 It seems crazy and certainly not intuitive at all but when you think about it it does make perfect sense. They both consider themselves outlaws and that along with guns, women and trouble are an underlying themes in everything they do. We can even take it a bit further and look at the mythologies they both represent. Being a gangster and the lifestyle that comes with it really isn't all that far from the wild west and the gunslingers that Cash is known for immortalizing. The moral "Life is hard and sometimes ugly and surviving is a triumph" is a moral I would expect to hear from both. Also, we can take it from the height of mythological significance down to to the lowest common denominator; the common man. Neither make music for the industry, hell Cash was thrown out of the Grand Old Oprey for being to rowdy, but rather for regular people. Snoop said it.."I'm not a musician..I'm Gangster".."I write my songs for gangsters, bangers and bitches". I can't prove it but I bet if you polled all the prisions in the US Snoop and Johnny would be two of the most listened to artists even to this day. That's because for both thier music begins and ends in the streets and while Laredo is a long way from South Central the themes are the undeniably the same.
I love Johnny Cash and this connection is a good start for the month...I look forward to learning more.
G

My Month With Polka; The Final Verdict

Ok, ok, so this is the post where I am supposed to admit that after last posts surprising finds that I've reconsidered and I now have a great and deep understanding and love of polka music. Eh, not gonna happen. In fact I would rather gargle glass, vote for Sarah Palin for President and let Mike Vick walk my dog before listening to one more day of it. maybe it's the constant upbeat accordian/tuba riffs or the fact that polka existed waaay before the concept intellectual property was invented so instead od each artist having thier own songs they all basicaly played varioations on the same song..over and over and over again. The lack of variety was maddening. Maybe it was a logistical error on my part when I chose it for this project. Polka is marching music and dancing music...listening to it alone may have done it an injustice. The fact that most of it had no lyrics and the few that did were in a variety of germanic and slavic languages didn't help. Of course a few did have yodeling and those I dug.
So, in the future will I listen to polka? Probably not but if I have a chance to see a polka band or go to a dance I'll think about giving it a shot at viewing it in it's proper element.

Next up
The pimp with the heart of gold
The bone daddy
The shizznizzle
And quite possibly the man who stole the sheeshka
SNOOP DOGG!!


Word.

G

Fowl Play, Molly Ringwald and The Super Bowl Champions of the World!!

So here I am, suffering through CD after CD of random polka madness trying desperately to find anything I could connect with, anything familiar..anything!!

And to prove that there is indeed a God in the heavens and she has a wicked sense of humor I finally ran across a song I recognized.

A song that I always avoid at all costs.

 A song that has made me cringe since I was a child.

 A song I react so strongly too that I will actively avoid anyone who claims to like it because based on that alone they can't possibly be trusted.

Many of you feel the same way as I do and I asked that you gird your loins and be brave for the next few minutes..this part will be over soon and I promise that before this post is done I will infect you with another song that will blot this one out of your mind..

So, yes...the song...I never knew it was a polka...I should have.

What song do I refer to?

The.

Chicken.

Dance.

                                                                                                                                                                                                 

Chilling!!     

                                     It figures that when I finally find a polka I recognize it triggers my gag reflex !! 

Still, it must have been a karmic right of passage because after I found it the flood gates opened and I started to recognize alot. It turns out that because most polka songs aren't very original there is a common pool that most artists pull from  and thus alot end up in the public domain and over the years have served as back drops in Looney Toons, The Three Stooges and even more!!

The next big revelation knocked me off my feet. I had no idea that I was going to find a polka song that I liked and have known since I was 16 years old but also one that that has been an icon of not one but two major motion pictures, one of which  won an academy award, This song is so entrenched in the popular culture I bet everybody reading this knows it well.

I, of course, refer to the "Colonel Bogey March"!

What are you looking at me like that for?

Of course you know it!!

Yes, you do!!

Not only do you know it but in then less then 30 seconds you're going to be humming, singing and whistling along to it.

Don't believe me?

By all means ...take a peek

                                  

  Ahahahahaha!!!  Suckers!!

That song is gonna be stuck in your head ALL NIGHT!!!!       

Not only did The Breakfast Club secretly bring polka to a whole generation but it also paid tribute to another film in the most hilarious and subtle in-joke I've seen in Hollywood.

You see, before "The Breakfast Club"  The Colonel Bogey March was highlighted in a film called "Bridge Over the River Kwai". Wherein Obi Wan Kenobi, long before he became a Jedi, was the leader of a group of POW's captured by the Japanese during WWII and forced to work at hard labour. The captured soldiers used to whistle the march each time they were gathered as a show of defiance to their captors and to prove that their spirit wasn't broken. Kinda funny John Hughes had his kids use the march the same way and never told anyone..when I finally realized the parallel it made me laugh!!

And it would have been impossible with out polka!!!

Geez, after that little nugget could it get any better?

You know it!

For those of you who don't know, I'm a diehard Greenbay Packers fan and after they won the super bowl I was so psyched I decided I wanted an "NFL Champion" T-shirt. I ran to Google and searched for Greenbay Packers not even realizing that I had already had the word polka in my search box from when I was doing research earlier. 

The sky opened up and I was blessed with a great gift!!!!

Ahahahahaha!!!

Packers Polka!!!!!

Maybe there's something to this Polka stuff after all!!!!

I'll have to give it another chance...but I gotta go grab my cheesehead now!!!

See you soon,

 Greg