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Open thread 4/9/22 — 14 Comments

  1. McCartney’s “Silly Love Songs” has fun with counterpoint, layering three melodies — even a fourth, including the composer’s tuneful bass line — into an inventive musical bonbon.

  2. Contrary to Kermit it’s easy being green. Alternative Energy is all about the green (subsidies) and if you have to destroy wildlife and the environment to get that green, it’s for the planet! Because watermelons and rope subsidies.

  3. Irving Berlin wrote a number of counterpoint songs over the course of his career– here’s Ethel Merman and Dan Dailey with “Play A Simple Melody”/”Musical Demon” in the 1954 film There’s No Business Like Show Business:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HW1i5Yz1-1U&ab_channel=GoldenHollywoodFan

    And then here’s what happens when “Meet the Mets” meets the “Toreador Song” from Bizet’s Carmen:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vgVpsMeqEuA&ab_channel=MetropolitanOpera

  4. Homophony?

    Isn’t that a guy in drag going into a women’s room?

    😛

    I’m sure that’s right on Target.

    😀

  5. I did a desultory scan of Sarah Hoyt’s latest post and found this shout-out to our esteemed hostess.
    It’s waaayy down near the end.

    https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/04/09/a-sorry-excuse-for-a-post/

    I’ve been reading Neoneocon for decades, and when I disagree with her it’s because we followed different but equally valid tracks. I sympathize with her — what now would be called red pill — experience of political conversion, because even though I was never leftist, I did grow up in Europe, where the center and even the right are leftist. So it took me a long time to figure out “Liberty-right” or American right. So we have commonality.

    Sarah’s post yesterday was one of her best ever.
    https://accordingtohoyt.com/2022/04/08/who-you-are/

  6. Go GREEN! (cont.)
    Another “Biden” victory, for which Sec. Pete will also be sure to to want to take credit:
    “American Airlines To Offer Bus Service In Place Of Connecting Flights Due To Soaring Gas Prices, Pilot Shortage”—
    https://www.zerohedge.com/technology/american-airlines-offer-bus-service-place-connecting-flights-due-soaring-gas-prices

    Not sure why “Biden” doesn’t tell ’em to just hitchhike (so as to reduce their carbon footprint), but I guess Sec. Pete—even as we speak—is assiduously trying to work out the kinks in the system….

  7. I remember that initial Bach piece from my piano days. It isn’t that difficult to identify Bach as the composer of a given piece of music, because NO ONE BUT NO ONE had his ability in counterpoint. If it’s counterpoint well done and maybe complex, odds are Bach wrote it.

    Here is the NYT BGees piece, courtesy of a university library:

    The Bee Gees are nothing if not lavish. Just a trio, they have never been content with the simplicities of the usual back?up rock rhythm. On occasions they have surrounded themselves with massed choirs, symphony orchestras and even the British Royal Air Force Apprentice Band. At Philharmonic Hall on Sunday the group was a little more restrained—only a 30?piece orchestra?au?tux provided the swirling and rumbling counterpoint to the three Bee Gee voices.

    It is not that the Bee Gees are untalented and need the lavishness for camouflage. Their writing pays meticulous attention to melody, and a majestic swirl of strings on song such as “To Love Somebody” or “Massachusetts” (two of their major successes) adds a great deal of depth. It is here they make their point about the weight they carry.

    The Bee Gees presented a familiar program to an audience with locked?in loyalty. The voices of Robin, Maurice and Barry Gibb, and the harmonies they project, can recall the pop music of six or seven years ago. The Bee Gees have deftly, and for them sensibly, sidestepped the harsher excesses of the electric rock revolution. It probably makes them unique.

    Opening the concert was Jimmy Stevens, pianist, singer and Liverpool nationalist.

    IAN DOVE

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