James Fallows

Striving always to encourage full and frank discussion, and following the proud Atlantic motto "of no party or clique," I give you this (fairly representative) response to my recent mention of Nataly Dawn and Pomplamoose.

To: James Fallows
From: xxx xxxx
Subject: hate Pomplamoose. they're terrible. and that's not an opinion, it's a fact

that version of "September" is cowardly and pitiful.  at first it sounds like they're really gonna do something with the song -- they change the harmony a bit.  but then they chicken out, leave the chords unchanged, and just end up making you wish you were listening to EWF.

her singing is anemic, and there's no drive or urgency to anything they do.  it's like sweatpants in Seinfeld -- it's music for people who have given up.  you haven't given up, have you?  no, you haven't!... so try this instead:

OK, I actually like Van Hunt, and I'm interested in the way the beginning of this number reminds me of Pup Tent by Luna in the 90s -- which itself is better than I remembered; but I see only peril and heartache ahead if I dig myself in any deeper on this topic. So here endeth the music blogging for the year. (Except to mention that I felt general and unaccustomed boomer-era pride in hearing the way that Fleetwood Mac's Tusk was used in the pilot of The Americans a week ago. Ok, here endeth for real.)

It's been a while since we've caught up with news in this category. In case you missed it, Nataly Dawn has a new single album coming out:

You probably know this already. But before seeing the boffo Juneau, Alaska, production of Oklahoma! I hadn't really focused on it, so I figured it was worth sharing the point.

Where did PSY's horse-riding dance in Gangnam Style come from? It certainly seems as if it might have come from Agnes De Mille's choreography for the dream-ballet sequence of Oklahoma! as shown below. Skip to time 8:25.



If you would like to hear Agnes De Mille discuss the thinking behind this sequence, go here. And if you would like to see a far more explicit matching of PSY and Agnes De Mille, try this. It's the dances from another possible De Mille source of Gangnam Style, Aaron Copland's Rodeo - but set to PSY's music.



"Straight," non K-Pop version of Rodeo is here. Submitted in the interest of cultural understanding.

This is what the Internet is for. In response to an item about Andy Williams, and a followup that included a video of the great song Aguas de Março as performed by Antonio Carlos Jobim and Elis Regina, messages like this one arrive. It's from a reader in Japan.

If you love that song, then you should definitely watch this version:

The same song, done by the same two, in almost the same manner.

But what makes this truly special is that it appears to be the actual recording session and the exact take that later went on the record and became one of the most beloved bossa nova songs of all time. I can't absolutely confirm that (for one thing, all of the comments are in Portuguese), but I've heard that album a hundred times and, yes, this is that exact version.

Bless whoever had the foresight to set up the camera.

He's right. I find this version incredibly moving, both for its role in recording history and for the magic between the two performers. Including the last few seconds of the clip.

A number of readers also recommended this video of Elis Regina with a jazz combo. And thanks to TH for this link to the intricate lyrics to Aguas de Março, in Portuguese and English.

To wrap this all up, a note from someone who doesn't have a gripe!

Can I just say that there's at least one reader who got what you meant when you offered that clip of Andy Williams and Jobim as a shorthand summary that might illuminate why Mitt Romney's pre-rock personal style seems out of place in our decidedly post-rock culture?  And, can I ask my fellow readers to get over themselves a little?  Did anyone really think that the point of what you were saying was that Romney could, in any way, be equated with the substance of Jobim's music?  Come on! 

The point, as I see it, is that before Rock, with its aesthetic of outsiderism and its claims to sweaty authenticity, took over the center of the popular music universe*, that center was occupied by music that hewed to entirely different criteria.  These were criteria that, rhetorically, placed greater value on execution than emotion, that at its best preferred cleverness and craft to intellectualism or transcendence. I'm not saying that Jobim's music  fits neatly into this paradigm at all, but that this popular aesthetic made a space on the charts for Jobim's music in a way that a Rock-dominated pop aesthetic wouldn't.  And, Jobim, who was a great, great composer, whose tremendously sophisticated music implies transcendent emotion through its very refusal to pander to the listener by acting that emotion out, was happy enough to pursue that place on the charts by dueting with a pure pop singer like Williams.

The interesting thing about this to me is how someone could, as Romney does, seem so untouched by the cultural shifts that we associate with "the sixties" and the Rock aesthetic.  I suspect it has something to do with money, and something to do with his church, and something to do with his personality.  But, either way, what better way to make the point than by offering a glimpse at music from Romney's coming of age period that was literally untouched by the 60s Rock aesthetic because that aesthetic was still plugging it out on the chitlin circuit.

Maybe you could have made this clearer by choosing a video of Williams without someone like Jobim, but that would have seemed to be just taking a cheap shot at Williams on the occasion of his death.  I like this much better, because it illuminates both Mitt Romney and Andy Williams. 

I know a lot about this stuff, but I didn't know about this performance of this song.  The notion that we can't learn anything by putting Mitt Romney next to Jobim and thinking about the moment in time that they both evoke is foolish.  Yes, Jobim's music is timeless and transcendent, a high human achievement.   But it is also tied mnemonically to a specific cultural and historical time, and is sturdy and substantial enough that using it to evoke that moment does it no harm whatsoever.  Those folks rushing to "defend" Jobim here are actually the ones that are seriously underestimating the power of his compositions.
___
*People think this happened with Elvis in the 50s, but those gains weren't really consolidated until the mid-1960s, which is why I use "Rock" instead of "Rock and Roll" throughout this.  I actually wrote a dissertation that argues that, after about 1966, the center of the popular music universe is dominated by what I call unpopular popular music: music that is distinguished in the pop marketplace by its supposed transcendence of the marketplace.  The paradox that the most commercially successful music over the past 4 or 5 decades has also often been the music that posits its own authentic uncommerciality is fascinating to me.  As is the fact that Romney seems like a visitor from a place where this never happened.

On the occasion of the singer Andy Williams's death, I posted a clip of Williams and said that his mid-1960s style and look -- pre-Hendrix, pre-Sgt. Pepper, pre-Pet Sounds -- helped me understand Mitt Romney. More and more Romney comes across to me as a man whose taste and demeanor are from an earlier age, and who doesn't quite know how to convey them to the current audience.

That Williams clip was of a duet with the great Antonio Carlos Jobim. Many readers write in to protest the idea that the Jobim and Romney aesthetics can be linked in even this indirect way. For instance, from a reader in Japan:

I'm taking the liberty of writing you now to comment on your "Andy Williams/Antonio Carlos Jobim" post. I gather it was put up partly in the nature of a tribute to the recently deceased Andy Williams, and I shouldn't nitpick at it--but--as you probably know anyway, you do Jobim a huge disservice by filing him under the inspiration for Mitt Romney's sense of style!

Jobim is up there in the list of greatest composers and performers of the 20th century ("Aguas de Marco," "Se todos fossem iguais a voce" etc. etc.). Andy Williams, nice voice and all, doesn't hold a candle to him. (He was also gorgeous in his younger days, judging by the photographs taken in Brazil, without the extra dose of Brylcreem the Andy Williams Show seems to have applied to him.) Do your readers a favor and post some of the YouTube videos from "Tom Vinicius Toquinho e Miucha," for a treat.

I apologize for jumping down your throat, but I wrote my senior thesis, back when, on Tom Jobim and the singer Elis Regina, and they have a space very close to my heart.

OK, how about this one with Elis Regina, below. Watch it through and tell me that this interaction is not as romantic as anything you have seen -- even if, like me, you don't understand a word they are saying.



My wife will testify that I love Jobim music in general and could listen to the deceptively simple melodies of Aguas de Março or even Samba De Uma Nota Só for a very long time. Not to mention Onda, Insensatez, Saudade, Agua de Beber, Dindi, etc. So there.

And:

In your comment concerning the death of Andy Williams, you showed what was considered to be cool in the pre rock and roll 60's ("Mad Men") era using a clip of Williams singing "Girl from Ipanema" (one of the preeminent Bossa Nova songs) with its composer, Antonio Carlos Jobim.  You then equated Mitt Romney's style (and overall manner) to this era and, by extension, to Bossa Nova.  While I understand (and agree) with the linkage of Romney to the early 60's era, I strongly disagree with linking him to Bossa Nova. 

Having grown up through the 60's and 70's, and having listened to (and liked) much of the rock from that time period, I still think that Bossa Nova (which my Mom introduced me to) is the coolest music there is, with Jobim being the coolest composer.  To me, it's a type of music that transcends the era it was created in.  And, for me, Romney is someone who definitely can't seem to transcend anything, including the early 60's era whose style he seems most in tune with.

If fact, when I think the about the cool, refined, restrained sounds of Bossa Nova, the politician that pops into my head is not Mitt Romney but Barack Obama.  Go figure.

And:

My wife and I are currently at Bourg Le Compte, France on our barge and have limited internet coverage, so I was unable to view the Andy Williams clip. Growing up in that era (I'm 63), I can imagine the blandness (viewed from our time) of the music and the presentation.  However, there was something going on with Brazilian music in the U.S. during this period that I think had an influence on a lot of popular music and culture to this day. 

Tom Jobim (and Sergio Mendez and others) made "foreign" music accessible and and acceptable.  Who could have predicted from this clip that sitar music would through the Beatles become popular not so many years later.  Tastes need to be cultivated and the Jobim's (and to their credit the Sinatra's the William's and others) opened American ears to other types of music.  Williams was popularizing the music and certainly not radical, but the opening of world music to the U.S. market certainly came from this period.  And the breadth of current American musical tastes is better for these early commercial efforts.

That is all. But please do watch that clip above.

The music I most associate with my first stage of living in Washington, in the Watergate era of the 1970s when I was working for the Washington Monthly, was the voice and poetry of Gil Scott-Heron, who was then in his early-/mid-20s. When I think of sitting and sweating in the non-airconditioned Washington Monthly office late on stifling DC nights, I think as well of Gil Scott-Heron's immediately recognizable voice in the background, on the radio. To me it was the theme music of that time. Of course this was a voice you stopped and listened to, rather than half-noticing as background effect.

He really was a beautiful singer, in addition to his poetry -- and his political influence, which has been most discussed on the occasion of his death. The only drawback of his being so well known for 'The Revolution Will Not Be Televised' is that his singing doesn't sound so great on that song. I preferred ones like this, which certainly is political in its own way:



Ta-Nehisi Coates posted an appreciation of GSH this morning. I am surprised at how moved I am to hear of his death. Sympathies to his family, and gratitude for his life and work.

I am no fan of Heineken beer, as beer. But Heineken as a cultural force is something else again. I take my hat off to any company responsible for an ad like the one below, "The Entrance." Yes, you've seen it already, but why not enjoy it once more -- and stay around for a little bit of video compare-and-contrast. Here's the short version that usually runs on TV, and which I'm reminded of by having seen it during Friday's Lake People-Calves NBA playoff game:



The comparison with the three-minute long internet version, below, is fascinating for what it shows about the editing and artistry that went into the short final release. The long version provides a lot more airtime for the bubbly blonde singer, Mette Lindberg of the Danish group Asteroids Galaxy Tour, which is fine, especially in the snappy opening. [See, it's not all Pomplamoose around here.] And it fleshes out a few of the "plot" elements in the ad. But after you see it, you realize that everything that matters was captured, better, in the version that's only one-fourth as long, with nothing extraneous left in. It's like a poem version of an essay. Don Draper would have been proud, and perhaps would have wanted to play the leading role.

For the record, Mr. Cool in this ad is a French actor, Eric Monjoin. And while I would generally take a Dos XX over a Heineken, I think the Most Interesting Man in the World crown has passed from Mexico's control back to Western Europe.

Maureen Dowd, writing from Washington DC, is wroth about Bob Dylan's failure to stand up to The Man in his concert in Beijing this week. "Bob Dylan may have done the impossible: broken creative new ground in selling out," and so on. I see from the world of Twitter that this outraged/ disappointed interpretation is sweeping through the U.S. commentariat.

Many of my Chinese and Western friends, writing from Beijing, Shanghai, Chengdu, and Nanjing, are wroth about Dowd and what they call her misunderstanding of Dylan, China, and the current alarming wave of crackdowns there. (Getty photo, left, from last year's tour.) Eg:

- Jeremiah Jenne, a Chinese-speaker and long-time resident of Beijing who covered the actual "Jasmine Protests" in Beijing in a stint as Guest Blogger here, says in his Jottings from the Granite Studio that "there has been a rash of increasingly unrealistic drivel [about Dylan] from the foreign press, culminating yesterday in a truly moronic piece by Maureen Dowd." Jenne pointed out that one of the numbers Dylan sang in Beijing, "a corrosive version of All Along the Watchtower, ain't exactly bubble gum pop. Coming on the heels of an epic Ballad of a Thin Man (in which Bob stood in a yellow spotlight at center stage, staring down the crowd like a carnival barker at the gates of Hell, literally snarling lyrics like "But something is happening here/But you don't know what it is/Do you, Mister Jones?") it's hard to complain that Bob was toning it down."

- Adam Minter, also former Guest Blogger here and long-term resident of Shanghai, points out  at his Shanghai Scrap site that Dylan began his China shows with the strongly Christian Gonna Change My Way of Thinking, eg:

Jesus said, "Be ready
For you know not the hour in which I come"
Jesus said, "Be ready
For you know not the hour in which I come"
He said, "He who is not for Me is against Me"
Just so you know where He's coming from

Minter says:

>>those few Chinese who attended, much less cared about, Dylan's concert, have not - best as I can tell - joined the chorus of mostly affluent foreigners claiming that a failure to sing "The Times They Are A-Changin'" in Beijing is tantamount to performing for Qadaffi's family. My suspicion is that they (and Dylan), probably sense that, in Beijing, there just isn't much revolutionary currency in song verses such as:

Come senators, congressmen
Please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway
Don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt
Will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside and it is ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a-changin'

Indeed, I think it's fair to say that revolutionary anthems which address "senators and congressmen" are best addressed to people who have them....

Which brings me back to the striking apocalyptic Christian imagery and message with which Dylan started his Beijing and Shanghai shows. I don't know why he chose to do that number (aside from the fact that it's great), and what it says about him. But the fact that Maureen Dowd and other critics of the performance fail to pick up on the fact that Dylan sang an overtly Christian song to (using Dowd's words) "2,000 Chinese apparatchiks in the audience taking a relaxing break from repression" seems to me a much more pointed criticism of Dowd's (and her likeminded critics) biases and blind-spots than anything that's been written about the bard's workmanlike Chinese performances.<<

And this note from a long time Dylan fan in America:

>>Check out the Beijing set list - he played A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall and Ballad of a Thin Man - those tunes are as "subversive" as anything he has written, and frankly, better tunes than his "protest" songs (The Times They Are A Changing).  http://www.boblinks.com/040611s.html 

What does Maureen Dowd want from Dylan exactly, and what evidence does she have that he altered his set list?  He doesn't speak at concerts, the set list changes daily, and again, Gonna Change My Way of Thinking which opened both China shows, and Desolation Row from Shanghai are more thumb-in-your eye than Blowin in the Wind.  http://www.boblinks.com/040811s.html 

Dylan closed both China shows with Like A Rolling Stone (as he does all his shows). If the Chinese were really intent on shutting Dylan down, wouldn't they have crossed out that tune from the set list?

Gonna Change My Way of Thinking, from Slow Train Coming, opens with this lyric:

Gonna change my way of thinking
Make myself a different set of rules
Gonna change my way of thinking
Make myself a different set of rules
Gonna put my good foot forward
And stop being influenced by fools

So much oppression
Can't keep track of it no more
So much oppression
Can't keep track of it no more

http://www.bobdylan.com/songs/gonna-change-my-way-of-thinking

It's from Dylan's so called "born again" phase, but do you think the Chinese were hip to that lyric?  Something is happening here, and you don't know what it is, do you Maureen Dowd?<<

For another on-scene review of the Shanghai concert, see this. I have heard to similar effect from a few Chinese friends in brief messages too. Main points of this based-in-China pushback:
    - The Chinese following for Dylan is not that enormous anyway -- in contrast, say, to the Eagles, whom my wife and I saw perform before a packed, enraptured crowd in Beijing last month and who are truly Big in China;
    - The songs that U.S. critics of Dylan were yearning to hear weren't ones that would have resonated in China; and
    - The songs he did sing were plenty boat-rocking themselves. "So much oppression / can't keep track of it no more."

Based on what I know about China and the role of pop culture there, and what I saw of the crackdown until a week ago when I left Beijing, Jenne, Minter, et al ring true to me. At a minimum, the situation is not as clear cut as "Dylan sells out." But read it all and judge for yourself.

For those American right-wingers, and those Chinese hotheaded fenqing, who were sure, sure, sure that the famous Chinese-born pianist Lang Lang was sticking a harpoon in the side of dunce-like Americans with the song he played at the White House State Dinner, please, please, please listen to his interview this evening with Melissa Block of NPR. (Transcript here.) You are wrong, wrong, wrong:



Sample convincing/exasperated detail, about the Korean War movie that introduced the song: "This movie was like.. when my mother was two years old." His "I am a man of both countries" theme was exactly the tone Lang Lang had when my wife and I were fortunate enough to talk with him at the dinner before he performed, as described here. Now I'm really going away and leaving things to the guests. But had to say it.

Following this and this item, a Western reader in northern China writes:

>>It seems to me that the intended subtext of the jazz presentation at the White House was much deeper than simply "America ... still had some zip". Indeed the immediate thought that came to mind when I heard about the musical line-up was that jazz has become all that it is by relying on the US traits of individual liberty and spontaneous collaboration. And I think this is very well highlighted in Mr. Bouloukos experience: "... I was often asked by serious Chinese classical musicians how I could improvise at great length on the piano without having any music in front of me. When I responded that I was playing jazz..."

Moreover, it has occurred to me in reviewing your two columns that the well-recognized prominence of an excluded minority of Americans in inventing and furthering jazz has a similar significance internationally. And if one is looking for another intended subtext in the Obama White House, this would have to be suspected.<<

Just under the wire, this note from Nicholas Charles Bouloukos, a jazz pianist and conductor now working in China, is too interesting not to share while the Hu Jintao visit is still more or less newsworthy. Bouloukos explains how the White House choice of a jazz-centric music program for last week's State Dinner matches developments in China itself:

>>Thank you for reporting on the important subtext behind the musical programming at the State Dinner. In the West we first see the foreground, but in Asia it is usually the background and larger picture that is often first recognized.... [Chinese leadership] will surely understand the message of the musical programming at the State Dinner, while Western media will not only miss the point but spend five thousand times the effort discussing Michelle's dress.

But you might not be aware of another level of reasoning behind the choice of performers. Shanghai of course has a long jazz history, and in the past ten years we have seen a jazz renaissance in Shanghai and greater China that mirrors the country's financial ascendancy. 

I first came to Asia in 1996, and at that time jazz equaled Kenny G for the greater part of humanity in this part of the world. In 2000, on my first gig in mainland China, I was often asked by serious Chinese classical musicians how I could improvise at great length on the piano without having any music in front of me. When I responded that I was playing jazz, the responses more or less were variations of this one theme: "But jazz is saxophone music!" [Kenny G photo -- helpfully supplied by me, not Bouloukos -- is from here.]

In 2002 I came to Shanghai to play at the House of Blues and Jazz, which is still one of the best jazz clubs anywhere in the world. At that time the local musicians could play some funk tunes ("Cantaloupe Island," "Watermelon Man," and "Chameleon," all by Herbie Hancock) and perhaps a vaguely Ellingtonesque version of "Caravan." My bass player at that time was Ren Yu Qing, formerly the bassist of China's only rock god, Cui Jian, and at that time a new convert to the music of jazz. [JF note: Watermelon Man, with Hancock on the piano, was in fact the opening number at the State Dinner concert.]   

Fast forward to 2011. Ren Yu Qing's JZ Group, which includes the JZ Club and JZ School, have for five years produced increasingly hip jazz festivals of international caliber. Last year's headliner was Diane Reeves (with Mr. Martin on piano). Dee Dee Bridgewater headlined the 2009 JZ Music Festival, and I was privileged to conduct and play piano for the performance with our JZ Big Band [YouTube here and here -- with Bridgewater plus Bouloukos on the piano.] Dee Dee and Herbie both performed at the Shanghai EXPO last summer as well, in concert with the students of the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz. These two dynamic ladies and others of heir caliber are not just great performers, they are true ambassadors of a great American art form; and as ambassadors they have largely been welcomed warmly and enthusiastically by not only the Chinese cultural authorities but by the general public as well.

More »

My wife and I were seated two rows behind Bill Clinton during the music, and -- what a surprise! -- you could see him moving, bopping, smiling the whole time. When the event was all over, at the moment pictured above, Obama made the normal statesmanlike remarks -- and then had a nice ad libbed comment, that he thought he had detected Hu Jintao tapping his foot during some of the numbers. If you have seen the normal immobile public mien of Chinese leaders you get the joke. Hu gave the standard "heartfelt greetings!" response, but I mainly thought: it's a performance that made you proud and happy to be an American and had to have had some infectious effect. (Like the great Chinese-folk-blues performance I described here.)

The photo: OK, it's blurry, but it was with a camera phone in the dark at short notice. If you click, it's bigger but still blurry. Facing the camera, from left to right, you can more or less make out: Lang Lang, Hu Jintao, Barack Obama, trumpeter Randy Brecker (standing back by the portrait), Herbie Hancock, Dianne Reeves, DeeDee Bridgewater, bassist James Genus, Chris Botti holding trumpet, and Michelle Obama. That's the white-maned back of Bill Clinton's head you see in the front row on the right, and the back of Robert Gates's head in the very corner. While I'm at it, that's the back of John Kerry's head at the lower left -- and the baldish head in the center belongs to former SecState George Shultz. If you could see right through his head, you would detect Jimmy Carter, whose wife Rosalynn's head is visible immediately to Shultz's right. Joe and Jill Biden are standing directly in front of Obama. While I'm also at it, how incredibly small-minded was it of Harry Reid and John Boehner to decline invitations to this event?

Now you know, and I'll see you in a while.

The great jazz pianist and teacher Billy Taylor died yesterday, at age 89. Several months ago I wrote about the late-1950s TV show "The Subject is Jazz," which included this appearance by Taylor. He's at the piano throughout the clip and discusses the history of cool jazz with the host, Gilbert Seldes, starting around time 7:30.



A very nice collection of other Billy Taylor clips on YouTube is here, assembled by Bret Primack, aka "JazzVideoGuy." I like the Seldes one, above, because it shows something amazingly constant about Taylor -- recognizably the same guy in his 30s on that show as he was in appearances in his 70s and 80s, often at the Kennedy Center -- and something amazingly transformed about American culture and American TV, as I think you'll see if you watch even a little of the clip (and as I tried to explain in the earlier post). He was a talented man, with a gracious and charming public presence.

Update: reader TC highlights this offhand observation in the clip, and what it shows about Taylor.

>>"Fundamentally our musicians play modern jazz, and they play it hot or cool as the occasion demands." -- Billy Taylor, quoted by Gilbert Seldes

We should all aspire to such elegance and versatility!<<

Here is a trifecta. It is a news nugget that (a) features the blog-war - provoking indie duo, while (b) supporting a worthy Christmas-themed cause; and (c) offering yet another wrinkle on the endless "future of the press in a digital age" theme. How could I resist?

These strands come together in a front page story in the print edition of today's SF Chronicle, that the Pomplamoose singing group is supporting a book drive for several public schools in Richmond, in SF's East Bay. For a list of the schools and why they're seen as deserving, go here. The plan works this way:

1) You go to a special Amazon page that has been set up for the Richmond Book Drive and choose a book (or books) to donate, from the wish-list they have established it.

2) You pay for it, and specify that it be shipped to the Richmond schools address, which is already on the page.

3) You go to a "Thank You" page and download the Pomplamoose Christmas album.

SF Gate photo of Richmond students receiving some of the gift books:



I will confess that across the whole Pomplamoose oeuvre (which maybe I should spell "oovre" for consistency), Christmas songs are not my absolute favorites. This is the Pomplamoose-original I like best; this and this are some of their best covers. But I'll sign up for the book drive because: the "choose the books you want to give" model is appealing (sort of in keeping with the GlobalGiving model that gives you a fine-grained sense of the projects you're supporting);  as a product of the California public schools I'm happy to support them; plus, it can't hurt to have the music.

And the "future of the press" angle? The SF Chronicle's web site today has a mention of the story -- but says that the full text won't be online until two days after it runs in the print edition. Print subscribers can log in and get it right away. One more entry in the ongoing world-wide experimentation in how news organizations can devise new business models to cope with the internet. Check it out.

Hyundai has signed up ... Pomplamoose ... for its new TV campaign.
 


Previously on Pomplamoose and the Pomplamoose wars, here, here, here, here, etc. Inside-advertising intriguing detail: Pomplamoose previously served an uncredited off-camera role for the sublimely retro Toyota Avalon TV campaign. Why the switch? (Better terms? Desire for face-time on screen? Suddenly prefer Hyundai? Unwholesome impulse to be cutesier than is really wise in this Hyundai ad?) I don't know. But Happy Turkey Day.

... who just happens to be performing with Pomplamoose (which I've promised not to mention any more) and Ben Folds, in a new video song here.

 

It's perfectly respectable and hip to mention Hornby, so I feel no style-guilt in passing this on. Also, the point he makes in the "lyrics" here is a little icicle to the heart of anyone in the middle of a big writing project, like for instance me. Oh well. Thanks to reader SH. (And although Nick Hornby is not involved, consider also this one and of course this classic.)

... especially the very-tail-end-of-the-Fifties aesthetic of the first shows, you may be as transfixed as I was by "The Subject is Jazz" programs from 1958, on YouTube here. Screenshot below; embedded player at the bottom.



Watch even the first minute and try to imagine an America in which something like this was on TV. This whole consciousness is as remote from today's as Elizabethan drama, but still detectably in touch with early Mad Men. The then-famous Gilbert Seldes is the host, and Billy Taylor, who has just turned 89 and was for many years a fixture at the Kennedy Center, is the pianist and musical star. His surreal but fascinating discussion with Seldes begins at about time 7:30 in the clip.

The music itself is great and beyond any era -- for instance, the last 4+ minutes of the clip,  which have a a rendering of what I think is called "Half Nelson." But if you want confirmation of the old adage that we overestimate how much things change in a year, and underestimate how much they change in ten years (let alone 50), give this a look. (Thanks to Jazz on the Tube and reader DM.)

As promised, no more posting on music themes [for a while], in the interests of generational concord.

But tell me what is not impressive or interesting about Jack Conte's (50% of Pomplamoose) promo video, below, for the Electro-Harmonix Voice Box. Includes cameo by other 50% of Pomplamoose.
 


Thanks to reader (and rock player) Brian.