Old World Swine

Video Thursday

I'm not the first Catholic blogger to discover the music of Pomplamoose (hat tip to Mark Shea on that), but I want to share one of their videos that I found lately, and which I've added to my list of Christimas songs.

Pomplamoose (French for grapefruit) are the musical team of Jack Conte and Nataly Dawn. I think it's fair to say that they are what used to be called song stylists. They have hammered out a sound and a style (which is not easy to do, by the way) and they apply it to well-known songs from other artists (these used to be called "standards") as well as to their own material. You either like them or you don't. On the whole, I and my whole family have been delighted with their covers of other artists and I have enjoyed their original songs, as well.

Pomplamoose have also made clever use of video and editing. Jack is a fairly accomplished and versatile instrumentalist and arranger, and Nataly has a vocal style that lends itself well to rich, layered harmonies. My first taste of their work was a cover of the old Chordettes song Sandman, which is difficult and which they made sound pretty effortless and joyful. Their arrangements are uncluttered and in general very successfully re-tool and update older songs for modern ears, while respecting the original. That's not easy to do, either.

When I first played their version of O, Come, All Ye Faithful, the opening measures made me think I wasn't going to like it. Nataly has a great voice, but there are certain songs wherein her particular style can sound flat or wooden. Their version of Michael Jackson's Beat It left me cold, for instance (...well, no one hits a home run every time, but I don't know what they were thinking trying to cover that one). I was thinking for a few seconds that this was going to be a very dull and maybe even unpleasant version of one of my favorite Christmas carols.

But it got better quickly. I can't speak for anyone else, but I find it a real Christmas treat. And, it's actually a Christmas song about Christ, as well. Who'd have thought?

Then, I find the video below just kind of fascinating. Here's John Lennon giving his thoughts on overpopulation. Makes you wonder what he might have thought of Global Warming.

Lennon has always bugged the hell out of me, but it's hard to hate the guy. One got the sense he was sincerely trying, even if he was sincerely wrong on a lot of things. He always seemd to be gracious and charming, as he is in this video. He sensed the absurdity of his own fame, and he was able to detect the odor of bullsh*t around the Overpopulation Myth. But sometimes, you just want to shake him by the shoulders to loosen up more of that common sense that was rattling around in his head with all the pop philosophy and fashionable Eastern mysticism.

Another hat tip to Creative Minority Report for bringing the Lennon video out of mothballs.

Stuck In My Head

 

A while back, a friend loaned me this CD by Tony Rice titled Church Street Blues (pictured).

First, it's fantastic. Powerful in its simplicity. It is easy to see why Alison Krauss claims him as an influence. 

Second, Rice is influential enough in his circle, but is not nearly as well known as he ought to be... not for his sake, but for the sake of our ailing culture. Go and buy everything you can find by Tony Rice and share it with your friends. By his CDs by the gross and drop them from a helicopter over population centers.

Now, the song that has been stuck in my head for days is Rice's version of The Pride of Man. Written by actor/singer/sonwriter Hamilton Camp, it has been covered by several artists, but has never been done better (IMO) than Rice does it. However, I can't find his version on the web, so I'm posting a recording by Gordon Lightfoot, which is also very good and similar to the one by Rice.

The lyrics, especially as Rice sings them with such unadorned clarity, are chilling. Especially now, for some reason. The poetic biblical imagery calls to mind some Tolkien-esque vision of great cities in ruin, and of black clouds blocking out the sun, of sudden calamity that was none the less long in coming.

  

The Pride of Man - by Hamilton Camp

Turn around go back down,

back the way you came,
Can't you see the flash of fire

ten times brighter than the day?
And behold the mighty city

broken in the dust again

Oh God, the pride of man,

broken in the dust again

Turn around go back down,

back the way you came,
Babylon is laid to waste,

Egypt's buried in her shame,
Their mighty men are beaten down,

the kings are fallen in the ways

Oh God, the pride of man,

broken in the dust again

Turn around go back down,

Back the way you came,
Terror is on every side,

Oh, the leaders are dismayed,
Those who put their faith in fire,

in fire their faith shall be repaid

Oh God, the pride of man,

broken in the dust again

Turn around go back down,

Back the way you came,
Shout a warning to the nations,

that the sword of God is raised
on Babylon that mighty city,

Rich in treasure wide in fame,
It shall cause thy tower to fall

and make it be a pyre of flame

Oh God, the pride of man,

broken in the dust again

Thou that dwell on many waters,

Rich in treasure wide in fame,
Bow unto a god of gold,

Thy pride of might shall be thy shame

Oh God the pride of man,

broken in the dust again

And only God can lead the people

back into the earth again,
Thy holy mountain be restored,

Have mercy on thy people Lord

 

 

  

The song also reminds me that it can be nigh on impossible to fruitfully preach The Good News to a culture that has forgotten The Bad News to which the gospel is the cure. How do people with no concept of sin understand that the forgiveness of our sin - freedom from sin - is the most important thing there is, or can be? The culture at large, in the West, is like the alcoholic who, when confronted, angrily slurs that he has no problem with his drinking, it's everyone else who has a problem with it. If everyone would leave him (or her) alone and stop nagging, everything would be fine.

The Pride of Man is a powerful presentation of The Bad News... man's rejection of communion with his Creator and his subsequent slavery... slavery to his pride and his passions.

One of the Cool Things...

...about living in the Ozarks is... bumping into John Michael Talbot when you're running errands!

It was such a great blessing to see him. I met him once before at a Christian Musician's conference in Eureka Springs, maybe ten or twelve years ago. I wasn't there as a musician, y'unnerstand... we just went to the performance the final evening.

This time my son, now 18, was with me, looking, shall we say, much different than he did when we had last seen brother Talbot. As a boy, he used to fall asleep listening to JMT's Table of Plenty album.

One of my favorite John Michael Talbot recordings is his Meditations in the Spirit, because it is largely comprised of scripture set to music. It has been a great aid to prayer, at times.

I interrupted brother Talbot, introduced myself, and he was very gracious, introducing me in turn to a Sister who's name I have forgotten, though I have not forgotten her kind face.

If she ever finds out how quickly I forgot her name, I hope she won't take it personally, as names have always flown straight out of my head. I have a terrible time with names, unless I can tie them to something solid. If I met you and you hit me in the head with a shoe, I would likely remember your name, but barring something along those lines, it will take meeting you a few times for me to get it right.

I was able to talk with John Michael for a few minutes about an art project I have in mind, and he was again very gracious and encouraging. I have for years wanted to do a series of paintings depicting the monastic life of the Brothers and Sisters of Charity at their Little Portion Hermitage in Berryville, Arkansas, and this serendipitous meeting may shake me out of my inertia enough to finally do it. Prayers please.

I think the meeting might have been more significant for my son, though, who has been in a period of, well... let's say searching. In the modern world, it can be hard to believe in things like plain goodness and holiness. Meeting John Michael and this gentle Sister was, I think, a little like an opening door for him.

The fact that both were in their monastic dress also may have made a big impression on him. It is one thing to tell someone that we hold an ancient and timeless creed... it's another thing to see such a concrete reminder of it. He, like many Americans, has never seen anything like Chartres Cathedral or Old Jerusalem (we in the West stopped building beautiful, awe-inspiring churches a while back). Their simple monastic habits were the quiet visual equal of the distant ringing of some ancient bell.

There is much in the Church that my son questions, but this was something like spying a hearthfire through a frosted window after you've been wandering in the snow. The flaws of the Church are easy to see, and easy to criticize. The holy Fire at the center of the faith can be harder to spot. Once you get a look at it, though, nothing else will quite measure up. It becomes worth putting up with the flaws.

I hope he saw an unexpected glimpse of that fire.

Musical Answers To Life's Pressing Questions

I finally thought of what President Obama and the health care alarmists remind me of, lately;

And this video goes out to Kanye West, Serena Williams and Congressman Joe Wilson;

Gord's Still Gold

Gordon Lightfoot at Massey Hall, Toronto, Ont. Photo by Kasra Ganjavi (via Wikimedia)

For our anniversary this year (27 years... OO-Rah!), I bought us tickets to see Gordon Lightfoot in concert at Tulsa's Mabee Center (on the campus of Oral Roberts University, within sight of the gigantic praying hands scupture and the notorious Prayer Tower).

It was a show perfect in its simplicity... just Gordon and a small 4-man band of very accomplished musicians (one keyboard, one lead/rhythm guitar, drum and bass). They played two forty-five minute sets, with a twenty minute break in the middle. The sound was immaculate, which is to say that one didn't notice the sound system at all. It sounded as if the musicians were just playing inside your head.

Can he hit all the high notes like he could when he was a comparative youngster of fifty or sixty? No. Was it a great show, anyway? Heck yeah, even though he was apparently fighting off a cold (I couldn't tell). Did he get called out for two encores with standing ovations? Yes indeed, though he merely gave a grateful bow on the second. The man is seventy, and stood ramrod straight for the entire show... no seated numbers at all.

He suffered some kind of burst blood vessel in his abdomen several years ago, and this is (I believe) his first major tour since (*Correction* - a commenter below informs me that G.L. has been touring since 2004, and that this is his third such tour since then). The incident should have killed him, but he was in good condition and that helped him stay alive and recover (according to one interview I scoped on YouTube).

The crowd loved him, and gratefully cheered the opening chords of nearly every song, as nearly every song in his hefty catalog is instantly recognizable (who wouldn't recognize the first few bars of Sundown, with its ringing guitar and prowling bass line?).

He told a few tales and dropped a few names (Elvis, Jerry Jeff Walker, Kris Kristofferson), but the evening was all about the music. There may technically be better musicians, but the man just has the gift for crafting enduring songs. They are uniquely his, too. They have been recorded by others, but never improved on. The show, like Gordon Lightfoot's music, was deeply and satisfyingly human on every level.

He did perform the haunting Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerqald, and so I could forgive him somewhat for leaving Canadian Railroad Trilogy out of the mix. Trilogy is probably my favorite of all his work - one of my favorite historical songs, period - and it was sorely missed, but Edmund Fitzgerqald is like his Stairway to Heaven... he would probably get lynched if he didn't sing that.

As I say, the crowd loved him, and he loved them back. I think he was perhaps a little surprised at the level of enthusiasm. I suppose a traveling musician may not know exactly what to expect when rolling into Tulsa, or many towns throughout Flyover Country, but this sold-out crowd of Boomers knew all his songs by heart. He and his music have stuck around long enough to weather his Can't Get Arrested phase and he is now deservedly enjoying his Living Legend phase.

Singers and pop stars come and go. The songs either endure, or they fade along with all the other cultural flotsam that marked their native decade. The music of Gordon Lightfoot will be around a long time after the man himself is laid to rest under the Canadian peat.

At The Round Earth's Imagined Corners

I had the great privilege of singing this piece as part of my high school All-Region choir. I have remembered it ever since, but never thought to look for it on the internet until now.

Composed by Wilametta Spencer, it is based on John Donne's Divine Sonnet VII, but is better known by the title At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners.

At the round earth's imagined corners blow
Your trumpets, angels, and arise, arise
From death, you numberless infinities
Of souls, and to your scattered bodies go ;
All whom the flood did, and fire shall o'erthrow,
All whom war, death, age, agues, tyrannies,
Despair, law, chance hath slain, and you, whose eyes
Shall behold God, and never taste death's woe.
But let them sleep, Lord, and me mourn a space ;
For, if above all these my sins abound,
'Tis late to ask abundance of Thy grace,
When we are there.   Here on this lowly ground,
Teach me how to repent, for that's as good
As if Thou hadst seal'd my pardon with Thy blood.

It's only a couple of minutes long, but it has stuck with me. I have some great memories tied to that experience.

In one, we students - hundreds of us - cooled our heels in a large lobby of some kind waiting to audition. Some began to spontaneously break into small groups to practice together. In no intentional way, these smaller groups began melding together, and soon everyone in the room was singing the same piece in an impromptu performance of our own. The cool thing was that we were a bunch of kids from the sticks (Eastern Arkansas), raised on Top 40 radio, but we were all clearly taken up into the experience of this music. We had tasted something that was expanding our little world, and we loved it. We (at least for the moment) didn't even pretend to care what kids our age were supposed to like, but let ourselves be swept along in the madrigal harmonies.

We were drawn together around something ancient and achingly beautiful and beyond any of us, and we knew it. We saw it in one another's eyes and acknowledged it without embarrassment. At that moment we didn't care who heard us, or what they might think. We weren't singing for a teacher, or for the judges, we weren't even singing for ourselves. We were singing for the sheer beauty of the music.

Another memory was after the auditions were over and we were practicing for our performance. Our director, the late Mr. Alfred Skoog, was taking us through At the Round Earth's Imagined Corners one last time. It is an a cappella piece - no accompaniment, only voices. As we neared the end, the hint of a smile began to creep in at the corners of Mr. Skoog's mouth. He looked pleased, and maybe more than pleased. As we finished the final crescendo, he hastily motioned to the accompanist, cueing her to strike on the keyboard the correct final chords.

We were precisely on pitch, a fact which caused Mr. Skoog, a big man, to literally leap into the air. It seemed to me he came a good, solid foot off his director's podium. He was gleeful. It can be a tricky thing to stay on pitch when singing a cappella, and given the complex harmonies of the piece and the reality that we were just a rag-tag assemblage of teenyboppers, I guess we did alright.

We likely didn't sound that great, but we had made our director jump for joy, and that has to count for something. What is heartbreaking is that I qualified to go on to All State choir, but opted out because, you know, I had a girlfriend and I thought it would impinge on my social life. What a yutz. All-Region was one of the few worthwhile things I accomplished during my less-than-stellar high school career (and that only because of the dogged persistence of Miss Pierce, the music teacher), and is now one of my greatest memories, but I took a pass on something that could have been even better, because, like, I had stuff to do, and junk.

There are better recordings available, but I chose the one above because it reminds me of the performance I took part in (same arrangement, I think), and it is filmed in the National Cathedral.

My favorite commercial recording of it is by Quire of Voyces, from their album Eternity (available from iTunes). Nice, round tones. Miss Pierce would have been pleased.

Jesus Blood Never Failed Me Yet

Dawn Eden posted this at her blog The Dawn Patrol, and I want to pass it along. Being that I'm yammering all the time about beauty, I thought I'd post something beautiful.

One thing to note is that neither the old man singing, nor Tom Waits (in the background) have what most people would call a beautiful voice. The orchestration is magnificently subtle and truly gorgeous, but the singing is not something that would make it past round one of American Idol. It isn't pretty, yet it is hauntingly beautiful.

That is part of the mystery of beauty.

As a painter, I'm fascinated with light and form, and I find great beauty in the interplay of light and shadow, reflected light and color. In order to establish any real sense of light, though, there must be some contrast - some shadowed places - and there can be no thinking about solidity and form without also allowing for the emptiness of negative space that these forms inhabit. Similarly, rough edges and textures clarify the meaning of smooth edges and fine gradations.

My own traditional still lifes tend to be dark, overall, with the objects emerging from shadow into light, or floating against the dark like the planets, and I think anything really beautiful will take into account and explore not just the light and the pleasing forms, but also the emptiness, the darkness and the rough edges of existence. In terms of art, mere prettiness is the enemy of beauty.

Be sure and read the story behind the video at The Dawn Patrol.

(Incidentally, this kind of thing is why I'm not actively boycotting YouTube for some of the nasty, bigoted, hateful, blasphemous videos they allow to run. YouTube might be run by a bunch of God-hating fascists, I don't know, but this is one of those cultural areas in which we need to be engaged. The best way to fight blasphemous videos is with beautiful videos, methinks.)

New Favorite?

Photo from Flickr)

I'm really liking this ABBEY Belgian Style Ale from New Belgium Brewing;

Winner of four World Beer Cup medals and eight medals at the Great American Beer Fest, Abbey Belgian Ale is the Mark Spitz of New Belgium’s lineup - but it didn’t start out that way. When Jeff and Kim first sampled the beer at the Lyons Folks Fest, reviews were mixed at best. One of founder Jeff’s first two Belgian style homebrews (along with Fat Tire), Abbey is a Belgian dubbel (or double) brewed with six different malts and an authentic Belgian yeast strain. Abbey is bottle-conditioned, weighs in at 7.0% alcohol by volume, and pairs well with chocolate (or boldly served by itself) for dessert.

I can personally attest that ABBEY Belgian Style Ale also goes tremendously with a hunk of Stilton cheese... like they were made for each other. This may be my new favorite mass-market brew. I'm still hoping, of course, to make trips to the liquor store redundant by drinking mainly my own brew.

And just for fun, here is a link to the music video for the song New Favorite by one of my favorite bands ever, Alison Krauss & Union Station. This particular song is not that typical of her other work, but still great. For my money, she and her band are the best popular musicians going for the last 20 years.

Chasing Road Trip Rabbits

Back from the OPA show in Nashville, all in one (somewhat numb) piece and grateful to God that everything went so smoothly. Neanderthal that I am, I still rely on directions from  MapQuest printed on dead trees rather than a GPS. I do hope to get a GPS device someday soon, hopefully one that can talk to me in the voice of the HAL 9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey... you know, when traffic is bad and my HAL/GPS unit detects stress patterns in my voice it will say things like, "I really think you should pull over, take a stress pill and think about this."

The maps did the trick, though. I managed to end up standing in more or less the right places at more or less the right times. The affair was less stuffy than I had imagined, more informal and I met and chatted with a number of perfectly nice folks. The quality of the paintings was excellent, so it was a little annoying that the dense crowd made it difficult to really look at them in the thoughtful, unhurried way they deserved. As is usual, I could see nothing but the flaws in my own piece. It's difficult to honestly see one's own work. Familiarity breeds, well, all sorts of things.

I won no awards this time around, but I'm very encouraged that I can do better next time. It was, as they say, "an honor just to be nominated...". At the after dinner, I sat with one of the award winners and her husband. When I found out he was a NASA engineer it almost derailed the conversation permanently, as I gushed that my son and I shared an interest in the space program and that he had his picture made with Buzz Aldrin and The Right Stuff was, like, our favorite movie ever, and blah, blah... I didn't mention the blurb I read on some blog recently (by someone who would probably know) that said NASA was like a sheltered workshop for high functioning autistics.

I came back down to earth and we talked about kids and the election (by this time we had each sent enough coded "I might be a conservative" messages that we felt it safe to venture a bit into politics. In a gathering of artists of that size, you're going to have a lot of Obamaphiles and no one wants a scene over their grilled swordfish).

The drive was pretty easy, though there is not much that can dress up the plain fact of sitting in one position for nine hours. Actually, I take that back. I drifted into the range of an alternative radio station out of Little Rock (KABF) that I thoroughly enjoyed because they happened to be in the middle of a long jazz set. It was so cool to tune in and find music for grown ups!

I was quite taken by the sounds of Gypsy Swing (which is so much fun to listen to that I actually laughed out loud once or twice) and am itching to download a lot more of that genre. Listen, I'm at the point where I just don't have time for music (or anything else) that doesn't have some genuine joy to it, and gypsy swing fairly oozes joy out the seams.

I was also saddend to hear them announce the death of legendary soul singer Levi Stubbs, of The Four Tops. His voice and their music is simply iconic.

I had the singular pleasure of driving into the hills of western Tennessee on a perfect autumn day. The road was smooth as buttermilk and the sun filtered through the leaves and dappled the rolling blacktop. They let the trees grow closer to the freeway there, I think, which I heartily endorse. I didn't run the air conditioner the whole trip, as the air coming through the vents was dry and cool.

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I promised myself I wouldn't do any more political posts before the election, so I'll just steer you to this dose of sanity from The Anchoress. She calls for fasting and prayer and I'm, you know, down wi' dat.

Trite, Yet Shallow

I assisted at or parish Teen Mass, yesterday, during which something occurred to me. I have struggled for a while with my dislike for contemporary music in church. I can ignore it a lot of the time, but some days it just grates on me in a way that is distracting and doesn't honor God, I'm afraid.

Even our more traditional Masses are flavored with contemporary music, though there is no Jazz Combo leading the tunes, as there is for the teen worship (drums, electric guitars, etc...).

Last night it finally hit me why this bothers me like it does.

It's because it adds to and amplifies the sense that there is simply no escape from Pop Culture. It will find you, hunt you down... in an elevator, in a restaurant, on the bus, at work - the unceasing static of a frenetic, restless world. I desperately need a break from this, at times, which is one reason I love to go camping. No radio, no cable, no internet... I can re-orient my head to the sound of rustling leaves and the songs of birds.

You would think that taking part in the ancient rite of the Mass would be one of those occasions when you could count on a bit of a respite from pop culture. There stands the holy altar of stone. Beyond that, the tabernacle sits behind massive wooden doors. The smell of incense hangs in the air, while the robed priests and acolytes make their way in solemn procession... how did Doc Severinsen and the Tonight Show Band get in here? (If you don't get the reference, Google it. Please keep in mind that I was born in 1960).

I'm really not a musical prude, I love all kinds of music (... well, almost all kinds). But it seems to me that we should try hard to make the Mass feel more like the timeless sacrament that it is. The Mass should smell of eternity. We should leave carrying this sense of the eternal with us out into the world. Instead, it seems we carry the noise of the world wherever we go, even into the Mass.

It's like wearing an i-pod on a date.

I know this gets people all riled up on both sides, and I don't really fall into that camp that is positively offended at non-Gregorian music for Mass. Mostly I just go along and get along like everyone, and I'm grateful for every Mass I can make it to. But... music for the Mass was once composed by people like Mozart and Beethoven. Why must ours sound like something from Barney, The Musical or American Top Forty?

Yeesh.

Okay. Rant over.

Addendum: In a humorous way, it occurs to me that the blank, featureless buildings and trite music may be all part of a grand scheme, a conscious attempt (by some committee at the USCCB, probably) to make penance an integral part of the modern Mass... to make it so bland and unappealing as to be a purely spiritual exercise, holding no reward for the flesh... like monks who used to wear hair shirts or eat nothing but gruel. Anyone who can, for years, drag themselves to a typical, contemporary American Mass can only be driven by some unseen force beyond human comprehension. It could even be seen as proof - hard evidence - of the supernatural. ;-)