An off note in music history

It is little known today that Signor Alfredo Nobellini, inventor of the accordion, also invented another, even less successful instrument. Always seeking a greater fortissimo, he combined his interest in music with his interest in things that go boom! to produce the explodeon (rhymes with melodeon). Any accordion player could play an explodeon, though seldom for very long.

It is difficult, at this historical remove, to gauge the impact the explodeon had on its listeners, as few critical reviews of performances have survived. Audiences are reported to have been blown away, even transported to heavenly heights. The score of the famous 1812 Overture originally had an explodeon part, but this was later rewritten for cannon, which were found to be easier to manage in an orchestral setting.

Nobellini composed a suite for explodeon and pipe-bomb organ. He was reported to have said, before its only known performance, that it would mark the apogee of his career. Indeed, neither he nor the concert hall is known to have featured in musical history since the event.

Battle Hymn of the Republic, updated for the Tea Party and Sarah Palin

I was thinking that the Tea Party needed some songs.



The smugness of the comments at Youtube must be seen to be believed.

Update: I see there is some discussion at Althouse.

Instruments of dubious value

Not the robosigned mortgages causing such an uproar among the bankers, but "the 10 Most Ludicrous Musical Instruments Ever Conceived." All are described and presented with videos so that they can be seen and heard. All are unfamiliar to me, and for most of them, I'd just as soon they stay that way. There might be a future for the violimba in horror movie scores. The Samchillian Tip Tip Tip Cheeepeeeee, a keyboard "based on relativity," is intriguing and might actually have a future. Or it might be from the future.

"Better late than never, dear"

The Sunday afternoon concert comes on Monday evening this week. Here's Janey Cutler, of Glasgow, Scotland. (Via Reality Rocks.)



Someone's already put up a website.

Morgan Freeberg makes one of those non-obvious connections

Warning to Young People. Go, listen, read. And get off my lawn!

Sunday afternoon concert: Katie

I suppose you'd want to imagine a man singing this, since it was written by Jimmy McCarthy. Yet this version by Mary Black is the canonical one, to my mind anyway. Lyrics. Lit-crit explication is beyond me, as with much of the modern Irish pop music. Too densely personal, too obscure, for easy comprehension. I like the sound of it.

I think I have finally found the W.C. Fields movie I was looking for — and its name is "Poppy"

Cascading absurdities, grandiloquent orotundity (or should that be "orotund grandiloquence"), a "talking" dog, a shell game, a fair amount of booze, "Purple Bark Sarsaparilla," without which "this mundane sphere of ours would be barren, bleak, and dank," a pretty girl and a romance, a highly unlikely plot device, a carnival, a certain amount of conniving, not too much bitterness, and the closing line, a bit of fatherly advice to the dear adopted daughter who is about to go straight, "Never give a sucker an even break."

I do not seem to be in agreement with the reviewers at IMDB, who regard this as a minor Fields flicker. The ones they cite as superior seem to me to suffer from excessive bitterness and cynicism. This one is sweet almost all the way through, with just enough bitter to make it tangy.

And the bit with the cigar-box cello and the hat:

Oh dear!

Sunday afternoon concert, second set

A couple of Henry Lawson's poems, set to music. Get out your hankies.

Priscilla Herdman sings "Do You Think That I Do Not Know." Sometimes I allude to this as if everyone else knew it, too. If you hear me say "in the days when our hair was brown," I am referring to this.



Another: Walter McDonough sings "The Outside Track." No video for this. I looked all over Youtube for a version I liked at least as much as this, but could not find one. Full text here, including some bits that Walter does not sing. I love the phrase, "the last of the careless men."

Sunday afternoon concert

Today, ladies and gents, Victoria Jackson!

Do you remember Victoria Jackson from Saturday Night Live? Here she is, to sing for you again. This is a poignant little ditty called "There's a Communist Living in the White House." Let's hear it for Victoria, folks!



Thanks, Victoria!

Stepdancing into the future

This reminds me of Star Trek. We've crashed the Enterprise on some planet or other, and the saucer is broken open to the sky; what shall we do? Dance!



The band is Tuk Tuk Skip. (Google's English version.)

Here's one that's more on the mellow side:



If this is the future, let's go.

Their fingers never leave their hands

Received in email from Dean, an amazing display of virtuosity.

That's Cecilia Siqueira and Fernando Lima, also known as Duo Siqueira Lima. If your first thought after seeing and hearing this is "What could they do with two guitars?" you might want to check out their website.

Dean sent a link to the video of this performance at wimp dot com, a video site I had not seen before. Fun videos, "suitable for all ages," it says.

It's been a long road since those days

Althouse posted an R.I.P. for Liam Clancy. I heard him a few years ago at the Mystic Sea Music Festival. Of course, he was very good indeed. Althouse linked to his obit at the Irish Times; here are obits from the Telegraph and the NY Times. His website is Liam Clancy dot com, naturally. Music begins right away when you enter the site, so be prepared.

For a while, The Clancy Brothers and Tommy Makem personified Irish folk music in the States, and sold an enormous number of records in Ireland as well. I bought my first Clancy Brothers record back around 1962. It was this one:
(That's Tom on the left, Paddy in the middle, Liam on the right with the guitar, and Tommy Makem down in front with the whistle.)

I learned every song on it, and sing most of them still.

[Update: Amba posted an R.I.P. with two videos, one of them "The Parting Glass." Liam's spoken closing line in that holds a resonance now that it did not, then.]

Althouse's post includes a video of Liam Clancy singing "Those Were the Days." Commenter rcocean links to a video of Helmut Lotti singing "Dorogoy Dlinnoyu," the Russian song from which the music was taken. There is a discussion of the song at Languagehat, in which Languagehat links to this translation of the lyrics. Here is another translation, with some commentary, and here is a singable one. Languagehat quotes from a Russian page which says that, in October 1917, "'Endless road' became one of the biggest 'hits' in Russia." The singer whose performance made it famous was Alexander Vertinsky. And here it is (with subtitles in Polish).

Another Sunday afternoon concert.

Lynn has a few odd links

Right here. Don't miss the Three Redneck Tenors.

The lung flute

Not exactly a musical instrument, but I want one.

Today, doctors in Japan use the $40 Lung Flute as a tool to collect sputum from patients suspected of carrying tuberculosis, and in Europe and Canada it’s used to help test phlegm for lung cancer. Clinical trials in the U.S. have shown that it is at least as effective as current COPD treatments. At press time, Hawkins expected the device to receive FDA approval any day, and says the reusable device could also provide home relief for patients with cystic fibrosis, influenza and asthma.

I suppose you'll need a prescription. Via Reynolds.

Update: keep up with current developments at Medical Acoustics.

Singer killed by coyotes while hiking

Taylor Mitchell, 19, was attacked by two coyotes and fatally wounded while hiking in Cape Breton Highlands National Park in Nova Scotia.

News video here.

Autumn's come again

This, by Gerard Manley Hopkins, is about a hundred years old, and eternal.



Spring and Fall:
to a Young Child

Márgarét, áre you grieving
Over Goldengrove unleaving?
Leáves, like the things of man, you
With your fresh thoughts care for, can you?
Áh! ás the heart grows older
It will come to such sights colder
By and by, nor spare a sigh
Though worlds of wanwood leafmeal lie;
And yet you will weep and know why.
Now no matter, child, the name:
Sórrow's springs áre the same.
Nor mouth had, no nor mind, expressed
What héart héard of, ghóst guéssed:
It is the blight man was born for,
It is Margaret you mourn for.
___________________________________
(Photo by Ann Althouse, used under Creative Commons licence.)

The sunny side of climate claptrap

There is always a sunny side.

Though "sunny" implies warmth. Warmth is necessary for life. So the 2009 Miss Earth competition, or pageant, is being held in the Philippines, where it's naturally warm.

The photos in the "Press Presentation" are better at the Telegraph.

I've heard nice things about Slovenia, as a place to live. Miss Greece looks like a character from the Iliad:

Penelope, perhaps; though the red hair would seem to imply Circe; one would hope, not Briseis or Iphigenia.

Thanks to Glenn Reynolds.

Law school pirate

This is illegible as seen here, so click it to get a better view.

That subtitle is likely to be going away pretty soon, but it seems worthy of preservation. It's a testimonial to Althouse's sense of humor.

Related: Pointed, pointless questions.
Sarah Palin is Dumb.
Ann Althouse Is Dumb
"Oh...did I mention Althouse is a dirty libtard pirate whore?"
"Sirs, the smiles will leave your faces when the walls come tumbling in..."
There may be more to come.

I've been searchin'

That new search widget is not working, now, either, so I've put in a home-brew version based on the Google site search. In the sidebar.

Sam Spade and Charlie Chan got nothin' on me. Oh, wait, if they got nothin' — does that mean they searched and got no results? I'm so confused.

Update, Oct. 13: "Search Blog" in the navbar is fixed, now. I'll leave the home-brew search in the sidebar for a while, in case it reverts. Oct 19: It's reverting.

Musical prescience

IF Iran and North Korea are aligned on the Axis of Evil, AND they are working on nuclear weapons, THEN this old song takes on new relevance.

From 1947, the Golden Gate Quartet, "Atom and Evil:"



An encore at the Sunday free concert.