Bing Crosby just didn't give a shit

Bing Crosby's recording of "We Wish You a Merry Christmas" is the laziest piece of junk. I never noticed until this year. At least it was released as "I Wish You a Merry Christmas," thus relieving all arrangers, producers, and players from any culpability.

Here are the lyrics as most of us know them:

Holy shit! Jam with Joe friggin' Perry?? LIVE???

Ok, sorry. Here's Bing:

           

Yeah, double reeds! Let's break this down:

I wish you a merry Christmas.

I wish you a merry Christmas.

I wish you a merry Christmas,

And a Happy New Year.

That's fine. A little selfish. But ok. Time for the booze-soaked, dried fruit gut bomb:

UHHH bring us some figgy pudding.

Uhh bring us some figgy pudding.

Oh bring us some figgy pudding,

And bring it out here.

Sounds like Bing has been hitting the brandy. Maybe the cooking sherry. (Editor's note: I don't care how desperate you are--don't drink the cooking sherry. Trust me. And I have no idea if Bing Crosby was drunk for this. But if I had been in his place, I would have been pretty drunk.)

We won't go until we got some.

We won't go until we got some.

We won't go until we got some,

So bring some out here.

What kind of fucked up grammar is this? "We won't go until we got some?" And hold on...did they just end this with "bring some out here?"

Where's my cup of good cheer? And aren't we missing a few "Good tidings..." and shit?

And I have to take issue with the original carol/song--it's like some sort of wassail, door-to-door hold up. WE WON'T GO UNTIL WE GOT SOME! AND WE'RE GONNA SING WITH WEIRD GRAMMAR, TOO! UNTIL YOU HAND OVER THE DAMNED FIGGY PUDDING!

Bing's performance ends with the Merry Christmas, Figgy Pudding, then another Merry Christmas verse. Except he substitutes "I" with "We." Sorry, folks. Bing has now included all y'all in this travesty.

He doesn't even do the "We won't go" bit. Maybe they got tired of singing traditional Christmas songs with verbs in the wrong tense. I would love to know how much time he spent on this tune at this session.

I wish you a Merry Christmas.

I wish you a Merry Christmas.

I wish you a Merry Christmas,

So bring some out here.

And I won't go until I got some.

Eighth note groupings and text setting in Roger Waters' "Pigs On the Wing (Part I)"

This is my analysis of Roger Waters' "Pigs On the Wing (Part I)," the opening track of Pink Floyd's Animals:

I think that after a cursory look, my Excel spreadsheet is pretty straightforward. The eighth note pulse is constant, starting with the 3+3+2 subdivision of 4/4 that is extremely common in strummy guitar rock music. It's often 3 eighths, 3 eighths, 4 sixteenths. Like the verses of this:

Oof. What a bad video. Or this:

Wow. Super shitty.

This song plays around with the same stuff:

Yes, of course I count in 4/4. But the underlying "clave" is 3+3+2.

It even carries over into the next track of Animals, just faster:

What I love about "Pigs On the Wing" is how the text dictates the time signatures. This is much like a lot of older country music, actually:

Which is, strangely enough, a lot like this:

If you don't know what I mean, just count to four. Until you can't.

The difference in Roger Waters' example is that the inconsistencies are much more unpredictable and expressive. If I did a similar analysis with "Hey Ya!" the phrases would line up cleanly and evenly. In "Pigs," the bottom of my chart is all gnarly. And that is a result of the text setting--using the eighth notes necessary to get the words out.

And then the album continues after that. For me, this is Pink Floyd's finest. I used to listen to this on cassette on long car trips. If I was cool enough, I'd cite a Syd Barrett album as my favorite. But I can't--Animals is the best.

As long as we're keeping score...listen from 1:41 in "Pigs (Three Different Ones)":

Don't need four beats to set your syllables? Then take one out.

Or maybe you need an extra beat?

"There's a restless feeling knocking at my door today."

The melodic genius of James Blunt's "You're Beautiful"

Mostly known as an unlikely, shaggy-haired, parrot-voiced, one hit wonder dork-throb, James Blunt should also be recognized for his unrivaled gift for melody. And it is clearest in that one hit of his--his breakout (one) hit "You're Beautiful."

OH SHIT HE'S SO DREAMY!

Oh God, this song is 9 years old. Have mercy.

While this song may seem simple on the surface, after a careful analysis you discover that not only is it simple, it's also one of the stupidest songs you've ever heard.

Ok. Really. I can't do this. I was going to do this one straight. Do a real transcription, then tear it up. But fuck it. My life is too valuable. This song is so awful. I'm resorting to a list. I'm so mad right now. This has been cooking for 9 years.

-It's a I-V-vi-IV song. For Christ's sake.
-The melody is nothing but the notes of the I chord, for the most part. Except for the dreadful bridge, which I'll get to next.
-There's a bridge, of sorts. And it's awful. The most perfunctory, wordless, buy-a-few-seconds-of-radio-play bridges ever. (It goes IV, vi, IV, vi, IV, vi, ii, V, in case you thought I was slacking off.) Guess what note he sings a whole bunch? Right. It rhymes with Gee Splat. And the voice leading into the ii chord is horrible--direct octaves between the bass and vocal.
-This video might be worse than the song. Sure, I understand the practical matter of removing the items from one's pockets before jumping from a great height into a body of water. But what does his compulsion with lining up said items just so have to do with his Craigslist Missed Connection? Or run-in with an ex or whatever it is. Maybe lining up the contents of your pockets means you're sensitive?
-I don't wanna see his ugly feet or beat up sneakers.

This song is straight terrible. Listen. Listen. I see hot girls all the time that I will never be with or "be with" or BE WITH or even be with (if you know what I mean). I have the courtesy and good sense not to write the worst song of all time about it.

And I mean it. I have to think hard to think of a song that's bad on all the levels that this is. Top 5, for sure.

Trouble stop

I loved Aerosmith growing up. And I still find myself defending them from time to time. I still believe that Tom Hamilton's work in the band is pretty much unimpeachable. I imagine him going back to the hotel after a gig, sighing at another Steven Tyler/Joe Perry shit show, then going online, checking his bank account, and climbing into bed with a smile and a shrug.

But I have wondered about something for a while. His playing on "Dream On" is pretty much roots and licks in octaves with the guitars. But then toward the very end he does this:

Why the double stop then? And why on D flat? I can't think of any reason to do this. Lots of reasons to do it on F. He could have done it on all of them, for that matter. D flat is pretty muddy. If you don't believe me check it out. He doesn't do it until 3:46.

                            

WHY?? It's quite distracting once you notice it.

Maybe it has something to do with the "Huge Chinese gong" at the end.

Spare Time

Here's a very entertaining YouTube compilation/montage video:

Here's another:

And here's a far less entertaining blog post about Stewart Copeland:

The Unbehind: More flams than you can shake a stick at!


These all have two things in common:

1) They took a lot of time to create.
2) People like to say "Ha. Wow, they must have a lot of time on their hands to do that."

I know I've heard that in response to several of my posts. And I've heard it whenever I've shared both of those videos with people. By extrapolation people are saying:

"My goodness, man. To take such time and care to cull these David Lee Roth clips from the internet...I could have spent so much more time with my children! And read that Important Novel! And grown twice the crops I already grow for subsistence!"

Yes, sir. I'm sure you would do all such things. And maybe make a macrame owl, to boot.

Or is it... to hoot?

But I've noticed something interesting. No one ever talks about the macrame owls they're making. They do tell tedious stories about books and kids sometimes, for sure. But usually they talk about:

-House of Cards

-Game of Thrones

-Orange Is the New Black

-Breaking Bad (until recently)

I mean ON AND ON AND ON AND ON about fucking TELEVISION.

Don't get me wrong. This is NOT an anti-TV rant. If I had a TV and cable I'd be watching Cops eating Slim Jims and drinking High Life RIGHT NOW.

(One of those things is true RIGHT NOW. I'll let you guess.)

BUT! When someone is going on and on and ON about all of the goddamn shows they're following, does anyone ever say:

"Ha. Wow, they must have a lot of time on their hands to do that."

No. Never.

Why is it that someone can make a really entertaining YouTube video that gets over 2 million views and people think "Damn, what a loser! That guy really entertained me by doing something I'd never think to do or ever be willing to do! I'm gonna go watch some quality HBO TV."

Or my blog post, say. It has 108 views. Got a few Facebook likes (whee!). Certainly have made zero dollars from it. It certainly took many hours. Lots of hours I could have spent getting caught up on Awesome Show X. Alas. I didn't feel like watching TV. And I don't have a TV. And when I wrote that my computer was barely operational. So those are also considerations.

But still.

I really don't give a shit how anyone spends their time. The fact that we have any free time at all is an amazing luxury. It just burns me whenever I hear that comment. You might as well say it every time I write music that has weird notes and no one will ever play it correctly or even want to hear it. Or every time I play a gig that pays junk and nobody listens but at least I'm playing exactly what I want to play, as loudly or as softly as I want.

Maybe next time someone makes that comment about a post or one of my musical endeavors I'll ask them about Game of Thrones, pretend I know what they're talking about, then say "Man, you must really have some time on your hands! WOW!"

Summer is great when you're a millionaire that used to be middle-class

After a long day yesterday with two borderline heat stroke gigs and 8 hours of driving I'm spending a little time hiding indoors in the AC, pondering important issues.

I'm not a big fan of millionaires singing songs about "not having a lot but at least we have each other" or the "simple life." It's their living. Whatever. And it's been around forever. But I heard a tiny bit of a song I'd never heard today. I was at my neighborhood Tedeschi, where depending on the time of day I procure coffee, beer, potato chips, Powerade, or some combination of the four. Simple pleasures. Anyway, I heard this:

"Well I won two dollars on a scratch-off ticket
So I went back to the counter and I bought two more with it.
And I won ten bucks and that was just right
So I bought a six pack and a bag of ice."

Rough rhymes aside, my thoughts were:

1) Oh great. Another "new country" song about being "country."
2) What kind of six-pack did he buy?

I mean really. Ten dollars. Let's say he spent a buck on the ice. That's still $9 for a six pack. Shit, you can get something decent for $9! And that does NOT go with the aesthetic here!

So then I looked up the song. It's Brad Paisley, who is actually pretty decent, but this song is not so great.


       

So I did further research. Brad Paisley lives outside Nashville in Franklin, Tennessee. As it turns out, Tennessee has the highest beer excise tax rate in the nation! So maybe Brad's sixer of Bud Heavies and a bag of ice did cost $10. It doesn't go along with his tale of poor-ish simple life, but maybe it's more in line with Metropolitan Nashville prices.

But who needs an entire bag of ice for 1 six-pack? And let's look at this picture again (it's from around the 1:11 mark in the video):

Did he buy Coronas? What beer is that on the right? It's way too dark for bro country. Who brought the Jose Cuervo? I wonder if those limes are any good--who bought those? And HOLY SHIT, LOOK AT THAT CHICK'S BIKI...oh wait, those are guy nips.

In summary. Brad Paisley can sing about being poor-ish if he wants. Everyone else does it, too. But the thing I find weird is when someone makes a video like this. I can't accept lyrics about buying beer with scratch ticket winnings when he and a bunch of guys that look like Someone's Dad are frolicking around in a river, ruining nice instruments, and doing tequila shots with swimwear models.

Maybe the craziest part is that it makes this video look brilliant--a song which is, when you take about a step and a half back, exactly the same song:


                           

Oh well. Maybe I should just have a beer, enjoy the bikini tops and cut offs, and HOLY SHIT THAT'S A GODDAMNED SQUIRREL ON WATER SKIES!

Happy August, everyone.

Tree rings, artificial wonder, and big farts: UPDATE 12/17/14

Here are two things that bother me more than they probably should.

         

And this:

         


It seems that the general reaction to this nonsense is "Ooo my, how grand nature is! The wonder! Music is EVERYWHERE!"

I'm sorry. But birds and trees don't give a fuck about music. And if they did, they certainly wouldn't give a fuck about this bullshit.

Two big points here:

1) These things have absolutely nothing to do with nature.

They are all about a human being placing some sort of careful filter on nature.

OH I'M GETTING WORKED UP AGAIN!

I have an idea. Let's take a walk. We'll bring calipers. We'll measure the diameter of every piece of dog shit we see. Then we'll use the following table:

.5-1cm=C
1-1.5cm=D
1.5-2cm=E
2-2.5cm=G
2.5cm+=A

Then we come home and write some bad music! It'll likely be garbage. Dog shit, for sure. But since we've chosen a nice, lovely, pentatonic filter it'll be pleasant enough. And depending on the breeds that are common in your area, it'll either sound like C major or A minor. Like dog turd wind chimes.

2) Nature is amazing enough without our bullshit observations and extrapolations.

Birds on a wire. Treble clef. Stupid. An interesting exercise, maybe. But all this "oo ah music is all around us" nonsense is outrageous.

And trees rings. Tree rings are amazing enough! Don't get me wrong, the technology is VERY cool. But I don't need someone's vague minor chord rambling to tell me Nature's Hidden Secrets. I'll just look at some goddamned tree rings.

Someone did make the comment "Sounds like Chopin," which wins big points with me.

I had to get this out. If you've endured this post 'til this point, I'm sorry. But seriously. Go look at some birds. They're amazing. They don't need any of our nonsense. Then go home and write some music. How about that? With some work, your music won't need any sort of help from trees or birds.


UPDATE 12/17/14:

After months of searching and failed attempts, I finally got the chance to make my own bird music. I hope you enjoy it. Pardon the windshield wipers. It was raining.