Jerome Kern

Has anyone ever wrote more lushly beautiful melodies than Jerome Kern? We saw Show Boat at the dinner theatre last night and I was reminded once again of Kern's supreme talent for crafting a tune. I was also reminded of what transitional forces both he and Show Boat were in the history of the Broadway musical. From the show's Wikipedia entry:

Show Boat is generally considered to be the first true American "musical play" — a dramatic form with popular music, separate from operettas, light musical comedies of the 1890s and early 20th century (e.g., Florodora), and the "Follies"-type musical revues that preceded it. In many ways, it took the plot-and-character-centered "Princess Musicals" that Kern had developed with Bolton and Wodehouse in the previous decade and broadened their scope.

Of Kern himself, I've heard it said that he had one foot in the old world - that of the 19th century European operetta style - and one in the new - that of a purely American style of songwriting. In that sense, Kern bridged the gap between Gilbert and Sullivan and Richard Rodgers, between The Pirates of Penzance and Oklahoma!. His familiarity with the old Victorian high-style of musical theatre and songwriting probably had a lot to do with the pure prettiness of his tunes. There is a sentimentality to his melodies that harken back to the old days, a sentimentality you would never find in a Rodgers tune, or a Gershwin. The titans who followed Kern on Broadway in the years after Show Boat - Berlin, Rodgers, Gershwin, Cole Porter, etc. - scrubbed their music clean of the old-world emotions and crafted a style based, both musically and lyrically, on wit, self-control, a relaxed charm, a serene nonchalance. There was a emotional distance to their music, and they were never mawkish. Only occasionally would they attempt to go deeper emotionally, Berlin for instance in a song such as "What'll I Do?", or Cole Porter (who, along with Richard Rodgers and Larry Hart, epitomized the newer style) in songs such as "So In Love" or "After You, Who?" But mostly they stayed away, appropriately, as they crafted those utterly new and interrelated art forms called American Musical Theatre and American Popular Song. Along with jazz, rock and roll, and the movies, they are this country's enduring contributions to 20th century entertainment.

Kern was a contributor and an innovator of this form. Today, we remain in debt to him for Show Boat, and for some of the most memorable melodies we know; "They Didn't Believe Me", "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes", "All The Things You Are", "Long Ago and Far Away", "The Song Is You", "The Last Time I Saw Paris", "Ol' Man River", "Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man", "A Fine Romance", and, probably the most recognizable song in his canon, and one of the most romantic songs ever written, "The Way You Look Tonight".

iPods, Cell Phones, and Mozart

I celebrated a birthday recently, for which my lovely bride presented me with a new eighty gigabyte iPod. I have been using a four-gig iPod for the past three years during my morning workouts but it is filled to capacity and I need more space. Hence my request for the eighty-gigger, for which I am much obliged.

That's the only time I use the iPod, to help me through my workouts. You will not see me walking down the street with the plugs in my ears. For that matter you won't see my walking down the street talking on a cell phone, or with my nose buried in it, checking messages or text messaging someone. Nor will you see me talking on a cell phone while I am driving (which, by law I assume, must be done in the left-hand lane, going five miles an hour under the speed limit, while remaining utterly oblivious to everyone else being forced to pass on the right.) The main reason for this is because I don't own a cell phone; I've never felt the need. I don't feel the need to always be in touch with the world. In fact, when I am out on my own I want to be unreachable. If I'm on the golf course, for instance. That's another thing that you'll never see me do - pull out a cell phone on the golf course. My golf buddy Jim and I used to agree that anyone who does so should be flogged. If they actually keep talking while they are away, thereby keeping the rest of the group waiting, they should be put out of their misery with a single bullet to the head, and left to lie there with a sign around their neck as a lesson to others.

The other reason you'll never see me do these things is philosophical, though I'm not sure I can explain it well to someone who's not equally as ornery as I am. I just don't want to be one of those guys. You know the type? I was flipping channels a few weeks ago and came upon a Ben Stiller movie called Night at the Museum. It was fluff, but entertaining fluff, so I hung around. Paul Rudd, who's a very funny guy, has a bit part in the movie as Stiller's ex-wife's new husband. And he plays one of those guys, the guy who walks around - even at home - with a bluetooth headset permanently attached to him. The scene where Rudd's character is introduced as the prototypical one of those guys guy gave me my only belly-laugh of the movie. He's meant to be ridiculous here, and he is. So at least I'm not alone in finding this technology-geek character somewhat comical. Some people in real life combine this type with the another type; the I'm-on-the-phone-while-walking-down-the-street-and-I'm-talking-really-loud-so-I-must-be-important type. That guy is really funny.

Anyhow, I think cell phones are a plague. But that's not where I was going with this post. I digress, as usual. My original intent was to mention that with the eighty-gig iPod, I can now add music to my heart's delight. My four-gigger had 722 "songs". I put "songs" in quotes because that's how the iPod itemizes any musical entry. This is fine for modern music but I would hardly call the first movement of Beethoven's Emperor Concerto a "song". Now that I think of it, Benny Goodman or Count Basie probably wouldn't have referred to their music as "songs". They called them "numbers." My dad used this terminology - "that's a great number, huh, bud?" But that's a different way of speaking and for an age and by a type that has now completely disappeared. That would be a good subject for a future blog post - the way the old-timers talked, their language peppered with slang and idioms, a certain street patois, that now exists only in memory. My dad was the last of the breed that talked this way. Anyhow, where was I? Oh yes, now we have songs. For lack of a better term, I had 722 musical entries on my four-gig iPod. Some simple math now tells me that, all else being equal, I can now have approximately 14,000 entries on the new device. I don't think even I can fill that.

I've already added a bunch of music this week, mostly Mozart, who had been sadly neglected on the previous device. Most of what I added were his chamber works so yesterday I listened to third movement of the "Kegelstatt" trio, K.498, for piano, clarinet, and viola, and the whole of the Clarinet Quintet, K.581, both of which I adore. I am looking forward to getting reacquainted with Wolfgang, and with others. Since most of my music listening time now occurs during my morning workouts, the new iPod device will allow me to add a lot of old stuff I haven't listened to in awhile, and probably spur me to search out some new stuff. I'll keep you posted.

Great minds....?

I posted this this morning:

Do we want a president who, after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares the Holocaust a myth and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, is still eager to sit down and negotiate with Iran? Does Obama think Ahmadinejad just went a little too far in his rhetoric, like Wright?

And Mark Steyn has this to say in his column today:

You can understand why Obama is so anxious to meet with President Ahmadinejad, a man who denies the last Holocaust even as he plans the next one. Such a summit would be easy listening after the more robust sermons of Jeremiah Wright.

It's always good to be on the same wavelength as Mark Steyn. Of course, Mark states the case so much better than I ever could. Read his whole column here.

Notes on the Obama speech

I watched Barack Obama's Reverend Wright speech on Tuesday and was immediately convinced it was a failure. Of course, I'm not a very good focus group for the Senator, especially on this issue. As I said last week, how do you explain such bigotry and America-hatred? You can't. So I went into the speech convinced that there was no explaining a close, twenty-year relationship with a man such as Jeremiah Wright.

But Obama's speech made things worse, from my perspective. The thrust of the speech turned out not to be about his relationship with Wright, but on race relations in general. He switched the focus from himself onto the rest of us; he had no explaining to do, we did. The subtle, unspoken message was that he was not guilty, we were. If we couldn't understand what went on each Sunday in Wright's church, or similar churches, it was due to a lack of imagination and understanding on our part. Wright, given the era he had come of age, was justified in his rage - oh, perhaps he went too far sometimes, but who was he to judge? In Obama's eyes, Wright's racist rants were no different than his white grandmother's reservations about passing young black men in the street. Or Geraldine Ferraro's unremarkable comment that Obama is in the position he's in because of his race. That comment may not be perfectly true - Obama has obvious talents that are certainly in part responsible for his success. However, without his racial makeup those other talents would not be enough to propel him to the brink of the Democratic party nomination as a post-racial candidate. So while Ferraro's comment probably needs some slight amendment, it is still innocuous. Does Obama truly believe it comparable to Wright's "God Damn America!" comment? Or his accusation that the United States government created the AIDS virus in order to destroy blacks? I don't think he does but the fact that his explanation fell back on moral relativism - it is a virus among the left and has been for fifty years - is more evidence that his mind-set is saturated with the orthodoxies of leftism.

One more comment. The speech is already famously known as the "throw your grandma under the bus" speech. It has been duly noted that denigrating the woman who helped raise you (and who is still alive) during a speech is unchivalrous at best, and more likely a sign of low character. I agree. It is appalling in retrospect - casting someone close to you in a bad light in order to score political points. When he said it during the speech, I reflected back to Al Gore using his sister's death from cancer for political benefit. During that same campaign he also used his son's car accident to gin up sympathy and to prove to voters he had a heart. It was truly grubby behavior but at least Gore wasn't actually criticizing those relatives he spoke of. Obama, with forethought, actually found it acceptable to commit his grandmother to history and public opinion as a mild bigot. The more I think of it, the more astonishing I find it.

But I may have my own explanation for it. Did Obama not even realize he was criticizing grandma? Just as he didn't realize that Wright's lunatic sermons were not particularly controversial? He said he wasn't criticizing grandma - that she is simply a "typical white person." His speech let it be known that he thinks Wright is a typical black person of his era. So the question is, is no behavior unacceptable? Can justifications be found for everything? And do we want a president who thinks like this? Do we want a president who, after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad declares the Holocaust a myth and calls for Israel to be wiped off the map, is still eager to sit down and negotiate with Iran? Does Obama think Ahmadinejad just went a little too far in his rhetoric, like Wright? This whole Wright episode, the speech, and its aftermath, have convinced me even further that Barack Obama is unfit for the presidency.

The Wire and John Adams on HBO

My wife and I watched The Wire's fifth and final season on HBO this year, our first experience with the show. How had a show of such excellence passed me by? I had heard it referenced occasionally over the past few years, and what I heard was good, but I really had no idea. The Wire should have been lauded in the same terms as The Sopranos. Check that. It should have received even higher plaudits because it's better than The Sopranos. We have begun watching season one on DVD and it started as superbly as it ended. Previously I was of the opinion that the finest television I had ever watched was the first season of The Sopranos, the first season of Rome, and the entirety of Band of Brothers. Now I have to add The Wire to the list - maybe at the top. It is simply brilliant.

Notice a common denominator among those shows? Yes, they were all produced by HBO. Why can't anyone else do television this good, or even close to it? HBO continues to prove its superiority to the other networks with the current mini-series John Adams, based on David McCullough's book. We've watched the first two episodes and it's terrific. When I first heard that Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney were playing John and Abigail I was unimpressed - neither seemed to fit, especially Giamatti. But they are both excellent. If I went looking for faults I might say that Giamatti's Adams, while brilliant in other ways, is perhaps too smoothed-over - the Adams I know from history is all jagged edges - but this is probably due to McCullough's source portrayal of Adams. David McCullough is a fine historian (I loved his book about the building of the Brooklyn Bridge) but if he has a failing it's that he falls in love with his subjects - he did it with Harry Truman also (it was still a terrific book.) So while we get small doses of Adams' vanity and insecurities, which were profound, they are portrayed here as endearing quirks rather than driving forces of his personality. I'll need to read the book before I lay the entire blame for this at the feet of the series' writers or Giamatti but even so it's a minor quibble. The program concentrates on the events of the early founding and the role Adams played in them and here I have nothing but praise. It doesn't contain everything but what it does contain it gets right - the major events, the turning points in popular opinion, both sides of the debate at the Second Continental Congress, the political machinations before the vote for separation. The program gives you a full sense of the risks these men were taking. We forget how dangerous the moment was for those voting for war. They knew they would hang if their cause did not succeed. The period in question, from about 1770 until the early nineteenth century, was full of drama. So far, John Adams takes full advantage of the era's raw material. If you are interested at all in the founding moment - to me there is no more interesting period in American history - then John Adams will dazzle you.

Don't Be Late To The Party

Courtesy of Derb over on The Corner, get your presidential bumper stickers now while you still can.

The Damage Done

Are the revelations about Barack Obama's racist, America-hating pastor a death blow to his campaign? I think they are. The talking heads are saying Obama can limit the damage if he makes a speech explaining his relationship with the Reverend Wright, but how do you explain away such evil bile? Obama makes no secret that Wright has played an important role in his life. He attended Wright's church for many years; was married by Wright; was baptized by him; had his children baptized by him; chose a phrase from one of Wright's sermons as the title for one of his books (The Audacity of Hope); donated $22,500 to Wright's church as recently as 2006; and has spoken often of their special relationship. It is inconceivable that Obama was unaware of Wright's views, which leads to two questions: 1. Why did Obama continue to attend the church of someone with such odious opinions? 2. Does Obama share these views?

As to the first question, if Obama maintains as he did yesterday that he's never heard Wright express certain outrageous opinions such as those which are being discussed, then he's dodging. As I said, it is simply beyond credulity to insist he was unaware of Wright's views. If he claims he was then he is simply lying, and everyone will know it. If he claims he continued attending Wright's church because of any other reason - political and social connections, the occasional effective and inspiring sermon, a sense of loyalty to a man who had meant much to him when he was younger - then we have reason to question his judgement. And judgement has been one of his talking points in this campaign. The central issue (the only issue?) among Democrats during this campaign season is the vote on the Iraq war. Hillary voted for. Obama was not yet a Senator so he didn't have to vote. Obama has yielded this single vote like a hammer against Hillary throughout the campaign, maintaining that he would have voted against the war, which shows he has better judgement on the issues than she. Obama's continued attendance at Wright's church, especially with his children in tow, would lead one to question that judgement. That he did not distance himself loudly and clearly from Wright many moons ago also reflects badly on him. I'm not sure there is a good answer to this question that will limit the political damage to Obama's campaign.

As for the second question of whether Obama shares Wright's views, this is more difficult to answer. Certainly is not unreasonable to ask the question in light of the facts. Would a true post-racial presidential candidate sit silently through Wright's rage-filled sermons against America and the privileged white people who run it at the expense of blacks? Obama has run a post-racial campaign to this point. His campaign transcended race, and this was one of his appeals - the candidate who could heal the racial wounds of the past and unite us all behind a single vision. But the Wright issue blows that conceit up.

Then there is Michelle Obama and her comments last month that 'for the first time in my adult lifetime, I am really proud of my country.' She had made similar comments previously. When asked to explain herself, she didn't, really. That this privileged woman could not find a single thing about her country to be proud of in the past twenty-five years is telling. It is not unreasonable to come away with the opinion that Mrs. Obama is part of that segment of the left which considers America to be fatally flawed, and which instinctively seeks to blame America for all the world's ills.

Add to this that Obama's mother was a member of the far-left during her lifetime, "a fellow traveler," according to her friends. Add to it also that Obama was introduced to Chicago elite society at a party hosted by Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, former members of the radical Weather Underground terrorist group. Here is a segment from Ayers' Wikipedia entry:

Ayers went underground with several comrades including Brandy Diekman, after their co-conspirators' bomb accidentally exploded on March 6, 1970, destroying a Greenwich Village townhouse and killing three members of the Weather Underground (Ted Gold, Terry Robbins, and Diana Oughton, who was Ayers' girlfriend at the time). He and his colleagues invented identities and traveled continuously. They avoided the police and FBI, while bombing high-profile government buildings including the United States Capitol, The Pentagon, and the Harry S Truman Building housing the State Department. Ayers and Bernardine Dohrn raised two children, Zayd and Malik, underground before turning themselves in in 1981, when most charges were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct during the long search for the fugitives.

In an interview that appeared in the New York Times on the morning of September 11, 2001, Ayers said this about his past involvement with the Weather Underground: "I don't regret setting bombs; I feel we didn't do enough." He is also quoted in this interview as saying he found "a certain eloquence in bombs."

Now, for Obama, this only adds up to guilt by association. We cannot say that because many of those close to him have either explicit or suspected anti-American views that he shares those views. He certainly has said nothing on the campaign trail to make one think he does. But the questions arise and are not easily answered. Even if Obama comes out with an explicit I-Don't Love-Wright-I-Do-Love-America speech, the questions will still hang over him. Why? Because people instinctively understand that they themselves would not surround themselves with others who views were odious. I know I would not continue to attend a church - and bring my children - were the views expressed from the pulpit offensive to me. I would not have married who I married if she had opinions on large issues which differed substantially from mine and which caused me to question her judgement (I know, I know, the very fact that she would marry me should cause others to question her judgement.) It all has to do with the company you keep; if you surround yourself with suspicious people, people will consider you suspicious too.

So how does it play out in the Democratic presidential horse race? As I said, I think this is probably a fatal blow for Obama. I'm not even sure he can get the nomination at this point, and if he does, he probably can't beat John McCain in the general. Hillary's whole strategy since South Carolina has been to make Obama 'the black candidate.' That's been done now. First the Clinton's stripped off the halo and got him down in the gutter with them, now they have made race a major issue in the campaign. He wanted to be the post-racial candidate - it was the only way he could win - but he's turning into Jesse Jackson.

So what happens if Obama gets the nomination? Who will vote for him? Of course, he has the black vote locked up along with the far-left and the anti-war voters. That's not enough to win the presidency. Previously it was assumed that the Hillary-leaning Democrats would vote for Obama in the general. But who are those people? Older, white, blue-collar folks. These are the very people who might reject a candidate who is perceived as the 'black candidate.' These are also the same people who would find a non-ideologue war-hero like John McCain palatable. I think they switch sides in large numbers and vote for McCain.

So does this benefit Hillary? Without a doubt it benefits her in terms of getting the nomination. But it hurts her in the general. Due to her position of being behind in the elected delegate count entering the convention (not to mention behind in the total popular vote) she was always going to have trouble holding on to the black vote. Her goal was to convince enough of the super-delegates to come over to her side to secure the nomination. No matter how she did it, there was going to be damage. But if it is perceived among African-American voters that a 'black issue' is what brought Obama down and gave the nomination to Hillary, the damage will be even greater. Blacks will stay home in November, and a Democrat can't win without the black vote. McCain wins again.

The prospects for the Democrats electing one of their own as president in November grew even slimmer this week.