William Butler Yeats was born near Dublin on this date in 1865. His dad studied law but never practiced, instead founding an art school. Willie's mom home-schooled him and read him a lot of Irish folk tales, many of which are bizarre and frightening but also lyrical and deep. He started writing poetry at a very young age and built a reputation (and a career) as the most Irish of modern Irish poets.
Yeats's poem "The Second Coming" was set to music by Joni Mitchell in a song called Slouching Toward Bethlehem. It is one of my all-time favorites. Joan Didion also wrote a book titled Slouching Toward Bethlehem about the counterculture in San Francisco in the 1960s.
Joni took some liberties with the poem, but this line: "Things fall apart. The canter cannot hold" is chilling in both.
It is my usual practice on this blog to highlight arcane events or people in an effort to broaden my own horizons and entertain myself (and, I hope, visitors hereto). Well, today is a little different because it's the anniversary (1963) of the murder of Medgar Evers in Mississippi.
I've only been to Mississippi once, traveling through on the way to New Orleans. It was hot.
Here are two of my favorite songs about Mississippi -- the state and the river.
The first song is chilling and moving and I hope it helps us remember what
people like Medgar Evers were up against and how we owe them. The second is a bit more upbeat. The Cactus Blossoms recently released a new album and I think I'm going to buy it. I hope they come back to Northfield.
On this day in 1644, Evangelista Torricelli wrote that sentence in a letter. Torricelli's dad was a textile worker who could not afford to send young Evangelista to private school, so the boy was packed off to live with an uncle in Florence. The uncle was a monk, so could get a break on tuition at a Catholic school there. Later, Evangelista went to Rome and became secretary for another monk who got him interested in science (a.k.a. heresy: the teacher had been a student of Galileo). Anyway, in the same 1644 letter Torricelli described an invention of his that he immodestly called the Torricellian tube. Today we know it as the barometer. It measures atmospheric pressure and is still, after all these centuries, a crucial meteorological tool.
For some reason, several submarines in the Italian navy have been named for Torricelli.
Speaking of barometric pressure and the role of science in our everyday lives, here's a poem by Richard Brautigan:
At the California Institute of Technology
I don't care how God-damn smart
these guys are: I'm bored.
It's been raining like hell all day long
and there's nothing to do.
Written January 24, 1967 while poet-in-residence
at the California Institute of Technology, Pasadena
We think that the following Frankie Lee tune is appropriate and we think we do not have to point out the connection because you can surely figure it out for yourself. Enjoy!
It's the birthday of three outstanding (or at last famous) female musicians. Frances Gumm (1922) was born in Grand Rapids, Minnesota. She was a precocious and ambitious little girl. At some point, she changed her name to Judy Garland and moved to California and made a strange movie about a tornado and a fake wizard and flying monkeys.
My father always cringed and left the room when Judy Garland was on TV.
A few years later (1961), Kim and Kelly Deal were born in Dayton, OH. One of them was in The Pixies and then together they formed The Breeders. In one of the better-known Breeder songs, seen below, the opening phrase is a direct reference to some ominous sounds from The Wizard of Oz. I do not know if the Deals were aware of their connection to Ms. Gumm, but it's kind of a cool coincidence. Enjoy!
It's the birthday of Les Paul (1915), who is credited with inventing the electric guitar. It is not hyperbole to say that Mr. Paul's invention revolutionized music. I remember watching Les Paul and Mary Ford sing and play on Perry Como's variety show. It's a bit of a leap from there to Slash, but I for one am glad old Les tinkered around in his basement.
For some reason, my family is into guitars. Our son Michael plays guitar quite well. Nick, married to niece Louise, is a guitar player, builder, and repairer of some repute in North Carolina [follow this link to his shop: NC Guitar Works]. Nephew Jay builds and sells solid-body guitars [visit the JML Guitar site]. Brother-in-law Bill makes guitars and ukuleles.
As for me, I do not even know what a humbucker is. If you have a few minutes to spare out of your hectic Sunday, you can watch some dude play a Les Paul:
This is a significant date in musical history because, waaaaayyy back in 1985, the Tears for Fears song "Everybody Wants to Rule the World" reached #1 on the Billboard charts. The original is good, but there have been some cover versions that I like even more. Seminal jazz trio The Bad Plus recorded my favorite (biased by the fact that we've seen them do this live twice).
Today, the estimable blogger Dr. Caligari featured another version by Weezer.
The song title reminds me of a college writing exercise that backfired. Prof told us to write a page that completes the sentence phrase "Everybody wants to..." He should have known better than to pose this question to bunch of horny, hung over sophomores.
The Libertines were a pop-punk band founded by Carl Barat and Pete Doherty. It's Carl Barat's birthday today. He was born in the quaint village of Basingstoke, Hampshire in 1978. When you visit Basingstoke, you can stay in this modest cottage.
In the music video, Barat and his mates are I believe referencing an older cute British pop group that sometimes wore red uniforms.
It's appropriate that these blokes are singing about the sun. It's a rare sight where they grew up and it has been rare this spring where we live. Yesterday and today and tomorrow, however: sunny and bright. Yay.
