NOT YOUR TYPICAL MUSIC VIDEO LIST

There's been a great thread going on the past day or two over at Dykes To Watch Out For concerning music that rocks our worlds. It's an eclectic bunch, and tonight I followed up on some of the recommendations others made, as well as my own. I found almost all of them on You Tube, and decided to share the videos here with you.

People were comparing versions of "Gracias a la Vida" (written by Violeta Parra), and here's the three mentioned:

Violeta Parra singing "Gracias a la Vida" (audio and stills only)



Mercedes Sosa singing "Gracias a la Vida"



Joan Baez singing "Gracias a la Vida" (audio and stills only)




Folks were also weighing different versions of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelejah", and again, here's the three mentioned:

Jeff Buckley singing "Hallelujah" (audio only -- I have to say, this is by far my favorite)



John Cale singing "Hallelujah"



k.d. Lang singing "Hallelujah"



Speaking of k.d. Lang, someone recommended this:

k.d. Lang singing "Crying" live in Sydney



Someone else recommended Walela, which is Rita Coolidge, her sister Priscilla Coolidge and Priscilla's daughter Laura Satterfield

Walela singing "Cherokee Morning Song" (cheesy stills but good audio; )



Milton Nascimento got raves, and here's one of his songs mentioned:

Milton Nascimento singing "Travessia"



Another rave was for this:

Ruben Blades and Jerry Garcia singing "Muevete"



Of course, I had to jump in and start talking about Doris Day, whom I am rather desperately hung up on. Picture, if you will, a room full of revolutionary San Francisco dykes organizing against the police in the early 1980s, young, furious, androgynously dressed. They stop during a long, contentious meeting to take a break, and relax by singing various uplifting things like "Joe Hill", "El Pueblo Unido" and "Amazon ABC". But one of their favorites is "Secret Love", which they are convinced is a coded lesbian ballad when performed by Doris Day. Yep, really happened. Listen and imagine:

Doris Day singing "Secret Love" from Calamity Jane



Doris Day singing "Sentimental Journey" from the Big Band era (this was my parent's "song")



I also grew up with a passion for Rosemary Clooney. All of her nephew George's dreaminess, smooth demeanor, big sensual eye-rolls and self-deprecating smiles originated with Rosemary. Not to mention a voice from heaven. Check her out in the following:

Rosemary Clooney and Jo Stafford singing autumn songs



Rosemary Clooney does Gershwin -- "A Foggy Day"



And, the ultimate Rosemary doing Gershwin: The brothers Ira and George were extremely close all their lives. When George died suddenly at age 38, he had written the music for a final song but Ira had not yet begun the lyrics. Ira finished the song as a tribute to George, and it completely changes your read of the lyrics when you learn that. (I wrote about this in my post last year A Word After A Word After A Word.) You can hear it here:

Rosemary Clooney singing "Our Love Is Here To Stay" (in 1993 at the Newport Jazz Festival)

Read More...

Summary only...

A WORD AFTER A WORD AFTER A WORD

A word after a word after a word is power. --Margaret Atwood

As a writer, I'm grateful for the reminder of how dependent we are on our storytellers out on strike during this dismal holiday season, even as I miss them terribly. When I heard the corporate fobbing swag-bellied puttocks intended to flood the airwaves with even more "reality TV shows" (as if any of those situations or losers represent reality), I took an oath to find other ways to fill my time until the strike is over.

This oath is not particularly new. I've never seen a single episode of Survivor, Wife Swap, Big Brother, or the other crapola. I did watch part of an Amazing Race because some blog had mentioned there was a gay couple on it, but I lost interest rapidly and changed the channel. My one exception to the genre is Extreme House Makeover, because they actually help real people in dire trouble in a way that prolongs lives, creates exponentially more opportunities, and rewards poor/nonwhite/nontraditional families as if they deserved as much respect and faith as Ozzie and Harriet. And yeah, it's all about product placement and hype, I know, but I've followed up on those families, they actually benefit long-term. It's more than just a Sears circle-jerk.

(Patti LaBelle as winner of the Excellence in Media Award at the 18th Annual GLAAD Media Awards)

But: I broke my oath last week to check out the first night of Clash of the Choirs. Because, my god, it was Patti LaBelle heading up one of the choirs. I have to say, she definitely did not disappoint. Michael Bolton and his Connecticut milquetoasts were an embarrassment, and at least the country-western guy was honest in admitting he didn't have a fucking clue about anything except kicker music. But Patti blew them out of the hemisphere. I got hooked, in spite of myself. I learned that choirs don't have to sound like badly homogenized eunuchs (or Mormons), and I was fascinated with the all-too-brief glimpses of how Ms. LaBelle formed her musical judgments and pushed her pupils to perform dazzling displays above the rest.

I wound up taping and watching all five nights (taping was essential because I really couldn't sit through Bolton & Co.) And every single night, LaBelle's crew mopped up the floor with extremely original, ambitious, outrageously moving performances. But: the format relied on the standard "let the idiots with cellphones make the final decision" and even my cynical self could NOT BELIEVE IT when Nick Lachey (Mr. Jessica Simpson) was named the winner.

Gag me with the patriarchy. Gormless white boy beats out Patti LaBelle? Yeah, you just convince me it wasn't all those hip-hop-lovin' racist pasty-skinned suburbanite testosterone-poisoned BOYS who couldn't bring themselves to vote for a 50-something black WOMAN. I was utterly disgusted, most of all with myself for giving it a try.

Back to my oath.

And here's the thing: These "reality" shows are designed to bring out the worst in people. Designed to reinforce woman-hating and white supremacy. Even more, they are sops to distract us from the class war being waged with increasing ferocity against most of the population. Shadocat recently pointed out how many daytime shows have devolved into flashy giveaways to audience members, a high-tech throwback to the old Queen For A Day shtick of let's get everyone to believe help from drowning will eventually arrive. It's obscene.

If you care about the survival of unions, the compensation of merit over corporate greed, the value of diverse voices: Check out the Writer's Guild of America site and lend your solidarity. You can go here to find out ways to support a fair contract -- even if it's just writing an e-mail which they'll post, it makes a difference.

And if you'd like to create your own devastating insults such as the I used in the second sentence of this post, check out The Shakespearean Insult Kit for ideas. Language is at our disposal, and we don't have to be stupid or obscene to wield it with maximum effect.

Speaking of art and language...

(Ira and George Gershwin at work)

I watched the American Masters' special on George Gershwin yesterday, and was struck again by how what we think of as pop culture in this country would not exist without the outscale contributions of Jewish immigrants and African-Americans. Gershwin, coming from Russian Ashkenazic immigrant parents who were not in the least musical, still somehow found his way to a job on Tin Pan Alley by the age of 15, playing piano as if born to it and blending Hasidic longing with jazz and blues to create an unmistakable sound. He was especially dependent on his family for emotional sustenance -- never married and, from the sound of it, never even came close to it, although it doesn't seem he was a closet case, either.

It was deeply interesting to hear the two main stars of Porgy and Bess, who owe their roles in that smash to Gershwin's groundbreaking insistence that only blacks be cast for black parts, present two completely contradictory reactions to the fact that the first successful African-American opera was written by a white man: One of them, Todd Duncan, had no problem with it, and one of them, Anne Brown, said tactfully but with strong emotion "I just wonder what it would have looked like if it were written by someone who wasn't white." We'll wonder forever, won't we?

George's creativity found home port when his older brother Ira began creating the lyrics for his songs. They were temperamentally very different, but extremely close friends as well as collaborators, living a life joined in most aspects. Ira Gershwin was the first lyricist to be awarded a Pulitzer Prize (for Of Thee I Sing, a profoundly political and still radical script), and his ability to wed words to George's extraordinary music leaves me simply in awe. These brothers made an American art form of musical comedy.

During the late 70s and early 80s in San Francisco, almost weekly I stepped away from my intense role as a radical dyke activist to watch old movies at the Castro, York, Rialto, or other theaters around town. It was a habit I didn't talk about much with my serious revolutionary friends, but I can now see that it fueled my faith and creativity in profound ways. I had a movie-going buddy, Laurie, and the sum total of our relationship was Fred Astaire/Ginger Roger movies. We saw every one of them, more than once. A New York Jew, Laurie found validation of her culture somehow in those dances and melodies, while I reveled in the language and meter. Laurie, if you read this, write me. No, no, they can't take that away from me.

I began crying at the end of the PBS special, not over George's tragically early death at 38 (though I still consider it a great loss), but over the revelation that when he died, he had created the music for a final song with Ira but Ira didn't write the lyrics until after George was gone. That song was his goodbye to his beloved little brother, and no wonder it's one of my favorite of all time. Knowing the history has altered the meaning for me irrevocably for the better:

It's very clear
Our love is here to stay
Not for a year, but ever and a day

The radio
And the telephone
And the movies that we know
May just be passing fancies and in time may go

But oh my dear
Our love is here to stay
Together we're going a long long way

In time the Rockies may crumble
Gibraltar may tumble
They're only made of clay
But our love is here to stay

Read More...

Summary only...