Quite apart from basketball, I have a lot of different interests. I have a tendency to wear my mind up my sleeve. I have a history of losing my shirt. It's been one week since I blogged at you. I like music a great deal, is what I'm trying to say. I like jass bands, rappers, rock-'n'-rollers, and vaudevillians. I especially like Tin Pan Alley and Broadway. I'd give a pretty penny for the tenor at the Met; I'd give a quarter for a Cole Porter lyric and three for a melody by Strauss. "It's smooth! It's smart! It's Rodgers! It's Hart!"
On the lighter side of music is outright parody: Weird Al, that band that recorded "No Pigeons" in response to TLC's "No Scrubs": Yes, the list goes on of bands I don't listen to, not even a little. But parody - when mixed with a real capacity for ironic distance and a sincere musicality - has the chance to transcend its object. Tom Lehrer is one such parodist. You may remember his hilarious "New Math" but he took on any number of odd intellectual and political subjects in his few songs: folk music* ("Folk Song Army"), an optimistic interpretation of nuclear holocaust ("We Will All Go Together When We Go"), and even overzealous songwriting ("Clementine"). This latter is what I'd like to talk about.
*Probably his most scathing pronouncement was that "Little Boxes" was the most sanctimonious song ever written. Heh.
On the lighter side of music is outright parody: Weird Al, that band that recorded "No Pigeons" in response to TLC's "No Scrubs": Yes, the list goes on of bands I don't listen to, not even a little. But parody - when mixed with a real capacity for ironic distance and a sincere musicality - has the chance to transcend its object. Tom Lehrer is one such parodist. You may remember his hilarious "New Math" but he took on any number of odd intellectual and political subjects in his few songs: folk music* ("Folk Song Army"), an optimistic interpretation of nuclear holocaust ("We Will All Go Together When We Go"), and even overzealous songwriting ("Clementine"). This latter is what I'd like to talk about.
*Probably his most scathing pronouncement was that "Little Boxes" was the most sanctimonious song ever written. Heh.
