"Happy" Music? Really Though?

The Blackbyrds' Happy Music



(Download Happy Music by The Blackbyrds at Mediafire)

The Internet doesn't have the full lyrics anywhere- so I will supply the missing lyrics which are relevant for our purposes:

" when you get up/and you gotta / start your day
feelin' lazy/and confused / you can find your way
Happy music/is the music / you need to play
if you want to/it will help you / save your day "

Good thing I am not writing my dissertation right now, because today, and the days that are like, have been and will be like, today, even preparing for class seems a chore.
Confused and Lazy.

Happy Music, sure, but also pretty dark for this band. Sort of the inverse of a point I've made before: The Stooges' "No Fun" is actually probably their most fun song.


For the Blackbyrds (most of their songs are fun, and light 'n' mellow),
this actually has a pretty dark edge.


Now, dark and happy are not strictly opposed- but neither do they have any necessary connection.
You could be both dark and happy at one moment, but that would be a bit of the old "cake and eat it too," wouldn't it?


So certainly these days (late-year, ... etc. ...) are dark, but ideally, they would be happy, for you, as well.

This Is Not A Joke

I've been watching some more movies lately, a few of them Westerns.
Also been listening to almost only old records. A few of them old country.
A nice fit, that.


YouTube video of a fun and funny old tune, "Evil on Your Mind" by Jane Morgan
Download an even better version here: "Evil On Your Mind", Judy Lynn

Most Westerns that I've seen awfully serious, though, and a lot of classic country is joshing, joking around. Not too surprising: why would ('western') film have anything to do with ('country and western') music?
I mean, a silly case in point: old western movies are in black and white; old C'n'W music is neither black'n'white nor in color.
Because music is invisible.
(However, music is not immaterial, or non-physical: sound is nothing but moving air and the vibrations that air causes in your body.)
My point is, the arts don't really have that much in common; they are more distinct than similar.
Which is part of the reason that music doesn't need words, as I boldly and clearly stated in the last post.
Words are poetry, or literature. Music is not poetry, or literature. You don't demand that all your paintings have words in them, do you?



"Keep your Apollonian Narrative off My Dionsysian Body!" That's what I say!

But, that said, if you are going to have words, you might as well tell a story. Country does that: old or new, perennially telling stories. If you must use words, I implore you: instead of mouthing vacuous truisms (which are so vague as to become false), create a character, have interactions that make something happen (but please, don't try to 'make a point', pffff), or at least, crack a joke.

Lion-Less Helter-Skelter Honky-Tonk

That's Duane Eddy, on Youtube. Okay?
Create a makeable digital download-version of the same here, plus other songs

So, more deets about the most recent AMX mix that I birthed,
entitled "AMX: Black Mask McGuffin".



This one was modeled after the Pulp Fiction soundtrack; precisely, it's based upon my imprecise memory of it. SO there is Al Green-ish RnB; there is surf-y, country-y, honky-y tonk-y rock too. About 6 of one, half dozen of the other.
You should have a good idea of the BLACK side- see all my posts on Philadelphia International Records, on Jerry Butler, etc.

Now I'm giving you a dose of the WHITE side- the honky-tonk bits. You know, the white man's blues: barroom sad-sack business. Chorales for "The Loser's Cathedral", as a jam by David Houston calls bars.


You are asking yourself why the mix "Black Mask MacGuffin" is called what it's named; or conversely, why it is named what it's called.



Definition of a MacGuffin (from www.filmsite.org):
"Alfred Hitchcock's term for the device or plot element that catches the viewer's attention or drives the logic or action of the plot and appears extremely important to the film characters,
but often turns out to be insignificant after it has served its purpose;
its derivation is Scottish, meaning a "lion trap" for trapping lions in the lion-less Scottish Highlands (i.e., a trap that means nothing, since it is for an animal where there is no such animal)."

That would be the suitcase in Pulp Fiction.

"Black Mask" was a working title of the movie: I think that would refer to "the Gimp".


One last chance: Download AMX: Black Mask McGuffin.zip.

Philadelphia From Salem - Romulus and Remus

I'm trying an experiment:
I'm writing two blogs simultaneously, so that you will have shorter posts, and more of them. We'll see if this works.
They are opposed twins, so we'll call them Romulus and Remus.

One is posted today, the other soon after.

I first was going to have one of my oft-postponed "X-Battles", where I pit two songs in band-to-band combat. This battle then morphed into these twinned posts; which then morphed into a different X-Battle.
There are a series of battles running here:
Oregon X Pennsylvania; (both posts)
Rain X Sun; (next post)
New band X Old band (aka blogbuzz vs reissues); (next)
New band doing a Cover X the Original; (this post)
Scuzz production X Cleanroom production (both).

Now, we will have drugged drugged drugged band SALEM trying to outdo the BOSS himself (who is probably really sober) .

Brustreet - SALEM

Above is Salem covering Bruce Springsteen's great "Streets of Philadelphia". Salem has an EP called "Yes I Smoke Crack". Here is a picture of an historic building in Salem, Oregon, with a crack in it:



This band Salem is probably named after Witch-Trials Salem, but Salem is also the meth-addled capital of Oregon. (I'm more concerned with getting things stolen in OR than PA: meth = stealing, and meth is not much of a drug out here in PA, because meth also = country.)
Salem the band sound like (recently legalized) Absinthe mixed with Oxycontin instead of sugar; like cough syrup mixed with boxed wine; like My Bloody Valentine mixed with the Knife and with strains of chopped and screwed Southern/Midwestern hip-hop : CHOP the pill; and unSCREW the wine.
Oregon is the only state with a two-sided flag. The flag, other than that, is very boring, and why are the letters all crooked??.

Salem is the capital of Oregon- and you ask, "Why not Portland, which I've actually heard of? Or at least Eugene, which has a big ol' university in it?"
Almost all state capitals are the not-biggest city, and this is done on purpose: it is to counteract the very real and very natural power (economic, cultural, geographical) that cities possess more of than do rural areas. This discrepancy occurs even when the cities hold significantly less people in them than the countryside.

(In Oregon, it is a rough balance, #-wise, between quasi-libertarian rightists and "Little Beirut" leftists: left lives in cities, and so has the upper-hand. IT'S A FACT!!)

Placing the capital outside of the largest city helps to strike a balance of the "naturally opposed humours"; the haves and the haves-less.
I steal this idea from Machiavelli. It occurs in both "On Principalities", his most-famous text (aka "Da Prince"), and his "Discourses on the First Ten Books of Titus Livius" and is key to uniting his championing of both quasi-tyrannical power and quasi-democratic republicanism.

--this is Prince on a high-school b-ball team:


Ahem! But, see, Rome's battles, with external enemies and with itself (have X have-less; city X country; Citizen X slaves), are appropriate here:
Rome itself was a productive clash of discipline (the Boss- how long has he been around? about as long as Rome itself: this requires discipline),
and the insanity of a dark violent youth: what do you think propelled and compelled them to take their many older neighbors as enemies, again and again? What do you think pushed citizen against citizen, time and again? (It wasn't drug disputes.)
What do you think drove Rome, with little rhyme or reason (but with plenty of instrumental rationality), to move from ruling nothing, to ruling 7 hills, to ruling from England to Africa to India?.
So Rome itself must be understood as a clash between Salem and Bruce Springsteen- this much has obviously been established- and the question is, who gets the greater share of the legacy?

Streets Of Philadelphia - Bruce Springsteen


Who won the battle? I expect you to argue, to battle this out in the comments section.