I see that the media handmaidens of the Democrat Party are gearing up, preparing to scare the ever-loving snot out of the general public again with a new Covid variant. I swear, I can almost hear them in the newsrooms, dancing about, shaking rattles and wailing “Oooga-booga! Run for your lives, it’s a new Covid variant! It’s gonna kill granny, an’ everyone! Strap on the masks, get the vax, universal mandate! Social distancing! close down all the things! Mass insanity! Cats and dogs living together!” Or something like it. I suppose the readily boggled will fall … again … for that old panic magic, but will the rest of us?
RetroMusical Goodness
There are a lot of great songs, once well-known, that aren’t performed or listened to much anymore. Here are some that I especially like.
Thine Alone. This beautiful song sounds like it might be a hymn, but it’s actually a love song, from the 1917 operetta Eileen. I only know it because it’s on a Victor Herbert album that belonged to my parents.
Duncan Gray. A fun song, with lyrics written by Robert Burns in 1792. The tune seems to be much older, dating as far back as 1700. The Scottish lyrics are only partly understandable to English-speakers and are translated here.
Three for Jack. My father liked to sing this song from 1902.
Softly as in a Morning Sunrise. My father also liked this one. Nelson Eddy, from his 1940 movie New Moon. Originally from the 1928 operetta of the same name.
10,000 Miles Away. The singer’s wife or girlfriend has been convicted of a crime and is being deported to Australia. Seems to date from the early 1800s.
Lorena. Written by a Reverend in 1856 after a broken engagement. Popular among both sides during the Civil War.
Carrier Dove. From 1841.
Summertime Love. I heard this song on the radio once and really liked it but could never locate it again. Finally found it at the link shown here…but I can’t quite manage to decode all the lyrics. Any help would be appreciated.
Seeman (Sailor). A German song from 1959. Also heard on the radio once and not rediscovered until many years later. I think the version I heard was the US hit version of 1960, which includes an English-language overlay of some of the words.
When the Wind Changes. A most unusual 1960s protest song, by PF Sloan.
Where e’er You Walk. From the musical dram Semele, 1744, libretto by William Congreve and music by Handel. Another favorite of my father’s, who sang it beautifully.
Westron Wynde. This song fragment dates in published form from 1530, but the lyrics are believed to be several hundred years older.
Some of my previous music posts:
Worse and Worse
The trickle of news regarding the Maui wildfires which incinerated an entire town and likely over a thousand of its residents just gets worse and even more distressing with every tidbit reluctantly disgorged by the local authorities. 1,100 are still listed as missing. After a week, it is most likely that they are dead. Many of the missing are presumed to be children, as local schools were closed because of high winds and power outages and children at home alone because their parents were at work. Others might be senior citizens trapped in a local retirement home, unable to move without assistance, and visiting tourists unfamiliar with the area, whom no one has thought to report missing as yet. That so many are still unaccounted for especially the children — that is an aspect that is difficult to contemplate. No wonder that local authorities are reluctant to admit the degree of carnage.
The Trans-National Pollution of Anti-Free-Speech Policies
The WSJ for 8/1 has a front-page headline: ‘US Tech Scrambles to Abide by New EU Rules.” What kind of rules?
The new EU laws aim to push big tech companies to better police online content and to open them to more competition–with regular oversight from regulators empowered to issue fines. The article refers to “hundreds” of provisions in the new regulations.
Note that word better, referring to the policing of online content. The implication I would draw from this is that the article’s author regards top-down content control as a good thing. Maybe that’s unfair, perhaps just a matter of phrasing that doesn’t have to be as implying approval–do you think?
In any case, I’m reminded of a passage from an old science fiction story:
The intellectuals had been fretful about the Americanization of Europe, the crumbling of old culture before the mechanized barbarism of soft drinks, hard sells, enormous chrome-plated automobiles (dollar grins, the Danes had called them), chewing gum, plastics…None of them had protested the simultaneous Europeanization of America: bloated government, unlimited armament, official nosiness, censors, secret police, chauvinism…