And pretty soon, there will be less of it.

In other words, I have no ideas for tonight’s blog entry, so I am just going to wing it. This is completely different from my usual method of starting off with a firm, clear idea of what I want to write about and then ending up writing something completely different.

Well, maybe it’s not all THAT different.

History of Popular Music was rad today. It’s such a perfect environment for someone like me, who is into music in a very broad, deep, almost holistic sense. I have almost no time period or genre biases, so I love everything, in a sense. I just plain love music. I’m a music nerd.

So I loved all the music we covered today, and knew most of it. That’s not that big an achievement, though, because it was all songs that were really popular at some point. But still, most people don’t have nearly the amount of music I have in my mental musical library.

If I like it, I’ll retain it. Simple.

We’re still not quite at rock n’ roll yet. We covered the ground from the 1920’s to the 1950’s, from the Jazz Age where the most famous people were bandleaders, into the Bing Crosby crooner era where the singer took over, into the beginnings of Sinatra before the Rat Pack era, and into the very early days of rock n’ roll with people like Chuck Berry, Little Richard, and Elvis.

In case you’re curious, this is what scholars consider to be the first rock n’ roll song ever :

He may or may not be talking about a car. It’s hard to tell with music from that era. This is the era where blue singers talking about their “one eyed cat” being outside your “seafood store”, after all.

Anyhow, I can see their point. The simple beat, the boogie woogie piano, the way the saxophones play counterpoint, even the teen-oriented lyrics about (probably) a car that is so cool and awesome that all the girls will want a ride are very rock n’ roll.

I wonder what people who heard it thought of it at the time, though. It must have, let’s be honest, sounded like crap to them. So simple, so crude, so crass, so cheap…. nobody could like music like that, right? Not when there was still exquisitely crafted big band based crooner music around?

But one of the many cycles in art is the sophistication cycle, where something starts off simple and fun, other people pick it up and play around with it to make it more fun, then eventually you get to a point where it’s extraordinarily well crafted… and insanely expensive to produce.

Then some people come along who just want to mess around and have fun, and the cycle starts over.

It was Bing Crosby who created the switch from bandleaders to singers. He was the first jazz singer to go out on his own with his own band, and as history clearly indicates, it went extremely well for him. He was the first superstar singer, long before Elvis, and he opened the door for people like Tony Bennett, Dean Martin, and my personal face (right after Sinatra), Perry Como.

It’s hard for me to decide on my favorite Como song, but this one’s awfully good :

His voice and his music are so smooth and sure and soothing that it’s not just easy listening… it’s effortless listening. And that was totally the vibe they were going for back then. Remember, this is a song style that was born during World War II. The soldiers at war at that time wanting something gentle and soothing from back home to make them feel good.

And besides, if they wanted some excitement, there was always hot jazz :

Speaking of Old Blue Eyes, I don’t have to think hard to find my favorite Sinatra tune :

I know, I know. All those great upbeat songs in the Sinatra catalog , and I went with a really sad one. But it’s still my fave. So beautifully sad, with so much emotion in every word, and such a universally identifiable emotion, how can I not love it?

What can I say, some of us identify more with the sad songs sometimes.

On the other hand, there’s a hell of a lot to be said for rocking the fuck out too. Like this song that people from my generation generally only know about via the movie Back to the Future :

Hot damn, if that song doesn’t set you a-rockin’, your rocker is broken. Chuck Berry wrote all of his own songs, too, which was amazingly rare back then.

But if you really want to pull out all the stops and rock out with your cock out, go here, my son :

Little Richard was so awesome. He was the first “wild man” rocker, with a persona that was flamboyant, androgynous (can you imagine the guts it took for a man to wear makeup in the 50’s?), and out of control.

Ahem. I guess when I get started talking about music, I can get carried away rather easily.

At some point in the course, I am going to have to do an “inquiry project”. This is basically a hippie-tastic version of final project, in that you are supposed to pursue something you are interested in that is related to the course. The rainbow eternally exploding into sunshine part is that it can take any form you want. It could be an essay, sure. But it could also be a painting. Or a song. Or a dance. Or a portfolio of sketches. Or anything else you can think of.

One lady translated the works of Duke Ellington into pastries. Pastries for everyone in class. How awesome is that?

I probably won’t go so esoteric. I am pondering an audio presentation, or maybe a video, about the history of synthesized music. I am very interested in both the rise of electronically generated tones from the theremin onward and the backlash to it from people quite rightfully pissed off that their years of learning how to play music could be replaced by some twit with a box full of wires.

Or, if I want to go (way, way) deeper, I could do a history of poverty and music. Starting from the way the Great Depression led to a need for super-happy optimistic music, on to the various disenfranchised groups who had to invent their own music because they couldn’t afford anything else, all the way up to now, with people making music with nothing but their computer and Garage Band.

And I am sure I will have other ideas.

To sum up, the course is awesome, the prof is awesome, and I feel awesome.

I will talk to you nice people again tomorrow.