New old music & this was a surprise

Now with Saturday (and Sunday) morning cartoons, vampires, yodeling, Greek gods, a single Python of the Monty variety, and cultural appropriation.

I like to expand my musical horizons now and again by using allmusic.com‘s advanced search. For giggles tonight, I thought I’d start at the beginning, as it were. Goal: see where the music starts before I start getting picky about genres and ratings and see what rings a bell. Follow that rabbit down the hole and see where it goes. See what, if anything, satisfies my hankering for nostalgia.

The earliest thing in allmusic’s data to register at all was Alberta Hunter, 1921 with an album called The Twenties. At first I was inclined to give it a pass. I had nothing in my mind to hang that on. Nothing that came immediately to mind. So I moved on. How lazy of me.

Next I landed on the 1922 soundtrack to Nosferatu. Allrighty, then. Let’s see where that goes. Not far at allmusic.com. Apart from the album’s existence, the only useful information was “RCA Victor – 68143.” Spotify appeared to be all but useless as the search results yielded nothing obviously associated with 1922. YouTube did disgorge this wonderful find, however. And now I have a new YouTube playlist for soundtracks, huzzah. As with everything else, gotta start somewhere, right?

Mind you, at that time I took it on faith that all was as presented, noted the general tone of the music and decided that it wasn’t quite the background music I wanted at the moment, although I do appreciate the atmospheric tone quite well.

That left me moving on to Gilbert & Sullivan, 1926, The Mikado. That’s marginal for me. Perhaps I’d just jump to 1927 and see if there weren’t anything there to better scratch the hidden itches of my memory. I knew their names, but Gilbert & Sullivan weren’t part of the soundtrack of my life at any point that I’m aware of, though I’ve had friends into musical theater who could sing along, I’m sure. When I hearken back to my golden childhood years of couch potatodom, featuring 1970s television programming in the metro-New Orleans area, nothing like Gilbert & Sullivan jumps out at me. Mom would occasionally put on a movie that must have been from the forties with elaborate musical stage performances or even synchronized swimming, but not musical theater, per se. It just wasn’t her thing, unless maybe it was Danny Kaye. Even so, sure, why not. Maybe I could use a little Gilbert and Sullivan in my life.

Now, one of the first things I like to do when I’m poking around in a year’s music and land on something I recognize is to start up that album wherever I can find it, usually Spotify or YouTube, then go to that artist’s bio, look up the first act(s) they were associated with and find something from a releases by those earlier acts featuring those musicians. Another thing I like to do is go to the act-of-the-moment’s discography and listen to their first release. Then I’ll listen to the album that triggered this bit of musical rabbitholing again. Sometimes the results are surprising. Case in point, if you know REO Speedwagon only from their later radio hits, their first album may come as a surprise to you, for better or worse, especially when it’s compared with the later stuff for which they became famous.

I very seldom pay attention to the rest of the biographical details, however. I just don’t care. Well, haven’t cared. That may change the deeper I dig. Same with lyrics. I don’t have a great ear for them, so unless they’re right on top of the music and grab me, I don’t tend to pay them much mind. When I do, it’s because the lyrics really speak to me. Generally, searches for lyrics to songs that I like irrespective of the words tend to disappoint me.

I also try not to pay too much attention to the context of the music if I can help it, because at the level of the music itself I want to appreciate it for what it is. Once you start looking at the music’s place in its historical context, sometimes you have to throw the baby out with the bathwater. Some things just don’t age well, for varying degrees of good reason. Some others just aren’t part of a coherent whole along with someone’s philosophical inclinations. For instance, I’ve had a radical feminist friend inform me that, at least in her school of feminism (2nd wave), it was always a nagging question whether one could be a feminist and also like the Rolling Stones. Seems rather problematic, doesn’t it? Can one oppose pedophilia and still like Ted Nugent and countless others who glorified the virtues of jailbait in many of their songs? Can you be Christian and like Slayer? Sometimes the lines crossed are the stuff of cancellation, or not, depending on how one rolls.

Well, back to Simon and Garfunkel, no, wait, Simon & Schuster, nooo, Gilbert and Sullivan, first thing was to look into their discography and get briefly lost trying to make heads or tails of what I was able to find. Given that this barely caught my interest, I didn’t care enough to dig and see what I could find of either Gilbert or Sullivan prior to their artistic coupling. A proper recording of their first collaboration, Thespis, in its original form would be impossible, given that much of the music is apparently lost and that there’s some mystery even around that which remains. What I did find, I added to a new Spotify playlist, simply named Gilbert & Sullivan. For now, of Thespis it has only the two songs that survived, and what I believe to be the five parts of the ballet that was inserted somewhere in the production, though nobody seems to know where.

And on listening to it, no real itches scratched. I didn’t grow up with the three tenors, or Mantovani, or Lawrence Welk, or even Liberace. Those were albums I always saw in someone else’s home. I have the vaguest of vague recollections that time spent listening to them in those other places was something of a torture, akin to the effect of Slim Whitman on Martians.

Don’t get me wrong. As I’ve grown older and been exposed to more of life and the world, I have acquired a few less barbaric tastes. I love me some Mozart, thanks to Amadeus.

And if someone asks if I have a favorite opera, I can say Don Giovanni.

Unless, of course, I’ve had Bugs Bunny on the brain, which is a thing that happens. Then of course, it’s What’s Opera, Doc?

So there I am with really not much to hang an appreciation of Little Maid of Arcadee on, so I move on and listen to Climb Over Rocky Mountain, and…nothing. It’s, to my ears of the moment, “just” musical theater, nothing that was part of my media experience. Good, bad, or indifferent, it just sparks no nostalgia for me. As for the five parts of the ballet, they’re nice, just nothing I think is terribly remarkable. Nevertheless, mission accomplished. I’ve finally set the stage for listening to The Mikado.

As it turns out, The Mikado is problematic for reasons Desdemona Chiang makes abundantly clear in the article Why The Mikado Is Still Problematic. As insensitive as I can be about some things, the moment my digging pointed in the direction of Asian culture portrayed in entertainment in the time period at hand, the 1920s, even I knew that I should at least find out what the controversy is before proceeding further.

That said, the point of the search was the music, which however unfortunately is inextricably intertwined with the stage production. So I went looking on YouTube for what could be found, because while it’s an exemplar of the period’s cultural appropriation, at the same time it was a work intended to satirize British social institutions. There’s some irony. Satirize the institutions with institutionalized cultural appropriation in a manner that contributed to the perpetuation of stereotypes, even if it was by way of providing what they thought to be a suitably accessible “exotic” and somewhat fictionalized locale for their satirical jabs at the colonizers themselves.

Having read Chiang’s article and the Wikipedia entry on The Mikado, I’m conflicted. I’m not generally of a mind to cancel that with which I disagree, although my free speech purism has taken a pummeling these last couple of decades. That’s a brand of recentism I’d rather not fall prey to as it interferes with my pursuit of history. And the Japanese audiences of the time seem to have not taken offense, generally speaking. Whatever may have been of historical issue at the time, it’s the treatment over the ensuing decades that makes even the precursors like The Mikado more problematic than they were at the time of their creation.

I’d generally rather see discourse about the offense. Well, that was until politics in America devolved into, “Yeah, well, you’re a Nazi Socialist commie libtard,” and “Yeah, well, you’re a Nazi Nazi, bootlicker!” Guilty as charged when I deigned to be swept up in the furor. Now, not so much. Now I fear that discourse about the offense generally boils down to the same rhetorical tactics. “What about my feelings?” “Fuck your feelings! What about *my* feelings? (on the rare occasion feelings are even admitted to)” “Your feelings don’t count, subhuman, so fuck ’em, what about *my* feelings?”

I’m also not of a mind to provide a platform for that which I reject.

Yet I think it’s important to at least present a clip as an example of the yellowface in question so that Dear Reader can see for themselves how it could be seen as problematic.

Oh, wait. That’s the still-beloved Jerry Lewis truly exemplifying the problem of the gross stereotypes. That stings personally, because I’m sure this would have been one of the examples I saw as a child and I probably thought was absolutely hilarious at the time. For reasons of the environmental racism to which I was exposed as a child, about which I’m sure I’ll have more to say later, I can see how something this “innocent” on broadcast television contributed to warping my limited perception of Asian people, especially in my very limited cultural milieu in which a) I personally knew nobody of Asian descent, b) “gook” was still a pejorative bandied about within my earshot by the early 1970s racist influences in my life, c) and decrying benefits for the Vietnamese “boat people” was as much small talk as talking about the weather for that lot. Luckily, without a victim group handy to practice that kind of racism on, it never had a chance to take root with me, so I don’t think I needed to be disabused of terribly much when I was finally introduced to Vietnamese-American culture. Otherwise, the cosmic roll of the dice just hasn’t generally put me in proximity to many others of Asian descent. All of which is to say that one doesn’t need to be steeped in a culture to see the problem with contributing to its marginalization, especially in an age where the likes of Henry Kissinger and Colin Powell can persist to the bitter end as elder statesmen.

Here’s a proper snippet from The Mikado. It’s so very cringeworthy, and it’s not even the worst of it.

But this was supposed to be about the music. What if I just focus on that and strip away the visuals entirely? Given the context, I thought I should at least pay attention to the words this time, but I didn’t even need to make it to the lyrics. The Wikipedia article did enough by showing me the characters’ names, made up names supposed to be reminiscent of their exotic inspirations so as to make Brits more comfortable while satirizing their own, names like “Nanki-Poo, Pooh-Bah, Pish-Tush, Yum Yum, Pitti-Sing, all of which strike me as about as appropriate as the names from the old racist joke heard when I was a child, “how do [epithet’s] name their kids? Drop silverware on the floor, HAW HAW NYUK NYUK, Ping Pang! Ping Pong! HAW Get it?” Yikes.

My last hope was that perhaps a modern rendition might have taken the barbs out. Well, going back to the Wikipedia article, an attempt in New York City was shot down in flames. Subsequently, this happened. Apparently, if you can’t appropriate Japanese culture in an offensive fashion, you just move to a different culture and reskin the effort entirely. I’m not sure that’s much of an improvement, although it seems to have placated the critics.

I’m not even sure it helps that by way of the comments to that video, I learned of Eric Idle’s, 1987 appearance in a similarly reskinned effort, just one more reminiscent of Fawlty Towers set to music, perhaps?

After some consideration, I’ve removed The Mikado from my own Spotify playlist. Should Gilbert & Sullivan have other, finer offerings, sure, maybe they’ll find a home in a list. But this won’t be the one.

Then I found this production of their Thespis (or The Gods Grown Old), and all was tentatively right with the world again. I’m going to have to shoehorn this into my own schedule tomorrow so that I can form an opinion about it, so I’m sharing it here somewhat cautiously at the moment. I think it’ll be okay insofar as it only appropriates ancient Greek culture and mythos to the point of highlighting all-too-human failings, so sure, why not? I’ll check back in on this if I end up with buyer’s remorse.

After all that, I was ready to take another look at Nosferatu. Not yet a film as lit snoot, or even a proper film buff, I didn’t know enough of the production history to make easy sense of what Spotify has going on over there. As it happens, there you’ll find Popol Vuh’s soundtrack for Werner Herzog’s 1979 Nosferatu: Phantom der Nacht. Other than that, you’ve got two newly reimagined “soundtracks” for the original 1922 film, one by Silent Orchestra, and another by Hugh Cornwell and Robert Williams (of Captain Beefheart’s Magic Band fame) with additional talent from Devo and Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention. All very interesting, but that’s not the droids, erm, soundtrack, I’m looking for.

So, with the paucity of information I had from allmusic, I found my way to discogs. From there I was able to locate both this…

And the rest…

Noting that the above version was “newly arranged” by Gillian B. Anderson (not the X-Files Gillian Anderson) and James Kessler, I was once again skeptical of what I’d found so dang it, I went and splurged on Amazon and bought Nosferatu, which, given the organ music throughout, is none of the above.

After all that, and having been reminded of discog’s general usefulness, I decided to give Alberta Hunter her due after all. Ahh, 1920’s. The tinny sound of Tin Pan Alley and the recording technology of the day. And the first thing in the ol’ memory banks to come to mind? Oingo Boingo, of course!

Yes, that’s NSFW. And it’s not entirely apt. That’s just how my memory works. See, I don’t know that the 1920s Tin Pan Alley sound really registered on me through cartoons after all. Cab Calloway really registered on my consciousness because of the Saturday morning cartoons I grew up on, but it had to have been well buried. I do know that when I saw Forbidden Zone for the first time, Danny Elfman awakened something in me. It would only be later that I discovered the connection between that above and Minnie the Moocher.

And only from the animation did I eventually leap back to the real deal.

Having been down all these byways, I’m not really sure now where Alberta Hunter’s sound, if not her work itself, fits in with my memories and what prompts the feeling of nostalgia for me. Perhaps as the background in scenes from The Three Stooges, or maybe the Little Rascals? In any event, that whiff of nostalgia is there, and I enjoy her tremolo enough that I think she’s earned her place as the start of my 1920s playlist.