Cimorene

It's not even Monday, but every now and then, at any time, I now remember how terrible a song "Let it Be" is - just egregiusly awful. A frequent repeated insult to my ears! It gets played so much in karaoke that it can start playing in my head at any moment.

But on the other hand I don't think I had ever heard Loretta Lynn before. Or maybe somewhere in the background, but not known it was her? She has a pleasant voice.

I seem to be feeling basically okay now, but with lingering sinus congestion. Which is annoying but not huge. Definitely a cold and not flu. On the other hand, Wax is now definitely sick! She was barely ever in the room with me while I was sick, but even so! She often doesn't get as sick as me with the same infection, so hopefully she won't have as many days of misery.

I posted some time like a year ago about how much I like the Queen of the Night aria commonly referred to as "Der Hölle Rache" from Mozart's The Magic Flute. I don't typically like a lot of opera songs, which is largely because of the singing style but partly the structure, but I was essentially thinking, this is such a banger that the genre HAS to have some more bangers! Several people who like opera tried to help me with recommendations and I listened to a fair number of arias, but I never found anything with the same vibes.

There are other opera songs with great melodies, though. I love The Barber of Seville and William Tell (the whole operas), and some bits of the ring cycle, though in all those cases I prefer instrumental because the vocal styling irritates my ear.

But last week the YouTube homepage at work, where I'm not signed in and YouTube history is even off, recommended a video of Cristina Deutekom singing Bellini's Casta Diva after I played Der Hölle Rache, and I really liked it! I recognized it too - it's one of those things you recognize a million quotes from, like Shakespeare. I proceeded to listen to like ten more recordings of the song and to read the article on Wikipedia. The plot of the opera, Norma, strikes me as wack even by opera standards. Also is it just the Tiffany effect, or is Norma an odd name for a druid priestess in ancient Gaul?

This song has little in common with Der Hölle Rache, though. In fact, it's kind of a slow ballad song, which I don't usually like as much, although it is minor, which is the most important quality. None of the opera fans I talked to would have thought it matched what I THOUGHT I liked about Der Hölle Rache.

Last week after overhearing bits of karaoke from the next room at work, at one point I asked Wax if she knew a song that went "Da-da-da-DUM, kitara soi... dum dum dum DUM... da-da-DAAAA, da-da-DAAA".

Wax laughed and asked if I knew anything else about it, so I said that it sounded vintage, sort of chanteuse-era, with a guitar and some other folk music type instruments and sounded vaguely like the ensembles used for Finnish tangos.

If you didn't know, Finnish Tango is a big thing. Finland has been crazy for tango, both the dance and the music, since it took Finland by storm in the 1930s. There are tango clubs and tango competitions and there's a whole genre of tango bands and Finnish tango artists who compose and sing Finnish tangos. (According to Wikipedia, the dance is an Argentine tango but the rhythm follows ballroom tango, whatever that means.) Aside from the lyrics being in Finnish, while Finnish tangos are clearly tangos, they also have a slightly different flavor which seems a bit more slow and a bit more relaxed or staid: perhaps that's what the Argentine/ballroom distinction is getting at, but I don't care enough to research it right now.

Wax's suggestion was that if it sounded Spanish or Italian to me it might be a Finnish translation of an Argentine tango or Italian dance - there are oodles of these, even more as you go back in time, because of the tango's popularity.

She named a song which is apparently basically known to everyone in Finland, "Hopeinen Kuu" (lit. "silver moon").


This is Olavi Virta's 1960 translation of the Italian Guarda che luna:


She hummed a bit of it to me and I said, "You know, actually, I think that's probably it!"

But then this week at karaoke somebody sang it, so I came over to get a look at the lyrics as they went by, and later I googled them, and it totally is not.

It IS a big song in Finland, though. It's called "Surujen kitara" (lit. guitar of the sorrows), and the first result you get for it is a hilarious-looking band of guys called "Topi Sorsakoski and AGENTS", who released it on a hit album in 1986, but I found a 1963 recording that sounds very much like Mexican folk music:


So I looked a bit further, thinking I'd find a Spanish-language original... but what I found out instead... is that it's the translation of a theme song by PEGGY LEE for a 1953 JOAN CRAWFORD Western called "Johnny Guitar". The original! Is actually called Johnny Guitar!


Interestingly, I think it's quite understandable why Surujen kitara was a massive hit and Johnny Guitar (the song) apparently wasn't: I think it's a much better song, even though musically they are the same! The lyrics are a lot stronger without the character's name, which, you gotta admit, is pretty goofy; they thus manage to sound more poetic and have a more universal appeal. The summary of "Johnny Guitar", song, is kind of... "My man, Johnny Guitar, is absolutely the best for various reasons and someone just killed him". In contrast, you could summarize "Surujen kitara" as "This mournful guitar used to sound beautiful and joyful, but you (vague, mysterious) left and now it sounds sad and dark and cold instead."

I don't think I've ever actually seen a Joan Crawford movie, but the cover image from Wikipedia has a fabulous, albeit ahistorical, outfit on her:


She also wears, apparently, a black blouse and jeans and a little gray or green ribbon bow necktie with a big thigh holster to hold people at gunpoint, and a strangely 1950s gown with a gauze bodice and kind of cottage core collar for playing the piano in her saloon that she owns, and also a denim button shirt with a floor-length skirt and a red bandana around her neck. And at some point, a maroon housecoat with a... hot pink lace-edged camisole...? And in this cover image she also seems to wear slim high-waisted jeans which is hilarious for an apparently 19th century western.

Also, according to Wikipedia, Johnny Guitar (the character) doesn't actually die AND isn't the main character, rendering the title of the movie weird and the content of the Peggy Lee theme song even weirder. Maybe there's a minute in there where she thinks he's dead before being reassured, idk.

In this household we are fans of the work of composer Bear McCreary, a fairly prolific soundtrack composer who first came to our attention as the composer of Outlander (we got the first volume of the soundtrack and for a while tried without success to legally obtain the next one), but awakened way more enthusiasm with his soundtrack work for Black Sails. Specifically, the Black Sails title theme, which is an absolute banger.

He has more recently worked on Rings of Power and Foundation, so he's clearly been busy, but the most exciting new thing is this collaboration with Hozier (also like him, but have never got around to buying any of his albums): it's called Blood Upon the Snow and they wrote it for a video game and I guess won an award and performed it at an awards show? I have taken pains to gather as little information about the game in question as possible, but McCreary did the whole soundtrack, so we just bought the entire album. All the rest of it is more soundtracky - not exactly instrumental, but the use he makes of a chorus (singing I think in Faroese? Or maybe Icelandic?) and soloist are very instrumental-feeling, in comparison.

There's a great behind the scenes video with them both talking about it which has so much long wavy brown hair and enthusiasm, it's great, although it's not entirely free of video game promotion (like... understandably, I mean, but still).

I'm finishing up a few more icons and decided to put on this music mix, which is one of my favorites. This was a popular Tumblr post a few years ago and I loved it so much that I went and hunted down all the artists and albums and tracks on it, paying money to them where possible/desired, and made the playlist with individual tracks on my computer and phone. (Also the rest of Vox Vulgaris is great... not as keen on the rest of Martin Best's Medieval Ensemble, but my dad tells me my grandmother used to listen to it.)

VacnaPaul - Medieval Music - 'Hardcore' Party Mix on Youtube - Jul 6, 2013

The most rhythmic, upbeat, party medieval music out there, put together in a mix.

0:00 La Suite Meurtriere - Vox Vulgaris
4:25 La Segonda retroencha - Martin Best Medieval Ensemble
5:52 Salterello [I] - Instanpitta
11:08 Rokatanc - Vox Vulgaris
15:01 Rassa, tan creis e monta e poia - Martin Best Medieval Ensemble
17:01 Salterello -Trotto [II] - Instanpitta
21:57 Spanish Bombs - Vox Vulgaris
24:09 Au Temps D'auost - Martin Best Medieval Ensemble
25:27 Amarcatu - Os Trabucos
29:58 Odisete - Os Trabucos
33:59 Tempus transit gelidum - Martin Best Medieval Ensemble
36:42 Esek Bayrami - Vox Vulgaris

I downloaded Shazam to identify the songs that I hate the most and like the most on the store's soundtrack. Wax was laughing at me because when I showed the ones I liked to her she was like "Okay I guess we're learning about the state of Finnish pop" (we don't quite get enough radio in our limited grocery runs to have kept up with this). (The ones I hate the most are a couple of American pop-country songs I haven't captured yet and Bruno Mars and "OneRepublic" - really? Without a space?)

Anyway, here are a couple of recs.

Behm is a recent singer-songwriter phemenon here whose popularity made Wax curious about the song. And I love this song Tivolit, my absolute favorite on this list, although I am kind of annoyed that I can't figure out what it's about even after reading the lyrics through several times (Wax didn't get it either). This metaphor is out there, but whatever. Wax wanted to compare her to Adele on the basis of this song. I glanced at a couple of her other singles, but I haven't really checked her out yet to test the idea. She's still at the beginning of her career, though.

Erin's Yhtena Sunnuntaina is from 2020 and is definitely one of my favorites here. She's a gifted singer and songwriter and has had plenty of past major hits as a solo artist and as one half of Finnish duo Nylon Beat. This song is more of a sentimental ballad than a lot of her other stuff, but I'm a sucker for the bridge and the chords in the chorus.

Labyrintti by Jenni Vartiainen, an uptempo dance hit from 2019. I have the 2010 album with her first #1-debut single, En haluu kuolla tänä yönä.

Suvi Teräsniska has possibly the coolest name I've ever encountered. It means "Summer Steelneck". Wax says she is mainly a humppa (the Finnish equiv. of country - that is, modern traditional) singer but sort of on the border with pop. I enjoy Matkalla Tuntemattomaan and the cover Rakkaus on Lumivalkoinen, which is and sounds like a folk ballad (but a cool minor-key folk ballad, very traditional for Finnish music, which is why I like it so much). I really like her voice.

Ida Paul & Kalle Lindroth are a Finnish pop songwriting-performing duo formed in 2016 who Wax says "are selling out a bunch of shows recently" here in Finland. They met at a songwriting workshop, which is cool. I really enjoy Päiväuni and Vuonna Nolla. All their music has the same sweet, hopeful kind of mood (or wistful/hopeful and nostalgic/triumphant respectively, for these two) and it all sounds pretty similar to this, but mostly less catchy than these two, which are both jams.

J. Karjalainen's Sekaisin is from 1992. It sounds more retro than that to me, partly because of his distinctive singing style. Anyway, because of his distinctive style, all his music sounds pretty similar to this. I've been enjoying this one when it pops up on the store playlist recently.

Keko Salata's Todennäköisyys. Wax says he's a Finnish hip hop artist. I like the hook in this one.

Mikael Gabriel is also a hip hop artist according to Wax, but again it seems more like a flavor to a pop song with a definite pop hook and chorus to my possibly ignorant ear. This song Oli Aikoi also has a pretty great music video.

Sinun by Mika Ikonen is a sentimental love ballad (and Wax says sort of approaching humppa again), but it has a melodramatic and almost melancholic feel to the music and instrumentation. Those larger-than-life noisy scenery-chewing minor chords make it kind of a banger.

Lauri Tähkä is a big star and has a long career, and he also has a really distinct sound that goes through all his music. This song Morsian is from 2016. Besides the great beat, I like the self-consciously nostalgic retro feel of this one, which saves it from simple sentimentality (though I would excuse simple sentimentality with this beat anyway).

And compiling a long list of new stuff to acquire and explore in the world of (early) jazz, but so far no new-to-me great female vocalists, sadly, except that the movie star Dorothy Dandridge used to sing in clubs when she was younger before she got big but it was never recorded, except she recorded one single album for Verve that then got lost in the vaults until it was released in 1999. Based on the clip played in this documentary ("Minnie the Moocher and Many More", narr. Cab Calloway, 1983) I've gotta get that.

However, it's not very much compared to how much I've watched; there's a lot of focus on the very earliest years in most of these and they give more weight to bandleaders and virtuoso instrumental soloists than to vocalists. Although I realize now that Fats Waller's singing style on the several great songs he wrote is EXTREMELY different from the popular female performances I love, so I've got to track him down too.

Since I was a teenager, my favorite music has been from the Great American Songbook - which isn't, as waxjism thought, a physical book, but a term for the canon of American jazz standards, show tunes, and popular songs from the early 20th century.

As I mentioned in a previous post, I didn't always know that's what the name of the genre, or this body of work, was; I discovered it through a compilation of the great ladies of vocal jazz (Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, Billie Holiday, Dinah Washington, Sarah Vaughan, Lena Horne) and subsequent purchases of more of their albums; I only gradually learned the terms "jazz standard", "vocal jazz", "Great American Songbook", etc. The realization has been slow and gradual, and when I was young the only way to discover more of it was to look for CDs by the names I recognized from the compilations.

More recently, however, I gradually came to conceptualize this music in terms of the composers and lyricists who wrote it and not just the singers (although the singer is an important element, because if you just take my list of composers you could be talking about someone who listened to exclusively Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby or Tony Bennett - and I'm not interested in male vocalists, really, although I'm open to maybe giving them a shot later, once I've found all the important female ones!), and a couple of years ago I went through my collection with the aid of Google and Wikipedia and made a list of the writers of my favorite songs so that I could investigate more of their work. I'm not 100% finished with chasing down their songs, but with the aid of some greatest hits compilations I was able to rank them as follows:

1. Cole Porter, writing primarily for Broadway from the 1910s-1950s, wrote about 9 of my absolute favorite songs and at least sixteen more that I love, including "You're the Top", "Let's Do It (Let's Fall in Love)", "Anything Goes", and "I Get a Kick Out of You".


2. Harold Arlen (anglicized from Hyman or Chaim Arluck, a Jewish immigrant), wrote 8 of my absolute favorite songs for Broadway from 1929 through the early 1960s, including "Come Rain or Come Shine", "It's Only a Paper Moon", and "Stormy Weather" (also "Over the Rainbow", which isn't one of my favorites but has been considered the greatest American song of the 20th century by some songwriters' guild or other).


3. George and Ira Gershwin (Jewish, but that's their original name) wrote 6 of my favorites, partly for Broadway and partly for movies, from the 1920s-40s, including "Let's Call the Whole Thing Off", "Summertime" (immortal duet of Ella & Louis Armstrong), and "Nice Work if You Can Get It".


4. Irving Berlin (anglicized from Israel Bailin, another Jewish immigrant), wrote 4 of my favorites, partly for Broadway, from the 1910s through the 1950s, including "I've Got My Love to Keep Me Warm" and "This Year's Kisses".


5. Rodgers & Hart, the songwriting duo of Richard Rodgers and Lorenz Hart, wrote 4 of my favorites for musicals and movies from the 1920s-40s, including "The Lady is a Tramp" and "Ev'rything I've Got".


6. Jerome Kern, also Jewish, wrote 3 of my favorites from the 1900s-1930s, including "The Way You Look Tonight".


7. Fats Waller & Andy Razaf wrote two, "Ain't Misbehavin'" and "Honeysuckle Rose" in the 1920s and 30s.

There are more songs I love by all of these people and a whole collection of other songwriters and lyricists responsible for somewhere between one and five songs in my library with a ♥ next to them (which is more a like than a love, you understand). I started trying to make a list and rank them three times in a row before I started thinking I needed a card catalog to cross-reference, because apart from the iconic duos above, most of the songwriters and lyricists collaborated with a variety of different people.

I actually did start making a card catalog yesterday, after a couple of days of trying to just write out lists, only to quickly decide it needed to be a database for searching and sorting. I opened the open source office suite and started to make a spreadsheet, only to realize that there was no good way to include all the titles, all the composers and lyricists, and all the artists in one spreadsheet: if a row is a song title, and one column is composer and one is lyricist and one is original release date etc, but there are a bunch of significant recordings by significant vocalists - I asked my wife, who learned more about Office more recently than me, and she said there definitely is a way to do this in databases, but it's complicated and probably involves having linked spreadsheets for example, and the simpler solution would be to make each row a recording - at least this way they have the same title so when you sort by that column they'll stack up together, she said. I agreed that I didn't want to learn that much about making databases right now just to catalog an important subset of my music collection, but if a row is a recording instead of a song, I might as well just use the metadata tags on my music files.

My desktop music player, Quod Libet, comes with what I think is the most robust metadata-tag-management software in open source, and it's not too hard to do this; you can simultaneously edit the tags of big batches of songs, which is convenient. The albums and artists in my music collection are all tagged correctly pretty much, but the tags for composer, lyricist, and original release year were missing from most of it, so it's still essentially about as much work as if I'd started making a database of them from scratch.

It's fun to do, though, and it's not like I have a deadline to finish quickly. It's also quite interesting to listen to bits of the genre in chronological order of original release year, which happened when I went down the lists of jazz and blues standards on Wikipedia. The 20s and 30s jazz standards are full of songs I love, and the percentage I like goes down and down until it's nearly vanished by the 1950s, and then jazz after that bounced into the experimental stratosphere and left me behind.

Incidentally, I found quite a few shirts referring to this genre on Redbubble last week (it always makes me sad that you can't get band shirts for jazz and classical standards! Wouldn't one from The Planets by Holst be amazing too, by the way?), mostly saying things like "I ♥ VOCAL JAZZ" and "ELLA & BILLIE & NINA & SARAH", but they're just text, which is not nearly as cool as a band shirt should be. At least there should be a nice logo or lettermark. (There are some shirts of the individual artists - the bigger ones anyway. They also don't usually look as cool as band shirts.)

Yesterday I thought "Is that Boyz 2 Men?" again at the store music but also "Duffy??? Erykah Badu???" and then a while later there was something that was definitely leaning pop country, way poppier than Melissa Etheridge.

But it all still sounded like a backup track without the main vocals/a tragic episode of misplaced 90s nostalgia.

I found out there's a fandom of people on YouTube who just create and film elaborate Rube Goldberg machines to do trivial things. Most of the ones that I watched became so torturous that it was difficult following the action, or so long that my attention drifted off, but the first one I watched, How to Pass the Salt While Maintaining Proper Social Distance by Joseph's Machines and Sprice Machines, hit a sweet spot of just long enough to get a bit surreal and therefore firmly ridiculous, but not long or convoluted enough to be offputting - that's possibly why it won the algorithm optimization and got recommended first.

Other recent YouTube discoveries include Device Orchestra, which tunes electronic devices and produces things like covers of pop music on electric toothbrushes and typewriters, and the Floppotron, an elaborate arrangement of computer components including two printers, a wall of floppy drives and a phalanx of optical drives which the creator uses to play his own arrangements of a variety of past and current popular music and video game music.

But definitely the most impressive music thing I've discovered lately is Luna Lee's virtuosic gayageum covers of rock songs (apparently she was going to be at sxsw?). The gayageum is a large Korean zither-like stringed instrument which looks nearly identical to the Japanese koto and is related to a variety of other Asian stringed instruments. It's reminiscent of the Finnish kantele too, but quite a bit bigger than the standard kantele, although there's a giant version with legs for concerts... but there's nobody on YouTube doing anything like this with the kantele.