Free classical music

Here’s a great site with free classical music:

ClassicCat.Net

Take a break with Ludwig…

The following free concert begins with Beethoven’s little-known Opferlied (Offering Song). Then it continues with the complete, monumental Ninth Symphony. It’s by Philharmonia Baroque. More here.

Skip all that politics and listen to pure beauty…

Beethoven – Opferlied and Symphony Number 9 by Philharmonia Baroque

Is “the Devil’s Music” in your church?

One of the worst developments of recent decades has been the invasion of rock music into churches. Protestants have sappy “Christian Rock,” even heavy metal songs. Catholics have hideous, 40-year-old sappy “folk rock” at most of their Masses, and even have, in some cases, God help us, “rap Masses.”

This, from a Christian culture that gave us Bach and Beethoven, Mozart and Handel, Vivaldi and Verdi.

At least, for the past two years, I have been able to take refuge in the old Latin Mass.

The Killer

On that note, I just saw the 1989 movie “Great Balls of Fire,” which I somehow had missed. It’s about rocker Jerry Lee Lewis, “The Killer,” his third “marriage” (of six) to his 13-year-old cousin, and his fights with another cousin, preacher Jimmy Swaggart, who had his own run-ins with the Devil.

In the movie, as in real life, Swaggart and others branded the new thing called rock and roll “the Devil’s Music.” Jerry Lee was kicked out of schools for it. It’s considered funny now — and I admit I still sometimes listen to rock, at 54 finding it hard to break the habit. But the critics had a point.

In the movie, rock and roll is shown originating in the black juke joint near where Jimmy and Jerry Lee grew up, which at the age of about 10 they snuck over to see and hear. Black folks are shown gyrating in a dionysian manner. Later in the movie, white teenagers are seen gyrating in the same manner to Jerry Lee’s music.

That’s contrasted with church music, the beautiful old hymns and gospel sung in Protestant churches, black and white. (So, today, where did that old church music go? I guess it’s still in a few churches.)

Let’s be clear. Back in the 1940s and 1950s, black folks understood the difference between sacred (gospel) and profane (juke joint, rhythm and blues, rock and roll — all pretty much the same thing) music, but today nobody seems to.

Some decades later, Jerry Lee was asked, “Are you still playing the devil’s music?”

He replied, “Yes, I am. But you know it’s strange, the same music that they kicked me out of school for is the same kind of music they play in their churches today. The difference is, I know I am playing for the devil and they don’t.”

Churches’ Devil’s bargain

But the funny thing is, the Devil always wins the bargains one makes with him. That’s even reflected in our literature, such as the Faust myth or several episodes of “The Twilight Zone,” the best being “Escape Clause,” the one where the guy makes a pact with the devil for eternal life, then murders somebody to test the electric chair, instead ending up in prison with a life sentence. Submitted for your approval, in the closing narration Rod Serling intones:

There’s a saying, “Every man is put on Earth condemned to die, time and method of execution unknown.” Perhaps this is as it should be. Case in point: Walter Bedeker, lately deceased, a little man with such a yen to live. Beaten by the Devil, by his own boredom, and by the scheme of things in this, the Twilight Zone.

Speaking of boredom…

One of the tricks the Devil’s Music played on us was that it appealed to our modern lust for innovation, then stopped innovating about 30 years ago, with the development of rap. Everything new since then has just been a “sampling” of something old. Rock today is at least 55 years old.

So, when churches use rock music to appear “with it” to youngsters, they’re really just playing the sounds old folks heard four or five decades ago. No wonder church attendance keeps plummeting. Who wants to hear Grampa’s Woodstock rock?

What’s needed is for churches to return to real, Christian music. May I suggest polyphony?

Such as the following by Palestrina:

The rest is here.

More Palestrina here.

Beatle Paul must be singing “Yesterday” about rip off by ex

You never give me your money
You only give me your funny paper
and in the middle of negotiations
you break down

— The Beatles

The above lyrics were written by McCartney for the song, “You Never Give Me Your Money,” part of the great medley on side 2 of “Abbey Road.”

The lyrics concerned the financial problems the Fab Four were undergoing eight days a week in 1969. In 1970, John, Paul, George, and Ringo went cold turkey from each other and split.

But the lyrics sure also fit Paul’s contentious divorce from Heather Mills. She just lifted £24.3 million from him, less than the £125 million she wanted, but more than the £15.8million he offered. That £24.3 million, today, amounts to about $49 million U.S. dollars.

Her court position said, in summary,

Money don’t get everything it’s true.
What it don’t get I can’t use.
So gimme money (that’s what I want)
A little money (that’s what I want)
That’s what I want, ye-ye-yeh,
That’s what I want.

She should be thankful that the negotiations were conducted in British pounds sterling, not the plunging U.S. dollar, or the £24.3 million she got soon would be worth about $24.30.

And what, exactly, did she contribute to Paul’s life that justified such a lavish grab? Embarrassing photos that popped up in supermarket tabloids and seemed to come straight out of “Paperback Writer“? A face that she keeps in a jar by the door?

All his greatest songs were inspired by other girls, such as Jane Asher in the 1960s and, for decades, his longtime wife, the late, “Lovely Linda.”

No doubt Sir Paul now is singing,

Yesterday [before I met Heather],
All my troubles seemed so far away,
Now it looks as though they’re here to stay,
Oh, I believe in yesterday.

Suddenly,
I’m not half the man I used to be [because that golddigger ripped me off],
There’s a shadow hanging over me,
Oh, yesterday came suddenly.

How to make a billion dollars…

Even though Compact Discs for music have been around for 25 years, and now we have iPods, vinyl still has the best sound. You have to put up with the snaps, crackles, and pops, but the sound is warmer.

That’s because all digital music, even the most technologically advanced, is only a “sampling” of the real music. But vinyl is a physical pressing of a physical sound. So all the sound is there, even if a little marred by the defects in the vinyl that are picked up by the stylus.

So here’s how to make a billion dollars…

Design a technology that somehow combines the clarity and ease of use of digital with the warmth of vinyl.

When you figure that out, don’t forget to pay me royalties for the idea.

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1984, knockin’ on your door

With Big Brother Bush imposing new controls and spying on our lives, here’s a video of the song “1984.” It’s by Spirit, a late 1960s California rock group led by Randy California. The song is based on the “1984” novel by Orwell.

But 1984 turned out to be 2007.

Here’s the link to the video.

And here’s the lyrics:

1984
knockin’ on your door
will you let it come
will you let it run your life?

someone will be waiting for you at your door
when you get home tonight
ah yes he’s gonna tell you darkness gives you much more
than you get from the light

classic plastic guards well they’re your special friends
they see you every night
well they call themselves your brothers
but you know it’s no game
you’re never out of their sight

it’s time you started thinking inside your head
that you should stand up and fight
oh where will you be when the freedom must end
just one year from tonight

classic plastic coppers are your special friends
they see you every night
well they call themselves protection
but they know it’s no game
you’re never out of their sight

I’m gonna run through the jungle
I’m not going to ever come back

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Why can’t kids these days get their own music?

I was walking around my neighborhood the other day and a garage band of young kids was playing in somebody’s garage. It sounded like a garage band from 40 years ago, when I was 12.

When I was that age, we wouldn’t be caught dead playing 40-year-old music, which would have meant 1927. That’s when Bing Crosby was just getting started.

I’ve just read a couple of essays on why popular music has stagnated. Here’s Steve Sailer, whose site took me to Jaron Lanier.

My speculation is that electric music has taken us farther each year from the original, non-electrical music. The Beatles, Stones, and Dylan grew up listening to the old, mostly non-electric music, including, yes, Bing Crosby. That’s what their parents played. Dylan also heard a lot of the blues and old gospel tunes on the radio, as he writes in his interesting autobiography, “Chronicles: Volume One.”

They didn’t start hearing electric music — rock music — until their mid-teens. So they had that influence. Even when I was growing up in the mid-1960s, my parents played old show tunes, such as “Oklahoma!” and “My Fair Lady.”

But the boomers, as they grew up, played rock music, which is what their kids grew up listening. The old music, rooted in non-electric traditions, was gone. Rock ruled, then stagnated.

So, kids, how about coming up with something different? My suggestion: polyphony.