2 minutes and 49 seconds of holiday cheer
lyrics here
"Must be Santa" was written by Bill Fredericks and Hal Moore and made popular by Mitch Miller in 1961. The recently recorded version replaces U.S. presidents for the names of Santa's reindeer...
Go ahead and sing along.
Yet another precursor.
Decide for yourself whether that dance in the first video is more of a Hungarian csárdás or a Romanian sirba.
Saturday, November 21, 2009
Klezmer?
After the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 CE, many rabbis discouraged music. Merrymaking at weddings was still allowed, and the klezmorim developed to fill that niche.
The first klezmer known by name was Yakobius ben Yakobius, a player of the aulos in 2nd century Samaria. The style and structure of modern klezmer is traced to 19th century Bessarabia, where the bulk of today's traditional repertoire was written.
Influenced by Slavonic, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Ukranian, Moldavian, Tartar and Gypsy musical traditions, the klezmorim used numerous tempo changes, irregular rhythms, dissonance and improvisation to generate a musical style that is easily recognizable and widely appreciated all around the world.
In medieval times, klezmorim wandered from shtetl to ghetto to perform at various joyful Eastern European occasions such as birthdays, circumcisions and weddings.
Klezmorim were often poor and known t0 prefer alcohol and women to study of the Torah. They were considered pariahs, barely higher than beggars (shnorrers) and criminals. Even so, many developed reputations high and wide and were in great demand.
The first klezmer known by name was Yakobius ben Yakobius, a player of the aulos in 2nd century Samaria. The style and structure of modern klezmer is traced to 19th century Bessarabia, where the bulk of today's traditional repertoire was written.
Influenced by Slavonic, Greek, Turkish, Arabic, Ukranian, Moldavian, Tartar and Gypsy musical traditions, the klezmorim used numerous tempo changes, irregular rhythms, dissonance and improvisation to generate a musical style that is easily recognizable and widely appreciated all around the world.
In medieval times, klezmorim wandered from shtetl to ghetto to perform at various joyful Eastern European occasions such as birthdays, circumcisions and weddings.
Klezmorim were often poor and known t0 prefer alcohol and women to study of the Torah. They were considered pariahs, barely higher than beggars (shnorrers) and criminals. Even so, many developed reputations high and wide and were in great demand.
(Klezmer music in a few words)
Felix Mendelssohn loved it. Franz Liszt hated it. George Gershwin and Benny Goodman borrowed it, so to speak.
Friday, November 20, 2009
Large Hadron Update
The MSM has been silent on the LHC but the BB will get the 411 PDQ from our friends at Wikipedia:
On September 19, 2008, the operations were halted due to a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets. Repairing the resulting damage and installing additional safety features took over a year. As of November 9, 2009, particles were going half way around the LHC, and the first high energy collisions are expected to most likely occur in early 2010.
If these particles are supposed to be going all that fast, how come they started out Nov. 9, 2009 and haven't got around to colliding yet?
On September 19, 2008, the operations were halted due to a serious fault between two superconducting bending magnets. Repairing the resulting damage and installing additional safety features took over a year. As of November 9, 2009, particles were going half way around the LHC, and the first high energy collisions are expected to most likely occur in early 2010.
If these particles are supposed to be going all that fast, how come they started out Nov. 9, 2009 and haven't got around to colliding yet?
Thursday, November 19, 2009
New things to worry about
The Beagletown Bugle considers it our responsibility to alert those masses happily skipping through life, hardly wondering about the consequences of firing 192 mondo lasers that focus 1.4 megajoules on little dabs of deuterium and tritium.
Scientist theorize the resulting nuclear fusion will generate power effortlessly, cleanly, and painlessly in multi-job creating operations that could be in production in a decade. Hell, we won't even need the sun anymore. We can just pop a few megajoules through a glass of water and bam! power the world's eight billion whizbang phones and 100-inch plasma entertainment centers.
According to Newsweek, 10 gallons of water could produce as much energy as a supertanker of oil. And who has all the water? Canada, of course. In 20 years, Canada will own the world.
Scientist theorize the resulting nuclear fusion will generate power effortlessly, cleanly, and painlessly in multi-job creating operations that could be in production in a decade. Hell, we won't even need the sun anymore. We can just pop a few megajoules through a glass of water and bam! power the world's eight billion whizbang phones and 100-inch plasma entertainment centers.
According to Newsweek, 10 gallons of water could produce as much energy as a supertanker of oil. And who has all the water? Canada, of course. In 20 years, Canada will own the world.
When water replaces oil
Look out! Ok, we're still like even with Russia and beating China a little, but hey -- Norway, Iceland, Suriname, Chile, and Belize will be world powers. Looks like Brazil, New Guinea, Australia and New Zealand will do okay, too.
Ask Dr. Hin?
Q: What the hell is a megajoule?
A: The megajoule (MJ) is equal to one million joules, or approximately the kinetic energy of a one ton vehicle moving at 160 km/h (100 mph). For convenience, one joule can be expressed as:
Q: What is a one-ton truck doing going 100 miles an hour down the highway weaving in and out of families from the real parts of America headed for good, honest work and mothers with babies on board just trying to get to market?
A: Unlikely cheesy tsotchkes travel back from Mega Lo Mart under own steams.
A: The megajoule (MJ) is equal to one million joules, or approximately the kinetic energy of a one ton vehicle moving at 160 km/h (100 mph). For convenience, one joule can be expressed as:
Q: What is a one-ton truck doing going 100 miles an hour down the highway weaving in and out of families from the real parts of America headed for good, honest work and mothers with babies on board just trying to get to market?
A: Unlikely cheesy tsotchkes travel back from Mega Lo Mart under own steams.
Wednesday, November 11, 2009
What a guy! What a couple-a guys!
Allen Toussaint is one of the most generous spirits in music history, a gracious man in a rough culture who gave up on school-trained music to follow Perfessor Longhair. He started out a skinny kid playing piano and selling songs to Cosimo Matassa and Dave Bartholomew, and has gone on himself to be a neglected pivotal figure in the history of American music. But he isn't necessarily as neglected as Dave Bartholomew, known if at all as Fats Domino's producer, but someone who created a space and time for the most electrifying, innovative music yet.
There is a sliver between the post-Big Band-era swing and the be-bop offshoots that was R & B -- when Louis Jordan, Dave Bartholomew, Paul Gayten, Larry Darnell, Roy Byrd and others played that club music with singers like Annie Laurie, Alma Monday, and Chubby Newsome. Then R & R happened and it became a different kind of club, and now it is technopop or something.
Imagine you could go into the Brass Rail and order a Cour-
voisier and sit d
own and listen to Dave Bartholomew's quintet sharpening up material they might be laying down over at Cosimo's J&M Recording Studio the next day. Damn. Or imagine you got a job working at the Roosevelt pouring water for some banquet Mr. Toussaint was putting on.
Alerted by another Southern gentlemen and frequent contributor.
There is a sliver between the post-Big Band-era swing and the be-bop offshoots that was R & B -- when Louis Jordan, Dave Bartholomew, Paul Gayten, Larry Darnell, Roy Byrd and others played that club music with singers like Annie Laurie, Alma Monday, and Chubby Newsome. Then R & R happened and it became a different kind of club, and now it is technopop or something.
Imagine you could go into the Brass Rail and order a Cour-
voisier and sit d
own and listen to Dave Bartholomew's quintet sharpening up material they might be laying down over at Cosimo's J&M Recording Studio the next day. Damn. Or imagine you got a job working at the Roosevelt pouring water for some banquet Mr. Toussaint was putting on.Alerted by another Southern gentlemen and frequent contributor.
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
Race purity in the 23rd
Recognizing after a while something isn't news or even a fit subject for commentary because it has gone stale in a post-ironic media environment in which the cameras are aimed across the holler like some cathode-happy Hatfields and McCoys, but just to flog a dead horse, one should note that the Beagle has been gigging the GOSPers about the importance of race purity, keeping social libertarians and potential taxers out of the party or least out of the game for months and now they gone and done it.
Will the tea party gang howl in the GOSPer primaries about purity? Will a Galahad emerge?
Will the tea party gang howl in the GOSPer primaries about purity? Will a Galahad emerge?
Choose yer doc
In America, you always get to choose your doctor. Pick one -- Dr. Christiaan Barnard, pioneer of heart surgery, or a drug-addled baboon government doctor foisted off by a communist system that amounts to extermination camps?
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