Oklahoma Underground Music

Most of what’s on the Steely Dan albums, Aja (1977) and Gaucho (1980), is enjoyable, and three tracks in particular I consider great.  Great because, for one thing, they’re meaningful, not mere larks.

The song on Aja is the sinuous-sounding “Deacon Blues”, about an oft-losing sensualist.  He identifies with college football teams that keep getting whipped, turning the first line of the song–”This is the day of the expanding man”–into a nifty piece of irony.  The saxophone here is nothing more than nice, but it bolsters a pleasurable melody.  And the words are trenchant.

Two great ones emerge on Gaucho, beginning with “Hey Nineteen.” As usual, the music is easygoing and Donald Fagen’s voice saucy and non-insistent.  It’s one of the most economical smart-songs you’ll hear; the objects of its satire are a middle-aged man and his 19-year-old girlfriend (“She thinks I’m crazy/But I’m just growing old”).  A sardonic hit.  “My Rival” give us some ominous guitar and percussion before the singer identifies himself as a “fool in love” with a peculiar rival for the woman’s hand.  The chap is determined to defeat his rival until, strangely, the song’s instrumental part conveys a mood of despair, as though there’s really no way the fool-in-love can win.

Again, meaningful.  And not exactly sanguine.

Cheers for Steely Dan.

The short Symphony No. 2 (1966) of the Estonian composer Arvo Part doesn’t sound so strange anymore, but it still sounds dark.  Menace is everywhere, though without the climax in the first movement (featuring a vibraphone) seeming very grim.  In any case, Part doesn’t leave us in darkness.  The steady drumbeat in the third and last movement soon yields to something the composer might have found difficult to fit in:  a pleasant quote from Tchaikovsky.  A bit of light, then, concludes the Christian Part’s symphony.

That drumbeat (and strings) may have lost by now any freshness it once had, but no matter.  To me, in toto this is delectable music.

The Beatles’ Revolver (1966) opens with George Harrison’s delightful “Taxman,” a simple rocker criticizing relentless taxation.  Even stronger is the song that follows:  McCartney’s “Eleanor Rigby,” one of the Beatles’ best.  Fast but sombre, it’s all about isolation and the absence of community.  John Lennon, too, was showing real sophistication with “I’m Only Sleeping” and (perhaps) “Tomorrow Never Knows” and . . .

Are we drifting into the region of drug abuse yet? 

Sgt. Pepper (1967), of course, was the drug album.  The Beatles got serious with Revolver, not to mention “Norwegian Wood,” then got lethal with I’d love to turn you on, “Lucy in the Sky”, ‘With a Little Help From My Friends,” and so forth.  Naturally the album was often brilliant but, well, it was unsavory too.  Pro-drug is pro-drug.  If it was such a great idea, guys, why didn’t you do it with the White Album?

By the way, McCartney has announced, at age 69, that he is finally giving up pot.

It was in 1979 that Donna Summer had another Top 40 hit with “Fujiyama Mama.”  No, wait a minute:  that was Wanda Jackson.  Donna Summer had a hit with “Hot Love.”  I got confused because both women were pleasure-seeking pop stars who eventually turned to Jesus Christ, albeit in Donna’s case it was only her public image that was pleasure-seeking (and sex-lovin’).  From the porno song “Love to Love You Baby” to The Wanderer with its “I Believe in Jesus” cut–this constituted Disco Gal’s journey.  Summer did a duet with Streisand called “No More Tears.”  With The Wanderer (1980), it was No More Hedonism.

Technically not a Christian album, The Wanderer nonetheless offers “I Believe in Jesus” amid the optimistic “Looking Up” and songs about failed love.  It has its spiritual dimension, in addition to being very entertaining.  For all the no-account lyrics, almost every tune on it is catchy–and blessed with Summer’s powerful but unmannered vocals.  Her voice is The Instrument here, that’s for sure.

I don’t know how meritorious Donna’s following albums were, but there have certainly been some strong individual songs, such as “Unconditional Love”, except for the line “Give me your unconditional love . . . / The kind of love I deserve.”  The kind of love I DESERVE?

Most of the music Felix Mendelssohn composed for Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream I have not heard.  But if one has enjoyed the Scherzo and the ageless “Wedding March”, which I have heard, even more, surely, will he or she relish the overture the German master wrote for the play–and wrote when he was only seventeen.

Extraordinary music, this.  Eleven minutes long, it is all youthful elan as it darts and gallops.  It is now comic, now majestic, and perfect in structure.  The Berlin Philharmonic’s performance is the one I’ve heard, many times.