Acorns From An Okie

Allen February 15th, 2006

My wife recently celebrated her birthday (1 day before Valentine’s Day so I luck out in remembering important dates) and I purchased Barry Manilow’s new CD, The Greatest Songs of the Fifties for her.

I was picking my daughter up at the ballet studio and listened to the CD while waiting for her to come out.  Fairly good album, even though Barry is no longer my cup of tea.

And on the CD, Barry answers the eternal question, how many key changes can you hammer into one song?  In Unchained Melody, it had to be over fifty.

Known as a Truck Driver’s Gear Change, we find out:

Many writers and arrangers feel that when their song is in risk of getting a bit tired, it can be given a fresh lease of life by shifting the whole song up a key, usually in between choruses, towards the beginning of a "repeat-till-fade" section. You may have heard this technique informally referred to as "modulation", but the correct ethnomusicological term for the phenomenon is the truck driver’s gear change. This reflects the utterly predictable and laboured nature of the transition, evoking a tired and over-worked trucker ramming the gearstick into the new position with his – or, to be fair, her – fist.

Contrary to what many people seem to think, the truck driver’s gear change is in no way inventive, interesting or acceptable: it is in fact an utterly appalling and unimaginative admission that you’ve run out of inspiration and the song should have ended one minute ago; but you’re under pressure to make something which can be stretched out to the length of a single. The concept of the truck driver’s gear change seems to transcend all musical styles, from Perry Como to The Misfits, although my investigations reveal that it’s most prevalent in mainstream pop, and, let’s face it, it’s unlikely to feature in hip-hop. But who’s to say.

Also from the site, we see that Barry is no new-comer to gear changes.  Barry rammed the gearshift home in many of his earlier songs, including: Even Now, I Write The Songs, Looks Like We Made It, Mandy, and Weekend In New England.

One would assume at some point the Grammy’s will award Barry a lifetime achievement for his endeavors.

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Allen December 22nd, 2005

Charles notes that "jewelry is the gift to give".  Why?  Because it’s the gift you know can’t fail.

Non-Okies are probably scratching their head and wondering what we are talking about.  We are, of course, talking about the BC Clark Jingle — a staple of Oklahoma folk culture for as long as most of us can remember.

While many people know the song, few remember that it was actually re-recorded in 1977 to fit the standard 30-second time frame for commercials.  The deleted line was "The Christmas wish of B. C. Clark is to keep on pleasing you".  If memory serves me correctly it was just after the "since eighteen-ninety-two" line.

Fewer still know the names of the singers.  So few, in fact, that even the people of BC Clark don’t know.  I received this response when asking about the singers:

Allen,

Thank you for your email!  We actually do not know the names of the people who originally sang the jingle.  All that we do know is that it was sung by local talent in Dallas, TX where it was produced.  In 1977, when the missing line was dropped, the Jingle had to be re-recorded.  It was done again in Dallas and a couple of the singers happened to be some of the ones involved in the original recording.  The song was written by a gentleman named Al Fiegel in Oklahoma City.

Given that the original was recorded in 1956, I hope the singers weren’t hanging around the studio some 21 years later solely on the hopes that they would get a 2nd BC Clark gig.

So to some un-named group of studio singers in Texas, a  generation of Christmas shoppers (jewelry and otherwise) thank you.

Thanks also to Al, who won the Lowe Runkle Distinguished Service Award in 1956.  Al didn’t go on to write any other "blockbuster" songs that I was able to find.  Perhaps this one song was enough.

Who knows?  Perhaps Al’s little ditty will still be sung at Christmas 64 years from now.

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Allen August 17th, 2005

One of my favorite bands, Jimmy Eat World, is performing tonight at the Ford center in OKC.  I’m sorry to say that I couldn’t make the concert, but it should be a real treat for power-pop/alt-rock fans.  One of my favorite albums is "Jimmy Eat World" (originally titled "Bleed American").  This is an excellent CD with lots of complex rhythm patterns and great melodies.

I think they are being followed by a bunch of idiots.

The fact that Jimmy Eat World is performing in Oklahoma is further proof that God exists.  The fact that they are the opening act is an indication that he has a twisted sense of humor.

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Allen March 22nd, 2005

As alluded to earlier, the family and I spent Spring Break in Branson, MO.

If you are in the Branson during the Thursday to Sunday time period, be sure to stop in at the Buzzard Bar at the Big Cedar Lodge.  If you like humor and western songs, you will enjoy Clay Self.

And if you don’t enjoy either of those things, you just ain’t quite right in the head, are ya?

[BTW, Germ-Packing Freaks are children.]

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Allen November 30th, 2004

I mentioned earlier a moving tribute to our armed services.

I now point you to another tribute that is also quite moving.   Load the lyrics (separate window) and watch the video (separate window).

If you like the presentation, GCS Distributing has more.  I can’t vouch for the other tributes, but I’m sure they are good.

Then, if you like it, go buy the CD from which the song was taken.

Finally, I’d like to give thanks to Marta Keen Thompson for such a moving song.

[Via American Digest]

[Update: Got the video link wrong.  Now fixed.]

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Allen November 22nd, 2004

As noted earlier, I saw Andy Williams in his Christmas concert in Branson.  One of the classic Christmas songs Andy sang was It’s The Most Wonderful Time Of The Year

Written by Eddie Pola and George Wyle, the lyrics include:

There’ll be parties for hosting
Marshmallows for toasting
And caroling out in the snow
There’ll be scary ghost stories
And tales of the glories of
Christmases long, long ago

Parties for hosting?  Check. 
Marshmallows for toasting?  Have both the marshmallow and the stick.
Caroling out in the snow?  Sign me up.
Scary ghost stories?  ?Que?  Scary ghost stories?

I don’t know.  Maybe, maybe if you stretched it a bit the Abominable Snowman in Bass and Rankin’s Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer could be a bit creepy.  But scary ghost stories?  Nope.

Whoops!  Forgot Dicken’s Christmas Carol.  But once you’ve seen The Muppet Christmas Carol or Mickey’s Christmas Carol, the whole specter of Jacob Marley and the three Christmas spirits don’t seem as scary as before.  No matter how hard you try to play it up, Pegleg Pete just isn’t that frightening as the Spirit of Christmas Future.

Not that the whole Christmas/slasher/death/ghost hasn’t been tried.  It just hasn’t proved to be too successful outside Dickens.  Exhibits A, B, C, D, E, and F.   More to be found, I’m sure.

Maybe successful Christmas Ghost Stories need to be based in literature.  Perhaps I have found the title for my 2005 NaNoWriMo novel: The Silence of the Reindeers.

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Allen October 8th, 2004

Of Constant Sorry

Well, not really.

But you can teach yourself how to play the banjo with a CC licensed book.

[Via BoingBoingBlog]

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Allen September 23rd, 2004

My son and I were coming home from Scouts the other night in my car. I had the radio tuned to the Buzz when Green Day’s American Idiot came on. Here is a snippet of the lyrics from a popup laden site:

Don’t want to be an American idiot.
One nation controlled by the media.
Information age of hysteria.
It’s going out to idiot America.

As a note, The Buzz is owned by Clear Channel Communications who racked in $8B in sales last year (pdf).

Also note Green Day’s record company is Reprise Records, a division of Warner Brothers Records, itself a child of Warner Brothers who is (finally) an offspring of TimeWarner. TimeWarner had sales of $39B last year (pdf).

Commenting on hysteria, TimeWarner owns both CNN and Time magazine.

One could say that Green Day’s lyrics are meta-ironic….

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Allen August 3rd, 2004

Streaming rip of Tiki Room vinyl

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Allen July 27th, 2004

Music Industry Executives Baffled By Decreased Sales of CDs

Read Rip van Hoodwink to learn from Charles how Macromedia has created a broken CD (with bad data on the music tracks, etc) that then requires the installation of their software that prevents ripping.

While I fully support property rights, I realize that peeing in the soup is not the way to sell more soup. Once folks catch wind of this system and the usage of said system starts showing up on more and more CDs, I predict that CD sales will decline — even more than before.

I rip tracks from CDs onto my computer at work, in order to listen to music that suits my mood at the time. I don’t maintain a huge inventory of CDs at work, but keep them at home. I also rip them to listen to them on my MP3 player that I have on my Palm during workouts. All perfectly legal activities that will be denied with this new hare-brained (or is it hair-brained) idea. I’ve disabled auto-play on my computers — in part for this very reason. I guess I will have to start inquiring when purchasing CDs to see if this brain-dead “feature” has been installed.

What’s next? Books printed in fading ink?

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