Roll over Beethoven. Ditch the 5th.

Beethoven's 5th Symphony has much to recommend it -- but I still don't like it. For me, the whole thing is way too martial, too militaristic, too bombastic.

Yet, it is so vigorous and well put together, who wouldn't admire it?

I agree with those who are certain Beethoven wrote it with Napoleon's victories in mind. At the time, Beethoven still believed in Napoleon as the liberator of Europe and the hope of the common person. Beethoven was thrilled that "the people" were sweeping out the nobility and beginning a new age of freedom (tho Napoleon eventually lost).

So Beethoven's attitude makes perfect sense -- for his times. Yet, for someone like me whose life has straddled the 20th and 21st Centuries, militaristic bombast seems absurd in light of the horrendous, genocidal wars that have marked the years since Napoleon's defeat.

I would rather hear a simple gospel song any day.

Ozark Mountain Home

Another one from the Petersens. A fine original. Enjoy!

Imagination. Breakthru creativity

♬ Hey Julz, don't let me down... ♬

PS. Not interested in all the psychedelic BS of the period. Junk. Only pointing to the youthful creativity of these cats. You've loads of that; keep it up, God with. Hoping.

Get Me Back on Time, Engine Number 9 (Pt. 1 & Pt. 2)

Wow! Fabulous line of percussion behind the Great Wilson Pickett.

Pickett liked to do his production at the Fame studio in Muscle Shoals, Alabama, near the natural youth musical nexus of the University of Alabama, which was chockablock with young boomers in the early 70s. Pickett, who grew up in Alabama, also used the Stax studio in Memphis, Tenn., while under contract to Atlantic.

The consensus is that Pickett was aided "immeasurably" by the marvelous expertise of these studio's tweakers and players, giving him the "soul funk" sound he helped pioneer.
Cited for the superb studio work on "Get Me Back On Time, Engine No 9" are Bobby Martin, arranger, and the four-person "Staff" as producer.

Pickett included white rock music in his repertoire, no doubt eyeing the lucrative potential of the R&B-white rock crossover market. He even covered the Beatles' surprise worldwide hit "Hey Jude" in his soul-funk style but he still echoed enough of the Beatles to give the disc broad new appeal.

The Beatles of course had, in their own Liverpool style, based much of their original music on the breakthrough African American rockers of the 1950s (tho many miss this point because their band simply did not have quite enough bass, yet despite that difference they radiated enough raw, vital energy to reignite the rock boom).

Bang bang ring ding ding and all thatWhat some discerning fans still might not know

If your musical group has no drums but has someome shaking a tambourine, that person is "the percussion." But if you do have drums or drum set but no other percussive instruments, you may call the drummer the "percussion section" -- though it's more likely you'll just say, "So and So on drums..."

Consider: In a rock band the rock drum set is "the drums" while a set of bongos may easily be viewed as part of the "percussion section."

In bluegrass there typically isn't much going with percussion, but it's certainly allowed -- except for the verboten drums. Old-time rural percussion might include washboard, tambourine, those Mexican things you shake and someone rhythmically batting the side of a wooden box. That way, everyone could get in on the music-making.

Now a group with a drum set and other percussive instruments can't be bothered with such verbal niceties. "Drums" means "drum set" and "percussion" means other percussive instruments.

The Oxford Language dictionary gives us these definitions as its top two:

1. Musical instruments played by striking with the hand or with a handheld or pedal-operated stick or beater, or by shaking, including drums, cymbals, xylophones, gongs, bells, and rattles.

2. The striking of one solid object with or against another with some degree of force, as in the clattering percussion of objects striking the walls and the shutters. Technically, a piano is a percussive instrument because soft hammers strike the strings.

Well, doesn't bass fiddle stand in for drums since both sort of soundmakers are used to keep time? So then, someone says, bass is a percussive instrument. Nope. You can make a case for the bass doing the job of a percussive instrument, But it's means of forming sound is its string set placed over a container holding a large volume of air. That larger volume is necessary to get the low, reverberating bass sound.

I post this silly bit of trivia in response to implications I have noticed that drums are not among the percussive instruments.

OOPS! Halt! A leetle glitch, sorry...

[Scroll down to Beatles LP sleeve.]

Released for a very short time in 1966 was an avant garde album cover. That Beatles sleeve was suppressed, and fast! The story is that the band had hired an avant garde Australian photog to do a cover. Not all bandmates were pleased but John and Paul had been to art school, with Paul hobnobbing with London's artsy set and with John striving to be a multi-dimensional artist. He certainly had a high creative streak. Anyway John backed use of that cover at full throttle.

My first instinct, when I saw it, was "SICKO! Who needs this?" But then I recalled that when I was in my early twenties, I'd probably just have guffawed at that bit, maybe adding, "These guys are CRAzee!"

But 1966 was not the time to try such a stunt in America. Yet, I can see that that cover has real merit as art. It carries the messages of the ludicrousness of civilized life and of how children worldwide are treated as chunks of meat with no regard to their human needs (something that would have struck a chord with John). Further, many young adult males are simply highly aggressive. Note that much highly popular hard rock carries an aggressive, in-your-face boldness. Artists, especially hard rock artists, are expected to take a fun-loving "amoral" stance (Stones). Sometimes the line is blurred between aimless barbarian rock and very forceful art rock (Metallica).

The Beatles "naughty" LP sleeve was only a small jump ahead of its time. Take a look at Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention with bandmates in drag a couple years later. That one survived the howls of indignation. I still think quite a bit of Zappa's art rock was cool, tho I'm not drawn to it these days.

[Scroll down to Mothers of Invention LP sleeve.]

Patient Katie

She's very cordial in explaining to a non-bluegrass fan why she does chops, and graciously deflects attention by pointing to another band member who occasionally does chops.

I don't know when the practice of having the fiddler do chops became standard in bluegrass. I doubt that chopping has become standard with any other instrument.

The fiddler doing chops makes sense. For one thing it adds to the percussive beat/rhythm, which is a great idea for a string band. It also helps keep the fiddler on time and in the right place during fiddle lulls or when she's not on vocal,

Of course in most string music, no one chops (except maybe in rock now and then).

Everyone looked great! Good stuff!

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