This is a band called "Beirut." Their music reminds me of Europe in the years after the war, when Henri' and I drank wine in the cafes of Paris as we hunted down Nazis hiding in public as bakers, accordianists, and sommeliers. We need to get more of us with ukuleles to gather together to create our own counter-factual music, because we don't do anything else anyways. C'est La Guerre!
For some reason, I was thinking about traveling recently, especially those travels back in my youth. My sister, who shares my whacked sense of humor for things a bit askew, used to listen with me to tapes on our Realistic tape recorder on many family trips throughout this great land of ours. We would be in the back of the station wagon with the seat down, un-seatbelted of course, drawing on old computer print-out paper from my dad's office and reading comic books and playing Simon and Merlin and card games, all the while listening to Bible stories narrated by Burl Ives and various other tapes my parents had to make us tolerable during the trip. I don't know if she remembers, but we used to giggle and giggle in evil glee at some of the songs on a compilation tape of oldies that my parents had. There was "Que Sera Sera" sung by Doris Day. Mitch Miller did "The Yellow Rose of Texas." But, the one that really got us cackling was "Hey, There (You with the stars in your eyes)," sung by Rosemary Clooney, George's aunt. The way it was recorded, she would sing the chorus (Hey there, you with the stars in your eyes...) in one channel and then speak a reply in the other channel (Are you talking to me?). This was too funny for the both of us, and we would laugh and laugh and laugh and hyperventilate and laugh and laugh and eat some Trix cereal and laugh and laugh and rewind the tape and listen to this again and again and laugh and laugh and laugh until we were at the beach or West Virginia or wherever we were going. This video I have posted is probably from a Karaoke machine, so it has no pictures. However, I think that you will agree, as my sister and I believed and still believe, that this remains either very funny or very disturbing. Maybe even both! My sister has since gone on to be an amazing mother of four (I am her oldest) and I hope that she will one day pass this song on to her other kids as some sort of legacy that will either slightly scar their psyches or make them continue to enjoy drawing pictures of purple dogs and orange trees.
Enjoy!
...the weird turn pro. So said Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. And I think he was right. I just had a weird, weird, weird advising appointment, that resulted in the phrase "I believe anyone who does not like children should have their balls cut off with an axe" being uttered by the advisee. Needless to say, that put me in a weird mood and I decided to put this video up!
Enjoy!
I have discovered that I am getting more interested in earlier music. While I still love crunchy, Stooges-riffing, Velvet-esque ugly bands, I have found myself recently drawn to the dangerous sounds of old rockabilly and rock and roll. Like this:
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? Maybe Johnny Cash....?
Oh, the beatniks, you have to love them! Hepcats, wearing black berets and turtle necks, smoking brown grass reefers, drinking coffee and listening to righteous jazz licks in too cool basement frolic pads, splashing paint on walls in Pollackian patterns, playing bongos and snapping their fingers to stream-of-consciousness poetry, avoiding the Man and his unhip ways. What more could you ask for?
