pnArt

Many decades ago, when we were kids, my Mom used to sing us a song -

It’s three o’clock in the morning / I looked upon the wall

The spiders and the fireflies / were playing base-a-ball

The score was 5 to 2 / The spiders were ahead

I got so darned excited / I jumped right out of bed

I could still remember the tune perfectly as I sang it to my wife last night.    So today I set out to learn more about this song.   Who sang it?  Who wrote it?    It turns out to be 20th century example of folk music.

Googling for the lyrics I found dozens of variations.   Sometimes it’s three o’clock, sometimes it’s four o’clock or five o’clock.    My mother must have sweetened up the lyrics for us kids, because I found no other examples of fireflies.   In most of the songs the insects involved were bedbugs and something else - roaches, beetles, cooties (i.e., lice),  or mosquitoes (often “’squitoes” or “skeeters” to keep the rhythm).    I only found one other example of getting excited and jumping out of bed.    In all the other ones an insect hits a home run and knocks the singer out of bed.    The setting in my mother’s version was unspecified but in many of the ones I Googled it was jail.  Other times it was a shack, barracks, a tent, or just a bed at home.   A typical example:

Oh, five o’clock in the morning / I looked up on the wall –
The roaches and the bedbugs / Were having a game of ball
Oh, the score was six to nothing / The roaches were ahead –
The bedbugs hit a home run / And knocked me out of bed

The origins of the song are hazy.    The earliest reference I found was 1934.   My mother was a child of the Depression so that timing is right.   The lines are often cited as part of a camp song, usually with the title “A Jolly Bum” or “The Bum’s Song”.   When sung by folk singers it’s sometimes part of a song called “Portland County Jail”.    I also found mutiple versions in songs about Army life.   Almost all the performers I saw named were so obscure they don’t even appear in Rhapsody, which has an impressively large database.    The one exception is that two sources claim that Bruce Springsteen sang it at the Bridge School Benefit Concert of 28 Oct 1995 at Shoreline Amphitheatre, Mountain View, CA, but I couldn’t locate a recording of this.

This website has a collection of some variations:  http://rolandanderson.se/bedbugs.php

And here’s a discussion of “Portland County Jail” by a group of folksingers:  http://www.mudcat.org/thread.cfm?threadid=8265

All of the references I found only described the lyrics, not the music.   Locating the tune was interesting.  On Rhapsody I searched for “o’clock in the morning”.  I found dozens of “Three O’Clock in the Morning” references.   This looked promising.  I clicked on one, which turned out to be an instrumental, but the tune was exactly what my mother sang!    Farther down the Rhapsody list I saw a version by the Andrews Sisters with the Glenn Miller Band.   I played it.  It was a love song about dancing the night away -  nothing to do with bugs playing baseball - but it had the same melody.       I also spotted a version by B.B. King.    Blues and county jails often go together so I played that.  No luck -  just a lonely man missing his woman, but also lacking bugs and sports.  In the end I listened to every vocal I could find with a promising title, but I never found anyone actually singing it.

If anyone reading this can locate a recording of those lyrics actually being sung, I’d be interested in hearing it.  Thanks in advance.

Collaborative creation with strangers; borrowing bits of music and making something new;  adding your own ideas or verses to someone else’s work;  applying an old song to a new social or political situation – and not an intellectual property right to be seen.

Web 2.0?   Open source?   No - traditional folk music.

For centuries, long before there were record companies and the DMCA, this was how people made their music.   Folk music really was the “people’s music”, arising from their shared experiences and expressing their feelings and opinions.   The “same” song appeared in many guises, with new lyrics, different subject matter, or with changed endings.   Sometimes the sailor got the girl, sometimes he got hanged.  Sometimes Shenandoah was a Native American chief; sometimes Shenandoah was a river.  Change some lines and a protest song about the king’s taxes becomes a protest song about cruel mine bosses.  Change a few words and a windlass shanty becomes a logger’s shanty on the other side of the world.   Songs often referenced each other and the same stanzas would be borrowed and reappear in hundreds of different songs.

Traditional folk music is social history and one of the world’s finest interpreters of English folk music, Louis Killen, graced us at a Folk Song Society of Greater Boston house party in Brookline on June 11.

Killen, who’s 75, was born in northern England.   He lived in the US for several decades before recently returning to his native land.  He’s been a sailor and shipyard worker in both the US and UK and throughout it all he has gathered and recorded a vast collection of traditional music and he’s worked with Pete Seeger, Ewan MacColl, A.L. Lloyd, among many others.

Killen is best known for songs of the English miners, especially union and protest songs, and for sea shanties – sailors’ work songs used to establish a rhythm for hauling or other repetitive tasks.

The concert was wonderful.  Killen often sang unaccompanied, although on some songs he played a concertina.    The house party setting -  a Folk Song Society tradition -  made it seem much more like an informal gathering in a friend’s living room than a concert, even though there was a small admission fee.  Killen did his best to eschew many of the songs he’s best-known for, instead introducing us to some less well known material.   But he also sang some pieces we all knew and the room sang along.    Near the end of the evening both his voice and his memory started to give him trouble and this only served to remind me to treasure these moments with the old breed of folk singers.

And we had some special treats.   Another internationally-known folklorist, Norman Kennedy, from Aberdeen, Scotland, was in the room.   And he sang a long, fascinating, and very Scottish version of a song that I eventually recognized as a version of “Cruel Sister” (AKA “Binnorie” “Wind and the Rain”, “Two Sisters”, “Twa Sisters”)  but he was halfway through before I realized what it was.    And a member of the new generation of English folklorists, Sam Lee, from the English Folk Dance and Song Society, was also present and he, too, entertained us with his singing, offering new hope that this remarkable history written in music won’t be forgotten very soon.

As both an artist and buyer of art, few activities are more delightful to me than a good open studios or art walk.  Throw in live music and a nice June afternoon and I’m the happiest camper you ever met.

Sunday my wife and I attended the annual Beacon Hill Art Walk in Boston.  It had everything: art, music, sun, June.  Plus Porta-Potties -  no art event is complete without bathrooms.

In preparing for this blog entry I wanted to research similar events throughout New England.   But it’s impossible because there are so many of them!  

Boston alone hosts at least a dozen such events including this one along with open studios in the South End, Jamaica Plain, Fort Point, East Boston, and others throughout the calendar year.   In Cambridge, Somerville, Newton, Brookline, and on outward blossom countless more.   In Lowell we’ve had open studio and similar events for years, thanks to the efforts of some now defunct local arts magazines, artists’ groups such as the Arts League of Lowell and the Western Ave Studios, and various local civic organizations.

When my wife and I travel to Vermont and Maine in the summer and fall most years we seldom manage to get back home without spending some time at some local open studios we pass on the way.   This cottage industry seems to be growing so fast it makes Web 2.0 look pokey.

The Beacon Hill Art Walk has been going for 19 years.  It’s just on the Boston Side of the Salt and Pepper bridge over the Charles River.    The artwork, and the artists, are tucked into all the little alleys and courtyards and interior gardens that surprise and deflight visitors who, from a distance, only see solid brick residencies in that neighborhood.   And for artists who couldn’t claim a garden or courtyard for their work, tents and stalls were set up on sidewalks, in the Vilna Shul, and even under the elevated Red Line tracks.

The sheer artistic eclecticism of the Art Walk was amazing.  I think I saw every medium and style I’ve ever heard of, not to mention a few new ones.   The artists were all happy to describe their methods and techniques and I took notes in case I get the itch to try a few new things myself.    The quality was variable, but generally high.  Some of the artists were clearly professional and others were talented amateurs.    The prices were lower than what I would have expected at a show of this caliber.

One thing that sets the Beacon Hill Art Walk apart from others of its ilk is the music.   -  5 chamber ensembles - 2 string quartets, a string trio, a flute ensemble, and a string quintet.  Plus two klezmer bands, fiddle music, guitar music, Armenian music, Greek music, and native American flute!    This is due to the efforts of Ivy Turner, the Art Walk’s music coordinator and the very talented musicians who donate their time.   Musical art and visual art go together so well that I don’t know why all such events don’t do this.

(Disclaimer:  I’m not in an artist’s co-op and I have no position on House 3686 – “AN ACT RELATIVE TO ELIGIBILITY FOR COOPERATIVE HOUSING CORPORATIONS” )

Recently Arts League of Lowell members received a missive from Artists Under The Dome (AUD) regarding a piece of state legislation deemed by them to be a threat to artists’ co-ops, exhorting Massachusetts artists to take a stand against this legislation. But the message didn’t explain what the threat was; instead it provided a link to the bill. I read the bill but couldn’t figure out the issue so I emailed AUD.

I told them they should have spelled it out for those of us not following this topic or who are not skilled at reading legislative language. I suggested that they should have had the message reviewed by someone familiar with communicating with the general public.

I received a response from the organization assuring me that it had been reviewed by their lawyer and political advisor. I pointed out that those people were, no doubt, familiar with the issue and with reading legislatese so they were not good choices for assessing whether the rest of us could “get it”.

In response the AUD contact said the most remarkable thing I’ve ever heard in a political discussion: “Again thank you for taking the time to email - if you gave me your phone number I would tell you WHY we sent out what we did due to legal reasons- which can not be put in writing.”

Now, silly me, I was under the impression that one reason why we have free speech in the US is so we can discuss political matters. And that opinions about the merits or lack thereof of legislation is not only protected speech, but encouraged. Yet here we have an organization allegedly representing Massachusetts artists in the rough and tumble world of Beacon Hill politics that doesn’t even have the courage of their convictions to put in writing why they object to a bill! They say they’re going to bat for us but apparently their attorney has advised them to take a base on balls because if they swing the bat they might hit something!

Imagine if historical figures felt that way -   “We don’t like the Stamp Act but on the advice of our attorneys we can’t say why” or “Slavery doesn’t agree with me but my lawyer says I shouldn’t get too specific about it”.

The Cowardly Lion reflected:

What makes a King out of a slave?

What makes the flag on the mast to wave?

What makes the elephant charge his tusk in the misty mist or the dusky dusk?

What makes the muskrat guard his musk?

. . . Good questions. Just don’t ask Artists Under The Dome.

Classical music in America has been getting grayer and grayer.     Although my wife and I are in our 50’s we sometimes feel like the youth brigade at traditional classical concerts in Greater Boston.   Audiences are moving away to retirement destinations, or just plain dying off and the old composers are not attracting enough young listeners.

The Boston Chamber Music Society, which we’ve subscribed to for many years, was recently forced to end its Friday evening concerts at Jordan Hall and fall back on a single Sunday evening concert at the Sanders Theater.   A few years ago, sensing their decline, the BCMS issued a questionnaire to their subscribers asking for advice.   My wife and I suggested expanding their program material to include more modern and living composers and composers from broader cultural traditions.

Apparently we were out-voted because the program didn’t change.  In the years we’ve attended their concerts we’ve heard every major piece written by Brahms, Dvořák, Beethoven, et al.   Many times.   The BCMS ensemble is second-to-none in their skill and command of this repertoire, and the music is beautiful, but really, enough is enough.

And yet . . . and yet, even as old listeners are dying off, young people are being drawn to the richness and subtlety of this music and are redrawing the map of the music to include the whole world.   The New England Conservatory and NPR produce a weekly radio program, From The Top, featuring jaw-dropping talent from teenagers across the US performing both traditional and contemporary classical music.   The host of the show, Christopher O’Riley, also gives solo piano concerts, and we attended one in West Palm Beach recently where he interspersed 19th century classical works with his own arrangements of songs by RadioHead.

And around the world small ensembles are gaining audiences and acclaim by widening the box.  One of our favorites is the Boston trio, Triple Helix who gave a marvelous concert recently in Groton featuring works by Shostakovich, Bright Sheng, and Piazzolla.

Last night we attended a concert by the Chameleon Arts Ensemble at the Goethe Institut in Boston.   The building is in a residential neighborhood on Beacon Street and the auditorium there is a long narrow hall apparently carved out of several living rooms or dining rooms in a row.  It features intricate rococo plaster reliefs on all the walls and ceilings, and the floor is flat so only the front rows have a good view.

And it was sweatingly hot.   But the reason why it was hot was because it was packed.   The seats were filled and more people were seated or standing on the sides or in the doorways.   And for the first time in years of classical concerts, my wife and I were among the older people in the room.  I never thought it would feel so good to feel old!

The concert was excellent and eclectic.   Starting with Schumann’s opus 73 fantasy, it included Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel, the world premiere of Zhikr: Songs of Longing by Shirish Korde, (featuring soprano Elizabeth Keusch), Takemitsu’s Rain Spell, and Faure’s opus 45 piano quartet.

In terms of sheer technical virtuosity Chameleon is very good but not quite on the same plane as the BCMS.   But they make up for this by not being on the same plain as BCMS either -  the program and their performance of it was fresh, exciting and courageous.  On Spiegel im Spiegel, which has become a minor hit recently in the classical world, the instruments are left naked and exposed, especially the clarinet, so they have to be perfect.  Were they?  No, but somehow it didn’t matter and I was completely absorbed by the music.

The hit of the evening was the Korde, and the composer was there to receive the warm, enthusiastic response from the audience.   The piece uses 7 instrumentalists and a singer, and features extensive percussion plus a harp.   It’s a fresh and engaging work with African, Indian, and western flavors reflecting Korde’s own personal background.  When I got home I tried to find him on Rhapsody; I failed but any composer who makes me want to hear more has succeeded at something.

So classical music has a future after all, and I’ve found it in a long, hot, narrow room in Boston.

Drawing down the moon is an exercise always fraught.  Urban sophisticates in city parks with their schematic designs never know how close to the other world they may tread on spring evenings when the rumble of thunder and the strike of lightning are all it takes to awaken the sleeping spirit in the art.

My wife and I arrived at Harmony Park shortly before 8 this evening.  The Revolving Museum in Lowell Massachusetts had advertised a “Full Moon Celebration” in the “Harmonic Center of the Universe”, which this evening was located in this old industrial city northwest of Boston.  Food, music, and a 30-foot lighted sculpture by artists Chris Harvey, Olivia Robinson, and Jesse Stiles were on offer.

When we arrived we saw a softly glowing orb elevated on a tripod in a small urban park.  Below it the acolytes and supplicants, worshipers and mere visitors quietly milled about.   There was conversation and laughter, and food for sale at tables set up nearby.  A chorus was about to take the stage in a corner of the park.

But something was wrong.  A drop of rain on my cheek.   A flash of light in the sky.  A boom of thunder – and then another.    The chorus stood on stage.  They sang briefly.  This was just the magic the elements had been waiting for.   The deluge was instant.  The air itself became water – everyone ran for the nearest cover; food vendors desperately tried to protect their wares, umbrellas popped open and were quickly caught by the wind; shouts mingled with thunder and the roar of pelting raindrops -  my wife and I found shelter in an apartment doorway with a dozen other refugees -  looking around the park we saw under every tree and in every doorway huddled masses yearning to be dry.

And then it happened.   The orb came to life.   Some animus, some libido, some creature spirit had been awakened by the tempest.    The soft glowing electric lights that illuminated it before had been dashed to blackness by the storm, but now something new, or perhaps very old, was energizing it.  The orb rose and changed shape; it thrashed and tore at its tethers, it became a beast, a tentacled creature, some sort of jellyfish or octopus at home in this suddenly aquatic world that had driven away the humans.

It roared and danced and postured and threatened us from atop its tripod, trying to break free while sodden knots of people cowered under their trees or in their tiny alcoves.

After some time of this the violence of  the storm gave way to a light rain.   We emerged from our shelter to bid goodbye to some of the others before heading to our car.    As we did we glanced at the creature on the tripod.  It was limp now, but every so often we saw a ripple or a gesture to remind us that it wasn’t dead -  only resting.

(Orb schematic copyright Revolving Museum and respective artists; storm image copyright Peter Nelson)

It’s never easy to guess what what “the last straw” will be in corporate governance. Boards of directors and American shareholders are a compliant lot and they would rather lose millions, or even billions, of dollars, than vote out a sitting CEO.

Many reasons have been suggested for this. Frequently-cited is the “Costly Firing” explanation – finding a good CEO is hard; interruptions in leadership, especially during a crisis, can exact serious penalties; the new person might be worse - better the devil you know that the devil you don’t; firing a CEO could give the wrong signal to the market and send the stock plummeting, plus there will probably be a big severance package to pay and even the risk of legal action.

An alternative explanation for CEO entrenchment is the old-boy network - executives and fat cats looking out for each other, often with the knowledge that the board is complicit in the various decisions that drove a company into a wall.

But either way, sometimes enough is enough and tomorrow’s Bank of America shareholder’s meeting will be interesting.

I started buying Bank of America about a year ago when it was around $40/sh and paying a fat dividend. Over the years I’ve done well buying strong companies in wounded industries. On the day the markets opened after 9/11 I bought Southwest Airlines, for instance. And Bank of America was a pretty strong bank, and well-positioned, so I bought more as it fell.

But then a funny thing happened. Last September, with Wall Street firms falling to the ground like autumn leaves, Bank Of America acquired Merril Lynch, virtually overnight. An article in the January 28, 2009 issue of Business Week reported that BofA had only 24 hours to review Merrill’s books - and this with a staff called in at 2AM after working a 14-hour day on another crisis.

Last week the reason for this became clear. In testimony to investigators from the New York Attorney General’s office looking into fishy bonus payments, BofA CEO Ken Lewis said that he was pressured by Hank Paulson and Ben Bernanke to make the purchase - and to keep quiet about his reservations.

Let’s reflect on that for a moment. Under law, a CEO is required to disclose to shareholders any information that might materially affect the value or prospects of the company. Not only did Lewis break the law, but according to his testimony he was urged to do so by the two most senior government officials involved in the US economy - the heads of Treasury and the Fed. For the record, both deny that they urged Lewis to cover-up.

But now that Lewis has admitted in sworn testimony that he failed to meet his legal obligations and that he bought a company that he suspected would drag down shareholder value, I cannot fathom why we should keep him on. I proxy-voted my shares against him for the chair a month ago, before the latest news,  and several major institutional shareholders have since indicated their intention to vote against him tomorrow. If he survives tomorrow it’s likely the lawyers and prosecutors will get him before long anyway, but the sooner BofA starts its spring cleaning the sooner it can get its house in order.

( artwork copyright © Peter Nelson )

For non-classical music the streaming subscription services such as Rhapsody provide a rich source of content at a nearly adequate quality level. Recent improvements in the Sonos search tools make it easier than ever to search Rhapsody even without a computer booted, and almost every popular song I could ever want seems to be accessible. But I still relentlessly build up my own music library.

Why?

Four reasons:

Ownership I like to own my stuff. I don’t want my access to music to depend on my fleeting financial fortunes or decisions made in corporate meeting rooms or the success or failure of Rhapsody’s business model or the reliability of my network connections or whether all the unions between here and there are happy with their contracts. My own music on my own harddrive (with suitable backups, of course) is the key to sleeping well at night, and maybe even enjoying some bedtime music on my way to dreamland.

Portability I can listen to my own MP3’s anywhere I want - at work (where most companies don’t allow streaming), weeding in my garden, in my car on long drives, traveling overseas, or out for a run.

Searching/Tagging The MP3 tagging scheme seems to have been first designed by geeks with a degrees in musicology from the back of a matchbook, and it’s since mutated into more strains than the flu virus. But its sheer amorphousness and lack of definition makes it clay in my hands, and I’ve used the tags to create schemata that allow me to search, recognize and organize my music easily. All of this is lost when I have to rely on some third-party to notate the music I’m hearing.

Audio Quality Most music services stream at 128 kbps. While there are slight quality differences between formats – MP3, AAC, RealAudio - there is no format where 128 kbps is artifact-free for close listening. It’s fine for casual music doing chores around the house or background music for dinner, but listen closely with good headphones or earbbuds and at times you will have no doubt that it’s compressed My lossy-format standard is MP3, between 192 and 320 kbps VBR. By ripping the music myself I get to choose the codec and the parameters, and I get to adjust loudness and gapless settings as I see fit.

The vast majority of my music is transcoded from CD’s I own. This addresses all four of the issues above. In recent years I’ve been buying used CD’s, partly because they’re cheaper than new CD’s and partly to thumb my nose, within the bounds of the law, at a record-industry that remains in denial about what century this is. They don’t make a penny when I buy a used CD.   In even more recent years I’ve been buying MP3’s online from Rhapsody or Amazon, as their selection is finally starting to broaden to the point of practicality.

I have not been tempted to use P2P file sharing. I’ve been amazed at the rationalizations used by that crowd to convince themselves that what they’re doing is not wrong. It’s striking how an adolescent sense of entitlement can energize such creative thinking.  A few file sharers admit what they’re doing is illegal but try to ennoble it as a kind of civil disobedience for a greater cause.  I can accept a civil disobedience argument in support of a great moral struggle – say, ending Jim Crow or apartheid, or achieving colonial independence.   But civil disobedience in the cause of pampered American or European teenagers getting more free stuff is too much of a stretch.

When my car registration renewal arrived yesterday from the Massachusetts Registry of Motor Vehicles it came with sponsorship. Seven 3.5 by 6.5 inch advertisements - perfect for a business envelope – fluttered out along with my registration form. Known as “buckslips”, these advertising inserts promoted car insurance, oil-change services, a local gym and other businesses trying to reach an audience of automobile owners still in a spending mood despite the economy and the State’s $41 registration fee.

My wife and I take pains to avoid being advertised-to. We keep a recycling bin on the way from the mailbox to the house and junk mail never gets past it. We have strong spam-blocking on our email and ad-blockers on our browsers and we don’t watch TV. But how do you block out the government?

According to the Tax Foundation, Massachusetts has the highest per capita total state debt in the country at over $10,000 per citizen – about three times the national average. Years of political fiscal mismanagement have put the “Commonwealth” into a hole deeper than the Big Dig – one of the major contributors to the problem. In the case of the Registry of Motor Vehicles this has resulted in commercial sponsorship, cutbacks in hours of operation, elimination of license-renewal reminders, and such desperation-measures as printing registrations on cheap paper instead of the traditional card stock at a savings of about 2 cents per driver.

Any revenues gained or money saved do not go to the Registry, but instead are directed to the State’s general funds, which virtually eliminates any incentive for Registry staff or managers to look seriously at cost-saving ideas.

Times are tough all over, and the Registry’s travails are only a small slice of the Commonwealth’s shrinking fiscal pie. But when you’re in hock as deep as Massachusetts, your fiscal wiggle-room is more limited because debt-service is one part of your budget you can’t cut, so everything else must absorb deeper cuts. Programs all over the state are being chopped and local aid has been slashed, so local governments are also cutting and pink-slipping. It’s hard to see the light at the end of the tunnel when the tunnel is closed because its maintenance workers have been laid-off.

Yesterday I took advantage of some recent tick-killing freezes to descend into the woods behind our house to cut firewood. A large red oak died last year, but had the courtesy to remain standing while its wood seasoned, before it fell recently so I could reach it with my bow saw. A chain saw would make much faster work of this but a bow saw cuts both pushing and pulling so it’s great upper-body exercise for all the opposing muscle groups in my arms, back, and chest. I also like its quietude - I can hear the birds and the deer and chipmunks all around me as I saw and I can start early in the morning without disturbing neighbors.

Later in the day I harvested my remaining apples. My wife and I have a tool used to change lighbulbs in our high ceilings - an extendable pole with a sort of spring-loaded basket for the bulb. This was perfect for picking high-in-the-tree apples and filling a utility bucket with them. After dinner I used some of the apples to make apple-cranberry crisp from a Jane Brody recipe I like.

Then I went to Westford, to the Amateur Telescope Makers of Boston (ATMoB) site, to take more photos of Comet 17P/Holmes.

I’m not actually a member of ATMoB. I used to be, back in 1997, when I was shooting comet Hale-Bopp. So I felt a little guilty setting up in their field in pitch blackness at 10PM, surrounded by the disembodied voices of the real members, discussing variable stars and galaxies that they were looking at through fancy, expensive telescopes. No one said a word to me, nor I to them, as I set up my little old Nikon D100 and el-cheapo FJR equatorial mount.

The light pollution was only marginally less than at my house in Chelmsford but I did get a slightly better comet photo than a few nights ago . . .

I then tried to photograph M31 - the Andromeda Galaxy - but the automatic noise reduction feature in my geriatric Nikon D100 camera picked that moment to fail so I got a shot resembling what you might see in good binoculars or a small telescope - you can just make out the dust lanes, but that’s it . . .

. . . still, the thought that I’m seeing light from two and a half million years ago is thrilling. This was the Andromeda galaxy before there were humans. This was the Andromeda galaxy back when there were mammoths and sabre-toothed tigers, and when the ancestors of camels trod the plains of North America. And I just took this picture of it last night.