Tag Archives: saloon

Anthem

dictionary with letter A

Anthem (n.): a rousing or uplifting song identified with a particular group or belief.

I have become convinced that the best way to ruin any experience is to have a committee discuss it or experts share insights on “why it is so complicated.”

Thus the National Anthem.

Yes, the beautiful lyrics written by Francis Scott Key and the saloon song sung by so many Englishmen of the day came together for a rousing rendition of patriotic jubilation.

When I was a kid people sang it without commenting on the complexity of the melody line or trying to lift it an octave at various intervals to stimulate emotional reactions.

It was just beautiful.

Matter of fact, when I got the chance to do a musical arrangement of it for a symphony, I began it with an arpeggio of strings, lending a more pastoral depiction of the first stanza:

Oh say, can you see by the dawn’s early light

What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming?

It’s such an intimate statement, really not requiring double brass and pounding drums. It is a progressive work, beginning with a gentle spirit and ending with a victorious shout.

But like so many other things in our country, we’ve turned it into a debatable dilemma–a dastardly debacle.

It’s not that we need a new national anthem.

We just need a people who can be moved by pride in our nation as the anthem is performed.

 

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Al fresco

Words from Dic(tionary)

dictionary with letter A

Al fresco: (adj) in the open air: e.g. an al fresco luncheon.

Much as I enjoy the arrival of spring with the promise of coming summer, and the warmth of that experience, I also become fully aware that I am about to be inundated by many different individuals who want to take advantage of the beauty of the season … to do everything outside.

Especially difficult for me is when they suggest that I take my sound equipment and music and array it on some sort of makeshift flat-bed trailer to perform in a park situation, surrounded by so many distractions that it’s nearly impossible to get the attention of a dead squirrel.

Let me tell you what bothers me about it:

1. Good sound needs walls. Otherwise it floats out and joins with other distracting molecules and becomes distorted or dispelled.

2. Even though I work very hard to be interesting, birds and trees, supersonic jets flying overhead and children briskly running and tripping to fall and scrape their noses do tend the eliminate the possibility of an ongoing attention span.

3. Bugs. If you are a normal person who showers, uses deodorant, or God forbid, aftershave, bugs seem to approach you as if you were a saloon and they are determined to get drunk on your elixir. I’ve had them fly in my mouth, buzz my bald head and perch themselves inside my ear.

I think I’ve just described the definition of “distracting.”

It happened to me recently when some friends invited me out to dinner, and asked if I wanted to sit at a table near the lake. It was a beautiful evening, about 6:15 P.M., and apparently the exact time when the local bees come out for an evening fellowship and what appeared to be church service. They huddled together, gathering around our food, and at times it appeared they were saying grace for the bounty set before them.

We eventually (being more intelligent than the buzzers) found ways to cover up our food, our bodies and the surrounding table with napkins, plates–and I think one lady used a scarf. It was not exactly what I would call a favorable dining experience.

I think going camping is an al fresco event. When you do so, you plan on roughing it, taking on nature and trying to get away from the delicacies of life.

But every other time you go al fresco, you must realize that it’s going to turn out to be a campout–and as soon as you arrive outside, you have departed your home … and entered Nature’s back yard.