TPPM Spiked! "Folks Looking to Be Offended"

[Dave Monroe]

"Welcome, music lovers, to the cheerfully deranged
world of Spike Jones and his City Slickers. There's
gunshots and cowbells aplenty, not to mention class
hostility, first-rate musicianship, subverted
expectations, hair-trigger timing, and more than
enough material for that interesting subset of folks
looking to be offended, who might like to begin,
actually, with the lyrics to the recitative or lead-in
to the 'Chinese Dance' in Spike's Nutcracker Suite--
although mild compared to, oh say your average Chinese
celebrity roast, this will require the sort of
listener who either wants to wince with embarrassment
or can find in vintage bigotry quaint refuge from the
more virulent forms encountered in our own era. There
is certainly lots of it here to go around. The
'Russian Dance' makes fun of Russians. 'Granny Speaks'
is an insult to older people. Elsewhere,
'Pal-Yat-Chee' manages to offend country people and
Italians, 'Deep Purple,' featuring Paul Frees's
impression of Billy Eckstine, will offend
Afro-Americans because the singer keeps nodding off,
implying narcolepsy not in the public interest, and so
forth. What today we would unquestioningly call acts
of racism seemed, for Spike and the Slickers and
indeed postwar America, as pure and unpremeditated as
the breathing of a Zen monk. It was the Golden Age of
Radio, and dialect humor, a legacy from vaudeville and
minstrel shows before it, was part of the comedy
environment-- shows like 'Amos 'n' Andy,' 'Life with
Luigi' and 'The Goldbergs' aired week after week,
available for free to listeners not always analytical
about what they were hearing. (Additionally, for
musicians of the swing era, 'Chinese' references in
song lyrics had long been code for opium, its
derivatives, and their recreational use-- so there's
maybe that subtext here as well.)"

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_spiked.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_music_jones.html

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/spiked.html


Cf. ...

"... an unacceptable level of racist, sexist and
proto-Fascist talk ...." (SL, "Intro," p. 11)


Paul Frees

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0293659/

http://www.io.com/~jgjones/tetley/paul.php3

http://voices.fuzzy.com/actor.idc?actor_id=750

http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/PersonDetail/personid-52049

http://movies2.nytimes.com/gst/movies/filmography.html?p_id=90522&mod=bio


Billy Eckstine

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0248751/

http://search.eb.com/blackhistory/micro/185/30.html

http://www.vh1.com/artists/az/eckstine_billy/bio.jhtml

http://www.vervemusicgroup.com/artist.aspx?ob=per&src=prd&aid=2894

http://www.aaregistry.com/african_american_history/996/Billy_Eckstine_a_voice_of_distinction


"the Golden Age of Radio, and dialect humor"

"Amos 'n' Andy"

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/A/htmlA/amosnandy/amosnandy.htm

http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ShowMainServlet/showid-16245/

http://www.radiohof.org/comedy/amosnandy.html

http://www.geocities.com/Hollywood/2587/

http://www.amosandy.com/

Ely, Melvin Patrick.  The Adventures of Amos 'n' Andy:
   A Social History of an American Phenomenon.
   2nd ed.  Charlottesville: U Of Virginia P, 2001.

http://www.upress.virginia.edu/books/ely.html

Amos 'n' Andy-ism: What it was and what it is
 
http://people.ucsc.edu/~dramadon/Amos_and_Andy.htm


"Life with Luigi"

http://www.otrcat.com/lifewithluigi.htm

http://blogs.salon.com/0003139/2003/12/31.html

http://www.italiansrus.com/articles/subs/stereotyping.htm


"The Goldbergs"

http://www.museum.tv/archives/etv/G/htmlG/goldbergsth/goldbergsth.htm

http://www.tvtome.com/tvtome/servlet/ShowMainServlet/showid-9132/

http://www.radiohof.org/comedy/goldbergs.html

http://web.cnjnet.com/~mweinber/goldberg.html

http://www.tvparty.com/vaultgold.html

The Goldbergs: The Jewish American Dream on Television

http://www.columbia.edu/~asr41/Goldbergs.html


"Folks looking to be offended"

Thomas Pynchon, BMG:
   "...this will require the sort of listener who
either wants to wince with embarrassment or can find
in vintage bigotry quaint refuge from the more
virulent forms encountered in our own era."

Er, Tom, if you don't like this stuff, you could have
asked me to fill in for you.

Cub Koda, Rhino:
   "Spike had a musical vision that also encompassed a
total assault against the conventions of general show
business pomposity....Once you heard Spike's version
of the tune, you could never take any of those idols
quite as seriously as you might have before."

   That last quote brings me back to another aspect of
Thomas Pynchon's "notes": there is enough Politically
Correct crap in there to set Rush Limbaugh off for an
entire 3-hour radio show with spillover into his TV
show too. Pynchon uses the phrase "class hostility"
twice in talking about Spike's recordings. I think Cub
Koda had it right when he referred to general
pomposity; class hatred never entered into it
pomposity cuts across all "classes," and the most
pompous I can think of are the PC wonks....

http://www.houg.com/critiques/Kimba/Spike_Jones.html 


		
__________________________________ 
Do you Yahoo!? 
Meet the all-new My Yahoo! - Try it today! 
http://my.yahoo.com