It's about music!

Sat Apr 2 05:07:54 CDT 2016

Keith (and poor old Goebbels)

'Colonel Bogey' march' 1914
'River Kwai' countermarch for the movie, 1957

On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 3:14 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Then there is the "Himmler has only one left ball" thing, which does fit a
> tune, which I can't remember the name of right now, but I seem to remember
> is a military thing...That might not even be an original lyric of Mr. P's...
>
> On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 3:12 PM, Keith Davis <kbob42 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>> Isn't there a Pynchon fakebook out there somewhere? Maybe I'm thinking of
>> Monty Python...In any case, I think at least the majority of the songs are
>> just lyrics which imply a certain type of musical phrasing. Some of them
>> are trickier to get than others, and I haven't taken the time to analyze
>> them all. I'm not convinced that they all work as real tunes, but if one
>> took the time to explore them, that theory could be proven wrong. Knowing
>> Mr. P's work, he probably took the time to make sure they do.
>>
>> On Fri, Apr 1, 2016 at 3:02 PM, Smoke Teff <smoketeff at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>>> Everything you say here, Laura, I second. Including especially
>>> compliments to Kai.
>>>
>>> On Apr 1, 2016, at 1:39 PM, <kelber at mindspring.com> <
>>> kelber at mindspring.com> wrote:
>>>
>>> Great stuff, Kai. It's always been a source of frustration for me that I
>>> don't have the musical knowledge to make sense of what the songs might
>>> potentially sound like. Hints such as "close-harmony trombones" are lost on
>>> me. On first hitting those Pynchon songs, I thought it was only a matter of
>>> figuring out the popular tune it was based on (like the old Mad Magazine
>>> satirical songs, "sung to the tune of …"). Is it your sense, Kai (or
>>> anyone) that Pynchon had exact tunes in mind when he wrote these, or is he
>>> just riffing with words?  I know there've been a number of attempts at
>>> adding music to Pynchon's lyrics (Just a Floozy With an Uzi). But what a
>>> great project for a musicologist to write/compose a definitive
>>> written/audio work on the music, employing as many hints as are available.
>>>
>>> Laura
>>>
>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>
>>> From: Kai Frederik Lorentzen
>>>
>>> Sent: Apr 1, 2016 8:06 AM
>>>
>>> To: pynchon -l
>>>
>>> Subject: Re: It's about music!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> > ... Pynchon's phrasing as a writer follows the musical
>>> criteria of flow, he's the auditive type of writer (- in contrary
>>> to more visually orientated authors like, for example, Ernst
>>> Jünger or Claude Simon) ... Especially obvious this becomes with
>>> the incorporation of songs into the novels, which is, on this
>>> world-literary level, as far as I can see unique ... <
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> While Homer could write his 'novels' still in verses ("Versepen"),
>>> modern writers have, even if they're poets like Rilke ("Die
>>> Aufzeichnungen des Malte Laurids Brigge", 1910), to write their
>>> novels in prose. The quoted or - like most often in Pynchon's case
>>> - created verses respectively song lyrics thus are a) poetry in
>>> prose, b) graphic interludes and c) music in literature. All three
>>> aspects play a role in Pynchon's use of songs.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> The idea to turn his texts temporarily into a jukebox Pynchon must
>>> have had early on. Already in "Low-Lands" this becomes obvious.
>>> This early short story not only contains three lines from a Noel
>>> Coward song - "Is this Noel Coward or some shit?"(GR, p. 709) -,
>>> but also, later on, four lines of a song Pynchon himself seems to
>>> have written (at least the lyrics of it):
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "A ship I have got in the North Country
>>>
>>> And she goes by the name of the Golden Vanity,
>>>
>>> O, I fear she will be taken by a Spanish Ga-la-lee,
>>>
>>> As she sails by the Low-lands low."
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Note the "Ga-la-lee" which emphasizes the actually musical
>>> dimension. In other cases, Pynchon also gives hints about the way
>>> how to arrange the songs, which gives the reader the opportunity
>>> to intuit the musical details. Like in the third song
>>> ("Yes---I'm---the---/Fellow that's ha-ving other peop-le's
>>> fan-tasies ...") of Gravity's Rainbow which appears on page 12 and
>>> where it says in between:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> "[Now over a lotta tubas and close-harmony trombones]"
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Can you hear them?
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> By the time of V, Pynchon was very sure about this special style
>>> feature of his and already used it with a certain self-evidence.
>>> The first chapter of V contains four songs on 34 pages. No song
>>> appears in the first chapter of The Crying of Lot 49, but in the
>>> second there are no less than three on just 14 pages. "The Secret
>>> Integration" has drunken soldiers singing "Mine eyes have seen the
>>> misery of the coming of the draft,/ And the day I got the letter
>>> ...". (I was a Kriegsdienstverweigerer and did Civil Service
>>> instead of going to the army, taking care of seniors who were
>>> still able to live alone in their condos. It was twice the time it
>>> would have been in the army, 20 instead of ten months, and thus
>>> rather long when you're young, but it was an experience - actually
>>> I had a client, her condo contained a samovar and an incredible
>>> number of books, who had experienced the Bolshevist revolution as
>>> a teenager and had stories about it to tell - I wouldn't like to
>>> miss.) In Vineland, the first song appears on pp. 43-44, the
>>> second on page 51, and the third on pp. 78-99; Mason & Dixon
>>> offers the first song on pages 18-19, the second on pages 27-28,
>>> and the third on page 34; in Against the Day the first two songs
>>> appear on pp. 15 and 49-50; in Inherent Vice the first three songs
>>> can be heard on pp. 43-44, 51 and 78-79. Although Pynchon seems to
>>> have grown a little tired of song writing by the time of Bleeding
>>> Edge - after the initial five lines from the fictional Leonard
>>> Bernstein musical (pp. 55-56) where Robert Moses sings "Throw
>>> those Puerto/Ricans out in the/street---It's just a/slum. Tear it
>>> all/do-o-own!", the reader has to wait until pp. 152-153 before he
>>> gets to hear another song -, I could imagine that this, perhaps,
>>> has to do with the problems music itself is facing in our
>>> retromanic times. People don't read anymore - and certainly not in
>>> Pynchon novels like Vineland or Bleeding Edge! - and the music is
>>> just there to provide your mobile phone with a catchy ringtone or
>>> to present yourself on a Karaoke night.
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Here are the page numbers for the songs or fragments thereof from
>>> Beyond the Zero:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> 8-9, 11, 12, 14-15, 61-62, 66 ("Down the toilet, lookit me,/What a
>>> silly thing to do!/Hope nobody takes a pee,/Yippy dippy dippy doo
>>> ..."), 67, 68, 108 (Dutch traditional), 129/136 (Suso: In Dulci
>>> Jubilo), 163, 174-175, 177. This makes a song density of 14 tracks
>>> in 174 pages. The best songs are, imho, to come later on in the
>>> book. Here's one from pp. 229-230, sung by "rats 'n' mice", which
>>> I chose because of our recent debate on behaviorism:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> PAVLOVIA (Beguine)
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> It was spring in Pavlovia-a-a,
>>>
>>> I was lost, in a maze ...
>>>
>>> Lysol breezes perfumed the air,
>>>
>>> I'd been searching for days,
>>>
>>> I found you, in a cul-de-sac,
>>>
>>> As bewildered as I---
>>>
>>> We touched noses, and suddenly
>>>
>>> My heart learned how to fly!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> So, together, we found our way,
>>>
>>> Shared a pellet, or two ...
>>>
>>> Like an evening in some café,
>>>
>>> Wanting nothing, but you ...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Autumn's come to Pavlovia-a-a,
>>>
>>> Once again, I'm alone---
>>>
>>> Finding sorrow by millivolts,
>>>
>>> Back to neurons and bone.
>>>
>>> And I think of our moments then,
>>>
>>> Never knowing your name---
>>>
>>> Nothing's left in Pavlovia,
>>>
>>> But the maze, and the game ...
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> I wish you all a weekend with music!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> On 21.12.2015 12:57, Kai Frederik Lorentzen wrote:
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> Or at least also about music ... One may see bigger themes in
>>> Pynchon --- "the century's master cabal" (V, p. 226), technology,
>>> "the fork in the road America never took" (GR, p. 556), or (since
>>> Vineland) family --- but music, though this is rarely analyzed by
>>> the academic Pyndustry, plays a certain role in all of Pynchon's
>>> books ... And not just one genre of music, music in general ...
>>> There's an ongoing interest in classical music, from Stravinsky in
>>> V to Wagner and Puccini in Bleeding Edge, including, among other
>>> things, fictional Kazoo pieces from Vivaldi (TCoL49, chapter 1)
>>> and Haydn (GR, p. 711) ... But also - from McClintic Sphere's
>>> saxophone playing in V over Ragtime in Against the Day to the
>>> HipHop culture in Bleeding Edge - in African American music ...
>>> Plus lots of other musical phenomena popping up in Pynchon's books
>>> ... With Zoyd Wheeler we have, in addition to McClintic Sphere,
>>> another professional musician as male protagonist, here from
>>> Pynchon's second work phase ... And with Mucho Maas, who goes from
>>> DJ to record producer (and from acid to blow), there is a music
>>> related character as an indicator of cultural change connecting
>>> Pynchon 1 with Pynchon 2 ... Equally relevant: Pynchon's phrasing
>>> as a writer follows the musical criteria of flow, he's the
>>> auditive type of writer (- in contrary to more visually orientated
>>> authors like, for example, Ernst Jünger or Claude Simon) ...
>>> Especially obvious this becomes with the incorporation of songs
>>> into the novels, which is, on this world-literary level, as far as
>>> I can see unique ... What do the musicians on the list say? Is
>>> Pynchon - as one could perhaps say in analogy to formulations
>>> like 'writer's writer' and 'musician's musician' - a, well,
>>> 'musician's writer?' Let me know! ... "The old man was singing, in
>>> a fine, firm baritone:/ Every night is Christmas Eve on old East
>>> Main,/ Sailors and their sweethearts all agree./ Neon signs of red
>>> and green/ Shine upon the friendly scene,/ Welcoming you in from
>>> off the sea./ Santa's bag is filled with all your dreams come
>>> true:/ Nickel beers that sparkle like champagne,/ Barmaids who all
>>> love to screw,/ All of them reminding you/ It's Christmas Eve on
>>> old East Main." (V, pp. 9-10) ... Cheers!
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>>
>>> -
>>>
>>> Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=nchon-l
>>>
>>> - Pynchon-l / http://www.waste.org/mail/?list=pynchon-l
>>>
>>>
>>
>>
>> --
>> www.innergroovemusic.com
>>
>>
>
>
> --
> www.innergroovemusic.com
>
>
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