Clancy Tucker's Blog: MUSIC

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12 June 2022 - THE SITE OF THE WOODSTOCK FESTIVAL

THE SITE OF THE

WOODSTOCK FESTIVAL

G'day folks,

Welcome to the dairy farm in upstate New York where nearly half a million people gathered for three days of peace and music in 1969.

On August 15th, 16th, and 17th, 1969, an estimated 450,000 people from all over America descended on Max Yasgur’s 600-acre dairy farm in Bethel, New York, for the Woodstock Music and Art Fair. The festival was billed as “An Aquarian Exposition in White Lake, NY: 3 Days of Peace & Music.”

It is hard to overstate Woodstock’s legend. It has gone down in history for its epic musical performances, the mind-blowing size of the audience, countless logistical and technical challenges, traffic jams, drugs, rain, mud, occasional nudity, and the hippie ideals of peace and love. It was, above all, a joyful celebration that stands as the defining moment of the 1960s counterculture generation.

For those three days, some of the greatest musicians in the country descended upon this rural Catskills town (and notably not the town of Woodstock, New York, located nearby.) They included Richie Havens, Sweetwater, Tim Hardin, Ravi Shankar, Arlo Guthrie, Joan Baez, Carlos Santana, the Grateful Dead, Creedence Clearwater Revival, Janis Joplin, Sly and the Family Stone, The Who, Jefferson Airplane, Joe Cocker, The Band, Blood, Sweat and Tears, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young, Sha Na Na, Jimi Hendrix, and many more.

Today, the historic music festival is marked with a small monument that offers a panoramic view of the original festival site. The site is adjacent to the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, which contains the Museum at Bethel Woods, which features displays and artifacts related to the Woodstock festival and the 1960s counterculture that it came to represent.

Clancy's comment: Ah, those were the days ...

I'm ...

16 September 2021 - THOMAS ARNE and 'RULE BRITTANIA'

THOMAS ARNE

and

'RULE BRITTANIA'

G'day folks,

Every year the Promenade Concerts are held at the Royal Albert Hall in London, culminating in the “Last Night of the Proms” – a patriotic (some would say jingoistic), flag-waving musical jamboree where the audience joins in lustily with perennial favourites such as Rule, Britannia!, Land of Hope and Glory and Jerusalem.

Composer Thomas Arne is responsible for setting the widely misunderstood Rule, Britannia! to music from words by the poet James Thomson.

He wrote it at a time in the 18th Century when Britain did not rule the waves – the Dutch, France and Spain possessed formidable fleets – but Thomson foresaw that by sticking to their guns, so to speak, the British could emerge as the world’s Number One naval power. “Rule, Britannia! Britannia, rule the waves,” he pleaded.

It was a message of hope and encouragement, much like excited sports fans today yell, “Come on!” when their team is pressing an advantage.

This, however, appears to be lost on many of the concert-goers, known as “promenaders” at the Royal Albert Hall. There, the words are inevitably rendered as “Rule Britannia! Britannia rules the waves”, which isn’t the same thing at all.

The missing commas and the substitution of “rules” for “rule” change the meaning completely and turn the phrase into imperialist triumphalism.

None of this detracts from the spectacle and fervour of the Last Night which, in recent years, has been shown simultaneously on giant screens in London’s Hyde Park and other venues across the country, not to mention the millions watching on television around the world.

And it’s largely thanks to Henry (later Sir Henry) Wood who became the first conductor of The Proms in 1895 and who built the repertoire as the series developed from year to year.

His bronze bust is brought out and placed in front of the organ at the start of each season.

Promenade concerts were originally held in London’s pleasure gardens and were so-called because the audience would stroll around as the musicians played.

There is no room to do that nowadays in the Albert Hall, which is packed for most of the prom concerts through the eight-week season.

But it is the Last Night that is the big draw. The best seats for the 2017 event were selling at the beginning of the year for £1,540 ($1,900) each. And that’s the official price – before the touts got their hands on them!

Clancy's comment: And the best of British luck to you all.

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17 February 2021 - THE BIRTH OF THE BEATLES - McCartney and Lennon

THE BIRTH OF THE BEATLES

- McCartney and Lennon -

G'day folks,

Welcome to some facts about the birth of a famous band.

On July 6, 1957, in the midst of a heavy heatwave then gripping Northern England (and all of Europe), 15-year-old Paul McCartney decided to attend the annual Woolton Parish Church Garden Fete. It wasn’t because he was an especially active church member, but rather in the hopes to meet girls at the event. He may have not met any girls, but he did happen to hear a high school band named The Quarrymen performing.

McCartney was immediately impressed by their sound, and after the show, he asked a mutual friend to introduce him to the band’s lead singer, John Lennon. You might think the two Liverpool teenagers would have probably met on some other occasion. But as much as they had in common, the two boys lived in different neighborhoods, went to different schools, and were nearly two years apart in age. McCartney also happened to have his guitar with him at the fair, and he managed to impress 17-year-old Lennon greatly with his skills. The latter invited him to join the band, and half of the Beatles was born.

Clancy's comment: What a great quartet.

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19 December 2018 - STEINWAY AND SONS – PIANOS

STEINWAY AND SONS

- PIANOS -

G'day folks,

Ever wondered who made the famous Steinway pianos? Read on ...

If you were to guess what the most intricate thing being made in America today is, chances are you wouldn’t imagine that it’s a piano. Almost entirely still hand made and assembled in Queens, New York after 160 years, Steinway pianos are known the world over. Lesser known, is the fact that Steinway & Sons shaped the history of Queens when they created an entire utopian village out of the marshlands we now call Astoria. At the Steinway factory, where a combination of decades old machines, and new, cutting-edge ones are still producing a 1000 instruments a year, discover the remarkable history of the family that made so much more than just pianos.

Walking into the elegant Steinway factory in Astoria, one of the first things you notice is what is missing– the sound of a piano. What does hit you however is the smell of sawdust, and the distant sounds of sanding, delicate hammering and wood being sawn. It’s more like walking into a master craftsman carpenter’s guild in old Europe rather than a modern factory in Queens.

It takes half a dozen careful hands to gently coerce the wood into the shape of a grand piano, using presses invented by Steinway & Sons themselves. The making of the rim is just the beginning of a journey from the lumberyard, to trimming the wood, making the bridge, notching, stringing, key weighing, regulating the action before being sent to the pounding room, where the piano is first played and endlessly tweaked to ensure perfection, before the case is finished. The entire process takes nearly a year.

Often, the secret techniques used to make a Steinway are passed down in the age old tradition from master craftsman to apprentice, generation after generation. Each stage of making the piano has the creator’s name written on it. Story has it that one old Steinway sent to Astoria for renovation was taken apart, only for one of the craftsmen to see his grandfather’s name chalked on part of the piano that been hidden from view since it was written there decades before.

The company had a remarkably humble beginning. An illiterate orphan from Wolfshagen, Germany called Heinrich Engelhard Steinweg started as a carpenter and cabinet maker. He began making his own instruments, particularly pianos, before migrating with his family to New York in 1850. He changed his name to Henry Steinway, creating Steinway & Sons the same year.From 1996 through 2013 the company traded on the stock exchange under the ticker symbol LVB, which stood for Ludwig van Beethoven. In 2013, the company was acquired and taken private by current owner Paulson & Company.

When the younger Henry Steinway reported on his first day at work to his father, he was told: “Henry, I am glad you are here. You are going to get a start where I did.” Henry, initially ecstatic, was soon puzzled as his father led him to the basement where he stopped by the maintenance foreman’s office, laconically stating “he’s yours” and walked away.

In 1866, Henry Steinway’s son William opened Manhattan’s grandest music venue. ‘Steinway Hall’ was four stories tall, faced in immaculate white marble, and designed by the Steinway’s themselves without hiring architects. It could house a full orchestra, had seating enough for 2,500 people, and was adorned with gas lighting throughout.

It became New York’s principal concert hall, home to the New York Philharmonic and was also used for public events such as lectures by Charles Dickens when he first came to America. Cleverly, concert goers had to walk through the showrooms en route to their seats, passing by the range of Steinway pianos for sale. As William Steinway remarked, “one concert on Saturday night sells pianos on Monday morning.”