-
Orrin Hatch and John McCain, Hipsters
read more
Uh...
Not content to sit on the sidelines, longtime senator and one-time presidential hopeful Orrin Hatch has penned a song for his Senate buddy John McCain in hopes of helping his White House bid.
Really, he did.
Hatch - a Utah Republican who won a platinum award for helping co-write lyrics for a song that sold more than a million records - crafted a tune called "Together Forever" for the presumptive Republican nominee.
"Forever together / America is the land we're fighting for / There's a time in history / for a hero's destiny / together forever more," says Hatch's song, co-written with composer Philip Springer, famous for the Christmas song, "Santa Baby"...
"We'll see Barack Obama's Bruce Springsteen endorsement and raise them an Orrin Hatch," a [McCain] spokesman said.
What do the kids think?
[A]ccording to Hardball, while Hatch's office says he was aiming for an upbeat song that would appeal to the youth vote, the song doesn't mimic anything found on the Top 40 - or even the next 40.
Jason Mattera, spokesman for the conservative Young America's Foundation, says the lyrics are fine but the beats and tempo are "not appealing to young people.
"Hatch's heart is in the right place, but he has the wrong decade," Mattera says, noting that the message to attract young people is that liberalism oppresses people, stifles freedom and causes "pervasive destitution. I give him credit for trying, though," Mattera adds.
What, are you surprised he didn't say "I like it, it's got a good beat, you can march to it, I give it an 86?"
Really, though, it's hard to blame McCain (who was born in 1936) or Hatch (who was born two years earlier). Many people, myself included, think that one's love of music is heavily shaped by the music you experience as a child. And look at was was happening in music in 1936:
George Gershwin was still alive, Cole Porter was in his prime, Rodgers and Hart were collaborating, Leadbelly published "Goodnight, Irene," Count Basie and Nat Cole began their careers, and Benny Goodman was selling a bunch of records. It wouldn't be accurate to say, however, that Benny Goodman was tearing up the charts, because the Billboard Charts hadn't been created. In fact, the 45 single and the 33 1/3 LP hadn't been invented yet.
It wasn't a good year to be a Russian, as Uncle Joe Stalin was still collectivizing and purging, but it was a good year for Russian music: Prokofiev debuted Peter and the Wolf, Shastakovich wrote his Symphony No. 4 in C Minor, and Rachmaninoff wrote his Symphony No. 3.
That's all good stuff. But other than maybe Cole Porter, not much of that music is considered particularly hip by today's standards. So one can partially forgive Orin Hatch and John McCain for not being very hip; they didn't grow up in time for it to be easy for them to be hip.
For fun, though, lets look at what was happening musically in 1961, the year Barack Obama was born:
In 1961 the charts—yes, they had been around for some time by 1961—were topped by some great songs like Ben E. King's "Stand by Me" and "Spanish Harlem," the Miracles' "Shop Around," Patsy Cline's "I Fall to Pieces," the Marvelettes' "Please Mr. Postman," Etta James' "At Last," Roy Orbison's "Crying" and Ray Charles' "Hit the Road, Jack." John Coltrane released "My Favorite Things," Oliver Nelson released "The Blues and the Abstract Truth" and Dave Brubeck released "Take Five."
In 1961 Bob Dylan traveled to NYC to meet Woody Guthrie, and the Beatles were playing in Hamburg.
Oh, there was another significant musical event in 1961; the recordings of an almost forgotten delta bluesman by the name of Robert Johnson were released on the album King of the Delta Blues Singers. These old scratchy recordings were a big inspiration to future rock and rollers such as The Rolling Stones, Eric Clapton/Cream, Jimi Hendrix and Led Zeppelin.
The almost forgotten recordings, by the way, had mostly been recorded in 1936.
DHinMI
John McCain
Orrin Hatch
Music
Aural Violence
Thu, 24 Apr 2008 02:52:02 GMT
-
On the ground in the Lehigh Valley 3
read more
Yesterday I asked dozens of voters around the Lehigh Valley to talk about what they did and did not admire in the presidential candidates. I sought out areas where I thought I'd hear some of the harsher judgments on them.
What I didn't hear endorsed by even a single voter, Democrat or Republican, were any of those scandals that the traditional media has obsessed over during the last few months. Nobody mentioned "bittergate". Obama's relation to Ayers came up only once; an older couple in Allentown thought the Ayers allegations were confusing and irrelevant. The words "Bosnia" and "sniper" never came up at all.
It's not that I didn't evoke some negative opinions. One middle-aged voter in an up-scale Allentown neighborhood declared that Hillary will bring in socialism, and she said with what appeared to be pride that she couldn't think of a single positive thing to say about Obama. But even so, nobody cared to mention the bizarre "scandals" that have loomed so large in media coverage. In fact only a single voter thought the Philadelphia debate was anything but a waste of time.
Most of the people I spoke to want the traditional media to drop the trivial nonsense and start informing voters about the issues they do care about: the economy, Iraq, healthcare, the mortgage crisis, outsourcing jobs. Nearly everybody agrees that the country is in crisis, and they want to know what the plan is to fix the mess. They have the quaint notion that the traditional media ought to take an interest in that as well.
Well, I need to correct one statement I just made. An activist I met outside a polling place did say he'll never vote for Obama because of Rev. Wright. But he's a Redstate blogger, a self-described neocon whose main complaint about the Iraq war is that Bush did not "bomb Iraq into a parking lot". Otherwise a jovial enough Republican, but hardly typical of the other voters I met - none of whom approve of the war or occupation of Iraq. In fact, one woman who'd like to vote for McCain in November said she really hopes he'll change his mind about staying in Iraq because McCain's position is untenable. So I think the right-wing bloggers have a corner on the Wright "scandal" for now. The public as a whole doesn't seem to realize that it's supposed to care.
smintheus
2008
Pennsylvania primary
Subscribe with an RSS reader
Older News Archive
Add news to your web site
Earlier today, DHinMI 