Stravinsky derangement syndrome.

I'm so glad I just made a "Stravinsky" tag — prompted by Spike Jones's tale of squeaky shoes —because I do have old posts that I can add it to — 5 old posts! I'm strangely proud of that. I'm not in any way suggesting I have serious musical analysis anywhere in this blog's 13-year archive, but that's not the kind of thing I've ever tried to do, so I'm not looking for pride in anything I'm not ashamed of having failed to do. It's the miscellany that amuses me. I'm going for something between the extremes of subtle and corny.

Stravinsky comes up in a September 2016 post, "Donald Trump, Sex Pistol/The punk-rock appeal of the GOP nominee." A writer in The Atlantic — James Parker — talked about "the impression Stravinsky’s 'Sacre du Printemps' made in Paris in 1913, then shifts to 1976, when The Sex Pistols went on British daytime TV live," and I wrote:

But what's Parker's point here? Is Donald Trump like The Sex Pistols because he goes on TV and talks to his interviewers in a way they're not used to and that busts up their game? Well, sort of. Parker says he's that and simultaneously the guy watching at home getting pissed off at the Pistols, because he's using a "transgressive, volatile, carnivalesque" style with respect to conservative things like "chaos in our communities" and "barbarians at the border."...

Parker says (among many other things): "Trump’s speaking style is from the future, from a time to come when human consciousness has broken down into little floating atavistic splinters of subjectivity and superstition and jokes that aren’t really jokes." Of course, Parker loathes Trump, but that reminded me of something I said about Trump as an exemplar of a new way of speaking:



I'm seeing something more positive about the speaking style of the future (and not just because I do cruel neutrality but because I think I'm speaking in the style of the future too).

I just watched that Bloggingheads clip — from a month and a half before the election — and it's quite interesting in light of Trump's actually becoming President and taking his new way of speaking to the White House.

Following the tag further back into the archive, back in 2013, it was, "Picture yourself, 100 years ago, losing your composure over this":

"Cocktails for Two."

I'm watching that because for some reason, in the comments to "Let's explore ADHD with owls," tim in vermont said:

If you want to be a writer that Althouse enjoys, make sure you are born with the right voice, and I am not using ‘voice’ figuratively. You have to have that Spike Jones type voice mentioned in “Up On Cripple Creek” that tuned on Bessie.

Tuned on? I think that was supposed to be "turned on," but you know what they say, "tune on, turn in, drop over."

Anyway, I love the old Band song, with the lines "Now, me and my mate were back at the shack/We had Spike Jones on the box/She said, 'I can't take the way he sings/But I love to hear him talk.'

So I was looking for a video with Jones talking and not singing, and "Cocktails for Two" has no singing by Jones but it also has no talking. Ah, here — you can hear him talk:



He's explaining how he got the idea for his sound-effects and music routine watching Igor Stravinsky conducting "Firebird" while wearing squeaky shoes. Another thing I learned in that clip is that the opposite of "corny" is "subtle." Which makes perfect sense.

I didn't set an endpoint in that video, so watch as long as you want. Hang in long enough and — trigger warning — there will be Nazi salutes. Lots of them.



Now that just gave my heart a throb/To the bottom of my feet....