Audacious Amount of Audio Appreciation

I sketched out a couple of paragraphs on what I enjoy listening to now, but then memories flooded in about the wide varieties of audio experience I have had during my life.

My earliest strong memories are listening to the Saturday serials on the radio: Captain Midnight, Sky King, and Tom Mix.  My brother and I did get our decoder whatevers and write a few “secret” messages.

The Cleveland Public Schools did bus elementary students to Severance Hall for matinee concerts of the Cleveland Orchestra.  I don’t remember any particular pieces, but I do remember falling asleep.  But the fine arts were not completely lost on me.  I think it was WDOK that broadcast some classical music.  I remember trying to decide whether I liked piano pieces or violin pieces better.  I think it was piano: more notes!

Radio was not all music.  We can’t forget sports and news.  Jimmy Dudley and Jack Graney broadcast the games of the Cleveland Indians on WJW and then other stations.  I can’t remember much of news broadcasts, but I remember my mother’s aunt wanting to be sure she didn’t miss Walter Winchell: “Good Evening Mr. and Mrs. America … and all the ships at sea…” She was so eager to hear every word of Winchell that she made us change the station five minutes before his program began.  One of my own favorites was “Ripley’s Believe It or Not”.

Then Rock ’n’ Roll exploded among teenagers.  I think I may have had a 45rpm of Bill Haley and the Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock”.  Elvis Presley followed with "Blue Suede Shoes" and "You Ain't Nothin' but a Hound Dog".  The British returned with another revolution: The Beatles!  I know I have an LP of "Yellow Submarine", but my favorite song was "Strawberry Lane".

The Boy Scout troop I was in had a scoutmaster who was a master of song.  We would probably do three or four songs at every meeting: "John Jacob Jingleheimer Schmidt", "Marching to Pretoria", and the "Worms Crawl In" among dozens of others.

I did try to join the choir in high school.  The music teacher played a note on the piano and asked me to repeat it.  End of audition!  Church choirs were far more generous.  Either it was not politic to turn volunteers down or it was just to increase the number of male voices.  Fifty years later I took voice lessons and made amazing improvement.  Thanks, Curt!

When I was in Italy, a taxi driver sold me a 45rpm with “Chi non lavora non fa l’amore” (“He who doesn’t work doesn’t make love”).  It was the lament of a striker who hadn’t worked two out of three days.  My real favorites in Italian pop were the San Remo Festivals.  Even after I moved to Sweden, I bought a few more.  One of the song titles I remember is “Baci, baci, baci” (“Kisses, kisses, kisses”)

Many people in the U.S. have talked about “dour Swedes”, but I met very few of these when I lived in Sweden.  Just listening to all the upbeat traditional dance music should dispel that notion.  One of my early linguistic mistakes was thinking that there was a popular song about crayfish (kräftor).  No, it was about no powers (krafter) could keep the singer away from his beloved.

Wherever we lived, we went to concerts and plays, either occasionally or by subscription: “Aida” at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome; operas in Swedish at Operan, symphonies, and park concerts in Stockholm; Philadelphia orchestra; Guthrie in Minneapolis; and Lake Superior Chamber Orchestra in Duluth.  This is only a partial list of what we found enticing enough to buy tickets for.  Reading the Reader Weekly listings, I bet one could find three musical events to choose from each night of the week.

Over the years we have accumulated a wide variety of music, whether on LPs or CDs.  Our stereo system seems to be failing, and so we listen to fewer LPs.  CDs we can play on our computers (for now).  The question is should we have the LPs converted, or is it cheaper to by new CDs or download the albums from iTunes.

When we drove to Madison, Chicago, or other points east, we would listen to Wisconsin Public Radio (WPR).  Besides the classical music, they had a program called “To the best of our knowledge” (“TTBOOK”).  It was mostly interviews with authors whose books related to the two subjects of the week.  Since I could also get an WPR station clearly at our cabin, I would often make a point of listening to some part of the broadcast.

Then I discovered that podcasts for TTBOOK were available from iTunes.  Now I listen to one hour in my car on the way to our cabin and one hour on the way back.

I use other podcasts to try to drown out the intrusive music at the Essentia Health Center: “Godmorgon Världen” from Swedish Radio, “Science” from American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the French version of United Nations Radio.

Interestingly,  I almost always have some aural accompaniment outside the house, whether MPR or a podcast, but I almost never listen to the radio in the house.

Enjoy whatever you like, but please don't insist I listen too.  I shouldn't hear your earbuds over mine, your car radio over mine, or your concert in the park over my stereo in the parlor.

Also posted in the Reader Weekly at http://duluthreader.com/articles/2015/07/09/5610_audacious_amount_of_audio_appreciation

What do you think of the Twins? Who had twins?

The title is a more culturally sensitive version of a reply to “What do you think of the Indians?”, meaning the Cleveland Indians.  That reply, censored here, was given by an adult I knew while in high school, an adult who didn’t have much interest in professional sports.

Then, I did, I rooted for the Cleveland Indians and the Cleveland Baron’s, a professional hockey team.

Going back to my elementary school days, I remember listening to Jimmy Dudley and someone else announcing the Indians’ games on WJW.  When I was in junior high I gave up a job in a grocery store at 60 cents an hour for the uncertainty of being a vendor at the Cleveland Stadium.  But I got to watch a lot of baseball games.

A couple of decades ago, I could still recite most of the usual lineup.  Now all I remember is Al Rosen at shortstop (whose name we took for our Class F team), Ken Keltner(sp) at third base, Larry Doby in right-field, and Thurston(?) something in center-field.  The only pitchers I can remember are Bob Feller, Bob Lemon (who sometimes hit home runs), and Don Black (who was hit in the head).  I may have also seen a game with Satchel Page.

I can still recite the names of the eight teams in each league.  In the American it was Boston Red Sox, New York Yankees, Philadelphia Athletics, Washington Senators, Cleveland Indians, Detroit Tigers, Chicago White Sox, and St. Louis Browns.  In the National it was the Boston Braves, New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers, Philadelphia Phillies (I had to think about that one), Pittsburgh Pirates, Cincinnati Reds, Chicago Cubs, and St. Louis Cardinals.  I don’t know how many teams there are now and who has moved where, except the Senators became the Minnesota Twins.

I rooted for the Cleveland Barons, mostly because my mother knew the wife of the hockey reporter for one of the Cleveland papers.  He would give us tickets once in awhile.  Those were the days when many players went bare-headed, but they high-sticked and slammed each other into the boards, and sat in the penalty box.

When I was in high school I went to most of the football games and basketball games but I don’t think I ever went to a school baseball game.  Some of the players and band members were my friends.  Like my wrestling career, the football team lost more games than they won.  With some of the same players, the basketball team went to the state championships a couple of times.  I think the difference was the coaches – one older and rigid, the other younger and flexible.

When I went to Case as an undergraduate, I went to few if any football or basketball games.  That was in part because I was a commuter student and had a grocery store job that occupied most of my Saturdays.  When I came back as a graduate student, I don’t think I had much interest.

When I went to Ohio Wesleyan University, I attended a few football and basketball games, but I just didn’t have that “school spirit”.

In my first five-year stay in Minnesota, I don’t remember attending any professional sports events.  I did play on a church softball team, but certainly was not a stellar player.

When I worked in Italy, many of my co-workers were enthusiastic soccer fans.  At World Cup time it was amusing to watch the bantering and betting between my Italian and German co-workers.  I still remember the cheer, “Dai Azzuri”, loosely, “Go Blues”, Azzuri being the name of the national team.
The last two sports events I remember watching on TV were the 1987 World Series and the Winter Olympics in Norway.

Living in Minnesota, of course we cheered for the Twins.  However, I remember feeling sorry for the Cardinals as they dejectedly walked off the field after losing the seventh game.  But, hey, Cardinal fans, think how far they did get!

I remember seeing the nighttime opening spectacle at the Oslo Olympics and watching some of the ski races.  Was that the Olympics that “La Bomba” (“the bomb”) was a highly rated ski-jumper?  I don’t remember how well he did, but he was something to watch coming down the chute and into the air.

Now I’m a very reluctant spectator.  My son-in-law is a big sports fan and watches many games.  When I visit during a game I go read a book or work on my laptop.

The Essentia Fitness Center forces its member to watch sports.  Last year they installed flat screen TVs in three places.  Two of them are on the Sports Center.  I do my best to ignore them, but it is hard when they are in my line of sight.  Thank goodness, the sound is not on to compete with the overly loud background music.  I’m sure my figures are wrong, but it seems that it is one minute of sports action, two minutes of discussing the action , and three minutes of commercials.  How many times must I watch “Flo the Progressive Girl”?

Also published in the Reader Weekly, 2014-02-06, http://duluthreader.com/articles/2014/02/06/2872_what_do_you_think_of_the_twins_who_had_twins

Blasé about sports

When I was in high school in Cleveland, an adult I knew, when asked what he thought about the Indians, exclaimed, "There's Indians in town? Run for your lives!"

Now I have the same so what attitude toward sports. With the demands of the Minnesota Vikings to have the taxpayers fund a new stadium for them, I say,

The Vikings of olden times plundered states.
The Vikings of Minnesota plunder the state.

or "There's Vikings in town? Hang on to your wallet!"

Another argument I've seen is that the taxpayers of Minnesota are being asked to pay over a billion dollars to a billionaire for a bar for 50,000 drunks.

If so many are calling for governments to live within their means, why can't sports teams live within their means?