Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs: XVIII. Homeless Wassail

And here's the Manna Tease singing the song "Homeless Wassail":

Please "like" the Manna Tease on facebooks.
Homeless Wassail is a song by Ian Robb, but we heard it from a Christmas mix in a beautiful version by Finest Kind. The only cover on Spotify is by Broadside Electric. Here's our full Infinite Playlist of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs (listen on random!)
Lyrics:

HOMELESS WASSAIL
(Ian Robb)
"Wassail, wassail,all over the town,
Our cup is white and our ale is brown"
But huddled on the iron grate
we poor and hungry curse our fate. 

No wassail bowl for such as these
No turkey scraps, no ale nor cheese,
This Christmas Eve our heart's desire
Is a bottle of gin and a trashcan fire. 

Good Christian, mind, as home you go
With dreams of holly and mistletoe
That the holly bears a dreadful thorn
For those who wake to a frozen dawn. 

Oh, where is He, that holy child
Once born of Mary, meek and mild?
And whither peace, goodwill to men
Now and forevermore, amen? 

All ye who dine with face aglow
In Reninensi atrio (in the Queen's hall---Latin)
Pray pause awile at pleasure's door
And sup some sorrow with the poor. 

"Wassail, wassail,all over the town,
Our cup is white and our ale is brown"
This cold and hunger, pain and care
Sweet Jesus Christ, it's hard to bear. 

copyright Ian Robb/SOCAN 

Chords as we play them:
amin G emin
amin emin/B C D
amin G emin
amin emin/B C D 

C G emin
amin emin/B C D
C G emin
amin emin/B C D

Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs: XI. The Bitter Withy

This English folk band Kerfuffle's "Midwinter album" Lighten the Dark is amazing, my favorite new discovery in this non-overplayed Christmas music project. Here's them playing The Bitter Withy live:

I love the "God Rest Ye Merry Gentleman" in that funky mode in the middle (technically overplayed, it's true.) It seems Kerfuffle has broken up & the sexy accordion player has joined the girly band Lady Maisery. Here's the spotify link for their awesome take on I Saw Three Ships Come Sailing In, & here's The Bitter Withy from Lighten the Dark. Here's our lengthy spotify mix Infinite Non-Overplayed Christmas Playlist (listen on Random!)

W.O.S. - "What's Op, Sammy?" - Sam Amidon's Tumblr

If you're not following Sam Amidon's new tumblr blog, I recommend it. It's good to see him bloggifying again. Mr Amidon is a folksinger, movie star, and mid-level Virgin Airlines executive. (He & I were in the legendary Liberal Arts college band Radiohead a decade ago - not to be confused with the British band - so if you ever see posters around Westchester County maintaining "RADIOHEAD WILL REUNITE!" that's the reason.)

This was a good series from W.O.S. (which I believe stands for "What's Op, Sammy?") He responded to several e-mails he received intended for other S. Amidons:

Three Years Ago: There Were Alligators in the New York Sewers

Moving into 2008 for our feature Three Years Ago, where we re-post a hot post from EXACTLY THREE YEARS AGO:

_____________________________________________________

Jan Harold Brunvand, in his famous book on urban legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker (1981), debunks most of the teenagey scary-story myths on which he reports. One of the most bizarre ones tho, about alligators in the New York City sewers, he finds corroborative evidence proving true. The standard urban legend was that kids all over the city had bought baby alligators (imported for sale or brought back from vacation from Florida), &, when they grew too big or dangerous, flushed them down the toilets. Whereupon, they grew to giant, blind, sometimes albino, rat-eating, secret monsters (the story, like all urban legends, has many variants). Thomas Pynchon - another reclusive blind, albino monster - elaborates in an episode from his novel V (1963):

Did he remember the baby alligators? Last year, or maybe the year before, kids all over Nueva York bought these alligators for pets. Macy's was selling them for fifty cents; every child, it seemed, had to have one. But soon the children grew bored with them. Some set them loose in the streets, but most flushed them down the toilets. And these had grown & reproduced, had few of rats & sewage, so that now they moved big, blind, albino, all over the sewer system. Down there, God knew how many there were. Some had turned cannibal because in their neighborhood the rats had all been eaten, or had fled in terror.

There is also the Alligator Patrol, which hunts them down. Brunvand then describes 1960's legends about a potent "White Weed" which grows "lushly in the sewer because of the nutrients," (pg. 92), but people are deterred from harvesting because of the alligators. As I said, he dismisses as having no origin most of the legends he describes in the book. But this one, remarkably, can be linked back to newspaper stories from the 1930s (this headline from the New York Times, February 10th, 1935):

ALLIGATOR FOUND IN UPTOWN SEWER

Youths Shoveling Snow Into Manhole

See the Animal Churning in Icy Water

SNARE IT AND DRAG IT OUT

Reptile Slain by Rescuers

When It Gets Vicious-

Whence It Came Is Mystery

The article continues with the full story. Furthermore, there are public works records corroborating the existence of alligators:

According to a former New York City Commissioner of Sewers there was a problem with alligators in the sewers in the mid 1930s. In his book on the development of utilities beneath Manhattan Island, titled The World Beneath the City, Robert Daley claims that recurrent reports of alligators in the sewers finally forced Sewer Commissioner Teddy May to investigate the situation personally. May told Daley that he did find alligators (averaging two-feet long); he immediately launched a campaign to eradicate them [like Pynchon's Alligator Patrol!], & was able to announce their extermination by 1937. [Brunvand, pg. 97]

There's more info, & a host of popular culture references, at this wikipedia article: Sewer Alligators.

''It's crazy, you know,'' Diana Odetalla said. ''I don't know where alligators come from. Out of nowhere, I guess.''

-NY Times, "Alligator is Found", June 29th, 1997.

Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs No. XXI

Gail Collins had an awesome tangent in the New York Times this morning in defense of folk music:

“You can watch your property right here being towed away by the Russians! Back to Moscow!” If the former Red Menace wants to “hold hands and sing ‘Kumbaya,’ ” [Senator James Risch of Idaho] added, “Well, that is fine. But give us back our stolen military equipment.”

When was it that the singing of “Kumbaya” became a shorthand for weenieness? “Kumbaya” is an excellent campfire song, especially for groups that border on tone-deafness and don’t know the words to anything. I remember singing it in Girl Scout camp with friends who emerged unscathed and became conservative Republicans. Some may be writing letters protesting the New Start treaty at this very moment. Please, give “Kumbaya” a break.

Which brings us to Nowell Sing We Clear (with Tony Barrand), who put out several excellent albums with traditional Christmas carols in the '80s & '90s. The Rag Dance gets started around 3 minutes into this video:

Happy 70th Birthday Phil Ochs~!

The great folksinger Phil Ochs would have turned 70 today. (He hanged himself at age 35, following a period of depression in which he believed he was a man named John Butler Train who had murdered Phil Ochs.) Ochs was the vintage Greenwich Village protest singer. Happy Birthday! Here's a smattering of songs:

"Here's to the State of Mississippi" is one of my favorite songs, incurably dated, but still powerful:

	Phil Ochs - Here's to State of Mississippi .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

And here's a website with lyrics and chords, if you want to sing a Phil Ochs song today. It's also what would have been my grandmother Helen Barnes Welsch's 98th birthday!

Advent Calendar of Non-Overplayed Christmas Songs No. VII

I couldn't find a recording of Jean Ritchie singing "There was a pig went out to dig" anywhere on the internet, but here's the great folksinger singing another Decemberry song "Wintergrace":

Otherwise, I recommend her 1959 album Carols for All Seasons, which includes the forgotten Christmas carol "There was a pig went out to dig." (Links to the iTunes store.) Here's the lyrics:

There was a Pig went out to dig
Chris-I-mas Day, Chris-I-mas Day
There was a Pig went out to dig
On Chris-I-mas Day in the morning!

There was a Cow went out to plough,
. . . &c.
There was a Sparrow went out to harrow,
. . . &c.
There was a Crow went out to sow,
. . . &c.
There was s Sheep went out to reap,
. . . &c.
There was a Drake went out to rake,
. . . &c.
There was a Minnow went out to winnow,
. . . &c.

The Swell Season for Arnophilia

I got a phone call midday Tuesday (in Berkeley, CA) from an 'unknown' number, & it was Sam Amidon calling from Oxford, England, looking for recommendations for a pub to sit & read in for a while! I navigated him to the Turf Tavern, which is hidden up a windy alley & has a beautiful beer garden & rare ales on tap. Here's a video he just posted of him singing at the Royal Festival Hall (in Bangladesh I think).

Ultimate Corn Whiskey Mix: "How to Make Corn Liquor" - Exclusive Special Mix Tape Was Lost

With pride & after much deliberation, this blog returns to the mix universe with a masterpiece, the most excellent corn liquor mix imaginable of all time. Even if you do not have access to good American moonshine, it should also be one of the finest mixes for bourbon drinking or for frustrating morning commutes.

(Listen to it by clicking on the play button right there....)

Please download the full mp3 free here.

PS: If you're not averse to the whiskey tax, I strongly recommend the Platte Valley Corn Whiskey from Weston, Missouri, pictured above. I don't know how widely it's available, but I found a jug for sale at Monument Liquors in Concord, California. Healthy amounts aided the creation of this mix.

The Tale of Big Toothie

The Tale of Big Toothie
Comprised of Five Word Poems by Minnie Molly Mary
Photo-journalism by David Magnolia Ficke
Sangria provided by S. Sandrigon
And a Special Appearance by Darren Southworth Peoples as the outlaw Rocky "Antibiotic-Resistant" Goner-realism
Five Nights Only!
Free Hair Tonic & Cold Sore Eradication thrown in for parties of five or more.

The Tale of Big Toothie
Part I.

big toothie was a thug

he resembled a good-looking dolphin

both parents were feral mathematicians

big toothie always wore white

especially with tooth-fairy on sunday's

they would jump chain-link fences

tooth-fairy laughed at big toothie

big toothie shook his fist

"i'll get you my pretty!....

if the jellyfish don't first"

Part II.

big toothie threatened death often

fortunately the jellyfish never obliged

child services watched them constantly

Part III.

big toothie rocked the party

oftentimes his bow-tie strangled him

instead of crying he choked

this he did not like

big toothie has low tolerance

"off with this accoutrement immediately,

bow-tie's disturb the chest halo...

and this little shirt, too!"

teeth have nipples, everyone wondered?

"what do they taste like?"

tooth-fairy raised her hand first

"they taste like vegan haggis!"

Part IV.

big toothie wanted to murder her

he was a reasonable tooth

conversely, pixies were riotous cheerleaders

tooth-fairy's parents sported grog blossoms

mother wore christmas ass-less chaps

father was a rhinestone cowboy

Part V.

big toothie got a cavity

"curses to all the truffles....

beastie evil fairy perversed me

tooth fairy's had rich taste

"screw dental hygiene" says she

"WELL, it's MY calcium appendage!"

fairy's liked corrupting god's gifts

afflicted, big toothie played dead

unfortunately, sleeping gives cavities strength

being an alcoholic doesn't help

"an inevitable dr. death visit!"

Part VI.

doctor's office smelled of warthogs

dr. death wore air jordan's

his parents were tight rope hula-hoopers

his handlebar moustache was frosted

sadly the prognosis was negative

"this chunk here must go!"

(speaking of the right nipple)

"refusal would mean impending gangrene"

to be continued!!??

Song: Bacon in Gold

Whilst prominent symbologist blogger Gottlob K. Bremselhäcker, M.A. (Oxon.) was visiting from somewhere near Eurasia, he & Dr Benway penned this song about bacon in gold. We just set down a few synth ocarina tracks for it &, with myself & Mrs Benway, recorded the vocals last night, as a single for their Incorrigible Runt-chestra. An epic, the total lyrics sprawl past ten verses, & growing: this single merely a best-of. This mp3 can be downloaded here.

Hindustani Vegetariani Doggerel

Behold the mighty Englishman
He rules the Indian Small,
Because being a meat-eater,
He is five cubits tall.

The explanation, from "Clothing the political man: A reading of the use of khadi/white in indian public life" by Dipesh Chakrabarti, Postcolonial Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, 2001:

Gandhi quotes [this] 'doggerel of the Gujarati poet Narmada' that was popular 'amongst the schoolboys'. The doggerel captures the colonial nationalist understanding of the role of the body in the construction of political power.

The Legend of Stray Dog No. 242

On the Black Sea beaches in Varna, Bulgarity, last month, a cute medium-sized white dog befriended us, with an eartag numbered "242". We cast aside aspersions of touching strays & gave him a lot of love. We learned a bit about the things this dog did & did not like:

Things Two-For-Two did not like:
-Bicycles.
-Small children.

Things Two-For-Two did like:
-Being scratched on the rump.
-Our party of travelers.

Miss Proinseas was very taken with this dog, & vaguely schemed to sneak him out of the country. He followed us for a long time, but eventually went his way. Here are some photographs from her scribd book "Beautiful to Forget", stills grabbed from her camcorder:

A day or so later, at an outdoor pub that served Guinness along one of the main boulevards in Varna, in a different neighborhood than the beaches where we earlier saw the cur, we were admiring some other non-stray dogs. I believe we even toasted to #242. A few moments later, our couchsurfing host Mr Yavor said "you know there's a dog underneath your bench." And there he was, asleep underneath my bench! He acted very nonchalant about our re-acquaintance, but we couldn't believe it. I told Miss Proinseas, things happen in threes, & since we saw him twice, we were sure to run into him again. She said, it could not be, because our time in Varna was over & she was journeying North across the Danube & by plane back to another continent.

But I was right! One of our traveling party, Martichka, went back to Varna a few weeks later & saw Two-For-Two, & sent this photograph as corroboration:

If to Varna you are going, please send word from Stray Dog No. 242.

Folk Music: All Over YouTube

A month ago, I had posted a comment on this YouTube video, of a trio of young people "sing[ing] number 276 out of the blue book (Bridgewater). We number three, so the [treble] section is left out. This is the conclusion of a trip back from the 108th annual Southwest Texas Singing Convention, held at Bethel Primitive Baptist Church in McMahan, Texas, 30 March 2008." I wrote:

Spectacular,
And, as far as I can tell, Youtube's only recording of 276.

Today, someone replied,

Not any more, since May 8 there's a clip at watch?v=A7CWwgt_2IM Great song! This trio deserves a milkshake--

In short, every page of the Sacred Harp is gradually being added to YouTube, making the website a valuable compendium. (That song, Bridgewater, composed by Lewis Edson in 1782, is also printed on page 276 of the red book, The Sacred Harp.) Just search for Sacred Harp & the page number you desire to hear. So far, I appear to remain YouTube's only recording of 68b, but that could all change by July or August.

In related news: I was discussing Bulgarian folk music with a Bulgarian coworker of mine. (His attitude: "Bulgaria is shit. That is why I'm here working shit jobs.") When I told him there was a growing scene of interest in Bulgarian folk music, & that I had friends who study it in Los Angeles & will be traveling to the Balkans to perform, &c, he was somewhat surprised, but mysteriously asked: "What kind of Bulgarian folk music? The good kind or the shit kind?" I said, you know, the women dancing in a circle, et cetera, & he said "Oh, good, the good kind."

I challenged Mr Quill, currently living in Bulgaria for undisclosed purposes, to, with all haste, find some of the "shit kind" & send it back. He writes:

When Bulgarians say folk music, they actually mean chalga. This was confusing for me for a while. Although, he may have been referring to Folklore, which is also awesomely shitty. Maybe stuff like this:

It's true, it's a bit Andy Williams, but anything with people dancing in a circle in 7/8 time isn't shitty by my strict defecation meter. I could see how young people growing up in any country would cringe at cheesy televised displays of their cultural heritage, & perhaps prefer, for instance, 1980s American death metal. Thank God American television contains no traditional American folk dance & hymnody, accompanied by synthesizers & sweeping camera shots - our marginalization is again a blessing. Let them do to Sousa what they will.

Travis John - Printable Shape-Note Score & Demo Recording

I finally have a pass-aroundable score for Travis John, a shape-note arrangement of a folk song about a fallen Iraqi Soldier, written in 2003 by Kate Power. My original post was here. Click on the bottom of the picture to see it large & print it. Or download a pdf here.

Tracy Grammer sings this song & passes out a copy of the music, to spread as a quiet memorial-style folksong protest. Hence, the shape-note arrangement, more so than any other music, capable of reaching across idealogical divides. A history of the song can be read here. A history of Shape-Note Music can be read at this wikipedia entry. A recording of myself singing all five parts accompanied by a 1990s synthesizer can be heard & downloaded right here:

Mining for forgotten Jesus jokes

I was just sifting thru some of the local folklore archives on campus. There are file cabinets full of jokes. Here's two harmless Jesus ones:

Three wise men were crossing a field on their way to Jerusalem. One of them stepped on a rake in the field, which swings up & hits him in the face. The injured wise man, yells 'Jesus Christ!' Another one retorts quickly, 'Great name for the kid!'

-Andy H_ (Age 21, Kansas City, MO) told to Prof. Pete S_, 14 December, 1965

Another variant recorded was “That beats the hell out of Irving!” (San Francisco, 1969). However, the archivist weirdly feels the need to explain that, because the wise man couldn't have known the expletive “Jesus Christ” before Jesus was born, that “Irving” must have been an early Jewish curse. Not sure I agree with that scholarship.

Jesus & Moses sit together & are talking about the good old days. They decide after long debate, that they should do some of their old stuff again. So they go down to the water, & Moses flings open his arms to the sea. Sure enough, it parts right open. Jesus walks out on the water, but starts sinking slowly, & finally he has to swim back to the shore. He goes out, & says 'What happened? Why can't I do that anymore?' & Moses says, 'The last time you tried that you didn't have those holes in your feet.'

-Told by Laurie M____ (Student, Berkeley, CA) to D.G., 17 October, 1974

There Were Alligators in the New York Sewers

Jan Harold Brunvand, in his famous book on urban legends, The Vanishing Hitchhiker (1981), debunks most of the teenagey scary-story myths on which he reports. One of the most bizarre ones tho, about alligators in the New York City sewers, he finds corroborative evidence proving true. The standard urban legend was that kids all over the city had bought baby alligators (imported for sale or brought back from vacation from Florida), &, when they grew too big or dangerous, flushed them down the toilets. Whereupon, they grew to giant, blind, sometimes albino, rat-eating, secret monsters (the story, like all urban legends, has many variants). Thomas Pynchon - another reclusive blind, albino monster - elaborates in an episode from his novel V (1963):

Did he remember the baby alligators? Last year, or maybe the year before, kids all over Nueva York bought these alligators for pets. Macy's was selling them for fifty cents; every child, it seemed, had to have one. But soon the children grew bored with them. Some set them loose in the streets, but most flushed them down the toilets. And these had grown & reproduced, had few of rats & sewage, so that now they moved big, blind, albino, all over the sewer system. Down there, God knew how many there were. Some had turned cannibal because in their neighborhood the rats had all been eaten, or had fled in terror.

There is also the Alligator Patrol, which hunts them down. Brunvand then describes 1960's legends about a potent "White Weed" which grows "lushly in the sewer because of the nutrients," (pg. 92), but people are deterred from harvesting because of the alligators. As I said, he dismisses as having no origin most of the legends he describes in the book. But this one, remarkably, can be linked back to newspaper stories from the 1930s (this headline from the New York Times, February 10th, 1935):

ALLIGATOR FOUND IN UPTOWN SEWER

Youths Shoveling Snow Into Manhole

See the Animal Churning in Icy Water

SNARE IT AND DRAG IT OUT

Reptile Slain by Rescuers

When It Gets Vicious-

Whence It Came Is Mystery

The article continues with the full story. Furthermore, there are public works records corroborating the existence of alligators:

According to a former New York City Commissioner of Sewers there was a problem with alligators in the sewers in the mid 1930s. In his book on the development of utilities beneath Manhattan Island, titled The World Beneath the City, Robert Daley claims that recurrent reports of alligators in the sewers finally forced Sewer Commissioner Teddy May to investigate the situation personally. May told Daley that he did find alligators (averaging two-feet long); he immediately launched a campaign to eradicate them [like Pynchon's Alligator Patrol!], & was able to announce their extermination by 1937. [Brunvand, pg. 97]

There's more info, & a host of popular culture references, at this wikipedia article: Sewer Alligators.

''It's crazy, you know,'' Diana Odetalla said. ''I don't know where alligators come from. Out of nowhere, I guess.''

-NY Times, "Alligator is Found", June 29th, 1997.

Quotes: December 2007 & Beyond the Infinite

..seize this window of opportunity.

-Mixed metaphor from a coalition of British corporations responding to climate change

Steve Martin, in his memoir of his early career as a stand-up comedian, writes that he used to get a laugh by claiming that in Bananaland it's true both that all chairs are green & that no chairs are green ("In the Bird Cage," October 29th). "I loved implying that the one thing I believed in was a contradiction," he writes. Actually, those claims are not contradictory: if there are no chairs, both claims are true. (The negation of "All chairs are green" is, rather, "There is at least one chair that is not green.") I would like to think that his audience included some logicians who cracked up at the thought of a chairless Bananaland.

-Alexander George, Professor of Philosophy, Amherst College, Mass.
The New Yorker's The Mail, December 24th, 2007.

1) No interesting poems are unpopular among people of real taste
2) No modern poetry is free from affectation
3) All your poems are on the subject of soap bubbles
4) No affected poetry is popular among people of real taste
5) Only a modern poem would be on the subject of soap bubbles
THEREFORE: All your poems are uninteresting.

-The famous Lewis Carroll syllogism, which Martin quotes as being an inspiration for some of his early absurdist stand-up comedy.

Ever hear the Urban Legend about the lady who puts her poodle in the microwave to dry it off? Here's a folklorist matter-of-factly discussing the physics of it:

Around 1976 I began to hear the microwave-over variants, & I inserted the following summary example from Utah into the second edition (1978) of my text-book The Study of American Folklore: "[a] child ... accidentally sprinkles the cat with a hose & puts it into a microwave to dry out, whereupon the cat explodes (p. 111)." The phrase in the Arizona text, of the animal being "cooked from the inside out," more accurately describes the molecule-jiggling effect of microwaves than the account of the pet exploding in my text (the only way I have heard it). I am told, however, that eyes might possibly pop when bombarded with microwaves, just as eggs or potatoes are said to do if inserted into an oven whole. People's notions about what would happen to a living creature caught in a microwave oven are doubtless colored by a vague fear of the new devises and intensified by such things as the warning signs posted on public-access microwave ovens and the news stories about microwaves beamed by the Soviets into our foreign embassy. Whatever those mysterious invisible waves may do to a person - or to a pacemaker, as the posted warnings imply - they certainly would not be healthy for the family pet. The animal would surely cook & die in the oven, so the fear is quite realistic.

-Jan Harold Brunvand, The Vanishing Hitchhiker: American Urban Legends & Their Meanings (1981), pg. 63.
This is a tall tale which Myth Busters, for liability reasons, will never be able to debunk.

If you do not own a copy of John Hodgman's "Almanac of Complete World Knowlege", The Areas of My Expertise, may I suggest it as a Christmas Present to yourself, or as a gift to someone who lives in the same house as you. In the section on "How to write a book", he offers this advice:

When writing, please avoid these failed palindromes:

Slow speed: deep owls
Drat That Tard
Two Owls Hoot Who Owls Hoot Too (Owt)
Sour candy and Dan C.
Roused Desire still lisps: Arise! D.
A man, a plan, a kind of man-made river, planned.
Hobos! So!
Eh, S'occurs to Me to Succor She
Tow a What? Thaw!