Songs Near and Far

This is a fun little song but what really caught me was the many times repeated lyric "I know I'm not the center of the universe, but you keep spinning round me just the same." My first dance teacher would often tell the men/leaders that in many of the moves they should be trying to stay in much the same spot and their partners were the ones who truly moved. "Your partner is a moon orbiting around you." Seeing this repeated in Heavy tickled my fancy. So it's a rare song that I paid for! Songs back in the day had simple overall structures ababa or aabbaa or something, but Heavy is more of a novel with beginning middle and end. Just enough repitition to hold it together.

My mother had a record with this and the Russian Sailor's Dance and a few other orchestral dances on it but this was definitely my favorite.  With that name how could it not be?  There's a little interlude in Disney's Fantasia where they talk about how some music is representational -- it's supposed to directly suggest a scene.  I always think of this as the epitome of such music.  The sound's of the bone clanking and the cock crowing at the end. It was only recently since I've taken up ballroom dancing that I see it as a very fast waltz.   The energy it would take to dance so fast and so long.  Even the dead would be exhausted at the end.

When I went to the planetarium at the Franklin Institute as a boy, the background music that played until the presentation began was The Planets by Gustav Holst.  So it brings back fond memories of days spent exploring the museum.  One of the more amusing exhibits was an exhibit where you could play tic-tac-toe against a machine.  It was based purely on relays and the best part about it was that you could cheat.  If you pushed two buttons simultaneously you could get two X's on your first turn and and with that advantage you can win! 

The theme for 12 O'Clock High was the piece that most inspired me to take up the flute.  It's very simple -- primarily a descending minor scale -- very simple.  But I had always loved it from when I first heard it when the series was on television.   Google informs me that the series ran from '64-'67 so I was between 8 and 11 years old at the time.  I really enjoyed seeing Robert Lansing commanding his bomber group. The plot seemed very sophisticated at the time compared to the other fare on the tube.  Later I saw the movie on whose music the TV theme was based.  That had Gregory Peck and -- doubtless influenced by the show -- I enjoyed that as well.  That shows up on cable from time to time, but I haven't seen the show in a long time.

This is the first song alphabetically in my list of favorite songs. With my decidedly limited exposure to the music world, it's no surprise that my introduction to it was in an Apple Ipod nano commercial. The gaiety of the music and simple dance was infectious and these days it's trivial to track down any piece one is interested in. The video is composed as apparently one long continuous shot. Not sure what trickery they use to get a horde of dancers to appear and disappear. But they all sure seem to be having fun. Feist does this song on Sesame Street in a very engaging way. They don't use all of the lyrics from the song. Maybe not surprising since one of the refrains is 1-2-3-4-5-6-9 and 10, which might not be the best. Apparently Feist is more interested in rhythm than mathematics!