Mathematical Institute Bulletin: Song of the Week

We'll be home tonight by the light of the silvery moon. And my heart's a-thumpin' like a mandolin a-plunkin' a tune. When I get home, I'm fixin' to stay. So, whip-crack-away, whip-crack-away, whip-crack-away.

Also see Short Stories 1.

When your Song of the Week editor's history teacher got bored of teaching history (a regular occurrence) he would play his pupils music instead. Often it was jazz, but sometimes a guy called Leonard Cohen. We weren't keen. This Cohen guy seemed so miserable. 

But in time the pupils got older.

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As each generation grows up, it revisits the culture of its youth. So now is the Millennials' moment as those aged c30-45 are in positions of influence and have greater spending power. So the 1990s and early 2000s are hot in film, games and music. Even 'Baywatch' is being remade.

And meanwhile Britney has sold her back catalogue for $200m. Toxic.

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One of Rachmaninov's most famous pieces, this prelude, one of a set of five, was written when he was nineteen. Rachmaninov was himself a very accomplished pianist (he had very large hands which no doubt helped). He also loved fast cars and speedboats. 

And for the classical music buffs among you, on 16 January 1910 no lesser a figure than Gustav Mahler conducted Rachmaninov playing his own third piano concerto at Carnegie Hall, New York.

Bernadine, Joanne, Fern,  Martha (later of the 'Dancing in the Street' Martha and the Vandellas fame) and Shirley were the Fascinations, probably long forgotten. But Song of the Week never forgets.

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At the same time as Kurt Gödel was publishing his completeness theorem (1929) and working on incompleteness (see Short 1 above), Louis Armstrong was working tirelessly in Chicago, refining his trumpet playing and his scat style singing and producing some of the most influential records in early jazz. This is a Fats Waller-Andy Razaf song from the Broadway revue, 'Connie’s Hot Chocolates.'

'Like Jack Horner/In the corner/Don't go nowhere'. 

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Dr Robert, leader of the Blow Monkeys, took his name from a Beatles song. The comparison with the Fab Four ends there, but this is also fab.

You may think it sounds a like a pop/soul love song, but in fact it is a critique of the socio-economic conditions in Britain at the time.

Sometimes you have to let rip.

What happens when you combine writer's block, African polyrhythms, funk, electronics, stream of consciousness lyrics and Brian Eno as producer?

This happens. It was pretty crazy (and fantastic) for those of us just listening to punk and new wave.

Louis Thomas Hardin, better known as Moondog, was a blind avant-garde American musician who worked in a variety of genres including jazz and classical, invented a series of his own instruments, influenced a bunch of other composers including the American minimalists, made a lot of his living by begging and briefly appeared in a cloak and horned helmet (he loved Norse mythology) on Sixth Avenue in New York. 

But never mind that.

Every song needs a hook and rapper KRS-One nailed it with his siren whoops. Careful or you'll be 'whooping' too.

The song, with its attack on generations of police behaviour, is part of a rap tradition which arguably began with NWA's 'Fuk tha Police' in 1989. Not that all police were offended. Apparently in 2014 two Essex policemen were caught blasting it out of their patrol car.

Cormac McCarthy write a novel, later a film, entitled No Country for Old Men. He can't have had music country in mind. Eightysomethings the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney has just released new albums and Tom 'the Voice' Jones is still going strong at 86. Do eightysomethings in the audience still throw their underwear at him?

This is his two-minute masterpiece. Jimmy Page from Led Zeppelin says he played as a session musician on the track.

Jamaican reggae star Gregory 'the Cool Ruler' Isaacs was prolific with over 500 albums including compilations. He was also prolific at being arrested - 27 times prior to a 1982 jail sentence, and he was blighted by cocaine. But that voice.

With a lead singer who spent a lot of time during early gigs wearing an overcoat and standing on one leg playing the flute (he also owned salmon farms), 'Tull' fitted the Prog Rock stereotype perfectly. But like other Prog Rock bands, in-between the concept albums and overlong songs, there was the odd banger such as this.

For the musician - and mathematician - in you, it's written in asymmetric 5/4 time.

Not an old warhorse, but offering something new each time, as one critic said of 23 year-old American composer Samuel Barber's masterpiece. Barber himself got a bit tired of its success, the price of peaking early.

Leonard Bernstein takes it slowly as he conducts the New York Philharmonic. Contemplation for a summer's evening.

A song that dates back to the seventeenth century, here nailed by Joan Baez during the folk boom years of the early 60s. 

Like many a folk song, folks, it isn't a happy tale (Barbara denies a dying man's love and then dies of remorse herself), but ironically it is mentioned by seventeenth century diarist Samuel Pepys as being sung at New Year's celebrations, and features in the Christmas celebrations in the 1951 film version of A Christmas Carol. Who listens to lyrics?

There are songs that change your taste in music, especially when you are young and don't know what you like. They may not be great songs, but they do something. In your Song of the Week editor's teenage years, hearing this one lunchtime from an older boy's low-fi stereo made him realise that he didn't need to listen to Pink Floyd any longer.

Originally written by the Italian singer-songwriter Lucio Battisti, it was Patty's version that kicked off the song's fame. Amen Corner recorded the best known English language version (as fab as Patty's and she really is fab).

Let the video play for a few seconds and then Patty appears. Well worth the wait. One of Italy's best-selling artists, she is still going strong despite, or because, of six marriages.

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With the World Cup in week 2 of 200 (well, it will feel that way), there have been various lists of best and worst football songs, worst being an easier option. 

So in that spirit here is part of composer Michael Nyman's score for the documentary film about his beloved Queen's Park Rangers and their mercurial star Stan Bowles, a team that went so close to winning the old League 1 (now the Premier League) in 1976.

One of the first Ska revival songs and one of those tracks that you think sounds throwaway and then decades later isn't. Apparently the band weren't sure about it either.

A recording career that lasted only seven months in 1936 and 1937. Robert Johnson sings the blues.

For decades, any aspiring musician has had a Velvet Underground album to hand, usually the first one with the Andy Warhol 'banana' on the cover. But other albums have gems as well. Take this Lou Reed song about an ex who married someone else.

So Rod is 18 and him and his mates have formed a band and just won a local competition and been given a recording contract. But they need songs. So Rod, still only 18, does something unusual. He writes one himself. In those days, writing songs was usually something someone else did. Bands just performed.

A minor key classic. By an 18-year-old.

First recorded and co-written by "Screamin' Jay" Hawkins in 1956, this song got Nina's treatment nine years later. 

You'd better believe her.

It was tempting to include the whole of Prokoviev's symphonic tale for children based on a Russian folktale, but there's things to do, so I won't keep you children. David Bowie is our rather good narrator here alongside the The Philadelphia Orchestra.