Category: Music

What Makes This Work is Everything They’ve Left Out

This is my little Ozzy Osbourne memoriam. I’ve been meaning to post this for ages. The older I get, and the more times I listen to “War Pigs,” the more fascinated I become with how finely crafted it is, guiding and orchestrating the listener’s emotional states. Despite everything metal is purportedly about, it’s really defined by being an exercise and almost preternatural restraint and fine articulation:

You can follow everything that is happening; each phrase is stated clearly, so when things get hectic, you are still able to keep up. Almost more importantly, Black Sabbath let’s a lot of air in when it is needed, so that they can build up to a big and satisfying conflagration. They appreciate that silence is just as much an instrument as the guitars and drums and voice, and requires as fine an ear as any other instrument.

This is a live recording from 1970, when Ozzy was 21 years old—about a year year after recorded their debut album, and a few months after their follow-up (neither session lasted more than a couple days; for the first album, all the tracks were laid down in a single 12-hour session, and mixed the next day).

Imagine being able to hear and speak that clearly at 21. Imagine how much Osbourne subsequently was able to see and hear in the ensuing 55 years.

Our Most Important Thanksgiving Traditions 🦃💀

I repost this (or a variant of it) every year. This is a year, and so I repost. QED. After all, without our traditions, we are as shakey as a fiddler on the roof.

1. “What do Jews do on Thanksgiving?”

I wrote this essay a few years back, as a little bonus for the folks kind enough to have subscribed to my newsletter.  A good friend, Chris Salzman, was gracious enough to make something pretty of it. I relish the opportunity to reshare it each year, and I’m doing so once again.  Every word here is both true and factual—which is a harder trick than you’d think.

You’ll be 15 minutes into that Lesser Family Feast in Michigan when your mother-in-law will turn to you and ask:

“What do Jews do on Thanksgiving?”

You should be prepared for this sort of thing in Michigan. But even though I’m warning you in advance, you still won’t be prepared.…

(read more: IN MICHIGAN: A PRIMER, A TRAVELOGUE)

2. “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”

THANKSGIVING TURKEY GIVEAWAY! (WKRP in Cincinnati) from Tony DeSanto on Vimeo.

I repost this every year, because I love this gag, and because watching this on TV—and rehashing it with my mom and sisters each year—is one of my fondest holiday memories. But it is, in my humble, a damn-near perfect gag. That’s saying something, because I find single-camera laugh-track situation comedies almost entirely unbearable to watch. If you wanna read more of my thoughts on this specific gag and what it can teach writers, you can do so here.)

3. “…your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs; we will sell our bracelets by the road sides…”

4. ♬♫♪ “Caught his eye on turkey day / As we both ate Pumpkin Pie … ” ♬♫♪

5. The Alice’s Restaurant Massacre (in four part harmony)

I’m a child of the 1980s, so most of my nostalgic holiday memories are TV-related. 🤷‍♀️

I hope your T-day is good and sweet.  Gobblegobble! 🦃💀

A Holiday Tip for Gentile Schoolteachers with Jewish Students🎅🏿🕎

This is always a fraught time of year for grade-school music teachers: they wanna sing Xmas songs, most of the kids wanna sing Xmas songs. But they know that the constant wintertime Othering grinds away at the Jewish kids. (It’s even worse when teachers try to “include” you be singing the “Dreidel Song”; that song is crap, and we know it. The Xmas songs are way better.)

Back during the pandemic I eavesdropped on the most brilliant piece of classroom third-rail navigation I’ve ever seen in my life, and I wanna share it here again, for any that need help (esp. in what’s become an extremely fraught year for Jewish kids in America).

This was early in the pandemic, when our community was pretty locked down (my kids didn’t have in-person school for 400+ days). My daughter was then a third grader, and I was sitting nearby during her Zoom music class (we’ll leave for another day any discussion of the crime against humanity that was “grade-school Zoom music class”).

A few slides into the lesson, the teacher show a picture of an unremarkable middle-aged White dude, “Mitchell Parish.” 

Who the heck is Mitchell Parish? Well, he was born in Lithuania, and brought here by his parents, who were Jews (my daughter immediately perked up; Jews! Like us!) looking for a better life. Mitchell Parish was a popular songwriter in New York in the ‘20s, ‘30s, and ‘40s—and he wrote the lyrics to …

*advance to next slide* 

… “Sleigh Ride”!  

*kids sing “Sleigh Ride”* 

*EVERYONE IS A WINNER!*

My daughter felt seen, gentiles got their Christmas carol, and no one had to sing the goddamned “Dreidel Song.” 

So there’s the trick to getting to sing Christmas carols in public school in what has been the worst year for Jews since 1945:

Start out with a brief bio of the Jews who wrote your Xmas song

You could do a whole Winter Concert—featuring “Rudolph, the Red Nosed Reindeer,” “A Holly Jolly Christmas,” “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree,” and “Run, Run Rudolph”—on just a single bio slide: All four of those classics were written by the same Jew (the inimitable Johnny Marks, whose Jewish brother-in-law was the guy who created Rudolph to begin with).

(SPOILER ALERT 🚨: All your favorite Xmas songs were written by Jews; you’re welcome).

A Musical Xmas Gift for the Final Night of Xanukah! ♬♫♪🕎🎄🎅🏿

I’m a mixed Jew (i.e., one raised in an interfaith family, and raising my Jewish kids in one now). I’ve lived in the American Midwest for my entire life (which is kind of a double-Diaspora).

I think these songs—which I wrote and recorded nearly 20 years ago now—possibly capture that experience more purely than anything else I’ve ever written.

  • Another Dark Xmastime (FUN FACT: I wrote this during my first year as a fundamentally unemployable stay-at-home dad; for years my children believed it was an accepted part of the broadly accepted Xmas Music Canon.)
  • Dreidel Bells (FUN FACT: The beat here is an original GameBoy running an early German Nanoloop cartridge. Both voices are obviously me, but the filters for the robot voice badly overburdened my old iBook, causing significant lag–which is why Mr. Roboto struggles so badly to hit his marks.)
  • DreidelDreidelDreidel (FUN FACT: The beat here is a vintage analog Boss DR-55 purportedly once owned by Poe, crammed through a heavy-metal distortion stompbox.)

Our Most Important Thanksgiving Traditions 🦃💀

1. “What do Jews do on Thanksgiving?”

I wrote this essay a few years back, as a little bonus for the folks kind enough to have subscribed to my newsletter.  A good friend, Chris Salzman, was gracious enough to make something pretty of it. I relish the opportunity to reshare it each year, and I’m doing so once again.  Every word here is both true and factual—which is a harder trick than you’d think.

You’ll be 15 minutes into that Lesser Family Feast in Michigan when your mother-in-law will turn to you and ask:

“What do Jews do on Thanksgiving?”

You should be prepared for this sort of thing in Michigan. But even though I’m warning you in advance, you still won’t be prepared.…

(read more: IN MICHIGAN: A PRIMER, A TRAVELOGUE)

2. “As God as my witness, I thought turkeys could fly!”

THANKSGIVING TURKEY GIVEAWAY! (WKRP in Cincinnati) from Tony DeSanto on Vimeo.

I repost this every year, because I love this gag, and because watching this on TV—and rehashing it with my mom and sisters each year—is one of my fondest holiday memories. But it is, in my humble, a damn-near perfect gag. That’s saying something, because I find single-camera laugh-track situation comedies almost entirely unbearable to watch. If you wanna read more of my thoughts on this specific gag and what it can teach writers, you can do so here.)

3. “…your people will wear cardigans and drink highballs; we will sell our bracelets by the road sides…”

4. ♬♫♪ “Caught his eye on turkey day / As we both ate Pumpkin Pie … ” ♬♫♪

I’m a child of the 1980s, so most of my nostalgic holiday memories are TV-related. 🤷‍♀️

I hope your T-day is good and sweet.  Gobblegobble! 🦃💀