A possible echo of “Nights in White Satin” (1967, The Moody Blues) in Taylor Swift’s “gold rush” (2020)

Two particular moments in Taylor Swift's "gold rush" (from "evermore", 2020) echo something I heard long ago (and am sure I've heard many times). At 1:00 and again at 2:10, the music swells with string sounds (perhaps Jack Antonoff's Mellotron). Just now, I've followed a hunch and listened to "Nights in White Satin", by The Moody Blues (from "Days of Future Passed", 1967), which has moments at about 0:50 and 1:50 that might be what I've been hearing in "gold rush" (and which features Mike Pinder on Mellotron). Still, I'm not yet sure that this is what I've been hearing in the back of my mind when I hear Swift's song. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 11 March 2024)

An exemplary three-part song about three moments in a life: Greg Brown’s “If I Had Known” (1990)

As in the two three-part Taylor Swift songs I mentioned yesterday ("The Best Day" and "Never Grow Up"), each stanza of Greg Brown's exemplary "If I Had Known" (from "Down In There", 1990)  takes place at a different time in the speaker's life: the first is about going fishing as a boy, the second about a first kiss at fifteen, and the third about a night of love-making on a roof during a meteor shower. The first two choruses each say "if I had known, I might have stopped fishing / kissing right then", while the third offers the song's twist: "If I had known, I'd do it all over again." (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 10 March 2024)

Three part songs with themes and variations: Joni Mitchell’s “Both Sides Now” (1969) and Taylor Swift’s “The Best Day” (2008) and “Never Grow Up” (2010)

In Joni Mitchell's "Both Sides Now" (from "Clouds", 1969), the three verses each have their own theme (clouds, love, and life), as well as a turn in the middle at "but now". Then the choruses all refer to looking at those themes "from both sides now" and "not knowing" each theme "at all." Such a three-part theme with variations offers a model for writing songs; it can also be found in Taylor Swift's "The Best Day" (from "Fearless", 2008, with its three "best days") and "Never Grow Up" (from "Speak Now", from "Speak Now", 2009, with a small child, a young teen, and a young woman who has just left home). (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 9 March 2024)

“Going Slow” with the Roberto Bossard band at the Bird’s Eye in Basel, 7 March 2024

At the Bird's Eye in Basel last night, Raffaele Bossard on unaccompanied bass introduced "Going Slow" with a melodic solo that gradually established the song's rhythm. Then his father Roberto, the bandleader, joined his son on guitar for some counterpoint. After first drummer Dominic Egli and then pianist Lukas Gernet added their accompaniment to Roberto's solo, tenor saxophonist Toni Bechtold joined in to finally play the composition's main melody. After Bechtold soloed, Gernet's wide-ranging solo was accompanied by the rest of the band vamping, an approach I've only heard for drum solos before. This tune exemplified the group's arrangements, which frequently played around with the standard head-solos-head frame for jazz improvisation. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 8 March 2024)

My FC Basel – AC Fiorentina souvenir scarf

On Thursday, 18 May 2023, I went to the match between FC Basel and Fiorentina, the second leg of the Europe Conference League semifinal, and I bought one of the souvenir scarves that combine the colors of the two teams and include the date of the match. This winter, I've been wearing it whenever it's been cold, and I've learned to tie it around my neck so that the team names at the ends are clearly visible. Several people from Italy have asked me about the scarf, and people from Basel keep asking me if there's a match today. But for me, it's just a good memory that keeps me warm. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 7 March 2024) 

“Purple with ill-smelling dye”: The river in Coketown in Charles Dickens’s “Hard Times” (1854)

The Coketown canal in Charles Dickens's "Hard Times" (1854) is "purple with ill-smelling dye." Purple dyes were among the first synthetic dyes developed in the mid-nineteenth century, and one center of the discovery and production of those dyes was Basel, Switzerland, where I have made my home since 1995. However, Dickens's novel was published two years before William Henry Perkin synthesized mauveine in London in 1856. And both parts of the company that first became Ciba-Geiby and then later Novartis began to produce the synthetic fuchsine dye in 1859. So something made Coketown's river purple, but it wasn't the synthetic dye that was discovered two years after Dickens finished the novel. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 6 March 2024)

Taylor Swift and Emily Dickinson: Sixth cousins thrice removed

As Michael Sainato reported in The Guardian yesterday, Taylor Swift (b. 1989) and Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) are apparently sixth cousins thrice removed: “Swift and Dickinson both descend from a 17th-century English immigrant (Swift’s ninth great-grandfather and Dickinson’s sixth great-grandfather who was an early settler of Windsor, Connecticut)”. I wondered again about how related distant cousins are. According to a table in a 1983 study by Kevin P. Donnelly, sixth cousins once removed have a 94.40% chance of having "no detectable DNA relationship," so while there might be a genealogical link, any literary relationship between the two is more likely to be due to Swift reading Dickinson rather than any shared genes. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 5 March 2024)

 

“Some sort of witty retort”: Mr. Stevens and possible autism in Kazuo Ishiguro’s “The Remains of the Day” (1989)

In Kazuo Ishiguro's "The Remains of the Day" (1989), the English butler Mr. Stevens repeatedly worries about the problem of "bantering" with Mr. Farraday, the new American owner of Darlington Hall after it has left the Darlington family. But on his trip to the West Country to meet Miss Kenton, the Hall's former housekeeper, he also worries about how to converse with the locals at an inn where he is staying: "[S]ome sort of witty retort was required of me." I've read the novel many times already, but only now have I noticed that Stevens's uncertainty about wit and "bantering" could be a sign that he is on the autism spectrum. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 4 March 2024) 

The correlation between popularity and quality in popular music

The other day, I had occasion to look at the "list of best-selling musical artists" on Wikipedia. Nine artists are listed as having sold over 250 million records: The Beatles, Elvis Presley, Michael Jackson, Elton John, Queen, Madonna, Led Zeppelin, Rihanna, and Pink Floyd. Lately, with me teaching a course on Taylor Swift's lyrics, I've been hearing a lot of people insisting that pop success does not equal musical quality. Almost all of them, though, are from my generation (plus or minus a decade), and I know that they would all celebrate some or many of those artists for the quality of their music. Here, at least, popularity correlates with quality. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 3 March 2024)

 

The Pablo Held Trio at the Bird’s Eye in Basel on 1 March 2024

Pianist Pablo Held began his Pablo Held Trio concert with bassist Robert Landfermann and drummer Jonas Burgwinkel at the Bird's Eye in Basel last night with a statement that they work without a setlist and play continuous blocks of music in their sets. What followed was two relaxed and melodic suites of music in which composed passages seemed free and free passages seemed composed. When Held began the second set with a solo piano section, I noticed at one point how Landfermann and Burgwinkel prepared to join in – and then did not. This was just one way in which I saw how they made decisions about what to play and when. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 2 March 2024) 

“A lot of spaces” between Taylor Swift and James Joyce’s “Finnegans Wake”

When Grateful Dead guitarist Jerry Garcia died on 9 August 1995, Bob Dylan wrote a moving statement that included this point that has stuck with me ever since: "There’s a lot of spaces and advances between The Carter Family, Buddy Holly and, say, Ornette Coleman, a lot of universes but he filled them all without being a member of any school." That is, Garcia's music ranged from folk to rock and roll to free jazz, and everywhere in between. I remembered this on Wednesday when I went from my Taylor Swift course in the afternoon to my Finnegans Wake reading group in the evening – there's "a lot of spaces" between them. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 1 March 2024)

A metrosexual Swiftie

One day when Miles was four, we went to the swimming pool. After some splashing, he began playing in a sandbox; I watched him and enjoyed the weather. Then I noticed that three boys who were maybe ten or eleven years old were looking at me and whispering to each other. That week, my visiting niece had painted my toenails, so I wondered if that had gotten their attention. Sure enough, one of them then pointed at my toenails and asked, "Are you metrosexual?" I remembered this story yesterday when I had all my fingernails painted in the ten colors Taylor Swift associates with her ten albums. I'm a metrosexual Swiftie! (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 29 February 2024)

The difficult but rewarding narrative promised by the opening of Kazuo Ishiguro’s “An Artist of the Floating World” (1986)

In our first discussion today of Kazuo Ishiguro's "An Artist of the Floating World" (1986), we concluded that the opening sentence of retired painter Masuji Ono's narrative not only provides directions to get to Ono's house but also offers instructions and encouragement for how to read the narrative as difficult but rewarding: "If on a sunny day you climb the steep path leading up from the little wooden bridge still referred to around here as ‘the Bridge of Hesitation’, you will not have to walk far before the roof of my house becomes visible between the tops of two gingko trees." This may be a "steep climb", but it promises visibility. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 27 February 2024)

Weaknesses for the sake of the despicable in “Great Expectations” (1861) and in my own life

In Charles Dickens's "Great Expectations" (1861), when blacksmith Joe Gargery plans to visit his upwardly-mobile brother-in-law Pip in London, Pip is happy Joe will visit him at the apartment he shares with Herbert Pocket, and not at Herbert's parents' house, where the unpleasant Bentley Drummle also lives. Pip fears Drummle would look down at working-class Joe: “So, throughout life, our worst weaknesses and meannesses are usually committed for the sake of the people whom we most despise.” I'm reminded all too well of my schooldays: bullied myself, I rejected the interest of a charming girl who was just as unpopular as me, because my bullies would have made fun of us. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 26 February 2024) 

Music from the Alex Sipiagin Quartet at the Bird’s Eye, plus a marriage proposal (and some Taylor Swift)

Last night at the Bird's Eye in Basel, Alex Sipiagin (trumpet and flugelhorn) played two wonderful sets last night with a superb band: pianist Antonio Faraò, bassist Makar Novikov, and drummer Sasha Mashin. Sipiagin's son Nikita played alto saxophone on one tune. But one couple will remember more than the music: after the first set, a man proposed to his partner from the stage. She accepted; he gave her a ring. But I remembered the proposal rejected in Taylor Swift's "champagne problems": "Sometimes you just don't know the answer / 'Til someone's on their knees and asks you." Anyone making a public proposal better be sure the answer will be "yes". (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 25 February 2024) 

Ed Yong’s “An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us" (2022)

In his brilliant book "An Immense World: How Animal Senses Reveal the Hidden Realms Around Us" (2022), Ed Yong dedicates chapters to senses humans have as well as those only other animals have: smells and tastes, light, color, pain, heat, contact and flow, surface vibrations, sound, echoes, electric fields, and magnetic fields. The next-to-last chapter, "Uniting the Senses", considers how the senses an animal has come together to form each individual's view of the world, with an especially fascinating discussion of how animals distinguish their perceptions of the world from their perceptions of their own actions. The conclusion addresses "Threatened Sensescapes": how humans disrupt the senses of the world's other animals. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 24 February 2024)

The sound of Taylor Swift’s early and recent albums

In my preparation for my Taylor Swift course, which starts next week, I keep going through her albums in chronological order. Whenever I get to the end and go back to the beginning again, I experience a small shock: from the mostly sparse and often ambient textures of the three latest albums ("folklore", 2020; "evermore", 2020; "Midnights", 2022) back to the power pop country of 2006's "Taylor Swift" and 2008's “Fearless”). I don't dislike the latter; in fact, I find much in them to admire and appreciate. But to me, there’s much less space in the sound of the early records, less room for my kind of listener, in a sense. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 23 February 2024) 

"He prophets most who bilks the best” (“Finnegans Wake”, 305.1-2)

"He prophets most who bilks the best": This line from James Joyce's “Finnegans Wake” (1939, 305.1-2) parodies the Rotary Club's 1911 motto, "He profits most who serves best." Instead of coming from service, Joyce's profit comes from fraud. And it is not just being the best fraud, but also defrauding the best people. Then, "profits" as "prophets" makes prophets not servants of the divine but rather frauds themselves, and prophecy becomes being "practiced at the art of deception" (to quote Mick Jagger in a Rolling Stones song from thirty years after "Finnegans Wake"). The combination of profit and prophecy – of capital and religion – thus makes for the best deception of all. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 22 February 2024)

After The Grateful Dead broke out “All Along the Watchtower” at Berkeley’s Greek Theater in June 1987

The Grateful Dead did a six-show tour with Bob Dylan in July 1987, first playing one or two sets and then backing Dylan for a final set. One way they began to prepare to be Dylan's band was to introduce "All Along the Watchtower" into their repertoire on 20 June 1987 at the Greek Theater in Berkeley, California. As I was walking out of that show, I overheard a young woman say to a friend that it was cool they had played "that U2 song". A young man next to them piped up that it was "a Jimi Hendrix song". I chuckled and told all three it was a Dylan tune. (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 21 February 2024)

Andreas Schärer & Kalle Kalima in Romanshorn, 18 February 2024

On Sunday, 18 February, I went to Romanshorn to hear singer Andreas Schärer and guitarist Kalle Kalima perform as a duo. When Kalima took solos, Schärer would often become a percussionist with his multifaceted beatboxing mixed with other sounds – and again and again, I found myself laughing at the joy and humor of it. That in turn reminded me of my thoughts last year about listening to jazz as a comic rather than a tragic form. (For an excellent example of Schärer's mouth percussion, go to the five-minute mark of "Ukuhmaba" on the 2017 album "Out of Land", by Schärer, soprano saxophonist Emile Parisien, accordionist Vincent Peirani, and pianist Michael Wollny.) (Andrew Shields, #111Words, 20 February 2024)