Who is this "I" of which you speak?

Today in History of R&R we were discussing the Beatles' "I Want to Hold Your Hand," and the subject of Lennon and McCartney's unison singing came up. The lyrics are about the singer wanting to hold the hand of his/her love. What does it mean that two men are singing the lyrics at the same time? One student said he assumed the two people were singing to each other, that they had idyllically identical emotions for each other. Thus John and Paul want to hold each others hands for a charming tribute to homosexual relationships. (The emphasis on "hand" in each refrain through the split to separate notes takes on an interesting light with this interpretation.) Another interpretation is that the two men are vying for the affection of a woman, both of them wanting to hold her hand. And yet another is that the blending of two voices together represents an ideal Everyman who wants to hold Everywoman's (or another Everyman's) hand in a celebration of romantic love. Thus the listener can place his/her love as the singer, since a specific identity has been hidden through the fusing of John's and Paul's voices.

Then again, it could just be because it sounds nice.

Day for the King

I'd be remiss in my History of Rock&Roll duties if I didn't acknowledge Elvis Presley's birthday today. Born in 1935, he'd be 73 today if still alive (insert conspiracy theory here). Curl a lip in honor of the king.

Music for coping

When children are being treated for cancer, they usually need help to cope with all of the stress and emotions that are engendered. A study by Indiana University's School of Nursing (along with many contributing institutions/authors) investigated three environmental conditions on cancer patients ages 4-7: active music engagement (AME), music listening (ML), and audio storybooks (ASB). Active Music Engagement is a program that involves playing hand held instruments and singing action songs like "Five Little Monkeys" to allow the patients to work out stress and pain. It's been used as music therapy for burn patients and pain management, and relationships between patients with dementia and their spousal caregivers. This study found that the patients who received the AME had significantly higher coping behaviors than the other two conditions (ML and ASB). These coping behaviors were positive facial effect, active engagement with others, and initiation of activities. Initiation of activities was about equal for both music conditions, significantly greater than the storybook listeners.

Sherri L. Robb, et al. "Randomized controlled trial of the active music engagement (AME) intervention on children with cancer." Psycho-Oncology (Nov. 21, 2007 online).

IUPUI article, TherapyTimes article.

PoliPod

Phil Ford is back from vacation with a very thorough listing of presidential campaign music. It's both less judgmental and more complete than Wonkette's rant (no grade higher than a C?) New York Times reporter Ben Werschkul had a series of reports almost a year ago, including some almost candidates at the Democratic National Committee winter meetings. And breaking it Old School is a listing of campaign music from 1840 to 1920, provided by Parlor Songs.

Additions to Phil's list:
Joe Biden: "Centerfield"
Wesley Clark: "Waiting on the World to Change"
Hillary Clinton: "Right Here, Right Now" "Blue Sky"
Chris Dodd: "Get Ready"
John Edwards: "This is Our Country"
Rudy Guiliani: "Life is a Highway"
Mike Gravel: "Power to the People"
Mike Huckabee: "Free Bird"
Dennis Kucinich: "America the Beautiful"
Bill Richardson: "Lean on Me" "Baby I Love Your Way" "Mess We're In"
Tom Vilsack: "Reach Out I'll Be There"
George Washington: "God Save George Washington"
George McClellan: "Little Mac! Little Mac! You're the Very Man" (by Stephen Foster!)

FriPod: Rock-n-Roll never dies

I'm back from the holidays, and just finished the second day of my Winter Term course, the History of Rock and Roll. It's fun so far, though the students are still getting back into classroom mode.

1. "Big Rock Candy Mountain" by Harry McClintock on the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack. Not really rock, but it is part of the rock-n-roll genealogy as we discussed yesterday and today.

2. "It's Still Rock and Roll to Me" by Billy Joel on Glass Houses. I had a friend in high school who made a karaoke tape of this, which haunts me to this day.

3. "Jailhouse Rock" by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, performed by Elvis Presley. Written by two white guys who thought they were black, performed by the first white guy to sing rhythm-n-blues.

4. "Rock 'n Roll Music" by Chuck Berry. I'm getting slightly tired of this music, since it is used as the title music for the History of Rock and Roll Video series I'm screening for class.

5. "Rock Around the Clock" by Max Freedman and Jimmy DeKnight, performed by Bill Haley and the Comets. I'd like to hear more accordion on this. Happy Days anyone?

6. "Rock-a-Bye Basic" by Shad Collins, Lester Young, Count Basie, Arranged by Jimmy Mundy for the Count Basie Orchestra. Another ancestor of R&R.

7. "Rocker" by Gerry Mulligan, performed by Miles Davis on Birth of the Cool.

8. "Rocket 88" by Ike Turner, performed by Jackie Brenston and the Delta Cats. Jackie is credited with this song, but Ike really wrote it.

9. "Rockin' In Rhythm" by Harry Carney, Duke Ellington, And Irving Mills, performed by the Duke Ellington Orchestra.

10. "The Rocky Road to Dublin" performed by The Chieftains & The Rolling Stones on The Long Black Veil.

11. "Jelly Roll Blues" by Jelly Roll Morton, performed by Louis Armstrong.

12. "Let the Good Times Roll" by Sam Theard and Fleecie Moore, performed by Ray Charles on Ray!

13. "Roll 'Em Pete" by Joe Turner and Pete Johnson, performed by Joe Turner.

14. "Shake, Rattle and Roll" by C. Calhoun, performed by Joe Turner. Today we looked at the changes between Turner's version and Bill Haley's cover.

The Top 50 Classical Music Blogs - Google Version

Using the number of Google links gives a different result than Technorati links, since Google counts links from non-blog sites, and has a more complicated algorithm for determining whether to count a particular link or not. I've heard some explanations of this, but I'm not sure I have the total picture. Also different from Technorati, Google counts all active links, regardless of how old they are. Thus this ranking has a bias for older blogs that have had more time to accumulate links. Here is the ranking based on the number of Google links (listed after the blog name), as determined by typing link:URL in Google.

1 About Last Night: 8840 Terry Teachout (Crit)
2 The Rest is Noise: 6560 Alex Ross (Crit)
3 PostClassic: 2790 Kyle Gann (C)
4 On an Overgrown Path: 2580 Bob Shingleton (producer)
5 Sandow: 2560 Greg Sandow (Crit)
6 Adaptistration: 1890 Drew McManus (orchestra management)
7 Ionarts: 1880 Charles T. Downey (A)
8 Jessica Duchen: 1620 (Crit)
9 Sequenza21: 1560 Jerry Bowles (C)
10 Night after Night: 1410 Steve Smith (Crit)
11 Sounds and Fury: 1320 AC Douglas (L)
12 The Iron Tongue of Midnight: 1130 Lisa Hirsch (Crit)
13 Musical Perceptions: 1090 Me (A)
14 Mad Musings of Me: 1070 Gertsamtkunstwerk (O)
15 Classical Music: 1030 Janelle Gelfand (Crit)
16 Soho the Dog: 1020 Matthew Guerreri (C)
17 Think Denk: 919 Jeremy Denk (piano)
18 Oboeinsight: 864 Patty Mitchell (oboe)
19 Deceptively Simple: 851 Marc Geelhoed (Crit)
20 The Standing Room: 776 Monsieur C (L and voice?)
21 The Concert: 762 Anne-Carolyn Bird (voice)
22 Listen: 733 Steve Hicken (C and Crit)
23 Aworks: 722 Robert Gable (L)
24 Twang Twang Twang: 714 Helen Radice (harp)
25 La Cieca: 705 James Jorden (O)
26 Vilaine fille: 691 (Crit)
27 The Rambler: 654 Tim Rutherford-Johnson (A)
28 Wellsung: 622 Alex and Jonathan (O)
29 Violinist.com Diaries: 620 (violin)
30 The Well-Tempered Blog: 615 Bart Collins (piano)
31 Sieglinde’s Diaries: 614 Leon Dominguez (O)
32 Meanwhile, here in France: 603 Ruth (cello)
33 Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog: 563 (bass)
34Prima La Musica, poi le parole: 543 Sarah Noble (O)
35 An Unamplified Voice: 512 JSU (O)
36 Dial “M” for Musicology: 492 Phil Ford and Jonathan Bellman (A)
37 Felsenmusick: 470 Daniel Felsenfield (C)
38 Café Aman: 458 Anastasia Tsioulcas (Crit)
39 Roger Bourland: 447 Roger Bourland (C)
40 Daily Observations: 438 Charles Noble (viola)
41 Trrill: 426 Nick Scholl (O)
42 Renewable Music: 396 Daniel Wolf (C)
43 Chicago Classical Music: 363 (L)
44 Sound and Mind: 331 Kris Shaffer (A)
45 Loose Poodle: 329 Peter (the other) Kaye (C)
46 ANABlog: 310 Analog Arts Ensemble
47 Sounds Like Now: 309 Brian Sacawa (saxophone)
48 A View from the Podium: 307 Kenneth Woods (conductor)
48 NY Opera Fanatic: 307 Roy Wood (O)
50 In the Wings: 296 Heather Heise (piano)

The top 51 Classical Music Blogs - Technorati version

Here are the top 52 Classical Blogs, as ranked by the number of unique blogs linking to said blog (the Technorati Authority number). Unlike last time, I used only the larger Technorati Authority (TA) number if a blog had two addresses, no adding. There are several surprises, some significant moves in the list, including a new #1. The largest mover upwards was Hucbald, who rose 48 spots from June's ranking. Close behind were Today's Opera News (42) and the CSO Bass Blog (41). I had a TA of 79 three weeks ago, but that dropped down sharply, probably as all of the links from my June list timed out. Technorati only counts links from the last six months, and I actually did the June list in May. Thus I continue my slow descent in the ranks. But then I did take many breaks these last six months, and didn't do much spreading of link love to encourage higher links back to me. Commence the complaints about your own rank.

The list shows the rank, the blog, the TA, the author(s), and the category: C = composer, Crit = critic, O = opera, A = academic, L = listener, AD = arts director, and the rest are self explanatory.
Update: I've made a few corrections.
Update II: One more correction. Sorry for the error, Steve. And thanks to Marc for catching my mistakes.

1 Sequenza21: 783 Jerry Bowles (C)
2 The Rest is Noise: 650 Alex Ross (Crit)
3 About Last Night: 314 Terry Teachout (Crit)
4 Opera Chic: 181 (O)
5 Violinist.com Diaries: 158 (violin)
6 On an Overgrown Path: 144 Bob Shingleton (producer)
7 Ionarts: 133 Charles T. Downey (A)
8 PostClassic: 129 Kyle Gann (C)
9 Night after Night: 122 Steve Smith (Crit)
10 Soho the Dog: 120 Matthew Guerreri (C)
11 Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog: 112 (bass)
12 Sandow: 107 Greg Sandow (Crit)
13 Think Denk: 106 Jeremy Denk (piano)
14 La Cieca: 103 James Jorden (O)
15 Jessica Duchen: 93 (Crit)
16 Dial “M” for Musicology: 79 Phil Ford and Jonathan Bellman (A)
16 Sounds Like Now: 79 Brian Sacawa (saxophone)
18 Sounds and Fury: 76 AC Douglas (L)
19 Deceptively Simple: 74 Marc Geelhoed (Crit)
20 The Concert: 71 Anne-Carolyn Bird (voice)
21 Adaptistration: 68 Drew McManus (orchestra management)
22 The Standing Room: 65 Monsieur C (L and voice?)
23 The Iron Tongue of Midnight: 64 Lisa Hirsch (Crit)
24 Musical Perceptions: 62 Me (A)
25 The Rambler: 60 Tim Rutherford-Johnson (A)
26 Oboeinsight: 58 Patty Mitchell (oboe)
27 Collaborative Piano: 55 Chris Foley (piano)
28 CSO Bass Blog: 49 (bass)
29 Roger Bourland: 47 Roger Bourland (C)
30 A Singer's Life: 44 Michelle Bennett (voice) [stopped posting in September]
31 My Favorite Intermissions: 42 Maury D’annato (O)
32 Classical Life: 41 Timothy Mangan (Crit)
33 ANABlog: 40 Analog Arts Ensemble
34 Aworks: 40 Robert Gable (L)
35 Sieglinde’s Diaries: 39 Leon Dominguez (O)
35 Renewable Music: 38 Daniel Wolf (C)
36 Chicago Classical Music: 36 (L)
37 A Monk's Musical Musings: 35 Hucbald (guitar)
37 Musical Assumptions: 35 Elaine Fine (C and viola)
39 Brian Dickie: 33 (AD)
40 Catalysts & Connections: 31 Evan Tobias (education)
40 Counter/Point: 31 manpranissimo (voice) [no longer music]
40 Listen: 31 Steve Hicken (C and Crit)
43 Mad Musings of Me: 30 Gertsamtkunstwerk (O)
43 Vilaine fille: 30 (Crit)
45 Terminaldegree: 29 (kazoo)
46 Wellsung: 29 Alex and Jonathan (O)
47 Thirteen Ways: 28 eighth blackbird (ensemble)
47 Wolf Trap Opera: 28 (O)
49 Today's Opera News: 27 Alan Foust (O)
49 The Well-Tempered Blog: 27 Bart Collins (piano)
51 A View from the Podium: 26 Kenneth Woods (conductor)
51 Classical Music: 26 Janelle Gelfand (Crit)