Musitorial - Let us eat cake

 

musitorial n a mashup of music, musings and editorials, music and song that evokes thought and commentary.

Today’s musitorial, celebrates “Va’ peniero” – better known as the “The Anvil Chorus” – from Giuseppe Verdi’s (1813-1901) Il Trovatore (1853). This chorus gives me chills – the good kind.

That work of art is reason enough to play it as background music for musing, but a good reason to select it for today’s musitorial is that Verdi was an Italian classical master (those Italians really knew how to do it up big, eh?). But there’s a third reason (are you following this?), and that is that on June 27, 2025, the Italian city of Venice played host to an extravaganza that would be the envy of any self-respecting operatic chorus: the wedding of digi-billionaire Jeff Bezos to high-flying socialite Lauren Sanchez. Wow. Just wow. (Wow to the wedding, not her).

As the world watched, their wedding displaced more mundane media events – you know, like Gaza, Iran, Ukraine – and I couldn’t help but draw a thoughtful line between that wedding (especially the resulting public protestations), Verdi’s anvil chorus and that historically famous paragon of decadence, Marie Antoinette (1774-1792), who famously said of her impoverished and much abused French populace: “Let them eat cake.”

Things ended badly for Marie Antoinette. In a future post I will explore that now-timeless quote in a slightly different light, but for now, I am using it to point to the unmitigated arrogant display by the world’s elite to the down-in-the-dirt plight of the rest of us.

Venice has been a hotbed of restive resistance toward tourism of late. As the wedding spectacle and those protests captured the headlines, I recalled recent protests in Barcelona where “locals” protested that their city was being overrun by tourists, apparently displacing locals from their favourite bars and restaurants. Unlike the gun-slinging heroes of the old spaghetti westerns, or our gun-happy neighbours to the south, Barcelonians began shooting squirt guns at tourists occupying seats at popular outdoor cafes.

Look out world, the peasants are armed and righteous!

You can learn a little more using the links below.

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Link to Wikipedia article (complete with “play” link) about “The Anvil Chorus:” https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anvil_Chorus

Link to Wikipedia article about Verdi: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giuseppe_Verdi

Link to Wikipedia article about Marie Antoinette: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marie_Antoinette

Link to news article about the wedding protests (CNN): https://www.cnn.com/2025/06/28/europe/jeff-bezos-wedding-protest-venice-latam-intl

Link to news article about Barcelona protests: https://tinyurl.com/yushyxmw

 

Musitorial - Happy birthday Irving

 

Belated happy birthday Irving. Today’s musitorial is a brief one but does offer you two for the price of one. 

Composer Irving Berlin’s (1888-1989) birthday is/was May 11 but this musitorial is really about a song by Ian Tyson.

“Irving Berlin is 100 Years Old Today” has nothing to do with Irving Berlin per se, it’s just a really, really great song about how life passes us by as we go about our business (with horses, of course). People’s pain goes largely unnoticed by the world passing by. It’s from Tyson’s album I Outgrew the Wagon (1989). Link below.

I suppose it would also be fitting to play something by the composer himself, “Blue Skies” (1926). But  Willie Nelson’s 1978 version, on his album Stardust (link below) is lovely.

Enjoy.

Mike Hunter, West Bay, CB

link to YouTube recording: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0earQ2wCf0

link to Wikipedia Ian Tyson: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ian_Tyson

link to Wikipedia Irving Berlin: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Irving_Berlin

link to YouTube version “Blue Skies” rendition by Willie Nelson (CBS, 1978): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SI4ZTXOi6Ew

 

Musitorial greeting - Happy Mothers Day

On this special observance day, a special musitorial highlighting Frank Zappa’s (1940-1993) awesome band, The Mothers of Invention – frequently referred to back in the day as, simply, The Mothers.

The group was a delight, never failing to lead their audiences on an oddball journey through Zappa’s mind. The album I was most familiar with was We’re Only in it For the Money (1968).

Favourite songs that still favour my mental playlist include: “What’s the ugliest part of your body?” (answer: your mind), ”Let’s Make the Water Turn Black” and one lament from “Mom and Dad” that went, “...mama, mama, someone said they made some noise, the cops have shot some girls and boys.” Sadly, that refrain comes to mind rather frequently these days.

Okay, so that last one is a bit macabre, but it does mention moms and it is by The Mothers, and so it qualifies for a Mothers Day listen.

Enjoy

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Link to Wikipedia entry for Frank Zappa: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Zappa

Link to a YouTube entry of We’re Only in it For the Money:  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U56sGInCQec

Link to a complete playlist from the album: https://tinyurl.com/2vk5mjyz

 

 

Musitorial - A Chicken-and-Egg Story

 

musitorial n a mashup of music, musings and editorials, music and song that evokes thought and commentary.

Remember the “Great Pumpkin?”

Cartoon-strip characters in Charles Schulz’s long-running (70 years!) Peanuts celebrated Hallowe’en in a singular way: a visit to children by “The Great Pumpkin.” See below links for more on the strip and on the “Great Pumpkin.”

Besides “cute” and humorous situations for the hapless Charlie Brown and friends, it seemed to me a slightly cynical take on American Thanksgiving and Santa Clause Christmas. Especially loveable was the recurring story line of the “Easter Beagle,” a.k.a. Snoopy (Charlie Brown’s pet beagle). See below link for more on the Easter Beagle.

How is this a chicken-and-egg story? Funny you should ask.

Pity Snoopy and Charlie Brown the dilemma of an Easter egg hunt in 2025. Eggs are in very short supply in the U.S. these days. As I understand it, millions of laying hens have been destroyed because of bird flu. Aside from the cost of the epidemic to egg farmers, the cost of eggs (as much as $8 per dozen) means they are out of reach for such frivolousness as traditionally crafted at Easter time. See below link to a news story on bird flu.

What to do. What to do.

Well, trust American ingenuity and resilience once more. Easter potatoes! Potatoes come in smallish sizes, right? They’re somewhat egg-shaped, right? They’re good for you. Why not decorate potatoes? Heck, why not train Snoopy to dig them up – that’s win-win. Link below to a news story on Easter potatoes.

Happy Easter everyone – if that’s your thing.

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Link to Wikipedia article on Peanuts: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peanuts

Link to Wikipedia on the “Great Pumpkin”:

Link to Wikipedia on the “Easter Beagle”: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_the_Easter_Beagle,_Charlie_Brown

Link to news item on so-called bird flue (H5N1) : https://tinyurl.com/42nj5hfu

Link to news story on “Easter potatoes” (for real!): https://tinyurl.com/4kk5zetm