Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Familiarity, Contempt, and All That Jazz
I would normally post something like this on PIT 14 or the “What Are You Listening To?” group, but this tune seems suddenly to be everywhere. KJAZ in Long Beach, CA, plays it but, more than that, it is popping up on phone hold queues everywhere.
It’s catchy enough, but I fear I will become as annoyed with it as I am with the Pachelbel Canon in D, another instance of an old tune that was catapulted into ubiquity.
If by some chance you haven’t heard Ramsey Lewis’s Les Fleur, before, enjoy it while you can.
Is there a tune you once loved that has become over-familiar and that you wish you could avoid either forever or for long enough that the absence of it makes your heart grow fond again?
.
Published in General
That’s because everything is Canon in D.
I hadn’t heard it yet. Thanks for sharing.
I’m not tired of Pachelbel’s “Canon in D.” I had never heard “Les Fleur” to my knowledge. After a few seconds, I never wanted to hear it again. Hate those bright new instruments, such as the pianoforte.
Very nice.
But why on earth would a 1968 Ramsey Lewis song suddenly get popular 51 years later?
Oh, I see… Minnie Riperton did a version of this in 1970. And Jordan Peele used that for the closing credits of his recent film “Us”. There ya go.
Minnie Riperton is known for her vocal chops, her work with the band Rotary Connection, her hit song “Loving You”, and for being the mother of Maya Rudolph of Saturday Night Live.
Here’s her version:
I really like the lyrics in the chorus.
Most songs on classic rock radio have reached a saturation point with me. Since Bohemian Rhapsody came out Queen has been obnoxiously over played on the oldies stations.
I love Pachelbel in D and Fur Elise. Pachelbel sounds better than the wedding march, so I’ll take it.
Fur Elise is typically the other one. I love that song. I found the serious issue with Fur Elise is that only the first movement has been thoroughly overplayed. I stumbled my way through learning the entirety of that piece. I’m still working on the third movement, 20 years later.
What gets me out of lurking mode is having an excuse to post funny videos (audio, in this case). Here’s my favorite comedian John Finnemore on Pachelbel bemoaning the one piece that people would ever remember him for.
https://youtu.be/aSK3pZiyV28
There’s one thing I enjoy – well, that’s not the right word… get a certain perverse pleasure – out of hearing the wedding march played at, well, a wedding. Under my breath, to be sure: “People! Do you have any idea where that tune came from? The marriage of a beautiful young maiden and… a jackass!” (Mendelssohn’s incidental music for Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream.)
And it seems that, for some reason, so often nowadays, with wedding vows written by the happy couple, there appears the phrase, “… as long as love shall last.” Well, that usually expires about the time that Party 1 gets tired of picking up Party 2’s smelly socks, the jackass!
It also brings to mind the largest tip my barbershop quartet ever got. We happened upon a wedding rehearsal dinner in a big restaurant. We ended up singing, “Today.” We left them all blubbering in their dessert, and the father of the bride tipped us handsomely. People! Do you pay any attention to the lyrics? The guy’s a cad!
So I’m happy to report that Mendelssohn did not show up at Mrs. Quietpi’s and my wedding. And I credit our 49 years of wedded bliss to the fact that I always pick up my own smelly socks.
Okay, almost always.
Oh, come on! Lighten up, @arahant! I’ll grant you this, and this only: No Brandenburg Concerto should ever be played with piano instead of harpsichord. It just isn’t right.
When I worked at Dillards, almost twenty years ago now, the eight or so hours of the in store soundtrack had a section that was four different arrangements of the Canon back to back. One was traditional, one was brass, one had vocals, don’t remember the fourth. One hour every day listening to the same repetitive composition ….
I refused to have it at my wedding. I down vote it every time Pandora tries to sneak it onto my music channels. I shut off the radio when the classical station plays it. A friend’s wedding is the only occasion when I won’t walk out of the room in protest.
I hate that song.
My understanding is that it was reintroduced into a non-resistant population during the 1980 film, Ordinary People and that the contagion spread through other media vectors until much of North America was suffering from the symptoms @amyschley describes.
My belief is that if we had just begun innoculation early, it woud probably not have mutated into a viral wedding march.
“Smoke on the Rising Stairway to Free Bird”
I can sort of hear it in my mind; Dun Dun Dunnnd she’s buying a free as a bird now. So thanks for that.
I think part of the problem is that a piece that is preeminent in a genre becomes predominant and then preemptive. This is particularly true when there is a genre you only listen to rarely. So if there is to be jazz it is Brubeck’s Take Five, Guaraldi’s Linus and Lucy, Mangioni’s Feels So Good, or whatever it is that Kenny G. did that gets played too much. If dub step it’s, Bangarang;* metal, Enter Sandman… you get the idea.
Also, if you tell a disc jockey that you can never get enough of ‘X’, he’s gonna run tests to verify.
Most of it.
Heard a bass and piano playing Cole Porter this afternoon. It would take me a long time to tire of that. I never tire of Dido’s Lament from Purcell’s opera, or Erbarme dich from the St. Matthews passion, and lots more. I thought I liked Ramsey Lewis, but listening to 10 seconds of Les Fleurs has changed my mind. By the way, is the title supposed to be ironic?
I played in and directed my college pep band, which played at every home basketball game. The P.A. system was typical of the time (it had tube things that glowed in the dark), and they had a record player wired into the system. My guess is that it was a 45 RPM. The sound techs would of course switch on the equipment early so the system would warm up and stabilize before the game. The problem is that they only had one record. They would play it right up to the first whistle, and again between periods, etc.
One. lousy. record.
Over. And over. And over… and over… To this day when I think of basketball, the tune returns to haunt me.
“Don’t you know that I hoid it on the grapevine. Not much longer would you be mine. Oh, I hoid it on the grapevine.”
Now they would stop the record when the pep band was playing. The trick was to catch the break while the record player reset. But when we reached the end of a song, if we weren’t really quick in starting the next song, it would return. There were some positive things that came out of all this. We became desperate to expand our repertoire, to defeat that infernal beast, and it led us to doing more big band stuff.
Eventually our salvation showed up in the form of a clarinetist. Now normally I rate the clarinet just a notch above the accordion. But this guy was a walking fake book. And he could no more hold his clarinet and not play it than a fish can not swim. He never stopped, except to take the downbeat of whatever the band was playing next. He never looked at the part, he just ad libbed, and it sounded great. And when we released the last chord, off he went on a new lick, without missing a beat. Oh, what a relief it was! The grapevine was pruned!
And now I can’t stop it! Out damn grapevine! Out I say!
Please! Somebody play Pachelbel’s Canon! I so need another ear worm!
Title is definitely ironic – I like jazz best of all.
I feel for you regarding; most people only got sick of that song-that-I-will-not-name-because-you’ve-suffered-enough once the California Raisins adopted it (use in commercials is another thing that can make a song unbearable – Pachelbel’s Canon was used by Taco Bell if I remember rightly).
My favorite take on Pachelbel:
I’ve gotten tired of hearing several Queen songs, and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, which I first heard by Jeff Buckley. That version or Rufus Wainwright’s in Shrek are the basis for its frequent performance on talent shows etc.
United Airlines has been using Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue for many years now. They have ruined it for me forever.
And NOT ANY song from The Steve Miller Band!
But… but… some people call me Maurice.
I wonder what old Pachelbel would’ve thought of this.
Pronounced it infernal and destroyed it I imagine.
But he would secretly write parts for it in his dreams.
https://youtu.be/yflWG-e38OU https://youtu.be/yflWG-e38OU
Pachelbel’s Loose Canon
I love it!