Skip to main content

Game Theory - Penny, Things Won't

The blues points to a critical question for every person, what do we do with our sadness, pain, and disappointment? Do we use them to see more meaning in things and people? Do we use them to be kinder? Or do we use them to feel the whole world is bad, and to retreat from or lash out at other people? This, Aesthetic Realism explains, is the central fight in the mind of every person between the desire to like and respect the world, and the desire for contempt, which Eli Siegel defined as the disposition in every person to think we will be for ourselves by making less of the outside world.

The blues as musical form is against depression, even as the lyrics may describe that depressed feeling. This is explained greatly in a paper titled Feeling Bad, Good Will, and the Blues by Ellen Reiss, who is the Chairman of Education at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation in New York City.

By looking throughout the history of music, we can see how deep is the desire in humanity to relate pain and pleasure, the somber and the celebratory. A surprising example, which I’ve studied with my high school chorus is NY, is the motet Ave Verum Corpus, by the English Renaissance composer William Byrd. The piece begins in G minor but ends in G major, and throughout we find major and minor 3rds, 6ths and 7ths. And in the last phrase, on the words miserere mei, have mercy on me, we find major and minor actually overlapping. The altos and tenors begin, in G minor.
Source: Why Do the Blues Make Us Feel So Good? by Alan Shapiro


Game Theory - Penny, Things Won't
  • Written by: Fred Juhos
  • Released in: 1983
  • Genre: Rock

"Game Theory was a power pop band which formed in 1982 in Sacremento, California. The band's only constant member was singer and songwriter Scott Miller, vocals and guitar, who led the band through two major lineup changes before he disbanded the group in 1990."

See previous Song of the Day

Labels:
Location: United States

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Ry Cooder - Available Space

It all started with gospel music. After the American Civil War, in the mid 19th century, people moved north from the plantations to the cities, St Louis, Chicago and Memphis. By the end of the 19th century the syncopated rhythms of ragtime and the improvisational nature of jazz had arrived. Hard times in the great depression of the 1930s drove many swing jazz big bands out of business. Jump blues filled the gap. Patrons of dance halls needed small groups who could match the volume and atmosphere of the departed big bands. Singers would shout and saxophonists would honk. This gave performers names like shouters and honkers. Jump blues was an uptempo jazz tinged style of blues. Usually characterised by a vocalist in front of a large horn driven orchestra or medium sized combo with multiple horns. The style had a driving rhythm, intensely shouted vocal and honking tenor saxophone solos. There was also less reliance on the guitar as a lead instrument. It also had a hard, rhythmic drive and...
Post a Comment
Read more

Lester Young - Ghost of a Chance (Take 1)

Philadelphia was well positioned to play a leading role in popular music. The city had long been one of the nation’s most important musical centers, with strong traditions in both European derived and African American music dating back to the eighteenth century. In the early twentieth century Philadelphia saw a dramatic increase in its Black population as a result of the Great Migration. By the 1940s, Philadelphia’s large and diverse Black population had created thriving scenes in jazz and gospel music. From these traditions a new kind of music emerged in the 1940s, in Philadelphia and across the nation. Usually played in small combos called jump bands, the music featured rollicking dance rhythms coupled with fairly simple blues based harmonies and melodies. The adaptation of this style, known as rhythm and blues or R&B, by white musicians essentially created rock and roll. In Philadelphia in the late 1940s and early 1950s, jump bands played dance halls, nightclubs, and corner bars...
Post a Comment
Read more

Copyrights and Public Domain

Copyrighting and Public Domain Music A song is the combination of melody and words. Each is protected by copyright, the melody as a musical work and the lyrics as a literary work. One or the other could be used separately and still be protected. Image by Markus Spiske Public Domain Music Public domain essentially covers creative works that are no longer protected by intellectual property laws, compositions and musical recordings in which the claim to intellectual property has either expired, been forfeited, or been waived. Most people recognize the term public domain in reference to published works, including sheet music or musical recordings, which once were protected by copyright, but the copyright expired several decades after the artist’s death or a considerable length of time after the work’s creation. Once copyright expires on a work like a recorded song, you can use it for any purpose without paying the publisher, the artist, or another institution. The Two Types of Copyright ...
Post a Comment
Read more