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| Give it up, Dick. Please. |
Thankfully, we didn't stay with this show. Some of the music was pretty good, but nothing show-stopping. We switched over to a New Year's Eve concert by Coldplay on Austin City Limits. This was better on the whole than the mixture of musical groups that trotted out in Times Square and in the West Coast echo in L.A.
I ran across this bit today in the "Writer's Almanac", and I thought it interesting. Maybe you will too.
The Times Square celebration dates back to 1904, when The New York Times opened its headquarters on Longacre Square. The newspaper convinced the city to rename the area "Times Square," and they hosted a big party, complete with fireworks, on New Year's Eve. Two hundred thousand people attended, but the paper's owner, Adolph Ochs, wanted the next celebration to be even splashier. In 1907, the paper's head electrician constructed a giant lighted ball that was lowered from the building's flagpole. The first Times Square Ball was made of wood and iron, weighed 700 pounds, and was lit by a hundred 25-watt bulbs. Now, it's made of Waterford crystal, weighs almost six tons, and is lit by more than 32,000 LED lights. The party in Times Square is attended by up to a million people every year.
Other cities have developed their own ball-dropping traditions. Atlanta, Georgia, drops a giant peach. Eastport, Maine, drops a sardine. Ocean City, Maryland, drops a beach ball, and Mobile, Alabama, drops a 600-pound electric Moon Pie. In Tempe, Arizona, a giant tortilla chip descends into a massive bowl of salsa. Brasstown, North Carolina, drops a Plexiglas pyramid containing a live possum; and Key West, Florida, drops an enormous ruby slipper with a drag queen inside it.
5 comments:
i kept channel surfing ny eve, b/c i always want to see the ball fall, but i can't stand the rock music and bibble-babble. i remember when guy lombardo said one year, 'when i go, i take n y eve with me.'' and every year i think of that and think, boy, was he right! he and ben grauer [sp?] may have been sentimental but they weren't embracing the frenzied ugliness of so much modern pop culture. i've never been a fan of dick clark; i find him interesting as an historical figure in the birth of white-souled rock n roll [even as he played black singers], but i never especially liked him. but yeah, it was startling and sad to hear that slurring voice and wonder if it's post-stroke, parkinson's, or what. maybe he's terribly brave, or maybe just doesn't know how he looks and sounds. but it's a pretty stark reminder of decay and death in the midst of all the froufrou re newness......added to the vulgarity, and yet was grimly touching.........
I am surprised that you can't stand the rock music. Somehow I thought you might still be plugged in to somebody. Are you a classic rock person or what?
I like music, any kind. Everything from classical to rock to alternative to indie to country to reggae, etc. I'm even trying to appreciate some hip hop. I'm pretty much immersed in music whenever I'm doing anything that doesn't require close attention. Like now. A group called "My Morning Jacket" which I used my gift iTunes credit for. My son and I are constantly swapping music and new discoveries.
The less I contemplate what Dick Clark represents, the better. I get no younger. New Years always remind me of how many previous years I've seen come in. 2012 is not going to be all that hot for some people. My mother-in-law is in hospice. She will die in 2012. So this was her last New Year's Day. In fact, she's not even aware of it. Doesn't know how many children she had, doesn't recognize Susan. So sad. Nothing is so unbecoming as our taking leave of this realm of existence.
sad about your mother-in-law. one of the things i like about ny eve is that one year, very strongly, i felt the presence of all my loved dead [there were fewer of them then....] and knew they and i were all okay. i'e felt that since but never so strongly. i wrote a poem about it that began 'this is the truly hallowed night....'
as to r&r--as a kid i was exposed much more to my parents' generation's music than my generations, and i disliked rock intensely when it first began. ironically now i enjoy some of the 50s rock. in the 60s it took a long time for me to warm up to the beatles, and i came to like some of the gentler rock that seemed to reflect the benovolent side of the cultureally rebellious. even then though i prefered the new-folk-music of baez and collins, and especially the odd, artistic work of joni mitchell. but the shrieking rock, never--hendricks, joplin, ghastly!
i partly believe, and fully feel, that rock as a genre is an aesthetically appalling form, with a few shining lights. but i still would take mediocre berlin [let alone mediocre porter or coward or kern] over the best of rock. at the same time, it's pretty clear to me that 50s culture, including the coy godawfulness of most early 50s pop music [[ how much is that doggie in the window, tennessee waltz....] made rock an inevitability, maybe even a necessity. and the further we've gotten from the 60s, the worse it sounds to me. i'm a big fan of figure skating but they use a lot of rock and semi-rock music, and about 1/2 of any skating i watch on tv i turn the mute button on. so i think i still live up to my reputation as an eccentric, i'm afraid my reputation as an old hippy chick has some serious flaws.....[s]
I have to agree with you, Karen, that you are mischaracterized as an "old hippie chick" if you are appalled by Jimi Hendrix! And what's not to like about the Beatles? You probably could stomach Jackson Browne, the Bee Gees, Badfinger, I would guess. I don't think it could get any edgier for you than that. But you'd be surprised, there's a lot of mellow stuff being done right now that you might like if you ever heard it.
I like all that big band stuff, too. Glenn Miller, Duke Ellington, Tommy Dorsey, etc. But I have to disagree with you about the aesthetic aspects of rock. Just because it's not to your taste doesn't mean it's ugly. It's an art form, like all music, like painting, prose, and prosey. Some of its practitioners produce shit, others not. Not everybody recognizes or accepts the aesthetic beauty of modern art when its good either. But of course shit is shit, and we all can recognize that.
the beatles are okay, for what they are, and i did, still do, like the doors, and of course, i've even blogged about buddy holly and about the mamas and the papas. and there's always a roy orbson, whose brilliance bursts past its form, like when you see a painting on velvet that is actually good. 'good' of course being in the eye of the beholder. but for what it's worth, my dislike of the genre in general, goes far beyond it being not to my taste. baseball is not to my taste, but i can recognize the skill involved [sort of, and only in my head, not my emotions]. i've known classically trained mjusicians who tell me aretha franklin is a great musician, and i'm sure they're right, but i can't hear it at all, except maybe very briefly at the lowest register. otherwise i doubt that i could tell the difference between her, hendrix, or joplin. someone like tina turner i admire greatly as a person but i can't listen to her. my whole body contracts when i hear those shrieks. i remember long ago going with some friends to a bobby short concert, and coming out so happy, and saying, 'when i hear that i feel ashamed of being part of the generation that invented rock n roll.' and my freind said, 'don't feel bad--you're not really part of our generation; you're just a cultural anachronism.' doubtless she was right. i'm actually far more tolerant in a way now than i used to be, liking some 50s rock and a bit of 60s. but it's hard to listen even to non-rock pop music b/c it seems infested with rock; it seems always part of even a lovely song to my ear like 'fields of gold' [i think that's its name]. oh well....
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