I second that yeah... good stuff.I wanted to add t...

2008-06-20T10:45:00.000-07:00

I second that yeah... good stuff.

I wanted to add that this group, like all the early doo-wop groups, have their roots in African American gospel quartets (which paradoxically have five people in them...don't know where #5 went too in that video, but I am pretty sure that's 5 voices on the recording..I am not a Flamingos expert though). Anyway, no matter how many people, these acapella gospel groups were "do-bop-sh'bopping," ca. 1930s in harmony, tweaking the intonation so you would hear a rich wash of overtones, more evident in a church than a 1970s youtube vid. The vocables, and the use of the voice as a rhythm instrument has African roots for sure, but those gospel singers probably heard it in the sinful records of Louis Armstrong and some classic blues singers. They cleaned it up and added that emphasis on overtones and timbre, which also sometimes occurs when you get a bunch folks singing together in church anyway. Doo-wop takes it back out of the church, but keeps the conventions.

To me, those vocables and resultant play of timbre they create symbolizes passivity (what I am calling passivity anyway, not implying pathological weakness), an admonishen that there are forces in the world greater than your self. The effect, a result of acoustic physics, is in my mind a metaphor for the importance of living with others, of the necessity of others to our individual identity. Themes that are of course not uncommon in Christian churches, but no less important in the rest of the world. The interesting thing to me is that lots of spiritually inclined music draws on these kinds of acoustic phenomena.

Fuck yeah.One thing that always cracked me up abou...

2008-06-19T01:48:00.000-07:00

Fuck yeah.

One thing that always cracked me up about about this tune is that, when it comes to the backing vox, it's actually only the first one that is "shoo-bop-sh-bop" -- all the others are "doo-bop-sh-bop."

I used to wonder how that happened. Was it an accident? Seems unlikely. But why would you only make the first iteration "shoo-bop-sh-bop"? What aesthetic purpose did it serve? Was there an argument between the two choices, and this was the compromise that resulted?

Of course it doesn't really matter, cuz it just works, regardless of how it got to be that way.

All of which is just preamble to my story about how, after I first played this tune for Thandie, we made a little game of sneaking up on each other and singing "doo-bop-sh-bop!" when the other person was least expecting it. Try it, it's fun!

Comments on All At Once: A KIND OF BLIND LOVE

I second that yeah... good stuff.I wanted to add t...

Fuck yeah.One thing that always cracked me up abou...