artist Dos Caballeros

By Hugh
This piece is written in mixed time signature, namely 4/4 followed by 12/4, switching from a short four beat, to groups of three.
I bought a viola, and I am playing viola, bass, and vocalization.
Written on a Sunday. First, I met a friend who was on her way to work at the grocery store. Then considered fortune and lotteries. Then recalled the sermon I heard about the evangelist Matthew. Mix it all up, and maybe the thing sort of sticks together, or not.

April 17, 2008.
I (Hugh) wrote a new piece, called "Allan Dwayne", based on how Kim Robinson the hunter captured the fugitive Allan Dwayne Schoenborn in British Columbia. My lyrics are as follows:

(chorus)
 ALLAN DWAYNE I'M NOT GOING TO SHOOT YOU
YOU MEAN NOT A THING TO ME
I'M TAKING YOU IN, SO THIRSTY AND THIN,
WHERE YOU CAN PLEAD YOUR PLEA

(verses, each followed by the chorus)

As tough as the midnight mountains,
that rise around his home
Kim Robinson the hunter
had a rifle ever since he was born

Tracking down the grizzlies
with Blaze his big jawed dog
he found Allan Dwayne
hunkered down in the logs

Allan Dwayne looked at the hunter
by then he was skin and bones
Oh hunter are you going to kill me
like white dog yonder on the ground

A big white dog did guard him
a dog so loyal and true
but Blaze was bigger and meaner
and bit his throat right through

Every hole in the hills hides a critter
he knew where a man could hide
when a man is a hunted animal
with a bounty on his hide.

March 14, 2008
I (Hugh) have added another track. I got a piece of plywood and stomped to try and get rhythmical. I think it helped.

Here are the words and commentary:
LIGHT POLLUTION

1.
Hatchling turtles
swimming toward the moon.
Brilliant bits of diamond
upon black velvet space;
we crave the darkness
to connect us.
[commentary: phrases from something in the newspaper about light pollution. Little turtles lose their way because of man's lights.]

2.
How can I stop
this overwhelming passion?
How can I
stop
This overwhelming passion?
[commentary: on the same page of the newspaper, these were words from a letter to the advice columnist]

3.
Like a hawk
I can wait ten years
in the top of a tree
to drop
[commentary: there was a picture of a hawk on the same page]

4.
I have my hooks in you
I have my hooks
in your heart
[commentary: in the advice column, a woman keeps running into a former boyfriend who married her cousin, and he keeps staring at her. The columnist says he still has hooks in her heart.]

March 13, 2008. I (Hugh) added "Horoscope Rant". All the commentary necessary is that I read phrases on a horoscope page. The words are as follows

HOROSCOPE RANT
HOROSCOPE BLUES
There's a goat
and a ram
in the Zodiac
The scorpion bit the bull
The Planet of Illusion
is performing an intrusion
feeding you confusion
talk about Bull

I't won't be easy
not so easy
to sift, to sift
the facts from the fiction
from the fiction
so many, so many different
people
so many different people
telling you so many different things
so many different things.
Ask your self, you have to
Ask yourself
What's in it for them
what's in it for them
and what they mean
and what they say
and what they mean
two different things,
its two different things
I't won't be easy
to sift the facts
from the stories
maybe you've said or done
something to turn them
against you
or maybe, or maybe, or maybe
they're in one of those moods
when no one can do anything right
when no one can
do anything right in their eyes
you don't know what to believe
today it won't be easy
to tell fact from fiction
so focus your mind
read between the lines
why do they want you
to decide right way?
It kind of
makes you suspicious
doesn't it?
I have a feeling
a nagging feeling
an uneasy restless feeling.
Gotta free myself
from this feeling
that something
is going to happen
pretty soon
to me.

March 11, 2008. I (Hugh McDonald) added a song called "In a Few More Hours".
It is still in flux. There is some scat singing also around the four minute mark, inspired by my recent discovery of the music of Jon Hendricks.

Here are the words, more or less as I did them on this take:

1. In a few more hours, we'll reach the frontier
with me is all I'm allowed to take
In a few more hours we'll be in the clear
No one ever promised it would be a piece of cake.

Living down town
A lot of people see you.
You see a lot of people.
You forget some names.
Giving all you have to the trash collector.
My hearts not in it. I've no reason to remain.

[commentary: I don't know where the ideas for verse one came from]

2. Gotta a pot of beans slowly cooking
in Chili Powder on the stove
And my heart is in your kitchen
keep the soup, nice and warm.

Living down wind, a fire is burning,
day and night, not far enough away.
You ask somebody, when the last train is leaving.
They tell you its left, yesterday.

[commentary: I make a lot of chili, usually with dry ingredients from Bulk Barn. I start with a big pot of beans on Sunday, and as it gets lower, I add fresh vegetables. The second verse, perhaps based on recollections of Eastern Europe, conscious of the horrors of its past, but I am not sure where the inspiration came from]

3. The blushing bride, fell on the dance floor
the bridegroom cried, and the ladies all wailed.
In the briar patch, grows a red red rose.
My darling bride, why do you look so pale.

While from the steeple, the pigeons are departing
a pair of bells, commence to toll
blue skies above us
in the middle of summer
in the distance
I hear the army start to roll

[commentary: I read a story in the news about a bride who died at the wedding party. She had diabetes. The briar and the rose are images from the old song "Barbara Allen". The bells and the steeple and the pigeons, images that fit with a wedding. "Blue Skies", from a song by Irving Berlin, I think it was. Then I wrote about thunder beginning to roll, but that sounded too much like something by the inimitable Minnesotan, so the business about the "army starts to roll" seems to be go back to Jethro Tull, Aqualung.]

4. Oh the ice, is getting thicker,
and the hull, cannot hold
and the wind, is painting pretty pictures,
and the sky is threatening cold.

Living down south, we thought was easy
too safe and warm, for our young souls
and so we ran, for the white horizon
the seven seas, and lands unknown.


[Commentary: Well, I was in the arctic working on a ship when I was young. I had a dream about being on a sailing ship. The ice was starting to form, so we sets the sails and broke through and started to move. All that ice, and water. The real meaning of the dream was that my bladder was full, and that I must rise and take care of that. The wind painting pictures, like frost patterns on windows.]

March 4, 2008 I, Hugh McDonald (henceforwardly to be self-referred to as “I”) have just put up “News Blues March 3, 2008”. It is taken from the news in the last little while. It is me speaking over a little instrumental stuff I recorded. Here are the Lyrics:
Malkin and Ovechkin
They've been linked now for awhile:
Ovechkin speaks the English
Malkin, he just smiles.
But it's not about the talking.
It's how they play the game.
The Russians are in Pittsburgh,
for fortune and for fame.

Athletes make some guarantees,
they can't all be right.
The Leafs won't make the playoffs,
but we might see a fight.
* * *
Lord Black is in the Kitchen,
cutting the baloney.
People at Tim Horton's
are talking about Mulroney.

You shook me down for Lunch Money.
You slapped me around some too,
and now you know the purpose
of my steel-toe blue suede shoes.

* * *

They tap into your love of plastic
spend a penny, pay a dollar
now you can buy into the racket,
your dog can wear a diamond collar.

The dog will laugh, the cat will pay
while you rake in the dividends
and never mind delinguency
They have money to lend.

I'd rather have a big windfall,
than credit crunchy woes
at a time when bankers need their balls
womeon who once were men are wearing pantyhose.

* * *

There's a brand new way to make hay:
the farmer raises credits
for which Big Oil gladly pays,
so they can dig the tarpits

* * *

There's a place for you, Fidel,
in a wax museum, Fidel,
reserved right next
to a North Korean
with a trumpet in your hand
and a singing a song, right along,
with a red star band
led by Kim Il Jong,
reserved for you
by Vlad the Impaler,
who's smoking your Havanas
by his repossessed trailer.
There are a few
who call evil good,
who kiss the mud,
wherever you stood,
but Lenin's tomb
is full of rot,
and you're a monster
just like Pol Pot.

Commentary.
Malkin and Ovechkin are Russians who play for the Pittsburgh Penguins. Lord Conrad Black might end up working in the prison kitchen. There is some ongoing investigation of former Canadian Prime Minister Brian Mulroney. You can now buy stock in the Visa Company. Some Banking Institution is offering medical coverage for employees who want a sex-change operation, because the company supports “diversity”. Fidel Castro retired, leaving his brother Raoul in charge.

(Hugh) I uploaded today Pibroch #1. I read about the Pibroch in Sir Walter Scott's the Lady of the Lake and found what I could about the form. I found a traditional one, in 4/4 time and changed it all around. The melody is altered, and I changed the timing, with a section of 5/, a variation in 3/4, and a variation in 4/4, which by my calculations should add up to something equal to 4/4. A pibroch in Gaelic is called a "pìobaireachd (literally meaning "pipering" or "pipery", or the actions of a piper)".

Technical stuff. I just bought an electric guitar (a Squire Fender Stratocaster). With my mixer I can lower the sound an octave, and that is the bass. Then I play a second track with the basic melody, then a final track with sort of improvisation around that melody.

Pibrochs were written for laments, salutes, gatherings (a signal to gather together a clan), or for rowing.

Posted by Hugh. I bought an electrificated guitar, a Fender (subspecies Squire) Stratocaster. Quite a bit cheaper than a high end Strat, but for my purposes just as good. And today I used it to compose "Ode to a Lady", which perhaps does not have too much structure. But I like listening to it, and I hope that you will too. You know, once upon a time there were no albums or records, and if you wanted to listen to music you had to do it yourself, or have friends who knew how to musicate. Just imagine.

New song or whatever you want to call it, by me (Hugh McDonald), about my brother’ Gran Marquis 1975. My method for writing this song is to work out the words to a rhythmic scheme, which is a combination of 2/4, 3/4, 4/4 and 5/4 time, but all adds up in the end to chunks of 64 bars. So I can play a 4/4 track and then perform the words, and it all adds up (more or less). The words are as follows:

Nineteen seventy five Gram Marquis
what a sweet ride, lots of room inside

Down Thoroldstone Road to the highway
your Gran Marquis, nineteen and seventy five
so glad to be alive, nineteen seventy five


I did not know back then that this world would still be here today

So let’s drive down the highway to Toronto

Shiny black, red carpets inside, It’s got stairs to the engine-room
bigger than a Cadillac, front and back, lots of space

You can drive just about anywhere
except to Angleterre
you own the passing lane


There’s no room in the driveway
take it out to the highway
put your foot on the gas
don’t want to be last
make it go fast
make it go fast.

From the Top of the Escarpment
Behold! roofs and steeples
The old road winding through the countryside
Many old roads leading who knows where.

I lost my poppy
It slipped off the pin
It&rsqu;os for an old warrior, older than the cold war.


Halloween,
It gets stranger every time, every year.
The night of the dead who have no body to send them roses


Your Gran Marquis reigns supreme on the Queen E. W.,
exempt from emission tests, it can burn,
burn its gas any day!


You have to treat it right, treat it nice,
treat it like a lady, like baby,
Have to let it breathe like a race horse.


So relax, sit back, turn up the radio,
turn it up, park it in a parallel universe
sit back, relax.


We’re going to Brantford in the morning,
for a visit on your birthday,
To hear you play your fiddle
and to bring you some equipment.


He says there’s snow expected on Monday.
Its no surprise, it happens every year without fail
despite Al Gore&rsqu;s predictions.


Look out your window. It’s just as good
as the television forecast, history lession
about yesterday, yesterday.


We’ll pass the morning train,
Leave Casino-Town behind us in the rearview mirror
I have the keys to the road, so let’s go
to Toronto.

Notes on the mystical meaning of the confusing words: Casino-Town refers to Niagara Falls. The morning train refers to trains that can be seen to the side of the road when travelling on the Queen Elizabeth Highway. Thoroldstone Road is a major trading route between the United States and Canada. A poppy is not a real poppy, but a badge shaped like a poppy that we wear on Remembrance Day. Remembrance Day is on November 11, and it is called Hero’s Day in Jamaica. By looking out your window, you can tell what the weather is like. David Suzuki&rsqu;s specialty is studying fruitflies. Look this up in Wikipedia. Race horse, presumably, breathe hard, and you have to let a car run at a high speed to get it all warmed up and loosened up and stuff. Al Gore invented the word “algorithm”. He also invented the alphabet. A dead person has no body, but still a soul.

There is something I would like to know how to do.
Listen to the "Lonesome Cowboy" Arthur Miles at http://khoomei.com/mp3s/amiles1.mp3
Anyways he inserts a weird harmonic effect in his singing, known as throat singing. You have to listen to the whole thing.

Any my neighbor told me that his son also has music on radio3.cbc.ca. The musician's name is Mark Broere and his website is as follows:
http://radio3.cbc.ca/bands/mixetc

Enjoy.

Because you are curious, I will tell you. The painting at the top of this site for Dos Caballeros was done by me (Hugh McDonald). It is not a portrait of Jack, but simply of a violinist. It is done in egg tempera, which is paint made out of egg-yolk and pigment. More of my paintings can be seen at: www.hyoomik.com.

More of poetry (potentially song lyrics) can be read at hyoobear.blogspot.com.

I am working on about ten new things that may go up here or not, but I have decided to practice them all more than is my custom before recording them. Mainly words set to music, but not necessarily “singing”, although not rap. In the olden days, before phonographs, when a poet like Thomas Moore (or Tennyson) published one of those book-long poems, people such as the Empress of Russia would read them at sessions, each person taking a certain role in a dramatic poem. So, you cannot say that the rhythmic reading of words was invented in Harlem, or by the beatniks. I heard a recording of Ezra Pound reciting some long poem about a sea-farer while beating a drum. Actually, he sounds a little like that sea-salt captain guy on the Simpsons who is always saying “AARGH, MATEY”, but it is something special, sort of like a real old bard in the days of yore. But there are billions of ways of presenting the same words.

Anyways, if you want to know what I am talking about, you can find Ezra Pound reading “SeaFarer” here: http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Pound.html

 

And because some of you have commented. No I am not going to quit my day-job. I do not have a day job.

Finally, today, I updated "Ave Maria" to a longer version. I still hear faults in it, most of all, that the singing does not start to mesh until a few repetitions.

November 5, 2007. (Written in the first person by Hugh). Today we went to visit Jack in Brantford. We brought him a digital sound recorder, and I had time to record two pieces by him, and one with us together at the Corfu Garden Cantina.  He added a second track of violin to his piece "Crux of the Biscuit", and when I got home I lowered that second track an octave roughly to the domain of a cello. Despite that it was live. The phone was ringing, guests were there, and we didn't have much time. Only first takes on these recordings. So, here is the first appearance of "Crux of the Biscuit", and live versions of "Farewell to Whisky" and "Remembrance Day for Uncle Jack".

Post by Hugh. (November 4, 2007) The experimental character of this offering is from my efforts with some noise reduction software. You try to reduce noise too much, and strange artifacts are produced, and the new software tempted me with  other possibilities. In this piece, even the dog, Amigo, worked himself in, if I am not mistaken.

In the result I can hear highways, trucks, bubbles, huge airplanes, earthquakes, seismic events that have no name, voices, new insect species.

My lyrics to this song are thus:

No cloth, no gold, no silver too, no roof to call your own
a troubador from Italy you sing from town to town
a fool for Jesus Christ,
but wiser than all philosophy,
as you loved Lady Poverty

The animals God also made, each one it has its place
a voice, a skill, a love a song, though not a human face
and Sister Death is kind
for each one there is a time
by the plan that is in God’s mind

My body cries for luxury and weighs my soul all down
May it obey and fall in line though appetites may growl
To all we must be kind
as life in this world’s a battlefield
there’s a battle in every mind

The moon this night points to the Sun, although the Sun now hides
The moon in turn will disappear, when outshone in the skies
The sun is a tiny light
and points to the cause that has no cause
and the Glory that knows no night

I don’t think that the lyrics need any explanation as they are pretty straightforward.

“Tree” originally started as something that was not going to be sung. Anyways, it is. The lyrics are as follows:

All day and night and all it does is stand
While water runs, its leaves will never fade
Its constancy, the wind can’t drive away
The strong roots of my tree hold fast the land

Small scraps and coupons tumble down the walk
Grey dust is spreading, blocking out the sun
Don’t let the darkness fall—my work’s not done
I listen, learn, remembering not to talk

You may have noticed nothing going on
My tree is busy growing toward the clouds
Sometimes alone, sometimes amid the crowds
But constantly, my tree is growing strong.

The land is sailing, skies are standing still
The wheels of memory go around again
The river running in my mind needs rain
The river never stops—it never will

What does it all mean? First, it is a meditation on Psalm One. Second, papers blowing in the wind, grey dust, that is imagery from New York’s calamity. The third voice is about being patient, like someone said: a man hammers and hammers to break a rock, and with the hundredth blow the rock breaks. It was not the hundredth blow that broke the rock, but all of them bit by bit. So keep on hammering the rock. The fourth verse is sort of relativity. Sometimes the clouds are moving, but it looks as if you are moving and the sky is standing still. Then another reference to Psalm One. Also, between singing (what Encrico Caruso did) and talking (what Dan Rather does) there is an infinite continuum of things the human voice could do. I wanted to have at least one thing on this website that approached normal singing, perhaps just to make a point. When I was in grade two, the nuns stopped me from singing with the other students because I was off tune. However, I was really experimenting with a scale with one hundred steps. An eight note scale is so Eurocentric. But really, many years ago I listened to some Coptic liturgical music in the Halifax library. They do implement a hundred-step scale, and while at first it is jarring and painful to listen to this, your ear gets tuned. So: “Friends, Romans, countrymen, TUNE ME YOUR EARS”. On the other hand, perhaps I really can’t sing.

Because curious minds must know. Emily DIckinson was an eminent American woman poet, a reclusive soul. The words to this talking blues are hers, rearranged. It is all good by the Berne Convention, because she died a long time ago (1830-1886).

Her words are:
The sky is low, the clouds are mean
A travelling flake of snow
Across a barn or through a rut
Debates if it will go.

A narrow wind complains all day
How someone treated him.
Nature like us is sometimes caught
without her diadem.

The words to “Morning News Blues # 1” are as follows:

Extravaganza, its a bonanza, sing the pink panther, I wait for an answer
On the veranda, tattered pyjamas, Aunt Jemimah, change in the climate
Anything goes here: a motherless pearl, the curly-cue girl, top half of the world
I missed the wide mark, Victoria park, can't see in the dark, can't throw a dart
A word to the wise, a birthday surprise, I like Spanish eyes, no tobacco pies
a word to the wise
In the beginning, the world was not spinning, and darkness was winning, no one was happy
More things are done by prayer than this world can dream of or scheme of
Eternal sadness, the price for badness, on this earth madness, … but I digress
Read the instructions, widespread destruction, funereal luncheon, worms are a-munching
People are talking, they don't much like me, I sit in a corner, thinking my thoughts
Raise up your hands high, the sky must obey you, weariness plagues you, allies will help you
Malibu Country, under the mountains, no water in fountains, celebrities’ homes
Sank in the Ocean, bitter the potion, round up illegals, police bring in beagles
The five-day forecast, scientist hog-wash, twenty percent off, waiting for take-off
I got your
Number, remember, written on paper
watching the ticker tape unmaking money
Envelopes promise you rich rewards, but contents are different, false expectations

But what does all this mean. Well, for the first five verses I am just using phrases that fit jazzlike together. Then a brief reference to creation. If the earth was not spinning, then there was no day and night. And it was Tennyson who said, in the Death of Arthur, that “more things are wrought by prayer than this world dreams of”. I looked up this quote for Ma because she quoted it and I said it was by a poet I thought, but I thought Alexander Pope, but Pope said “Fools Rush in where Angels Fear to Tread”, which is where Elvis Pretzel got the line.
Stuff that is on the news in October 2007: global warming, changing forecasts, fires in Malibu exacerbated by the Santa Ana winds. Stuff in my mailbox, promises to find me a mate, funeral discounts, investment opportunities, whatever.

People want to know, what are the lyrics.
Here are the lyrics to AVE MARIA ---that is ”Hail Mary" in Latin.
Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum, benedicta tu in mulieribus
Benedictus fructus ventris tui Iesus
Sancta Maria, mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus
nunc et in hora mortis nostrae amen

In English, it is as follows: "Hail Mary, full of grace, the Lord is with thee, blessed art thou amongst women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb Jesus. Holy Mary, mother of God, pray for us sinners, now and at the hour of our death, amen".

Here are the words to Remembrance Day for Uncle Jack:

Your enemies had the element of Surprise
You needed allies in those angry skies
Smoke over the fields, another red sunrise
Cities full of danger, trains full of spies

Chorus: so far away, so far away, from my eyes

The children sleep in castles in the English countryside
The doors open wide, up the stairs they climb
Not a whimper to be heard, they have their pride
Over their heads, the warplanes collide
(Chorus)

Sweet Genevieve makes supper back in town
Satchmo plays low and soft, but she does not hear the sound
Herb is on the seashore when everything comes down
The story is all over, before the wreckage reaches ground
(chorus)

Jack is in the bloody clouds battling over the sea
At times like these he thinks of Dorothy
This food shall last him unto Eternity
This too shall pass, then he shall be free
(chorus)

This song I invented in honor of my uncle, a fighter pilot, who was shot down in World War II. Another uncle was on the ground and saw it happen. Normally I have a very flowing melody to it, but I decided to improvise with the music and the words. Now notes on the details. The first line “element of surprise” appeared on an episode of “Stargate SG1”, while I was thinking of something. The next line, with “angry skies” is drawn pretty directly from “White Cliffs of Dover” in the long version with verses. “Cities full of danger” refers primarily to London during the Luftwaffe bombing. “Trains were full of spies” is about a story my mother told me during wartime. She was returning from the USA to Canada on a train. A foreigner was in the car or cabin. When the customs officials asked him if he had anything to declare, without a word he slit his own throat. The next four verses are about the children of London. Because the cities were dangerous, the English sent the children to the countryside, which, by the way,is the setting for the Narnia Chronicles. “Sweet Genevieve” is the name of a very old song, and my grandmother’s name was Genevieve. Satchmo is Louis Armstrong, and I presume that his music was on the radio in the 1940s. “This food shall last him unto Eternity”—I have been told that Uncle Jack received Holy Communion that morning before he was shot down.

October 26 or so
This morning I composed, then performed, then uploaded Morning News Blues.

This afternoon I received a cassette tape from Jack. The quality was better than before. In order to facilitate overdubbing with MIDI, he played with a metronome, but my cassette player must drag a little, because it was a little slower, and the pitch was slightly off. But I used some technical nerdstuff-thinking and got something I could overdub, but with live instruments, not MIDI. And so, then, I uploaded "Farewell to Whisky" interpreted and performed by Jack.

October 29th or so

(by Hugh) I was bothered all weekend by Morning News Blues. I was telling people to listen to it, but it had such weird mixing that I was feeling embarrassed. So I did it again, and posted it. If you were heard the first version, you can't hear it anymore. (a little later) ---I posted a third time, cutting some stuff at the end.