MetaFilter posts tagged with wwii and music

Red Foley's war effort.

flapjax at midnite — Wed, 09 Apr 2008 20:15:29 -0800

Just the other day I was thinking about World War 2-era propaganda songs, so of course I gave a listen to Smoke On the Water. Say what? You didn't know it was about kickin' Hitler's ass? Or Hirohito's? Guess you weren't listening well enough when ol' Red Foley sang: "...there'll be nothing left but vultures to inhabit all that land, when our modern ships and bombers make a graveyard of Japan..." I tell you, they just don't write songs like that anymore, friends. Anyway, by 1951 Red was looking forward to Peace in the Valley. More from Red Foley: Hot Rod Race: What a cool little guitar solo! Pin Ball Boogie : Complete with pinball sound effects! Crazy Little Guitar Man: As might be expected, this live TV spot features some slick plucking from stringman Speedy Haworth. Nice! Freight Train Boogie: Another live spot. Jumping little tune!

Your random audio links of the day.

goodnewsfortheinsane — Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:24:15 -0800

Today's post of tenuously related audio brings you ten historic radio broadcasts, 529 eternal questions in popular music, and one mildly amusing black metal band prank call.

Hitler's record collection

mr_crash_davis — Tue, 07 Aug 2007 15:48:20 -0800

Know who else liked tunes by "subhuman" Jewish and Russian musicians? That's right.

Full Fathom Nine

matteo — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 09:09:22 -0800

Mahler performances were rare in Vienna in those days because Mahler's city had already been contaminated by the acolytes of Adolf Hitler. By their reckoning, Mahler's music was loathsome — a product of "Jewish decadence." To put Mahler's music on the program was therefore a political act. It was to protest and deny the hateful faith that blazed across the border from Germany. That much I understood quite clearly, even as a boy.
The New Yorker's Alex Ross reprints Hans Fantel's New York Times 1989 essay on Bruno Walter's 1938 performance of Mahler's Ninth Symphony -- the last performance of the Vienna Philharmonic before Hitler invaded Austria.

Leonard Bernstein: Miracle on 57th Street

matteo — Wed, 28 Dec 2005 10:41:43 -0800

Miracle on 57th Street.
Thomas Wolfe said that America is not only the place where miracles happen, but where they happen all the time. This is the story of a miracle, a true-life fairy tale, and appropriately enough it begins with the intervention of the Almighty.
Artur Rodzinski, music director of the New York Philharmonic from 1943 to 1947, was an eccentric, a health nut who drank only milk from goats he raised himself and who kept a loaded revolver in his back pocket whenever he conducted. Rodzinski said that God told him to hire 24 year old Leonard Bernstein, to be his assistant conductor. In the fall of 1943 Rodzinski decided to take a vacation, spend a little time with his goats, and called in Bruno Walter to conduct seven concerts in ten days. Only hours before one of those concerts (in the program, works by Schumann, Rosza, Strauss and Wagner) Walter fell ill. Rodzinski was only four hours away, in his farm. But he declined to come back to Carnegie Hall: "Call Bernstein. That's why we hired him." The concert was broadcast over radio and a review appeared on page 1 of The New York Times the next day: "Young Aide Leads Philharmonic; Steps in When Bruno Walter is Ill". In the same size type as another that read, "Japanese Plane Transport Sunk." More inside.

Wilhelm Furtwängler

matteo — Wed, 05 Oct 2005 16:15:43 -0800

The Wartime Ninth. "Berlin. October 7, 1944. In the Beethovensaal a concert is about to begin, but the theater is empty, relieved of its usual audience studded with Nazi elite. The Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is on stage, awaiting its cue. Conductor Wilhelm Furtwängler stands awkwardly on the podium. The vague meandering of his baton summons the first shadowy note of Bruckner's Ninth Symphony. A Radio Berlin engineer starts his Magnetophon. The most extraordinary orchestral recording of the century has just begun". More inside.

Singing, Painting and the Holocaust: Interview with Leon Greenman

matteo — Mon, 29 Aug 2005 12:31:47 -0800

you'll then have a grave in the clouds where you won't lie too cramped
"No, no, I never met Paul Celan. This poem is too CLASSIC, too cold, and too difficult to follow. It does nothing to me".
Singing, Painting and the Holocaust: Interview with Leon Greenman, Auschwitz Survivor 98288

DooWop Nation

y2karl — Thu, 11 Nov 2004 13:03:25 -0800

DooWop Nation Not to get all Pepsi Blue on your collective ass, but I have been luxuriating in the Proper box sets The Dawn Of Doo-Wop (tracklist) and Doo Wop Delights (tracklist and discography) and thought to construct a post around the topic of the original postwar--as World War II--black harmony singing style, of which, as Greil Marcus notes in his Lipstick Traces, there were 15,000 records recorded after World War II--a DIY phenomenom which he compares to rise of punk... (more inside, naturally)