Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

Dumb motherfuckers cannot understand a consequence that most 4 year olds have fully sorted out.

The cruelty is the point; the law be damned.

It’s the corruption, stupid.

I really should read my own blog.

New McCarthy, same old McCarthyism.

Never entrust democracy to any process that requires republicans to act in good faith.

They want us to be overwhelmed and exhausted. Focus. Resist. Oppose.

Stop using mental illness to avoid talking about armed white supremacy.

🎶 Those boots were made for mockin’ 🎵

Republicans are radicals, not conservatives.

Jack be nimble, jack be quick, hurry up and indict this prick.

Giving in to doom is how we fail to fight for ourselves & one another.

I like political parties that aren’t owned by foreign adversaries.

The desire to stay informed is directly at odds with the need to not be constantly enraged.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

President Musk and Trump are both poorly raised, coddled 8 year old boys.

All hail the time of the bunny!

Good lord, these people are nuts.

We cannot abandon the truth and remain a free nation.

When someone says they “love freedom”, rest assured they don’t mean yours.

Optimism opens the door to great things.

The arc of history bends toward the same old fuckery.

Not all heroes wear capes.

Speaking of republicans, is there a way for a political party to declare intellectual bankruptcy?

You are here: Home / Open Threads / O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?

O Death, Where Is Thy Sting?

by | 56 Comments

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The grave has been winning many victories lately among the unvaccinated. Many Herman Cain awards are still being awarded to brave Facebookers who are lions not sheep, including those who know in their hearts that their first vaccinations were a mistake, refused a booster, and are now residing in the graveyard.

Anyway, I don’t have a big point to make here, other than Reginald Mobley is a fantastic countertenor, and thousands of people who died for no reason other than owning the libs will never hear him sing.

Reader Interactions

56Comments

  1. 1.

    geg6

    Saw a blurb for an article (WaPo???) that the fifth highest cause of death for cops in 2022 was COVID.  Let ‘em die, I say.

  2. 2.

    K488

    You’re not kidding about Reginald Mobley!  Wow!  Wonderful instrument, with a real musical intelligence behind it.  Thanks for this!

  6. 6.

    Ohio Mom

    @geg6: There were two people in my circles who died of Covid.

    The first, very early on in the pandemic (before the vaccine and before doctors had developed any real sense of how to treat it) was my cousin who caught it when he was in the hospital with a sacardosis crisis of some kind. He’d been in and out of the hospital before, we all assumed he’d be stabilized and sent home as usual.

    The other was a good friend’s BIL, an unvaccinated retired cop whose second career was owning a shooting range. So, hanging out all day with similarly unvaccinated dummies. I can’t say my friend was especially sad about it.

  8. 8.

    Baud

    @Spanky: Ah, I just saw Bach in the title and didn’t read further.  I was kind of surprised that Bach did lyrics at all.

    So Handel is the one that could have used the assistance of ChatGPT.

  11. 11.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @Baud: A lot of composers used a librettist to write the lyrics. Most of the famous opera composers wrote the music (presumably including the melody sung by the singers) but not the actual lyrics. I suspect Bach and Handel, Mozart and all the rest used librettists but could certainly be wrong. That song writing model continued into the modern era – a lot of the songwriting teams of the 20th century worked that way, including the Broadway musical songwriting teams and the writers of pop standards up through the early rock and roll and Motown era. In fact it wouldn’t surprise me at all if a lot of songwriting teams still work that way. One has a knack for music, the other for lyrics.

  14. 14.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @$8 blue check mistermix: I’m not especially religious these days but still feel strongly that one could do worse than the guys who wrote the KJV of the Bible for librettists. Those guys knew how to write memorable phrases.

  19. 19.

    JGreen

    @oatler: Ah, yes.  “Only he who is running knows”.

    I, myself,  am an aficionado of using double reeds without using oboes or bassoons.  When I started playing the entire oboe, things got much harder.

  20. 20.

    Lapassionara

    @Baud: I think Handel mainly relied on Bible verses for his lyrics. So, basically using God as his librettist.

     

    ETA, what Mistermix said

  25. 25.

    geg6

    On topic, I can’t listen to this or most classical music.  Having been forcibly immersed in Catholicism until I simply refused to capitulate any longer (about age 14), it all gives me terrible feelings and flashbacks.  Any art that smacks of the Catholic Church triggers me.  I cannot express my hatred for it adequately enough.

  27. 27.

    kalakal

    @What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?:

    @$8 blue check mistermix:

    I’m an atheist, in large part of having a lot of religion thrown at me in my schooldays.

    I still love a lot of the music, architecture, artwork, and think the KJV is a truly terrific piece of writing. The language is magnificent

    If you can sit in a medieval cathedral, listening to a choral or organ recital and feel nothing you’re not human

  29. 29.

    satby

    @geg6: That’s too bad. I left the church at age 12, but I find classical music beautiful, and listen primarily to it. I can ignore the religious overtones of some pieces as aspirational.

  30. 30.

    Anoniminous

    Music trivia

    The opening segment of Doppio Movimento (Simple Gifts) in Copland’s “Appalachian Spring” has the oboe and bassoon in 9ths. And it sounds absolutely wretched on a piano and absolutely marvelous when played.

    Go figure and that’s why Copland was a genius.

  31. 31.

    Gin & Tonic

    @satby: My difficulty now is that my fondness for russian men’s choral music is in direct conflict with the behavior of russians in Ukraine.

  33. 33.

    Anoniminous

    Re: God as librettist

    Does he have a union card?  Is He a member in good standing of the American Federation of Musicians?  Does He get paid scale or can he command top dollar?

  36. 36.

    Sure Lurkalot

    @WaterGirl:  “To serve and protect”…my ass.

    Last year, a neighbor’s garage mounted cam filmed the same car driving around the cul-de-sac at 3 am for weeks so I emailed our community resource officer who I had met at a volunteer event. He called back a couple of weeks later, apologetic for the delay because he and his family had been sick as shit with the “China virus”.

    Didn’t want to take the made in America vax…guess he thought some bigotry would keep him and his family safe. FAFO.

  37. 37.

    RaflW

    Vaguely related: My friend and I started watching Tár last night. I was kind of intrigued, but it was a weekday evening and it’s a long movie, so we paused it.

    Have folks watched it? Worth the commitment for you? (Knowing that ‘worth it’ is highly subjective, this asks if you thought so, not if you think I’lll feel the same. TY).

  39. 39.

    sab

    I only discovered Reginald Mobley this Black history month. This is shocking! He is amazing and has been for years.

    Time to buy some records.He is so good. What a voice!

  41. 41.

    geg6

    @satby:

    I had a traumatic experience with the church involved and I despise everything ever associated with it.  Can’t deal with the smell of incense either.

  42. 42.

    geg6

    @Spanky:

    Not really any better than the Catholics.  Much of my father’s family were either Methodists or Lutherans.  All assholes, IMHO.

  43. 43.

    sab

    I am a not very good soprano, so I love counter tenors. I have followed a lot of them over the years. A lot of them. I am old. And I love people who can do that voice range.

    Reginald Mobley is so good he is almost out of the class. I have never heard anyone like him.

  44. 44.

    Matt McIrvin

    @geg6: I recall PZ Myers once described walking into St. Patrick’s Cathedral in NYC and being overwhelmingly, viscerally repelled, like he had walked into a place suffused with evil.

    I kind of figured he was raised Catholic on the basis of that but, no, his family was Scandinavian-immigrant Lutheran. When I go into such places my reaction is just “this is beautiful but also weird, and not from my cultural background”.

  47. 47.

    sab

    Reginald Mobley, Floridian, wanted to be a painter until people forced him to discover his voice was amazing.

    Another amazing black Floridian, painter,  is Dean Mitchell. Best painter in America in watercolor, my favorite medium because it is so difficult.

    There are some amazingly talented people out there that we choose to ignore. Just because. Not because they are not talented enough.

  48. 48.

    MisterDancer

    Wow. I did choral as a kid for about a year; my Mom wanted me to expand past the gospel I’d been singing up unto that point. It’s a whole level of rigor and effort unto itself, and hats off to Mobley for his amazing talent!

    Oh! Yeah, COVID his close recently — my Brother (double-vaccinated) had it over last couple of weeks, and somehow both myself and my Partner (triple-vaxxed) didn’t get any symptomatic business; tests negative, although I did feel…off, for a day or two. Very scary times; we’ve all given COVID a miss since start of pandemic!

    Then an old pal literally on other corner of the country got it, and she’s still working thru it.

    It could be much worse, so I’m grateful for the health and strength we all still got ’round here. :)

  51. 51.

    sab

    I am a white woman who cannot  sing. I have a black granddaughter with a lovlely voice.

    I will be sure this granddaughter and the others will hear this amazing voice.

  53. 53.

    prostratedragon

    @Madeleine: ​If there’s a good baroque ensemble in your area, look out for him; he performs widely, for instance this past Fall in the Chicago area with Music of the Baroque.

  54. 54.

    VOR

    @Sure Lurkalot: To be fair, the President of the United States was using that term just a few years ago. Short fingered vulgarian coarsened the discourse, basically gave a green light for all the assholes to be their authentic selves.

  55. 55.

    Emma

    @prostratedragon: I was going to post this if no one else had :) this was the first time I ever heard Mobley and listened to this on repeat for like an hour. I much prefer the modern style of classical singing without all the crazy vibrato (which ironically is probably closer to what it actually sounded like back in the day), so his interpretation is spot-on for me. When is he going to update his website, though, I want to see if/when he’s ever coming to the Seattle area!!!

  56. 56.

    What Have the Romans Ever Done for Us?

    @$8 blue check mistermix: Yeah same. I listen to a lot of classical music from Renaissance and Baroque periods and up to 20th century composers like Copeland and Gershwin. A lot of old church music is great even though I’m not much of a believer these days.

     

    @kalakal: Yes they’re one. Burt Bacharach and Hal David are another. I suspect the great Motown songwriting teams (Norman Whitfield and Barret Strong and Holland-Dozier-Holland) worked that way. Not sure about Smokey Robinson – I think he wrote both music and lyrics and boy could he turn a phrase.

     

     

    @kalakal: Yes I feel the same way.

     

    @Matt McIrvin: Did not know that.

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