His compositions for Diaghilev’s company, Ballet Russe, established him as a world-class composer and remain today some of the most compelling music. His second ballet, Petrushka, debuted in 1911 and two years later the third, Le Sacre du Printempts (“The Rite of Spring”). Because his native Russia did not adhere to the 1886 Berne Convention on the Protection of Literary and Artistic Works, Stravinsky was not always paid his due royalties upon the performance of these pieces, and his relationship with Ballet Russes turned sour over financial disputes.

Tchaikovsky’s three ballets cast an enormous shadow. If you can imagine a little skiffle group trying to make a name in Liverpool in the middle sixties you can imagine how Stravinsky may have felt as a Russian composer. While he had attended an historic debut as a boy, one of his ballets had an even more auspicious opening.

Le Sacre du Printempts was first performed in Paris’ Théâtre des Champs-Élysées on May 29, 1913. A growing unease in the audience became a disturbance and led to the house lights being turned up and as many as forty people being ejected from the packed theater, as the audience hurled “everything available” at the orchestra. Although the work was finished in relative peace, early reviews were damning. Puccini attended the second performance and deemed it “the work of a madman.” It was rumored that Camille Saint-Saens walked out of the debut in disgust, although this was probably not true as there is not certain account of his having attended the performance.

Vaslav Nijinsky’s original choreography for the ballet was lost in the outbreak of World War I when it became impossible to maintain a touring ballet company. Le Sacre du Printempts has remained, regardless, a venerable classic, reinterpreted with gender reversals, eroticism, a feminist agenda, and once infused with punk rock and once with Soviet propaganda. Professional productions of the ballet to date number over 150.

rites of spring 1

rites of spring 2

rites of spring 3

rites of spring 4

(Le Sacre du Printempts, a concert arrangement conducted by the composer himself in 1960, performed by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra)

What was so extraordinarily for that Paris audience in 1913 is still there for us to experience today. Le Sacre du Printempts explores the range of our experience and expectations from the opening notes, performed in such an extreme range of the bassoon as to render it unrecognizable. Still, t’s hard to understand the shocking nature of Stravinsky’s use of polytonality in the introduction or the intensity of the “Abduction” dance’s driving rhythm in our post-punk, post-everything world. Nothing in Stravinsky’s music nears the extremities of 60s free jazz or the base crass-ness of the Sex Pistols. The ballet wasn’t even composed with the intention of shocking its audience.

Le Sacre du Printempts is probably Stravinsky’s most-recorded work, possibly even the most recorded 20th century composition by any classical composer. We recommend – if you can find them – either of the two Antal Dorati recordings. One was in 1954 with the Minneapolis Symphony Orchestra, issued on Mercury, and the other with the Detroit Symphony Orchestra in 1980. You will have a hard time finding a copy of the second, released by Decca, but it’s worth the search. Another recording worth the search is Colin Davis’ 1976 recording with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (from the Netherlands) – this may be the most “shocking” recording you can find on LP.

Stravinsky never abandoned ballet but never composed for dance on the level of his Ballet Russes work again. His 1928 work, Le baiser de la fée (“The fairy’s kiss”), was based on a Hans Christian Andersen story but really served as a tribute to Tchaikovsky, whose early piano melodies were incorporated.

Before parting from Ballet Russes, Stravinsky wrote an arrangement for the ballet he had seen as a boy. Portions of Tchaikovsky’s Sleeping Beauty was, at that time, only published in the form of piano reduction, and Stravinsky had the opportunity to score Princess Aurora’s solo in the first scene in the second act (he also scored another scene from The Sleeping Beauty for the American Ballet Company many years later).

spiderman is born

You’re hearing a story from this classic Peter Pan LP, Spidey Super Stories. Everybody enjoys the story of Spider-Man’s origin, especially when it is told in such a hilarious manner, but I also wanted to share this record because yesterday when my son was listening to it I recognized the voice of the narrator.

Yes, it’s actor Morgan Freeman, Academy Award winner (five time nominee) narrating that old Spider-Man record. Everybody’s gotta start somewhere, and apparently a lot of stars made records for kids (we discovered Michael Dorn, Star Trek’s Worf, on a Star Wars record last year – hear it here).

And the appearance of Morgan Freeman on a Spider-Man record actually makes a lot of sense to people about my age – see Spidey Super Stories were a recurring feature on TV’s Electric Company, a a children’s program where Freeman started his career, appearing as Easy Reader, Vincent the Vegetable Vampire, and of course …

Mel Mounds the DJ:

Yep. We all start somewhere.

meditation tape

And also a passage from one of my favorite histories of the United States – This is from Samuel Elliot Morrison’s lively and opinionated 1965 Oxford History of the United States:

It was America’s busy age, or one of them  Eighteenth-century travelers scolded Americans for their indolence; nineteenth-century travelers criticized their activity.  Each Northern community was an anthill, intensely active within and constantly exchanging with other hills.  Every man worked, or at least made a semblance of it; the few who wished to be idle and could afford it, fled to Europe and dabbled in the arts or pursued some pallid branch of scholarship – the type of American expatriate immortalized by Henry James.  Nothing struck European travelers more forcibly than the total want of public parks and pleasure resorts, of games and sports, or of simple pleasures like country walking.  For the Northern American had no learned how to employ leisure.  His pleasure came from doing; and as almost everyone worked for long hours six days of the week, and (except in New Orleans) the Puritan sabbath prevailed, there was not much time for recreation, and very few holidays other than Thanksgiving (still confined to the Yankee area), Christmas, and the Glorious Fourth.

So here’s a track from Night People, a late 70s Lee Dorsey produced by Allen Toussaint – It’s a good fit for this election year:  a little bit cynical, a little bit jaded, but not downtrodden at all.  Let’s leave all that hostility to the angry folks on the fringes so those of us with real shit to do can go on with our lives.

god must have blessed america

(“God Must Have Blessed America” by Lee Dorsey)

And now our feature presentation…

Anyway, this week we’ve been exploring weird albums, although today’s is only weird if you think the above sentiment was out of line.  It’s hardly irrelevant to today’s holiday, and even just maybe a little inspirational…

intro:theme

(Intro / “Inside Star Trek Theme”)

Inside Star Trek is an album released by Columbia Records in 1976, during a time when the series was in cultural exile – several years before the first movie, several years after the cancellation of the animated series*, and nearly a decade after the original series aired.  Unlike most records about a TV show (like the Goddamn stupid Dukes of Hazard album) a lot of creative thought went into it – they even included an interview with Isaac Asimov!

*Now on Netflix but not as awesome as you remember it being.

The best part of this album is Star Trek‘s creator, Gene Roddenberry, speaking before an audience about his relationship with the network and it’s censors while making the first two seasons of the original series.  These are the only parts we have here in this post.

roddenberry 30%

(“The Enterprise Runs Aground”)

roddenberry network censorship of the bible

(“A Letter from a Network Censor”)

roddenberry – robot sex

(The Questor Affair” – There’s robot sex in this one!)

It’s sort of fun to hear the interview with Spock’s dad one time, but after that it’s just boooooring.  Roddenberry’s the best part.  My dad, incidentally, thought all Star Trek was that booooooring – he complained that it was just guys standing around and talking.  He proved his point when we got our first VCR, because I’m pretty sure I remember watching Raiders of the Lost Ark that night.

So Star Trek isn’t always very exciting.  It does reward your attention when it can capture it – and so it is for the album, which ends with Roddenberry’s case for its legacy:

the star trek phenonmenon

(“The Star Trek Philosophy”)

opening number – let my people come

(“Opening Number – Let my People Come”)

Let My People Come ran for more than 1,500 shows at the Village Gate, although it didn’t survive the transition to Broadway.  It has enjoyed worldwide popularity since and numerous revivals, most recently and near to us at Chicago’s Stage 773 this past December.

It was subtitled “A Sexual Musical” and through songs like “I’m Gay” and “I Believe in my Body” conveyed a positive message of sexual liberation that went over well with, um, people that go to musicals.  The original cast album was even nominated for a Grammy in 1974.

i’m gay

(“I’m Gay”)

come in my mouth

(“Come in my Mouth”)

A lot of the music isn’t that great, though, although it’s all HILARIOUS!  Some gags are better than others – “Come in my Mouth” is about as close to a fellatio anthem as you’re going to find (or is it?).  Let My People Come is the ranchy grandaddy of South Park and Avenue Q.  It even got into it’s own legal mess, and later pressings of the cast album had to drop one track (“Cunnilingus Champion of Company C”) because MCA, who owned the rights to “Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy” sued over copyright infringement.

let my people come

(“Let my People Come”)

Are we a more sexually liberated society than we were in the middle 70s?  Sure, but it’s a guarantee somebody’s going to complain about these tracks.  Did I mention you really shouldn’t play these songs while your kids are around?  You can find lots of songs more offensive that the FCC lets people play over the airwaves every day (like “Lollipop” by Lil Wayne), but one thing you can count on is somebody being offended even though there’s a knob on every radio for changing the station.

And my favorite thing about Let My People Come is that it makes me laugh.  They’re some of the least sexy songs I’ve ever heard, but they make me laugh every time.  Of course, I still can’t watch Rowlf the Dog and Sam the Eagle sing the “Willow Tit Willow” song from The Mikado without giggling.  Hee, hee.  Sam said “tit”!

More succinctly, from the album’s liner notes:

People are sexual, if only because they are human and mortal, and if they understand and deal with that fact they will be able to move on to something else, something more spiritual.  Earl and Phil are presently working on a new Broadway musical called “Spirit”.

I guess they never moved on, because the promised new, more spiritual musical never came.

Tomorrow: Another weird record, and this one will have – I swear! – sex with robots!

(“In a Gadda da Vida” by Maddog)

It’s educational record week here on the Hymie’s blog.  After Friday we promise to go back to insulting your intelligence with idiotic lists and comparisons and cover songs.  Today we ask you to think big…

What follows is a pair of lectures by Dr. Edward Teller.  According to the liner notes “the discussions he presents on this record were originally made informally in the home of a friend in answer to various questions of other guests regarding the universe and the theory of relativity.”

edward teller unverse part 1

edward teller universe part two

(“The Size and Nature of the Universe”)

edward teller relativity part 1

edward teller relativity part 2

(“The Theory of Relativity”)