CHAIR: Then it’s settled! We’ll continue charging top dollar to wriggle our hands in front of this “instrument”—which is no more real than an air guitar—and insisting that it’s the most diff (snickers)—excuse me—that it’s the most difficult thing in the world to play, to discourage further investigation from the masses.
ALL: (laughter) Aye!
CHAIR: For the eighty-sixth consecutive year, the motion passes. And now, for The Feast of a Thousand Papa Johnses!
ALL: (wild cheers)
CHAIR: Does anyone know how to use a telephone?
Tags: evan allgood, humor, music, theremins, we did not pay for this piece
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ooooooooOOOOOOOOOOOEEEEEeeeeeeeeeeooooOOOOoooooo
I love the tags. “This guy deserves maybe 7 dollars,” I said in my head.
ALSO, there used to be a roughly 10-year-old boy who played theremin in my subway station about once a week. I can’t tell if he was good because theremin. He did sell CDs, though.
CDs of himself or just like he had a bootlegging business coincidently
Himself. Though that’s not outside the realm of possibility.
Who controls the British crown? Who keeps the metric system down?
WEEE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
WEEE DOOOOOOOOOOOOOO
WEE DOOOOO, WEEEE-OOOOooooooooOOOOoooeeeeeeeEEEEEeeeeeoooooo
♫ We doooo…
Who holds back the electric car?
Who makes Steve Gutenberg a star?
(Have had the song in my head from virtually the moment the screencap went up.)
I actually just read a really interesting novel about the theremin’s creator, called “Us Conductors”. I thought it was really really interesting but a completely fake telling of the story – then I googled and it turns out most of what happened in it was real? So much spying and science and prison and not-sappy romance!
I just read that book too! It was great – beautiful writing, interesting history, espionage!
I went to a bookstore reading that had a theremin player open for the author. He played pop songs from the 80s.
Can you conceivably play anything else on a theremin?
Not if the proposed law I’m lobbying for gets any traction.
So I am a musical saw player and I busk all the time and everyone who walks by says, “That sounds like a theremin!”
It DOES NOT–okay it sounds A LITTLE like a theremin but it ISN’T one–and I have grown a little resentful of theremins as a result for, what, being a cooler, more science-fiction version of my instrument?
I love this, because those smug theremin players get their due in it.
Hngngngngnggngng. Musical saw players are fucking amazing. I love this clip of Guy Forsyth playing “Over the Rainbow.” Check out the very beginning when someone starts to laugh and he looks out into the crowd like “Dude NO I am serious. Shut up before I shut you up for you.”
Are there any clips out there of you playing?
Awwww! Yes, there is a vine of me somewhere out there. I believe the hashtag is #Emilythesawplayer. I am dressed up for Halloween! It’s v. spooky.
Ahhhh! I shall go search this out! Thank you!
And, I have lots and LOTS of thoughts on the musical saw and what it represents to people and how I feel about the musical saw in traditional music venues and what that says about how we think of non-Western or American folk music generally and a lot of it is summed up by videos like that. I also do some education stuff on the musical saw and Appalachian music in general and my talks always end with me pointing out that it would be so cool if people wrote for the musical saw and used it to enhance the repertoire of traditional Western music ensembles but that wouldn’t solve the problem of the extreme high-brow low-brow stratification in music, just get the saw from low-brow to high-brow, which will never really happen because it’s a fucking saw and people will always laugh about it a little.
I just realized in this rambly comment that as a first-generation working class college student who always felt super out of place at her rich kid liberal arts school, I might have taken up the saw because I saw myself in it. This requires some thinking.
Can you write an article please, this is all new and interesting to me!
That would be awesome, but not very easy! I feel like as a musician I haven’t built enough “cred” to talk about this, because I do only mostly busk (grad school is busy!) and have worked with composers but only in kind of an advisory role. I feel like as a writer, I don’t have enough cred to get anyone else interested in putting my work up!
BUT I am currently underemployed, so putting these ideas down would be a good way to get excited about something again 😀
You might enjoy a book called REDNECKS, QUEERS & COUNTRY MUSIC by Nadine Hubbs. Pretty gnarly class analysis via the snobbery leveled at you old-timey instrument twangers. Also, have you seen a sketch from the old Tracey Ullmann show about a corporate creativity exercise–spoilers–that a woman wins by stringing up a saw and playing Somewhere Over the Rainbow? It was smart and funny and I hope non-insulting to practitioners, since I loved it to bits.
No! But I would love to consume both of those things!
Have you seen the movie “Delicatessen?” The closing credits feature a great duet between a cellist and a saw-player. The soundtrack of a French indie film isn’t exactly breaking down the barriers of classical music, but it’s still a really nice little piece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W7ydEkUViZo&f…
Based on my Youtube search for the above clip, it seems that cello/saw duets have achieved mild popularity, not always as a musical gimmick.
And I, also, want to read your saw article.
Yes! I play that piece. It’s very sweet-sounding and works even sans cellist, which is nice for me, a busker.
Laughing at somebody who’s using a cutting tool as a musical instrument seems like a terrible idea.
It’s the cutting edge of musicology. God, I’m doing Dad jokes now. I’d be happy to see more on this. A local performance artist Christine Johnston plays the saw as well as other repurposed tools,she is worth checking out. Her work is both funny and beautiful. http://www.christinejohnston.com
When I saw Jeff Mangum solo the only thing I really missed about his backing band was the musical saw.
I saw Neutral Milk Hotel this summer, and I took a video of just the saw guy so I could show my dad! Getting to say “Wait for the saw to drop in…here it comes!” was a real pleasure.
This post is total clickbait…
.. for a music minor like me.
I would love to learn to play the theremin. It’s supposed to be quite hard to get an actual melody out of this instrument.
Hannibal has ruined the theremin for me forever. Thanks, Hannibal.
….Thannibal.
I would love to learn to play the theremin. It’s supposed to be quite hard to get an actual melody out of this instrument.