In a 1762 letter thanking Italian physicist Giambatista Beccaria for supporting and defending his recently published theories on electricity, Benjamin Franklin gave Beccaria permission to freely use, and instructions on how to build, one of Franklin’s new inventions:

Perhaps…it may be agreeable to you, as you live in a musical country, to have an account of the new instrument lately added here to the great number that charming science was before possessed of: — As it is an instrument that seems peculiarly adapted to Italian music, especially that of the soft and plaintive kind, I will endeavour to give you such a description of it, and of the manner of constructing it, that you, or any of your friends, may be enabled to imitate it, if you incline so to do, without being at the expence and trouble of the many experiments I have made in endeavouring to bring it to its present perfection.

The invention Franklin was describing was the glass armonica, a musical instrument that sounds like wine glasses being resonated with a wet finger, and works on exactly the same principle. The purpose-built glasses (bowls) in a glass armonica are mounted close together, though, so multiple perfectly-tuned notes are accessible within a hands-width, and since the bowls are rotated on a spindle one need only lightly touch them, as opposed to using a circular hand motion to resonate them. Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips is almost certainly the most well-known piece of music to feature the unique and ethereal sound of the glass armonica: From Tchaikovsky’s ballet The Nutcracker, here’s William Zeitler playing Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy.
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Tonight’s lighthearted amusement en route to the Tips is a short clip from the 1939 Marx Brothers movie At The Circus in which a dance-happy Groucho Marx, accompanied at one point by his brother Harpo on the bass couch, extols the high-quality, point-by-point education – in geography, history, music, and the arts – one can receive by watching the performances of Lydia the Tattooed Lady.
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In 1982 a group of entertaining senior citizens living at The Walter Salvo House in Northampton, Massachusetts pooled their talents and put on shows under the name Young@Heart. The first performances involved singing, comedy routines, and impersonations, but over the years settled into a (mostly) choral format wherein various members of the group take the lead in singing songs, many of them – notably – contemporary songs by the likes of James Brown, Sonic Youth, and The Ramones. As the years went by, various members died and were replaced, but the show went on; in 1996, following some fruitful collaborations with outside, non-senior performers, including punk rockers and a gay men’s chorus, a fellow named Roy Faudree, who had staged their first full-blown theatre show, organized a trip to Rotterdam’s R Festival, where they unexpectedly met with such success that they ended up doing 12 – count ’em, 12 – tours of Europe, Australia, and Canada.
In 2008, British documentarian Stephen Walker released Young@Heart, which chronicled the group as they prepared for, and then staged, a concert in Massachusetts. Tonight’s clip from the film shows a member of the group giving a solo performance of what was to have been a duet with his friend, until his friend passed away shortly before the show. Backed by the Young@Heart chorus, here’s the late Fred Knittle, a former WWII machine-gunner, singing a song by British group Coldplay called I Will Try To Fix You.
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Over the course of his career Frank Sinatra recorded and performed numerous Cole Porter songs, most famously “I’ve Got You Under My Skin”, I Get a Kick out of You”, and “Night and Day.” Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips, the next installment of our summer series of songs about particular cities, was recorded in 1958 as part of the sessions for the Come Fly With Me album but was not included on the original LP; in 1996, Capitol Records released it on the retrospective compilation CD Frank Sinatra Sings the Select Cole Porter. Backed by the orchestral arrangements of Billy May, here’s Frank Sinatra swinging his way through Cole Porter’s tribute to the City of Lights called I Love Paris.
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Last month Clara Cannucciari, star of the online series Great Depression Cooking, walked us through the steps required in the preparation of the tasty, nutritious, and inexpensive Poorman’s Meal. Tonight, she provides some modest advice and answers a few of her viewers’ questions about life, food, and happiness, in a segment called Clara answers her fan mail.
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Tonight’s amusement en route to the tips is a song about loss of faith in the goodness of human nature. The beautifully simple fan-made video that accompanies it is powerfully affecting because it artfully goes right to the heart of the song, which isn’t a lyrical examination of, or treatise on, sadness and disappointment, but rather an expression of the purely emotional state wherein loss of faith and trust feels monumental, absolute, and permanent. From the 1997 release The Boatman’s Call, here’s Nick Cave singing People Ain’t No Good.
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The Buddy Deane Show was a Baltimore-based television program that aired in the late 50s/early 60s. Patterned after American Bandstand, the show featured white-bread teenagers dancing on camera to the latest pop songs (and sometimes even singing their own songs) while Deane and his co-host moved merchandise during breaks in the action. Tonight’s amusement en route to the tips is an in-studio promotional spot for an exciting and remarkable product that, as you’ll see, provided hours and hours of fun for the whole family: here’s the perky Nancy Rogers urging viewers to go out and purchase the latest absolute-gotta-have-it invention called the Bob-A-Loop.
Wowee. Please remain calm.
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The growth of no-frills budget airlines in the UK over the last twenty years or so has enabled hundreds of thousands of pleasure-seeking Brits to jet their way to inexpensive holiday/party destinations in Spain, Poland, Estonia, Turkey and elsewhere for very little money. The downside for these travelers, of course, is that they get the sort of flights they pay for – or rather, they don’t get what they don’t pay for. In tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips, the comical cabaret trio Fascinating Aïda, comprised of Dillie Keane (the lead singer in the middle with the Irish Brogue), Liza Pulman, and Adéle Anderson, grumble robustly about the feckety rip-off known as Cheap Flights.
(Note: the song ends at the 4:10 mark, at which point a two-minute advertisement/merch-promo is tacked on.)
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Tonight’s amusement en route to the Tips is a little happy-foot dance number in the Western Swing tradition. Accompanied by some vintage 1930’s (I’m guessing) sepia photographs of dancers at house parties, here’s laid-back Turkey, Texas hometown boy Bob Wills and the rest of The Texas Playboys singing the vigorously cordial Stay All Night (Stay A Little Longer).
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About fifteen years ago I was walking on a dirt road just north of Hinton, Alberta when I saw Great Grey Owl sitting not more then twenty-five feet away on a fence post. I was floored by its shockingly (to me) large size, striking facial expression and unperturbed demeanor; I suspect that anyone who’s been fortunate enough to see an owl at fairly close range would agree that they are amazing and beautiful creatures. Tonight’s amusement, from the same folks at Peterson Field Guides who brought us the previously featured video about woodpeckers, is an interesting and informative short video about our feathered friends the Owls.
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A couple of days ago I stumbled across an interesting YouTube channel that hosts an extensive collection of national anthems with English subtitles. Most of the anthems are remarkably similar, with common themes of pride, honour, beauty, and the duty to stand up for and defend the great nation. The Chinese national anthem, though, written in 1934 and used as the anthem since 1949, stands out from the rest by virtue of sounding entirely like a fighting song; its lyrics are more about mortal peril and unnamed enemies than about the country itself. Here, with English subtitles, is the March of the Volunteers.
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