That's Just Silly

 

It surprised me that the Beatles didn't lose their popularity when their work went in unusual new directions after "Rubber Soul."  "Yellow Submarine,""Sergeant Pepper's" and "Magical Mystery Tour" sounded more like musical theater than what we were familiar with from the lads.   We had heard of Gilbert and Sullivan, but thought that to be antique and quite dead.  But that tradition was long (operetta, minstrel shows, commedia del 'arte, all the way to the scatological Roman popular stage) and lived on in all the media forms of the 20th century -- vaudeville, radio, movies and television.

The appeal of irreverence, satire and skewering bureaucracy and especially officiousness increases in trying times.  The tragic events and head-turning rate of change of the last 110 years called for an antidote in the repartee of Burns and Allen, the fast paced exchanges of Abbott and Costello, the madcap hijinks of the Marx brothers, Monty Python, Benny Hill and Robin Williams.  

The Beatles would have known about a fellow Liverpool native and multitalented singer, Tommy Handley, whose show "It's That Man Again" held the record for the largest radio audience ever.  It ran on the BBC from 1939 to 1949.  Absurdity reigned at 8:30 on Thursday nights, helping in no small way to get Britons through terrible times.

                                            

A  crew of 70 characters presented a rapid fire, up-to-the-minute topical comedy sketch show -- doesn't that seem a lot like "Saturday Night Live"?  One of the most popular, Mrs. Mopp, with all the double-entendres, had to have been the model for the randy Mrs. Slocombe on the 1970s television riot "Are You Being Served?"  Her famous tag line "TTFN" spoken as she ended a scene, went on to become part of the language.  Television and  movie characters have since had to have one ("Dynomite!" "All right all right all right" "Bond.  James Bond" -- the list is endless).  

Wherever it's found, we can always use a little silliness.   

  

     

   

Old Gold

 

When I was a boy, one of my favorite things was to hang out with Grandfather in his large detached garage.  It was his man-cave for sure, full of gardening and canning equipment, a small tractor or two, a .22 and a small-gauge shotgun, a detailed rain and weather log, onions drying on a suspended rack, pesticides that are banned today, and that corner stuffed with oil and gas cans with the smell of getting things done.  I once looked around and said, "You know, I really like old things."  With a big grin he replied, "Well, you must like the hell out of me, then!" 

It all went after he passed, but I did save the Maryland Graham Wafers tin from the kitchen because it was always there, reminded me of them (I always wondered when did they get it?) and had the appeal of great midcentury commercial design.  Today it is still in plain view and has a use again, holding the birdseed.  Someone might also save it one day, but what about all the knotted, crocheted and embroidered fabric items Grandmother made that we have had on tables for decades?  Without a story, and some little acquaintance with the person who created them, meaning is lost and they may be, too.

I admire antiques, but fortunately don't have the room for them.  What I really am drawn to, and have quite enough of, are old pieces of little value that ordinary people bought and used.  They have all been refinished (I guess all they had back then was varnish, but that is so ugly) and serve as well as they ever did.

Having two cassette decks with bad belts and many audio cassettes I didn't want to get rid of, I recently went to Just Audio in Middle River, Maryland where they not only repair old equipment but have a showroom full of that sort of thing, all restored.  Talk about a kid in a candy shop.  I traded in my two and when I saw a Kenwood deck from about 1985, I knew I'd made a new friend.  It now sits atop a receiver from 1986 and they look like twins.  The point of this seemingly unrelated story is that audio gear from the 1970s to mid-80s, the vintage stuff, is what I (more than) like.  I could have gotten a new machine for only a little more, but that's not for someone who "likes old things."

And just sometimes, the old comes back even better:

Play It Again

 

The previous post on the end of the Gaucho era leads to today's on the infamous Pincheira Brothers gang of the early 19th century; not just another tale of bad actors and rascals, it has a bigger point.

Royalists fighting against the independence movement in Chile, the brothers lost and took up a new career as bandidos, much like ex-Confederates did in the U.S. after heading west after 1865.  Mostly mestizos themselves, they allied with Native tribes such as the Boroanos to ravage Chile and Argentina, rustling and robbing.  The Natives were being hard pressed by General Juan Manuel Rosas conducting a war of extinction against them (at least 6,000 were killed).   As in our American West, the motive was to take their land for stock ranching and grain farming.  As usually happens, in these two arenas or even after the Norman conquest, a few thousand favored ones were given the land (and were very lightly taxed, as users of Federal grazing land in the West are charged little).  The gang (over 1,000 strong -- a considerable force) stole away to a hidden cave at the Andean foothills their pursuers could not find.  Just like Pennsylvania's Robber Lewis in a previous post.

               La Cueva de los Pincheira

This phenomenon of mass crime and disorder occurs again and again throughout history after wars as soldiers and sailors are discharged en masse, usually penniless and homeless.  The rise in piracy after a succession of European wars of empires is another clear example.

Another parallel:  Rosas held close to absolute power for 23 years (until 1852), not hesitating, along with his loyal wife Dona Encarnacion, to send out his thugs to intimidate and murder anyone expressing even a hint of opposition.  How they resemble the Perons a century later.  He was vengeful, cruel and popular, pursuing an aggressive and botched foreign and economic policy.  If that doesn't remind you of some of our own fearless leaders since 1980, this stands out: red was his theme color, and everyone fell in line wearing it on hats and clothing, waving banners as he passed by.

Below is a picture of Facundo Quiroga, the "Jaguar of the Plains," a powerful provincial Argentine warlord who was Rosas' ally until they fell out and Rosas had him assassinated.  He reminds one of rogue Republican state governors who defy Federal government today (he summarily rejected an earlier new national Constitution), and his fate is shared (minus the bloody end) by officials and hangers-on who  dare to deviate from total and unquestioning loyalty.   Not to their country or the idea of justice or democracy, but to a demagogue. 

 Human history, unfortunately, is like the same side of a recording being played over and over again.