11,823. RUDIMENTS, pt. 711

RUDIMENTS, pt. 711
(fire! teach you to burn!)
The early-mid 1950's, about

the earliest I can remember,

brought classical music, I'd

guess, in the guise of the

William Tell Overture, by

Rossini. More commonly

known around the Avenel

parts as, 'The Lone Ranger

Music,' and even sometimes,

if they were really Avenelian,

the 'Long Ranger Music.' It

was OK, had that dramatic

flair, was marginally enough

interesting as music went,

and, surely, was recognizable.

Nothing tedious there. The

funny part of it was that those

same years were the brink years

for so much other junk just

getting started. The trite years:

Muzak in elevators, based at

first on many of those same,

serious-music, classical tunes.

The big company back then,

run by David Sarnoff (Radio

Corporation of America), was

a large influence in the mass

popularization of classical

music  -  radio concerts, the

NBC Symphony Orchestra, etc.

The guy in all this, as lead man

and conductor, was Arturo

Toscanini. It's probably no

big deal, but I'll try to explain

some of this, helped by David

Denby : "Toscanini was at the

center of an American experiment

in art and commerce that now

scarcely seems credible: late in

the Depression, in 1937, RCA,

which owned two NBC radio

networks, created a virtuoso

orchestra especially for them, and

kept it going until 1954. The

NBC Symphony gave concerts

in New York that were broadcast

on national radio, and then,

starting in 1948, on national

television. RCA hyped

Toscanini, and the media 

responded gratefully, some

would say shamelessly. He

was widely profiled and 

photographed, lionized and 

domesticated by 'LIFE' and

countless other publications.

His NBC years were probably

the high-water mark of classical

music's popularity in America.

Some of that popularity was

doubtless swelled by the

excruciating and often, as

well, condescending music

explainers ubiquitous on the

radio, in books, in schools, 

all eager to sell great music 

to the masses..."

-

I'll get back to all that in a 

minute; but for people of my

parent's class and education

level, this was all big stuff,

televised as it was  -  my

mother always referred to it

as 'longhair music.' I was

never sure what that meant 

or where that phrase had

originated, but that was her

catchword for the exotic

spell of the classics as she

heard them. (Ferrante &

Teicher, Montovani, amd

others of that ilk). The

fresh, new idea of television,

in its earliest days, held the

promise (it really did!) of

uplift. Classical music!

Learning! Distant places!

Characters! The Lone Ranger

program's use of this William 

Tell Overture was indicative

of that  -  by 6 or 8 years later,

all that goodness was gone.

We had already entered those

numb years, with TV being,

as Newton Minnow had put

it (Chairman then of the FCC)

[Federal Communications

Commission, overseer of the

airwaves]. 'A vast wasteland.'

-

Back then  -  in these opening

years of negligence  -  the

televisions themselves were

but little tin boxes with a 

glass screen. The rear area

was stuffed with vacuum tubes.

They threw heat and lit up

some too. There was no color

TV, at least not until after

about (maybe) 1962 or '63.

When a tube burned out,

you'd go to the TV repair

shop, or have the guy come

to your house (yes; television

repair was big business back

then for the small merchant, 

who'd make house calls with

trucks and supplies as needed.

The later TV's got to the point

where the internals were on

a roll-out frame at the rear,

and the repairman would just

pull the tubes and innards

out to test and replace right

onto the frame he'd then

slide right back in. Done!

Sometimes you could do

all this yourself, by pulling

out the dead tube, and going

to the TV shop (like 'Sentry

TV,' in Avenel) and testing 

it yourself  -  using their

large, testing machine, which

replicated the tube slots and

all for what you'd find was

yours (many different sizes).

Television was new for a few

years, and then quickly became

as old hat as Uncle Harry's

jokes.The elongated days of

the endlessly televised JFK

funeral were all held in a

vivid black and white!

The 'pink' dress of Jackie

Kennedy (his widow) and

the blood spattered aftermath

of the assassination, red, was

all taken on good-faith, as

narrators intoned what people

could not see. What was weird

was that, once it did become

'old hat' everyone just forgot

about it being miraculous or

wondrous, and just began

mainlining it, juicing their

hedonistic brains with it, taking

it to rot-extremes as it steadily

increased in destructive qualities.

People's brains died. There really

should have been a mass funeral.

Or maybe there was. (I'll catch

it on re-runs sometime). And, oh,

by the way, over in North Edison,

up past the railroad tracks at

what used to be called Potter's

Crossing and what used to be

all Negro shacks and small

homes, a friend of mine

lived in one of those new split

level homes they built through 

there and had it burn down one

day, quite by accident when they

weren't home, because, he said

lightning struck the house and a

fireball came blasting in, bursting

right through the television set,

and setting the house up. (I guess

you had to be there, but he wasn't).

So much for Eyewitness News!

-

Back to the previous classical 

music affirmation: Once America,

as a nation, lost that 'institutional'

memory of the common things

to fall back on  -  like classical

music, classic literature, the

references and stories and 

morals of the old tales and 

myths  -  all of which TV 

accelerated to losing process

of  -  it was pretty much, slowly,

over. Minds roamed, peoples'

thoughts fragmented, everyone

began roving about on their own.

That's probably not as bad as it

seems  -  after all, complete unison

and group-think is what I'm always

going on against anyway. But,

the fissured dumbing-down of

everything really did have a

brutal cost, wrecked everything,

destroyed the original paradigms

by which the Nation and its working

constitutional parts functioned  -  

to wit, the rational. Enlightenment

based order and process of the

educated elite. Now we only have

hordes. Hordes wouldn't know

a Toscanini from a Panini, and

wouldn't care to anyway.