Dear Program Director
It's not true I had nothing on, I had the radio on.
— Marilyn Monroe
Tree Surrounded by Night. November 2021.
I am writing to inquire about a piece of music I heard on your radio station on my way back from the post office today. The piece is a little difficult to describe, but I hope to give you enough information so that you can inform me of the name and performer of the piece since the DJ of the show doesn’t post playlists online.
I usually ride my bicycle but on Tuesdays I drive the car to and from work so I can pick up the mail at the post office box which is close to where I work but still too far to ride a bicycle to and from at lunch. I would go to the post office after work except the traffic is so congested in that part of town after 3:30 in the afternoon and it’s not really the distance that’s the issue but the amount of time it takes. Plus, it’s not comfortable bicycling year round in “business casual” work attire.
I distinctly remember a clarinet as the primary melodic instrument and maybe a violin though this could simply have been a secondary instrument. I usually leave for lunch around 12:15 and so would be in the car listening to your radio station around that time on the way to the post office. But I heard this piece on my way back from the post office which would be closer to 12:30 or 12:35. Actually today at the café, a co-worker told me she made it to the post office and back in twenty minutes but that is an anomaly. It usually takes almost thirty minutes to get to the post office and back to work though I usually stop at the café before coming back to the office.
It’s not that I don’t like having mail delivered to my house, I just prefer that people don’t have easy access to my address for reasons beyond the scope of this request about the piece I heard on your radio station today around 12:35 or maybe as late as 12:45.
I was on my way back from the post office where I picked up my mail which included an ad for a health assessment and consultation which I threw away there at the post office even though I don’t think they recycle so it will end up in a landfill somewhere just north of where I live. I remember hearing a program on another radio station in our city once that paper has to be turned in order to decompose in a landfill. Obviously, anything will decompose given time but who has time these days. There was also a notice from the public library that I have an overdue book from the university. This is a little frustrating but more amusing because if I had picked up the book at the university library it wouldn’t be due until sometime in December. Well, I guess it’s important to read contracts regardless of the size of paper they are printed on.
I was waiting to turn left at the light and turned on the radio and the piece was playing on your radio station sometime around 12:35 or 12:45 but I think the clock in the car is not quite accurate. Actually, it seems to be accurate in keeping time, but it seems to be set differently in relation to the other clocks I encounter throughout the day.
The clarinet was played in a style that many would mistake for Klezmer which Microsoft does not agree is a legitimate word but I’ll let that go for now even though a discussion of imperialistic practices of corporations and the homogenizing effect we allow them to dictate on our daily lives because of our own inconveniences would be stimulating I think the rhythm of the clarinet melody was not typical of any Klezmer music I’ve heard and I have certainly not heard all the Klezmer music that has been recorded but have heard many styles and this seemed to lack a certain rhythmic pulsing that typically drives the melody to some ecstatic moment in Klezmer music before turning again toward itself as if to reassert that it is what it says it is.
At best I would describe the clarinet melody in the piece as gypsy inspired, much like something one might hear in Liszt’s piano music or Bartok’s “Hungarian Rhapsodies” which I believe he used folk tunes of his native Hungary through which a great deal of gypsy and Klezmer music travels as it moves East to West. The piece also featured an electronica/emo continuo or rhythm section and a hip-hop beat, not an eighties beat as the rhythm section might suggest, but a contemporary hip-hop beat with what may be an eighties soundscape in the rhythm section. No, not a hip-hop beat...something more electronic but not full on EDM.
The only words in the piece are, “One day in May it suddenly happened,” and “I had to go.” These were not used as chorus or verse and sounded sampled. The piece sounded very interesting and I would like to have heard the beginning of it. If you know the piece which I’m describing, I would be grateful to you to know the name and the performer.
Respectfully,
Jeffery Oliver
Later: The tune I heard was by The Real Tuesday Weld originally from the album “The Return of the Clerkenwell Kid” but what I heard was not the album version. So it’s the song but not the song.
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How to Photograph Ghosts. Daniel and Rachel of Mango Street Labs are some of my favorite YouTube creators about photography. This 60-second tutorial on photographing ghosts is a must see for a little levity.