Boston does it Best

When I was young grad back in ’70’s I had a big “entertainment center” that I used to haul around, from apartment to apartment.  It had an exterior of fancy faked wood, about five feet long, maybe three feet high. . . and as wide, front to back, as a TV console, although there was no boob tube in it. 

All of that old grandiose ’60’s-style bulk existed for one reason, and one reason only: music. This ancient lo-tech, high-bulk furniture was nothing like the smart phone with music in your 21st-century hand.

I had a collection of 33rpm records. There were a lot of them stacked in a drawer inside that furniture, but certain ones of them still linger in my mind today. 

I had a double-record set of the Mormon Tabernacle Choir singing Handel’s Messiah. And I remember vividly the day that Dylan’s Slow Train Coming first came spinning off that old turntable. I think there were some old Beatles LPs in that stack, and a few Moody Blues, most notably, Threshold of a Dream.

But most vivid in my boomer mind was the memory of hearing the Boston Pops performance of Tchaikovsky’s 1812, recorded under the baton of Arthur Fiedler. 

Last night, I and several thousands of other Americans, along with our immigrant friends, heard the live 2022 version of 1812 by the Pops, cannons and all,  now under the baton of their 20th Conductor, Keith Lockhart. 

In preparation for Tchaikovsky’s musical masterpiece, we heard the entire litany of our American patriotic songs, My Country ’tis of Thee, God bless America, Grand Ole Flag, etc, with words projected so we could all sing along. We also sang the anthems for all of our armed services, with appropriate interviews from the military personnel who were assisting Boston’s Finest and the Mass State Patrol to keep keep an appropriate handle on our covid-delayed exuberance. 

Conductor Lockhart also included a Pops’ performance of the Ukrainian National Anthem to honor those patriots in yonder Euro nation who are under the Putin gun now, as we were under King George’s muskets in 1776.

In introducing Tchaikovsky’s 1812 masterpiece, Conductor Lockhart explained its relevance here and now. The composer wrote it to commemorate the courage, resolve, and sacrifice of people who had had to defend their lands and their lives because of a dictator’s (Napolean) unprovoked attack.

Oddly enough, in these times, those Russian defenders of 1812 were the forefathers and mothers of a people group whose grand history is presently being violated by megalamaniacal dictator as he makes hitlerian war on their Ukrainian neighbors to the souuth.

So that’s something to think about on this day after Independence Day, 2022.

A good time was had, y'all, as we Southerners say. But hey, nobody does the 4th like Boston! where our Independence was born by the light of a lantern held high in the Old North Church, illuminating the midnight ride of Paul Revere!

King of Soul