“The Hinge Around Which a Song Swings”

I had occasion this morning to hear a song I haven’t heard in a couple years, and this made me think of the guy who introduced me to it. Like many friends these days, he’s not one I’ve ever actually met: I know him only through his online handle, “FLJerseyBoy” (three guesses what first got my attention about that), and his blog, A Dog Starv’d.

If you follow that link you’ll know a couple things about him (and his blog) pretty much immediately. You’ll know that he’s much more politically vocal there than I’d ever dream of being here, and you’ll know that he pretty much ran out of blogging fuel after less than a year, his last post going up in June 2008. Since then he seems to have disappeared. I’ve made numerous attempts to contact him, to no avail. Wherever he is, I hope he’s all right. (Maybe he’ll come across this post and contact me.)

The New Jersey/Florida connection aside, one thing I liked about his blog was that — although ostensibly about politics — it reflected FLJerseyBoy’s apparent inability not to be “distracted” by other matters. (Boy, do I relate to that.)

And one of my favorite, non-political posts of his was titled — as is this one — “The Hinge Around Which a Song Swings.”

In it, he took about 750 words to pick apart a song barely three minutes long. An instrumental, at that — and, for the most part, he focuses on a single instant. That post by FLJerseyBoy very much provided the template for my What’s in a Song? series: lay out what you know about the song, talk about its psychological effect(s), and provide it for listening. In the rest of this RAMH post, I’ll paste what he had to say, verbatim, and trust that he (or his ghost) won’t mind.

(He made one mistake of fact, which I’ll correct here. He also provided a sample from the song in three different digital forms; here, you’ll get just the MP3 — but you’ll get, too, the whole thing.)

So here’s FLJerseyBoy, on “Je M’Ennuie.”

—-

I‘m not, Lord knows, a musician. But I do like to listen to music, and every now and then I can’t help noticing something interesting.

I’ve been listening to one of my and Mrs. FLJerseyBoy’s favorite soundtrack albums, from the 1991 film Henry and June. As you may know, the action in the film takes place in France (Paris, mostly) during the 1920s. (For purposes of this blog entry, that’s really all you need to know about the film. If you’re interested in finding out more about it, of course, you can always check the Internet Movie Database, and/or Wikipedia.)

Given the time and place, it’s only natural that the soundtrack consist of 80-year-old music, whether by the original performers (like “I Found a Million-Dollar Baby,” sung by Bing Crosby) or updated but still in keeping with the film’s context and tenor.

Among the updated items on the soundtrack is the thirteenth, called “Je M’Ennuie.” (Translated to English, this is, literally, “I’m bored.” Perhaps it’s got some idiomatic nuance beyond that, if you use the phrase in France.) This is a laaaaaaaannnguorous instrumental, arranged by Mark Adler for a trio: a throaty muted trumpet [JES: whoops! I'll fix this henceforth] trombone in the foreground, intro and background by a piano, and very subtly, for the most part, a drummer using brushes on the cymbal. It’s that “for the most part” which interests me — or rather, the exceptions to the rule.

When I started listening to this song the other day, I was in the car, alone, and sitting at a traffic light. Languor aside, it’s a quite melodic tune, and it’s easy to get into the gentle swing of it. It’s also hard to ignore that trombone, which is given such a major role that you almost forget the other instruments are there.

A little less than a minute into the song, the pitch is swinging like an autumn leaf in still air, groundwards: back and forth, down and down. And then all of a sudden something amazing happens: in the space of less than a second, everything stops, is silent, and the drummer wakes up and taps, very lightly, on his cymbal.

When I heard this the other day, my face broke into a big grin. I’m not sure why. The closest I’ve come was when I described the epiphany to Mrs. FLJerseyBoy; I referred her to the Mad Hatter’s tea party in Alice in Wonderland. The following excerpt is from the book’s Chapter 7; the Dormouse has been asleep (although occasionally singing or otherwise interjecting, while not really waking up) during the whole party:

“Suppose we change the subject,” the March Hare interrupted, yawning. “I’m getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.”

“I’m afraid I don’t know one,” said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.

“Then the Dormouse shall!” [the Mad Hatter and the March Hare] both cried. “Wake up, Dormouse!” And they pinched it on both sides at once.

The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. “I wasn’t asleep,” he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: “I heard every word you fellows were saying.”

That’s what the drummer is like at this point in the song: he suddenly wakes up, claims to have been participating all along, and immediately falls back into a slumber. At that point, the trombone and piano — but especially the trombone — go right back up to the top of the stairs and begins another swinging descent, to a repeat of the whole cycle.

The illustration at the top of this post is a partial screen capture taken from the Audacity sound editor program; it shows a segment of the song, from about 1:36 into it and running to 1:40 or so. This is the second appearance of the suddenly conscious drummer (not the one which hit me in the car); the cymbal tap is that last flare in the wave, to the right, just to the right of that fat bump of a note (and subsequent silence) from the other two members of the trio.

If you’d like to hear a sample which includes this “hinge note,” I’ve got one in three formats:

• WAV (2.5MB)
• MP3 (232KB)

  [Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is just a few seconds long.]

  Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

• OGG (278KB)

This sample actually includes not only the portion illustrated above, but a decent section before it — starting at around 1:25 — to give you an idea of the “falling leaf” effect and the general rhythm and tone of the song. Here’s the, uh, waveform — is that the word? (like I said, IANAM) — of the full sample, from which the illustration at the top is taken:

___________________________

Note (from JES): …and here’s the full song, if you’d like to hear it as well.

[Below, click Play button to begin. While audio is playing, volume control appears at left -- a row of little vertical bars. This clip is 2:18 long.]