those included in the present classification

Hanukkah with the Viper, pt. 2

December 22, 2008 Ryan Jerving Leave a comment

As noted on my post from yesterday, I am in the midst of posting 8 nights of musical gelt based around my Hanukkah song, “Heyse Latke Kalte Latke.” Yesterday, I posted a recent December 6 recording by the Paint Branch Ramblers, the group with whom I’ve been playing the song.

Today, I’m posting the cheat sheet that the non-melody-playing Ramblers use to play along. I am a Rambler, and so can you!

This Word file contains the basic chord changes (using Mike Paul’s patented method for representing what’s supposed to happen for four bars at a time). And it contains the lyrics in both their original Yiddish and English. And, by original, I mean basically stolen from a transcription of some public domain lyrics I found in a folk music research article on the songs of early 20th-century Jewish-American immigrant tailors in New York. You’ll see that the lyrics are “to be sung pensato,” i.e., thought but not sung while playing. That’s how we did it for a pretty long time (I like to write lyrics for instrumentals that I never plan to sing), but at the Ramblers request, eventually relented and now sing, usually on our second pass through the B strain.

Those lyrics, in case you’re interested enough to wonder, but not interested enough to commit to right-clicking and downloading the file are:

Heyse latke, kalte latke
Bekelech mit royzn
Der vos trogt kayn shleykes nit
Der farlirt di hoyzn

Hot latke, cold latke
Cheeks so rosy red
He who wears no suspenders
Will surely lose his pants

And the chords (not in the patented Mike Paul style) are:

A STRAIN

D / | / / | C / | D / |
D / | / / | D / | C D |
D / | / / | C / | D / |
D / | / / | D C | C D |

B STRAIN

D / | / / | / / | C / |
D / | / / | D C | C D |
D / | / / | / / | C / |
D / | / / | D C | C D |

So sing and play along! And come back tomorrow for the lead sheet with the melody.

those that tremble as if they were mad

Hanukkah with the Viper, pt. 1

December 21, 2008 Ryan Jerving Leave a comment

I’d been thinking that the right and proper thing to do this holiday season would be to upload and post some version of the Hanukkah song that I’d written and have been performing all year with the Paint Branch Ramblers, “Heyse Latke Kalte Latke” (hot latke cold latke). But when I went to track down the file on my hard drive, I discovered that I had at least enough material for 8 days of blog posts.

A great miracle has happened here!

So I’ll start below with a live version of the song as recorded at our recent December 6, 2008 show at the Home Grown Coffee House in Accokeek, Maryland. (Here, we pair it with Bill Monroe’s “Jerusalem Ridge,” taking you from diaspora to homeland in just under 3-and-a-half minutes).

Please wait until sundown to listen. And for the best possible effect, some white noise produced by the sound of latkes frying in the background would be nice. Add a plop of applesauce. Then, for each of the next 7 days, please return to this blog for a little more of the musical gelt, Viper style.

download the mp3

NOTE: If you’d like to hear more of the Ramblers, you can find the complete set of recordings from the show on their own blog. To start, you might begin with my hand-chosen “best of” from the show.

those included in the present classification

All hail the viper

December 18, 2008 Ryan Jerving Leave a comment

The bright green pit viper you see below is Trimeresurus gumprechti, one of more than 1000 species “new to science” that the World Wildlife Federation recently claimed have been recorded over the past decade in the Mekong Delta region of South-East Asia encompasses parts of Vietnam, Thailand, Cambodia, Laos, Burma, and the Yunnan province of China. 22 new snake species alone are among this list, complementing other non-snake species such as the prehistoric Laotian rock rat (Laonastes aenigmamus) and a cyanide-producing “dragon millipede” (Desmoxytes purpurosea).

fabulous ones

For Odetta

December 11, 2008 Ryan Jerving Leave a comment

Odetta died on December 2, 2008. Here’s 5 seconds in tribute.

“Water Boy” (download)

innumerable ones

Set list for December 6, 2008

December 8, 2008 Ryan Jerving 3 Comments

Set list for the Viper’s 20 minute set between two longer sets by the Paint Branch Ramblers at the Home Grown Coffee House in Accokeek, Maryland. For more details on the evening and for the Ramblers set lists, see here.

This was my last performance as The Viper before I leave the Washington, D.C. area — where I’ve lived for the last 5 years — to return to the Midwest, and specifically to move to Milwaukee. So it was fitting that I played at the venue where I first played in the area 5 years ago and which is one of my favorite places to play: great acoustics, a great audience, and a great staff of volunteers from the neighborhood that always make the night a lot of fun. This is one of the things I’ll miss the most about the area.

SET LIST

Viper’s Blue Yodel no. 6.02 x 10 to the 23rd (a Mole of the Blues)
Capital
Think about your Troubles (Harry Nilsson)
And Sometimes Dmytryk
Time of the Leaving / I Will Always Love You (Dolly Parton, sung for the Paint Branch Ramblers)
My Seafaring Lassie

I hope to put up sound files over the next couple of days from the hi-tech but lo-fi recording I made at the show (essentially, a mic set up to capture the room sound that ran through my TonePort UX2 interface and into Audacity on my computer, which gives me a chance to equalize the sound a little bit on the other end).

For now, this snippet of me yodeling over the “First Round Polka” with the Paint Branch Ramblers will have to do.