Bernard Chazelle explains “the technical part” of Eric Clapton’s classic “Layla.” Played here with an assist from Mark Knopfler, for those in need of a reminder.

The intro and chorus follow the progression of “All Along the Watchtower” (i-VII-VI-VII-i, ie here, Dm-C-Bb-C-Dm): one of the most common chord sequences in rock (0:27-1:10). The song is in Dm, but the verse begins on a C#m (1:10) ie, its antipode on the cycle of fifths. By rock standards that’s as wild as it gets. In country music, you’ll often hear a singer move up or down by a half-step for no particular reason, as though a boring tune becomes interesting just by virtue of raising its key. But Clapton knows what he’s doing. When he leaves the comfort of Dm for C#m he actually modulates to its relative major E. Just wait: you’ll see there’s method to the madness. Now when he hits the root E (1:17), you should soon be hearing a nice interrogative D (the Mixolydian quest for a change): you need it as a leading tone for the coming F#m (1:18). But Knopfler seems asleep and drops the ball, so the transition is not as compelling as it should be.

The idea then is to go through a perfect cadence twice (ii-V-I-IV, ie, F#m-B-E-A) — the kind of downwind sailing I was talking about earlier. The final A is then used as the dominant of the original key of Dm. It’s all tonally “correct.” If you’ve ever heard of the harmonic minor scale but always wondered what it was about: this is your perfect illustration. In theory, from A the reentry should be to D major, not minor. Of course, home is Dm so Clapton has no choice. The problem is that A has a C#, which is not in the scale of F (the notes of the keys of Dm are given by the scale of F), so hundreds of years ago people invented a new scale called Harmonic (common in Middle-Eastern music), which gives us a leading tone to the tonic, ie, C# -> D. Voila!

That really clarifies things, doesn’t it?

Yeah, I don’t understand it, either.  So why bother posting?  Because of Bernard’s point:

Why I care about such analyses: because it’s a myth to think those guys woke up one day, grabbed a guitar, and composed these tunes. They have in them, as we all do, hundreds of years of cumulative musical sensitivity that was “invented” (not discovered) by people who worked out the theory. That’s what makes western music different from all others. Since the 9th century, it’s been built as a written theoretical construction. The interplay between theory and practice is tighter than in any other art form. So to think of theory as what scholars did after the fact to understand music is naive. In the West, the theory always came first. Don’t forget that.

I think that’s right.  But it doesn’t mean that, for example, Clapton or other guitar virtuosos necessarily understand and of this from a technical standpoint.  But they clearly know it.

via Jim Henley’s secret blog

The British government has devised a novel solution to dealing with online piracy: Disable the Internet accounts of violators.

Broadband providers could be forced to suspend their customers’ accounts under proposals announced on Tuesday by the UK government to tackle internet file-sharing.

The proposals mark a hardening of the government’s stance against piracy since the Digital Britain report was published in June, and would give substantial new powers to Lord Mandelson, secretary of state for business, over the process.

The final decision on whether to disconnect those downloading copyrighted music and movies will now rest with Lord Mandelson rather than with Ofcom, the communications regulator. This would allow the government to move “much quicker” than Ofcom acting alone, the government said.  “We are considering the case for adding suspension of accounts into the list of measures that could be imposed,” the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills said on Tuesday. It added that this would be a “very serious sanction” that “should be regarded as very much a last resort”.

[...]

The proposal has upset ISPs and consumer groups.

A Virgin Media spokesperson said: “We share the government’s commitment to addressing the piracy problem and recognise that new laws have an important role to play in this. But persuasion not coercion is the key to changing consumer behaviour as a heavy-handed, punitive regime will simply alienate mainstream consumers. “The government should be ensuring a balance of action against repeat infringers and the rapid development of new legitimate services that provide a compelling alternative to illegal file-sharing.”

Larry Whitty, chairman of Consumer Focus, said: “Cutting people off the internet for allegedly infringing copyright is disproportionate. And to do so without giving consumers the right to challenge the evidence against them undermines fundamental rights to a fair trial.”

Cutting off access upon mere accusation strikes me as untenable. But, given due process, it’s hardly draconian to take away repeat violators’ access something they’re abusing.  While not exactly the same thing, we take away driving privileges for those who repeatedly operate their vehicle while intoxicated.

Photo credit: Derek Sivers

“I know folks think I’m a city boy, but I do appreciate listening to country music. It’s about folks telling their life story the best way they know how.” – President Barack Obama

Via Norm Geras, I see that the president hosted Alison Krauss, Brad Paisley, and Charley Pride as part of the White House Summer Music series.

“They grabbed the contemporary popular chart,” [Paisley] said, referring to himself. “They grabbed the artistic bluegrass side,” he continued, referring to Ms. Krauss. “And then they grabbed the legend side”: Mr. Pride, country’s most successful African-American performer, has had more than three dozen No. 1 country singles since the mid-1960s.

Mr. Paisley performed the title song of “American Saturday Night,” about the United States as a melting pot, and “Welcome to the Future,” which has a verse about race relations that starts with the recollection of a burning cross and concludes, “From a woman on a bus to a man with a dream/Hey, wake up Martin Luther.” He wrote it, Mr. Paisley said before the concert, after the 2008 election, when he was in New York City on election night and saw jubilation in Times Square. “It just felt like the world had shifted on a dime,” he said. “I wanted to encompass this big theme of how far we’ve come in a song.”

[...]

Mr. Pride has taken pains throughout his career to set aside racial considerations, describing himself as “an American singing American music.” He had performed for Presidents Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter.

“It’s always an honor,” Mr. Pride said.

Before the concert, he called President Obama “a very blessed man and a brilliant mind,” and saw a parallel between their careers. “There’s a similarity in what he has done and what I went through,” he said. He added that in his long career on the country circuit, there had “never been a hoot” or a racial epithet from his audiences.

These stories are not only entertaining but useful in reminding us of the continuity in American life that transcends politics.  I don’t know or much care about the political views of Pride, Paisley, or Krauss or even about the musical tastes of Obama.  None of it mattered last night.

And while there are obvious parallels in Pride and Obama as “firsts,” I’m willing to bet Obama never got traded for a used bus.

Copyblogger’s Brian Clark has noticed a distinction developing between blogs on the one hand and “social media” on the other.  He rightly notes that “blogs were the first modern form of social media” and thus the distinction is artificial.

My sense is that, blogs are indeed social media, they’re definitely of a different piece than Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and whatnot. The “new” social media are generally more interactive but less driven by original content.

Most blogs have evolved beyond being literal logs of what we see on the Web (InstaPundit is one of the few of those that have remained wildly popular and, ironically, Glenn closed off comments years ago) and are essentially self-published magazines or columns.  Indeed, while commenting and cross-blog discussion remain part of the blog experience, it’s not always clear that they’re “social” in any sense other than ordinary folks being able to publish their ideas without clearance from gatekeepers.

Conversely, Twitter is mostly a platform for passing along links to other content — including blogs — as well as snappy observations. Facebook is about messaging people in one’s network, organizing gatherings, and finding amusements in such things as zombie wars and movie quizzes. I’m not sure what MySpace is about; as best I can gather, it’s an homage to the Web circa 1997, with garish designs, music that blares as soon as one enters the page, and other annoyances that the rest of the Internet has thankfully left behind.

A month ago, we debated whether rock music died in 1980.  While we decided that it did not, we concluded that it has changed quite a bit since then.  Writing at Slate, music critic Simon Reynolds writes of “Grunge’s Long Shadow” and “In praise of in-between periods in pop history” as periods of transition in the dominant styles.

Regular commenter anjin-san recommended “making music/audio a more hefty part” of the repertoire here as a chance to “have a friendly discussion with guys you are typically trading gunfire with.” In that spirit, it strikes me that it could be fun and informative to discuss and come up with a list of the best rock songs of every year.  If the discussion goes as expected, it’ll create quite a bit of debate as well as introducing both myself and my readers to songs they hadn’t heard before or had forgotten about.

We’ll start with 2008, the most recent finished year and work our way back until either the idea fizzles out or we hit 1954 or so.

Here’s how it’ll go:    Readers will suggest songs in the comments below, preferably linking a YouTube or GoogleVideo or other place where others can hear the songs for free.    Songs should be confined to the broad rock genre, meaning no rap or hip-hop or country.  (I despise the first two and the last is a different category, albeit one I’d consider doing a similar feature with at some point if this goes well.) Think: guys with electric guitars.

Over the course of a week or so, I’ll update this post with my choices, probably ending up with a Top 10 list.  Songs may move down or even off the list as new suggestions come in.

Judging will be entirely subjective based on my musical tastes, which were formed circa 1979-1989.  A song may have held down the top spot on every Billboard chart for all 52 weeks of the year, won 17 Grammys and a Nobel Prize and not make my top 10.

UPDATE:   Thus far, “The ‘59 Sound” by Gaslight Anthem and “3 Dimes Down” by Drive-by Truckers, neither of which I particularly like, are in the lead by the virtue of being not so awful that I managed to get past the first minute.  Any sings that don’t include singing are hereby ruled ineligible.  Apocalyptica’s “I Don’t Care” had possibilities but they seem not to have mastered recording technology; the song sounds like it was surreptitiously captured with an incredibly crude device.

So far, it’s looking like rock and roll might have died by 2007 . . . .

UPDATE: Ray LaMontagne’s “Let It Be Me” is thus far the best of the nominees.  It’s got a Joe Cocker meets MoTown vibe.  I also don’t hate Dodd’s submission, “Check Yes Juliet” by We The Kings.  Sum 41’s “With Me” doesn’t totally suck, either.  Gomez’ “Get Miles” has a Jim Morrison vibe. Haven’t decided if that’s a good thing.

Also, several submissions were from 2007 or 2009 and were summarily dismissed from consideration.

UPDATE: Both About.comand Rolling Stone have “Best Rock Songs of 2008″ compilations. There’s some overlap between songs suggested below but quite a number that haven’t been mentioned.

UPDATE: Incubus’ “Love Hurts” doesn’t suck, although I far prefer the unrelated Nazareth song of the same name.

Photo by Flickr user Stephen Poff under Creative Commons license.  Originally posted  29 May.

In the discussion on my post about whether rock and roll died with John Bonham, commenter Michael makes an interesting point:

I was discussing it with my wife over the weekend and she made an interesting observation: there is no longer a “B” side.

Her specific point was that musicians often used the “B” side for introducing new, experimental ideas to their audience. Without it, the only thing that gets sold is the formulaic songs that they know people will buy.

I seem to recall, and certainly Bithead can clarify this, that radio stations only play what’s been released on a single, which means that adding experimental tracks to a full album doesn’t accomplish the same thing.

I had a few 45’s when I was a kid, mostly of the country genre (I recall, for example, that “Poems, Prayers, and Promises” was the flip side of John Denver’s “Country Roads”).  By the time I started buying music myself, though, the cassette tape and subsequently the compact disc had largely obviated the single.  Nowadays, of course, digital singles have largely obviated the album.

Anyhow, the “B” side thesis strikes me as quite plausible.  It provided a means of introducing songs that weren’t manufactured as radio hits into the repertoire.  If the flip side of the record was also a hit, it was largely accidental.  For example, the Rolling Stones’ “Ruby Tuesday” was the B side of “Let’s Spend the Night Together” and became a hit because radio stations deemed the latter too risque.

Photo by Flickr user Ann Althouse under Creative Commons license.

Stacy McCain contends that, “All great rock music was recorded by the time John Bonham died.” Craig Henry can’t think of any counterexamples and proclaims, “25 September 1980. The real day the music died.”

But that’s surely not right?

To be sure, there’s merit to this assertion.  Van Halen, AC/DC, Pink Floyd, Bob Seger and even REO Speedwagon, Cheap Trick, Billy Joel, and Tom Petty released their seminal albums in 1979 or 1980 and never matched their peak after that point. Lynyrd Skynyrd’s plane crash came in 1977.  The Eagles broke up in 1980.  Styx jumped the shark in 1981.

I hate rap, the pop form that has dominated the last quarter century or so and, in any case, it’s not rock and roll.

But REM, for example, put out some great music throughout the 1980s.  Journey’s best album, “Escape,” came out in 1982.  ZZ Top had some solid albums in the 1980s, although their best, “Deguello,” was released in 1979. Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” which I personally think dreadful, usually makes the upper reaches of the “best rock song ever” lists.  It was released in 1991. There have been plenty of great ballads throughout the years, of course.   Train’s “Drops of Jupiter” (2001) is a relatively recent example.

That’s some pretty weak tea, though, compared to the best music from 1956-1980.

Then again, this is almost certainly old fogeyism.  Most of us form our strongest attachments to music during the period from, say, junior high to college graduation.  After that, we tend to like new songs that remind us of stuff from those days.

What’s long fascinated me, with the passage of time, is comparative distances.  For example, when I was seriously forming my musical tastes, the Beatles were already “classic rock” and the earliest British Invasion stuff, from 1964 or so, was considered old.  The rock and roll of the mid- and late-1950s was already spawning nostalgia like Buddy Holly movies and the “Happy Days” television series.   The music I was listening to then is now much, much older than even Buddy Holly was then.

UPDATE: Bernard Finel suggests several possibilities:

Aside from the amazing groups/acts already active from before 1980 — such as the Rolling Stones, Queen, David Bowie, X, Rush, and the Clash — that continued to make superb music… you have dozens of brilliant bands since, including unambiguously great rock groups like U2, REM, Green Day, etc. etc. etc.

I’d say most of the mentioned old bands did their best work before Bonham’s death but the Stones’ “Tatoo You” (1982) indeed had numerous great hits.  I don’t know that Queen had anything great after 1980.  Ditto Bowie or Rush.  The Clash had one significant hit, “Rock the Casbah,” after 1980.  I’m only vaguely aware that X existed as something other than a minor letter of the alphabet.

REM, as previously acknowledged, was the one truly great post-1980 band that sprung to mind. U2 is almost universally thought a great band; I respectfully dissent.  Green Day doesn’t much appeal to me either, except for the ballad “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life).”

Scott Swank lists several examples of post-1980 artists he thinks were great but inadvertently makes my point; most of them are hip hop, funk, Latin or otherwise non-rock.   Stevie Ray Vaughan, who is arguably R&B rather than rock, is one that I would have listed had he occurred to me.  I’m not sure I’d put Elvis Costello into the same league as, say, Elvis Presley but I very much enjoyed his work.

I hasten to add that I like quite a bit of music from the post-Bonham era, including material right up to the present day.  But I’ve long grown tired of music radio, including the satellite variety (my wife has XM and I have Sirius) so tend to get exposure to the new stuff haphazardly.

In addition to the age issue noted previously, it’s also a function of the blurring of lines that started with the mega-popularity of Michael Jackson’s “Thriller.”   While undeniably a great album (albeit not my cup of tea even though I was in high school at the time) it wasn’t “rock” in any meaningful sense of the word.   “Thriller” killed rock radio and MTV.

Taking a page from the Communist Chinese Olympics, the Obama inauguration featured truthy music.  Daniel Wakin blows the doors off this travesty in a NYT exclusive:

It was not precisely lip-synching, but pretty close.

The somber, elegiac tones before President Obama’s oath of office at the inauguration on Tuesday came from the instruments of Yo-Yo Ma, Itzhak Perlman and two colleagues. But what the millions on the Mall and watching on television heard was in fact a recording, made two days earlier by the quartet and matched tone for tone by the musicians playing along.

The players and the inauguration organizing committee said the arrangement was necessary because of the extreme cold and wind during Tuesday’s ceremony. The conditions raised the possibility of broken piano strings, cracked instruments and wacky intonation minutes before the president’s swearing in (which had problems of its own).

“Truly, weather just made it impossible,” Carole Florman, a spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies, said on Thursday. “No one’s trying to fool anybody. This isn’t a matter of Milli Vanilli,” Ms. Florman added, referring to the pop band that was stripped of a 1989 Grammy because the duo did not sing on their album and lip-synched in concerts.

Ms. Florman said that the use of a recording was not disclosed beforehand but that the NBC producers handling the television pool were told of its likelihood the day before.

The network said it sent a note to pool members saying that the use of recordings in the musical numbers was possible. Inaugural musical performances are routinely recorded ahead of time for just such an eventuality, Ms. Florman said. The Marine Band and choruses, which performed throughout the ceremony, did not use a recording, she said.

“It’s not something we would announce, but it’s not something we would try to hide,” Ms. Florman said. “Frankly, it would never have occurred to me to announce it. The fact they were forced to perform to tape because of the weather did not seem relevant, nor would we want to draw attention away from what we believed the news is, that we were having a peaceful transition of power from one administration to the next.”

While rather amusing, it’s hard to get too excited about this.  Yes, it’s lame to have world famous musicians pretend to play their instruments when the sound is being piped in.  But what were they supposed to do, really?   I was downstairs working until just before the swearing in but my wife mentioned that the TV people reported that Yo Yo Ma had to use a substitute instrument, because his normal cello was too delicate for the weather.

I will note, however, that the Marine band sucked it up and played despite the cold.

Jerry Reed, a country guitar player, comedian, and actor perhaps best known for  “Smokey and the Bandit” and other Burt Reynolds vehicles from the 1970s and 1980s, has died from emphysemia at age 71.

Sony BMG Nashville Chairman Joe Galante called Reed a larger-than-life personality. “Everything about Jerry was distinctive: his guitar playing, writing, voice and especially his sense of humor,” Galante said. “I was honored to have worked with him.” Reed’s catalog of country chart hits, from 1967 through 1983, were released under the label group’s RCA imprint.

As a singer in the 1970s and early 1980s, Reed had a string of hits that included “Amos Moses,” “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot,” “East Bound and Down,” “She Got the Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)” and “The Bird.”

In the mid-1970s, he began acting in movies such as “Smokey and the Bandit” with Burt Reynolds, usually as a good ol’ boy. But he was an ornery heavy in “Gator,” directed by Reynolds, and a hateful coach in 1998’s “The Waterboy,” starring Adam Sandler.

Reynolds gave him a shiny black 1980 Trans Am like the one they used in “Smokey and the Bandit.”

Reed and Kris Kristofferson paved the way for Nashville music personalities to make inroads into films. Dolly Parton, Willie Nelson and Kenny Rogers (TV movies) followed their lead. “I went around the corner to motion pictures,” he said in a 1992 AP interview.

Reed had quadruple bypass surgery in June 1999.

Born in Atlanta, Reed learned to play guitar at age 8 when his mother bought him a $2 guitar and showed him how to play a G-chord. He dropped out of high school to tour with Ernest Tubb and Faron Young. At 17, he signed his first recording contract, with Capitol Records.

He moved to Nashville in the mid-1960s where he caught the eye of Chet Atkins. He first established himself as a songwriter. Elvis Presley recorded two of his songs, “U.S. Male” and “Guitar Man” (both in 1968). He also wrote the hit “A Thing Called Love,” which was recorded in 1972 by Johnny Cash. He also wrote songs for Brenda Lee, Tom Jones, Dean Martin, Nat King Cole and the Oak Ridge Boys.

Reed was voted instrumentalist of the year in 1970 by the Country Music Association.

He won a Grammy Award for “When You’re Hot, You’re Hot” in 1971. A year earlier, he shared a Grammy with Chet Atkins for their collaboration, “Me and Jerry.” In 1992, Atkins and Reed won a Grammy for “Sneakin’ Around.”

Reed belongs on the short list of the best country guitarists ever and he was a first-rate entertainer. My favorite of his songs, “Redneck in a Rock and Roll Bar” (which features the immortal lyric, “Just boys who look like girls/Who look like boys, who look like Cher”) isn’t available on YouTube, once again demonstrating the weakness of that medium. Several of his classics, though, are. Here are two:

She Got The Goldmine (I Got the Shaft)

East Bound and Down

Needless to say, he’ll be missed.

I’d never heard of John Hiatt until I caught him on one of those Delta Airlines playlists in those days before iPods when people listened to whatever music was provided for them and damn well liked it. Given the timing, I was probably on my way back from my tour of duty in Germany and getting ready to start grad school. This was one of the selections:

Interestingly, it was the title track from Hiatt’s eleventh album. He’d soon have a breakout hit.

John Hiatt Perfectly Good Guitar lyrics

He threw one down from the top of the stairs
Beautiful women were standing everywhere
They all got wet when he smashed that thing
But off in the dark you could hear somebody sing
Oh it breaks my heart to see those stars
Smashing a perfectly good guitar
I don’t know who they think they are
Smashing a perfectly good guitar
It started back in 1963
His momma wouldn’t buy him that new red harmony
He settled for a sunburst with a crack
But he’s still trying to break his momma’s back
Oh it breaks my heart to see those stars
Smashing a perfectly good guitar
I don’t know who they think they are
Smashing a perfectly good guitar
He loved that guitar just like a girlfriend
But every good thing comes to an end
Now he just sits in his room all day
Whistling every note he ever played
There oughta be a law with no bail
Smash a guitar and you go to jail
With no chance for early parole
You don’t get out until you get some soul
Oh it breaks my heart to see those stars
Smashing a perfectly good guitar
I don’t know who they think they are
Smashing a perfectly good guitar
Late at night the end of the road
He wished he still had the old guitar to hold
He’d rock it like a baby in his arms
Never let it come to any harm
Oh it breaks my heart to see those stars
Smashing a perfectly good guitar
I don’t know who they think they are
Smashing a perfectly good
Good
Guitar

Also, what’s the deal with Internet lyrics sites? They’re an amazing resource for the most part but they’re invariably rife with misspellings. This was by far the best I found and even it required some cleanup.

From my favourite band:

And just look at all that hair! On Dave, I mean. But, yeah, Michael, too.

The Spin Cycle Edition OTB Caption Contest^TM is now over.

REUTERS/Vincent West (SPAIN)

✰ THE WINNERS ✰

First: William d’Inger – With the last U.S. sword factory having moved to Mexico, American pacifists are reduced to beating washers into plowshares.

Second: Gollum Stop! – - Hammer time!

Third: Charles Austin Entry 3367 of the rejected Peter Gabriel music video themes.

HONORABLE MENTION

Rodney Dill – The Sock Puppet Liberation Army stages its first operation in preparation for Denver.

RODNEY’S BOTTOM OF THE BARREL

Citing appliances as the devils means of giving women to much time around the house, Islamic youth take a righteous stand against western values. – yetanotherjohn

Well, that was a fun little nostalgic romp. Rodney returns (per Charles Austin’s submission) on Bash Steel day with your regularly scheduled Caption Contests.

Moving from the very contemporary to something a little more, well… one hates to use the word “classic” for the music one grew up with, but there you have it.

I’m still hoping my fellows will join me in giving this Late Night OTB thing another go, but I’ll keep at it by myself a while either way.

Rush Limbaugh isn’t going to have any trouble affording good cigars, having just re-upped with Clear Channel through 2016 for $400 million, including a $100 million signing bonus.  And you thought pro athetes got paid a lot.

Said to be Limbaugh’s most lucrative deal ever by far, the new agreement runs through 2016 and includes a previously unheard-of nine figure signing bonus. For those of you in Rio Linda, that means more than $100 million, upfront.

[...]

Beyond infuriating the left, that staggering sum is sure to reinforce the widespread industry belief that talk represents one of broadcast radio’s only remaining bright spots. While several other major outfits are struggling to survive, Limbaugh and Premiere have provided a steady revenue stream for Clear Channel.

In fact, while advertisers have begun to abandon music radio for the Internet and other media, Limbaugh has recently added sponsors.

Clearly, I’m in the wrong business. Then again, if I could captivate 20 million listeners three hours a day for a couple decades, I’m sure I’d make more, too.

UPDATE:  The Chavets piece: “Late-Period Limbaugh.”

James Cason, the U.S. Ambassador to Paraguay, has achieved rock star status in that country. Literally.

[H]e learned the obscure Paraguayan Guaraní language, recorded a music album of indigenous folk songs and sold 1,000 tickets to a concert in a downtown theater. Now, in the final year of his four-decade diplomatic career, Cason has suddenly become the toast of Paraguay, or at least the country’s most unusual pop star.

”He’s been on TV and in all the newspapers,” said Nelson Viveros, 16, who traveled to meet the ambassador recently in Encarnación, by the Argentina border. “It’s strange, but people love it.”

Reviews have been mixed:

In a review of the CD release show in the Ultima Hora newspaper, a critic noted that Cason ‘’sat on a stool with the lyrics in front of him” during the entire performance, appearing ”nervous or unsure about the tune and pronunciation of Guaraní.” The newspaper La Nación was more direct: The ambassador, it said, “sang in the monotone of a tired bird.”

Following the show in Itá, Cason said, fan mail poured into the embassy — as did invitations to festivals and for a (nonsinging) cameo as a cardinal in the opera Tosca. The songs he had performed in Itá went into heavy rotation on local radio stations.

Judge for yourself. Here’s a video of Cason’s musical stylings:

Story via Patrick Fitzgerald. Photo credit: State Department.