Erik's Random 10

Ah, John Philip Sousa. No musician has made a bigger contribution to historical American wingnuttery than Sousa (sorry Ted Nugent). I can't speak much about "The Marquette University March." I imagine it's just a fight song he got paid for. But Sousa's music was designed to stir the worst passions of Americans. The head of the Marine Band from 1880 to 1892, Sousa's music inspired Theodore Roosevelt and other American imperialists in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Sousa actually volunteered to come out of retirement during the Spanish-American War to serve as a bandmaster but couldn't due to illness. He did however manage to rejoin the military during World War I, at the age of 63, to lead the Navy Band at the Great Lakes Naval Station in Chicago.

Sousa's music is pretty over the top and the politics behind it quite reprehensible. Nonetheless, I manage to find it amusing at this point and I don't really flip to something else when it comes up on my random listenings. Maybe because it's three minutes of amusement rather than 60 minutes of annoyance.

1. John Philip Sousa, The Marquette University March (Detroit Concert Band, Leonard B. Smith, conductor)
2. Eels, Checkout Blues
3. Alejandro Escovedo String Quartet, Everybody Loves Me
4. Richard Thompson, The Way That It Shows
5. Ashley Hutchings, Epilogue--Died for Love
6. Ora Alexander, Sweetest Daddy in Town
7. Earl Hines and Jimmy Rushing, Changing the Blues
8. Sonny Rollins, Get Happy (Short Version)
9. Fiddlin' John Carson, In My Old Cabin Home
10. Conway Twitty, It's Only Make Believe