Useful info and links at the bottom of the page
Important News:
- If there is something that the Rally and Brigade can do for you, to help with your preparation - please ask.
- The 2020 Rally will be one week earlier in the calendar than in previous years - to accommodate the Jewish holidays. If your calendar-system always blocks the 3rd weekend, remember to shift it to the 2nd weekend for 2020. We will revert to the 3rd weekend for 2021.
- If you are attending International or Harmony University this summer, look for opportunities to sing the core 8 from this year or previous years with other brigade singers. There may be brigade reunion rooms as well - a fast way to make friends is to sing a song together.
- Cheer on Rooftop Records at International - they will be singing late in the quartet program on July 3rd, in the third round.
- Reminders:
- If you are a new or returning attendee and want a sponsor assigned to you, someone who can help you prepare better or answer your questions, please ask.
- Additional part learning tracks are available for your personal use only. $20 per part, contact our Treasurer to purchase.
- Attend and host run-throughs - please attend or host. We are now on songs 1-8. To schedule a run-through, email Rob Sheridan. You can access the calendar on the web, add it to your own online calendar or find it on the NEHB web site.
- Current members - a reminder that to retain your membership you must have a current BHS membership and you must also attend at least every other year. Memberships expire after the second consecutive failure to attend. Future members - if this is your second consecutive NEHB you can apply for membership during the rally via a recorded audition. More details coming down the road.
Angel Eyes
Music by Matt Dennis, Words by Earl K. Brent
Arrangement: Hal Maples
This is a slow and sultry jazz standard. The composer was a prolific creator of music with famous big bands of the 40s and 50s, while the lyricist did a lot of work with bands and songs for movies. Angel Eyes was used in the soundtrack for a relatively obscure film noir called Jennifer (1953).
The song is clearly greater than the creators, having been arranged and sung by many of the major artists from that era. Frank Sinatra made it chart, Ella Fitzgerald apparently remarked that it was her favorite song. Bruce Springsteen covered it, k.d. lang, Sting...
Pulling from Steyn Online archives
“Dennis' music is memorable because of the arresting flat nine in Bar Three, and big leaps when the tune's going up, followed by small slips back down. It's a tune that's made for saloons - those up-leaps of anger and passion, and the slip-downs into dejection and despair. But that third bar could easily trip up a lyricist or at least put a speed-bump in his text. Instead, Earl Brent gets around it with a four-syllable word that, on those notes, is rendered onomatopoeic: When the singer sings "uncomf'tably near", you hear his discomfort. Even more remarkably, Dennis and Brent match it when the moment recurs in the next eight bars and again at the end”
“The tune is so bluesy that, in Ted Gioia's words, it "invites a soloist to pull out every stale minor blues cliche". Which happens rather a lot on instrumental versions. But the lyric makes it dark and strange and raw: a great ache of a melody with an oddly self-aware tale to tell. Dennis wrote his composition in D minor, which suits it perfectly, but the middle section is major in character and almost an inversion of the main theme: now the music leaps down and then climbs small steps back up. Lyric-wise, if the main section is like eavesdropping on someone's private pain, the release is an invitation to gather round and listen to him tell his story”
Steyn refers to this as a “saloon song” - I’ll let this quotation from Sinatra explain the genre (and Angel Eyes) to you:
“"I'd like to take a second to explain saloon songs to you, those of you who've never seen me work before – you must have been living in Lapland, under an ice cap. Anyway, saloon songs are songs of unrequited love and sadness or the simple story of the guy whose chick has split and left him with a quarter ounce of grass, but no paper and no matches and she never even paid the electric bill, and she stole the VW with the flat tyre. She split, the chick. She got the hell out of there, baby. She flew the coop. And he's hurtin'. Oh boy, is he hurtin'.”
Sing to anybody who ever has lost someone, and who plans to drink his way through the feelings.
VIDEO LINKS
Frank Sinatra - who else, baby
Frank Sinatra - because his set-up for this song is AMAZING
Ella Fitzgerald - it’s her favorite song, right?
k.d. lang - a great singer
Sting - what a weird and wonderful intro he added to the song
The Four Freshmen - it’s not barbershop, but it’s good enough for me!
Useful Info And Links
- The Preparedness Blog
- Geomap of participants
- Our Guest Quartet and Judges will be Rooftop Records! Get to know them on Facebook, their website, or their most recent performance at the SUN District this spring.
- The New England Harmony Brigade Home Page
- The NEHB Application Page
- A Video Retrospective of the 2018 Rally (credit Jim Schumacher)
- Getting Rides To The Rally, Rides Home From The Rally.
- Run-throughs
- Volunteer by sending email to Rob Sheridan
- See the calendar on the NEHB web site
- Add the calendar to your own.
