Musician's Hell?

Subject: Musician's Hell?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 09:24 AM

I'm generally not given to spiritual speculation but recent threads may have reminded me of my own mortality. So what do you suppose "Musician's Hell" would be like?

What pictures does this thread title conjure up in your mind? Do you see Satan handing out banjos or accordions instead of harps? Do you imagine being forced to sing in a choir where half the members are tone deaf and the other half are sopranos and they're always on pitch? Or are you introduced into a cozy song circle where everyone has a Rise-Up Singing Songbook and smiles at you? What kind of Muzak would be playing?

Is there a song already composed about such a hell? If so, I haven't run across it.

And who wouldn't be there?

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: treewind
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 09:47 AM

This will do (The inimitable Garry Larsen, Far Side)

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Old Vermin
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:15 AM

John Kirkpatrick -

'here's your accordion
Welcome to hell'

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:17 AM

The Kerry fiddle player Padraig O'Keefe once told Seamus Ennis that he was bound for Fiddlers Green when he died. Ennis asked where was that.

"Seven miles below hell", said O'Keefe. "It's so hot down there, the fiddles all have steel strings. And you have to be a fiddler, or we won't let you in."

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:19 AM

Now when the devil saw this old man,
He said put him down in the frying pan.
For this is another ould piper I know.
Put him down with the rest for to play.
Naaaah ah ah ah ah etc.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:32 AM

LOL!

There have been some great cartoons.

There's also the speculation of how lonely is would be in Heaven when one's friends were all down below.

Somewhere in Hell there would be a chamber where people would be arguing over what a "folk song" might be, or is that the Mudcat Forum?

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: M.Ted
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:42 AM

Hell would be having to put up with the all the same stuff we have to put up with now, which really makes one wonder---

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Nick
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:43 AM

>>Somewhere in Hell there would be a chamber where people would be arguing over what a "folk song" might be, or is that the Mudcat Forum?

That would suggest that there was no hell before 1954?

My view of hell would be a little like the following - I reckon everyone would play very slightly out of tune with each other and very slightly out of time with each other. Devastatingly frustrating. Each would then play slightly louder in order to be heard above the cacophany of chaos.

If anyone wants a preview I can recommend somewhere...

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Sandy Mc Lean
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:51 AM

Well I would consider RAP with filthy lyrics played at a deafening volume to be a torture of Hell. Sadly I hear it already played from passing cars driven by someone with his ears and brains already blown to Hell !

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: CarolC
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:51 AM

Musician's hell would be a place with no music.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Big Mick
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 10:58 AM

Re: the Larsen cartoon from the second post - where are the bodhrani?

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 11:50 AM

Once upon a time it would have been being stuck in an eternally running Porter Wagner show. But that was when i was a teenager.

Now it would be most Disney songs and quite a lot of RnB.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: billhudson
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 12:15 PM

I am in a room with the devil and I am either at a very bad open mike and karaoke and someone is singing Feelings. The devil is still there laughing his ass off telling me this is forever…hell, I should have taken the other door.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: eddie1
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 12:16 PM

I always liked the story that when John Martyn died, he woke up in a hall with lots of people sitting around tables, all of them holding guitars, basses etc. He recognised Broonzy, Davy Graham, Jimi Hendrix, John Lennon, Bryan Jones and Robert Johnson among a lot of others. On the stage was a drum kit. "Hey" he thought, "I've made it to heaven!"

At that moment Karen Carpenter came onstage, sat at the drums and shouted "OK guys, all together now, "We've Only Just Begun" 1_2_3!!!!!"

Eddie

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 12:21 PM

Ok., I give up. Who was Karen Carpenter?

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: VirginiaTam
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 12:46 PM

Fred! If you really mean that, then all I have to say in Pythonese, is "you lucky bastard."

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: kendall
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 12:47 PM

An elevator full of brats and elevator music at full volume.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: MGM·Lion
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 12:52 PM

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: GUEST,Suibhne (Astray)
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 12:59 PM

Shouldn't this be Folk Musician's Hell? In which case you're already there. Anyway, Fun in Acapulco's just starting on Film4 so I'm off to an Elvis exotic heaven for an hour or so.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 01:00 PM

The best I could harvest from the Digital Archives was this lone verse from "Sam Hall":

Now in Heaven I do dwell, I do dwell;
Now in Heaven I do dwell, I do dwell;
And the truth it is to tell
That it is a bloody sell.
All the whores are down in Hell --
God Damn their eyes!

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Don Firth
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 01:01 PM

You're strapped to a chair in a large, echoey room and for the rest of eternity the devil is piping in a recording of Bobby Goldsboro singing "Honey."

(I just scared myself!!)

Don Firth

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 01:33 PM

Well, here's a link to a graphical representation of this concept by Hieronymus Bosch from his "Garden of Earthly Delights": click here for image!

Works for me!

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Nick
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 01:51 PM

Don -

And then he sings "Summer The First Time"

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: DebC
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 01:58 PM

Any place where people aren't singing.

Debra

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 01:58 PM

I would have imagined that in Padraig O'Keefe's hell he would not have been able to get a drink. When someone once remarked to Padraig that they hadn't seen his bicycle lately, he replied, as he finished his pint that the handlebars had just gone down his throat.

Rog

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Rog Peek
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 02:06 PM

For me, it might be endless repeats of Alison Moorer singing Carrickfergus!

Rog (tongue in cheek)

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 02:07 PM

So the pub down in Hell has no beer or, worse yet, has only shandy or Bud Light.

That's certainly another important dimension.

Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Tim Leaning
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 02:13 PM

An open mic
with a sound man who really knows how a rock band should sound!

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Songbob
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 02:15 PM

"There's also the speculation of how lonely is would be in Heaven when one's friends were all down below."

Heaven for climate, Hell for company. (Mark Twain, I do believe).

Hell would be as described in a short story in Bluegrass Unlimited once, long ago. It goes like this:

The hero arrives after death in a room filled with pre-War Martin D-28s and Gibson Mastertones and F-5 mandolins, and each one he picks up plays like butter. "Take your pick!" he's told. He picks out his instrument and goes out the door, where he's on-stage with the best pickers he can think of. Every song is effortless, on tune, on time, every solo is like he doesn't even have to think about it or work at it.

It's great! He tries songs he's never heard, and they roll off his fingertips like he was the best studio musician ever. He can even sing -- lead, baritone, high tenor harmony, with no strain, like it's an instinct -- and he was never able to do that in life. This must be heaven!

But in a few weeks, he longs for the challenge, the thrill of trying something he didn't know he could do, because now he doesn't even have to try. Being perfect has become boring. In a couple of months, it's worse, so he says, "This feels like hell to me." The bass player says, "So? Where did you think you were?"


Bob

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Ernest
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 02:24 PM

And the {d}Minister{/d} folk musician says his vision of hell
Is three {d}folk singers{/d} politicians in a pub near Wells"

Well, you know it...

;0)
Ernest

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Ernest
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 02:24 PM

Sorry, crosssing out didn`t work...

:0(
E.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: SteveMansfield
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 02:45 PM

Sorry, crosssing out didn`t work...

<strike> is what you want ...

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: gnu
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 02:51 PM

Revenge is sweet. I ain't goin to hell, on accounta the devil won't let Bodhran players in. See some of you in heaven.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Amos
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 02:55 PM

You get to go back and forth between two rooms, whenever you choose. One has an endless tape of "Having My Baby", and the other of "The Fields of Athenry". No earplugs or sharp instruments are provided (to make sure you don't puncture your own eardrums in desperation). When you complain, you are told "You chose to be there...".


A

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 03:11 PM

Amos-

That sure would be "hell" for me!

You would think that Willie Nelson would have a song on this theme.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 03:25 PM

Well, this is the best I could come up with from old Willie:

By Willie Nelson
As recorded on Honeysuckle Rose, © 1980

Heaven or Hell

Well sometimes it's heaven
And sometimes it's hell
Sometimes I don't even know
Sometimes I take it as far as I can
And sometimes I don't even go
My front tracks 're found for a cold water
And my back tracks 're covered with snow
Sometimes it's heaven
Sometimes it's hell
Sometimes I don't even know.

Heaven ain't walkin'
On a street paved with gold
And hell ain't a mountain of fire
Heaven in lyin'
In my sweet baby's arms
Hell is when baby ain't there
Well, my front tracks 're found for a cold water
And my back tracks 're covered with snow
Sometimes it's heaven
Sometimes it's hell
Sometimes I don't even know.

Cheerily,
Charley Noble

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Old Vermin
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 03:35 PM

Uncharitable though it may seem, there is a mostly teenage uniformed, marching band I expect to hear next week as part of a larger, fund-raising, event. You may know the sort of thing - triangles, some brass and perhaps cymbals and a drum. All in a good fund-raising cause. Tunes I like on the whole - 'To be a Farmer's Boy', 'Lilli Marlene', 'Colonel Bogey' and perhaps '633 Squadron'.

Not that many tunes. By the third repetition in that instrumentation, it really begins to grate. An eternity of it...

I'm sure there could be worse things.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Fred McCormick
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 03:55 PM

Songbob, I've come across that Bluegrass Unlimited story in at least two other forms. One in a tv series called Tales of the Unexpected, I think, where a dead gangster finds the afterlife is a gambling table where he wins at cards effortlessy and perpetually, through all eternity.

The other is in a short story, name forgotten, where an angler is given a section of the Test Valley river in Hampshire, England to fish for all eternity. Yep, you guessed it. He casts his line. The fish immediately bites. He casts his line again and the fish immediately bites again.

That Flying Dutchman? One cheesed off geezer.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: alanabit
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 06:57 PM

An Irish pub full of John Denver fans?

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Acorn4
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 07:06 PM

My old school orchestra!

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Dave MacKenzie
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 07:32 PM

I'm in a session where the guy on my left is learning a member of the banjo family by joining in evrything, the guy on my left has a cigarette stuck permanently on his tuning heads, and the only song anybody knows is Caledonia.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Micca
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 07:38 PM

I always thought Hell was where all the Beer barrells had holes in the bottom and none of the women did!!!

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Ref
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 08:02 PM

I think Mr. Firth has come the closest, though there are some other contenders. My own thoughts go to an evening at Old Songs where a sporty older lady plunked herself down beside me and proceeded to sing along with every piece performed, half a beat behind and slightly off-key. I endured it for about ten minutes and took a long walk before I was forced to be unpleasant. I think Hell really is mostly other people!

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Charley Noble
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 08:28 PM

Now isn't "Musician's Hell" when you full in love with one of your groupies who then runs off with your wife?

Cheerily,
Charley noble

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: melodeonboy
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 08:45 PM

A never-ending edition of "Wake up with Wogan" piped into every corner of Lucier's abode!

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Smokey.
Date: 30 Oct 09 - 09:29 PM

Björk singing hits from 'The Sound of Music', accompanied by bowed psaltery, hurdy gurdy and seven drunken bodhráns.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: GUEST,leeneia
Date: 31 Oct 09 - 05:12 PM

As a musician, my idea of hell would be having to listen to the ugly pop music I am forced to listen to in stores and restaurants.

Just in general, hell would be having to watch Mr. Bean movies for all eternity.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: kendall
Date: 31 Oct 09 - 07:19 PM

It's almost enough to make me change my ways.

Subject: RE: Musician's Hell?
From: Callie
Date: 31 Oct 09 - 09:55 PM

a local sports club is advertising a tribute show to Andre Rieu. Not even the real thing - just a cheap copy of the cheap real thing. I reckon that show would be a musician's hell. For so many reasons.