Some cold-war era cheerful absurdity as I psych myself up for a long working weekend: Bill Haley and the Comets with their 1954 last-male-survivor-of-a-nuclear-blast masterpiece “Thirteen Women (and Only One Man in Town).” (Amazingly, “Rock Around the Clock” was originally released as the B-side to “Thirteen Women.”)
This tune actually came up in a paper at the AMS conference. I suppose they were saying the guitar was representative of the bomb? I’ve already forgotten everything I’ve heard there.
Wasn’t that a terrific paper? It had this one, plus one by Sammy Salvo I’ve been hunting for ever since with no luck, and good ol’ Burt the Turtle. I think the idea she was going for was that since the bomb represented an unimaginable silence that was ever-present in the minds of the people, they filled their lives up with cheery sounds like this as a way to mediate that potential silence. Or something like that, I’ve already lost my notes…
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