Music & Movie Monday ~ Ear-worm...Once There Was a Way to... SING

Searching for something nice to watch on Netflix - something to take away the nasty taste of Trump-flavoured "fire and fury"; and white supremacist malice, I hit on "Sing", an animated story featuring a singing contest. I'd seen a preview, during a cinema visit, some time ago and quite fancied the idea. I've been a fan of singing talent shows from long before the birth of Pop Idol in Britain (parent of American Idol et al). I suggested "Let's give this one a whirl - how bad can it be?"

We thoroughly enjoyed the movie!

Sing left me with an ear-worm - not an unpleasant one, but an insistent one. The film begins with a phrase from a Beatles song, from their now iconic Abbey Road album: Golden Slumbers.

 Nana Noodleman

The film ends with lines from the same song too, probably giving birth to my ear-worm.

Some good cover versions of well-loved pop-songs are scattered through the film, sung by cast members, some well-known, some less so. In the clip above, that's Jennifer Hudson singing, as Nana Noodleman; Jennifer herself is a product of American Idol - a rather nice tribute to the show which has had its share of sneers and brickbats over the years. Other well-knowns as singing characters include Reese Witherspoon, Scarlett Johansson and Seth MacFarlane (yeah we knew he could sing - I have his CD to prove it, but am still mysteriously blocked from his Twitter feed.)

A current acting fave of mine, Matthew McConaughey, has a leading, non-singing role as the talent show's presenter.

Back to my ear-worm. I guess that, by now, almost everyone knows that some Golden Slumbers lyrics in Paul McCartney's song were "borrowed" from a centuries old piece of poetry, "Cradle Song" by Thomas Dekker (1572 –1632). I recall Golden Slumbers being known as a lullaby back in my schooldays in England. The first time I heard the Beatles' version, I well remember exclaiming the equivalent of: "WTF Beatles! We sang that in school donkeys' years ago!" We sang it to this tune:



In several online forums members have chewed over the meaning of the Beatles' song, as patch-worked together by Paul McCartney. Theories range around the idea that Paul was grieving over loss of his mother and childhood family life, putting his grief to music; or regretting the upcoming inevitable break-up of the Beatles as a band, another kind of family; or even a general life to death ditty - carrying that weight; or a fit-all soliloquy on how one can never get back to...whatever.

Personally, I love the first bars of the song - the "Once there was a way to get back home(ward)" - I wish Paul had continued with his own words, not those of some long ago writer. And yet... you know... that thought brought forth a theory, a bit left-field perhaps: We've heard and read, often, that the 1960s and early 1970s brought us some of the best popular music ever, and this has been put down to the then ubiquitous use of mind-altering drugs such as LSD.

Well...say the influence of LSD, or similar drug, sends the mind out there, where the buses don't run, but (tin-foil hat time) where everything that has ever been heard on Earth still remains in the ethers. Consider that things heard, albeit unconsciously, during these "flights", out where the buses don't run, might return inadvertently, when the mind is back on all-fours, on Earth. The story goes that Paul read the lyrics of the lullaby Golden Slumbers from among his step-sister's piano music, even so, he didn't copy the music, he didn't know how to read music then. The music he created, to mix with the centuries-old words sounds kind of classical to me. It has been said, too that the music of Eleanor Rigby sounds akin to the Gregorian chant style. And how come famous symphony orchestras can make Beatles' songs sound like classical compositions? Because they have classical DNA collected out where buses don't run? Tin-foil hat country? Possibly, but I enjoy that thought.

I should really post Paul McCartney's original version of my ear-worm song, but I'm not a dyed-in -the-wool Beatles fan. I have, though, come to appreciate much of their music when performed and arranged by others. So, I'll wind up with a YouTube video I particularly enjoyed: a mix of two Beatles' songs, the second is my ear-worm number, sung by The Seattle Ladies Choir :

Seth (Family Guy) MacFarlane

Seth MacFarlane appeared as a guest on Bill Maher's "Real Time" on Friday night. He's an animator, composer, writer, producer, actor and voice actor, best known for creating the animated sitcoms "Family Guy" and "American Dad", for which he also voices many of the characters: Peter Griffin, Stewie Griffin, Brian Griffin, Glenn Quagmire and many additional characters.

Multi-talented? I guess so!

We watch "Family Guy" repeats quite often, The series has now come to an end, but repeats go on for ever in the USA. Stewie's Rex-Harrison-type English accent is a hoot. The humor and satire in the episodes often hovers around the border of acceptable and not acceptable, this is just part of its charm. Later seasons of the show seem to get more and more risque, certainly not fare for faint-hearted, strait-laced religiously oriented mortals.






When Seth MacFarlane appeared recently in a TV commercial, for HULU, and lapsed into the Stewie accent, I was completely taken aback. I'd felt convinced that some retired English actor from the West End stage was responsible for Stewie's lines.

Astrologically, I'd been expecting to see versatile Gemini (often a great mimic) featuring strongly in Seth MacFarlane's natal chart. I was wrong - unless Gemini is his rising sign (which can't be established without a time of birth). The chart below is set for 12 noon on his birth date: 26 October, 1973, Kent, Connecticut.





Just as MacFarlane has a surprising combination of talents, this chart has a surprising combination of Yods, aka Fingers of Fate. (A Yod is a planetary configuration made up of two planets in sextile aspect (60*), both linked to another planet via quincunx (150*), forming a sharp arrow-like shape.

Astrologers consider that these formations are reflected in the personality by the characteristics of the sextiled and harmonious planets blending and being channelled through the planet at the apex, via its own characteristics. A complex concept!






There are three Yods in this chart (as shown). That's fairly rare, I'd say. The Yods are themselves linked too, by Neptune forming part of each one.

Saturn/Mars~apex at Neptune = work/career/energy channelled via imagination and creativity.
Neptune/Jupiter ~ apex at Saturn = Imagination/exaggeration channelled via career and work (almost the mirror image of the previous Yod).
Neptune/Pluto ~ apex at Mars = Imagination/Passion/Darkness channelled via enthusiasm and energy.
The planets involved are exactly right for describing what Seth's career has turned out to be.

MacFarlane needed lots of energy and strong work ethic to get his projects off the ground and accepted by a primetime TV channel. These attributes comes via Saturn and Mars in the Yod configurations. His oddball characters are product of his Neptune links with a splash of Jupiter's excess. Pluto's appearance in one Yod, sextiling Neptune reflects the occasional satirical darkness of some of his storylines.


In general, apart from the trio of Yods, He's a Scorpio/Sagittarius type - intense yet with an outgoing enthusiasm for life and fun. I think he looks Sagittarian.


There are close square (90*) aspects in his chart: Sun to Jupiter to Mars, linked by the resulting opposition Sun to Mars which makes up yet another triangular configuration known as the T-Square. In this case the configuration links his core self (Sun) and two other planets in Fixed signs, bringing in an element of stubbornness and determination to add to the tension indicated by a T-square formation. But this formation does provide a special kind of dynamic tension - that which is is so often a pre-requsite for success.

In a lengthy and interesting interview at IGN.com (here) Seth MacFarlane admits that he was stubborn and determined about keeping to his initial vision when Family Guy first came to the TV screen. He was unwilling to delegate much to his team at first, but said that he later eased into trusting his team and loosening the reins. This connects to his Fixed and controlling Scorpio planets easing under the influence of his Mutable Sagittarius planets (Venus and Neptune).

MACFARLANE: When Family Guy started as a series, I was very, very controlling....... out of sheer paranoia, because all of our writers had come off of live-action sitcoms. My first thought was, "Oh God, these people have never written for animation before." And really, by the end of the series, I could not have come to a more opposite viewpoint. It got to the point where you just rely on these people. Really, what I found was that good writers are good writers.

Henry Selick - Animator Extraordinaire

Pondering again on yesterday's post, Neil Gaiman and "Coraline", I decided that I hadn't given sufficient mention to the movie's stop motion animation director, Henry Selick (on right of photograph).
His earlier work on previous animated movies, including "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "James and the Giant Peach" is discussed at Wikipedia HERE, also in an article at Digital Media FX: "Layers: A Look at Henry Selick"

Henry Selick was born on 30 November 1952 in Glen Ridge, New Jersey. I've included a 12 noon chart for that date in the absence of time of birth. His natal chart describes quite clearly what Wikipedia has to say about his "Style and Creative Temperament".
A quote from Wikipedia follows, with my notes in red as to how the comments relate so well to Selick's natal chart.

"Joe Ranft, a friend and collaborator of Selick's, once stated in an interview that Selick had a "rock 'n' roll-meets-Da Vinci temperament" -Venus opposite Uranus or vice-versa! In Ranft's words "He'll still go off to his office to play guitar or electric piano to ease off and think", but at the same time Selick operates scientifically. "He gets an outrageous premise-something that comes from a real dream place - Neptune- then approaches the aesthetics of it like a mechanical engineer Saturn. (= Neptune conjunct Saturn). What can we build on this foundation, how do we buttress it? If we have a mechanical shark, how does it kill? Will it shoot things from its snout?" Ranft thinks Selick has an uncanny gift: "He can articulate things through animation that people couldn't say otherwise." Sun conjunct Mercury sextile Mars in Aquarius.

Selick's natal Moon would have been in Taurus before 3pm, Gemini if he was born after that. I'd go for early Gemini, in trine with Mars in Aquarius. A Gemini /Aquarius trine would reflect the high level of mental acuity needed for the skills he so obviously possesses.

The magic in this chart lies in the way the key planets and signs are so closely linked harmoniously or dynamically: Neptune (imagination, creativity); Uranus (innovation); Sun/Mercury (self & communication); Venus (art); Saturn (the mechanics of it all); Aquarius and possibly Gemini (mental acuity); Cancer (the sensitivity to understand how put it all together in an appealing way); Capricorn (the common sense and business sense to be successful in what he does); Sagittarius - the expansive and risk-taking element needed in many of his ideas which have ventured further into the realms of animation than most others in the field.

The process of stop-motion animation is as follows:
Position a model by hand, take a picture and reposition it — repeating, ad infinitum, in tiny increments, to create the illusion of motion. Selick says the process combines all of his favorite things —sculpture, drawing, photography, music and physics. With the help of 30 animators, Selick produced about two minutes of finished footage a week over the course of almost two years. One technique, called "replacement animation," called for thousands of heads, each with different expressions, and the services of both a "face librarian" and an "assistant face librarian" to help keep track. (Information from NPR).

A couple of coincidences in the charts of Neil Gaiman and Henry Selick are worthy of note: Gaiman's Mars and Selick's Uranus are at the same degree of Cancer (17). Gaiman's Saturn and Selick's Venus are just 3 degrees apart at 14 and 17 Capricorn respectively. Perhaps these similarities help towards the good working relationship they seem to share

It's not really relevant but I may as well throw it in: I noticed that Selick's Mars in Aquarius is spot on my Sun, to the minute, so was also hit by the January solar eclipse this year.