Category Archives: Music

Moonlight Saving Time

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Today’s the first day of DST, and the nation is vexed by tired workers and dangerous motorists. To hear the opponents of the change tell it (and they’re never are quite as vocal in the fall). Maybe there’s something to their charges, but I’ve lived in a temperate-zone country where the time does not change, namely Japan. At the height of summer, the morning sun would wake me up at around 4 a.m. and my non-air conditioned apartment would be hot already by the time I had to get up for work.

It’s then, when you’re lying in bed feeling the sweat rising at 5 a.m., that you think: maybe taking this useless hour of daylight and dropping it into the evening is good idea. That is to say, I’m not persuaded that getting rid of DST would cure much of what ails us.

On the other hand, early March to early November isn’t quite right either. Better the way it was before Congress tinkered with it in 2005 – first Sunday in April to the last one in October, or even the way it was from 1967 to 1986, when it was the last Sunday in April to the last Sunday in October.

I looked at this map today because of the change, but also because it’s always a good day to look at a map. I wondered, what’s up with that corner of British Columbia that doesn’t change their clocks? Wiki says: “Part of the Peace River Regional District of BC (including the communities of Chetwynd, Dawson Creek, Hudson’s Hope, Fort St. John, Taylor and Tumbler Ridge) is on Mountain Time and does not observe DST. This means that the region would be on the same time as Mountain Standard Time (MST) in the winter, and Pacific Daylight Time (PDT) in the summer.” Hm.

One more thing: the change brings to mind this charming song, which is mostly lost to time.

I like the video that bsgs98 made. Where do you get so many pictures of people and paper moons? Google images, of course. But I also wondered, how exactly did the custom of sitting for a photo with a paper moon start, how long did it last, and why did it die out? A simple search doesn’t tell me, and I’m too lazy to dig around more (for now).

A quick check does reveal that there were many covers of the “Moonlight Saving Time,” but among those I’ve heard, I prefer Guy Lombardo’s version. The song was written by Irving Kahal and Harry Richman in the early ’30s, and it’s amazing the things you can find with a little creative Googling.

The Milwaukee Sentinel, in a squib published on June 17, 1934, said: “It was in the spring, three years ago, on the night that New York went on daylight saving time that he [Richman] thought up the title. There was a beautiful moon and the idea occurred to Harry that ‘Moonlight Saving Time’ would be a good title. Next day, he and Irving Kahal wrote the song.”

Christmas Morning ’12

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Christmas morning isn’t quite the land rush it used to be, but the girls still want to open their presents as they always have. Ann had some trouble going to sleep on Christmas Eve, but that was because she’d slept late that morning, rather than excess excitement for Christmas morning (though there was strong anticipation).

Gift cards, clothes, a little money, toys for Ann, a lot of sweets—it was all in the mix.

This year on Christmas and on the Sunday before, I managed to catch a few hours of a radio show devoted to Christmas music oddities hosted by two guys called Johnny & Andy on WDCB, the public radio station at the College of DuPage. I’d heard them years ago, maybe even these shows, since this year’s seemed to be rebroadcasts from earlier years.

So I got to hear “Solar System Simon, Santa’s Supersonic Son,” by one Francis Smith, which I haven’t heard in years. I’d forgotten how bluegrass-like it was. I’m also happy to report that when you Google that title, mid-2000s BTST entries turn up. Space Age Santa songs seemed to form a short-lived, and little remembered, subgenre of Christmas songs ca mid-1950s. Johnny & Andy even played a song of that exact name by I-forget-who-and-am-too-lazy-to-look-up (that guy records a lot of songs).

Other Christmas recordings played by Johnny & Andy included elf songs, Cajin-themed holiday tunes, Christmas polkas, and songs that tried to capitalize on the monster success of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer,” all in vain. One involved putting a light on Dasher’s tail, another had two reindeer named Percival and Chauncy becoming Donder and Blitzen, and one parody included the line, “Rudolph is lazy, tired, and has been fired.”

Even Gene Autry recorded other reindeer-themed songs, such as “32 Feet – 8 Little Tails,” and “Nine Little Reindeer,” which aren’t exactly forgotten, but hardly the hit Rudolph was. Then again, Autry recorded a lot of Christmas songs.