Sunday, April 4, 2010

"My Rifle, Pony and Me" "Get Along Cindy" -Rio Bravo*


There is not a better musical clip from any movie...ever. I will not do it any disservice by trying to elaborate. The songs are traditional however a great version of "Get Along Cindy" is out there by the legendary Texas musician Bob Wills.

I just watched it and have to say something about it. My God the way it opens, Dean laying on the bed with his hat cocked back a hand rolled in his hand, the Duke pouring some coffee and then limping out of a cell to sit down and enjoy, Ricky Nelson sitting on a table with an absurd hairstyle for a cowboy while Stumpy throws in Harp riffs between his missing teeth.

I used to have this same feeling of longing contentment this song and scene exudes when I was living on Perdido Key in a stilt house on the Intercostal Waterway, my front yard the ocean. In the searing mid day sun I would run six miles in the snuff-thin white sand in a short pair of shorts barefoot on a deserted beach. Upon completion I would lay in three inches of water, close my eyes and fall into that trance-like in and out of sleep mode while tiny waves broke over my body until I walked the hundred yards back to the house and laid down again on the couch with the windows open, out of the sun and the ambrosial southern breeze wafting in through the windows.

It was heaven and possibly the reason for my agnostic state of mind as an adult, if heaven is not similar I don't want any part of it. However almost two hundred years ago when the land I resided on was still inhabited by Seminoles and Spaniards I don't think such a scene was possible and the linked one with Duke Wayne, Deano and Ricky was probably a more likely way to spend a lazy afternoon after a strenuous day of work.

I so do wish scenes like this have taken place, that they aren't just in movies or fantasy. In thinking of it it makes me feel as though everyone is a member of the same whole human race, possessing the same problems, desires, needs, wants and when it was all over they relaxed in the same way. Two hundred years ago globalization existed deep down in the DNA of every person walking the planet and we simply just didn't know it. There were cowboys in the jail cell singing songs in standard G-C-D format, Chinese Eunuchs playing harpsichords in segmented triads and Pygmy throat singers on the African planes all releasing the worries and cares of the day. Maybe they supplanted Camels or Kudu for Ponies, spears and swords for rifles but there was always that third imperative part of the mix, the creators and the dramatists of the world theatre.


*I attempt to refrain from linking scenes or anything similar however to my knowledge this is the only example of said songs performed in this style and the only way to gain access to the original content.

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