Gimme Some of that Ol' Atonal Music

Music • Perspective
Who would’ve thought a bluegrass spoof of atonal music would take off on YouTube?

By Anne Midgette
Classical music critic
February 8

Gimme some of that ol’ atonal music. It lingers in my ears!

Schoenberg and Alban Berg were the genre’s pioneers.

Keep your Bach and Chopin, they’re melodic and passe.

Gimme some of that ol’ atonal music, like Daddy used to play.

If you’re a musician, chances are several people have already sent you a YouTube link to a bluegrass video this week. ... “(Gimme some of that) Ol’ Atonal Music,” by the singer Merle Hazard, details in sunny and endearing tones a love of atonality, while explaining to newbies what that is (music that isn’t in one clear key), and includes the best atonal banjo solo you’ve ever heard (probably the only atonal banjo solo you’ve ever heard). That the solo, and the production values, are so good, is no surprise: The soloist and the recording’s producer is Alison Brown, one of the leading five-string banjo players in the country. Combine that with a crack backup band, Hazard’s sweetly earnest delivery and a John Cage spoof that’s actually funny, and you have a lot of people laughing at their desks.

Hazard is the nom de guerre of Jon Shayne, a financial manager in Nashville, who, as Hazard, has pioneered a form of comic bluegrass economics on selected videos and Paul Solman’s economics segments on the PBS NewsHour. ... Shayne’s career as Merle Hazard began in 2007 when he was talking with a friend about the looming economic crisis. “Hedge funds crumbled because their real estate assets were crumbling,” Shayne said in an interview. “We said, ‘This is awful. This is going to be a slow-motion train wreck. This is going to be a festival of moral hazard’ ” — an economic term meaning that the risks taken by one party (in this case, banks) are borne by another party (in this case, the unfortunate borrowers).

“One of us said, ‘That sounds like a country singer, Merle Hazard,’ ” Shayne said. “I thought, Merle Hazard needs to exist.” ... Within three days, he had written “H-E-D-G-E,” to the tune of “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” by Tammy Wynette. He recorded and uploaded the song that weekend. “By Wednesday or Thursday of the next week, the New York Times had covered it, and it took off,” Shayne said. “Fun beginner’s luck.”

In the years since, Hazard has become a veritable persona, issuing a track every year or so, including such YouTube hits as “Inflation or Deflation” and “How Long (will interest rates stay low)?” “H-E-D-G-E” is no longer available online; having scrupulously licensed rights to the tune, Shayne eventually got tired of paying the licensing fee every year. His subsequent songs, he says, have been either original material, tunes in the public domain, or legal parody. PBS, however, did license the familiar “Never on Sunday,” which is the basis for Shayne’s “The Greek Debt Song,” recorded with bouzouki and videotaped in and around, where else, Nashville’s scale model of the Parthenon.


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Anne Midgette came to The Washington Post in 2008, when she consolidated her various cultural interests under the single title of chief classical music critic. She can be found online as The Classical Beat. Follow https://twitter.com/classicalbeat