Peter Stampfel – he of the Fugs and the Holy Modal Rounders – has a new and, hey no real surprise, rather unusual new album coming out. It’s called “Song Shards: Soul Jingles, Stoic Jingles, Vintage Jingles, Prayers and Rounds” which might be the longest album title we’ve featured to date. Conversely ‘Cognitive Behavioural Therapy‘ might be the shortest song we’ve ever featured in the Tracks section. The reason is, well, explainable if not wholly comprehensible – “Song Shards: Soul Jingles, Stoic Jingles, Vintage Jingles, Prayers and Rounds” is a work in two parts: part one made up of stoic aphorisms: prayers and observations of wit and wisdom; while part two sees Stampfel revisiting remembered radio advertising jingles. Both patrs are made up of extremely short songs. In fact you can listen to today’s song and think it might well be an advertising jingle. In a way it is – for stoicism as the underlying philosophy for Cognitive Behavioural Therapy.
As with all things Stampfel, the result is penetrating, deeply strange, funny at times, contains more than a little observed truth, and sounds like no one and nothing else. The musical aphorisms were inspired by prayers learned in Alcoholics Anonymous and others by revelations gained smoking weed; he was sober from 1988 to 2000 and has been almost entirely alcohol free since then. When first given a two-sentence prayer by his AA sponsor, he had trouble memorizing it and set it to music to remember it. “I had been re-writing folk songs for over a half century, ‘50s rock n’ roll songs for decades, and Great American Songbook songs since the ‘70s. Ah, why not re-write the bible. What the hell, you know? And thus, it was. My Stoic Jingles are based on stoic aphorisms; Soul Jingles are ones I made up,” says Stampfel.
“Previously, I knew nothing about stoicism,” he continues, saying, “I thought it simply meant putting up with pain and discomfort without complaining. But the more I began to understand it, the more sense it made. Then I ran into a list of 50 stoic aphorisms, and thought, ‘Hey, these are good song lyrics.’ Lucid, smart and useful.”
