And then I wrote...

... that this period of middle March has a number of significant things associated with it.

For example, we just passed the ides of March. Or you did, anyway. It’s still a week away as I write this. Did anything bad happen?

The basketball tournaments, state and national, either have come and gone, have started, or soon will. Did the weather act up, as it often does?

Major league baseball teams are halfway through spring training.

Folks are ordering seeds and plants or starting seeds at home in expectation of another gardening season.

And, another sure sign, it is fund raising time on Iowa Public Television.

I once was a “Friend of IPTV” as a dues paying member, but I grew disenchanted with it over program selection, detecting a liberal or leftish bent in programming.

Still, I am an occasional viewer.

One of the things I used to look forward to each year was the televising of the state high school wrestling tournament finals. While wrestling is bigger in Iowa than in most states, it does not rate the television coverage the major sports such as football and basketball do. IPTV used to televise a few college meets each year, sometimes on a tape delay basis. And those high school finals. It seemed to me there were far fewer college meets this past season, and IPTV was not at the state meet. Some FOX channel did a show for some Iowans, but our cable system did not pick it up.

There used to be a slogan that “if IPTV didn’t show it, who would?” The answer, apparently, is nobody.

But, Sunday night, I noticed that I could get my annual hour and a half of Andre Rieu’s music, so figured it was fund raising time. And it was.

I always enjoy that show, for several reasons. First, I like the enthusiasm of Rieu and his performers and the audience. This was the program recorded live in Tuscany, a province of northern Italy. The music is largely classical, but it’s sort of like classical music for people who don’t really like classical music. I do like classical music, but sometimes I don’t want to be required to spend the time to listen to a whole piece. For example, if one wants to hear all four seasons as composed by Vivaldi, one must be willing to devote a considerable amount of time. So, I have several CDs of the nature of “Famous Overtures” or “Classical Favorites” or “The Most Relaxing Classical Music in the World ... Ever!” I can listen to one or three or five in row, each lasting five, seven or ten minutes, or whatever.

I recognize a number of the themes in Rieu’s show, but what impressed me, as it does every year, was how the audience knew all of them, and could sing along with those that had words. Yes, the words were most often Italian, which helps. But five year olds, 50 year olds and 80 year olds all knew them, and obviously enjoyed them! And it struck me again how unlikely that would be in these United States.

First, I doubt a show like this would draw a huge crowd, as it did in Tuscany. A rock concert may fill Madison Square Garden or Yankee Stadium, and Woodstock drew a crowd. But you won’t find five-year-olds and the elderly there, and the young people don’t come just for the music, but rather for “the experience.”

And should someone my age show at a concert by one of the current group of pop tarts, we could not sing along because we don’t know the words, and could not understand them as they are sung.

In other words, there is no universal appreciation of a Rod Stewart in the U.S. as there is for Verdi in Italy. I think the program which followed Rieu was one of Big Band music. I like that sort of music too. But where Verdi’s popularity goes back more than a century and half, Big Band music’s popularity lasted maybe 30 years. And Rod Stewart fans would not walk across the street, let alone fill the streets, to hear it.