Tuesday, May 1, 2018

The piano tuner

   [...] Another song, indeed, plays on fears of a moral hazard to women and girls of respectable families, presenting them with a picture of a seductive male who had easy access to the middle-class home: the piano tuner. We can only speculate about the anxious reaction of some parents to the chorus of "The Tuner's Oppor-tuner-ty".
At first he'd tune it gently, then he'd tune it strong,
Then he'd touch a short note, then he'd run along,
Then he'd go with a vengeance, enough to break the key,
At last he tuned whene'er he got an opportunity.
—Derek B. Scott, Sounds of the Metropolis
(2008)

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