Comments (0) Berlioz – Requiem: “Dies Irae”
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This might be the most beautiful piece of music you hear today. If so, this post has been entirely worth it.
Cornbread – Panama
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Just because you CAN play “Eruption”, doesn’t mean you SHOULD; particularly when your audience is entirely comprised of restaurant patrons who are expecting nothing more than a bit of ambient folk music.
Yep, at a Mexican restaurant last night, one of the fairly inebriated diners asked the performing guitarist if he could play a song. MISTAKE #1.
Fortunately, the patron had already had several beers, otherwise there’s no way he would have actually gone up. MISTAKE #2.
Brilliantly, the diner/musician decided to “wow” the crowd with a tune that was moderately out-of-genre for the evening….80s metal. MISTAKE #3.
Perhaps not surprisingly, once the “performance” began, it became clear that no one in the room could play “Eruption”, including the only person in possession of the tool actually capable of making it happen. MISTAKE #4.
Fortunately, the restaurant food was superb enough to more than make up for the audio foux pas. So like I said, just because you CAN, doesn’t mean you SHOULD (especially when, in reality, you CAN’T).
Dvorak– New World Symphony
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Yes, this is exactly what it looks like. “Guitar Hero” for the conductor…featuring our very own Gustavo Dudamel.
You can play the game right here.
I must admit, if the game weren’t actually kind of fun, it’d be terribly tacky.
Chopin – Romance- Larghetto
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When as the last time you listened to an entire CD? Beginning to end? Start to finish? No shuffle, no playlists, no “genius”, but straight up, an entire album.
For me, it’s been far too long, and in desperate search of a respite for my musical ADD, I am sitting at home right now, listening to a magical invention called the Compact Disc, rather than simply my iTunes playlists.
It certainly presents a nice respite from the craziness that is work, simultaneously testing my students at the end of chapter 2, organizing meta-intervention (answering the question of what happens when kids who can’t multiply still don’t learn how to multiply), and putting the reigns on a Magnet-school faire that is going to occur at our school on November 21st.
Honestly, I love all this stuff, but sometimes it is simply grand to just lay out on my couch and listen to some music…not necessarily to be doing things with music in the background, but just listening to music.
Amazing!
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young – Déjà Vu
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Despite being a 6-year “veteran” at school, I’m still fairly young; in fact, young enough to cause some raised eyebrows among some of my elder colleagues who wonder how on earth I came to love the music of their childhood and teenage years, rather than my own.
Other than the fact that The Beatles vs. Gin Blossoms is simply not a fair comparison, it largely had to do with the existence of an LP collection that belonged (and still belongs) to my step-dad, which infused me with a love of the musicality, great song-writing, and sheer power of such groups as the aforementioned Beatles, as well as the Rolling Stones, the Who, Jimi Hendrix Led Zeppelin, and even venturing into the folk-rock worlds of Jackson Browne, James Taylor, and Cat Stevens.
One such group that I learned to enjoy was the cumbersomely self-titled Crosby, Stills, Nash, and (sometimes) Young. As a group that sounded like a strange mix between a jazz-vocal ensemble, a country band, and the Grateful Dead, they truly had a unique sound of their own.
Saturday night, I had the opportunity to see them perform for free at the Greek Theatre, thanks to a ticket giveaway from local NPR/Music station KCRW. [For those of you longtime readers of this blog, you might remember Rocking Out on a School Night, a post from nearly two years ago. Same radio station. Same kind of giveaway.]
Anyway, despite the fact that only 75% of CSNY performed (Neil Young is apparently too cool for these guys now), it was a great show, and even more, the audience surprised me a bit. I fully expected to see nothing but a sea of 50-60 year old boomers who literally grew up with these guys. Yet throughout the venue was a quite large contingent of younger generation folks, including including lots of parents with their teenage kids, who realize that great music is simply timeless.
I wonder if 20-30 years from now, I’ll be taking my kids to see geriatric Coldplay rock it out reminiscently of “The 00s”!
KISS – Hard Luck Woman
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Disappointed? Definitely.
Should I have known better? Absolutely.
Who’s fault? Mine.
Exhibit A: Eternal hard rock gods, KISS, who’s makeup and power chord-age inspired decades of sonic bliss and great Halloween costumes. A band who’s corpus of work spans nearly three decades, and yet, perhaps surprisingly, prior to yesterday, I had never actually owned any albums by KISS. Hmmm…. Luckily, while in Borders, on the way to Bible study, I happened upon finding “The Very Best of KISS” in the discount rack. And although opportunity knocks but once, there was a definite reason it was in the discount rack. Read on.
Exhibit B: Rod Stewart. So much rock and roll potential….so much of a sellout later on. Mr. Stewart became the epitome of “Adult Contemporary”, whilst causing the near-ruination of the radio airwaves. I do not like Rod Stewart. I never have, I don’t think I ever will. Suffice it to say, that simply not owning any of his works has been a core value of mine since I’ve been into music. There are certain elements of music that should never be reproduced, copied, or derived influence from at all. Ever. Period. Especially if you’re a hard rock band. Especially if your hard rock band dresses up in scary makeup, spitting up fake blood at concerts, and play bass guitars shaped like literal axes.
Yet, what to my horror should I hear on my new KISS album, but the track Hard Luck Woman. As soon as it started, could just feel the cold, heartless, influence, of fellow rasper Stewart. I almost threw up. Don’t believe me? Check it out.
Rod Stewart: Maggie May
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12 years before I was born, man landed on the moon. What’s weird is that 12 years isn’t that long at all!
In honor of the Apollo 11 astronauts, here you’ll find some of my favorite songs about space. What am I missing?
Elton John: Rocket Man
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Pink Floyd: Brain Damage
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David Bowie: Space Oddity
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David Bowe: Life On Mars?
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The Beatles: Across the Universe
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The Rolling Stones: 2000 Light Years From Home
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Aimee Mann: Lost In Space
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Philip Glass: Spaceship
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Harry Nilsson: Spaceman
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The Kinks: Supersonic Rocket Ship
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Norman Greenbaum: Spirit In the Sky
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Kathy McCarty: Rocketship
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Pink Floyd: Astronomy Domine
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What am I missing here???
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Yes, your eyes do not deceive you. Yes, that is Ben Folds. Yes, that is a giant “frowny” face. And yes, that is a keytar.
And yes, it is extremely refreshing to see an entire audience hyped up over a rock group centered on the amazing musical prowess of the pianist!
Speaking of other, far less amazing pianists, this weekend my roommate Ken and I performed our second coffeehouse in as many months at Unurban Cafe in Santa Monica, in front of a rocking crowd of about 9 people. We played a short set of 6 songs, two of which were written by Ken, and three of which were genuinely co-written by both him and myself. It was just him on guitar and myself on my keyboard (which honestly sounded much better than the incredibly out-of-tune piano they house at the cafe), so as you can imagine it was a pretty mellow set, but the feedback was mostly positive (or so I’ve heard). Next steps: (1) Find drummer. (2) Book Staples Center.
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Webster’s Dictionary defines Crapware as the category of software programs that come previously installed on your brand new PC, programs which slow your memory, your speed, and are often incredibly difficult to exorcise from your hard drive. I’ve spent the last few years tweaking my ability to get rid of crapware and it’s ugly cousin spyware from my PC. And to a high degree, I’ve been fairly successful, and now I’m the proud owner of a blazing fast, Microsoft powered, Windows Vista machine, with nary a blue-screen-of-death to show for it. For anyone interested, I highly recommend the use of the free programs Ccleaner and Ad-aware as part of a regular maintenance schedule to keep your machine running at top speed.
Why am I posting about crapware? Well, simply because my random iTunes background song is, in fact, one of the media files that came attached within the sample media files for the Windows Media player to discover and play. The piece, a slow jazz groove entitled Despertar, which is the Spanish verb that means “to wake up”. The sad thing, is that the piece is not that bad. For not being much of a jazz music aficionado, it’s actually growing on me. I grew up listening to some ragtime, and small doses of “big-band”, but only recently have gotten into the likes of Miles Davis or John Coltrane. It’s only when I feel like I’m sitting in a dentist’s waiting room that I get a bit perturbed.
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