Slightly Off-Topic

Working Through the Suck

This video of Ira Glass (of This American Life fame) has been making the rounds on the productivity blagoglobe but it struck home in that it encapsulates why I started writing this blog, why I stopped writing for several months, and a larger malaise that seems to affect the "academic blog" community.

But Bass Is Eternal

Since I now live in a household where at any moment the Van Halen Debate can quickly escalate to blows, it is comforting to have something everyone can agree on like Michael Anthony. Upon watching Live Without A Net I realized that the affable bassist's influence may extend past the pedal-point on "Running With The Devil."

Exhibit A:


Exhibit B:

Believe In Your Summer '08

The summer reading list is a tradition as old as the printed word and the acknowledgment of seasons. Having been a careless and fancy free performer for the past several summers said reading list usually consists of cleanup on a series of esoteric topics and angular science fiction/steampunk novels. But now I am a musicologist, and thus this has become Serious Business. The goal is not just to pass the looming entrance exams, but to the pass them with the grace and brutality of the ninja. Therein, the following schedule has been developed.

Eric Salzman - Twentieth Century Music: An Introduction
Carl Dahlhaus - Nineteenth Century Music
Charles Rosen - The Classical Style
Claude Palisca - Baroque Music
Allan Atlas - Renaissance Music
Jeremy Yudkin - Music in Medieval Europe

For bonus points:

Douglass Seaton - Ideas and Style in the Western Musical Tradition
Actually finish the goddamn Alex Ross

This will be accompanied by marching through all 173 selections in the Norton and doing at least nominal score study for each one. We will surely perish. Any thoughts?