Happy Birfday, Phil

I wish I could remember who snarkily mentioned that the true measure of a blog was how many entries were left after you take out all the apologies to write more often. Anyway, while I looked like I was living the life of a hip blogginista last semester, I was really just working at a library and watching bootlegged episodes of Good Eats. Oh what a change has happened, yesterday I went to Lee Hyla's sendoff at NEC, tomorrow I go to a gallery reception before jetting off to see the BSO; the weekend holds an opera, another composer spotlight, and that Annual Football Championship. I'll blog as much of it as I can, but the last week doesn't bode well.

Anyway, Mr. Glass turns 70 today with remarkably less fanfare than Mr. Reich did a couple months ago. I'll admit that I'm considerably less familiar with Glass's oeuvre as Reich's, something that the thinkers over at Sequenza21 attribute to Glass's rather more prodigious output. In the comments I mentioned that it sounded like the difference between writing when you have ideas and writing in order to get idea, so we'll see if I get creamed. This makes a lot of sense for me, since Glass's works are really hit or miss for me. While I love his String Quartet #5, "Low" Symphony, and score to Koyannisqatsi, I cannot stand his operas. This might also have something to do with my problems with hearing operas before I see them.

While the actual day of his birth caught me off guard, I had been hearing that this was to be the Year of Glass since the new year. So unless your birthday celebrations are made special by freakish longevity (knock on wood), no one takes stocks until the year actually ticks over. That explains it, it's way easier to put together a concert in ten months than three weeks.

A Tale of Two Orchestras

 I've mentioned both the Boston Symphony Orchestra and the Boston Modern Orchestra Project here before, but I attended concerts by both in the span of three days and couldn't help but notice the occasional contrast and comparison.

The BSO concert I attended was featured Mozart and Haydn, a program which probably wouldn't have attracted me if not the promise of discounted tickets and my recent enrollment in a seminar on Haydn. The discounted tickets ended up not materializing, but providence struck when a scalper was berated by the box office for being too close and she surrendered her tickets to us rather than continue her business outside. What's with scalpers in Boston standing so close to the ticket window?

Clearly the mission of BMOP doesn't allow for a real analogue program, but the concert was as nostaglic as BMOP really allows themselves to get. All the composers have some connection to the Boston area (this can usually be narrowed further to an NEC connection, but I digress...) and have worked with BMOP before, but the program included two world premieres.

The suprising thing is that for both of these concerts I struggled with how I should be listening. I feel that most of this had to with the fact that I didn't really have a program to fiddle with and distract me, during the BSO concert I had pinkeye and couldn't read it (I could barely see the musicians) and the BMOP concert I simply didn't get one. In addition to actually listening to the music more, I noticed some really whacky things about the audience itself.

As a precursor, I dressed up to go to the BSO. Not a suit, I sort of half-assed it but definitely paid attention to what I looked like. Not a moment's thought of it going to BMOP. Accordingly, there were a lot of bluehairs at the BSO, perhaps the Mozart reminds them of their youth. The BMOP crowd was noticeably younger (albeit smaller), part of this is expected since an NEC prof and recent alum were soloists, but there was an extremely unexpected population spike.

Children.

I saw five or six kids with their parents at the BMOP show. I don't know if you could manage that at most concerts that don't have Peter and The Wolf on the dockets, and this was rather uncompromising modern music. Perhaps it was the more relaxed atmosphere of the BMOP show as opposed to the rigid structure of Symphony Hall? Greg Sandow has been ballyhooing the death of the classical music environment for some time, maybe I'll tell him about this and see how he responds.

Most Annoying Song - Semifinals

Two songs continue to march towards history, causing increasingly unlikely pairing of songs that no one would expect to find in the same sentence. Lamb Chop def. Mark Dinning, Ludacris def. Dashboard. (Although I agree with that, I wonder if that has more to do with the sensibilities of the crowd, but whatever.)

James Tenney - For Ann (rising) v. Lamb Chop/Sheri Lewis - The Song that Doesn't End

Ludacris - Number One Spot v. Any song on Rachael Ray mixtapes

If I had actually assigned numerical seeds I imagine we'd be dealing with three #1's. Vile empress Ray's continued success surprises me, since her's is merely the spectre of evil.

Blow Your Gats On This One

Darcy James Argue posted a million years ago about the long tradition of really terribly awful rock saxophone solos, but why did no one ask of metal saxophone solos? I'm sure may of you are thinking that's because the previous phrase was absurd and rediculous. However, I have a an example! A good one! So you know I'm not talking about Dick Parry.

I've sat on Yakuza's Samsara for almost a year now, it was one of the last CDs that came in during my watch as metal director at WLFM. The first track "Cancer of Industry" was pretty br00tal and the muezzin-styled intro, that I assumed to be sampled, stuck it in my head. It wasn't until last week that I finally got back to listening to the rest of the album, it turns out that those saxophones at the beginning are real, and that the sax player is a dedicated member of the band. He's also listed as a vocalist, so I'm not sure if he's the one doing the standard hardcore scream or actually singing ("clean vocals" as we in the biz call them). The standout in my opinion is "Exterminator" which primarily features the aforementioned clean vocals and our saxophone friend with the courage to play that most metal of instruments, the soprano sax.

"Cancer of Industry" from Yakuza's MySpace page

"Exterminator" on localhostr (will go down in a month)

Back to the Light

 Another set of airports for me today as I head back to Boston for Act 2. I'll post if Milwaukee happens to have free wifi, but if all else fails I've got my trusty new pocketbook to corral all my thoughts in. (My lunch in Logan last month was one of the more productive thinking times I've had in awhile.)

This seems like a good time to mention that to prevent myself from going to a coma due to lack of trivia at the end of month I'm tentatively planning on attending Vericon up at Harvard, a nerdfest I'm admittedly going to primarily to meet demi-hero Jeffrey Rowland. However I plan on throwing my hat into the ring at the Verilympics, primarily looking at the Betrayal at House on the Hill event. I notice on the schedule at the Monopoly event is only given two hours, so they must play some extra bloodlusty version of the game.

No Knock

I plan on posting about a couple metal albums that have intrigued me lately, but for today I'll make sure to honour the occasion.

A lot of people suggest listening to Coltrane's (John) Alabama, but I still recommend Alive at the Village Vanguard...Again! Additionally, Destination: Out has reinstated some of her solo jams, as well as a second helping.

Dial M suggests Gil Scott-Heron, but not the one that you're thinking of.

Big ups to the public library for staying open so the kids off of school have a place to get educated against ignorance.

I was planning on posting earlier to describe some of the events in Boston and in my neck of the woods, but I've been packing due to my neck of the woods becoming Boston again tomorrow.

Celebrity Deathwatch: IAJE Edition

Concerning the passing of Michael Brecker, the Internets agree that Mark Turner said it best (although we all heard it first on Do the Math)

Fuck those motherfuckers who don't give it up for Michael Brecker.

In the jazz circles I rolled with in Wisconsin, Brecker was nigh invincible. I can't think of anyone else that a widely diverse of pretentious jazzholes can unanimously agree on, especially someone who could be unapologetically accessible while continuing to blow your goddamn brains out.

One of the first posts I made to this blog was bitching about how classical composers seem to only achieve acceptance upon death. I've mellowed this stance a bit, if you're dead anyway why not let it be a final press release. I hope that happens in the case of Alice Coltrane, who we lost almost simultaneously. Any dumb bastard can talk about Giant Steps or the albums with the classic , but the real hipsters know to go later to find the hard stuff. I'm going to go listen to Live at the Village Vanguard Again!....again.

Most Annoyin Song - Quarterfinals 2

A pair of shutouts again this week, despite the fact that I never ended up fixing the links for the first battel. Which is why the second battel (the fearsome Rachel Ray) got more than three times more votes, unless everyone agrees with Toki. For the unobservant, Tenney def. Lightning Bolt, Ray def. Muzak.

Sheri Lewis/Lamb Chop - The Song That Doesn't End v. Mark Dinning - Teen Angel

Dashboard Confessional - Screaming Infidelities v. Ludacris - Number One Spot

Other than the battel of ascending proportions, I didn't think much past initial seedings. Thusly I didn't expect either of these, allowing the mechanic of the tournament to create new and exciting combinations.

The Countryside, The Peasants...

Why is it that as soon as I find a sweet place where cool things happen it burns to the ground?

This is slightly incorrect, I heard about Pan9 at the same time as hearing about how they didn't exist anymore. Here's a page where helping can happen, although most of the big events happened already.

Also, if anyone knows any similiar "hippie communes" with sweet avant music, you should let me know.

Fanboy Diminished

I've been using Macs for as long as I've been using computers, but I would hesitate to call myself an Apple fanboy. Sure, I've never had a non-Apple computer and tippity-type upon a MacBook at the moment. I also am a Pod person, and take every swipe at Microsoft that's available. (The "Surgery" pairing of the Hodg-man and the guy from the next Die Hard movie is especially delicious) But this is where the buck ends.

A couple of years ago my iPod at the time committed some sort of dignified seppuku, which upon sending to Apple was diagnosed as fine despite still not working when I recieved it back. Back in the present, after some typical memory issues with the battery of my MacBook it has chosen to stop taking any sort of charge. Since I assumed it to be similiar memory problems I let it drain completely. Now the fantastically designed MagSafe power connection that I showed off to everyone upon has allowed swift winds to rob me of whatever work I happen to have not saved.

To extend the bitterness I'm not particularly juiced by any of the Macworld announcement, I would have preferred information about Leopard or something I can afford. Even my slavish devotion fails to see the quantum leap between the iPhone and the current CrackBerry marketplace. It was more fun when we were the underdogs.

A Few Quick Ones

!) I've finally thought of a New Year's resolution. Eat more fish, I live on a goddamn harbor for Chrissakes.

@) Despite living in a bigger city, I find myself less in touch with popular music. Despite Rolling Stone officially not being cool at all, I couldn't help but feel bad when I did rather poorly at recognizing their 100 greatest albums of the year. I certainly do miss working at a radio station. However, I did considerable better on this list of the best metal albums of the year, as decided by metallists themselves!

#) The aforementioned list and all the Queen references got me to break down and get My Chemical Romance's The Black Parade. I've got fond remembrances of MCR, their Three Cheers for Sweet Revenge was the first damn CD I ever opened working as a music director at WLFM. However, I do know Queen, and My Chemical Romance is no Queen. Still a fantastic album, however. The great hilarity is all this is that MCR is heavily rooted in punk rawk and Queen's attempt at punk ("Sheer Heart Attack", the song not the album) is awful.

$) Speaking of Queen, rumour has it (okay, actually Wikipedia) that Brian May is planning on finishing his doctorate in astrophysics this year. You know, the one he quit to tour with Queen in 1974. This gives me hope that a) I still could still join/form an awexome even doing higher education b) even 30 years down the line I can finish up that physics degree.

%) Since I forgot to fix the links for Lightning Bolt and James Tenney, this round of the tournament will run a week long. And those links still aren't fix, I r teh sUke.

Boston Without A Lens II

I did do some more shenanigans with the Populist II (PDF) before coming back and haven't gotten my dumb ass around to posting them, until now!!!!11



This is Huntington Avenue right in front of the Shaw's by the Pru. Almost a decent compromise of movement and clarity. I like it anyway.



Earlier in the year I took a bunch of pictures at night with my cameraphone, but couldn't figure out how to get them off whatever memory it has. So I took most of the pictures again with the Populist, this is actually a much more attractive picture of Mass Ave.



One thing that'll be cool when I back is that the second part of the Sensorium exhibit at MIT will be up. My dad is the one that gave me the camera, and he digs 2001 so I'm glad that I was able to get a picture here. The three of us are actually sitting on the couch discussing whether the camera will be able to sit there long enough to get an exposure without getting confiscated or otherwise fiddled with.

As before, these are the greatest hits of the larger Flickr set. (I added them to the same one as last time) I have about half a roll of film to burn in Wisconsin before I can use the new and improved Populist III that my dad recently developed.

In 2006 I...

• Went to Korea (Not technically accurate, I was in Korea for New Year's 05/06)
• Resurrected a radio station
• Gave my senior recital
• Graduated with a Bachelor of Music from Lawrence University
• Started a blog
• Had a guitar student accepted to an undergraduate music program
• Moved to Boston
• Began work towards a Master of Music at the Boston Conservatory

On initially compiling the list I was upset that what I thought to be a rather eventful year could be summed up by eight points. I suppose these aren't exactly non-trivial points, however. The events I've set in motion will have their biggest ramifications in 2008 (Hopefully another graduation, perhaps another admission/move) so I'll really have to work to make sure 2007 doesn't look like a lull.

Happy New Year's everyone, and do much enjoyment in the 2007 season.

Most Annoying Song - Quarterfinals Round 1

Now the actual tournament feature of these shenanigans really comes into its own. Dashboard def. Stefani, unsuprisingly. Mark Dinning performs a stunning upset over Pachelbel!

Lightning Bolt - Magic Mountain v. James Tenney - For Ann (rising)

I wanted this matchup, I wanted it to happen a lot. Ascension by rock band, or ascension by Shepherd tone. This whole thing was an excuse for an answer to this question.

Muzak of your favorite song v. Any song on Rachael Ray's mixtapes

H.P. Lovecraft forged a new brand of horror writing by depending entirely on the imagination of the reader. Both of these combatants work in basically the same way having defeated more concrete songs.

Celebrity Deathwatch - Holiday 2006 Edition

It is often said that deaths come in threes, so I was waiting for the tres before commenting on either of the two previous. However, it's getting unfashionably late for me to discuss the late Mr. Brown.

Dial M has a really great tribute that ropes in the idea of hip-hop (and funk and so on) being a music of vertical complexity rather than horizontal. Probably just best to follow the link rather than have me try to explain it, it makes sense. I also suggest another reason that the Hardest Working Man in Show Business was so damn fonky. Much like Reich and the minimalists would the next decade, James Brown didn't just master the beat. He was the beat. YouTube fails me in illustrating this, but either the PBS Rock and Roll series or the oft-syndicated History of Rock and Roll has priceless footage of James Brown in action. One of his saxophones cracks the note, and James Brown whips his head around looking straight at the offender and hits on the beat "You know I got you!" That guy was fucked.

Also something I hear about preventing Boston, and often by extension the rest of the nation, from descending into race riots singlehandedly.

I can't say much about Ford, being his prominence was outside my lifetime and the scope of this blog. You were a President, thumbs up for that even if you weren't elected.

(Current news is predicting that this trifecta will be concluded rather shortly, even if there's another recently deceased pair that probably have more in common.)

Most Annoying Song - Round 4

I told you I'd do it. Lambchop def. Macarena, Ludacris def. Vengaboys (barely). Here's the last round of preliminaries, after here it's winners only. I am sad that the extra traffic I got this week didn't result in a great upswing in voting. Come on, we're doing serious work here!

Mark Dinning - Teen Angel v. Johann Pachelbel - Canon in D

If you have chosen to attend a wedding, you've probably heard both of these songs. Compounded if it happens to be a shotgun wedding. (Those usually aren't well attended, poorly decorated) These also happen to be the oldest combatants in the tournament (1960 and 1680, respectively) Poor Pachelbel has had this relatively obscure work in his oeuvre, the only canon he wrote and not particularly representative of the rest of his work, turned into a spectacle for jackasses of all sorts, especially ones with guitars. Not to mention an entire album dedicated to it. Mark Dinning, on the other hand, deserves everything he gets for having invented the "my love interest has died in a tragic accident" genre of 60s pop.

Gwen Stefani - Hollaback Girl v. Dashboard Confessional - Screaming Infidelities

I unabashedly hate both of these songs. Two main themes seem to have arisen in this tournament, whining and repetition. Two modern practitioners present their wares to do battle here.

The Sounds of Science

 I occasionally disappear for weeks at a time, because the physical limitations of the universe and time-space continuum. Whenever anyone talking about how blogging is hard work it sounds like whining, because it is whining. Sort of like all those crappy songs about how the road is fuckin' tough, man. You could make blogging hard work, and but you can't not make it long work. Even posts that I think are going to be easy (this one should be a good example) take a not insignificant amount of time.

My good friend Dan Willis came to visit the past couple days, it my first opportunity to talk shop about this form of writing we've both chose to attempt. As a cursory glance will show, his posts are less common but significantly longer, each of which he said takes him the better part of a day. (It deserves mention that the blog isn't the sum of his writing, he also plays music critic for Lawrence's campus newspaper) Granted, since he posts at least every six months, most indices would consider him active.

Some entries require a little bit more research than stream of consciousness rambling. One of my favorite webcomics xkcd took to his interblag to explain his research behind one of his more ingenious comics. Get Rich Slowly, a personal finance blog I've recently taken to, also posts about his typical writing process. He says that most of his posts take weeks to put together, and he posts three times a day! Since blogging is all about getting on bandwagons, I'm recording the process that a post I'm working on that might be a bit over my head. You'll probably know it when you see it. When it's finished in a couple weeks.

By the way, it took me 38 minutes to write this. (well, 26 minutes to write. 12 to find the links.) But I was watching Food Network while I did it. Multitasking!

Keys are Funny Things

The Bad Plus links to me and I get more pageviews than I did in the first two months of this interblag. When I submitted my answers to the original gentlemen of the Bad Plus, I included an anecdote of my brief conversation I had with Ethan Iversen. I tell it in its entirety:

At the 2005 CMJ Music Marathon I attended a panel will the presumptious title of "The Future of Jazz!" (exclamation point added) Intriguing indeed, but it wasn't just a panel but more like the meeting of the goddamn New Jazz Justice League. Bill Frisell, Chris Potter, and a drummer whose name I can't remember, being led in battle by Ethan Iversen. There were only eight of us in the audience so the panel really just consisted of everyone playing their most recent releases.

It was right before Suspicious Activity? came out, so Ethan introduced his jam by saying that there were no rock covers on the new album, (!) but that they still laid a cover down. "You'll probably recognize it when you hear it." Problems with the jambox. "It's track 9." "Chariots?" A look of dejection. Don't worry, knowing the punchline didn't ruin it.

With the small audience, I felt only a little awkward going up and talking to Ethan afterward. My burning question? Who's idea was it to go major at the end of Iron Man? (If you haven't heard the Bad Plus's "Iron Man", you haven't lived.) Ethan actually seemed hesitant, almost embarassed, to admit that it was his idea and then explained exactly how the modulation worked. Music nerdity straight from the source. I had forgotten it, but was kind enough to repeat the magic incantation.

Thanks, you're not just a good bloginnist and one of the bestest pianists around, but a solid gentleman.

A Thoughful Gift

Whoever gave me this wondrous gift:
should identify themselves, since the packaging failed to do so.

I also have realized that I may have unleashed good sir Ethan's quizonnaire onto Facebook. I can't imagine it'll get far, it requires too much thinking and those that have taken the gauntlet thusfar aren't really the OMGWTFLOLBBQ types.

Music for Airports

By the time this is posted I should be back in Wisconsin for the holidaytime season. Thusly most of the posts for the next month would be more rumination than action, but maybe I'll get more research done when I can just drive to the library rather than taking the T. Not sure if they'll have the same selection.

I seem to gravitate to listening to Reich (God, I've been talking about him a lot lately) whenever I'm flying. And no, I don't own Music for Airports. And as I type this I'm actually listening to The Bad Plus's Blunt Object – Live in Tokyo. Nonetheless, I usually listen to Reich in airports, most often Music for 18 Musicians but this time it was Drumming. Perhaps by listening to minimalist music I become hyperaware of my surrounding and everything is interesting! Or captivating at least.

This led me down a train of thought: I thought of when I was first introduced to Steve Reich's music, by a friend of mine who is somewhere between session musician and local hero in Minneapolis's jazz scene. Or maybe he's dead, for all I know. It was late in high school, just as I was starting to approach the guitar as a classical instrument. He was attending Lawrence University, as I would the next year, and played for me the first four minutes of Piano Phase. Needless to say it was a bit of a shift from the steady diet of nü-metal I was ingesting at the time. (Don't misread this as a disownment, I will defend some of those albums to the death) The MP3 he had was incomplete, and for a couple years afterwards I thought the piece was only four minutes long.

Now my parents had taken me to the requisite children's symphony concerts, although I only have a vague recollection of them. However, that sliver of Piano Phase ended up being the touchstone that my knowledge of concert music would be built around. I'm not saying this is wrong, in fact it might be kind of cool, but the one point I kept coming back to as I ate my overpriced airport lunch was that this approach would be totally impossible and absurd if I had chosen any other instrument, Granted, this isn't the normal flight path for the guitar either but I think it's the only instrument where it's even possible. Maybe not, as with a lot of things, I'm starting to look into it.