When the Rain Comes
My friends, it seems that it has done nothing but rain the last week. That’s enough to send poor Mike into a psychological tailspin of doom and gloom. But I’m fairly determined to mow through. Late March showers bring late April flowers, no?
As I’m still in the middle of the task of importing the vast Stutzman Memorial Library into iTunes, I’m fairly sure that iTunes and the iPod are going to revolutionize my listening habits. I can’t express the feeling of being able to listen to any song, or more importantly, any
album in two shakes of a kitten’s whisker. And since I have a cool
gadget that allows me to wirelessly play iTunes through my stereo, I’m experiencing little to no sound degradation from my beloved Cds and the ability to "crank it," which those cute little MacBook speakers won't allow.
Pedro the Lion Whole (1997)
A Random CD Review from the Stutzman Memorial Library
Whole by Pedro the Lion (1997)
The randomizer spit out # 417 today, which correlates to the album
Whole by Pedro the Lion. Pedro, (basically David Bazan’s brainchild), is one of my favorite artists to whom I never seem to listen. I know that last sentence didn’t make any sense. How could it be a favorite if you never listen to it?
I’ve got several PTL Cds. This is the first one he released, I think. I found his lo-fi, indie rock mellow-ness to be soothing when I first heard this stuff. It was simple. Unadorned. But it wasn’t that “guy-and-a-guitar” sensitive, singer-songwriter tripe that the last sentence makes it sound like. There were drums and bass, actual melody lines that stood up over time, but it still sounded like it was recorded in a kitchen.
Lyrically, this is the sound of a depressed Christian.
My first exposure to this music came at a time when I was in college, willing to give music made by Christian artists more of a chance than before or since. Before that, “Christian music” meant gratingly-polished, annoying three-chord pablum, free of any type of “soul” or technique, spouting doctrine and stuck in a mid-to-late eighties production aesthetic—pretty much the opposite of this PTL stuff, (with the possible exception of technique-there’s nothing too daring, harmonically-speaking on this record.)
I remember that time of my life both fondly and with a little bit of chagrin at how “churchy” I wanted to be. And that embarrassment of things past is probably why this disc has sat on the shelf for awhile. I guess I kinda thought that I wasn’t the same person who bought it about eight years ago and I couldn’t possibly enjoy it. But that’s not the case. I was playing this in the car no more than a week ago. It still does what it’s supposed to do—gets me thinking about me, God, church, life…
Thank You
Thanks to everyone who showed up to the Grandpa Griffith show at Galileo's on Saturday night.
It was a fun night and your support is very much appreciated.
Technology Skin Graft
As of last Thursday I am one step closer to welcoming the reign of our robot overlords.
It was an exciting day as all sorts of boxes arrived as the cable guy set me up with DVR, digital cable and internet--all firsts in the Stutzman household.
This is the inaugural post created on my new MacBook, which I love. Not like racisim, which I hate.
Also delivered on that day was my ipod. I now understand what the fuss is about. I shall be importing Cds for the next few weeks.
Technology is our friend.
Pink Floyd's The Piper at the Gates of Dawn
Today I want to talk about an interesting album I got from the library last week-Pink Floyd’s
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn. As you may or may not know, Pink Floyd’s music was one of the staples of my childhood musical diet. But that was their later period of output: classics like
Wish You Were Here,
Dark Side of the Moon and
The Wall.
The Piper at the Gates of Dawn is their first album and I had never heard it before. (I had heard some of their earlier music on the compilation
Works, but was really only familiar with the story of the original incarnation of the band--lead singer and visionary Syd Barrett goes insane and is replaced by David Gilmour.) Basically the first album is a document of a different band than the one I had grown up with.
The year was 1967, the big pop-art-weirdness album of the year was The Beatles’
Sgt. Pepper. But I gotta tell you, for psychedelic weirdness,
Pepper doesn’t hold a candle to this album. There were still some conventions that The Beatles, (or Paul McCartney), were not willing to slough off-- regular time with a backbeat and regular phrase lengths, harmonic motion that was not jarring, lyrics that “made sense” in at least a general way…
But the 1967 version of Pink Floyd was less polished and had much less to lose as they created this circus of sounds. I’m pretty sure that Syd Barrett was the captain of the ship at this time, since the sound of the band changed fairly drastically after he was booted out.
I’m really at a loss to describe to you what I mean when I say this music is “psychedelic.” There just aren’t that many well-known reference points. I mean, Jimi Hendrix was considered psychedelic, but he had blues-based rock and some pop sensibility to hang on to, not to mention cool clothes with fringe. Even later Pink Floyd is described that way, but their lush, laid-back, chill-out and get-high vibe is pretty much the opposite of this album. Frank Zappa’s
Freak Out!, which came out the year before is a pretty good comparison, although the music on that album goes simultaneously further “out there,” (“Help I’m a Rock,” and “It Can’t Happen Here), and more conventional, (pretty much the first side.)
There’s something so British about the sounds on this album. It’s the sound of English school boys, grown-up a little bit, at play. Or is it
at work? That’s the predicament I found myself in as I tried to suss out what the band was attempting. Is it tongue-in-cheek or is this really what comes out when they try to create “art?” Can you really sing quirky little melodies about your bike and still have it be considered “art?” I don’t know.
But overall I found the music to be more humorous, (even if unintentionally), than great art. I hear this music and I can pinpoint it to a particular region and time. It’s that specific of an aesthetic.
And that, to me, is humorous for some reason.
The Wallflower's "One Headlight"
This song came on my Launchcast as I was typing my Nerd City article and I was reminded that Willie told me that there is not a single cymbal crash in this song.
Which is probably largely responsible for the insistent, on-the-edge-of-boiling, "groove" of the song.
As you were.
Oh, M
M Ward's album
Post-War has been haunting me the last couple days. His particular brand of old-timey, reverb-ey production in this digital age comforts me. He should do an album with Squirrel Nut Zippers' Jim Mathus.
An Empty Stomach-The Muse of the Culinary Arts
Ever since the end of last year I set an informal goal for myself, a non-binding resolution if you will. It’s really quite simple: to expand my cooking repertoire. My mom helped out with this task a lot by giving me the good old
Betty Crocker Red and White Cookbook for Christmas.
I’ve been cooking for myself for several years now, but I wanted to up the ante, try some different stuff, venture out of my comfort zone of Hamburger Helper and maybe learn a thing or two. I'm trying to view cooking as less about survival, (caveman with fire), and more about art.
Well, I must tell you, it has become one of my favorite things to do—to come home after work, put on some music and try a new recipe. This is a model of domesticated-bachelor bliss if I’ve ever heard of it.
It might be the rationalist or nutty-professor in me, but I like the process. You take these disparate elements, (sometimes things I’ve never even heard of, much less
tasted before), combine them in various ways and at various different times, and arrive with an end product, hopefully something enjoyably delicious. That process of following directions to a result—something about that is soothing to my soul. It’s orderly. Purposeful. I need these things.
But along with this orderliness, there is also a spirit of adventure. Granted, the old Red and White is largely comfort food, or at least my initial forays have been with comfort food, but I’m still learning a lot. And variety is the spice of life; the more new things I try, the more adventurous I’m becoming. And you can’t beat the scavenger hunt at the grocery store looking for all of these new alien ingredients.
Life is good.
On Doing the Right Thing-Slight Return
I just read the article “My Search for the Perfect Apple,” by John Cloud in this week’s
Time magazine and it brought the kind of despair of which I am easily capable. It’s the old existential question- “what am I
to do?”
You see, the article is about food in America. Two choices are becoming increasingly en vogue amongst thinking-people--eating organic and eating local, not always synonymous. Which is better? Seems like a simple question. But, like most questions, it’s not.
Better for whom or what? Better-tasting for the consumer? Better for their health? Better for the environment? Better for farmers? Restaurants? Whatever you would call that type of person who cares deeply about this kind of issue-they would probably go so far as to make this a moral or at least an ethical choice.
These are knowledgeable, well-meaning folks, I’m sure. But to me, this ethical kind of stalemate seems to be exactly why I believe the maxim that knowledge breeds sorrow. To me this food issue is a damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t scenario.
I hate those.
The author talks about buying food from a local farmer: “That transparency doesn’t exist with, say, spinach bagged by a distant agribusiness. I help keep Ted in business, and he helps keep me fed- and the elegance and sustainability of that exchange make more sense to me than gambling on faceless producers who stamp ORGANIC on a package thousands of miles from my home.”
Well, there you go-transparency and elegant sustainability of the system trumps big business. That was easy enough!
Here’s my problem. My brother is a trucker. He makes his livelihood by freighting those foods than can only be grown in the fantastic climes of California to people all over the country. Unfortunately, agribusiness HAS a face for me. If everybody decided to “eat local,” (as if it were possible for everyone to that anyway), my brother and truckers everywhere, not to mention the poverty-level people picking tomatoes for a huge farm, would be out of work. Where’s the lefty compassion in that?
I’m all about choice, but I’m also reminded that, very rarely are choices so simple and obvious. Does my need for scrumptious, fresh tomatoes trump the needs of people like my brother, who are just doing a job? Sure, corporations are evil, but it’s not like they exist without a collection of real people providing for themselves and families.
Ever since I first heard the phrase "systemic evil," I latched on. To me, it describes these kinds of things.
I’m starting to think that no matter what I choose to do or not do, there are
always hidden negative consequences.
Here’s to living in oblivion instead.
Musical Questions Answer-Man Part II
Another question that frequently directs people to this blog is this:
2) What does "Thela Hun Ginjeet" mean?
Also very simple. The phrase is a song title off of King Crimson's excellent album
Discipline. Anybody asking this question already knew that, as I assume that they aren't a roomful of monkeys with typewriters randomly coming up with the phrase.
It's an anagram, (a transposition of the letters of an existing phrase), of "Heat in the Jungle."
But what it
means is another question. For how can you derive meaning from a jumbled sequence of letters? I'm not sure. But I think I've answered the question.
As you were.
The Musical Questions Answer-Man
A couple common search questions keep referring traffic to this blog, so I thought I would go ahead and make it easy for them:
1) "Difference Between Trumpet and Cornet"-
This is a rather simple matter. The major difference between these two types of instruments is in the shape of the tubing making up the horn. A trumpet is basically a metal tube with a flared end-called the bell. It's stubby, shorter cousin is called a cornet. While the trumpet maintains the same diameter of tubing for the length of the instrument, a cornet's tubing gradually gets wider from the lead pipe, (where the mouthpiece goes), all the way to the bell. This is called a "conical bore." It's the same design as the tubing in a french horn.
This difference in design produces slightly different sounds. In general, trumpets have a brighter, more fanfare-like sound, whereas cornets are known for a more mellow tone. However, this is a matter of degrees. "Mellow" on a cornet means a diffeernt thing than "mellow" on, say, a cello.
Also, the moutpieces for these two instruments are similar but cornets start off with a smaller lead pipe and thus, the mouthpieces are a little smaller than those of the trumpet.
I never figured out exactly why kids are supposed to start on cornets in band class rather than on trumpets, other than the smaller, more compact size of the cornet.
I started on the trumpet when I was in sixth grade and when I was forced to start playing cornet in 7th grade I had a major playing crisis. The world as I knew it had somehow slipped away, so I suppose the difference in playing is more drastic than I had thought.
However, the ranges and fingerings are the same for both instruments. Trumpets are regularly available in different sizes, (Bb and C are the most common, but there are piccolos and all kinds of different transpositions, I remember hearing about D and Eb horns as well), whereas cornets are typically only available with a fundamental of Bb. (I'm sure there are some specialty cases, but I'm speaking in generalities here.)
I mentioned the difference in sound of the two instruments. The cornet had its glory days back in the early 20th century with the virtuoso travelling performers like Herbert L Clarke and JB Arban. In general, for most wind band music, (think Sousa), arrangers write parts for both instruments- cornets are often employed for melodic lines and trumpets for fanfare-like counterpoint.
That's about all I can tell you about the differences between cornets and trumpets.
Belew Prints: The Acoustic Adrian Belew Vol. 2 by Adrian Belew (1998)
Well, thank the Lord our office is pretty much back to normal. This probably isn’t a trade secret, but we did 8 ½ months’ worth of Heart Center scheduling in 11 days. For someone like me, who doesn’t particularly enjoy talking to people in the first place, that’s a situation known by the name of hell. I’ve been here 6 years now and that’s the busiest two weeks I can remember.
Enough about work. I’m boring even myself.
So, now for something I haven’t done in a long time…
---------
A Random CD Review from the Stutzman Memorial Library
Belew Prints: The Acoustic Adrian Belew Vol.2 by Adrian Belew(1998)
My Excel Randomizer spit out album #49 today, which happens to be an Adrian Belew album, which is quite appropriate, as his music has been on my mind quite a bit as of late.
So, what we have here is a fabulous introduction to the pop-ish side of Belew’s music. These are mostly acoustic treatments of previously-released material with the inclusion of a couple
musique concrete pieces- “Things You Hit With a Stick” and “Return of the Chicken,” that he layers on top of each other to create a third piece called “Nude Wrestling with a Christmas Tree.”
Anyway, the stripped-down arrangements serve up Adrian’s distinctive, strangely beautiful voice and super-catchy melodies on a silver platter. A couple things about this album appeal to the musician in me: 1) I think he plays every instrument on here- bass, piano, percussion, drums, guitar, squawking chicken…2) The liner notes detail the ironically complicated steps to recording these “stripped-down” arrangements.” What sounds like a guy and a guitar is, a lot of times, multiple acoustic guitar parts. This is a technique that I have attempted at home in my own recording experiments and I love listening to these organically lush sounds and trying to isolate individual parts. It’s not easy to do, though, and I know it’s really “music-geek-y.”
But even for less nerdy listeners than I, there are treasures contained herein. The bulk of the music is from Adrian’s period of output which is heavily Beatles-ish--meaning catchy, sunny melodies and conventional verse-bridge-chorus structures. (He has since gone to further “out-there” territory as of late, with some digital doo-daddery, heavier guitar at times, and more minimal, haiku-esque lyrical styles.)
I first experienced this album in my closing months as a woefully underpaid record-store clerk, and at the time it was a special-order-only type of title. I guess I can point to that time as when I really fell in love with Adrian’s solo music and I haven’t recovered yet.
P.S. I used to point to his live performance of John Lennon’s “Free As a Bird” on this album as evidence of his stilted piano playing. Turned out he was playing a piano voice on a guitar synth. What I perceived as rhythmic hesitation and poor technique was really just latency inherent in the technology of the time as well as the unusual chordal inversions that result when playing guitar chord shapes. It was forgivable. :-)
