It is Finished
Today is a red latter date in the life of Mike.After a year and three months of financial discipline and over $5000 in payments, I have paid off my credit card!
I have been waiting for this for a long time.
Eyes on the prize, my friends.
Of course, the big temptation is to go right back out and rack up piles of debt again. Which I am determined not to do. I have learned my lesson and have a contrite heart.
In my head right now is a celebration like when the Ewoks party at the end of
Return of the Jedi.
Stuff I've Been Listening To (Slight Return)
Van Morrison
Astral WeeksThis is another one of the
Rolling Stone Top 100 Albums and I just gotta say: I don’t get it. This is one of the most monochromatic albums I’ve ever heard. I wish you could see me scrunching up my nose right now as I think about it as if I just got done eating strained peas. I suppose this is music for the lyrics set, because it sure as hell isn’t for the instrumentalist set. “Sure as hell” is an interesting phrase, no? Actually, “________ as hell,” has always struck me as odd—“Funny as hell,” “Cold as hell,” “Talented as hell…” None of them make much sense by mere construction, but when someone uses it like that, you catch their drift.
Anyway, I digress. I found this album to be boring as hell. Two of the songs consist of no more than two chords repeated ad nauseum, with Morrison’s admittedly distinctive voice thrown out there like an angry goose. Nowhere on this album do I recall ever hearing what could be called a melody. Just a lot of singing. As a listener, I need more. I tend to appreciate construction method more than improvised warbling.
Special note: I also recall some of the worst solo violin playing I’ve heard recorded in a long time—out of tune for the attack of about 70% of the notes and 90% noodling on the tonic arpeggio. I felt bad for the uncredited violinist they obviously convinced to “try improvising during this section…”
However, some folks might cite all of these little annoying imperfections as reasons to love this album. I’m just not one of those people.
Cheap Trick
Live at BudokanNot on the
Rolling Stone Top 100, but just about equally revered. I have no problems with this album. It’s a document of a young, hard-working rock n’ roll band. I don’t think I’ll ever be able to hear enough of the version of “Surrender” on here-far and above my favorite song by them. Even though I have no idea what it’s about, (like most of my favorite music.)
That’s it for this short update. I’ve been listening to a lot of other stuff, but I like to give albums a chance to settle before giving even cursory impressions. Stay tuned for an exciting announcement at the end of the week!
P.S. Can I tell you that I could do without the rain?
Synchronicity
Tonight I saw a movie that was the culmination of about three or four weeks of art house delights.
The Rape of Europa was a documentary about the systematic theft and destruction of fine art by Nazi Germany all across Europe and the recovery efforts mounted by artists and experts after World War II that still continue today. Quite a fascinating movie about a period of history that I don't really know much about.
But seeing this movie bookended nicely with the novel I just finished today--
Dragon's Teeth by Upton Sinclair, the dude who is more famous for writing
The Jungle. This is a book about the rise of the Nazis, written very close in time to the actual events, told in an interesting manner, as seen from the viewpoint of people of high society globetrotting around with their surroundings slowly decaying from the troublesome economy of the time.
There was a passage toward the end describing a performance of the Beethoven Violin Concerto, (which I really want to hear now), by an accomplished Jewish performer that really caught my attention:
Nobody in that hall failed to know that he was a Jew, and that this was a time of anguish for his people. Such anti-Semitism as there was in Paris was not among the art-lovers, and to shout "Bravo!" at this young virtuoso was to declare yourself for the cause of freedom and human decency.
Lanny thought about the great composer, friend of mankind and champion of the oppressed. His concerto had been played badly in his own lifetime, and what a revelation it would have been to him to hear it rendered by a soloist and a conductor, neither having a score. But then Lanny thought: "What would Beethoven think if he could see what is happening in the land of his birth?" So the dreams of art fled, and painful reality took their place. Lanny thought: "The German soul has been captured by Hitler! What can he give it but his own madness and distraction? What can he make of it but an image of his distorted self?" This is recommended reading.
I'm About A Hundred Years Late With This Post
So, over the last couple of days I’ve been listening to and considering a 2-disc set of the
Complete Works of Edgard Varese. This is a very interesting set of music to me because it’s antithetical to most common notions of beauty or even the common methods of composing music. I am totally unable to suss out Varese’s methods for coming up with these sounds apart from pure random expression. Suffice it to say, this is some of the more dissonant music designed for the concert hall that you’re likely to hear.
With the turn of the century came a decreasing interest in Common Practice melody and harmony on the part of composers, (I’m thinking of Schoenberg’s Twelve-tone system), and Varese’s music just seems like the logical extension of that mindset. The textures change very rapidly from sparse woodwind tweets and toots to massively thick brass and percussion-fueled chords, (lots of biting bass trombone and cymbal), that’ll put hair on your chest.
I’m a guy, so I like those parts best.
Lots of talk is generated by Frank Zappa’s fanaticism for Varese and sure, I can hear the Varese in FZ’s “orchestral” works, but I was proud of myself for being able to hear shades of his contemporary Richard Strauss, without realizing they knew each other.
Another interesting aspect of Varese’s music, (other than what I hear as a loathing for stringed instruments), is his interest in electronic musical instruments that were developing during his life. He was very excited by the theremin and Ondes Martinot, which I’m sure he predicted would replace the old orchestral instruments of the symphony orchestra. This interest is probably why he is often labeled as a “futurist,” despite his discomfort with the word. But most of the time he sounds to me like Stravinsky on steroids.
This is music you certainly don’t wind up whistling later, but I can’t deny its bludgeon-like power and clear testimony of what was on the minds of artistic types in the early twentieth century—machinery and abstraction. Unlike the academics Schoenberg and Webern, who can sometimes sound clinical and anemic, despite the revolutionary ideas behind their music, Varese’s barbaric, “unspeakable visions of the individual”
1 make it clear exactly
what was at stake with the death of tonality.
So, if you want to hear some music that will blow your mind and challenge just about every assumption you have about what the audible art should sound like, I recommend this guy's music. (And I’m not as up-to-date with art-music composers of the last century, so I’m sure there is a lot of stuff even more “out-there than these two discs.)
I never got to twentieth-century music theory when I was in college, so this has inspired me to read up a little bit…
1 Ann Charters,
The Portable Beat Reader, 1992.
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius
About a minute and a half ago, I got done reading
A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers. Wow! What a great book! It was really not what I was expecting. At all. I was expecting a self-referential, droll, NPR hipster manifesto a la John Hodgman or some other unfairly intelligent person.
But this…this was something so much more.
First of all, the main narrative is sad. I mean monumentally sad—-two parents die of cancer and the son’s new life as surrogate father of his little brother. In describing the new resultant responsibility and his life of mourning and remembrance of things past, all related alongside the concerns and egomaniacal thoughts of a fairly libertine twenty-something, Eggers creates a narrator that was hard for me to like, but yet I couldn’t wait to see what happens next and more importantly, what he thinks next.
And there are some witty metatextual moments where a character or two will castigate the narrator as the writer and argue with him about the themes in the book- a device which I totally enjoy. But this book has a lot of heart to go with its headiness. There are a lot of beautifully sweeping passages that attempt to articulate that certain…something..that draws us all together…that makes sense of everything, despite all the hopelessness, etc. Which of course, never happens. This is a postmodern novel to its core.
Eggers is really good at presenting thoughts on paper as if there were no mediation—-straight from narrator’s brain to the printed page. No middleman. That’s a gift, in my estimation. Similarly, his realistic, snappy dialogue reads as if it was transcribed from a recording- also a gift.
I really enjoyed this book.
I wish I could have read the last ten pages or so without the phone ringing…
Some Books I Remember
Memory is a funny thing. I’ve read my share of things in my life. I have a few “Favorite” books among them. But the funny thing is—I don’t really remember exactly
why they were my favorites. I don’t really like the prospect of re-reading books: [1) Because I read so slowly, it’s a miracle that I finish anything and 2) There are so many unread books out there. So many things to learn and experience. I can’t get bogged down with things of the past. Things I’ve already experienced.]
I can think of a handful of books I vaguely recalled liking enough to read a second time. Here they are in no particular order.
On the Road by Jack Kerouac. I love Kerouac’s style as a writer. It’s a thrilling, stream-of-consciousness, rebellious game of language. Of course, America and traveling free as a bird, without the hang-ups of normal society—these are all very powerful urges within me and in this book, Kerouac was the bad angel on my shoulder, whispering in my ear and seducing me. We never did the deed, though.
The Subterraneans, also by Kerouac. A quick read about a love relationship gone bad from start to finish. Oh, broken hearts…
The Winter of Our Discontent by John Steinbeck. This one caught me by surprise, given to me by a fellow English nerd. (Thanks, Anne.) It’s a story about a moral crisis, the “creeping malaise”* of spirit that can overcome you if you allow it to, and surprisingly, the unexplainable hope in spite of it.
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain. I just may have read this book thrice, actually--twice under coercion and once just for kicks. It’s a good story about personal ethics vs. society, couched in an adventure story.
Hamlet by Bill Shakespeare. When I first read this in high school, I cried when Prince Hamlet confronts his so-called friends Rosencranz and Guildenstern. The constrained rage within him, finally beginning to appear was very powerful to me at that particular time for who-knows-what reason.
And that’s it. I’m pretty sure those are the only books I cared about enough to read a second, (or third) time.
How about you, dear reader?
*”Dogs,” Pink Floyd
Animals
Stuff I've been listening to as of late...
I've been listening to a lot of music from the library in the car these days. Here are some highights.
Miles Davis
Bitches BrewThis is one of those legendary albums that I had never heard before. Apparently it is one of the protoypical "Jazz/Rock" albums. The first time I heard it, I thought "This is just noise." I gave it a second listen, and while I can't say I LIKE it, it's a little more interesting to me, particularly what would have been Sides Three and Four on the original vinyl stuff. These are some pretty large groups of musicians on these sessions, usually a couple keyboardists and two drummers...of particular interest to me as I've been in a two-drummer band in the past. I've heard music that is both more grooving and more angular from a harmonic standpoint. Ironically, lots of the King Crimson album
Starless and Bible Black sounds like this. But I was thinking, I'd rather hear "rock" musicians striving than "jazz" musicians slumming it. Also features a lot of recorded evidence of the elusive creature known as the "jazz-rock bass clarinet."
Led Zeppelin
BBC SessionsLed Zep was an awesome live act, fairly free with arrangements. It's really interesting to hear some of the proto-licks that were available at Jimmy Page's random recall that wound up set in stone on the studio recordings. Their blues influence is obvious on these recordings. I plan on buying this album at some point.
David Bowie
Hunky DoryThe real gem on this album is "Life on Mars?" I can't recall a larger production-piece, sound-wise than this song. But it still sounds like RAWK. I mean, Neil Hannon uses quite a bit or orchestra and bells and whistles in his arrangements for Divine Comedy, but he will never be confused as a "rock" musician. David Bowie's doubled-vocals on the choruses give me goose bumps. I've heard "Changes" too many times to even really HEAR it now. I don't remember whole lot of other stuff on this album.
David Bowie
LowThis album is a little more memorable to me. It's kind of a dual personality work. The first half is more straight-ahead pop-rock while the second half is where I really hear the minimalist, textural Brian Eno influence, which is my favorite 15-20 minutes of "new" music I've heard in the last few weeks. The Sea and Cake's cover of "Sound and Vision" prepared me for the song, but there is certainly a different groove at work in Bowie's version. They both have their charms so I'm not about to rank them. (PS- Joe, I'm returning this one to the library tomorrow...)
That's all for now.
