Sic Semper Tyrannis

Your Life for All to See

Sometimes I like to imagine myself as a famous person. In my daydreams, there is this documentary film that comes out, and it’s all about me. The assumption is that I have done something spectacular like created a masterpiece of some sort, or arranged world peace. I imagine that this film would have to include footage of me just doing my day-to-day things to serve as a contrast to the rest of my life, which is so noteworthy that it deserved a documentary in the first place.

My model for this is the scene in the great movie about Wilco called I Am Trying to Break Your Heart, in which Jeff Tweedy is shown in black and white, with major stubble, looking like hell and driving his piece of crap little car in silence around his home of Chicago. I was fascinated by the mundane Sponge Bob hanging from his rearview mirror, a reminder to me that “this is a very creative, artistic, respected guy, yet millions and billions of people do this same thing-drive from point A to point B. Yet when he does it up there on that screen, it somehow has more meaning.”

Something about projecting his boring moments up on a screen gives them significance.

…Which gets me back to my daydream in which I imagine the boring and routine moments during my day being filmed and edited into a feature-length documentary. And of course I also ruminate on the music that would underscore the images.

The one I came up with was one time here at work at my desk, quietly writing in this journal as the light was streaming through the mini-blinds onto my desk. The camera would be up above and slightly behind my shoulder and the music would need to be something kind of muted, yet rhythmic and minimalist. (I’m imagining the kind of music that plays behind Hiro whenever he, with furrowed brow, tries to figure something out on the show Heroes.)

So I charge you, dear readers, with the task of creating the end of this entry. What would be the moments, (either significant or not) that with sufficient musical scoring, would be in your autodocumentary?

posted by Mike @ 9:17 PM 3 comments

Whatcha Listenin' To?

As always I’ve been listening to a ton of music lately. I’m just going to get right to it…

The Smiths The Queen is Dead

This is one of those “Best of All Time” albums and it really brought one thing into sharp relief- I didn’t hang around with cool enough people when I was in school. Granted, I was only ten years old when this album came out, but I remember the kids who wore their Morrisey T-shirts in junior high and high school. I was not one of them. They were sensitive, outcast, artsy types whose parents didn’t love each other. I was a band nerd.

There is a group of people who take their pop music very seriously. This is the group that would burn me at the stake for having been in a band and never heard this disc or really any songs by The Smiths.

But now that I’ve heard some I gotta say I really don’t get what the big deal is. They seem to value two things: jangly guitars and strangely stream-of-consciousness lyrics. Their sensibility reminded me of early REM- pleasant enough, but not world-shattering. Maybe if I revered Morrissey as poet or prophet I could get more out of this.

XTC Skylarking

They are about as poppy as you can get, all Beatles-based and what-not, but unlike The Smiths, XTC is apparently doomed to suffer from the problem of expectations for me. The first two albums I got from them were Nonsuch and Apple Venus Part 1. I loved both of them as if they were silvery, disc-shaped children. But the two albums I’ve heard since, this one and Oranges and Lemons just didn’t (or couldn’t) live up. This is very strange because in many ways XTC is the ideal band for me—melodic, intelligent, polished, fairly adventurous harmonically and arrangement-wise…I don’t know why I can’t get into this album. (And no, the oft-mentioned “Dear God” is not the reason.)

But isn’t that the way it usually goes? You discover this new band that you like but nothing you hear from them compares to that first album you fell in love with all those years ago.

Television Marquee Moon

It’s another one of those famous albums and I went into this one not knowing what to expect. Here are some cool things you get with Television: a two-guitar attack; angular, tight, funkish arrangements that open up into improvisational jams when you least expect it. And when these guys go off into solos, it’s not the same old tired blues or pentatonic-based stuff you might hear from Southern rockers. It’s more cosmopolitan and slightly more avant-garde than that.

I could tell just by listening that this was a wine produced from the same soil as your Talking Heads and your Blondie, (if it were possible to make wine from New York City concrete.)

There is something to be said for the lost art of the clean electric guitar sound, just barely loud enough to break up into distortion, and it’s all over this album. I need to hear this one again! But I’ve got a hunch it might be deserving of the hype.

Ornette Coleman The Shape of Jazz to Come

One of the most amusing musical moments I’ve seen on television was on the Grammys a couple years ago. (I haven’t watched this show in many years so I don’t really know how I happened to be flipping through channels on that night for this interesting moment.) In between presenting awards to beautifully plastic, hip, urban young people I had never of, they came to the odd thirty seconds of the show where they presented a “Thanks for being great in the past” lifetime achievement-type award to Ornette Coleman, who looked as out of place as an elephant in a petting zoo. I felt sorry for him, this guy who set out to change conceptions of what jazz and music should sound like. To see an aged, “outsider” mind like that spiritlessly applauded by an industry and customer base which alternately didn’t care about him or didn’t even know who the hell he was…well, it was just kind of sad to me. Ornette’s music is about as far-removed from today’s Grammy scene as you can get.

But let’s get to the album. First of all, the way I see the history of jazz, the title of this album turned out to ultimately be a lie, only in that very little jazz now sounds like this. Ornette’s big breaking-off point here was getting rid of chord changes altogether. There is not even a piano player on the album. The big idea is that, without a harmonic scheme to tie you down as a soloist, supposedly you are free to explore melody more freely.

I’m not sure what to think of this. In the world of big ideas, sign me up. I’m up for experimenting and re-imagining music. In the world of sounds, however, this album didn’t really do much for me, possibly due to Coleman’s penchant for playing out-of-tune on tutti sections. It’s pretty jarring, especially when trying to drive at the same time. And I think there may be something to the be-boppers’ idea about the symbiotic relationship between melody and harmony, each one implying and fueling the other.

Al Green Greatest Hits

It seems like cheating to me when a Greatest Hits album winds up on a Best of All Time type list. But I realize that’s because of two biases of mine. 1) I still like the idea of short-term brilliance. I respect the idea of someone getting their artistic act together for a fitful few months of inspired creativity and producing ten or so great songs that just “fit” together. That idea is somehow more interesting to me than someone who over a 10-30 year career amasses ten or so great songs that don’t necessarily “fit” together. Friend of the blog Steven and I recently were talking about composer-worship. I think I might worship a Romantic view of composer or songwriter—riding momentary fits of inspiration like a lightning rodeo horse. (Did I really just write “lightning rodeo horse?”) 2) My other bias is my preference for album-length statements, concept albums or achievements longer than the length of a song. But if that’s the case, that a sustained mood is something to strive for, this album delivers. If you’ve heard one Al Green song you’ve kind of heard them all, in my opinion. Which is why I can only hear the melodies to two of these songs in my head: “Let’s Stay Together” and “I’m So Tired of Being Alone.” Both are great horn-infused soul, if you ask me.

The Doors The Doors

When I was in high school I had a class with this guy Curt who was the biggest Doors fan I believe I’ve ever met. I’m pretty sure he owned one shirt- a black Doors t-shirt. It was all the guy ever talked about in music theory class. (Strangely, when we had to write a Christmas carol for a project, his wound up as white-boy rap. I can still hear his voice rapping “One little donkey, plodding toward town…”)

I’ve always been ambivalent towards the music of The Doors, never really caring for much beyond the radio singles. As much as I like the idea of organ in rock music, (what an odd pairing) I’ve just never really gotten them as music-makers, most likely because I pretty much eschew anything blues-based these days. I tend to like the Doors’ music that sounds the least like a stumbling bar band: “Riders on the Storm,” “Touch Me,” etc. And I’m pretty sure that Jim Morrison’s legend as super-sexy-rock-poet-icon alone would have established them into the rock canon. You don’t just let a life like that wither into obscurity.

P.S. The song “Twentieth Century Fox” off this album sounds like a song my friend Jeff Logan would have improvised, maybe in one of his turns as “The Minstrel.”

That’s about all I’ve got the stamina for today. Hopefully that’ll be enough. What more do you people want?

posted by Mike @ 6:53 AM 3 comments

Whatcha’ Listenin’ To? (Special Ryan Adams Edition)

I have found in the past that trying to turn people on to your favorite music is a tricky prospect. We all have probably a couple handfuls of things we are listening for in new music with varying amounts of importance placed on each element. For instance, I’m not really a lyrics guy, nor do I care for extended drum solos or vocal gymnastics. On the positive side I like long melodies accompanied by out-of-the-norm harmonies if possible. I’m definitely not afraid of instrumental music either. All that to say I don’t have much confidence that anyone hears things the same way I do nor do I hear the same things as others. (Not to mention when you make a mix CD for someone who happens to be a girl and they automatically assume you are trying to speak to them in musical-lyrical code. Imagine the irrelevance of saying “No, really, I just like the guitar tone on this song!”)

At the same time, it’s also tricky to let other people try to turn you on to new music for the utter heartbreak that’s sure to ensue if you don’t “get” what the other person is hearing that’s so remarkable. How do you tell someone that something that they are excited about doesn’t really do anything for you?

But, alas, this is the messiness of being human with other humans around.

I’m glad to report that I’ve been listening to the following Ryan Adams albums on a friend’s recommendation and I have liked them A LOT: Heartbreaker, Rock n’ Roll, and Love is Hell Vol.1 and 2.

Just with these four albums I heard several different versions of Ryan Adams- acoustic troubadour, snide rocker, purveyor of lush orchestrated rock, alt-country confessor. And I liked all of them. I expected to hear just a guy and a guitar because that’s what a lot of folks my age are into. Imagine my surprise when I heard electric guitars and pianos and synths and altered harmonies. The shock! I think the big surprise was how produced these albums were, with lots of little details that you only pick up after hearing the songs a few times.

This guy is going to ruin my music budget for the year. When I buy these albums, maybe I’ll go into a little more depth.

Thanks, Jason, for the tip.

posted by Mike @ 8:11 PM 2 comments

Thanks to Mark McCoy for this...

Listen to the mp3s of actual Jew's Harp Concerti on the following site for more musical questions than answers:

Go Here

posted by Mike @ 8:35 PM 1 comments

On Beethoven, Romanticism and Dissonance

The last orchestral composer I visited was Johannes Brahms. Since then, I’ve been slowly working my way through the output of Beethoven, who in my mind serves as a bridge between formal classicism and wild-man Romanticism.

Of course, he’s probably best known for the first movement of the Fifth Symphony, but I’ve gotta say that so far, (having not heard all of the Symphonies), I’m more of a fan of the Sixth- the Pastoral Symphony. The absolutely revolutionary idea behind this particular work is its introduction of the idea of a program- a non-musical component attached to the piece. This is one of the first instances in which the music was intended to stand for something specific, to invoke particular images for the listener-- namely country folks dancing, birds singing, and a thunderstorm. In service of this goal, he also chose to blur the lines between the five movements, (a pretty large break with tradition in itself), having some segue together rather than have definite, abrupt ends to each one. These are big ideas and one of the reasons Beethoven straddles the fence between the classical world, (which is still audible in his work: regular phrase lengths and predictable cadences, strings-heavy orchestration, etc.) and the Romantic world.

But his departure from “absolute music” aside, I gotta say I just like a couple of the melodies and harmonic turns in this piece. The fact that I can recall them in my head at all puts it above 75% of the orchestral music I’ve heard.

I have also revisited the 1st Symphony lately. I remember being grabbed in my college days by Beethoven’s choice to start this whole work with a sustained, unstable Dominant 7th chord--highly unorthodox for the time. Back in those college days we had a visiting French conductor/professor who cited this fact in a presentation which posited that the development of musical harmony through the centuries could be tracked pretty accurately by how much dissonance composers would allow in their music. Which, according to my music history teacher, was a novel concept. It made all the sense in the world to me at the time.

I’m a little bit more circumspect these days. If the history of orchestral art music has been a progression of more and more dissonant chords, what are we to make of Philip Glass, Erik Satie, Aaron Copland, or other successful, relevant post-serialists who chose not to employ every ugly chord that was now possible and deemed acceptable?

But I don’t want to seem like a stuffy, conservative traditionalist. The fact is I love a lot of dissonant, contemporary music just as much as I love the music of Bach. I just think that dissonance can’t be the only element that we track when looking at the development of musical aesthetics.

posted by Mike @ 9:32 PM 2 comments

Josh Lester playing Elgar on the cello!

It was like butta.

I have a young cello-playing friend named Josh Lester. Earlier today I witnessed the culmination of his musical career up to this point--playing the first movement of the Elgar Cello Concerto with the Oklahoma Youth Orchestra. That is one gorgeous piece and my young friend nailed the performance with a musicality and lyricism that extends beyond his years.

Josh, if you are reading this, you SANG through that instrument today! I watched in amusement as the whole row in front of me looked at each other in disbelief when you played that line that first extends into the upper upper range.

So proud.

posted by Mike @ 9:21 PM 3 comments