...have a dormant blog?
Perish the thought.
I'm a bundle of nerves this morning about the bundle of nerves that's peeking through where a shell of a wisdom tooth sits. It'll be gone in a couple of hours, I think. Blogging seems like a productive alternative to fretting, or at least--neutrally speaking--a more public venue for it.
I've been reading much more than I've been writing, and I've actually tried a novel experiment lately: drafting, outlining, redrafting, editing, re-outlining, etc. It's foreign to my thought process, but what the method lacks in "AHA, I've got it!" brilliance, it gains in cogency and slow/steady progress.
Last weekend, I went to the American Musicological Society conference in Philadelphia. This was my first AMS, and a wrap-up seems redundant--if you're interested in the AMS conference, you've probably already read Dial M or something like that on it, or you were there--because conference wrap-up blog-posts are a fairly predictable genre on the whole. I should have dealt with my dental issues beforehand, because I had a frankly miserable time for non-professional reasons. Professionally, I had a two-sided realization: 1) There are many smart people doing many smart things; and 2) I can do that. I mean, not the hardcore 13th century stuff, I definitely couldn't do that, but there were many papers where I realized, "Hey, I could have thought that up, researched it, and made a handout for it during that slow week I had in August."
The key, though, is that I didn't and they did, and so I should and I will. Even though I have three papers in the pipeline for coursework this semester--a medieval music literature review that I've mostly done, a meat-and-potatoes analysis of Mozart's C-minor fantasie, and a gendered reading of Cherubini's Medea that seems to write itself--I started putting down the gritty sourcework for a Randy Newman paper that will have many moving parts but move headlong from musical elements to the entire Superstructure. Trust me. I begin by discussing this Norman Mailer book that I bought the week it came out, because it was already an artifact, and I trusted it would be history pretty soon. When I finish this paper (Christmas, hopefully?), you will never look at George Harrison the same way again--I hope, at least. I take a side trip in the musical style of Roger Waters as well, with the literary offerings of Gore Vidal and--I'm debating, should I even touch Chomsky? that's a recipe for an exploding project--a few Marxisms du jour. I trace a particular curmudgeonly strain through the essays and musical stylings of ca. 1973- ca. 2008.
To sum up: I had been trying to be groundbreaking in seminar papers all throughout graduate school, and to churn out pro forma extra-curricular work. I've since decided to reverse my MO, and not lose too much sleep over trying to turn logic over its head when I should just be getting a clear handle on different historical periods for the purposes of teaching.
Now I have an appointment with an oral surgeon. Yikes!
Monday, November 23, 2009
Wednesday, October 21, 2009
Even a simple scherzo and trio can look inscrutably complicated through the magic of Microsoft Word diagrams
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
Schubert's Ich Grolle Nicht and Wilco's Hummingbird
Because it sure ain't Schumann's. If you're familiar with with Wilco, I find the piano style and tempo to be uncannily reminiscent of Hummingbird:
I've just started work on a performance analysis of Fischer-Dieskau's 1976 recording of Ives' Ich Grolle Nicht setting, where DFD's phrasing borrows the structure of Schumann's setting rather than Ives' score. Mistakenly searching for Schubert and Ich Grolle Nicht, I discovered this gem.
My favorite moment of this performance? At 1:05, the mid-phrase terror that slips into the tenor's voice as he gets lost on a long tone during an inconvenient page-turn, and seems to be sight-reading.
I think it has all the makings of an undiscovered kitsch classic. Let's meme this to notoriety.
Thursday, September 10, 2009
Never fear! This is not an abandoned blog.
This isn't a vacant or dormant blog, except that it sort of is.
For months, I've been thinking about various albums, thoughts, events, books, magazine articles, memes, blog posts, trips, cute things my dog does, what it's like to teach a college class with two weeks or two hours notice, what Mendelssohn said about the keyed trumpet*, the challenges of trying to learn two languages at once when English gives me much trouble on its own and the like. With each of these, I think, "Wow, that would make a great blog post!" I've started some, and many of those are saved as drafts so when life slows down--say, late December--and I get really bored, I can start posting them all at once and it will seem like a very exciting life that I lead. (But I'll have to excise references to the beautiful weather, all the walking I've been doing, the farmer's tan I'm getting, or my time-sensitive jig will be up.) But of late, I've started putting my research into--get this--Word documents! I've also been doing voracious reading that's really not typical of me. I'm a slow reader, seldom finish books, and have been tearing through them (relative to my normal pace, anyway). I won't say which books yet, because then I'd have to comment on them, and this would become an actual post, and I wouldn't get up in time tomorrow to do my menial job, which is to enter standardized test answers into an excel file or type up transcripts of focus groups.
Since I posted last, I've been to Boston twice (once for a musicologist friend and friend friend's wedding in Southern Maine, and again last weekend for my good friend and her husband The Cantor). I bought too many books, which I'm burdened by reading. I hate gravesite pictures--almost as much as I hate one-room house birthplace tours ("and here is where Herbert Hoover's mother kept her skillets...")--but along my theme of American music, I'll share my twitpic of a really boring William Billings plaque I found across the street from the Steinway shop next to Emerson College alongside the Boston Common on Sunday. Enjoy.
It's positively scintillating.
*"I must not forget to mention that the trumpeters, one and all, blow away at those infernal keyed trumpets, which always seem to me like a pretty woman with a beard; they are also without the chromatic tones and sound shrill and unnatural.”
For months, I've been thinking about various albums, thoughts, events, books, magazine articles, memes, blog posts, trips, cute things my dog does, what it's like to teach a college class with two weeks or two hours notice, what Mendelssohn said about the keyed trumpet*, the challenges of trying to learn two languages at once when English gives me much trouble on its own and the like. With each of these, I think, "Wow, that would make a great blog post!" I've started some, and many of those are saved as drafts so when life slows down--say, late December--and I get really bored, I can start posting them all at once and it will seem like a very exciting life that I lead. (But I'll have to excise references to the beautiful weather, all the walking I've been doing, the farmer's tan I'm getting, or my time-sensitive jig will be up.) But of late, I've started putting my research into--get this--Word documents! I've also been doing voracious reading that's really not typical of me. I'm a slow reader, seldom finish books, and have been tearing through them (relative to my normal pace, anyway). I won't say which books yet, because then I'd have to comment on them, and this would become an actual post, and I wouldn't get up in time tomorrow to do my menial job, which is to enter standardized test answers into an excel file or type up transcripts of focus groups.
Since I posted last, I've been to Boston twice (once for a musicologist friend and friend friend's wedding in Southern Maine, and again last weekend for my good friend and her husband The Cantor). I bought too many books, which I'm burdened by reading. I hate gravesite pictures--almost as much as I hate one-room house birthplace tours ("and here is where Herbert Hoover's mother kept her skillets...")--but along my theme of American music, I'll share my twitpic of a really boring William Billings plaque I found across the street from the Steinway shop next to Emerson College alongside the Boston Common on Sunday. Enjoy.
It's positively scintillating.
*"I must not forget to mention that the trumpeters, one and all, blow away at those infernal keyed trumpets, which always seem to me like a pretty woman with a beard; they are also without the chromatic tones and sound shrill and unnatural.”
Saturday, July 18, 2009
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Dave Douglas Brass Ecstasy, Hypnotic Brass Ensemble
So Dave Douglas's new album, Spirit Moves, is a real beauty. Released two weeks ago on Douglas's own Greenleaf label, Douglas's Brass Ecstasy is a compact and funky unit that mixes trumpet (Douglas), trombone (Luis Bonilla), french hornist Vincent Chaney, the inimitable tubist Marcus Rojas, and Nasheet Waits on drums. The tunes are often harmonically straightforward (compared to some of Douglas's more extended outings) and resonate on a certain New Orleans vibe, but they are never simplistic, and the New Orleans sense of counterpoint gets a compelling facelift.
Like many composers of his generation (also--what's with the jazz world's labeling of anyone who isn't 60 yet as a "young" musician?!) Douglas is exploring texture, vibe, rhythm, and groove rather than compulsively overloading his tunes with extensions and licks. I don't often get all ravey about a recording instantly (actually, that's a lie: I get all evangelical about recordings I like the second I hear them, which is part of why I started this blog), but for the last week, I've been finding small little charms in these arrangements, that can sound more intimate than--and much larger than--five men depending on the context.
Too bad I downloaded this on iTunes. These tunes are so great that a forward-thinking brass quintet/quartet might want to tackle them. I'm thinking of picking up the charts: for $40, you can download the sheet music and recordings from Greenleaf. This way, you can support great music on the one hand, learn it from the inside, and not be tempted to email Dave Douglas's manager to see if you can get a copy of the charts. (I haven't done this, but know of more than a few jazz stalkers out there...)
The album starts off with an arrangement of Rufus Wainright's This Love Affair that sounds like a most impassioned dirge version of St. James Infirmary for which Bach wrote the inner voices. Much of this has to do with Wainright's original harmonization--here's a video of it:
It's a very beautiful tune, but with Dave Douglas and Brass Ecstasy, it takes on a certain ritualistic quality, and--on the climactic turnaround--Rufus Wainright's beautiful melodic figures soar in Douglas's high range, which of late has sounded so easy and soaring that it's like the most moving infomercial for the Caruso method. And the voicing of the ensemble makes what was affecting in Wainright's hair-raising. Pay special attention to the french horn lines:
Here's another video with Douglas discussing how the group functions as a chamber ensemble, followed by "The View from Blue Mountain," a latin piece with a six-feel. Pay particular attention to how much harmony (and how richly the harmony) jumps out when there's no comping instrument:
My other favorites on the album? Orujo, a syncopated romp with some in-the-pocket french horn offbeats; The Brass Ring, that moves out of a lovely chorale into an impossibly slow, tight vamp midway; Great Awakening, an allusive kaleidescope of hymnody (I heard aspects of Just a Closer Walk and Silver Bells, but I'm probably missing a few obvious ones) that's Douglas's funniest tune since Elk's Club; Mister Pitiful, the Otis Redding tune; Bowie, a funky nod to the legendary Lester.
A bit before I picked up Spirit Moves, I read a Sasha Frere-Jones piece in the New Yorker on the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. A true band of brothers--sons of AACM co-founder/Sun Ra trumpeter Phil Cochran. I just picked up their label debut on iTunes and have been sorting through it. It's great groove music, almost all insistent, in minor key, very tight, and more ahead-of-the-beat than today's crop of New Orleans-style brass bands (which you shouldn't expect them to sound like). They're doing their own thing, and have a keen business sense after parlaying street success (literally--in Times Square, and on Chicago's South Side) with web word-o-mouth and now a successful European tour being chronicled in a frank, funny, and frequently updated blog.
"We could set up in a blackout, on a boat, plane, wherever." Love it. Reminds me of Green Eggs and Ham.
Don't expect jazz, per se: these are tunes to grab you, shake you, and put you down again in time for you to catch your train, but it's all very, very tight and a new direction. If you follow them on the web a bit, you'll find out that they--like Douglas, and the AACM, for that matter--are very commited to taking control of the commercial aspect of their music. I suspect we'll be seeing a whole lot of them in the future. Go to their myspace for clips.
If I had to recommend one download from their new album so far, it would probably be Jupiter, an irresistible space-age vamp that lays out a bit longer that some of their other tunes and sounds like the bridge from the theme from Shaft looped by Roy Hargrove overdubbing himself and playing against his own delay--except that it's all acoustic and tight. I'm sure a national tour is right around the corner, so stay tuned.
More later.
Like many composers of his generation (also--what's with the jazz world's labeling of anyone who isn't 60 yet as a "young" musician?!) Douglas is exploring texture, vibe, rhythm, and groove rather than compulsively overloading his tunes with extensions and licks. I don't often get all ravey about a recording instantly (actually, that's a lie: I get all evangelical about recordings I like the second I hear them, which is part of why I started this blog), but for the last week, I've been finding small little charms in these arrangements, that can sound more intimate than--and much larger than--five men depending on the context.
Too bad I downloaded this on iTunes. These tunes are so great that a forward-thinking brass quintet/quartet might want to tackle them. I'm thinking of picking up the charts: for $40, you can download the sheet music and recordings from Greenleaf. This way, you can support great music on the one hand, learn it from the inside, and not be tempted to email Dave Douglas's manager to see if you can get a copy of the charts. (I haven't done this, but know of more than a few jazz stalkers out there...)
The album starts off with an arrangement of Rufus Wainright's This Love Affair that sounds like a most impassioned dirge version of St. James Infirmary for which Bach wrote the inner voices. Much of this has to do with Wainright's original harmonization--here's a video of it:
It's a very beautiful tune, but with Dave Douglas and Brass Ecstasy, it takes on a certain ritualistic quality, and--on the climactic turnaround--Rufus Wainright's beautiful melodic figures soar in Douglas's high range, which of late has sounded so easy and soaring that it's like the most moving infomercial for the Caruso method. And the voicing of the ensemble makes what was affecting in Wainright's hair-raising. Pay special attention to the french horn lines:
Here's another video with Douglas discussing how the group functions as a chamber ensemble, followed by "The View from Blue Mountain," a latin piece with a six-feel. Pay particular attention to how much harmony (and how richly the harmony) jumps out when there's no comping instrument:
My other favorites on the album? Orujo, a syncopated romp with some in-the-pocket french horn offbeats; The Brass Ring, that moves out of a lovely chorale into an impossibly slow, tight vamp midway; Great Awakening, an allusive kaleidescope of hymnody (I heard aspects of Just a Closer Walk and Silver Bells, but I'm probably missing a few obvious ones) that's Douglas's funniest tune since Elk's Club; Mister Pitiful, the Otis Redding tune; Bowie, a funky nod to the legendary Lester.
A bit before I picked up Spirit Moves, I read a Sasha Frere-Jones piece in the New Yorker on the Hypnotic Brass Ensemble. A true band of brothers--sons of AACM co-founder/Sun Ra trumpeter Phil Cochran. I just picked up their label debut on iTunes and have been sorting through it. It's great groove music, almost all insistent, in minor key, very tight, and more ahead-of-the-beat than today's crop of New Orleans-style brass bands (which you shouldn't expect them to sound like). They're doing their own thing, and have a keen business sense after parlaying street success (literally--in Times Square, and on Chicago's South Side) with web word-o-mouth and now a successful European tour being chronicled in a frank, funny, and frequently updated blog.
"We could set up in a blackout, on a boat, plane, wherever." Love it. Reminds me of Green Eggs and Ham.
Don't expect jazz, per se: these are tunes to grab you, shake you, and put you down again in time for you to catch your train, but it's all very, very tight and a new direction. If you follow them on the web a bit, you'll find out that they--like Douglas, and the AACM, for that matter--are very commited to taking control of the commercial aspect of their music. I suspect we'll be seeing a whole lot of them in the future. Go to their myspace for clips.
If I had to recommend one download from their new album so far, it would probably be Jupiter, an irresistible space-age vamp that lays out a bit longer that some of their other tunes and sounds like the bridge from the theme from Shaft looped by Roy Hargrove overdubbing himself and playing against his own delay--except that it's all acoustic and tight. I'm sure a national tour is right around the corner, so stay tuned.
More later.
Monday, June 29, 2009
The Iowa City Wendy's restaurant is dishonest and preys on fat people and makes them even fatter by the way it abuses commas
Okay, a break from ostensibly musical posts: I'm launching a media campaign against Wendy's on First Avenue in Iowa City and want to know if any of my readers have had similar experiences.
Now, this summer I've started to eat many more vegetables, raw and fresh, but I'm not going to lie: I like a big, nasty hamburger slathered in mayo from time to time. Is that a crime? No. I like some greasy fries covered in salt. And there's something about the way Wendy's mixes their Dr. Pepper, and something courageous about their refusal to stock Mr. Pibb instead to capitulate to Coke.
If you can't get full from a small Wendy's combo, 1) you've either been driving on the world's most desolate stretch of highway, 2)you've worked very hard all day and skipped the previous meal, or 3) you're morbidly obese or well on your way and diabetic, or well on your way.
Every time I go to the Iowa City Wendy's on First Avenue (the only one, now that the Riverside Drive one got flooded out last year), I'll sometimes order off the dollar menu, but frequently, will get a burger (a #1 with no pickles and no mustard--it used to be the big bacon classic, but then whatever they replaced that with is now a 3-lb burger that feeds a family of six) in an extra value meal.
Here's where the dishonest upsizing comes in:
I go there now out of spite, to replay what has become a wonderful charade, a witty, Joseph-Helleresque banter. (Actually, it sounds just like a bit of dialogue that I can't place from John Hodgman's most recent book.)
And you know what? I blame baristas for this. We are no longer aware that a "small" even exists.
THIS IS A TAX ON IDIOTS! In fact, one time, when a drive-thru worker anomalously asked me, "What size would you like?" to reinforce his honest customer service behavior, I ordered a medium and nursed my drink (that came in a 5-gallon bucket--who knows what a large is) for the remainder of the day.
The fact that by saying "No, I want a small" consistently throws the workers--in-store and drive-thru alike--makes me think that many pay this hidden tax and have those extra fries. And you know what? I'll just come right out and say it: while it tastes great, you get less soda at Wendy's in a 32-oz cup than you get in a 16-oz. cup at McDonald's. If I wanted to buy 40 pounds of ice, I'd go to a convenience store.
One time, I was actually ridiculed and chided with the words "Come on--you only want a small?!" by some cocky 19-year old with slicked back hair who's probably one of the same morons who takes off his muffler and drives down my street at 2 in the morning while I'm trying to sleep. I mean, seriously. Another time, in the store, I started going through the motions with a nice young man, and I said, "Why don't you say that there's a small option?" And he said, "Hey, it's just the business. Sorry, man," with a sheepish and honest smile.
Do me a favor: you know you want a Frosty. So, go to the Iowa City Wendy's, order a small combo (but pretend that you don't know that such an option exists), and see if they use a comma. See if they're surprised by your decision, see if you throw them off, and if you think they were trying to trick you into buying a 600-gallon barrel of ice, call (614) 764-2032, ext. 2032 and log a complaint with Wendy's corporate customer service.
Now, this summer I've started to eat many more vegetables, raw and fresh, but I'm not going to lie: I like a big, nasty hamburger slathered in mayo from time to time. Is that a crime? No. I like some greasy fries covered in salt. And there's something about the way Wendy's mixes their Dr. Pepper, and something courageous about their refusal to stock Mr. Pibb instead to capitulate to Coke.
If you can't get full from a small Wendy's combo, 1) you've either been driving on the world's most desolate stretch of highway, 2)you've worked very hard all day and skipped the previous meal, or 3) you're morbidly obese or well on your way and diabetic, or well on your way.
Every time I go to the Iowa City Wendy's on First Avenue (the only one, now that the Riverside Drive one got flooded out last year), I'll sometimes order off the dollar menu, but frequently, will get a burger (a #1 with no pickles and no mustard--it used to be the big bacon classic, but then whatever they replaced that with is now a 3-lb burger that feeds a family of six) in an extra value meal.
Here's where the dishonest upsizing comes in:
I go there now out of spite, to replay what has become a wonderful charade, a witty, Joseph-Helleresque banter. (Actually, it sounds just like a bit of dialogue that I can't place from John Hodgman's most recent book.)
"Welcome to Wendy's, may I take your order?"That little curvy thing to the right of the word "medium" (,) is called a comma. It sets parts of a given sentence off from one another. Go to the Iowa City Wendy's and listen to their sales-pitch: there is definitely a comma. I would have no problem with someone asking me "Would you want that medium or large-sized?" asked with the pitch of the sentence going up. But with the comma, we have two choices: "Either you get a medium-sized combo, or you get a large-sized combo."
"Yes, I'll have a number one with no pickles, no mustard, and a Dr. Pepper to drink."
"Will that be medium, or large-sized?"
"No."
"No?"
"No."
"So... So you just want the sandwich?"
"No, I want the meal."
"Okay, what size?"
"Do you have a small option?"
"Yes, would you like a small?"
"Yes."
And you know what? I blame baristas for this. We are no longer aware that a "small" even exists.
THIS IS A TAX ON IDIOTS! In fact, one time, when a drive-thru worker anomalously asked me, "What size would you like?" to reinforce his honest customer service behavior, I ordered a medium and nursed my drink (that came in a 5-gallon bucket--who knows what a large is) for the remainder of the day.
The fact that by saying "No, I want a small" consistently throws the workers--in-store and drive-thru alike--makes me think that many pay this hidden tax and have those extra fries. And you know what? I'll just come right out and say it: while it tastes great, you get less soda at Wendy's in a 32-oz cup than you get in a 16-oz. cup at McDonald's. If I wanted to buy 40 pounds of ice, I'd go to a convenience store.
One time, I was actually ridiculed and chided with the words "Come on--you only want a small?!" by some cocky 19-year old with slicked back hair who's probably one of the same morons who takes off his muffler and drives down my street at 2 in the morning while I'm trying to sleep. I mean, seriously. Another time, in the store, I started going through the motions with a nice young man, and I said, "Why don't you say that there's a small option?" And he said, "Hey, it's just the business. Sorry, man," with a sheepish and honest smile.
Do me a favor: you know you want a Frosty. So, go to the Iowa City Wendy's, order a small combo (but pretend that you don't know that such an option exists), and see if they use a comma. See if they're surprised by your decision, see if you throw them off, and if you think they were trying to trick you into buying a 600-gallon barrel of ice, call (614) 764-2032, ext. 2032 and log a complaint with Wendy's corporate customer service.
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