Friday, November 6, 2015

Friday Miscellanea

I would like you to introduce you to perhaps the most important background figure in popular music today. His work underlies virtually every song you hear. He is indispensable and, indeed, after the singer and the video, probably the most important element in commercial popular music today. He comes in many versions, but for the locus classicus I give you the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, sometimes known as the infamous "drum machine":


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Some have accused rock musicians of being, well, less than intellectual giants. This is obviously false as this photo of Mr. Keith Richards, esq., relaxing in his library, shows:


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What is it with Prager University? They keep putting out these videos that contradict the Narrative! This one starts out by explaining how the best musicians are always conservative.


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Well, this left me flabbergasted: "Is It Harmful to Use Music as a Coping Mechanism?" As a what? This is one of the weirdest things I've ever read about music:
Listening to music is a form of emotional self-care that many of us turn to every day, without much conscious thought. The streaming service Spotify, well aware of this, offers a collection of “Mood” playlists, from “Anthems of Angst” to “Running Thru a Field of Smiles,” to my personal favorite, “The Happy Hipster.”
"Emotional self-care?" Where do you people get this stuff? Guys, it's a fine art, not a drug or a puppy. Geez...

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I once wrote a post on the "Layla" riff from the song by Eric Clapton. Here is a pretty good article about the circumstances surrounding the writing of the song: "Boomer Ballads: Layla" And here's the tune:


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CBC was an important venue for me as a young artist. As I developed, more opportunities opened up. When I proposed a whole series of concerts as a homage to the recently-deceased Andrés Segovia they responded by recording them all on location for national broadcast. But I'm afraid that the CBC these days has lost its way and instead of working to support real musicians, it is pandering to the reality show audience by announcing a contest that consists merely of videos of music classes covering pop songs. Bramwell Tovey, conductor of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is not amused: "CBC Music dishonest in promoting ‘Canada’s Greatest Music Class’ contest."

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Well, all that was depressing... Time for something both a) classical and b) really, really funny! Which pretty much brings us to Ray Chen, the Victor Borge of the violin:


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There is a new deluxe issue of "1" coming out! You have to know this album, the biggest-selling of the first decade of the 21st century? By a group whose name rhymes with skittles? Ok, it doesn't quite. I'm talking about a digitally remastered reissue of the CD of all the Beatles' number one singles, plus a DVD of all the videos all cleaned up and redone as well. Allan Kozinn reviews it in the Wall Street Journal.


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Here's a new thing: "Walls" from a new album by Rival Consoles (the nom de musica of Ryan Lee West). It is less boring than most EDM-derived music.


But still rather creepy and dreary, don't you think? I put that up as a foil for our musical envoi of the day, coming up next.

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In a world where so much music seems to be the result of industrial mass-production, dull, repetitive and, because of that, promoted with the most garish video productions imaginable, the humanity of classical music shines out stronger than ever, does it not?


5 comments:

Christine Lacroix said...

Hello Bryan
That Vivaldi played by Julia Fischer was amazing.It reminded me a another red head in a red dress, fifteen year old Camille Bertholet a French contestant in a talent contest in France. You can see Gautier Capucon, a French cellist as one of the judges in the audience.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxXHD14BIo4
Maybe I'm a bad person but I do enjoy watching beautiful performers whether men or women! It just adds something. So I've made my confession of the day.

Concerning the clip on the best musicians reflecting conservative values that argument is based on so many false premises that it would take pages and quite frankly partisan politics are toxic to me. Why is it that even brilliant people lose their ability to reason when they're defending their ideology???

Thanks for another interesting Friday miscellanea even though I didn't hear it until Saturday morning. And I enjoyed your Victory Hugo piece. Hannah has the perfect voice to accompany you. Lovely!

Bryan Townsend said...

Hi Christine,

Camille Betholet was remarkable, but my video kept pausing, so I didn't watch a lot of it. Very appropriate though, considering that Vivaldi himself was probably the most famous redhead in music history.

I'm certain you are not a bad person for liking to watch beautiful people perform. But there certainly seem to be a lot of people ready to to tell us that we are!!

Yes, it saddens me to see poorly done and unconvincing arguments--obviously someone preaching to the choir. I just put up a post the other day savagely criticising a poorly-written book with a conservative argument.

Hannah does have a lovely voice. Look for a new song up tomorrow. This one on a poem by John Donne.

Christine Lacroix said...

Pity you couldn't watch Camille until the end. She won by the way. Apparently she plays the cello as well as she plays the violin. Maybe that's not so unusual?
I had read your piece about the poorly-written book. You can sell it on Amazon you know. Get some of your money back!

Anonymous said...

How did the Beatles get to accept to wear such ridiculous outfits?
That's taking the Brits' natural taste for camp and kitsch to another level!

Bryan Townsend said...

@Christine, I have the Kindle version, so, sadly, no recycling! But I regard this as a valuable experience.

Those were their Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band personas--not the Beatles, exactly.