Friday Miscellanea

The Friday Miscellanea have been way too serious lately. So here is the solution. Four German musicians (I think) turn Vivaldi into Kurt Weill in several easy steps and look good while doing it:

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Ok, we're starting with a couple of clips today. Here is the Emerald carbon fiber harp guitar:

Re the sound? Ugh. Ugh. Ugh. Mind you, the sound seems ideal for the lo-cal new agey dreary musical selection. Meeoowww!

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And in the latest pop, er, I mean "post-hardcore" news, the Skrillex song “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” has been found by researchers to cause mosquitos to bite less and refrain from mating: Mosquitoes Don't Like Skrillex, But Listening To His Music Isn't Enough To Keep Them Away.

Considering that mosquitoes use sound to communicate, Hamady Dieng and colleagues at the University of Malaysia in Sarawak wondered if their behaviour could be disrupted by playing a Skrillex track. They set up an experiment to compare mosquito feeding and mating in the presence of the track “Scary Monsters and Nice Sprites” with that of mosquitoes listening to no music at all.

I guess now we have to listen to the song:

Ok, well now I also want to refrain from mating.

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Did you know it was illegal to have a home recording studio in Nashville? Nashville!?! 'Music City' Doesn't Want You Making Music at Home.

"Nashville is one of the few places remaining in the world where some of the very best musicians get together face to face to make music," says Shaw, who has worked with recording artists ranging from Jack White to Wilco to Adele. "That's why I wanted to be here and why I wanted to create a home studio."

But for the last four years, the city of Nashville has been trying to shut that studio down.

In August 2015, Shaw received a letter from the Department of Codes and Building Inspection informing him that his studio was an unpermitted home business and was therefore illegal. Shaw was given two weeks to cease and desist his recording operations or else face daily fines of $50 and potentially be taken to court.

This is one of a long list of reasons why I am a libertarian.

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Canada has long had the tendency to fetishize the indigenous peoples and now it seems to have spilled over into the music world: Canada: one Indigenous group accuses other of cultural appropriation in award row.

LeGrande, a singer from Alberta who performs under the name Cikwes, was nominated for best folk album for her album Isko, but Inuit performers said that the work uses a specific throat-singing style with deep cultural and historical ties to the Arctic. Nearly two months of talks between between the artists failed to produce an acceptable outcome, said Fraser.

In related news, the Mississipi Delta is suing Chicago for appropriation of the blues, the estate of B. B. King is suing Eric Clapton for stealing some really hot licks and Detroit is just really pissed at the Rolling Stones for, well, mostly making way too much money from their rhythm and blues and being generally a pain in the ass.

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Thanks to Slipped Disc, we find our way to this new selection of the worst classical album covers.

I think they used up the cream of the crop in the previous selection.

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Yo Yo Ma is looking more and more like a political opportunist: YO YO MA TO PLAY ON US-MEXICO BORDER.

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Here is an interview with the interesting Frederic Rzewski, who likely never became widely-known just because of the difficulty of pronouncing his last name ("chefski").

IN ONE INTERVIEW, YOU SAID, “IT’S BAD ENOUGH, THAT THE AVANT-GARDE HAS CRUMBLED SO SIMPLY AND WITHOUT SOUND. BUT THE FACT THAT CAPITALISM STILL HASN’T BEEN DEFEATED EITHER, THAT CAN GET YOU DOWN.”

There is a new era in capitalism: consumer capitalism. Not just exploitation of the working class, but the double exploitation of the people who pay for it. You can even say that it is turning into a new kind of slavery. Amazon slavery. This is not just capitalism. There isn’t even a word for it.

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Yet another sign of the Apocalypse: Against Chill: Apathetic Music to Make Spreadsheets To.

the music wasn’t really for liking, in the traditional sense. The music wasn’t for anything. It merely existed to facilitate and sustain a mood, which in turn might enable a task: studying, folding laundry, making spreadsheets, idly browsing the Internet. Spotify presently classifies chill as a genre, and there are an incredible number of playlists devoted to insuring a chill experience.

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 Whew, after that I think we deserve a really good envoi today. How about the Piano Concerto No. 2 by Sergei Prokofiev? I haven't put that up for quite a while, have I? This is Yefim Bronfman as soloist, Vassily Sinaisky conducts the Rai National Symphony Orchestra: