“Gustav is a composer. For months he has been carrying on a raging debate with Säure over who is better, Beethoven or Rossini. Säure is for Rossini. “I’m not so much for Beethoven qua Beethoven,” Gustav argues, “but as he represents the German dialectic, the incorporation of more and more notes into the scale, culminating with dodecaphonic democracy, where all notes get an equal hearing. Beethoven was one of the architects of musical freedom—he submitted to the demands of history, despite his deafness. While Rossini was retiring at the age of 36, womanizing and getting fat, Beethoven was living a life filled with tragedy and grandeur.” “So?” is Säure’s customary answer to that one. “Which would you rather do? The point is,” cutting off Gustav’s usually indignant scream, “a person feels good listening to Rossini. All you feel like listening to Beethoven is going out and invading Poland. Ode to Joy indeed. The man didn’t even have a sense of humor. I tell you,” shaking his skinny old fist, “there is more of the Sublime in the snare-drum part to La Gazza Ladra than in the whole Ninth Symphony. With Rossini, the whole point is that lovers always get together, isolation is overcome, and like it or not that is the one great centripetal movement of the World. Through the machineries of greed, pettiness, and the abuse of power, love occurs. All the shit is transmuted to gold. The walls are breached, the balconies are scaled—listen!” It was a night in early May, and the final bombardment of Berlin was in progress. Säure had to shout his head off. “The Italian girl is in Algiers, the Barber’s in the crockery, the magpie’s stealing everything in sight! The World is rushing together. …”
so it goes, with this epic debate, beethoven or rossini.
i agree with gustav, and do not think it is even a fair debate. beethoven is everything; rossini is bourgeois nonsense.
so, when the dso set up rossini and beethoven on the same night, it set my pynchon senses tingling. surely, i'd have to crack it open again, right?
but, alas - this is merely beethoven's first, which is fairly well composed for classical music, but before beethoven's peak, and not going to drag me out of the house.
i'll still take it over rossini, though.
as for prokofiev, i expect nothing less than prancing russian unicorns.
it's a little light...
i was able to find my previous kali masi review, at least.
again: i'm rather certain that i mentioned something about this band around this time last year, when i realized the show in detroit was sold out. at the time, i was concerned about border issues, but i had decided i would try it...until i realized it was pointless, anyways.
i remember saying something about how i remembered slow magic from a chill wave kick i went on in the early 10s, and how i hadn't kept up with them much, since.
i also remember saying something about how i would keep track of shows i was missing. i can't find any of this...
that was a somewhat different context, as it was in a much smaller club, and i was kind of in need to get out. listening to it now, it no longer sounds fresh like it did all of those years ago - it sounds generic and overdone, and any interest i had has largely evaporated.
my initial perusal through the show listings for may actually pulled out the may 3rd show - which is chopin to start and xiu xiu to close - as the most likely day out, all month. it's even looking like it's going to be a nice day....
but, a closer look through the logistics indicates that this would not have been likely.
first, i wasn't entirely sure what "xiu xiu (solo)" actually meant. it seems like a jamie stewart acoustic set, which would have been of minimal interest to me. that's probably what i should have expected, but i just wasn't sure.
second, it turns out that the chopin set was in the suburbs, again - apparently so that orchestra hall could be rented by some students for a recital. this is actually sort of shocking, to me. it didn't happen, so i'm just going to leave it at that. but, it's sort of beyond disappointing to finally tune in, only to have them ship all of the interesting performances out of town, and replace them with watered down trash for the uneducated masses.
so, what that means is that what i thought would be a short walk to the orchestra hall, followed by a short walk to el club, would actually be an almost impossible transit nightmare out to the furthest reaches of the detroit metropolitan area and back, and neither this particular chopin piece nor a jamie stewart acoustic set would be of enough interest to me to justify such a thing, unless maybe i was out that way on the saturday night, anyways....
my interest in the chopin piece shouldn't be surprising given what i've already posted. the piano was the main instrument during the romantic era, which is the type of classical music that i find most compelling, so these concertos by beethoven, tchaikovsky, rachmaninov and now chopin are actually in a continuity with each other. the debussy is not far removed from it, either.
this particular piece by chopin was written when chopin was very young, and only months after beethoven had died. it is not difficult to tell who the dominant influence on the young chopin really was, meaning this comes off as a sort of addendum-to or beethoven-lite - which is not to say it's a bad piece, so much as to clarify that it is a little bit outside of chopin's own distinctive style. hey, i've been critical of myself for holding up my own influences on my sleeve as a teenager, as well. that was even normal 200 years ago, it turns out.
there's a high chance i'd have gone if i could have walked, but i don't know if i could have even bussed out to where it was.
let's hope the dso gets back to scheduling things downtown, next year. book the lightweight stuff in ferndale, or something...
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
so, i've got may reduced to a small number of shows.
it seems like a slow month, but the virus has had an observer effect on the event listings, so it's hard to be sure if that's representative or not. that's just going to be even worse in june...
for may, this is what i've pulled out:
3rd: chopin's 2nd piano concerto (early) / xiu xiu solo set (late)
8th: slow magic
21st: harborlights
30th: ajj w/ xiu xiu
but, the truth is that it's all tentative.
i'm going to work out some mock reviews as the dates come up.
the dso was particularly disappointing this month; maybe it's not so awful that they canceled it.
this is the blog i would expect them to care the least about.
yet, it's the one that i'm most certain is missing posts.
i'm going to need to do an archive run when i get through the 01/14 sequence, before i pivot.
i could maybe do some cross-referencing, then, and see if i can understand what's gone...
this is something else that i'm absolutely certain i checked out last summer, before their aug 11th show downtown, and i was sure i posted a review of. but, there's a dead spot here over that period that seems very wrong. so, did somebody delete a bunch of posts from this blog over the week of aug 2nd-9th, perhaps while i was gone over aug 9th/10th?
i also remember posting comments about the show i went to on the 9th that aren't there...
*shrug*
i've said this before: i could grasp the media-intelligence complex editing or censoring my politics, but i don't understand why they'd delete my record or concert reviews, unless they were trying to set me up somehow, in a way i don't really understand. why do things keep disappearing, then?
what i remember thinking at the time was that the record was moderately interesting, but kind of light - and that the show might be a little slower than i'd otherwise like. i think i might have said something about the political presentation being more effective if they could thicken the sound up a little, but also fully realizing that that might pull the rug out from under them.
it was the same night as cherubs, which i had scheduled over them, but i didn't make it out at all due to crawling home early that morning on a two-nighter. likewise, i doubt i'd have made it out to hamtramck on a random tuesday, this may.
as before, i'm feeling that the record is thematically interesting, if perhaps a little bit musically light. would i still like rem if they showed up as a new band nowadays? it's hard to say for sure. but, maybe i'd get more out of this by listening to it at home...
from the deftones to touche amore, post-rock has long had a defining, if subtle, influence on a certain strain of contemporary punk rock, to the point that a discernible influence from the subgenre largely defines the strain of punk that has remained relevant in this century. so, i guess it was only a matter of time before the situation inverted.
that said, this isn't quite a post-rock band with influences from punk, either - it is certainly more directly in the lineage of a deftones or a touche amore than it is in the lineage of a caspian or a pelican. but, it flips the switch, nonetheless, and in the process often creates something that is maybe better described as "pink floyd goes doom rock" than using any kind of language i've previously deployed.
i'm still chewing on it, but bands that sound like this are the kind of thing i like to see in small bars, so i very well may have bit.
they have a few older records, but i'm not familiar with them. yet.
and, if you didn't get the quip regarding kim il-sung singing whitney houston, i'll repost this:
we will never bury the 80s.
it's 80s retro night, again.
forever.
(we've legalized assisted suicide in canada, if you can't handle this.)
kiiiiiiim
will
always
love
yooooooooouuuuuuoooooouuuuooooaaaaayyyyy..
*coughing fit*
they talk like it really matters.
what they should do is create a holographic projection of kim il sung, claim he came back from the dead, infer immortality upon him and just let the military stop worrying about it.
so, this is an instrumental solo record by the guitarist for a local frat boy rock band called citizen zero that i've never heard of before, but, as guitar music, it's not that bad - if not all that good, either. i can at least tolerate and passively enjoy this; i suspect that would not be the case for the band he plays in.
the thing is that he relies on a large number of cliches, without really extrapolating on the writing. so, if you're approaching this as though it's a di meola record or something, you're going to be disappointed by the lack of substantive musicality in the writing.
it's really better described as instrumental pop-metal, so you're going to lose me in the lack of serious musicianship. but, at least i'm not cringing at the vocalist, right?
stevie stevens did some records with tony levin and terry bozio, and that's what it is mostly really reminding me of. that's not a bad drop, either - it's just a little lightweight.
if it was closer than pontiac, i might think about it.
i did actually get most of the way through this.
there was a time when tame impala were kind of exciting to me, as they managed to be retro and forward thinking at the same time in a way that avoided the pitfalls of cliches like retro-futurism or steam-punk.
that hasn't been true in a while.
i'm not really sure what people would find to be compelling about this, so i'm not going to waste a lot of time on it, other than to point out that i got most of the way through it before turning it off. but, a tame impala / elo concert would be an interesting catastrophe, i must say.
so, these were the re-releases from jan, 2014 that i'm working on, now:
1) the liquify single, newly split off from inrimake (see entry 3). this is now inri031. this is dated to the summer of 1999. it was remastered in 2017. https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/liquify-ep
3) the newly expanded and finalized inrimake, without the liquify single (entry 1), which is download only. this is a covers & remixes collection, entirely unauthorized. it's now inri032. this is dated to late 1999, but some of the material was from 1998. https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inrimake-covers-lp-2
4) my third official record, inridiculous, was uploaded without modification, except to strip out the last track into the book it! single (entry 2). this is now inri033. i did not even remaster this record. this is dated to late 1999, but some of the material was from as far back as 1996. https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/inridiculous
5) the inricycled b compilation was initially released in parallel to inricycled a as a way to salvage material from the 1997-1999 period that i thought was otherwise unworkable. when i realized in 2015 that i could actually remaster this material from tape, this compilation was deleted from my discography by appending it to the inrijected collection, inri022. i suppose the compilation dates to jan, 2014, even if the material is raided from 1996-1999. https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/track/inricycled-b
6) the let freedom ring single, newly created from a discarded remix of a track on deny everything (see entry 11) that included martin luther king and doonesbury samples. this is now inri036. this is dated to late 1999 and early 2000. it was updated in 2017. https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/let-freedom-ring-ep
7) the first ever release of the full curious george suite in it's original form, which was thought lost until it was found later in the year. this is dated to the spring of 2000. it is now inri037. https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/the-curious-george-suite-ep
8) the ignorance is bliss single, with a comprehensive exploration of remixes of the track over the period of 2000-2014. the track was first written in 2000, but the lead track at this time was recreated from source in early 2014. it was updated with a final lead mix in 2017. this is inri038. https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/ignorance-is-bliss-ep-single
9) my fourth symphony, released in final standalone form as the acidosis ep, for the first time. this recording was created in the summer of 2000 and has not been modified since. this is inri039. https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/acidosis-ep
10) i also had to split off a separate curious george single, as the sample version did not exist until late 2000 and neither makes sense in the context of the suite, nor in the context of the record (now without any samples). this is a comprehensive collection of remixes created after 2000. this is inri040. https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/curious-george-single
11) my fourth official record, deny everything, was initially created near the end of 2000 out of material created since late 1999. this record was re-released several times between 2000 and 2014; this is the final version, void of all vocal samples, except the star trek sample in gravity's rainbow. this is inri041. https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/deny-everything-lp
12) my truncated experimental guitar experiment, an ep called j's adventures in guitarland, was one of the first things i uploaded to bandcamp back in 2010. it was re-released without further modification at this time. these are renaissance guitar pieces that i recorded in 2001. this is inri045. https://jasonparent.bandcamp.com/album/js-adventures-in-guitarland-ep
this actually exists.
well, golly, i couldn't imagine saying anything too rotten about this band.
i wonder if mr. trudeau has ever heard of jello biafra...
Sunday, April 26, 2020
that was the last one.
but they came back for one more, roughly a year later.
well, kinda.
like?
elmocare will make you strong!
you want a few more?
trust me, i'm pulling out the best ones.
oh, you idealists.
Saturday, April 25, 2020
see, there we are. that's how you do it.
bleach would be better than salt, though, clearly.
the virus is said to live in your upper respiratory tract. so, supplementing your water with bleach is unlikely to be helpful, because it's unlikely to come into contact with it - you're just going to end up with bleach in your stomach, which might increase your likelihood of ulcers.
but, what if you could find a way to kind of gargle the bleach through your nose?
if you doused this contraption in a low-level bleach solution, it would probably be more useful than meditation, at least.
Friday, April 24, 2020
little cardiacs, going on here.
good to hear.
Thursday, April 23, 2020
you think this is fantasy?
it feels startlingly similar to what i'm going through right now.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
south korea remains weird.
we got the delayed spikes in the other east asian countries that the science predicts. i've been over this, so i'll be terse: when you react to a pandemic with authoritarian tactics, what you do is scare the population into avoiding medical care. the result is that the curve stays flat for a while due to under-reporting and then explodes upwards once it can't be ignored any further. that is what the science actually "predicted" would happen, and what has actually happened.
.....except in korea. why is that?
well, either the koreans are doing some specific thing in an absolutely flawless way, or the data is stunningly flawed.
there are some reasons to think the data is funny. for example, people are testing negative, and then testing positive. we don't have to jump to conspiracy theories. are they testing properly? it would seem as though they aren't.
but, you don't get false negatives when you test for death, or at least you don't get them in a sustained manner.
so, i don't know. not yet...
if they're doing something spectacularly well, it would have to have something to do with keeping it away from the vulnerable. i can draw whatever conclusions i want about underreporting, but if people aren't dying it means that the weak are being protected. it would follow that if you want to learn something worthwhile about what they're doing differently, you should look at how they're protecting the elderly and other high risk groups.
it could very well be that the virus is actually running rampant in the general population, but has been effectively kept out of nursing homes. that would be the best-case scenario, anywhere, as you get immunity without killing people. but, they're not even logging the unlucky deaths. like, even in the absolute best case scenario, there should be a kind of background death rate of a few dozen people a day, and they're not even seeing that.
so, i don't know. not yet...
could you even imagine this nowadays?
it seems like it already killed all of the old people.
so, if you're fat, stay inside for the remainder of the pandemic.
you can still get takeout.
also, this, while i'm thinking about it.
so, i've spent some further time sorting through bent knee's discography, and i'm ultimately going to need to step away from it - for now.
there's a certain level of subtlety to the music, but they very rarely actually do much with it. there's moments, segments, but it just doesn't transcend from the slightly interesting to the truly compelling. they might get there in time, but the general impression i'm feeling is that it's a little too buttoned up, a little too sterile at the expense of emotional investiture. it happens when people get overeducated; it's a common problem with prog. but, this isn't prog, it's alt-rock, and that's a little less common.
this is perhaps a high point, because it lets loose a little in a way that they'd be advised to emulate more frequently.
they may get over a hump, eventually. not yet...
remember...
christianity is stupid, communism is good.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
i remember stumbling into this over ten years ago now and thinking it was absolutely brilliant.
actually, i've noticed alex jones is in the news with those protests.
he's an actual russian spy.
if you were looking for one.
so, terrence moonseed was a recurring character, here.
it's been done for a while, now.
spain, you're lame.
Sunday, April 19, 2020
that was quick, actually.
there were a few local things booked for april that i may have attended and have already reviewed, but i've otherwise cleared out the month, now.
it's possible that some things were already moved, but a quick perusal through may doesn't pull out anything that is particularly exciting, either.
so, the weekend i was irked about missing has now passed. let's just look forward.
yeah, i find the glitch mob to be hit or miss. i've tended to skip them when they come through here....
this is a little bit underwhelming, relative to their previous material, in the sense of kind of lacking interesting development. it sounds like what happens when your management is pushing you for product, and you're not feeling it, you need time to reflect.
you might get something out of the visuals, though.
i check out liturgy every once in a while to see if they've constructed something i can actually deal with, and the answer is always that they haven't.
i don't know what i actually want them to do. i know i like some of colin marston's instrumental work, i know i like sonic youth; i think i point out in every dismissive black metal review that i'm coming at this from a noise rock perspective, not the perspective of all of those terrible nazi bands that i'd be more likely to attend a protest about than actually go to see, even if i'd draw a line at actually preventing people from attending. and, i get that liturgy aren't like that, which is part of the reason that i'll take the time to listen every once in a while, even if i never actually get anything from it. i would probably find their lyrics flat out stupid if i could understand them, or took the time to read them, but i'm at least relatively comfortable that i wouldn't find them to be the literal negation of everything i'd actively fight for and against, the way i would for most music that sounds like this.
so, if liturgy ever pull everything they're doing together - the electronics, the noise, the atonality, the classical instrumentation - into something compelling that i can actually get into, i guess i'll know it when i hear it.
but, this is still boring. and, frankly, it's still stupid.
that was the most likely show sequence for april, to the point that i may have found myself out of both money and patience by the end of this weekend. so, that's likely the end of the mock reviews.
i'm going to push through, though, and see what else comes out.
if i could put in a request to the dso, it would be to schedule rachmaninov's 2nd & 3rd piano concertos as a double headliner.
i was also very much looking forward to a performance of this absolutely blisteringly vicious rachmaninov piece, and had tentatively scheduled it for the friday (the 17th), but that would have no doubt depended on a number of factors, such as the weather and the ability to schedule things before or after it. skipping this was not an option, though. this is one of the most ridiculous pieces of music ever written, in any style, ever.
there's a caveat, and that is that i tend to be disappointed by american interpretations of rachmaninov, as i tend to find that they strip the music of it's idiosyncratically dour russian existential dread, and replace it with a sort of upbeat american exceptionalism. passages that should make you want to yell, or cry, or otherwise break down into some kind of terrible fit of discomfort tend to be replaced with much lighter emotions that you're more likely to just kind of shrug off. i know that rachmaninov spent some of his life here, but i do insist that americans do not get this guy.
the pianist set to perform the piece has a russian-looking name, but who knows what i was going to get.
the above performance was the one i pulled out as most acceptable, in the end. if you've never heard this, i suggest you sit down, first.
i am not familiar with the other two pieces on the bill and haven't spent any time with them, but may do so over the next few days. neither seems to be particularly compelling on first listen, but i'll let you know if i change my mind over the next few days.
if i had gone on the friday, this show would not have been done late and i would have been close enough to the tunnel to walk, so i would have had to make that choice. was there some reason to stay later? or, might i have scheduled the show on the saturday or sunday to line up a double bill, instead? i don't see anything obvious on the friday night or the saturday night.
however, i very well might have waited until the sunday matinee, in order to attend the glitch mob show (across the street) in the evening.
this has not been rescheduled at this time, but i hope it is included in next year's program.
after his recent delves into bass music and a hundred other things all at once, the new squarepusher record seems to perhaps be a return to his classic mid 90s sound, but it also lacks a certain level of intensity, opting instead for something more palatable to a chiptune audience. i almost wonder if he's been listening to something like oxykitten, or if some of this was written with a gaming audience in mind.
it doesn't matter. i missed them when they did movement a few years ago due to the setting (way, way too many people for something like this...and you had to buy a day pass, meaning it was about $70 usd), and wasn't going to miss this. it doesn't matter if the new record sucks or not - which isn't what i'm saying. i'm not sure that this guy is really capable of producing something that is bad, even if this does feel a little stagnant.
further, it's not like he comes over here to tour every couple of months, either. when i missed both 65daysofstatic and future of the left in 2013 while i was waiting for border documents, i had the feeling that it might be the only chance i get to see either of them. and, i don't think either have come back. i was dreading as much....
so, i'm very much shattered by the cancellation of this.
but, it is being rescheduled, thankfully, for december, and we will get our adventure around it at that time.
t
his show was on a thursday (the 16th), and i would have come home relatively early to be sure i was able to get to the rachmaninov show the next night.
have you ever wondered why it's called epitaph records?
pretty much every bad religion record has at least one crimson reference. if you listen to the last track on the newest one, you can pull out a reference to the track they named their label after.
makes you wonder if it's not a subtle hint.
(robert fripp is notoriously anti-internet. this is a recent remake with a singer he's worked with semi-recently. you can tell that it's not the original, but it's not drastically different.)
bad religion hasn't changed much over the years, so i don't see what the point of reviewing the new record is, other than to ask whether...
well, ok. maybe, that starting line gives away my bias: they went through sort of a down period when they replaced the really efficient punk drummer they had in their far too short classic period (88-90) with somebody that had a more traditional corporate rock drumming style. they then spent a really long time making records that may have made some cogent points here and there, but didn't have the aesthetic feel or sound of punk rock records and consequently lost a lot of their fan base. i don't want this to be a purity attack, i'm just trying to get the point across that i lost interest, and i know why - they embraced cock rock drumming and, with it, a more muscular style that largely just left me flat out bored.
then, a few years ago, they went back to a punk drumming style, and the whole thing was instantly salvaged - they sounded like bad religion, again. or, at least, they sounded like so many of their fans want bad religion to sound like, even if we all know that they're listening to progressive rock records on the tour bus.
that down period, which is in truth most of their career, then got thrown down the memory hole. it never happened...and bad religion haven't changed in 30 years.
so, the question is - is the new record in their classic style, or is it toying with these cock rock structures that they got into in the 90s? it's kind of in between; it's not their worst record, but it's disappointingly unpunk, after the return to form on the last one.
chances are that you're probably more into the lyrics, though - and that hasn't changed much, and really isn't worth analyzing. if you're not familiar with bad religion, you should start with suffer and carry forward with it. if you never liked graffin in the first place, you probably won't like him much, now; if you're a fan, you don't need my analysis, you can come up with your own.
nobody likes trump. i'm just not sure if i like him less than clinton or not. but, you shouldn't expect any derangement syndrome here, or any baseless or emotional attacks. this band defines itself by it's appeals to reason, evidence and logic. in some ways, i'd actually argue that this is the right way to deal with trump, and the kind of opposition i'd be more likely to be more active in. but, he maybe loses the plot, in a sense, like the best stoics did at the end of the empire - of what value is a critique rooted in reason in a post-truth paradigm?
i'd still rather vent with syllogisms than with tears or screams, but to each their own.
this is from the previous tour:
given all that would i have showed up to the show here on the 15th?
i've been through this before with this band - the ticket prices tend to be a little on the high end.
the answer is probably not, no.
this was in ann arbor on the 10th, and there's a lot of reasons to think i wouldn't have actually made it there, including the distance and the fact that i've never actually heard of them before. but, it seemed interesting enough to check out, and one of the first things i learned is that they've apparently recently opened for mike keneally, which is a choice gig for any musically abstract band to land.
after several listens, i'm remaining non-committal about it. this is fundamentally singer-songwriter music with a heavy soul influence; the abstraction exists in the arrangements, and i'm not sure it really gets to where i need it to get to.
but, i haven't been to ann arbor in a while and, if the weather was nice, i might have used it as an excuse to get out to one of those legal dispensaries - and tell a story while i'm at it.
i wish i had more time to give it a deeper listen, and may actually do so in the upcoming days. given that i knew i wasn't actually going, i didn't find myself prioritizing it....
if the idea of soul-influenced pop with classical arrangements is interesting to you, though, this would be your thing.
this show was on the third, and is a band that has played at the far bar a few times recently, in scenarios that made it hard to get to. i've tried to be constructively critical of this, because i think it's moving in the right direction, even if it's still a little too conservative for me - i'd like to see them open up a bit, and embrace a deeper level of experimentation, rather than merely seem like an experimental act on the surface.
but, this show was at the closest bar to the tunnel, so i probably would have gone...
they were on first.
i don't know how long i would have stayed for the headliner, who seem pretty boring:
this was a friday night, so i'd be stuck with a choice to find an after-party or head home early. as i'd have been so close to the tunnel, i suspect i'd have taken the early bus out, but we can't be entirely sure.
i'm not exactly going to write mock reviews for the shows that i missed, but i'm going to draw attention to some shows that i'm certain i would have attended.
i'll be catching up with this over the upcoming weeks.
Saturday, April 18, 2020
i hope i get to see these guys some time.
i'm actually an advocate of the idea that you should quit your job if you don't like it, but i understand that that's easier said than done.
i would, nonetheless, encourage you to get up and walk out, asap.
uber alles, michigan.
Thursday, April 16, 2020
Sunday, April 12, 2020
so, i've worked my way through enough of april to put it aside and get to the next thing in the list, which is recalibrating the vlogging.
the shows i would have likely made some attempt to go to over the first half of april are:
3rd - dana
10th - bent knee (in ann arbor, though. maybe not.)
15th - bad religion (but pricey, so probably not.) 16th - squarepusher (for sure. moved to december.) 17th - rachmaninov's 3rd piano concerto (for sure. cancelled, for now.)
18th - liturgy (probably not actually)
19th - glitch mob (strongly weather-dependant).
now that i'm caught up, i can multitask. so we're on to the next thing....
the thing about enablers is that the constant, steady vocal stream acts as somewhat of a limiter on the musical dynamics, preventing the whole thing from moving away in any specific direction, and kind of keeping it spinning in place, to play itself out. i'm fully cognizant that the people that enjoy this interact with it in this kind of linear, storytelling manner, where information is digested and processed in order and all that variations in amplification can do is increase the error rate. this is in contrast with a piece of music that you move and feel with solely on the directions of the actual notes, and experience variations in amplification solely due to the enjoyment of experiencing it.
they're kind of stuck, too, because if they were to pull back on the vocals to open up more space for dynamics in the music, they'd really lose what they are.
i kind of like shopping on a base aesthetic level, as they write these very efficient, catchy pop songs with a bit of a baroque edge. unfortunately, a consistent truth throughout their discography is that they contain their musical explorations in an exceedingly disciplined manner, which often has the effect of making their recordings seem sort of light-weight, or perhaps even dumbed-down.
i'd like to hear them toy with more elaborate compositional devices.
this show would likely not have made sense to go to.
it's like do make say think, without the grit, or tension, which i'm really missing. where a dmst think track would weave through multiple patterns and often even shift tempo a few times, this tends to just kind of sputter in place in these kind of harmonically tidy patterns that have come to define the most generic places in post-rock.
then, when they let go, they do it in every direction all at once, rather than together - the latter being something that dmst was also very good at, playing together.
so, i doubt that i would have made it out to this, unless it was a connecting show, which it was not on this night.
there were a few years in the middle of the 90s where i found myself with this absolutely pointless holiday in the middle of the spring (the most nefarious thing about easter is that you never know exactly when it is.) that i barely understood. was jesus a man or a god, and do you dumbasses believe in reincarnation or not...?
i mean, of all the dumb holidays. he died for my sins? really? what an arrogant fucking prick.
i developed a sort of tradition of blaring this through speakers around noon on good friday, because i was bored at home. the tradition is that you take the corpse of your god-man down around 13:00. so, i made sure that it was loud enough that any religious minded person in earshot could hear it, at that time.
i guess that, during the late 90s, i would often disappear on the thursday night to some basement or garage somewhere, to light blunts and play songs, and maybe i'd be back that weekend, and maybe i wouldn't. so, this pointless holiday that i barely understood all of a sudden became an excuse to get stoned for days at a time.
but, when the social media era clicked in, i moved the ritual online and started posting this on facebook every year.
i would encourage you to post this song somewhere today, and across the internet on all days where fictional religious characters of all faiths are said to have died, to the maximum annoyance of all religionists that continue to insist on the inherently sophomoric juvenility and childishness of faith.
today your god is dead,
and noone cares.
Wednesday, April 8, 2020
this is a review of the weeping icon / control top show at deluxx fluxx on mar 12, 2020.
this was a night that was neither supposed to be late nor expensive, but the sudden collapse in the canadian dollar, combined with the closure of the tunnel overnight for maintenance work, meant that going to the show would be more expensive than previously budgeted for, and that there was no option but to overnight in the diner, as the tunnel bus would be out of service from 20:00 on the night of the 12th until 7:00 on the morning of the 13th. once i realized this on thursday morning, i strongly considered skipping the show, but in the end reasoned that the shows at the end of the month would likely end up canceled, anyways, so i'd might as well overpay on one last night out for a long while. so, i caught the last bus of the night over to detroit, which was the 19:00 bus.
all anybody outside wanted to talk about was the virus, and the looming assumption that there were imminent closures coming, indeed that things were being canceled and closing down in real time. people found themselves in the situation where they were just looking for something that was open.
my interest in the show was initially in the second band, control top, but i made sure to get there on time in order to see weeping icon, as well. i strongly considered catching weeping icon the last time they were here, in november:
so, the weather made actually going to this somewhat of a non-starter. i would have had to have dragged myself, and an unknown punk band wasn't going to do it... it's an interesting proof of concept, but i wish they did more with the electronics than they are. it just kind of comes off as something to distract people while they're tuning or changing busted strings... purely as a punk act, it's fun enough, if relatively generic. i actually bet it was fun. but, my impression is that they should be doing more than this, and i hope they do. https://weepingicon.bandcamp.com/album/weeping-icon
my memory of listening to this record back in november was that i interpreted them as a kind of art-rock band that was under-utilizing it's resources, and seemed to think they had a stand-up bassist for some reason. experiencing them live did uphold my perception of the electronics being used as a tuning distraction, as that is literally what they were used for, but it also clarified the band's intended presentation as very much being that of a punk rock band. it's perhaps worth noting that the band also slimmed down to a bass-guitar-drums three-piece, in noting the minimized importance of the noise and the increased importance of the band's presentation as a punk band.
this is a concept record, and they did play songs from it, but they didn't try to present it conceptually, so my comment that the record is an interesting proof of concept that requires greater elaboration is perhaps not reflective of their future plans - i might expect more straight-up punk rock from them, in the future.
and, as noted, they are in fact intriguing enough purely as a punk band. the guitarist can take up quite a bit of space on her own. it'll be interesting to see what she does with it.
so, i think i caught this band in a state of flux, and less want to make a point of a detailed analysis, and more want to point out what appears to be changing.
control top were an act that i first encountered at the end of the year, via reading through some best of the year lists.
the record is a little generic at points, but this is one of two or three types of music where i don't spend much time worrying about that - it just needs to actually be good and this does that. they could turn the vocals down a hair. my ideologically rigorous, enlightenment-era approach to anarchism sort of clashes with her post-nihilist anti-intellectualism, but whatever; that's academic, mostly. that means that i won't grade this too high, but it also means i'd enjoy seeing it more than most of the stuff in the list. https://controltop.bandcamp.com/album/covert-contracts
after a few listens, what i found to be enduring about this act is that they actually have punk lyrics in addition to their classic punk sound, which is rare in music of this sort in the current epoch; generally, acts in the punk spectrum with punk ideologies will avoid a catchy and pop-friendly type of sound or image nowadays, while the classic punk rock sound, itself, has largely been appropriated by pop culture and tarnished with bubblegum-pop type pseudo-artistry. perhaps pop culture's recent retreat from rock-era forms has reopened a space for the classic punk sound to be reunited with punk rock ideology. i would welcome that, as i don't tend to get much musical enjoyment from, or have much fun listening to, these hyper-aggressive spins on the style. i miss a more tactile and fun approach to punk culture....
live, the band presented the recorded material without a lot of variation, the high part of the show perhaps being when the singer descended on the floor and directly confronted a number of the male audience members on their hierarchical enforcement of covert contracts by yelling in their faces about it. i hope she wasn't infected, at the time. i was spared this wrath; i received a soft touch on my shoulder, instead.
teener were again booked to play this show, either first or last, and dropped out on the day of.
i didn't really plan the rest of this out very closely; i decided i'd find somewhere open, and kind of wing it. one idea was to just stay at the venue, but it chased everybody out and shut down early under rumours that it might be shutting down for a while - and, indeed, there was a facebook post not long after, indicating the venue would be closing indefinitely.
i had loosely planned to end up at tv lounge until 2:00ish, but they were closed when i got there, also indefinitely. before leaving the venue, i had heard rumours about things being open in corktown, so i took a walk around the corner to ufo and parked out there for the night.
as the concert that was scheduled at ufo was canceled by the band that booked it, the place was mostly empty by the time i got there around 23:00; pretty much the only people that were there were actually staff from other bars that had shut down early for the night and needed to have a drink and chill out and vent.
the people that i'm talking about are reliant on income coming into their respective bars - dishwashers, bartenders. they were rightly absolutely freaking out about what they were going to do if everything got canceled, and simply didn't want to listen to me rationalize with them, they just wanted to vent. so, i backed off a little and listened, and they made their concerns clear, even if they weren't always well-grounded in science, and i had to bite my tongue about it. writing in mid-april, i don't know what steps the government of michigan has taken to help them, but i hope they figured something out.
after however many beers at ufo, i eventually ended up back at the diner, and got something different, a blt, because my usd was running out when i got there. i nodded off for a bit after 5:00, but was out on time to catch the early bus back, make it home before the cold snap hit (again) and make some nachos before getting some rest in.
Monday, April 6, 2020
this is a review of the sunsquabi/floozies show at the royal oak theatre on mar 5, 2020, as well as a review of the "classical roots" presentation at the dso, which ended with a performance of beethoven's fifth piano concerto, on mar 6, 2020.
in the week leading up to this show, or excursion, i found myself trying to juggle a number of shows into a one or maybe two day escape, and so flirting with going to the concerto on the saturday or maybe trying to fit a double bill in on the friday, meaning i should come home early on thursday - or even just giving up and going to steve hackett on wednesday, instead.
i do feel that the first thing i should acknowledge is actually that hackett concert. the following was posted a few days before the show:
so, this gives me a better understanding of what the steve hackett set on wednesday is going to be about, and whether i want to spend what was $30 usd minimum on it, last i checked (the $25 seats are sold out). this is really a dad show, though, so he's supposed to yell at me for offering to pay my own way, and then insist on buying me food on the way home. alas.... whatissteve hackett? well, he was the not-quite-original-but-certainly-classic guitarist for the legendary 70s prog act genesis. mr. hackett left the band in 1977, so he had absolutely nothing to do with the band's somewhat infamous run of 80s pop singles, and in fact only did two records with collins singing, at all. however, he was the band's guitarist for all but one of their string of classic records (he was not the guitarist on trespass) between 1970-1977.
genesis is known mostly for being the initial vehicle of peter gabriel and then of phil collins (who initially played drums, before gabriel left for a solo career), and is generally thought of as a synthesizer-driven band when discussed for it's compositions. however, the guitar work on these records is actually somewhat revolutionary. amongst other things, hackett is widely credited for introducing the technique of tapping into rock music, something that was picked up on most prominently by van halen and has became a staple in rock music ever since. on this tour, he appears to be starting with a solo record he did in the late 70s and finishing with a set of genesis material centered around the classic record, selling england by the pound, which was the third with the classic lineup of gabriel on vocals, collins on drums, banks on keyboards, rutherford on bass and hackett on guitar.
he appears to have hired younger musicians to do the vocal and drums duties, which is fine and probably necessary. if i could get cheaper tickets, this would be a no brainer. but i don't want to spend too much on this show and then regret missing a bunch of others, and this weekend may be full of other stuff that i want to get to, instead. if i had a money tree. alas... i want to decide what i'm doing on the weekend, first. but, if i go out on wednesday, this is where i'm going....
by wednesday morning, i'd come up with a kind of maximal plan that started wednesday with hackett and ended early saturday morning. i had to face the facts - if i were to go to the hackett concert, i would have to cut something out. i also realized it was going to be seated and mostly populated with older men. if i had another $100 to blow, i would have started here, on the wednesday, and ended up at an experimental noise show a little later, before going home and heading back out for the thursday night.
after scratching wednesday off, i then decided that the most interesting things could be strung together starting on thursday evening and ending on friday afternoon, leaving friday night open as a variable, if the weather and my consciousness, as well as my finances, permit.
this was the ideal that i hoped set times would align around:
1) talking ear @ cliff bell's, 20:00-21:30 - first set.
2) take the bus to royal oak for roughly 22:00 and hopefully catch the last two acts, sunsquabi and the floozies. i want this to go late - until after 2:00.
3) get something to eat. it's a thursday, so i don't expect to find an after party. but, the bus runs all night, now. so, i can make my way back to detroit for the morning.
4) the beethoven concerto is running at 10:45 in the morning.
5) go home, shower, sleep.
6) maybe come back for another funk show on friday night at tangent gallery, followed by dancing.
obviously, imagining set times on my blog doesn't make them real, so the next thing to do would be to actually ask the artists what time they're playing at. this is done these days by posting at the event listing.
talking ear indicated that they would actually start at 20:00 sharp, and perform three 45 minute sets, each on the next subsequent hour. so, if i could get a confirmation that sunsquabi were going to be on a little later, i could maybe even catch the first two sets. perfect.
talking ear would also be playing as a four piece, without their singer, who is now their ex-singer. i will admit that much of the charm in the recorded material is driven by this now departed singer, but that's only really a drawback in terms of the uncertainty in direction that it creates; the rest of the band seems capable of holding my interest, regardless, even if i have little to go by in predicting what they actually would sound like. i'm sure i'll enjoy any new recorded material, once it exists.
i grew up listening to fusion records by the likes of holdsworth, di meola, mclaughlin....as well as some non-guitar jazz, albeit not much of it. i've heard ridiculous amounts of chick corea. there were a couple of bruford/holdsworth records with a singer named annette peacock. that's maybe the closest thing i can think of directly, although i should point out that it's also roughly in the same space as a local act name saajtak.
i wanted to get up and dance before the end of the night, but i was actually kind of stoked about starting at the jazz club early; that's something i wish lined up well more often.
unfortunately, after some prodding, we eventually got set times for the royal oak show - and learned that sunsquabi were scheduled for 21:00, making it impossible to schedule both shows. i'd have to cut out talking ear from the night.
this opened up some space for me, as i was planning on picking up beethoven tickets on thursday night, before the box office closed, at 17:00. so, i settled on crashing what looked like a weekly experimental dinner time series at tv lounge, that seemed like it might even have free food, before catching the bus to royal oak.
with all that planned, it was time to get ready to actually go. of course, that took hours longer than planned, and so i ended up failing to make even the 5:30 bus, and instead ending up in detroit around a quarter after six, without much to do but crash the dinner series, which happened before the hour, at the latest.
there was indeed free food, some sort of vegetarian burrito type affair, with some chips and salsa. i got a cheap beer, and found myself outside talking about this virus with somebody that actually works in the insurance industry.
he fully acknowledged the error of insufficient testing, and the problems that a large uninsured population would face. was i concerned, though? this seemed to be his interest - measuring my concern. we're all collecting data in our own ways, aren't we? the whole world's a laboratory. i tried to articulate myself as best i could - being that i was healthy, i was not particularly concerned about myself, or my well-being, and would rather consider it advantageous to confront the virus early, but if i were uninsured, or older or suffering from existing conditions, and i lived in the united states, then i could see some potential for alarm. my lack of concern is due to being in a relatively privileged position as a relatively young and healthy canadian.
he wanted to rely on the who mortality stats, which i insisted were an exaggeration; the high mortality rate in the united states may appear to be more in line with a third world country, or a country like iran that's been battered by us sanctions, but that's really just because they aren't testing; it's not really 7%. it's more like a 0.5%. although i'd be a lot more concerned if i thought it was 7%! but, he needed data, not speculation. in his mind, that 4.5% coming out of china was reason for serious alarm. and, i guess if i thought that was a reasonable mortality rate, i'd be alarmed, too.
the artist performing at the tv lounge on this night is also known as the detroit bureau of sound, and tends to frequently do these kinds of early night spotlights that are a kind of mix of high and low art; i've seen him perform philip glass pieces in dilapidated warehouses, and also do pretentious reinterpretations of cage pieces at energy drink showcases. he had an electronic reinterpretation of koyaanisqatsi up for showcase at the detroit institute of art in mid-march that got canceled. i keep an eye on him because a lot of what he puts together is kind of the perfect pre-show event, even if i end up showing up too late to catch it more than half of the time.
on this night, he appears to have set up a large amount of analog gear in the bar, and decided not to do much with it. i would have to label what i saw as a brap, albeit not a particularly lively one. so, i ejected from the situation a little bit before 20:00, with the intent to catch the early bus out.
i just had to get up and around the corner to temple, down the street to woodward and - hey, there's a bus...no....wait.
gah.
so, i had 20 minutes to wait to catch the bus i initially planned to take, to get to royal oak a few minutes after 21:00, and into the bar by 21:15 - hoping they're running late. when you miss the bus by seconds, the wait for the next one is of course maximal. but, even so, it would take as much time to drive there as it would to bus there, according to google, so i wouldn't actually be saving any time by driving. once i was able to get the driver to stop and let me on, it did run on time, and did get me to the neighbourhood of the venue at very close to 21:00, as expected.
i feared i'd miss the first song when i got there, but i actually showed up with plenty of time to spare. in fact, i'd been in and out for a few smokes, including finding the kind i like, by the time they came on, after 22:00. if i knew they weren't going to be on until after 22:00, i could have caught the fusion band after all.....
sunsquabi are a fully instrumental three piece white-boy funk band that also take strong influences from some specific guitar-driven progressive rock acts, like tangerine dream and pink floyd. while there are lots of bands that are vaguely like this out there right now, sunsquabi caught my attention due to the musicality - which is not to say that this is particularly technical, so much as to point to the wide musical vocabulary. so, they tend to make good use of abstract rhythms and syncopation, for example, in ways that would be better described as playful than technically impressive. the result is a convincingly fun sound that is also more than interesting enough to keep a nerd engaged, one that i tend to enjoy dancing to, as i get lost in the shuffling beats and the soaring guitars. i'd recommend this to anyone, but it's going to be especially intriguing for all those that exist in that intersection of the electronic with the guitar....
i found myself back outside between sets, and this is when the giant blunts started getting passed around, leaving me feeling fairly spaced out before the floozies set. this bar will make you leave your $8 beer on a table, in a room with hundreds of people, before you go for a smoke, and then who knows what's going to happen to it when you're gone. it was against my better judgement, but i did what i had to, and seemed to make it out of the venue able to walk.
the material i'd heard from the floozies also included a horn section, so they seemed a little bit stripped down on this night, as a two piece. this hemmed their sound into something that was a little bit more generic and formulaic, from a modern "edm" template. so, you had lots of dubstep wobbles, for example. i took it for what it was, and kept dancing in between the guitar licks, which were less plentiful than i'd have liked, but the truth is that sunsquabi is a hard act to follow.
my stark suggestion to the floozies is to make it a habit to bring a horn section with them when they tour. they're just not pulling it off as a two-piece.
a lot of people may consider a show that ends a little after 1:00 to be a late night, but it left me with some time to blow, as i could either find a late-night speakeasy in royal oak and ride it out until the morning buses started up or evacuate the suburbs and go back downtown early on the late night bus out. if this show had lingered past 2:00 to 3:00ish, it would have been relatively seamless to catch the early morning bus out, right from the venue. but, the earlier night had me wanting to catch the late bus out, instead. i had time for a beer, before the bus came, a little after 2:00.
i had picked out a couple of divey bars that i thought would be open, but neither were. instead, i found myself at a sort of sports bar, as they were the only thing around there that seemed to be open. it was moments after i ordered my beer, though, that they were yelling at everybody to finish their drink and get out.
the place was actually fairly well populated on a thursday, so it was maybe a bit weird that they were aggressively shuffling everybody out at 1:35, but i had little choice but to drink my beer quickly and be sure i'm not the last one out.
outside now, at 1:45, i'm having a smoke and am approached by a woman who remarks that she likes my red overcoat (indeed, the coat is a bit of a hit) and wishes she could straighten her hair as well as i do. she then proceeds to speak to me in what i presume is some dialect of hebrew, although i would be unwise as to advise on which one.
i have a complex ancestry, and i do get recognized sometimes, most often by native americans, but also by italians and also by people that are from the northeast of europe. i used to get teased for looking jewish when i was in high school, years before i realized i was, actually, of some ancestral hebrew heritage. i've never, however, been identified as a jew on the street and then spoken to in hebrew, with the assumption that i'd understand it.
"i'm part italian and part jewish, so i do have very wavy hair. i wouldn't call it curly, exactly. it's actually also really light and fine, due to the norse ancestry on my mom's side. so, it's more like a thin, fine and wavy hairtype than thick, heavy and curly type. and, i certainly don't speak hebrew..."
"you're not really jewish, then."
(she was disappointed)
"no, not culturally. except i kind of am like a secular american jew in my politics and in my tastes in art, which is sort of a different jewish culture. i'd bet the number of jews in new york city that are bilingual is pretty low nowadays. so, you could think of me like that, and it's not totally wrong. but, i'm only really vaguely aware of my actual jewish ancestry and don't really prioritize it over my other heritage."
"i still like your coat."
"thanks."
after some further late night banter, and an eventual dispersion from the closing bar, i did catch my late night bus out of royal oak, which tricked me into thinking it was going to take me downtown and then dropped me off at the state fair transit centre instead, to await the regular city bus going back downtown.
waiting for the woodward bus at 3:00 am at state transit in detroit is maybe not the most enviable situation to be in, but i can be friendly enough with the other riders, whoever they are. so, one of them wants a smoke, and i give it to him. it turns out he's recently been released from hospital, and nursing a gunshot wound that just missed his vitals; both lucky and unlucky, as he claims, at least, that he was an innocent bystander, and essentially struck by a stray bullet. the doctors told him he should have been killed. right now, he needs to get downtown to get to the mission, which is where he's staying until his wound has healed. and, i can have some of his vodka if i want (i passed).
he carries a sleeping bag around with him on his back, stuffed into his coat. says he needs it to keep the cold out.
"no, you use it to keep the warmth in."
"yeah, gotta keep the cold out."
"it would probably be useful to you on a day-to-day basis if you actually realized that you keep the warmth in, you don't keep the cold out."
"gotta keep the cold out...works good if you get bundled up right...."
eventually, the bus comes and our gunshot victim actually wanders down the street the other way, before he's coerced back by the driver. i admit that i sat in a place that would force him to sit elsewhere.
it's pushing 4:00 when we get back downtown, and i find myself getting off a stop early, due mostly to badly eyeing the stops - i knew where i was, but didn't know where the stops were. as it is, i'm walking south on woodward to the diner when a man in a wheelchair rolls up to me and asks me for a smoke. and, he needs me to put it in his mouth and light it for him too.
obviously, this guy probably shouldn't be smoking. but, what is the use of denying a dying man a smoke?
so, i give him the smoke, and i light it, and i turn around to walk off, but he asks me to come back and help him get a bag out of the side of his wheelchair. i initially thought he meant out of a pocket on the external side of the wheelchair, but after some discussion it is clarified that he meant a bag that was lodged between himself and the seat of the wheelchair. i am able to oblige this request relatively painlessly.
he tells me he's pulling a cup out of the bag to take a piss, right there, in his wheelchair, on the side of the road, on woodward avenue, in midtown. he wants me to get another bag out of the back, and i can't see where, and he's yelling at me to hurry up....
what's going through my mind at this point is a kind of self-righteous indignation as to why it is that this clearly severely sick man is in a wheelchair on the side of the road at 3:00 am and asking a canadian tourist to perform unpaid volunteer work as an orderly. any concept of dignity had left this man behind. everything else aside, that was what had me angry and almost shivering, the fact that i was forced to suffer this man of his lack of dignity so badly.
i eventually walked away, and went straight inside to wash my hands. there's a virus going around, they said.
this man was eventually wheeled into the diner, which was no doubt an unacceptable sanitation decision, but i said nothing. it was hovering around freezing outside.
i always get the same thing at this diner and wanted to take a closer look at the menu, so i didn't end up ordering until well after 4:00, but i ended up getting my breakfast special, anyways, nonetheless. it was barely 5:00 by the time i was done eating, so i just got a lot of water and a lot of coffee and camped out.
of course i nodded off a few times, but they were punctuated by smoke breaks in the cold air that did a good job of waking me back up.
i was lucky that i got the specific waitress doing the overnight shift that sees me as harmless local colour, and doesn't seem interested in chasing me out. i just told her up front that i was waiting for the symphony to start and would probably be there until after 9:00, and she seemed to register it and then said nothing to me about it.
i got some french fries around 7:00 and munched them slowly on purpose.
the food, the coffee, the water and the brisk smoke breaks actually had me largely sobered up by 9:00, when i ordered one extra large coffee to go (the specific waitress had been refilling my cup all night for free, actually) and made my way out to the box office to get a ticket for the symphony.
i was aware that they were doing a specifically african-themed event on this day, something i didn't look too deeply into, and also noticed that they were initially planning on doing the same ravel piece i saw the previous month, which minimized my interest in the whole thing. however, the pianist performing the ravel piece had to withdraw at the last minute due to tendinitis, and they replaced it with a performance of beethoven's fifth piano concerto, which i hadn't seen yet. that all of a sudden became a priority when i noticed it; the whole thrust of the adventure is really centered around making sure i can get to the symphony at some point that weekend, with the friday morning show being identified as most tactical, due to there not being a great follow-up show on the saturday and there not being a sunday show at all. this let me get to the two things that were most interesting to me, sunsquabi & the concerto, in one long & epic trip, rather than piecing together two or three half-nights in order to stretch it out.
i still didn't really look into the african themed first part of the show, though - i decided that i'd just go and check it out. i had a vague expectation of something religiously themed, but i otherwise didn't really know what to expect.
they started the show off with a piece called lift every voice and sing, in which the expectation was that we would all know the words (i did not. sorry.) and that we would all stand together and sing it (i did neither. sorry). it seems as though this tune has some political significance in the black community. i just have this aversion to choir-singing for some reason; i don't like the group think, the unity of action, it gets into my skin and makes me squirm. it doesn't really matter what it is, if i'm instructed to stand and participate, i almost certainly won't.
the piece itself sounded like an orchestration of a gospel tune, which i gather is what it actually is.
i'm not sure if this is the exact arrangement, but i think it is.
this was followed by an arrangement of ave maria. is ave maria black? it seems somewhat farcical on first glance, but i take it that this particular arrangement must have been constructed by a black american. it's still a little bit of a curious pick.
these pieces were running into each other like a medley, or, i guess, like a haphazardly thrown together symphony; these were movements, and the third was....a meditation on the word 'hallelujah'. it has a very minimalist feel to it in the reich or glass sense, but i was almost cracking up, really.
they then went into two pieces by a black female composer called nkeiru okoye, the first of which is supposed to be a hopeful reaction to 9/11 but actually kind of comes off as a walt disney megahit, to me, which is perhaps just a topical reflection - if america were to produce a hopeful response to 9/11, it would have to be in the form of a disney film. you can and i might suggest should imagine heroines singing soliloquies into their mirror in the middle part, psyching themselves up for their task. the big band perhaps gives it a downtown manhatten feel, but it kind of just comes off sounding like 49th street massacre.
the second piece by this composer was apparently a world premiere of her piece black bottom, which is a sort of opera in several short movements about the northwards adjoining neighbourhood in detroit, which is also currently the party district. i didn't even try to follow this, but i generally have no interest in opera, so i was not a good test subject; to me, the piece seemed sort of disjointed and didn't flow well, but i'd probably say that about most opera. i think that the dso did have this at their youtube site previously, as it is in the google cache, but it appears to have been taken down; as it was the world premiere, this is probably the only extant recording, as of this time.
the fifth piano concerto started up after a short intermission, and at that point i became cognizant of the nature of the audience - it was black, but it was also very young and apparently in attendance due to some kind of function. it clapped between the movements of the concerto.
this was my write-up, a few days after the show:
so, we didn't do a preliminary review of beethoven's 5th piano concerto. the reason i didn't catch this earlier was that it was added at the last minute. the program was initially supposed to start with what the dso decided was specifically "black music" (and i'll have a bit to say about that when i do the review) and end with the same ravel piece i saw a few weeks ago, but the pianist had to drop due to tendinitis. so, they brought somebody else in at the last minute to do what is one of beethoven's most classic works.
i hope they didn't pick beethoven in order to buy into the urban legend that he was black. the arguments i've seen would lead to the conclusion that he might have maybe been distantly arabic - if you want to pull something out of his tonality, that's really what you pull out, and these reaching deductions about some paintings at most have him looking a little tanned, rather than black.it's supposedly due to the idea that his mother came from an area that was once under moorish control. in fact, the idea that the moors were black is itself just a eurocentric myth that should really be vigorously corrected across the literature; european art constantly depicted the moors as dark-skinned, and they of course were, but they were dark-skinned in the sense that an arab is, and not black like subsaharan africans. that is an anachronism that we've picked up fairly recently. so, shakespeare's contemporary audience would have actually known that othello was an arab. what the moors really did was create a neo-carthaginian state that was fundamentally semitic in every way, not african. but, i don't think anybody actually takes this idea seriously as it isn't based in any hard evidence, and i'll remind you that there is an urban legend that mozart was black, too. rather, this idea seems to get it's support from a strain of historical revisionism called "afrocentrism" that essentially argues that everybody was black - including historical figures like darius (iranian) and cleopatra (greek) that quite clearly were not. maybe, though, there were good reasons to pull the ravel from a concert about black music...beethoven was at least about liberty, equality and fraternity, even if his mother was actually polish and he was, actually, pretty much lily white.
this piece is perhaps beethoven at his most cliched, and you can kind of interpret that in a variety of ways. is it therefore beethoven at his peak? or does it get a little bit expected, in a sense? regardless, it's impossible to deny the sheer enjoyment of it, if you love the aspects of beethoven's work that he is still best known for all of these years later - the raucus piano parts, the sheer fucking with christian tonality and the nice, catchy melodies that he wraps all of that into. we get beethoven as barnstorming revolutionary, beethoven as purveyor of catchy tunes for the masses and beethoven as epic, brilliant troll all at once. it's hard to present an argument against such compactness. but, it is a little predictable in terms of following his own previously established form, for better or worse. if you ever get a chance to see this, jump at it. there's a magic to it. really. i'm glad i stayed up all night for it...
i was aware before i left that the weather might turn on friday night, but it was also supposed to hit a peak of niceness on friday afternoon before rapidly deteriorating. in fact, the wind was already starting to pick up when i got out of the orchestra hall around 13:00, enough that it was somewhat of a difficultly cold walk home.
i was finally back in before 15:00, a little less than 24 hours since i'd left, and this ritual did end properly with nachos, a shower and some good sleep.
