The rhythmic phrasing and vocal performance by Cash in "Big River" is remarkable; its energy and drive replaces any need for drums or percussion. Cash's own guitar strumming riff was quite memorable as well. He strummed up the neck with a dynamic crescendo.
Now, won't you batter down by Baton Rouge, River Queen, roll it on. Take that woman on down to New Orleans, New Orleans. Go on, I've had enough; dump my blues down in the gulf. She loves you, Big River, more than me.
Mark O'Connor's Americana Symphony conducted by Marin Alsop on lala:
I like this eery music but found David Cronenberg's film of Crash disturbing, including the notion of recreating James Dean's fatal accident as part of the plot. That scene is not on YouTube but there is another short documentary with a recreation.
For the record, I have visited the Dean gravesite in Fairmount, Indiana as well driven the road in California where the actor was killed.
The local eighty-seven-year-old points out two members of jazz trumpeter Chuck Mangione's band were killed in this week's New York plane crash. The Buffalo News in reporting the passengers:
...two musicians who played with Chuck Mangione’s jazz band, Coleman
Mellett and Gerry Niewood, who were going to star in a jazz concert
Friday night at Kleinhans Music Hall.
Mangione's band was to play a concert with the Buffalo Philharmonic benefiting the Food Bank of WNY and Buffalo City Mission.
In a statement to The Associated Press, Mangione said: "I'm in shock over the horrible, heartbreaking tragedy."
Syracuse bassist Tom Brigandi was a member of Mangione's band alongside Niewood for four years, in the last 1990s.
"Gerry, he was the greatest. He played everything," said the audibly
shaken Brigandi, who hadn't heard the news until my phone call.
"Gerry's been at my house (in Syracuse) for dinner every time we were
though town. I was at his house in New Jersey.
"It's hard for me to even talk about it," Brigandi said, taking a
moment to collect his thoughts. "He went with the flow. He was a
laidback cat, to have a glass of wine with you and hang out. He used to
teach me stuff about music. He was a great guy."
The piece is five minutes long and calls itself Internet Symphony 'Eroica'. So, it's no surprise that the music is bargain basement film music. Its spiritual ancestor is Mr. Holland's 'Opus'.
There’s nothing better than to hear new sounds with new ideas in new
music; new sounds=new ideas and originality in the realm of indie
music. What we have here is some psychiatric-themed, noise-machine
artwork that, without singing and with what the uninitiated may hear as
just plain noise is an experiment in, for one thing, tolerance;
tolerance of the ears, of the brain and the psyche. Well, that’s the
gist of the new CD by Phog Masheen, which is basically the project of
Mark Soden, Jr., the “mastermind” who wrote it all and recorded it up
in the best place on earth – the Bay Area – San Francisco, to be exact;
at Gench Studios in the city.
It's not clear to me this should be considered classical music even by my permissive standards, but the machine gun intensity is delightful. Others would say it is a trumpet-derived barrage of formless noise but they would be wrong. And the composer mentions Jules Verne. MP3 here.
Ignoring the political implications, this year's presidential battles have also had the benefit of dragging me into the twenty-first century. Or to phrase it differently, I'm now ok with the fact that not just one, but two of the four candidates in our national election are younger than me.
Well, mostly ok. Back during the California primary, I had significant angst (and hopefully I didn't blog for the permanent record about why I voted for the candidate I actually voted for. And this is despite the local spouse donating to Obama early in 2007, let alone 2008).
To be honest, as my mind absorbs the meaning of this political and economic year, I'm revisiting 1981 and wondering what I would have done differently in my life then, given what I know now.
Financially, I do remember at the time being too scared to own one of those new-fangled money market funds. So I felt the need for a year or two to invest in one that only owned government securities. In particular, I recollect writing a letter (on my electric typewriter that I had recently received as a graduation gift) asking about the details of such fund. Hmm, 27 years later, that doesn't seem as cowardly as I remember.
Ok, back to present life, although I read and write blogs, I have to say I didn't get the significance of Caleb Burhans in the blogosphere this weekend. Fortunately, Life's a Pitch crisply summarizes what happened to the composer:
"I was in The New York Times, and all I got was these lousy 58 plays."
This is a reference to the other breaking story about how MySpace is now streaming tracks from (most) major record labels. For the record, I found MySpace's combination of a difficult interface coupled with obnoxious McDonald's ads a deterrent to using their new streaming features. Previously, I found lala.com a much better streaming service and last.fm's latest isn't bad either. But since I never particularly "got" the original MySpace (or FaceBook for that matter although I gave it another try tonight), the difficult conclusion is that I'm on the McCain/Biden side of this social technology argument. Yikes. Blogging may be sparse as I brood about that one.
All of which is a preamble to mentioning the only track I have of Caleb Burhans, his piece Amidst Neptune, played by Alarm Will Sound in the Steve Reich birthday tribute.
From the streamcast narration before the track, Caleb was born in Monterey (in California!) and his father was a rock musician (played with Kenny Rogers!). And the track is good, by the way, in a low-key, non-adversarial way.
This in turn makes me wonder how our younger generations can tolerate the tenor of political discourse about culture wars they've probably heard for their entire life. Whereas in my first years of life, I apparently saw both John Kennedy and Barry Goldwater campaigning in person in Michigan and no one has yet to suggest it would have been unusual to have reason to see both. Whereas, both Ms. Palin and Mr. Obama have had fund raisers this year on the Peninsula and presumably the intersection of their audiences was nil.
So, as one who came of age in between modernism and post-modernism but is still grappling with both, it's not clear I have the intellectual framework to cope with all this. This may be why boomers don't have the artistic success compared to other generations.
And did I mention MySpace and Fox News are owned by the same company?
full disclosure
in the nineties, i worked for a company that bought a company down the block from the mcdonald's world headquarters in suburban chicago. that company also bought the one and only high tech company in salzburg, austria which is how i ended up finally visiting mozart's birthplace. i presume mr. burhans was not also born at home, in monterey, although that's a nice town as well
in the first presidential election in which i was eligible to vote, i had good reason to cast my ballot for the independent candidate rather than for either major party. that reason is somewhat hazy all these years later although since my vote was moot since at the time it was in indiana.
that caleb burhans mp3 was obtained legally from a temporary download via the whitney museum. i have never illegally downloaded music, well, except for that doobie brothers track i grabbed via napster last decade after i realized no interesting john adams music was available. one suspects this is not our biggest issue anymore...
And slam bam I'm feelin' alright
Troubles take a hike in the blink of an eye
Don't need to psychoanalyze or have a stiff drink
All she's gotta do is just give me that wink
Hmm, I feel better already although possibly for ironic reasons...
Image via WikipediaI'm surprised and sad about the paint-over of the gigantic Sol LeWittacrylic works at SFMOMA, although in hindsight, its non-permanence is logical. via Disquiet and sfgate.
The seven figures are in a certificate of sole right to reproduce. This is what the museum owns, and it can have "Wall Drawings #935" and "#936" repainted at any time anywhere in any size, so long as it is to scale, and the artist's written instructions are followed.
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