How’s your day going? That’s great, but did you get in your daily Aaron Carter karaoke today? Let’s fix that:
It’s like Backstreet Boys with a novelty Chipmunks-style speedup. Thanks, Lillie.
Posts Tagged ‘music’
Hey Girl, I’m Sad
Tuesday, February 9th, 2010LOOK AT THE FROSTING
Tuesday, January 26th, 2010NPR’s Radiolab is brilliant, but often nightmare-inducing. The audio editing is creative but excessive. As you listen you tend to wonder if someone slipped a hit of LSD in your coffee. Quirky production techniques seem to follow host Robert Krulwich around. Brave New World, a late 1990s miniseries on ABC, was an audio-visual feast, and probably the most fun I had with TV. What They Might Be Giants does for song, Krulwich does for science. Heck, they’re even best buds.
This week’s Radiolab, featured on NPR’s Morning Edition, was too much. I was in my car and halfway through the segment, I experienced a waking nightmare involving two miserly, satanic voices arguing over cake. Was it a soul-crushing hallucination, or just something from the radio? Does it matter? I’m dead inside now.
Don't You? Don't You?
Friday, January 2nd, 2009The first time I heard Carly Simon’s ‘You’re So Vain,’ I had a brain fart. This was bad, because it occured on Mopac at 70 mph. Luckily I survived, but the song’s refrain still caused a logic exception in my head every time I considered it:
You’re so vain
You probably think this song is about you
You’re so vain
I’ll bet you think this song is about you
Don’t you? Don’t you?
I even lost a little sleep thinking about it last night. The wording is odd, and combined with its vague context—Simon still refuses to say who her douchebag ex is—potentially disastrous. After a little analysis, I have reached the conclusion that Carly Simon has inhuman sluttish abilities. Work with me on this.
Until the song’s ‘you’ is defined, I am free to consider every person living in 1973 p capable of being the song’s target (set P). Naturally, I’m not saying she banged everyone on Earth in 1973. ((Probably close. Mom?)) To whittle down the size of P, apply the song logically to every potential p ∈ P. In other words, a Cinderella glass slipper-type scenario. What she is saying is ‘If your vanity is sufficiently large, you think this song is about you.’ ((I had to drop ‘probably,’ because that’s a matter of statistics: what percentage of vain people live in a self-obsessed fantasy world where Carly Simon wrote a song about them?)) Broken down even further, ‘For every p, if p‘s vanity v > some arbitrary constant k, then p ∈ P.’
It doesn’t take a mathematician to see that P is a very large set. As in, untold millions of people. Carly Simon is confessing over oldies radio that she made out with entire cities, states, regions. She is either a) a boasting hussy or b) not a logician. I’ll be nice and assume the latter, in which case I’ll help her out.
Her goof is surprisingly petty and easily corrected: cause and effect are swapped. This is why I noted the song’s wording is disastrous. With a simple rearrangement of phrases, all is well. Um, until you try to sing it.
If you think this song is about you
You’re so vain
If you think this song is about you
You’re so vain
Do you? Do you?
Instead of saying every vain person in 1973 thinks they have a song dedicated to them, the lyrics simply claim that every person in 1973 who thinks the song is about them is vain. That’s a fair statement, even applied to any other song. What would you say to a person that boasted that Nine Inch Nails had him in mind when they did ‘Closer’?
2008's Obnoxious Song Of The Year
Saturday, December 27th, 2008I’ve named an Obnoxious Song of the Year since the mid-90s. It all started when some god-awful country song (now lost to history—it starts with the words ‘alarm clock’) tugged at my ears every few days for a month. Unfortunately I never wrote this list down until last year. What’s worse, the implosion of the old blog last year took 2007′s award with it to the grave. So, we start fresh now.
Surprise! It’s Katy Perry’s ‘I Kissed A Girl.’ This song does the homosexuality movement no favours while still teasing the heterosexual males watching the music video. With the mute on. Because really, who’s watching for the words?
As an alternative, I recommend ‘I Kissed A Squirrel’:
Kenny G-Flat
Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008On my previous, now-deceased blog (peace be with it), I made my sentiments known about smooth jazz, the musical genre with a serious misnomer. When there are lyrics, they’re as shallow and repetitive as a third grader’s attempt at poetry. When there aren’t, the performers make no effort demonstrating what makes their music jazz.
The supreme example is Kenny G. Trashing Kenny G is preaching to the crowd in most ways, but despite that he is one of the most popular saxophonists alive. For years I blamed his godawful music on his instrument, the alto saxophone. One critic outlines precisely what is wrong with this man, and since reading it I have (snicker) changed my tune. His tone changes from calm and collected to foaming with rage (Kenny G’s ‘lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing’), but every point he makes is spot-on.
Anecdote time: in high school chemistry my class was taking an exam right before Christmas. The room was silent, the air thick with concentration, as exam periods are wont to be. Halfway through, our teacher ((This woman had a few screws loose, just in general. This dumb idea of hers is merely an example.)) piped up:
‘Would anyone like to listen to some music while they’re working?’
Unless her taste in music comprised Iron Maiden and Billy Ray Cyrus, it seemed like a harmless idea. We weakly mumbled in agreement. She marched over to the CD player, punched a button, and Kenny G came blaring out. Not just any Kenny G: Kenny G’s Christmas carol cover album.
Needless to say, I failed that exam.
Mikhael Gorbachov
Thursday, July 10th, 2008The only thing worse than metal music is Iron Curtain metal. It would take zombie killing and boobies to make me listen to that crap. Actually, a music video with both exists, and is aesthetically amazing to boot. The author’s stated mission of reproducing propoganda posters succeeds gloriously. Glorious…like the revolution.
(Yes, I’m aware my post’s title is not in line with Western spelling. That’s how the band spells it, that’s how I spell it. Suck borscht.)
OS X's Nervous Tics
Friday, June 20th, 2008There are no shortage of metronome apps available for the Mac. One app, Dr. Betotte, is so hardcore I wouldn’t know the difference between it and a dialysis machine.
Each and every single Mac metronome is missing an excellent opportunity through the Apple Remote. A musician’s instrument of choice and his Macintosh may be several metres apart, so implementing Apple Remote functionality would avoid constant running back and forth to
- start/stop
- change tempo
- change volume
I bring this up so any prospective developers looking to shove another clone into an oversaturated market (or, more likely, already-existing narcissistic clone developers googling their product) get the clue. Arguably I could write such a Cocoa app myself, but I never finished Metal Gear Solid 2, and I need to get on that first. Uh, yeah.
In fact, it’s not even as hard as Cocoa. Sofa Control is one of the few shareware apps I’ve ever registered, and it makes the process as easy as editing a flat file.
Alles Klar, Herr Kommissar?
Thursday, May 29th, 2008In 7th grade (1997) I sneaked into Frau Bouska’s classroom at the end of her German 1B class, the 8th grader class. The room was dark, and every face was glued to the TV set up front. A man was dancing in place and singing. It made sense in theory, but it was in German and had the production values of a scaled back cable access TV channel, so it made my brain hurt.
‘What is this?’ I asked The Frau. She refused to tell me; for the answer, she said, I’d ‘have to wait ’til next year.’ It was clearly too special for 7th graders to appreciate.
Fast forward to 1998. She popped the PAL-to-NTSB-converted cassette in the VCR, and the secret was unwrapped. We were watching Falco music videos. To the unfamiliar, you probably know Falco best as the singer of ‘Rock Me Amadeus.’ To the girls, Falco was swoon-worthy and extremely sexy in his Miami Vice-style garb. To me, he became my favourite 1980s icon and one of mainland Europe’s finest pop musicians. As we watched the TV, everyone in the room agreed: we were watching a treasure.
‘Der Kommissar’ (imported to America by After The Fire) featured a music video so primitive, it wasn’t just filmed at the birth of the music video boom, it was music video’s premature baby, the result of snorting too many cocaine lines in discotheque bathrooms. It was a flagrant abuse of green screen technology. And for that, it was brilliant.
Today I compliment Frau Bouska for her decision to hold these videos only for advanced ages. Falco videos are fine wines intended to be aged. For a chaser, here’s the video to Rock Me Amadeus, which actually has production quality to it, likely because it had three more years of experience and development behind it than ‘Der Kommissar’:
Forever Forever Forever Forever: CWRU's Ridiculous Alma Mater
Monday, May 26th, 2008It’s been a little over a year since I graduated from Case Western Reserve University (May 20th, 2007). My commencement was god-awful, with laughter in all the wrong places. The commencement speaker Richard Lederer ((Who? Yeah, that’s the question I asked.)), a man who makes a living cracking jokes about motherfuckin’ grammar, failed to score points with most of the crowd. Grammar can be funny, but he talked about his professional poker-playing kids ((Both their Wikipedia articles are longer than his; the latter is three times so.)) more than his livelihood, so I had all the reasons I needed to take a nap for 20 minutes.
All the laughter was pent up in preparation for Case Western’s alma mater song. A tune that should inspire pride and honour in alumni instead made me struggle to keep from snickering. It was written in 1990, even though CWRU was founded in 1826.
Shine on, forever, Case Western Reserve.
Loyal and true are we (are we).
Your brave sons and daughters,
Your knowledge we use to make our history.Our school days we will cherish forever more,
A lifetime of friends from the start (the start).
Shine on, forever, Case Western Reserve.
You’ll be forever in our hearts.
Let me outline a few rules for any future anthem writers that may be reading:
- Don’t make your school song so generic that the college’s name can be swapped out with another and have it still make sense.
- Don’t use the same noun word (pronouns excluded) more than twice. Count the number of times forever is used above. Thanks to Warren for pointing out that, in fact, forever is not a noun.
- CWRU’s song could have been produced by a computer algorithm told to give weight to a short list of sentimentalist buzzwords. If your school song passes the Turing Test, you’re doing it wrong.
- Creativity is rewarded, which is why ‘The Eyes of Texas’ is one of the most famous alma maters of all time to the point it is considered an unofficial state song. Phrases like ‘make our history’ are clearly plagiarised from Party of Five screenplays.
Boo-Urns
Sunday, May 18th, 2008Orchestral music has become a historical artifact. People come up in their finest attire to observe silently from a distance as if the men and women were in a glass box. At some point we started experiencing obligation to appreciate what we see and hear in artistic performances. Anything less would produce hurt feelings—heaven forbid!
Concert-goers didn’t used to be this way. Emotional reaction from audiences were commonplace to the point that composers feared their reactions. Stravinsky’s 1913 première of The Rite of Spring resulted in public, violent rioting. More importantly, music was not a presentation piece; it was a way to socialise, see, and be seen. Prior to the 20th century, it was encouraged to converse, stand up, and walk around during an opera. Today, chatting to the guy next to you during live classical music is akin to pulling down an Elgin Marble and taking a poo on it.
Orchestras have much to learn from the customs of this generation and, surprisingly, many preceding it. I don’t go to rock concerts because of the music—I have the MP3s and good speakers to boot. Instead, I go to concerts to move and live with the crowd. Meanwhile, sitting in a dark concert hall is uncomfortable and awkward. Yes, the music’s pretty—it doesn’t stop my eyes from wandering, desperately seeking amusement. I don’t advocate laser light shows to accompany Mahler’s 5th Symphony. (I bet Gus would approve if it were suggested.) The act of concertgoing would benefit from deformalisation. The sooner orchestras stop being wrapped up in how sacred their work is, the more effectively we can heal the rift between contemporary genres and classical music.
Deformalisation would break down the sense of obligation as well. Patrons visit concert halls to appreciate music, and it would take sheer musical butchery to leave the goal unfulfilled. Changing attitudes to accomodate pursuing amusement instead of appreciation carries a bonus: if a patron comes to be amused and is not indulged, his time and money is being wasted. If Michael Richards can’t get away with disregarding his audience, why should your favourite local orchestra? Booing and showing displeasure towards repulsive contemporary music is the only way for a crowd to communicate its sentiments of the moment. You can’t write a letter from the mezzanine, and even the laziest slob with some musical sense has a say.
In hindsight, my reforms produce an amusing double-edged sword of theatre-going. On one hand, I insist people should go to have fun and listen casually. On the other hand, consider the responsibility of booing down bad music, preventing it from reaching future music appreciation classes in which it shouldn’t belong. If the partition bothers you, throwing chairs always speaks louder than words!