oh my soggy brain! today was the first day of classes and i now have 3.5 hours of 'intro to western music' under my very snazzy belt.
of things i had and hadn't heard:
Webern's Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op.10 (1913), which condenses all the quasi-orientalism, taut anxiety, and offchance sublime of 12 tone as bite-sized confections
smoke gets in yr eyes: something about internal rhyme just sets me to thinking about stephen merritt. i know i am reversing cause and effect.
the sound of goats fucking: played in opposition to Verese's monumental Poem electronique...when asked how the two sounds compared, they said things like "I didn't know two totally different sounds could both be terrible" which proves that intellectualism and free thinking is alive and well at Brown.
1.29.2004
Hey, here's the call for the new issue of front row center + the last issue...Man, you should write for it...:
It's called Front Row Center. It's a hot new zine that's half as wide as a maga-, three times more matte than Sassy and infinitely cheaper. Get on the rickety ship and write for it!
The concept is this: write about music from the first person, experientially, as a fan, as a hater, as someone listening not just at a desk, in front of a computer and because you have to, but because it's actually part of your world.
The form: a small, easy to publish zine made and distributed by me for free - all contributors get copies for themselves and others, and I leave them wherever I may roam. Email me for copies to take to your local friendly record store/bookstore/coffee shop/vegan co-op/pirate cove.
The writing: I'd like to make each issue of FRC an ongoing project, meaning that you can contribute to any and every issue whenever you'd like. If everyone keeps their word counts to around 300, I can just lay out another set of pages. Voila! The zine continues to grow and stay in print. With this neophyte world, however, I hope that you will consider writing for the upcoming issue first.
So: 300 words (plus nom de plume and mailing addy) emailed to pinkgerl@yahoo.com on these topics:
2) Due date 2/14/04 ish…Songs so good/wonderful/inspiring/miserable/etc that you can't listen to them anymore. A song, an artist, a recording, anything musical that has moved you in such a way that it's hard to drop the needle down.
1) already in print/additions…Sympathy for the Devil: the song, the film, the era.
That's the deal. I'm hoping that FRC makes a little community for itself by being somewhere that everyone can just write without thinking about the commercial audience…that all of the formal post-college work world drama can dissolve on backwater pages and just have a friendly chat.
It's called Front Row Center. It's a hot new zine that's half as wide as a maga-, three times more matte than Sassy and infinitely cheaper. Get on the rickety ship and write for it!
The concept is this: write about music from the first person, experientially, as a fan, as a hater, as someone listening not just at a desk, in front of a computer and because you have to, but because it's actually part of your world.
The form: a small, easy to publish zine made and distributed by me for free - all contributors get copies for themselves and others, and I leave them wherever I may roam. Email me for copies to take to your local friendly record store/bookstore/coffee shop/vegan co-op/pirate cove.
The writing: I'd like to make each issue of FRC an ongoing project, meaning that you can contribute to any and every issue whenever you'd like. If everyone keeps their word counts to around 300, I can just lay out another set of pages. Voila! The zine continues to grow and stay in print. With this neophyte world, however, I hope that you will consider writing for the upcoming issue first.
So: 300 words (plus nom de plume and mailing addy) emailed to pinkgerl@yahoo.com on these topics:
2) Due date 2/14/04 ish…Songs so good/wonderful/inspiring/miserable/etc that you can't listen to them anymore. A song, an artist, a recording, anything musical that has moved you in such a way that it's hard to drop the needle down.
1) already in print/additions…Sympathy for the Devil: the song, the film, the era.
That's the deal. I'm hoping that FRC makes a little community for itself by being somewhere that everyone can just write without thinking about the commercial audience…that all of the formal post-college work world drama can dissolve on backwater pages and just have a friendly chat.
1.23.2004
re: lifestyle politics... i forgot abt the system of a down non-prof until i read this interview with Tom Morello where he challenges Fugazi to a punk foot race.
i am fully in the bing crosby wasteland, from 'swing low sweet chariot' to duets with louis a. (gone fishin') to animatronic xmas tunes, it's like i'm waiting for my gi to walk through the frong door every moment. i can't get enough of these weird songs where he and his duet partner just talk shit to each other over trodding orchestra. fully pre-war pc white man skit, mixed with odes to the shoe shine boy who will 'make your shoes walk in rythmn.'
anyway, i'm convinced that bing crosby is the justin timberlake of the depression. i have to figure this all out for sound collector, which i've decided is the best self-indulgent wonderfully useless printer of music criticism i've read in a while. just cause, just cause i always want to BUY everything they talk about, just to argue with them sometimes. this fully acknowledges my white, bs east coast college elitist rockist fetish, but when i want to give in to that part of me, sound collector is my porn of choice.
in other news: tomorrow i'm headed to nyc to work on a web piece on the wildwood harley show and tonight i spent an hour listen to my location recordings from the show. nothing like having 100 roaring motorcycles pour from your computer speakers in the -2 nuclear winter. in another life, i'd be a low-brow sun city girl. oh wait, i'm a post-modern ethnomusicology student, duh. i guess i just need to make more recordings!
i am fully in the bing crosby wasteland, from 'swing low sweet chariot' to duets with louis a. (gone fishin') to animatronic xmas tunes, it's like i'm waiting for my gi to walk through the frong door every moment. i can't get enough of these weird songs where he and his duet partner just talk shit to each other over trodding orchestra. fully pre-war pc white man skit, mixed with odes to the shoe shine boy who will 'make your shoes walk in rythmn.'
anyway, i'm convinced that bing crosby is the justin timberlake of the depression. i have to figure this all out for sound collector, which i've decided is the best self-indulgent wonderfully useless printer of music criticism i've read in a while. just cause, just cause i always want to BUY everything they talk about, just to argue with them sometimes. this fully acknowledges my white, bs east coast college elitist rockist fetish, but when i want to give in to that part of me, sound collector is my porn of choice.
in other news: tomorrow i'm headed to nyc to work on a web piece on the wildwood harley show and tonight i spent an hour listen to my location recordings from the show. nothing like having 100 roaring motorcycles pour from your computer speakers in the -2 nuclear winter. in another life, i'd be a low-brow sun city girl. oh wait, i'm a post-modern ethnomusicology student, duh. i guess i just need to make more recordings!
1.21.2004
hey, the new tortoise is really good, if you still care. it's got this weird spinning plate thing going on, melodies just hover and the drums are much less chicago/cliche than one might expect from mcentire. the whole thing seems tastefully epic, a bit new agey but also there's this killer guitar solo somewhere in the middle of the CD that sat me up in my bed last night. nice.
also nice - my paper got accepted at EMP. back to seattle! did i mention that i had a nightmare that i went to the opening cocktail party and it was full of pitchfork writers? imagine a worse fate than three days of papers on mr. lif and death cab? eeiiiwww.
IN OTHER NEWS - how bout that speech last night, huh? i was thrilled when some brave souls (evacuated via the dropping chair like in MTV's long lost remote control) clapped when bush mentions 'this year, parts of the homeland security act will expire,' tee hee, clapping as protest.
meanwhile, my roommate bought up www.ashleypearson.com for our general pleasure and Ohio (hi in the middle) has decided that bush's QUEERBASHING comments would be an excellent entrance for their anti-gay marriage proposition. on the intro to media studies tip - it's so frustrating that the whole thing is framed around 'sanctity of male and female' marriage as if the two were mutually exclusive. it's almost as annoying as saying 'pro life' instead of 'anti-choice.' language is power.
also nice - my paper got accepted at EMP. back to seattle! did i mention that i had a nightmare that i went to the opening cocktail party and it was full of pitchfork writers? imagine a worse fate than three days of papers on mr. lif and death cab? eeiiiwww.
IN OTHER NEWS - how bout that speech last night, huh? i was thrilled when some brave souls (evacuated via the dropping chair like in MTV's long lost remote control) clapped when bush mentions 'this year, parts of the homeland security act will expire,' tee hee, clapping as protest.
meanwhile, my roommate bought up www.ashleypearson.com for our general pleasure and Ohio (hi in the middle) has decided that bush's QUEERBASHING comments would be an excellent entrance for their anti-gay marriage proposition. on the intro to media studies tip - it's so frustrating that the whole thing is framed around 'sanctity of male and female' marriage as if the two were mutually exclusive. it's almost as annoying as saying 'pro life' instead of 'anti-choice.' language is power.
1.18.2004
on the "ya, so what" front is a good idea, lackluster conclusion by the ever-fab Kelefa. he writes about bad singing in hip hop as if amatuer vocals were something new to pop music. the observation is apt - a lot of hip hop is being made with totally offkey choruses, but i'm of the opinion that this might be bc hip hop has radically shifted gears to cross over to more r n' b texture/beats and radioslick choruses, thus rappers have to sing more than they did in the past. example: nelly would be nothing if not for his weird little melodic transitions over crunky keys. i blame it all on pharell and yes, as k points out, kayne west.
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