Category Archives: music

last.fm, music, picnic

Music and Picnic and Miscellanea

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I’m listening to some Tina Turner on last.fm and thinking how melancholy this particular version of the song Tonight seems. Somewhere around here I have a concert tape with a version that is completely different. The concert version is completely up beat and builds to a peak of elation; the version from the album could be played at a funeral without raising eyebrows. It is amazing how different two different performances of the same piece of music can be. And even more amazing is the fact we still recognize the piece and the artist. Here is the concert version with Bowie:

Speaking of good music, I just got completely distracted as The Animals version of The House of the Rising Sun played. That song is one of my favorite heavy ballads. But I suspect that those of you that knew of my Iron Butterfly and Led Zeppelin addictions might have guessed that. {*grin*} As a clue to how old I am, I can remember listening to that song on the AM radio in junior high school. A song about a house of ill repute and all the bad that can happen there sandwiched between daily reports of the death toll in the Vietnam war – made for really interesting times. (And it was followed on last.fm by Janis Joplin doing amazing things with her voice singing Down On Me with Big Brother and the Holding Company. Totally good stuff!)

In any case, this weekend was the city employee picnic. It is one of two all-hands events that the city sponsors so that the staff and personnel and elected officials can bond a bit. The other is a more formal sit down dinner; this is a family affair with kids invited and held in the park across from the city water park so that the whole family can swim and recreate. For the less energetic, we play bingo for lottery tickets from 5 to 6 and then serve the food at 6. After the meal, we draw employee names from a hat for various raffle prizes.

So here are some annotated pics from yesterdays event. First off is a council member caught calling a game of bingo just before the ball roller broke and before the eats:

 
(Click on the pictures to  enlarge enough to read.)
Another view of the crowd getting ready to stampede for the food:
 
Here’s one with the Chief of Police (otherwise know as the master of ceremonies for the picnic) calling a raffle name with the city water park in the distance.

Last but not least is the master of ceremonies raffling off the swag after everyone got stuffed on ham and chicken and meatballs and salads and fruit and bread and cake and ice cream and chocolate. It’s a wonder anyone was still able to move at this point.

That was how I spent Sunday afternoon/evening. You’ll notice I politely refrained from getting pictures of the carnage as we ate. {*grin*} The only bad thing was that there was something blowing in the air last night and so today I could barely see for most of the day as my eyes kept watering. Oh well, they’ll be fine by tomorrow.

P.S. Mom won the battle and accompanied me to the picnic; too bad MIL! If you know what to look for, you can spot her back in one of the pictures.

P.P.S Little Ms Blogger gave me an award, I’ll show it off tomorrow.

music

The Power Of Music

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Have you ever been gobsmacked by the emotional power of music? By that I mean that the music that is the soundtrack of your life is somehow imbued with the power to evoke the emotional feel of the events that were happening when the music was playing. Confused enough yet? I suppose a more succinct way of expressing my thought is that music has the power to act as the trigger to recall emotions and feelings with a fidelity that normal reminiscence lacks. And those trips down memory and mood lane can be quite vivid and rewarding.

Tonight I have been listening to the music from my “neighborhood” in last.fm. By virtue of whatever algorithm last.fm uses to associate my musical tastes with a neighborhood, I get to rediscover a lot of music that was a big part of the soundtrack of my life at various stages. The interesting part is that the music is not necessarily what I would choose on my own. I am pretty much a creature of my formative years with some later influences. Thus my normal selections might have a lot of Jefferson Airplane/Starship, Led Zeppelin, The Grateful Dead, Iron Butterfly, Cream, Eric Clapton, etc. But at the same time, artists like Norman Greenbaum (Spirit in the Sky) and The Everly Brothers (Dream) and … all are capable of pulling up memories and events. Without something like my last.fm neighborhood, I might not hear them for years.

Via the power of the neighborhood, I listened to Tommy James and the Shondells (Crimson and Clover), The McCoys (Hang On Sloopy), Big Brother and the Holding Company (with Janis Joplin doing insane things with her voice), Vanilla Fudge (You Keep Me Hanging On), and even some {*gasp*} Archies (Sugar, Sugar). Each and every song brought forth a stream of events and feelings and emotions that at times was overpowering and yet rewarding and comforting.

So as I head back into the emotional cloud of my neighborhood, I’ll leave you with the questions:

  • Do you get the same trigger effect from the music in your life’s soundtrack?
  • What is some of your trigger music?

A parting gift of the map of musical island interrelatedness for your perusal from last.fm – if you click it it will take you to their playground and some references as to how it was built.

music, writer's challenge

When Is It OK ….

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This week Mama Kat asked the question, “When is it OK not to listen to the words?” The problem I have with this particular Writer’s Challenge is that, to me, it is almost always OK not to listen to the words. Music is meant to drive the primeval soul, to reach the core of our being at a deep level, not to be absorbed intellectually like a debate. (OK, OK, bad example, but you know what I mean!) So the real question becomes: which of the many songs that I love do I want to shred for their poor use of lyrical poetry and other such arcana? I decided to compare two of my anthems from a misspent youth, since one has lame lyrics and the other has lyrics worthy of a master poet.

The first song in this deconstruction is one of my favorites from the psychedelic 60’s, In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida by Iron Butterfly. This was my anthem in the late sixties and early seventies. Even today, it is not an uncommoon occurance to find me listening to the 17+ minute original version of the song. But the lyrics? Well … it is with a deep sense of guilt and quasi-shame that I admit to loving a song that runs for 17+ minutes with these lyrics:

In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, honey,
don’t you know that I love you?
In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida, baby,
don’t you know that I’ll always be true?


Oh, won’t you come with me
and take my hand?


Oh, won’t you come with me
and walk this land?


Please take my hand!


-Repeat-


~solos~


-Repeat-

So there you have it, a song that it is eminently OK to not listen to the lyrics in any detail. It is hard to explain how moving and powerful this song is to me, how evocative of a certain mood and time, and then have to present those rather pointlessly pitiful lyrics.

Lest you think it is purely a by-product of the era that the lyrics to In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida are so lame but the overall effect is so moving and downright good, let me present a song in which one should not only listen to the lyrics but study them: Stairway To Heaven by Led Zeppelin.This song is another anthem of mine from roughly the same time period, in roughly the same style of music, but the lyrics are true poetry and carry meaning well beyond any musical association. Thus I give you Stairway To Heaven by Led Zeppelin:

There’s a lady who’s sure all that glitters is gold
And she’s buying a stairway to heaven
When she gets there she knows, if the stores are all closed
With a word she can get what she came for
Ooh, ooh, and she’s buying a stairway to heaven


There’s a sign on the wall but she wants to be sure
‘Cause you know sometimes words have two meanings
In a tree by the brook, there’s a songbird who sings
Sometimes all of our thoughts are misgiven
Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, it makes me wonder


There’s a feeling I get when I look to the west
And my spirit is crying for leaving
In my thoughts I have seen rings of smoke through the trees
And the voices of those who stand looking
and it makes me wonder
really makes me wonder


And it’s whispered that soon if we all call the tune
Then the piper will lead us to reason
And a new day will dawn for those who stand long
And the forest will echo with laughter


***


If there’s a bustle in your hedgerow, don’t be alarmed now,
It’s just a spring clean for the May Queen
Yes, there are two paths you can go by, but in the long run
There’s still time to change the road you’re on
Ooh, it makes me wonder
Ooh, Ooh, it makes me wonder


Your head is humming and it won’t go, in case you don’t know
The piper’s calling you to join him
Dear lady, can’t you hear the wind blow, and did you know
Your stairway lies on the whispering wind


***


And as we wind on down the road
Our shadows taller than our soul
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold
And if you listen very hard
The tune will come to you at last
When all is one and one is all, yeah
To be a rock and not to roll.


And she’s buying the stairway to heaven

To my analytical mind, it makes no sense that two such powerful anthems that speak to the listener so deeply and personally can be so radically different in lyrical content. In my college years, it was not an uncommon occurrance to hear these two songs played one after the other. There was no sense of cognitive dissonance or unease – they both seemed perfect and fit in well with each other. But if I were to present just the two sets of lyrics, you’d think the one was written by a master poet and the other by a rushed schoolboy. Couple the lyrics with the music and they can suddenly stand proudly, side by side.

So what is in your guilty trove of songs where it is OK not to listen to the words? Do you have favorites, like me, that are lyrical diametric opposites? What are they?

altitude, Boy scouts, music, weather

Spring Hath Sprung

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(I am trying an experiment here. I’ve included the music playing as I compose this opus between brackets for your perusal. Interesting? Or not?)

 
You know how it is. In the spring a young (and not so young) man’s fancy turns to the great outdoors. (Get your mind out of the gutter – I wasn’t going there at all! {*grin*}) On the basis of my experience today, it is definite that Spring with a capital S has arrived. The moisture from the rain and blizzards of the last few weeks coupled with the near 80 degree sunny days of recent times has caused green to break out. The grass has started to grow and turn green, the weeds are rioting, with the dandelions adding a splash of color in the front yard. Even the trees are starting to put forth some leaf buds.


It was so nice out today  that I decided to make a big walking circuit of my errands this afternoon. I walked cross town to a bank to make the monthly deposit for the Boy Scout troop (the committee meeting was last night). After that I walked to another bank to sign a form and pick up some papers for L and myself, then walked across town to the credit union to pick up some papers for Mom. It was a wonderful 80 degrees with crystal clear azure skies and just enough of a breeze to keep it from becoming too hot in the sun. The sun here can be very intense when the sky is cloudless. Even though we are in the flat lowlands of Colorado here, we are still at an elevation that qualifies for the high altitude baking directions. {*grin*} Thus higher UV levels than lubbers from down around sea level are used to.


My freewheeling mind has forgotten what I was going to originally write about, so I’l just have to make do with what the last paragraph suggests. I was interruted by the phone and then the dog and then …


First topic, the Boy Scout troop. This town was founded in the late 1800’s and the Boy Scout troop that I am on the committee for (and serve as treasurer of) was founded in the early 1920’s. It has been continuously chartered and operational since that time with the exception of a three year span in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s. It is the troop I was a scout in during my youth. The people on the committee with me include several of the scouts I was a scout with. I often feel a bit left out in that crowd since I am the odd man out – I am the only one of the group who did not attain the penultimate rank of Eagle Scout. I opted to leave and go to a science institute at a nearby university and so stopped just short of completing my Eagle. It is also the troop that the Son followed a similar path through. Three of us who were scouts together in the 60’s and who now serve on the committee also all had sons in the troop at the same time. That sense of continuity and community is so rare any more. So what kind of organizations are you a part of with that kind of generational continuity?


Second topic, altitude (and cooking). Although we are at a paltry 3,935 feet here, the place in the mountains where L and the Son are is at roughly 9,200 feet. So down here there are only some moderate altitude effects on cooking, whereas up there the effects can be radical at times. Most of the effects are related to the boiling point of water and how it decreases with altitude and air pressure (lower air pressure -> lower boiling points) The relationship is non-linear and can be approximated by a quintic equation. Since I am aware that some of you are math phobic, I’ll protect your fine sensibilities. {*grin*} The pertinent data are are approximated by these boiling points of water at various altitudes:

  • 212 degrees F    Sea level
  • 205 degrees F    4000 feet
  • 194 degrees F    9200 feet

You can see that there is a sizeable effect at altitude. Anything that counts on the boiling point of water for thermoregulation is not going to work well at altitude. In fact there are some foods that it becomes impossible to adequately cook by boiling alone. Even if you can, the cook times are much  longer due to the lower maximum temperature reached as the water boils off. Do you do much cooking at altitude? Got any good tips or hints to share?



I once more got distracted, but I was essentially done anyway. (I cannot hear Layla without thinking of and missing L, so by the time my mind returns to reality, the chain of reasoning is long gone. {*grin*}) How do you like the inline music tags. Are they helpful in following my shifts of mood and thought?

film, music, writting

Good Friday

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The title is completely misleading … this post has absolutely nothing to do with the celebration of Easter. Instead, as I was listening to music this evening (primarily some old Clapton, Cream, and Animals) from my misspent youth, I was struck by the evocative power that music has for my generation.

The point I’ve been pondering as a result of being so struck is this: I’m not sure that the same evocative power of music is present in later generations when the onslaught of video changed the listening and thinking habits of the generation. It seems that the IPod generation both gained more immediate access to their music of choice and at the same time are less driven by the music due to the prevalence of video in their lives. I think I’d like to claim that there is an analogy to reading as well. So what am I babbling about?

Consider that when one reads a book, one is tasked by the author to use their imagination to create the detailed and vivid mental picture of the scenes and actions described in broad stroke by the author. Contrast that to seeing a movie. There the film maker has taken the imagination called for by the author of the original book or play and replaced it by *his* vision of what the author was writing about.  Watching a movie is in many senses an imaginative void for precisely that reason. Those of us who read a lot often find film deeply unsatisfying simply because we have a different or better or more vivid imagination than the film maker is capable of expressing. My claim would be that the loss of exercise of the imagination “muscle” as it were by watching video based works leads to atrophy and a certain lack of ability to imagine in the depth and vivacity common to those who read or listen to music. In music the difference is that the songwriter/performer is like the author using aural phrasing rather than words. The net result is similar – we build a vivid picture in our mind and then tie the imagery to emotions that we are experiencing.

So what do you think? Has the move to more video entertainment and less written and musical entertainment led to atrophy of the imagination muscle? Does the IPod generation get less from the music and perhaps more from the video than prior generations? I know the answer in my case, but I am admittedly an outlier and a bit insane. I really want to know what you think.