Tile

There is, like, nine tons of tile in the garage. Not yet including the laminate. Sigh. Yes, laminate. New floor time.

Idiots

You've probably seen the YouTube video on the news with the toddler cock fight. (YouTube has pulled the video but news sites are still playing it.) I see many people are fussing that YouTube allows such things to be posted. I say, let them. If idiots post this stuff and get caught, it's a good thing, like in this case. If this vid had not been posted, this guy might still be getting away with this behavior. Hopefully, it will get some help for those families. It does remind me of the questions on job applications that ask if you take drugs. You wonder what kind of idiot would actually respond 'yes' but they do...and well, there you go.

A Wall of Sound

That's what it felt like.

Ok, the best way I can describe what I saw last night is by analogy with visual art. You know the old saying, “I may not know anything about art but I know what I like”? And when you go to the museum and people look at the Renaissance paintings and say, “Nice” and look at the Baroque paintings and say, “Pretty” and look at the Modern art, with its color splashes and broken glass and say, “That’s not art, my seven year old could do that”? Art moved from the realistic representation of life and became more deconstructed, experimental in its media, more a statement of the artist about himself or about society. Maybe this was more music for musicians. Not being one, I dunno. I have zero musical training and no ear. Overall, it was loud, dissonant, deconstructed and very different. I enjoyed it. But I can’t say I liked it.

Let me begin at the beginning. After the initial Branca piece, the symphony orchestra played a Frank Zappa selection, which I liked, followed by a Varèse piece which made me feel like I was listening to a Sci-Fi Gilligan’s Island soundtrack. I can see why Varèse’s music was included in the program last night. SLSO music director David Robertson commented that Zappa really liked Varèse but it seems now that Branca takes Varèse ten steps beyond.

I took my earplugs. One hundred guitars, electric guitars. At the Pageant. Not the Symphony Hall. No way it could NOT be loud. The show opened with the St. Louis Symphony. Nice. After the first part of the program, the conductor picked up his guitar and had a seat to join the musicians while the guest conductor came on. The first movement started out slow and progressively built throughout the piece to a crashing end. The first, second and fourth parts each had some interesting parts to it, undertones and interesting chords. The third was just loud. I couldn’t hear what was underneath, if there was anything. Most classical style music we listen to is thematic. The theme is usually a pretty simple melody and pulls the composition together, especially for non-musical people like me. Branca’s had no theme. It was an experiment in chords and sounds. Much like I have a difficult time listening to Asian music, atonal and dissonant styles are unusual and hard for me to process. It isn’t traditional Western music.

I don’t know if there are many composers out there trying to write music for contemporary instruments, but I suppose it’s only natural that someone try to create something beyond 17^th to 19^th century traditional Western classical music. I liked it more than I expected to and YouTube doesn't do it justice. I was surprised by some of the undertones to the music. There were parts that sounded like bees, and parts that sounded like violins. My favorite part was the drum. One drummer for almost 100 guitars and basses. The drum provided the structure and framework for the whole thing. Without it, I would have been lost.

But hey, I got to watch the Maestro play air drums while conducting. Don’t see that very often.

(And Dave made it into this clip.)

Geetar Festival

This should be fun, or at least interesting, tomorrow night. Dave's in it. I have earplugs. I'll post my "critique" afterward.

From the St. Louis Symphony's page:

Guitar Festival: The Pageant

The music of Frank Zappa and Glenn Branca's "Hallucination City," a symphony for up to 100 electric guitars

David Robertson, conductor
John Myers, conductor**

GLENN BRANCA Symphony No. 14, “The Harmonic Series” (World Premiere)
2,000,000,000 Light Years From Home, Part I
ZAPPA G-Spot Tornado
VARÈSE Arcana
GLENN BRANCA Symphony No. 13, “Hallucination City”**

Hear music of Frank Zappa and Edgard Varèse, along with Glenn Branca’s symphony written for 100 electric guitars, with composer/guitarist Steve Mackey and guitar wizard John Patitucci joining 98 St. Louis guitarists and David Robertson on the stage of the Pageant.

And from Glenn Branca's page:

Link to four articles by Glenn Branca on New York Times blog 2007:
http://thescore.blogs.nytimes.com/author/gbranca/?scp=1-b&sq=glenn+branca&st=nyt

The next performance of Branca's 100 guitar piece "SYMPHONY NO. 13 (Hallucination City)" will be at The Pageant in St. Louis on Nov. 13, 2008 on a program with the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra, who will be performing works by Varese, Zappa, and the world premiere of Branca's 1st movement from "Symphony No. 14 (The Harmonic Series)" conducted by David Robertson.

TGIAO

That's akin to TGIF. Thank goodness it's almost over.

If you need a nice little sum up, this is from the AP.

Does it really look like they are all that different? The places they are different just aren't things that matter much to me. I see two fairly similar opinions but one person who just likes to talk a lot more than the other. I especially liked this quote from the above article:

Obama acknowledges what is true for both: “The next president will have to scale back his agenda and some of his proposals.” Yet neither candidate has spelled out what promises might have to be postponed or changed.

Which ever one wins, they will get in office and the machine will keep steamrolling along. People will find that there isn't really all that much that they will really do. So, if one looks carefully, things won't be all that different the day after tomorrow, people, in spite of all the yelling for change. Let's not let the fear factor run away. The world will not collapse. This happens every election. I've been through a few.