Filed under: Think Pieces | Tags: Bill Clinton, David Bowie, Mikhail Gorbachev, Patrick Stewar, Peter and the Wolf, Sean Connery, Sophia Loren, Sting, Wolf Tracks
What do Mikhail Gorbachev, David Bowie, Bill Clinton, Sting, Sophia Loren and Patrick Stewart have in common? “Peter and the Wolf!”
In case you happened to miss the newest version of “Peter and the Wolf” airing on PBS the other night, here’s a little video showing the making of it, or if you prefer, you can click on this link to go to a clip.
Unfortunately, I haven’t yet been able to find a full video of this amazing, Oscar winning short. But I
thought I’d take this opportunity to gush a little bit on one of my favorite music pieces.
“Peter and the Wolf” has an illustrious history. Written in 1936 by Sergei Prokofiev in just one week, the piece features both a narrator and musical parts, with different instruments representing each of the different character in the story (the cat is the clarinet, Peter is represented by the string section, etc.). The characters are also personified with their own melodies, Peter’s melody is upbeat and hopeful, the bird’s flute song sounds like, well, a singing bird. And when multiple characters are in a scene, for example when the cat tries to eat the bird, their instruments and their melodies interact. By tying the music to a story, and each of the instruments to a character, “Peter and the Wolf” teaches children to identify different orchestral instruments and parse them out from a larger piece of music.
The story is about Peter (duh) who leaves the gate open one day, which the Duck takes as an opportunity to go
swimming in the pond. Various shenanigans occur with his animal friends until the wolf emerges and eats the duck, whole and alive. Peter then catches the wolf and is celebrated as a hero.
Since then it has reappeared in a number of different versions with a host of celebrities lending their talents. In 1946, Disney made an animated version which appeared before “Fantasia.” This version was slightly more kid friendly, the duck is chased by the wolf and presumed eaten, until he emerges at the end after the wolf is caught. Joy ensues.
Since then versions have been recorded narrated by David Bowie, Sean Connery, Sting, Patrick Stewart and Alec Guinness aka Obi-Wan Kenobi. There’s just something about this piece that attracts British actors famous for playing fantasy roles.
Tiny Toons even did a version of it called “Buster and the Wolverine”
But perhaps the most impressive take of “Peter and the Wolf” is “Peter and the Wolf/Wolf Tracks”
which features Sophia Loren narrating “Peter and the Wolf”, Bill Clinton narrating “Wolf Tracks” and Mikhail Gorbachev reading the introduction and epilogue. “Wolf Tracks” features Peter’s grandson hoping to catch a wolf of his own, in the end, little Peter learns that it is important to protect and preserve the wolf’s habitat.
I’m glad that “Peter and the Wolf” is being popularized for a new generation, but I have to admit, I feel a little uncomfortable with the adapting “Peter and the Wolf” to a political message, even if it is something as positive has preserving natural habitats. The original piece’s only real moral was “wolves are dangerous.” When children’s stories are given a political slant, especially overtly, it tends to come with a certain amount of down-talking, which adults love and children detest.
For more on Peter and the Wolf, try this essay or its excellent Wikipedia page.
Filed under: Project Update
(For those of you new to the site, I decided to spend a year studying music for my New Year’s resolution; for my Chinese New Years resolution I’ve decided to blog about my project to add an analytical element to it. You can read more about my project here.)
It’s been a bit over a month and already I feel like my knowledge of music has expanded in unforeseen ways: the business of market music, the workings of the inner ear and the way we feel music with our sense of touch. My awareness of sound has increased, specifically has I write this on the train I’m aware of the squeal of the brakes, the whoosh of the air conditioning, the rustle of newspapers being read, conversations taking place all around the car, and the vibration of the train on the tracks shaking my legs and pen. In a very real way, I’ve stepped through the looking glass and uncovered another world on top of the world in which I’ve existed.
I did have have a bit of a break, which is why there was a week with no blog post. I think I’ve reached my limit in terms of my rate to absorb new music. Plus, when I latch onto an album I really like, like Bob Dylan’s Bringing It All Back or Girl Talk’s Night Ripper, it becomes difficult to find the time to listen to a new, untested record. My advice, no more than one new album or artist a day, plus, mix it up the medium and genre with live music, documentaries and listening with friends.
What I’ve Been Into:
New Music (for me at least)
Al Green Lay it On Me
Billy Bragg and Wilco Mermaid Avenue
Beck Mellow Gold
Beck Odelay
The Beastie Boys The Mix Up
Girl Talk Night Ripper
The Go! Team Thunder Lightning Strike
Kid Rock Rock ‘n’ Roll Jesus
The Klaxons Xan Valley
Panda Bear Personal Pitch
Tony Ragazzo I Got Picked Up Last Night
Robert Johnson The Complete Collection
The Shivers *This band was playing in the 14th St. orange line subway station, I was totally arrested by their sound, it was like something out of Once*
We versus the Shark Ruin Everything!
Wilco Summer Teeth
On My Nightstand
This is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin
Docs
I am Trying to Break Your Heart
Kill Your Idols
No Direction Home
On the Net:
New Scientist Five Great Auditory Illusions *I highly recommend this*
Shout Out Louds live
Art Brut live w/ interview
Filed under: Heads Up
Now I realize that this rooster is voiced by Roger Miller, but doesn’t it seem to look and sound an awful lot like Johnny Cash?
And here he is singing, it’s towards the end of the clip.
Filed under: Reviews
The perfect metaphor for Rock On is in the opening words of its foreword where Dan Kennedy, the author, apologizes and berates himself for the minuscule amount of cussing in the book. “Mister dirty bird can’t even take a minute to find a more mature way of saying something other than cursing a blue streak like an angry motorist or a bitter prison inmate high and insane on homemade prison booze made by cramming a Ziploc baggie with white bread, sugar, ketchup and fruit-cup remnants from the mess hall, then wrapping the baggie in a washrag and letting it rot and ferment behind the hot-water pipe in his cell. I know, I agree with you. Please know I’m not proud of my occasional use of even relatively mild profanity in this book.”
Rock On? Slow down Tipper Gore.
This passage illustrates the style of the entire book, not a lot of content smathered together by some over-written, mediocre prose. To paraphrase Bilbo Baggins, it’s too little butter on too much toast.
Rock On follows Dan Kennedy as he starts working for Atlantic Records just before the bottom falls out of the music industry. In between chapters of anecdotes is a bunch of creative writing 101 filler, lists and fake song lyrics, with titles like “Free Lyrics for Any All-Girl Rock Band Trying to Win Over the Middle-Aged White Suburban Male Demographic.” There’s a lot to be learned about the music industry here, how corporate labels approached marketing an album, how the inability to adapt and excessive salaries presumably doomed the music industry, unfortunately the book is more about Dan Kennedy’s insecurities and need to look down on others.
He makes fun of his bosses for having “Rush hair” or wearing an old blue jean jacket. He acts shocked and appalled that Jewel’s single about being “independent” is used to sell beauty products.
Curious Note: You always know you’re in trouble when the quotes on the front and back of the book are by other writers and not from reviews. Here’s something that you have to do when you’re in the media- ‘”Hilarious.” — Todd Hanson, editor of The Onion‘ is stamped on the front of Rock On. A few weeks after the book was released, this review by Ellen Wernecke showed up in The Onion, “Getting his dream job at Atlantic Records led Dan Kennedy to write two books, a series of pithy, brilliant short pieces, and a more conventional story about the dehumanizing effects of corporations. Those books are unhappily wed between the covers of Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, a memoir about work whose central narrative is as commonplace as the marketing meetings Kennedy lampoons.”
I had finished reading Rock On about a week before reading this review and I felt validated that the reviewer had come to similar conclusions to myself. I was also proud of the reviewer, because since Todd Hanson is most likely Kennedy’s friend, and since his name is on the front of the book, there was likely some sense of obligation to give the book at least an OK review. But then, a week after the review, The Onion published an interview of Dan Kennedy with this introduction, “Kennedy transformed the death of his rock ‘n’ roll fantasy into the scathingly funny Rock On: An Office Power Ballad, turning what could have been another tired eulogy into a funny, darkly comic wake.”
Well, which is it then? I know that it would be ballsy even for The Onion to preface an interview with, “Now, with his new failure of a book, Rock On, out in stores…”but still, I find it amusing that if this book sells at all, it’ll be because The Onion is essentially doing PR for it.
Filed under: Reviews
“Sunday in the Park with George” is a visual marvel, but unfortunately it leaves something to be desired musically, mainly melody.
The play is a fictional account of the pointillist George Seurat’s struggle to paint “Sunday in the Park on the Island of La Grande Jatte.” Each of the figures in the foreground of the painting has been given a character, and, by using projectors to create an optical illusion for a back drop, the painting comes to life.
George, played by Daniel Evans, is completely inaccessible to others, almost autistic in his inability to maintain relationships, and it is painful to watch him and the wall between himself and his lover, cleverly named Dot.
Stephen Sondheim, the author, also wrote “A Funny Thing Happened On the Way to the Forum” and “Sweeney Todd” and the failings of “Sunday in the Park” are the same as “Sweeney Todd.” The songs are often metaphorical, when George dabs his dots the music dot-dot-dots along with him, and this is pleasant enough. And like Sweeney Todd the lyrics are quite clever and this too is well and good. The problem is one of form; the songs are endless and tiresome.
There are only the slightest choruses, every song is packed with piercing notes, and many of the songs are played back-to-back. To get an idea of what I’m talking about check out this version of “Sunday in the Park with George” from an Sondheim tribute concert.
What I learned about Musicals: Songs are just like monologues, special effects or literary devices, they are best used to punctuate the most important parts (like the last clause in a post, wink).
Did you know that when you go to the theater to watch a movie, half of the time is spent staring at a black screen? For each frame of the film the shutter closes twice, meaning no light is being projected towards the screen. Fortunately our brains have a nifty mechanism we refer to as closure that allows us to watch a movie as if it were a steady stream of images. Here’s another nifty example of closure-
Do you see the big “A”? That’s closure. A computer wouldn’t be able to recognize anything except a group of individual “A”’s. This is why you have to punch in random letters and numbers to prove you’re human when setting up a new account online.
Similarly, sound works with moving images to create closure. The sounds you hear when watching a video often have no connection with what you are seeing, but your brain syncs them up. Most of the time it works, sometimes not so much, like when you notice someone lip syncing. This is part of the reason air guitaring is so funny.
Read more of Music and the Moving Image Part 1
Filed under: Reviews, Think Pieces | Tags: avant-garde, documentaries, Evelyn Glennie, experimental, music, Touch the Sound
Imagine you are colorblind and one day your eyes are fixed so you can see all of the colors you’ve been missing-that is what watching “Touch the Sound” is like.
“Touch the Sound” is a documentary about Evelyn Glennie, a Grammy award-winning, deaf, percussionist who plays music by feeling the vibrations of sound. The result is music unlike anything I’ve ever heard before — the work of someone who experiences sound unlike anyone you’ve ever met or ever likely will meet. You know the feeling of you fingers rubbing the rim of a wineglass? It is in that sensation that Glennie’s music resides.
The movie itself is one long music video with scenes of Glennie traveling the world to play with different avant-garde musicians intercut with minimalistic interviews. The sound quality itself is amazing and with each new location the film takes a few minutes to dwell on the tiny noises we hear but ignore everyday.
“Touch the Sound” is much more cinematic than any documentary I’ve ever seen; the camera work and editing often uses the visual element as a metaphor for the sound- extreme closeups for tiny sounds, panning up as the music ascends in volume or tenor, and even spiraling around Glennie as she plays. The film is so stylistic that it borders on not being a documentary at all. If this is a documentary, then so is Vertov’s “Man with a Movie Camera.”
The director explains in the documentary that he is composing scenes to demonstrate the principles of sound, kind of like a PBS science show. For example, for the scenes with Glennie and Fred Frith in the sugar factory, they filmed them playing music for three days. So is it an accurate recording of an improvised song? Yes. But it’s not spontaneous or objective in anyway. Thomas Riedelsheimer, the filmmaker, picked the location and introduced Glennie and Frith himself specifically for this film.
Which is fine, I have no problem with both “Touch the Sound” and “Man with A Movie Camera” being labeled as documentaries– they are trying to achieve an artistic truth as opposed to a journalistic truth. But where as most documentaries minimize stylistic flourishes in an attempt to (supposedly) remove the presence of the director as much as possible and increase objectivity, “Touch the Sound” uses the camera work and editing to try and convey the director’s subjective impression of the music.
A great example of this is the opening sequence which starts with Glennie playing a gong almost inaudibly. As she plays louder the camera glides away from her. Since the microphone recording the sound is not moving away from Glennie, this shot has the simple but awe-inspiring effect of defying how we would normally experience a sound if we were walking away from it.
I know that must be confusing, but unfortunately I can’t find any videos of this clip; I’m afraid you’re just going to have to rent the movie for yourself.
Filed under: Heads Up
Cool new project from Vice Records were each assigned a color. The songs are all great, and even better, free, but this video is bananas.
Filed under: Think Pieces | Tags: Brian Wilson, Mike Love, Panda Bear, Pet Sounds, The Beach Boys
The Beach Boys played a big role in my childhood. I vividly remember standing on the swings and pretending to surf while singing “Surfin’ USA” with my friend Michael Gates.
Ah, to be sixteen again.
Actually, when I really was sixteen I saw the The Beach Boys in concert. Well, a chop shop version of The Beach Boys with Mike Love and Bruce Johnston, plus I think one of Brian Wilson daughters was playing too…point is they still rocked.
Thanks to my recent love affair with Panda Bear, I decided I needed to revisit The Beach Boys.
If you’re not a fan of the The Beach Boys or Panda Bear this might take some explaining. Pet Sounds is more like a symphony than a pop album, with layers upon layers of instruments played by The Wrecking Crew, a group of L.A.’s best musicians that Brian Wilson recruited to record while the rest of The Beach Boys were out on tour.
It opens with “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” a tribute to the longing to be older and experience
e life more fully. The album ends with the sound of dogs parking at a passing train, which serves as a metaphor for the passage of time. It’s from the dogs’ barking that the album gets it’s name, which serves as a double entendre, because “petting” is what old people called making out. Panda Bear opens his song “Comfy in Nautica” with the sound of an owl hooting, which could probably be considered a head nod to Pet Sounds. But if Pet Sounds is impressionistic, with each distinct element creating a bigger picture, Panda Bear is surreal, nonsensical and disturbing audio clips of screams, crying, and gun shots float in and out with lots of scratching techniques thrown in for good measure.
So for President’s Day I listened to the the album in it’s entirety twice as well as a 17 part podcast series about the album that was available through iTunes.
“Wouldn’t it be Nice”
Notably, one of Paul McCartney’s favorite pop songs. This music is so plush. Normally I tend to focus in on the lyrics, so I’m having to readjust how I listen to try and catch everything. I’ve heard you can listen to this album back to back and cue in on different details each time. That certainly seems to be true.
“You Still Believe in Me”
“That’s Not Me”
“Don’t Talk (Put Your Head On My Shoulder)”
This is so much more like a sympathy than a classic rock album. I’ve always found it strange to lump The Beach Boys in with Rock ‘n’ Roll. They sound so much sweeter, they’re more like a rockabilly barbershop quartet singing about girls and rebellion. Note: Mike Love made a similar point in the podcast, but he sounded like a tool when he said it.
“I’m Waiting for the Day”
Easily my favorite song so far. I love the big booming drums dum-da-dum-dum’s, they just sound so happy. Plus, this song has so much attitude! “But you know that pretty soon I made you feel glad that you belonged to me” super creepy and possessive! “You didn’t think I could sit around and watch him take you?” I love how provocative the last four lines are. It’s like a rap song, start some shit!
“Sloop John B.”
Originally a poem by Carl Sandburg adapted by The Kingston Trio. Perhaps the best way to gauge the scope of Brian Wilson’s musical ability is to listen to the two versions back-to-back. They are basically the same melody, and I’m not knocking the Kingston Trio here, but Brian Wilson has added a deep, rich complexity to the song.
“I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times.”
I love how The Beach Boys never lost their candy coating, even though these songs are noticeably darker and existential than their earlier work. I guess that’s the side effect of having four guys harmonizing with high pitch voices. I wonder if you couldn’t speak English, or if you could listen to these songs without the vocals, if you could still hear the dark subtexts of the album.
“Pet Sounds”
Originally titled “Run, James, Run” and was made for a James Bond film. Sounds great, it’s very easy to imagine this song playing over the opening title sequence (hint hint to the current Bond film makers, Quantum Solace is a fucking terrible title, but we’d forgive you if you used this song).
“Caroline, no”
It’s easy to forget this was music of rebellion, especially since my parents encouraged me to listen to The Beach Boys as a kid. In the 1980’s, The Beach Boys were banned from playing on the Washington Mall. WTF? They’re as American as apple pie!
Conclusion:
I listened to the podcasts first, which perhaps was a mistake, and I started feeling doubtful about my project. There was one cast for each song, and clips from each song were intermixed with interviews with the “Boys.” A lot times they didn’t have much to say, especially on the instrumentals, but for what it’s worth, I can now tell Mike Love and Brian Wilson apart just by their voices.
My worries were ridiculous, listening to the album I became completely engaged with the swell of the music, these are songs that just can’t be cut into ring tones. After spending the day listening to Pet Sounds, I was appropriately blown away. I shifted gears and put on “Help!” one of my all-time favorite Beatles songs.
It felt like switching from a motorcycle to a bicycle. After training my ears with an album of a hundred instruments, the guitar and drums line-up sounded tinny and hollow. I recovered, and on a second listen was able to enjoy it a bit more, but I realize now I’ve made a step forward in my knowledge and appreciation with the unexpected result of being more critical of my old favorites.
Filed under: Think Pieces
We’d all probably agree that this is music:
But what about this:
I would say “yes” but my mother would probably say, “no, not so much.” Which is a problem, especially when you’re dedicating a year to “music.”
So I thought I’d turn to my two favorite dictionaries for definitions to help me set parameters. Let’s take a look at the contestants.
The Oxford English Dictionary aka the OED: A triumph of humanity, as important as Shakespeare or Whitman to the English language. The Oxford English Dictionary attempts to catalog every word in English. As an added bonus, the OED cites the first written use of each word as well as examples of each word’s use through history.
Urban Dictionary: User submitted definitions that are voted on by the unwashed masses. Urban Dictionary excels at slang, jargon, and the “street” usage of a word. Often their definitions are much better than traditional dictionaries for the common spoken usage of a word.
For a full list of both dictionaries definitions, click here.
So when does sound become music? The OED gives a cursory nod to “harmony, melody, rhythm, expressive content, etc.” which is cool because those are the closest means we have to express music objectively with verbal-based language (as opposed to sheet music which I would argue is a form of written language). But even for the OED, the definition quickly slips into the abstract and subjective, “[t]he art or science of combining vocal or instrumental sounds to produce beauty of form” and “the occupation or profession of musicians.” So musicians are people who make music and music is that which is made by musicians.
Resist the urge to make fun of the circular logic of this statement and I think you’ll agree that this is a pretty awesome definition of music because it intertwines music and humanity. By this definition sound, unless created by a human, is not music. After this point the OED pretty much slips into metaphor, listing personifications of music, such as this gem from Chaucer in 1425 “With Rethorice com forth Musice, a damoysele of our hous.”
Isn’t that pretty?
On Urban Dictionary, on the other hand, music is described almost exclusively with superlatives and metaphors, ‘Long story short, its “fucking your ears with noises, catchy noises”’ writes Chang Tan, “Mankind’s Greatest Achievement.”says Red Hot Chili Pepper, ” Something the world would be lost without,” adds Matt.
I love these definitions because the writers have focused on explaining how music makes them feel, which I think is a testament to how subjective music really is. Unforunately, they don’t work very well in the classic sense of a definition.
John A., however, has submitted what I think is my favorite definition of music, “Noise that is pleasing to the ears.” I think that if we combine this with the OED’s “occupation of musicians” we’d have a pretty good definition of music.
According to the OED’s definition, anyone who considers himself a musician can make music; according to Urban Dictionary, anyone can determine what music is.
So here is my working definitions of music, “Noise, made by musicians, that is pleasing to the ear.”
Looks like we can both be right, mom.
