Category Archives: Music

Would you like to pet my monkey?

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Justin Bieber’s monkey quarantined in Germany

Justin Bieber had to leave a monkey in quarantine after landing in Germany last week without the necessary papers for the animal, an official said Saturday.
The 19-year-old singer arrived at Munich airport last Thursday. When he went through customs, he didn’t have the documentation necessary to bring the capuchin monkey into the country, so the animal had to stay with authorities, customs spokesman Thomas Meister said.

So they quarantine the monkey but let the Beeb run loose. Yeah, that makes sense.

How shocking

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Of minor note these days are reports of lefty, acoustic folk singer Michelle Shocked leaping into a “anti-gay rant,” at Berkley jazz club “Yoshi’s” several days ago. (I used to work down the street from the club in the early 2000s.)

When I first heard tell of this I didn’t think much of it. I’m almost entirely unaware of Shocked’s oeuvre but, since I’m not a giant fan of folk, I figured it was forgettable (Hey, that could be a folk song lyric!) It seems like a lot of people make a seemingly overnight 180 degree turn in their belief systems; why couldn’t Shocked be another example? (It had already been reported that she’d become a evangelical Christian.)

My thoughts started to change when I read a transcript of the show. If anything her comments seemed tangential and deluded, but in regards to her main statement, it seemed pretty clear to me that she was saying people she knew and loved — fellow evangelicals — were opposed to homosexuals, but not necessarily her. (Her comments were, as I just said, confusing, so I could understand people having other interpretations but that was mine.) Her motivation for her now infamous comment at the show, “You can go on Twitter and say ‘Michelle Shocked says God hates faggots,” is unclear, but to me comes across as a rather clumsy form of satire — essentially an acknowledgement that her views do not synch up with her audience and they might be tempted to suck any nuance out of what she was saying.

I don’t close of the possibility that Shocked is, simply, a homophobe, but I don’t think that’s as certain as do, well, 98% of the commenters on the subject. My thoughts don’t change after hearing the actual audio of the event. (You can dig it up online somewhere.) It made clear to me that the audience was not nearly as set against her as reports indicated; at the end of the night she gets a healthy sounding round of applause.

My main point: I don’t think we know exactly what’s going on with Shocked and it ain’t going to kill anyone to withhold judgment for a while and let the air clear.

You are nothing!

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When I think about the core argument made by Eckhart Tolle (and Buddhism in general), I think it would break down to this: you are insignificant. You are a meaningless pee stain in a moldy corner of the universe and your life will ultimately be flushed down the toilet of history. You are nothing.

Tolle and many Buddhists would probably disagree with my framing of their views but I think that’s it in a nutshell. You might ask, “How could such a philosophy hope to have legs? How could that ever appeal to people?” But I get it – in essence this philosophy says, “None of my problems really ‘matter.’ The fact that I might get fired for spilling coffee on my bosses suit? Meaningless! My general sense of dissatisfaction with where I have ended up in life? Not worth worrying about. Even something heavy like my wife dying of cancer – ultimately insignificant and simply how life is meant to roll out. I might as well go to the park and smell the flowers.” I can certainly see many burdens being lightened by subscribing to such a viewpoint.

It’s a very difficult viewpoint to take of course, because we want to feel that we matter. We want to feel that our toils and tribulations serve some greater purpose. I see this a lot related to art. As I’ve mentioned I’ve been doing some exploration into the world of using social media to promote art projects, be they novel writing, music, film etc. And I see a lot of people constantly tweeting about how they are working on their novel, or how they wrote a song, or some weird new short film. People really tie their identities – their egos – to their artistic output; believe me, I did it for years, hell, I’m still doing it. It’s nice to think that after whatever shit you’ve dealt with in life you can point to something you’re proud of and say, “I did that. Fuck off world!”

But, if you’re going to take Tolle’s advice, you have to release your pride in those accomplishments. You have to give credit for them to “the universe” or some such. And that’s not an easy thing to do.

Of course, it is clearly true that you can’t take total credit for any art project. Take a painting. Obviously you didn’t create the paint or canvas from scratch. And your abilities to paint are derived from the years of development in painting which other humans have contributed to. You’re, at best, taking an established technique and putting your little spin on it.

I actually find thinking this that way makes me want to get more radical and experimental in art (in my case music.) After all, if this music isn’t “me” (e.g. if my ego’s attachment to the music is limited), why not get crazy? Why not get wild? Why not throw it up in the air and see where it lands?

This actually might explain the influence this kind of thought had on mid 20th century artist types who seemed to place the creative process into the hands of chance – Jackson Pollack and John Cage come to mind.

Ruminating on classical music

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It occurs to me that part of what makes classical and symphonic music boring to listen to for some people (including myself at times) is that it has a limited palette of timbres. By this I mean there’s a limited amount of types of sounds that can be created by the instruments the music was written for.

At first this might sound absurd. You might be scoffing, “What? That’s absurd!” After all, symphonic music has an entire symphony at its disposal. But I would posit that the average affordable collection of midi sounds one can buy for a computer has a broader collection of timbres; it likely contains a lot of basic symphonic sounds as well as modern keyboard sounds (ala The Rockets!) and even crazy dub step groans. That’s simply a richer aural palette.

I think one could revive interest in classical music if one wrote music in those forms but used newer sounds. Then one would be loved by all, desired by women and elected President of the earth.

Rockets (weird French space rock!)

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So today I got a friend request on Facebook from somebody I’d never heard of. I looked at his profile and saw that he was some kid in Brazil. I was thinking of deleting the request (and HIM!) but I noticed he had a degree in philosophy so I figured he might be worth having around. I’m glad I did because on closer examination of his profile I noticed he had links to a weird, French (thus the “weird”) Devo-esque band from the 70s I’d never heard of: Rockets. I’ve been checking out their videos and they are awesome! Here’s one such video:

So who are Rockets? Over to you wikipedia.

Rockets were a French space rock band that formed in Paris in 1974. Some of the former members had played together since 1970 in a local band called Crystal. In their most successful era (1977–1982) the line-up comprised vocalist Christian Le Bartz, bassist and vocalist “Little” Gérard L’Her, guitarist and keyboardist Alain Maratrat, drummer and percussionist Alain Groetzinger, and keyboardist Fabrice Quagliotti. The band went through a number of name changes, being known as the Rocket Men and Rok-Etz, among others. In the year 2000 Fabrice Quagliotti decided to reform the band (initially with the name Rockets N.D.P.), but with a totally different line-up. This brought to an anomalous situation, as far as none of the former members agreed to hold a reunion. In fact, the last former member to leave the band was Alain Maratrat, in 1992.

Weird, I will definitely check out more of their stuff. Here’s some more info on them.

K-pop

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I don’t have much to blog about so I thought I would post this weird K-pop (that’s “korean pop”) video I found on youtube. It has cute girls.

Rethinking Dave Grohl

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I was just thinking about Dave Grohl. Here’s a guy who was in the biggest band of the 90s (er, I’m talking about Nirvana) but didn’t command much attention for himself. He was certainly a respected drummer but, after Cobain killed himself, I think a lot of people — myself included — wouldn’t have been surprised had Grohl simply fallen into the dustbin of history (much the same way his band mate Krist Novoselic did.) But Grohl did not. He’s had a long and storied career and I think one could argue he’s one of the last of the real rock stars left.

And I think had Cobain not killed himself and Nirvana continued, Grohl would not have flourished the way he has. Unlike the reticent rock star that Cobain was, Grohl seems fully at ease in the world of the commercial music industry. He happily embraces the role of celebrity and plays with musicians from across the musical spectrum. But I don’t think he could openly acknowledge this side of himself while in the decidely anti-corporate, punk-elitist Nirvana. In some ways, Cobain’s death allowed Grohl to step out of the shadows and embrace his own persona. You could say he actually benefitted from Cobain’s self-immolation.

Which brings up an interesting question: Where exactly was Grohl the day Cobain “committed suicide”?

Measuring distance

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I’ve got a friend who is a phenomenal realistic artist. He’s able to render pencil and painted images that look very similar to reality.

He’s also a good musician, particularly a pianist. And for the most part, largely self taught. He seems to be one of the people of has a natural proclivity for the piano; what some would call talent.

Now, a while back, I was reading “The Tell-Tale Brain” by neuroscientist V.S. Ramachandran. He noted that there was a part of the brain devoted to our understanding of spatial dimensions e.g. how far apart things are from each other and from us. He also noted that for some reason this part of the brain is strong in young autistics, and consequently, they are often artistically gifted. In essence, they can look at an image (in reality, or in their head, I suppose) and translate the spatial relationships related to what they see to what they draw on paper.

So, it seems likely this artist friend of mine has such a gift in regards to visual imagery. But would this apply to his piano talent as well? In essence, if you hear a melody in your head and then re-create it, you are essentially measuring the distance between each of the the notes in the melody. Unlike visual imagery, you’re not measuring spatial distance, you’re measuring something more ambiguous — steps on a musical scale, or the frequency of sound vibrations. But, in the big picture, it’s the same process: measuring something abstract and then re-creating it. So I’m wondering if there’s a part of the brain dedicated to this? Not just measuring specific “somethings” like spatial distance or sound vibrations, but just measuring the difference between similar elements (sound, space, smells etc.) in general.