Ozomatli brings me back!

Something about the move and the transition to NC threw me off completely... but I am back, though we'll see how the blogging transition goes. Here are some things I've skipped blogging about:

1) Well, this isn't a skip. I went to see Ozomatli last night. Great guys, awesome show; kind of odd venue, since it was a concert hall, and people were torn between sitting and standing. Especially in the balcony, since the ushers were doing their best to prevent anyone from moving around significantly. I can understand that you don't want any diving.

2) Superchunk! My new hometown band. I went to a concert at the Duke art museum, and it was also awesome. I happily head-banged, or at least head-bopped, the whole time.

3) Sadly, I missed seeing Billy Bragg. The non-classical musical scene around here is pretty good; if I had any taste for bluegrass and country, I'd be in heaven.

4) At long last, I am reading Mark Kurlansky's Cod. Almost done. Rare that I spread out reading a book this long, but it's not suspenseful. I mean, I know what happens to the cod.

5) No travels lately. San Antonio in November.

6) Been on a huge Ricky Gervais kick lately. I generally am, since I adore him, but I polished off all of Extras and am moving backwards to the Office. I'm furious that no sooner do I leave Chicago than he shows up there to do a standup gig. How much do you want to bet he ain't hitting Raleigh anytime soon?

21st century show

I'm having a very 21st century experience right now, listening to a live concert being streamed from Duesseldorf, Germany and following the words of Schumann's Dichterliebe cycle with a translation on the web. I found out about it from a post on Thomas Hampson's facebook page. This could only get better if I were tweeting or videoblogging while I listen. Which I shall not, but I thought a regular blog post would kick it up a notch!

Recalled to life

Finally slowing down a little on work; you can tell because I'm a little way into Colson's The Intuitionist, and today I bought Queen's album The Miracle, which I happily anticipate listening to tomorrow. Good times

The pleasure of agreement

I haven't been watching much late-night TV lately -- the time for practicing and studying guitar has to come from somewhere! But I did tune in again the other night in time to catch a delightful rant by Craig Ferguson that went something like this:

"Young people of America. I finally decided to listen to the Jonas Brothers, and oh my lord, they SUCK! (audience cheers) Young people! I'm begging you! They don't even suck in an interesting way!" The delight was in the delivery. There's a crap vid on YouTube of an old rant of his about their appearance, but apparently the music pushed him over the edge.

As I always say: they will live to regret this, much like NKOTB fans.

Nostalgia

I was intermittently weirdly cool as a child, probably because I so didn't give a crap about the things that I ignored. Stuff like New Kids on the Block. I think we can agree that I made the right call on that one. (All those Jonas Brothers fans are going to know what I mean in 5-10 years.) However, there were also things I was into that made me cool. Guns N'Roses was one of those things. Yes, heavy metal can keep you cool even when you're reading Dickens, wearing knee-high socks (thanks mom), and ac(e)ing every test. Ah, "November Rain," you saved me.

I hate prom

I finally figured out why I never really got into Eric Clapton. Two words: "Wonderful Tonight." Can you blame me? Of course, it's a charming, mushy, sentimental song, and his guitar sounds as good as it always does, but it was a staple of the painful junior high and high school slow dance. A girl putting on her makeup, a boy telling her she looks wonderful... Ugh, ugh, vomit. I still can't listen to it without a shudder.

Happy birthday to me

My birthday present to myself came today, two Czech Queen LPs. Why Czech? Well, Queen vinyl is very collectible, but of course, since LP collecting is odd, colored vinyl is exceedingly collectible. And so are rarities. Foreign releases often combine the two. I decided recently to collect Queen vinyl, since my dad has tons of vinyl that I will inherit someday, all classical and light music. I already had a Radio Ga Ga single and the Jazz album with its wonderful centerfold photo of the band in the recording studio. Now I have Queen I, with a marbleized white LP, and Queen II, with a black-stained green LP. Good times. Of course, someday when my ship comes in, I will get the pink vinyl Ecuadorean greatest hits or the Holy Grail of Queen collecting, the 7" limited promotional blue vinyl Bohemian Rhapsody single.

Rock opera

I love rock opera. I think it works as a genre. Whether or not it works as a film rather than an album is a question not resolved by finally watching The Who's Tommy, which I enjoyed but found occasionally boring. That's a problem with some of the songs, at least for me. The psychedelic look and feel of the film definitely works, especially with my two favorite numbers, Eric Clapton's song and Tina Turner's. Yes, I liked them even better than Elton John's appearance as the Pinball Wizard, because while he's fantastic, there's just so much in Eric Clapton's appearance as a guitar-playing preacher of the cult of Marilyn Monroe that both the music lover and the cultural critic in me were thoroughly satisfied.

It was a lot of fun to see The Who scattered through the film, with Keith Moon having way too much fun playing the perverted uncle. Roger Daltrey was unbelievably convincing, particularly in Tommy's catatonic stage. I can't say I really loved it, but it's an interesting piece of musical and cinematic history.

Stunned

I was shocked to be informed at dinner that Michael Jackson had died. I didn't believe it at first -- I was not reading the news all afternoon. I will always remember him both as a cautionary tale about uncontrolled fame and an unbelievable performer. My brother and I used to breakdance in the basement when I was maybe five or six. Still, I wouldn't say that I was hugely into him until that video for Black or White came out, relatively late. That was just a fantastic, cutting-edge video for that time, and then I retroactively got into his Thriller days, then in college the Jackson Five Motown days, and finally settled on my favorite, "Billie Jean." Jackson was just... I mean, regardless, I think it's all right to feel sad about his death, both for the loss of the music legend and what went wrong in his life.

New blog

Rather than inflicting it ceaselessly on all of you, and to have a record for myself, I've started a new blog to track my entry into the world of guitar-playing. Check it out: http://mayandme.blogspot.com/

In case you couldn't figure it out, from the About this Blog:
"The URL mayandme is a tribute to my all-time favorite guitarist, Brian May, as well as that movie about Ben Franklin and his mouse... don't ask me why it popped into my head when I was starting the blog. I fell in love with his sound when I was young and have never loved another the same way... though I did, like everyone else at math camp, go through a 'Stairway to Heaven' Phase."

Upholding idiocy

I think I'm going to buck the Twitter trend with short blog posts.

Sadly, I find that I do not love the new Green Day album. I hope that it will grow on me, but I don't feel that it has the sound variety I was hoping for. Billie Joe Armstrong's voice is just so distinctive, and that fast thrashing guitar sound gets a bit repetitive. Maybe I'd also like it better if it weren't through my faintly tinny computer speakers. Oh well. I still prefer their last album, American Idiot.

Guitar gods

Having nothing but free time [sarcastic look here like you can't believe; only about five writing projects on the burners, and more in my head], I am really thinking of finally taking the plunge and learning how to play guitar. I've toyed with the idea on and off for years, but now's the time. I thought that it would be fun, and even if I only ended up taking a few lessons or being very, very bad at it, it would enhance my musical appreciation.

In college, I took about five voice lessons -- it couldn't have been more -- and I really had no intention of becoming a wonderful singer. That was just an accident. [!] But it taught me so much about vocal production and technique in only that short time, and it's really paid off in my listening ever since.

Now that was mostly for opera. With guitar, for me, it's all about the rock. And my serious contemplation of playing guitar has already paid off. I found this video of Brian May, my own personal guitar god, demonstrating the solo from "Bohemian Rhapsody," and other than the fact that I would watch the paint on his guitar dry and find it enthralling, I have already learned about guitar technique. My ignorance is so vast that I didn't even know you could bend the strings; I thought that sound was from vibrating the fretting finger, not the picking finger. I really can't wait to learn more.

Based on nothing

Or next to nothing... I don't follow American Idol, but I did hear that Queen (visualize the air quotes that I always have around the present-day version of the band) was on the finale, so I YouTubed it. Based on this three minutes, there's simply no comparison between the two finalists. Adam and his eyeliner all the way, man.

Sue me again

You all know I'm addicted to late-night, so how could I fail to watch Jimmy Fallon's first night? I presume he's going to be just fine, if not exactly revolutionary. Technically, however, you'd think they could have figured out some things in the YEAR they had to prepare. He's got the old-fashioned setup where he walks out and does jokes in front of the curtains, and the curtains are too bold a blue. Plus the folds form vertical stripes, and when Fallon bobs around, it gets kind of dizzying. Maybe as he gets less nervous, he'll bob less, but I'd change the damn curtain. I'd also like to see him look more at the camera. They've got to move his teleprompter to a better focal point, or else he has to memorize more.

On the other hand, the collage-like set where his band, The Roots, plays, is pretty cool, with fake brick and windows. God knows they're a welcome addition to late-night music (Craig Ferguson still has no band, just some canned library music). Fallon did a reasonably funny and charming 'slow jam' of the news before popping over to a cookie-cutter interview set, with the desk and couch in front of the obligatory skyline backdrop.

Well, that's all he's done so far, nothing egregiously terrible, and I might check in on him later, but for now I'm either switching over to Ferguson or else going to bed early. Over and out.

ETA: I checked back in on him, and was kind of sorry I did. His interview with Robert DeNiro was breathless, incoherent, and overscripted. However, 1) nerves and 2) interviewing is a skill that CAN be learned (cf. Conan).

So sue me

OK, I just watched U2 perform a new track off their new album on Letterman, and I have to admit that I enjoyed it.

I can never understand anything Bono sings, but it had a fun kind of pulsing beat. And I just realized that this counts as an Irish-themed post!

Molasses T'Rum

Yes, yes, it's Tale of Two Cities yet again, or rather its star, James Barbour, whose concert CD I bought online just to have some recording of that great voice. One online review promised that "Molasses T'Rum" makes the whole CD worth it, and indeed it does. It's a great song about the triangle trade (sugar, slaves, rum) from 1776, and it suits Barbour's baritone to a tee.

The CD itself is a little mixed. Since it's a live concert recording, all the tracks come with Barbour's spoken introductions, which are clearly scripted and not all that well scripted, with a wealth of cliché in plot and rhetoric, and most of the songs themselves are old familiar standbys. Same with his accompanist/co-concertizer Hershey Felder. Also, since he's singing with piano rather than orchestra, and selling it on a stage with no props, I think he's oversinging just a tad; he certainly loves the dramatic volume shifts. It's hard to tell, since the recording itself is not a miracle of perfection. Still, very enjoyable, especially once I loaded it into iTunes so I could skip through the spoken parts more easily. If I ever have the energy, I'll split the tracks in an editing program.

I did wish, as long as he was chewing his way through big ol' ballads, that "If Ever I Would Leave You" had been in the concert, because he played Lancelot in the national tour of Camelot a few years ago and, judging from this horrible recording on YouTube, was like a massage for the inner ear. (Take that, clichés!)

And I am telling you...

I hope to find time to write something on Paul Newman soon, because I was genuinely sad when I saw the announcement of his death this morning. He was really a great actor, and did a lot of wonderful philanthropic work. He's been embedded in my consciousness all my life, it seems, from the tiny little movie glutton that I was as a child.

Tonight, just a quick note that I heard Jennifer Hudson perform a song from her album on Leno last night, and it was distinctly unimpressive. Sorry. I like her, though I (unlike the rest of humanity) did think that her big anthem, "And I Am Telling You," in Dreamgirls was oversung and overshot; on the other hand, "Love You I Do," a lighter number that she sings to Jamie Foxx's character earlier in the film, was absolutely perfect. This song was light, boppy, catchy, but nothing to it to show off her voice or to distinguish the music from so much other canned studio-made pop out there these days. Maybe the rest of the album is better. I am also sure that her acting will continue to be worth watching. Next up is The Secret Life of Bees.

Whistle while you work

You can tell I'm busy; the posts are getting shorter and further apart.

I must say that music really helps when you have to buckle down. Favorite albums to work to at the moment? The Killers' Hot Fuss, Queen's Night at the Opera, Guys and Dolls (I don't even know if it's the original Broadway cast; I don't have time to read the album cover!), Dreamgirls (the movie soundtrack, sorry purists), Hairspray (Broadway recording with one track from the movie), and Aerosmith's Get a Grip. Green Day is coming out next. I have Dookie and I'm not afraid to use it.

Absolute failures: Lupe Fiasco's The Cool, Cavalleria Rusticana, and a couple of showtunes concert medleys. Hip hop does not work. I have concluded that I need to be able to either sing along loudly or bang my head to whatever I'm listening to.

Tone poem

I quite enjoyed this arts feature in the NY Times on Julian Schnabel painting Placido Domingo's portrait. As the author said, a lot of ego in one room!

Of course, I also enjoyed the SNL intro. Fit in your bits of media whenever you have time, say I.

I Love the '80s

YouTube has everything. I don't know if I could sit through all of Music & Lyrics again, but the hilarious faux-'80s video starring Hugh Grant as half of a group called Pop! (a not so subtle takeoff on Wham!) is available here and does not fail to please me.

Hugh Grant said on Leno that he was, in some ways, the proudest of this movie of out all his movies, and I think I can see why, because it must have taken a fair amount of work for him to do all the singing and choreography. Aside from that, it is an intermittently charming film about a forgotten pop star trying to put his life back together. I actually think it could have been quite good if it had focused on Grant's character and kept the female character supporting; it would have been another About a Boy. Unfortunately, Drew Barrymore's character was insipid and had a somewhat contrived self-loathing plotline about having had an affair with a professor who wrote it up in a bestselling novel. But the supporting character, a teenage pop star named Cora, was a great mishmash of Britney-Jessica-Christina, so it was really a fun musical parody film.

I was thinking about this recently because I also youtubed George Michael singing "Somebody to Love" with Queen at the Freddie Mercury tribute concert, which I think is one of his best performances ever. I remember when it was on the Top 40 countdown with Kasey Kasem, and I recorded it off the radio onto a cassette tape and listened to it over and over, as preteens do.

Kasem, according to Wikipedia, refused to say "I Want Your Sex" when that particular hit of Michael's made the charts, and would only refer to it as "the new single by George Michael." I don't remember this, but I believe it. How nice for DJs that Nas solved that little problem by not giving the album the name he wanted to. The only way to refer to it IS as "the new album by Nas."