Musings

Canadian Chamber Choir and DaCapo Chamber Choir (concert)

2012-01-21T10:20:00.011-05:00

There was a good concert on Friday, January 20, 2012 at Kitchener's St. John's Anglican Church, by the visiting Canadian Chamber Choir and the Waterloo area's DaCapo Chamber Choir. Many recent Canadian pieces were performed, including several competition winners. Featured were Erik Ross's "Icarus in the Sea," "Patrick Murray's "The Echo," Leonard Enns' "This Amazing Day," two pieces by Jeff Enns (no relation to Len), Imant Raminsh's exquisite "Ave Verum," and a piece I've heard DaCapo sing before and which I think is very good: Don Macdonald's "Tabula Rasa."

I've sung in similarly excellent chamber choirs, including Toronto's Exultate Chamber Singers and the Elora Festival Singers. At one point, I sang professionally in as many as six or seven choirs in a given week, including section-lead or core positions in church and community choirs. However, without also doing a lot of solo-work and voice-lesson teaching, professional choral singing caps out at only about a quarter of a proper salary. That's why I'm bemused by the idea of such "professional level" (i.e., unpaid) choirs. The CCC somehow manages (in our present age of collapsing arts organizations) to find enough money to fly its singers all over the country. However, can that sort of thing possibly continue indefinitely?!

Laurie Anderson - "Another Day in America" (live performance, 2012)

2012-01-20T16:06:00.003-05:00

Laurie Anderson's "Another Day in America: A New Solo Work in Progress" arrived as a 90-minute show in the atrium of Waterloo, Ontario's Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics on Thursday January 19, 2012. Anderson's most recent album, Homeland (2010), features quite a lot of music: singing, synthesizers, samplers, Vocoder, strings, world music voices and instruments, and even (in one song) rock guitars and electronic dance music. She developed Homeland over several years' worth of live shows, and I suspect she's doing the same thing now, but for a spoken-word-with-accompaniment album. She did a similar transition from her 1994 pop-rock album Bright Red (produced by rock producer Brian Eno) to her 1995 performance-art-based The Ugly One with the Jewels (based on her stage show, Stories from the Nerve Bible).

As far as I know, in the new performance, Anderson didn't really include anything from her previous work, although a pair of songs alluded to Homeland's "Another Day in America" (which she had spoken in "voice drag" to lower her voice electronically, although the new piece did not) and 1983-84's Garden-of-Eden/snake-related "Langue d'Amour." Musically, she mostly played samples and loops from two small keyboards and/or a notebook computer, speaking over them her often witty, philosophical, and/or political ideas about people, places, dreams, politics, and even her pet dog Lolabelle, who was shown playing a keyboard in some YouTube-like video clips (for a similar "performance," from just before Christmas 2010, see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YVnm2ZYD0s). Anderson also used several electronic effects devices and such things as pedals, triggers, and switches. On several occasions, she was much more overtly "musical," playing her "electric violin," which can electronically provide incredibly-dense textures and complex chord variations from only a few strings and/or pitches. Once or twice, she also played the instrument in the context of "live looping." However, this particular Anderson work is not really concerned with the "singing" side of music at all, even though she does otherwise sometimes engage with that.

Anderson's album Homeland includes quite a lot of Vocoder use (electronically making spoken or sung words seem like they are also being sung by an instrument), but she avoided that in this performance, possibly because she instead wanted to explore some different things. For example, she used a small pillow-speaker inside her mouth to "play" ("voice?") a weird approximation of a violin solo. In one case, she also combined her spoken voice with a "voice drag" lowered version of it, instead of her more usual approach of keeping the two things separate (usually in different songs) or combining her spoken or sung voice with a simultaneous, electronic Vocoder part.

The audience of perhaps two hundred attentive and enraptured people consisted of a combination of middle-aged art and culture aficionados (artists, musicians, professors, etc.), science and technology professionals (some in the audience, probably from Research In Motion and various start-ups, but also including "lurking" employees of the Perimeter Institute), and younger people who were probably university students (including graduate students). Anderson knows that the audience for her more experimental and less music-oriented work is much smaller than for her pop-rock work, so it is highly commendable that she does not even remotely rest on her laurels, even though she is about to turn 65.

See also http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=70eZbksZET8.

The Music Discussion Network (MDN)

2012-01-19T15:19:00.005-05:00

The YouTube Channel for the Instructional Videos of the Music Discussion Network (MDN) is http://youtube.com/MusicDiscussionNet. MDN's website is http://Music-Discussion.Net/, which includes the same videos, but also Additional Information and Links, as well as Discussion Areas. So far, I have completed instructional videos on Bob Dylan, Josquin, Laurie Anderson, Handel, Rush, Chopin, and Music in The Simpsons.

Managed to Replace My iPod Battery!

2012-01-18T13:25:00.000-05:00

I managed to install my replacement iPod battery today! The original one (from when I bought the player around 2005) died a little over a year ago. iPod cases can be pried apart, but both plastic tools that were provided with the battery were too flimsy and broke. (Incredibly, the battery didn't come with ANY instructions.) I didn't care that much about scratching the sides, so I just used a screwdriver. The battery connection itself was pretty straightforward. I found helpful this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2h53otOBTsI and this webpage: http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/how-to-tech/how-to-replace-ipod-battery2.htm.

Problem 1: This one tiny screw (maybe 2mm long) broke off and disappeared. The iPod thus came apart slightly TOO much, and the middle button of the scroll-wheel (which is just a plastic circle) fell out from way inside. So, that required taking out two more such screws with a tiny screwdriver I luckily had. I also lost one of those additional two screws and had to lift up some finicky stuff, but I did get the plastic button back in there!

Problem 2: The secondary power connector (hooked up to the area of the LCD screen) came off, but I eventually figured out how to reattach it. (Also tiny!)

Aftermath: In addition to the two missing tiny screws, I ended up with two smallish plastic thingies that were probably supposed to hold the edges of the hard drive, but I couldn't figure out where they went and left them out. So, basically, I didn't mangle it too badly, and it seems to be working!

Music Discussion Network - ROI (Return On Investment)

2012-01-18T11:26:00.000-05:00

You know you're in the bottom of the 99%, when you have to look up the acronym "ROI," because you truly and honestly have no idea what it means in the thing to which you've just been invited: a debate called "Be it resolved: That social media initiatives must pass an ROI test to be worthwhile."

I would agree that a return on investment is necessary once one gets past the development stage of a website and its related content. However, if you're doing something comparatively specific (http://youtube.com/durbow, http://music-discussion.net) and you haven't invested anything other than your time and expertise (because that's what you have), the "return" would presumably involve other people participating in the website with their own time and interest, such as in discussions.

Tori Amos - Midwinter Graces (2009)

2012-01-05T13:30:00.003-05:00

I just listened to Tori Amos's 2009 "seasonal" album Midwinter Graces for the first time. Not surprisingly, it's not overly "church-y," which is consistent with the "reacting against her religious background" aesthetic of some of her earlier songs. What she mainly does is take segments of existing, "traditional" Christmas carols (various combinations of words, tunes, rhythms, chords, etc.) and folds them into "arty" songs that are thus perhaps each around 60% original and reflective of her view of the season as being most usefully seen as not being particularly "Christian" OR "secular." It reminds me a little of Jane Siberry's live, 1997 album Child: Music for the Christmas Season.

Amos often somewhat modifies a carol's familiar words to de-emphasize its religious tone (although she also retains certain Latin words), and in some cases she combines aspects of two carols with her own ideas. Flowers, stars, candles, harps, and angels thus become relatively "generic" (both in her adaptations and in her original "Snow Angel"), and she transforms the idea of a "silent night" into an original love song: "A Silent Night with You." I found her combination of "Lo, How a Rose" and "The Holly and the Ivy" ("Holly, Ivy and Rose") to be the most effective.

Almost all of the instrumentation is for orchestra and/or piano (or the occasional synthesizer or harpsichord), sometimes with a modest amount of percussion. Thus, the ninth track (the original "Pink and Glitter") is fairly jarring when it suddenly introduces a kind of Sarah Vaughan, big-band jazz sound, which then abates for the following adaptation of "O Come, O Come, Emmanuel" and the two, concluding, original Tori Amos songs: "Winter's Carol" (very Kate Bush-like, and with its words from the 1864 fairy tale "The Light Princess") and "Our New Year."

Metal Evolution (TV series)

2012-01-02T13:05:00.000-05:00

The TV series Metal Evolution is 6 episodes too long (11) & spends as much time on glam & grunge as thrash & on Poison & Nickelback as Metallica, etc. Anyone who doesn't care about heavy metal is going to find more than two episodes quite enough, and anyone who does is probably going to know way more than anything provided in the series. (The questions asked are just not good enough, the biggest problem being that actual pieces of music are almost never discussed.) I don't CARE if Nickelback plays more interesting stuff live than evidenced in its radio hits: its radio hits are terrible (although I do find "Bottoms Up" a half-decent example of an irresponsible, excessive-drinking song), and Creed was mostly just warmed-over (and thinned-out) early Pearl Jam.

The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo (2011)

2012-01-02T13:03:00.001-05:00

I just saw the new, David-Fincher-directed "Hollywood" adaptation of Stieg Larsson's book, Män som hatar kvinnor (Men Who Hate Women, which is a much more apt title than the English version: The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo). [No plot spoiler follows!] I didn't find Lisbeth Salander (by American actress Rooney Mara) to be all that different from in the 2009 Swedish version (by Swedish actress Noomi Rapace), mostly because her troubled, hacker-investigator character is so vividly present in the "Millennium Trilogy" books themselves. I personally find Daniel Craig rather "beefcake-y" to be playing mild-mannered Swedish journalist Mikael Blomkvist, so Swedish actor Michael Nyqvist (from the first adaptation) makes way more sense to me. The primary settings remain in Sweden, but almost all of the characters speak in English, despite the fact that a fair bit of the background audio and images are in Swedish, so it is by no means obvious that English would REALLY be spoken. Both versions deviate from the book in several ways, and sometimes the same ways. The synth- and effects-heavy score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross works pretty well. It makes the most sense for Lisbeth's "indie" (pierced, inked, etc.) aesthetic and "odd" mental state and for the quick-cuts that happen in the first half of the film--before she and Mikael start working together.

Star Trek meets Star Wars

2012-01-02T12:29:00.001-05:00

Leave it to the British to cast Patrick Stewart in a non-speaking role (!) opposite the even more mellifluously-voiced Alec Guinness. This takes place in episode 4 of the BBC's 1979 mini-series of John Le Carre's Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. The actor of future Star Trek Captain Jean-Luc Picard meets the actor of the recently-disembodied Star Wars "force ghost" Obi-Wan Kenobi. This encounter is even more obscure than George Takei (Star Trek's Sulu) having voiced an animated Star Wars' character as the only major crossover actor between the two series! Obvious Follow-Up Challenge: Has any other pair of Star Wars and Star Trek actors appeared together in any other movie or TV show? If not, make one up, such as Nichelle Nichols' cameo with Harrison Ford in the car in American Graffiti.

Carlo Gesualdo

2012-01-02T12:27:00.001-05:00

Alex Ross (the music critic of The New Yorker) has "helpfully" suggested that Schubert (d. 1828) and Wagner (d. 1883) trace an "eerie harmony" continuity from Italian composer Carlo Gesualdo (the Prince of Venosa, ca 1566-1613) to the "present day" (i.e., Italian nobleman and composer Francesco d'Avalos, a descendant of the family of the unfaithful wife Gesualdo famously murdered). Vaguely suggesting that d'Avalos's son Andrea may have been the one listening to some unspecified hip-hop as you left the ancient building in Naples is seriously NOT GOOD ENOUGH. I could find only one photo of "Prince Andrea d'Avalos" - with dark, short hair and glasses, wearing a tux at some kind of international fundraising event in 2003, probably around 25 then. No signs of hip-hop! There are too many other people with the non-Prince name, though, to figure out much more.

Was Gesualdo (1) a tortured genius who blasted through the boundaries of harmony two or three hundred years before anyone else did, or (2) a person of considerable means who didn't have to follow any rules (in his personal life, such as killing his unfaithful wife and her lover, OR in his music) and thus also didn't really have to know what he was doing? Either way, the correct parallel is probably not so much Wagner or the Second Viennese School, as Ives! If you're interested in this, you might also like Werner Herzog's 1995 biography on him (Gesualdo: Death for Five Voices). It definitely has some strong-minded Option 1 types, but I think I'm still going to go with Option 2!

Peter Gabriel, Tori Amos, Kate Bush

2012-01-02T12:26:00.001-05:00

The last nine albums I added to my iTunes library are: Peter Gabriel's OVO (Millennium Show), Long Walk Home (the soundtrack from Rabbit-Proof Fence), Scratch My Back, and New Blood; Tori Amos's Abnormally Attracted to Sin, Midwinter Graces, and Night of Hunters; and Kate Bush's Director's Cut and 50 Words for Snow. Number of songs: 127, range of duration: 0:59-13:32, average duration: 5:00, number of songs without guitars, drums, or synthesizers (i.e., with orchestra, piano, and/or choir): 61 (48%). Three minutes, three chords, three verses, three choruses ...... not so much. (Not that there's anything wrong with that!)

Peter Gabriel - New Blood (2011)

2012-01-02T12:23:00.002-05:00

Peter Gabriel's New Blood (2011) is a fascinating album, comprising orchestral arrangements (by John Metcalfe) of some of Gabriel's best album tracks from 1977 to 2002: such as, "The Rhythm of the Heat," "San Jacinto," "The Intruder," "Wallflower," "Digging in the Dirt," and "Darkness." Disc 1 has vocal versions, and the Special Edition's Disc 2 mostly has instrumental versions that don't include approximations of the vocals. Those renditions are thus "karaoke" songs (the "empty orchestra" being literally orchestra, in this case), presumably for people--like me--who know most of these songs really well.

There are NO versions of such more obvious Gabriel hits as "Games without Frontiers," "Biko," "Shock the Monkey," "Sledgehammer," "Big Time," "Steam," or "Come Talk to Me," but it does include four songs from the 1986 hit album So: "Red Rain," "In Your Eyes, "Mercy Street," and "Don't Give Up"--the vocal version featuring Norwegian musician Ane Brun providing a guest vocal quite unlike Kate Bush's original. It also has two songs from the 2000 soundtrack OVO - The Millennium Show ("Downside Up," featuring his daughter Melanie Gabriel, and "The Nest That Sailed the Sky"), plus (after a five-minute ambient noise track) a "bonus track" of "Solsbury Hill."

The Special Edition disc also has "Blood of Eden" (in a vocal version) and there were two additional digital-download-only songs. I think "Here Comes the Flood" would also have worked pretty well, but I suppose there are already quite a few alternate versions of that song.

The War of 1812

2011-11-19T08:33:00.003-05:00

The War of 1812 was largely precipitated by the American ideas that the British colony of Canada (British North America, especially Upper Canada, i.e., Ontario) would be "easy pickings" and easily invaded ("a mere matter of marching," said Thomas Jefferson) and that the tens of thousands of former "Americans" now living in Canada (United Empire Loyalists and others, including some of my own Mennonite ancestors) would quite happily join the United States in its continuing struggles against British maritime imperialism, etc. It wasn't, they didn't, and Canada's road to independent nationhood (1867) was thus forged by military heroes such as Major-General Sir Isaac Brock and by others (including many from among the First Nations). See also See http://www.thecanadianencyclopedia.com/index.cfm?PgNm=TCE&Params=A1ARTA0008442.

Nuclear Power

2011-04-12T10:58:00.002-04:00

Nuclear power is a very bad idea. It doesn't make any difference that a natural disaster wouldn't happen that could mess up our reactors "here." Something on the scale of Chernobyl and Fukushima IS here. That's not even mentioning that we're just burying the nuclear waste from here and everywhere else for some future civilization (presumably of robot-monkeys) to deal with. The wind is here, and the sun is there (generating power that makes nuclear reactors seem like Easy-Bake Ovens), so can we please just get on with it?!

Elmira, Ontario's Chemicals - follow-up

2011-03-10T13:28:00.010-05:00

Despite my having lived in Woolwich Township for the first nineteen years of my life (1965-84) and occasionally since then (1987, 2000-01 and 2010-11), I did not know that the Elmira groundwater chemical scandal had anything to do with Agent Orange, etc. until last week. This situation just goes to show how reticent people were to talk about some of the underlying issues that were still going on in the 1970s-80s (i.e., before I first left the immediate area in 1989). At least one of the Elmira newspapers (there were often two, competing, small weeklies), the Signet, was apparently still in the pocket of Uniroyal Chemical until the 1970s-80s, and at one point (I believe in the 1960s) a couple of big-shots from the company (around the time when it was making Agent Orange for the US government) made up a not insignificant portion of the town council.

The timeline of knowledge about various known dangers vs. useful action will be important to establish. I'll probably want to consult the relevant town council minutes and company reports from 1945 through 1991 (and account for exactly who argued and voted for exactly what), look up the "Weed-Free Zone" newspaper ads from the 1940s in support of the blanketing of basically every lawn in the town with 2,4-D ("at cost" and as a goodwill gesture by the company), and get whatever public access there might be at a local, provincial, or federal level to records about this--and to relevant medical (and, possibly, veterinary) records. At one point, cows were dropping dead from drinking the creek water, and at another point a prominent citizen's dog died after it was powdered with 2,4-D for flea control. Most such things took place decades before anybody started to do anything about it. See the book-chapter excerpts at: http://books.google.com/books?id=lj8bcu03WigC&pg=PA297.

N-Nitrosodimethylamine (NDMA) and 2,3,7,8-tetrachlorodibenzo-para-dioxin (TCDD) seem to be the two nastiest things Uniroyal would have spewed out of its plant. However, TCDD (a by-product of Agent Orange) is rarely discussed, so maybe it's not an issue, even though 2,4,5-T was made in Elmira, as 2,4-D (arguably not as scary) had been since the 1940s. NDMA's cancer/tumour effects on rats had been studied at least since the early 1980s, and in 1982 there was a famous double-homicide case in the US of two people having been killed using it. It was first detected at contaminant levels in California in 1988, near a place where rocket fuel was made, and then at similar levels in Elmira's water supply in 1989. Although rocket fuel would have been more "glamorous," the Elmira contamination was probably caused by earlier attempts at cleaning up organic nitrogen-containing wastewater with chlorination.

In 1989, the levels of NDMA in several of Elmira's wells were 200 to 300 times (not % above, but multiples above) the maximum level considered safe: 3-4 parts per billion vs. 0.014 ppb. Uniroyal was found to be spewing out effluent with NDMA at 2000 ppb, which means that the water treatment system was getting rid of about 90% of it. The company was required to get its high influent levels of NDMA down to 0.5 ppb (and the average down to 0.2 to 0.3 ppb), so that Elmira's public water treatment system then further could get it down to reasonably acceptable levels. See the government report at: http://www.ert.gov.on.ca/files/DEC/O9206d1.pdf. The government forced a shut-down of two of the town's major wells in early 1990, then the town started piping in all of its water from Waterloo by 1991.

The engineering consultants Conestoga-Rovers have done the clean-up processing, both of continuing contaminants (esp. NDMA, which is done with "ultraviolet oxidation") and of the longer-standing issues. See a report about the clean-up approaches at: http://www.canadianconsultingengineer.com/issues/story.aspx?aid=1000106557. I also know that something was put into storage containers that somehow then later leaked. I'm not sure what that was, but it could possibly contain TCDD, because I suspect that 2,4,5-T wasn't actually made in Elmira until only a little before the "fallout" from it in Vietnam. It's likely that the storage containers were the same type of 55-gallon barrels that were also what ended up leaking similar things at Love Canal in the Niagara Falls / Buffalo area in the 1970s.

Elmira's water still won't be safe enough to use for several more decades. So, obviously, it can't just contain NDMA, although that was the tipping point (to use Malcolm Gladwell's, an Elmira native's, expression) that finally got some solutions underway. The town has an active blogger on these types of issues (Al Marshall, at http://elmiraadvocate.blogspot.com/), and the award-winning environmental scientist Henry Regier (retired from U of T in 1995) also lives in Elmira and worked with a citizen's group that helped get things done. However, I'm still keen to figure out the long-term health implications for those of us who drank and otherwise used Elmira (and/or area) water for decades: diabetes, various cancers and skin diseases, subacute transient peripheral neuropathy, liver poisoning, diarrhea, etc.

Elmira, Ontario's Toxic Chemicals - Past and Present

2011-03-08T14:46:00.001-05:00

Somebody needs to be held fully and utterly accountable for the Naugatuck-Uniroyal-Crompton-Chemtura chemical company having polluted the Elmira area (including the Canagagigue Creek, which runs through Floradale) with some of the most toxic chemicals ever made (including Agent Orange!), for the entire town having been routinely sprayed with an eventually-banned chemical weed killer (2,4-D) in the late 1940s, and for the area having been assured of the safety of its water supply for decades.

Incredibly, until tests were done in 1989, most people in the town had merely complained about some bad smells, and even I did not know much more about the whole situation until now, having lived away from the immediate area from 1989 to 2000 and for most of the time since then. I'm extremely worried that the sulphur smell in the water here (a few miles north-west of Elmira) also means that NDMA (a cancer-causing, dioxin-like compound) could also be present in dangerous quantities. Elmira will not be able to use its own water until most of the way through this century, but has anyone bothered to test for similar issues in closely-adjacent places?

Elmira now gets its water supply from Waterloo and others of us in Woolwich Township now mostly use bottled drinking water. However, I suspect that high numbers of people in the area have serious health issues, and I am going to try to find some statistics on this. The town's politicians and newspapers (not to mention the area's mild-mannered Mennonites) have clearly been either complicit or fairly useless on many of these issues.

See excerpts from the following book chapter (published in 1995): http://books.google.com/books?id=lj8bcu03WigC&pg=PA297.

Musicology Needs a Reboot and a New Name

2011-02-05T18:55:00.004-05:00

Ever since I first entered graduate school in musicology, people have asked me: “What instrument do you play?” It is safe to say that almost no-one in the general public understands that musicology is largely about interpreting and contextualizing music—historically, culturally, and so on. The field's closest parallels are not found in the fine and performing arts, but in the humanities, where an art history professor would never be asked: “What sort of paintbrush do you prefer?” Some musicologists also perform (or conduct, compose, etc.), but it is rarely the main thing they do. In any case, the field needs a reboot and a new name.

Musicology established, in central European universities in the mid- to late-19^th century, the academic study of music. In the 20^th century, university and college music departments (including schools, faculties, conservatories, etc.) then began to house all music sub-disciplines, with performance majors eventually comprising about 80% of music students. In nearly all music departments, musicology became triply-ghettoized as: (1) the provider of music history courses in a “service industry” to other types of students, (2) the purveyor of relatively obscure research in dissertations, books, conferences, and journals (such as journal reviews of books that have already been through peer review), and (3) a field giving ideological precedence almost exclusively to European classical music. Thus, it is hardly surprising that musicology has remained, with very few exceptions, a “faceless” discipline.

Musicologists still mainly teach music history “core” courses, covering various developments within the eras of European classical music: Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, Romantic, and 20^th Century. Their students are mostly music performance majors, many of whom resent having to take any music history courses at all. Musicologists also usually teach a one-semester “music appreciation” course (i.e., mainly classical music, “once over lightly” and less technically) for non-music majors. A few teach courses on the history of popular music, the history of jazz, and/or other “outliers,” but such courses are usually also for non-major music appreciation. Music departments frequently expect their music history core and appreciation courses to be based around textbooks. Thus, it is only occasionally possible for a musicologist to give students much of a sense of his or her intensive, original research.

Sometimes, musicologists teach upper- or graduate-level seminars within subject areas more specifically related to their research specializations. However, nearly all music departments continue to expect such seminars to focus on detailed explorations of more specific topics found within the standard, European, classical subject areas and largely from before the 20^th century. This is unfortunate, because by the first decade of the 21^st century 48% of all new musicology Ph.D.s had produced dissertations on 20^th-century topics (a 400% increase from the 12% of the 1950s). Such dissertations often covered a wide range of North American and other non-European topics, including not only concert music and opera, but also such non-classical forms as national/regional music from around the world, various types of popular music, jazz, and film/TV/radio music. Scholars working on such “new” topics are often highly innovative, using methodologies from cultural studies (e.g., issues of ideology and cultural hierarchy), critical theory (e.g., post-modernism and parody/appropriation), gender studies, and so on. Unfortunately, though, non-music departments and non-music scholars remain largely unaware of this excellent work.

In the late-20^th and early-21^st centuries, musicology encouraged (or at least allowed) dissertations on hundreds of topics that only a few music departments ended up tolerating in their courses. Those who argue that the best people always rise to the top of their profession are not in touch with the realities of subject-matter-bias found within music departments. Although some people would argue for the benefits of proprietary courses with specifically-assembled materials (as I would), almost any musicologist is capable of teaching standard, classical music history based around a textbook, its provided listening materials, and its provided lecture slides. By comparison, almost any musicologist who has never studied or performed popular music (or even listened to much of it) is going to look very silly teaching “The History of Rock” or running a seminar on “Interpretation vs. Analysis in the Study of Popular Music.” Tellingly, music departments routinely consider popular music to be “non-Western” (i.e., non-classical “world music,” and thus to be taught by ethnomusicologists), even though it is extremely diverse and makes up the vast majority of Western music.

The good news is that Ph.D.s in musicology end up in academic jobs somewhat more often than Ph.D.s in, say, English. The bad news is that whereas English Ph.D.s (of which there are considerably more) get tenure-track jobs less than 50% of the time, musicology Ph.D.s still only land in such positions 54% of the time. Using my new version of Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology (American Musicological Society, 2010), the Musicology Wiki (2010-11, plus its archives, 2006-10), the AMS membership directory (2010), and web-based searches, I tracked down the whereabouts of several hundred recent Ph.D.s in musicology. For example, of the 108 Ph.D.s from 2006, fifty-eight (54%) were, at the end of 2010, in tenure-track academic positions. Of the remaining fifty (46%), 7% were mainly employed as performing musicians, 5% were mainly employed as visiting (full-time) or part-time instructors, 4% were employed in other types of music positions, 3% were employed in other types of university positions, 3% were employed in other industries, 2% were on postdoctoral fellowships, 5% were “location known, but employment unknown,” and 18% were not found in any of the location sources.

Academic music research changed significantly in the 1990s and 2000s, but the requirements of music departments largely did not. Doing what you believe in doesn't necessarily mean that search committees and potential future colleagues will also believe in it, even if your work is ground-breaking. So, musicology should aspire to become much more widely: (1) respected (e.g., by a much broader range of students and colleagues than has so far been the case), (2) consulted (such as for media interviews, public-interest debates, magazine articles, and so on), and (3) disseminated (e.g., outside of music departments, at non-music conferences, and including “public intellectuals”). Suitable contexts include cultural studies, “general” humanities, American studies, philosophy, media studies, history, gender studies, sociology, broadcasting, journalism, and the development of web-based content.

Above all, we need to establish a new and better name for our field, one that actually lets people know what we do. “Musicology” is: (1) much too pseudo-scientific-sounding, (2) widely derided by music students (and even by many of their instructors), (3) far too tied-up in its formerly-exclusive associations with classical music, and (4) misunderstood by the general public. So, let's start calling it what it is: “humanities music history & culture”—or, in university contexts: “humanities music” and, in public contexts: “music history & culture.” Only then will some Ph.D.s in musicology actually have a chance of getting tenure-track academic jobs in places other than music departments and/or contributing to wider, public discourses about music.

Award-Winning Ad(vert)(isement)s

2011-01-14T13:29:00.000-05:00

I just saw the recent collection of award-winning, international ads. The Johnnie Walker ad with Robert Carlyle is pretty great (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnSIp76CvUI) and there were others that were also quite good (including two of the Old Spice ads most of us have probably seen) and some that were very interesting, such as Volkswagen's sociological "Fun Theory" experiments in Sweden, e.g. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lXh2n0aPyw, and some of the ones from Brazil, etc.

The strangest one was near the end: an excerpt from a German horror film called Last Call. It had no explanation or subtitles in the version distributed with the collection, so most of us were quite baffled by it. However, upon further research, it's an interactive, voice-recognition film, in which a randomly-selected, participating audience member in a cinema actually speaks (over a cell phone) with the main character (a real, filmed actress, not animated) and gives her suggestions (left or right?, etc.). The audience member's decisions change the actual locations, etc. of the scenes in the resultant version of the film! It's explained (and excerpted, in several versions) at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qe9CiKnrS1w.

A Status Update with More than 140 Characters!

2011-01-10T16:32:00.002-05:00

Happy (belated) New Year!

For Fall 2011, I've applied for some tenure-track, academic jobs in my Ph.D. field of musicology (in which I worked part-time or full-time from 2001-08), and there are some pretty good possibilities. I'm also occasionally applying for some more immediate, suitable, entry-level jobs in software development, which is the field in which I studied and worked from September 2009 to August 2010.

In the meantime, I have some semi-relevant, part-time work I can do: researching and writing articles for the Encyclopedia of Music in Canada (to which I also contributed circa 1990-91 and 2006-09: http://www.collectionscanada.gc.ca/emc/index-e.html) and developing a web-based portfolio directory for the American Musicological Society (which is where I created a brand-new Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology web database this past summer: http://www.ams-net.org/ddm/). It's difficult, however, to get motivated to work on writing articles that reprise part-time work I've done in the past or on a part-time IT project that may not lead to anything else. There really are no permanent, full-time jobs available in "musicological IT," so I wish I had a better "Plan B."

In December, I did quite a bit of Christmas carolling quartet and church-service choral singing (mostly while house-sitting in Toronto), but now I'm temporarily living out in the country, north of Kitchener-Waterloo. Actually, choral singing was my original "Plan B," but even when I regularly sang in the Elora Festival Singers and in several church and other choirs (also mainly 2001-08), that was still only ever a part-time job.

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"Black Swan" (movie, 2010)

2010-12-21T20:52:00.000-05:00

I like Darren Aronofsky’s movies, including pi, Requiem for a Dream, and even his relatively obscure “flop," The Fountain. The Wrestler was a much more mainstream type of thing.

Black Swan strikes an effective middle-ground between arty and commercial. Natalie Portman is quite good with the material, including channeling her actual childhood ballet experience. However, the character goes quite easily off the deep end, with “body”-obsessed fantasies, etc. (including what her rival, played by Mila Kunis, calls a “lesbo wet dream”) that seem inspired by David Cronenberg’s more bizarre things of the 1980s, but without the movie really ever providing an explanation (other than the character having an unpleasant mother, played by Barbara Hershey) for why or how she may be mentally ill in the first place.

I actually thought that the director's space- and time-shifting meditation on life and love, The Fountain, was great, even though it failed commercially and had a very difficult production life (e.g., a drastically-slashed budget and Hugh Jackman and Rachel Weisz replacing Brad Pitt and Cate Blanchett).

Lady Gaga

2010-11-03T09:54:00.000-04:00

From what I’ve seen and heard, Lady Gaga’s videos, persona, and weird fashion sense are somewhat more interesting than her actual music. In a sense, that’s rather a lot like early- to mid-1980s’ Madonna, but Madonna then gradually became a better musician and by the late 1980s was quite involved in her songwriting and, especially, the business side of her career. The main difference is that Lady Gaga is a more accomplished musician from the get-go. So, it will be interesting to see if she can make artistic changes and updates from where she is now and continue to do interesting things for a substantial fan base in five, fifteen, or twenty-five years—like Madonna did.

Lady Gaga’s androgyny and frantic, digitally-manipulated presentations also seem to me to be influenced by such late-1990s’ artists as Marilyn Manson (although she’s named after the 1984 Queen song, "Radio Ga Ga"), and Manson was, of course, one of the most intelligent interviewees in Michael Moore’s 2002 film Bowling for Columbine. All of these musicians are really quite smart (Madonna apparently has the same IQ as I do!), and if the music/academic establishment didn’t remain so biased against popular music, other smart people would realize that such artists are at least as interesting to think about (even musically) as contemporary, experimental, so-called “art” music and earlier “classical” music. However, musicology will never get to the point of considering “21st century music” to include Lady Gaga, because it still doesn’t even consider “20th century music” to have included the Beatles! (I’ve just written a blog posting about some of the problems in musicology, and this subject played right into that.)

"The Social Network" (2010)

2010-10-01T23:42:00.010-04:00

I like good movies much better than I like Facebook, even a good movie about Facebook. Even if only 20% of The Social Network is "true" (and it's probably more like 60%), Mark Zuckerberg and Sean Parker are still grade-A douche-bags. I liked screenwriter Aaron Sorkin's comment to Stephen Colbert last evening that he doesn't use Facebook and would rather call someone about having just had a great cupcake. Good one!

The movie was competently directed by David Fincher (Seven, The Game, Fight Club, Panic Room, Zodiac, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, etc.), but despite its hi-tech sheen and recent setting, it's really just an old-fashioned morality tale about greed and selling out your friends. (See one theater over for Wall Street 2.)

The Social Network covers the early years of Facebook (2003-04) extremely well, as adapted by Sorkin from Ben Mezrich's nonfiction novel The Accidental Billionaires (2009). The soundtrack is suitably hi-tech and somewhat coldly electronic, by Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails) and Atticus Ross.

Facebook is NOT web 2.0: it is, at best, web 1.5. In a related matter, people who don't want to hear about cupcakes (or somebody making lasagna for dinner, painting their bedroom, or becoming single) should check out the professional career-networking website LinkedIn.

Classicized Rock (Music and Culture - Podcast 1)

2010-09-14T19:41:00.008-04:00

I've just launched my series of Video Podcasts, called "Music and Culture." Podcast No. 1 is entitled "Classicized Rock: Heavy Metal, Progressive Rock, and Chamber Music." A full, podcast version (MPEG-4, for iTunes, iPhones, etc.) will be available from my website. The complete presentation is 30 minutes long. However, I've also posted it on YouTube in two, slightly-edited halves: Part 1, Part 2.

"Classicized Rock" is about selected heavy metal and progressive rock bands (Black Sabbath, Genesis, Rush, and Metallica) and some of their songs ("War Pigs", "The Fountain of Salmacis", "The Spirit of Radio", and "Master of Puppets") adapted into classical chamber music (involving early music, pianos, violins, and cellos) by Rondellus, Ingve Guddal and Roger T. Matte, Rachel Barton, and Apocalyptica.

"Chloe" (2009)

2010-05-25T11:49:00.002-04:00

I watched Atom Egoyan’s Chloe (2009) yesterday, and I plan to watch Nathalie (the 2003 French original), so that I can compare them. An arguably-sensationalist “hotness” factor is certainly there (lesbian sex scene and all, in a story aspect apparently excluded from Nathalie), but something about Chloe didn’t really gel for me, probably at least partly because Egoyan didn’t write the screenplay.

It’s too obvious that Chloe (“escort” Amanda Seyfried) has not actually seduced the daddy (classical music professor Liam Neeson) but, rather, is manipulating the mommy (gynaecologist Julianne Moore). However, the characters are not well enough established for us to care about them (or any of this) all that much. Without stronger characters in place, everything seems somehow “clinical,” but not in the weirdly-compelling way of Egoyan’s best original screenplays (such as 1989’s Speaking Parts) or even his 1997 adaptation The Sweet Hereafter. I also could not keep myself from thinking about whether or not they had completed filming Chloe before Natasha Richardson (Neeson’s wife) died after a skiing accident in Quebec. In fact, they apparently had to re-write parts of the film to account for Neeson’s absence, but he then returned for a couple of days after her death in order to complete certain scenes.

I was surprised that long-time Egoyan collaborator (and fellow Canadian) Mychael Danna’s score was so “traditional orchestral” sounding, because what he does best is electronic-keyboard and/or ethnic-world music fusions with western instruments. It’s almost as though Danna did not find the story compelling enough to bother. It was nice to see “gentrified” Toronto, but Neeson’s character being a classical music professor (based in New York City, for some reason, although this is not very well explained), the use of a Beethoven recital (in Toronto) by the main characters’ son, etc. seemed fairly gratuitous. It was also perfectly obvious (too perfectly obvious to me) that it was going to be Egoyan’s classical-pianist sister Eve playing the “Moonlight Sonata” (and not just the easy first movement!) on the soundtrack, almost as if standing in for the conspicuous absence from this film of Egoyan’s actress-wife Arsinée Khanjian. Presumably, these things may have been to balance (in a low-key Canadian way) the fact that the film’s three primary actors are not Canadians (although R.H. Thomson and others have supporting roles), and the references to the Canadian (London, ON) band Raised by Swans, which Egoyan had already used in his 2008 film Adoration, may have been for similar reasons.

"Blinking Point Liar"

2010-05-24T13:10:00.001-04:00

I think everyone should read Malcolm Gladwell's latest book, "Blinking Point Liar," in which a tipping point is reached whereby someone who thinks without having to think becomes a vastly famous outlier by plagiarizing actual research by a lot of people who actually have put 10,000+ hours into their professions.

Haydn's "Creation"

2010-05-23T12:03:00.003-04:00

Mennonite Mass Choir (with Menno Singers) performed Haydn’s “Creation” last weekend. I’ve been having my doubts about Menno Singers (Rachmaninoff Vespers was very “rocky” back in March, and I skipped the vast majority of the “Creation” rehearsals), but it was pretty good, actually. It helped for the end result that it’s (1) relatively easy for most of the singers, (2) accompanied/doubled by orchestra, and (3) verging on insufferably joyous, and (4) that I’m definitely feeling appreciated by the conductor (Peter Nikiforuk) and by the weaker tenors (of which there are 7 women in a section of only 18 in a choir of 150 voices). The soloists are Mennonites all: Stephanie Kramer (whom I’ve known for a long time, from Elora, etc.), young tenor and conductor Brandon Leis (whom I briefly sang beside in the St. John’s Elora church choir), and Daniel Lichti (of WLU, etc. and about whom I wrote an article for the “Encyclopedia of Music in Canada”). When I was asked by the weaker tenors to “section lead” them, that put me about six feet from Dan, and he glanced at me a couple of times, as if to say: “What the hell is this voice doing in this choir?” Good question!

my summer work term

2010-05-23T12:00:00.002-04:00

I needed a summer work term to complete my computer programming studies, and all I had in Kitchener-Waterloo (Ontario) was one interview at Research In Motion (i.e., the Blackberry) that didn’t lead to anything. However, a suitable position showed up on the e-mail list of the American Musicological Society. It’s a paid internship that’s 50% writing programme notes and doing web versions of those notes (incl. links, images, media, etc.) for the Bowdoin International Music Festival (which is mostly Romantic era chamber music) and 50% working on web/database programming for the AMS. So, it’s a highly weird combination of musicology and computers.

Bowdoin College is in Brunswick, Maine (25 minutes north of Portland, a.k.a. a little over two hours north of Boston), and the BIMF and AMS both have their offices on its campus. I do two weeks of work from here (Kitchener) starting next week, then I’m there for nine weeks (June 14 to August 13). The pay is OK, they’re also putting me up for free at a quite nice residence hall on the campus, they paid my visa and health insurance costs and gave me gas money to get there and back, and I also get two free tickets for every festival concert.

"An Education"

2010-03-28T12:26:00.002-04:00

I liked "An Education" OK, and it certainly seemed like every middle-aged (straight) man's fantasy for a little while, there! However, it got very depressing in the second half and right up until the last couple of minutes. It could have done with a little more "decompression" at the point where the sympathetic teacher helps Jenny get into Oxford. All of that seemed very abrupt (and way too "montage-y"), and the voice-over ending (about boys at Oxford proposing trips to Paris) was far too weak. I know the story is based on a real-life memoir, but I wish Jenny had actually gotten together with young, awkward Graham at the end. (I felt bad for him.)

Generally, the film reminded me of "Mona Lisa Smile" (2003), which was not perfect, either, and was based at least as much around the "young at heart" and socially-progressive teacher as it was around the "marry a rich boy" female college students, not to mention being set in New England as opposed to actual England. However, I guess the point of "An Education" (hence the underplayed teacher/headmistress roles) was that the suburban/lower-middle-class (or whatever they call that in the UK) main character learned a lot about life, the "real world," etc. BEFORE going headlong into higher education. I wish I had.

"The Hurt Locker"

2010-03-10T08:09:00.006-05:00

I didn't think "The Hurt Locker" was THAT good (i.e., Best Picture or Best Original Screenplay Oscar good). The war movie side of it needed to have at least some kind of coherent ideological point of view, and the psychological drama side of it needed to have better contexts for what motivates someone--other than the central character being fairly "nuts." For example, the Iraqis were portrayed almost entirely as a combination of bomb-crazy insurgents, marketplace shucksters, unruly boys, and disinterested wallflowers.

I found it moderately interesting that the encountered professor was "inviting," whereas the angry woman in the same scene (presumably the professor's wife) was not inviting at all. That scene was presumably meant to parallel the positive feeling of some Iraqis towards the intervention vs. the strongly-constrasting views even within an extremely-close sociological unit, but it lasted less than a minute out of the film's 130-minute duration. Also, for a film directed by the first woman (Kathryn Bigelow) to win an Oscar for Best Director, there were otherwise almost no women in it, either in the US forces or among the Iraqis.

At least James Cameron and "Avatar" (stupidest story ever) didn't win these three Oscars.

Quentin Tarantino and "Inglourious Basterds" should have won more awards.

Classical Music Snobs

2010-02-13T12:29:00.001-05:00

I believe that classical music snobs who think that Top 40 pop hits and the Grammy awards really mean anything re "popular culture" should be forced to listen to "Eine kleine Nachtmusik" repeatedly.

Payback

2010-02-13T12:28:00.000-05:00

I wonder, as I daily walk past the woodworking centre of the community college I presently attend, on my way to the class in which my assignments revolve around the website for a fertilizer company, if this is all payback for having presumed ever to have gotten a Ph.D. in musicology -- given my rural origins.

Winter Olympics death

2010-02-13T12:27:00.000-05:00

I think it's sad that someone died during a Winter Olympics trial run, but I also think it's sad that people willingly hurl themselves down icy things at 150 kph. The extreme speed of the track is to blame, not poor construction. It is what it is.

choral singing

2010-02-13T10:50:00.010-05:00

Last weekend, I sang in a chamber choir concert of Brahms’ "Liebeslieder and Neue Liebeslieder Waltzes" in the Oakville Chamber Ensemble. It went quite well, but it was a rather short concert, given how many hours we rehearsed. We have another concert coming up in May.

I also agreed to sing in a Haiti fundraiser concert on Feb. 20 (7:30 at St. John the Evangelist, Kitchener) of Victoria Requiem and various other high Renaissance pieces, despite the fact that the Victoria is already being performed by an expanded version of Tactus the SAME EVENING in nearby Guelph. I have serious doubts about such a program for a fundraising event, as a fundraising concert should be primarily for the relevant cause and to provide a concert that a lot of people would enjoy, not be an excuse for someone to present a concert that he wanted to present anyhow. However, the rehearsal/concert week is Reading Week at Conestoga College, so I figured this was a way to do something reasonably useful for a little while that also provides a break from my computer studies.

We also have Rachmaninoff's Vespers with Menno Singers on March 6, and I have a little solo bit at the beginning. The concert should be pretty good. 8pm, St. Matthew's Lutheran Church, Kitchener.

Computer Studies update

2010-02-13T10:39:00.003-05:00

My one course in Computer Applications Development (ASP.NET) is quite the chore, because the instructor is adding in some fairly hard-core programming stuff and for some reason assumes that we’re all experienced programmers already, even though two-thirds of us aren’t.

However, most of my fellow students in the program are fairly nice, and some of the ones with a lot more experience sometimes help out the rest of us. After such help, I generally understand things well enough to then be able to change certain things around. Assignment 2 for that one course (out of four courses) took me about 25 hours to complete, and he only gave us a week. However, I’ve decided on the strategy of seeking his help occasionally in office hours or lab time.

computers vs. musicology

2009-12-20T23:23:00.001-05:00

I wish there were suitable musicology jobs to which I could apply during my three-week break from studies in computer applications development. However, there aren't any, so by early 2010 I will probably promote "Plan B" (computers) to "Plan A."

If anyone has even a slightly good argument for why I should do any further work as a so-called "independent" (i.e. unemployed) scholar in musicology (which will probably never lead to anything ever again) instead of learning, say, XML and Java (which would nicely supplement my studies and make me even more employable), I'd love to hear it.

computer semester update

2009-12-20T09:20:00.004-05:00

I haven't blogged for a couple of months.

I got through my final exams in Computer Applications Development OK this past week (Dec. 15-18), and most of my grades are now in. I received a better grade than I expected in my systems analysis class (my hand-drawn diagrams were terrible) and a slightly worse grade than I expected in Visual C# programming (I guess the prof didn't actually like my creative, "Kobayashi Maru" approach to part of it). The Linux/Networking exam was extremely easy (as it was open-book and the questions were taken right out of the book), my SQL exam went quite well (although I never did get my stored procedure to work properly), and I lost slightly more points on my HTML exam "project" than I thought I would.

Some friends and I watched "2001: A Space Odyssey" last night (and I subsequently put some "Dr. D. Bowman" photos on Facebook). We also watched parts of the "Star Wars Holiday Special" (which is from 1978 and hilariously terrible), as well as Stephen Colbert's 2008 Christmas special (which is quite good).

It's now time to rent some movies I haven't seen, and my housemate lent me his 32" widescreen TV for the living room for the holidays. Then, I'll be at my parents' place on Christmas Day, singing in a carolling gig later that day, and house-sitting from that night until around New Year's Day.

My second (i.e., last) semester of computer courses don't start until Jan. 11 (and, yes, some of us definitely thought that we should watch "2010" during 2010).

Computer Applications Development

2009-09-30T08:08:00.003-04:00

Re my just-started "Plan B" studies in Computer Applications Development at Conestoga College, I kicked ass on some recent course assignments and lab work, over the weekend worked on a tough-to-accomplish one-page resume (difficult given that my academic CV is nine pages long), yesterday went to a Research In Motion co-op job info session at the college (also with free pizza and soft drinks, and we each got a deck of cards with Blackberrys on them!), and today am going both to a career fair (where I hope to meet people from a couple of relevant companies: RIM, Desire2Learn, and RealNetworks) and to a session with the college's IT Dean for those of us in computer programs, but who are older (“mature”).

"9" (movie)

2009-09-30T08:00:00.002-04:00

I just saw the weird “puppet” movie 9, which I’ve decided to rename The Wizard of Pinocchio: The Rise of the Machines. It's visually inventive, but the story is rather incoherent and a mish-mash of various and--one should have thought--incompatible influences, such as a mysterious scientist who inadvertently sets nasty things in motion, puppets who try to become heroic, Judy Garland’s original performance of “Over the Rainbow” (The Wizard of Oz) underscoring an extended scene, and Terminator-like near-future machines trying to blow up everything and everyone. As with District 9, it was derived from a young filmmaker’s short film and backed by a major director/producer, in this case not Peter Jackson, but Tim Burton.

Academia

2009-09-28T13:12:00.002-04:00

Recent thoughts about Academia:

Here's an example of how silly academic music job postings can be: "Primary responsbilities include teaching music theory, musicianship, composition, musical instrument digital interface, and low brass private lessons."
Academia in the humanities exists so that many of the 50% who are lucky enough to get "permanent" jobs can move around to better jobs, whereas the other 50% never get to have permanent jobs at all.
On the other hand, a dissertation is an elaborate information system, developed through an iterative and incremental life cycle. In other words, that's pretty similar to what systems analysts do! So, maybe there is hope for me in my new proposed career in computer applications development.

depressing news about my "Second Career" funding

2009-09-14T18:36:00.003-04:00

The program I'm taking in Computer Applications Development has already started, and I don’t want to have to quit.

However, I have a feeling that Ontario government Second Career funding is going to be a dead deal, after SEVEN MONTHS of prep work and waiting. They will probably argue that even though my U of Guelph Record of Employment from 2007 has code A (“laid off”) on it, it was actually just a sessional/contract appointment, not to mention just part-time. My MPP’s office will keep on them regarding this for a bit longer, but it will probably be futile to appeal the decision, not to mention likely into at least October or November by then.

I can’t get OSAP student loans, either, because they say that even if I wasn’t going through bankruptcy, my “grace” period for paying back my initial loans (some of which date back to 1984!) and potentially getting more loans had already expired. Also, because I’m going back to school for one more year, it’s entirely possible that my “end of study date” (despite the fact that the first one was for a Ph.D.) will change from 2000 to 2010 and I’ll still get stuck having to pay back my moderately large student loan amounts from the 1980s and ’90s, despite having gone through the humiliation of a bankruptcy that would otherwise have taken care of them. I have my MP’s (not MPP’s) office looking into that, as well as the office of my bankruptcy trustees.

So, I seem to have no choice but to see if my Dad will be able to get a suitable loan for me.

more on health-care

2009-09-09T08:16:00.001-04:00

What a ridiculous number of Americans don't get is that Canadians can still pay (or find that their employers will pay or, depending on their circumstances, their provincial government will pay) for such supplemental coverage as a private or semi-private hospital room, prescriptions, vision, dental, and so on. It's just that all citizens should be treated equally at the basic level of getting to (and choosing) doctors, using hospitals, getting clinical procedures and tests done, and so forth. Letting the "top" 8% (say, 24 million people) keep the "bottom" 16% (48 million people) from having appropriate, basic human conditions is not any kind of way to run a country.

See:

Who is Nash the Slash? -- Spoiler Alert

2009-09-05T11:01:00.010-04:00

If you want to know -- and see -- who the eccentric Canadian musician Nash the Slash really is, then visit the Photos section of my website.

The Truth about Canadian Health-Care

2009-09-05T10:41:00.000-04:00

Do not believe the outrageous lies by the Fox network and others in the US about Canada's health care system. It works, and we like it. See: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/09/04/canadians-defend-their-he_n_277684.html and http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DXXBCFnhsUc.

"This Beat Goes On"

2009-09-05T00:20:00.003-04:00

The second-half of Nicholas Jennings’ CBC rock-doc This Beat Goes On (about 1970s' Canadian rock music) was not very good at all.

The only way punk, post-punk, and new wave music make any sense historically OR stylistically is by comparison to the progressive rock, arena rock, heavy metal, and so on that preceded them. This second episode did not follow properly at all from the first one (which reasonably covered the Guess Who, BTO, Gordon Lightfoot, Harmonium, and many others) and instead dove right off the top into DOA, the Viletones, Teenage Head, etc., then covered Top 40 soft pop-rock, and then finally touched on Rush, Max Webster, etc. in the last couple of minutes. I’m not saying that hard/prog needed more airtime, but the filmmakers might as well have covered DOA in the show’s first episode and the Guess Who in a later episode, for all the sense this episode made.

I like the way they’re presenting lots of groups that people under thirty or so probably have never heard (or seen). However, the already-well-known entities (even Bruce Cockburn, but also Rush and way too many others) are just getting their best-known songs covered (any of which you can hear on classic rock radio any day of the week), rather than their much more interesting work, which would have presented them in a much better light in the context BOTH of obvious Top 40 pop songs AND of punk/post-punk/new-wave music.

They haven’t really done any better with this than the low-end fillers they usually have on VH1 and MuchMore(of-the-same)Music, and I find it hard to believe that they spent three years on it. Jennings is a light-weight: what Canadian music needs is a Malcolm Gladwell to distil what has been written about Canadian music by academics—but for a mass audience.

"Groucho"

2009-09-04T07:55:00.001-04:00

The ivory tower let me in, but only on the occasional day-pass. Please accept my resignation.

Peer review in the humanities makes about as much sense as improvisation in brain surgery.

"Adam" vs. "500 Days of Summer"

2009-08-28T21:40:00.001-04:00

I just saw Adam, and I liked it OK, but for me he had too many issues due to his developmental condition for me to be able sufficiently to sympathize with him. Also, being somewhat socially weird myself, I could not really help but keep seeing aspects of borderline Asperger’s Syndrome in myself. I liked 500 Days of Summer better, I suppose because the guy in it is quite normal, but interested in a socially-weird girl.

Setting-wise, Adam’s Central Park and the Upper West Side hardly needed a further case study to convince one of their merits. By comparison, 500 Days of Summer did a great job of showing aspects of LA that, while they probably can’t be reasonably compared with Manhattan, almost no-one ever thinks about, such as people with fairly normal jobs, green spaces, park benches, and architecture.

a video about Canadian health care

2009-08-28T16:29:00.004-04:00

I would like all of my US friends to watch this video: http://m.facebook.com/l.php?r55320e01&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.youtube.com%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DDXXBCFnhsUc&h=f221631cc745c4d663da7ed32f45167e&refid=7. It explains that Canada's health-care system works, that we like it, and that we spend WAY less on health care than Americans do--even though we are all covered and many of you are not.

It is preposterous to suggest that a public medicare system means that a bureaucrat with a clipboard decides everyone's fate within every examination room. If there are any Americans out there who actually believe that, then they need to have their heads examined. However, that examination would only be covered (1) if they were lucky enough not to be among the 47 million "citizens" without coverage and (2) if their private insurer didn't determine that their mental condition was pre-existing. Good luck with that!

I'm self-employed (part-time), bankrupt (i.e., with no credit), single, and with a pre-existing condition (type 2 diabetes). Am I covered in Canada? Darn right I am, and I even qualify for drastically-reduced medication and equipment costs. Would I be covered in this situation in the US. Hell, no!

"True Blood " 2.10 followup

2009-08-25T17:16:00.003-04:00

I liked this episode, because it actually has Maryann (even the lame-ass, grumpy, kitchen–oriented, complaining-about-water-heaters Maryann) in it less. On the other hand, without the Maryann/maenad/bacchanalian stuff that the vampires are trying to come to terms with (which is presumably not “Satanic” or “anti-Christian” as much as it is anti-vampire), there is frankly almost nothing going on in this show that would build to anything. The bible-quoting did have a slight effect on Tara’s trance, but the upshot of that for me is that religion is fairly innocuous compared to the combined power of Sookie and Bill. That is the combination (not religion) which will defeat Maryann, and I don’t think it has mainly to do with Sookie merely being “kind-hearted,” or whatever, either. Sookie clearly has some additional powers that are only now becoming apparent, and I still wonder if Bill had any reason (perhaps via the vampire queen) to know something about that possibility.

Even when in jeopardy, Sam was disinclined to change himself immediately, because he wouldn’t have wanted to “out” himself to Jason and Andy as a shape-shifter. However, when push came to shove he cleverly managed to make it seem that “Satan” (Jason) had affected his transformation, and he obviously did so in order to help keep Jason and Andy safe. If there IS something true about being a “good person” giving one additional powers (and not being easily controlled by the maenad), then Sam is clearly the next in line for that after Sookie. Maryann has succeeded, tried, and/or is still trying to disable those “super-human” people who have special powers (Sookie, voodoo lady, Daphne, Sam, etc.). All other humans--definitely including Christians--are mainly “trance-minion fodder.”

I imagine that part of the writing/production of this show (as with Justin Louis on Durham County) is that some actors end up signing on only for a certain number of episodes (or ask for too much money to continue or move on to other things), so that may explain where the vampire queen came from. That’s the downside of the more indie, shorter-series, premium cable approach compared to the bigger-money, longer series, network approach. It’s also why the “cheesy” main premise of Dr. Who (regeneration) has worked so well!

Will Jessica biting Hoyt’s Mom change her into a vampire? This is clearly an attack, not merely a borrowing of some of her blood, and my understanding of where this is going is that the vampires and even the tranced-out Maryann minions (not just Maryann herself) are probably going to be genetically incompatible.

"True Blood" 2.10

2009-08-24T17:34:00.002-04:00

This is a great episode. It’s been very clear for most of this season that the maenad/Dionysian side (Maryann, etc.) and the vampire side are equally ancient and, sort of, “mutually exclusive.” In any case, both sides were always ultimately going to need to exploit humans in order to be able to get to some kind of a showdown. Bill possibly always knew that (at least vaguely), Eric almost certainly did, Godric sacrificed himself to avoid participating in it any further (at the end of the previous episode), and the vampire Queen (nice legs, the rest of her is the equally nice Evan Rachel Wood, as we will see in the next two episodes) will hopefully explain the backdrop of this more fully.

At the moment, the vampires would appear to have the upper hand, because Maryann’s zombie minions are generally pretty stupid, even more stupid than Jason and Andy, apparently, but this does seem to depend on how deep they are into a trance (which is usually not very deep, especially in the absence of shape-shifter organ-meat cannibalism). By comparison, Sookie seems to have the power (still merely emerging) not only to repel Maryann directly, but also to bring people (such as Tara) out of an extremely deep trance, whereas Bill’s glamouring alone is not effective in this. In a related matter, if Maryann’s blood makes Bill violently ill, what will the blood of Hoyt’s Maryann-controlled mother do to Jessica? It would make the most sense if they merely “cancelled each other out,” in some way.

"Californication"

2009-08-22T10:19:00.003-04:00

I like Californication (2007- ), except that it certainly does propagate the unreasonable characterization that everyone in LA is so good-looking. I suppose the Venice Beach area is well above average in this respect, though! I remember David Duchovny (this show’s Hank Moody) notoriously giving interviews around the later years of The X-Files (that show’s Fox Mulder) that he loved watching porn, so I guess it’s somehow fitting that he ended up in such a naughty, sex-oriented, yet oddly-literary show.

Duchovny is well-suited to presenting something along the lines of self-loathing and a frequently-“mumbling” spoken presentation, both of which are also present in the character of Mulder. However, combined with the actor’s family and educational backgrounds (a teacher/administrator mother, a writer/publicist father, attending an independent NYC boys’ school, a B.A. in English/poetry at Princeton, and an M.A. and an incomplete Ph.D. in English literature at Yale), these characteristics actually conspire to work much better as applied to the character of a prematurely has-been writer than to the character of a “flaky” FBI agent.

Hank is vaguely aware of pop culture and self-consciously espouses retro-hipness, saying things such as “B to the I to the double-L” and preferring LPs and mid-’70s Bob Dylan, and he also disparages not only LA (favouring New York) but also the “non-literary” context of his current occupation: blogging. Moreover, the character’s unforced level of discourse can be as erudite as: “Is there another mode of egress?” when trying to sneak out of a girls' high school. Even more than with Mulder, you can’t help but wonder: How much actual Duchovny is there written into fictional Hank?

"Inglourious Basterds"

2009-08-21T16:15:00.004-04:00

Quentin Tarantino's new film, Inglourious Basterds, is the closest thing he's done to his 1994 masterpiece Pulp Fiction, not in terms of its content, but in terms of its form.

The film includes a number of "chapters" (with separate stories that come together towards the end), several extremely violent scenes, brutally wicked humour, and the music is again mostly from the 1960s, '70s, and early '80s--even though this story in set in Nazi-occupied France from 1941-44! This approach completely works, though, in a "suspending disbelief" parallel to the hilariously-mispelled words of the film's title, which were borrowed from the correctly-spelled title of a relatively obscure, 1978 Italian WW2 film.

Language and dialogue again play major roles in this film, often with beautifully-spoken German and French (usually subtitled) by highly-compelling European actors--men and women. There are even a couple of voice-only cameos by Pulp Fiction alumni Samuel L. Jackson and Harvey Keitel. Musically, numerous "spaghetti western" cues are used (some actually by Ennio Morricone), but even the film's use of distorted rock guitar cues and of David Bowie's 1982 song "Cat People (Putting out Fire with Gasoline)" do not seem at all out of place.

I wouldn't possibly want to spoil the film's story, characterizations, "extreme moments," jokes, and so on here, but if you appreciate Tarantino's earlier work (especially Pulp Fiction), can handle the violence, and don't mind a highly fictional story interwoven with versions of several extremely real people (especially Hitler and Goebbels), then I would highly recommended this film.

"The Time Travel(l)er's Wife"

2009-08-20T11:44:00.011-04:00

The Time Traveler's Wife (the third word must be pronounced “truh-vee'-ler's,” as far as I'm concerned) was merely OK, I guess, to pass the time--and I only paid $4.20 to see it. I suppose the story is meant to be a metaphor for absent spouses (or something “profound” along those lines), but with all the time-jumping there is almost no coherent character development at all, so it doesn’t really work as romance or as science-fiction or, really, as anything. It must work much better in the book upon which it's based, but I’m not inclined to find out.

One of the more annoying things about the film is that it was meant to be released last November, and it thus begins and ends around Christmas and New Year’s and also prominently features the German Christmas carol “Es ist ein Ros entsprungen"--all of which just completely does not work for a film release in sweltering August. (My guess is that they will attempt to rush out the video for pre-Christmas, later this year.) Apparently, they had to do some major-scene reshoots (never a good sign!), but they had to wait until Eric Bana had grown his hair back after being the bald-bad-ass Romulan, Nero, in Star Trek and for the correct season to come around again. (Bana's hair, or lack of it in Star Trek, oddly "stars" in both films.) As the time-traveller, he is semi-naked a lot, although you never actually really ever see more than his chest and, occasionally, his fleeting ass. He's also in Funny People (an even worse film), so he’s kind of the “overexposed” (in some cases, literally) actor of summer 2009, something like Jude Law was five to eight years ago.

Bana's co-star, pretty Canadian actress Rachel McAdams, was earlier in the romance film The Notebook (which no doubt inspired her being cast as the time-traveller's wife), and she was the victim in the thriller Red Eye, as well as being in the comedies Mean Girls and Wedding Crashers. Speaking of people and things Canadian, I noticed Toronto's Roncesvalles/High Park and Queens Quay areas (etc.) pretending to be Chicago, and apparently parts of the film were also done in Hamilton, Ontario. The score is by frequent Atom Egoyan collaborator Mychael Danna (who, as his brother Jeff told me in June, has recently moved back to Toronto from LA). The score was actually recorded in LA, though. Also, the occasional classical singing heard in the film is provided by Canadian operatic soprano Isabel Bayrakdarian, and the Toronto band Broken Social Scene appears as a wedding cover band, performing (in what must be the worst wedding song selection ever) Joy Division's "Love Will Tear Us Apart Again."

For multiple versions of the same character, instead see the much better current science-fiction film Moon. For incorporations of 1980s' British gloom-rock, instead see the much better current "relationship" film 500 Days of Summer.

"True Blood" 2.9

2009-08-17T23:23:00.002-04:00

To me, the dream with Eric and Sookie was just a dream (and quite obviously so, given its Twin Peaks-meets-vampires aesthetic), and it also went on too long. Eric had been getting interesting in the last couple of episodes (and he still had some good, funny lines in this episode), but this episode otherwise set that interest back for me, instead of advancing it. As for “Eric’s blood” and Sookie, presumably there is a difference between him saving her and her “saving” him, something vaguely similar to the intentionality thing about “vampires only entering homes when invited.”

As for sex and violence (esp. in the previous episode) when people are under Maryann’s control, they are clearly not intentionally “having sex” or “fighting” (and they can’t remember any of these things, either), so the only one equating those two things is, I suppose, Maryann. Tara and Eggs (and even Lafayette and Maryann) are annoying the hell out of me (Lafayette only slightly less so), so if the animosity between Maryann and Sam is supposed to go somewhere, I wish they’d get the hell on with it.

"True Blood" 2.8

2009-08-16T23:48:00.002-04:00

OK, so Godric has surprisingly turned out to be a mild-mannered, pacifist, historical-Jesus-appreciating dude, which I suppose whatever remaining Anabaptist/Mennonite part of me appreciates! The “Christians,” of course, have been presented as ridiculously violent and intolerant assholes, and I’m happy that Jason has cut his ties to them, but I’m more than a bit disappointed that Sarah Newlin ended up being nothing more than an inconsistent floozy (rather suited to Jason, actually, if you think about it). Speaking of which, the church’s “suicide bomber” at the end of this episode seems rather more threatening and consequential than Sarah’s “tasering” (i.e., paintballing) of Jason at the cliff-hanger of the previous episode. One possibility is that Godric will somehow sacrifice himself in order to save the others. Bill and Lorena have, of course, just stepped outside.

The show’s analogy concerning homosexuality / “queerness” vs. Christianity / “straightness” (fangs=fags) breaks down, if the vampires (even Godric/“Word Made Flesh 2”/“Gandhi 2”?) are presumed to have been literally attacking humans/“straights” for thousands of years. As for Beast/Bull/Maryann, she is now involved in, what, Hannibal Lecter-esque culinary cannibalism as a part of her minion-control arsenal? I wish she (controlling Tara and Eggs or whomever) would actually get around to doing something concrete, because that character has just been getting more and more annoying for quite a few episodes now. If she causes fairly random people from Bon Temps to have zombie-orgies, but they don’t actually do much else, who cares? The payoff/denouement (when Maryann’s “kind” finally encounters the vampires—or whatever it is that’s going to happen) had better be worth it!

Canada's NDP

2009-08-16T19:35:00.003-04:00

I had vaguely been thinking that Canada's New Democratic Party (NDP) could rename itself the National Democratic Party, in order to keep the acronym and not sound like the American party. (This weekend, the party ran out of time to consider the idea of dropping the "New" from its name.) However, given their left-of-centre ("socialist," having founded universal health insurance, etc.) leanings, I guess they wouldn't want to be confused with a certain European "national socialist" (i.e. fascist) party of the 1930s and '40s. Of course, many of those Americans who still think that private enterprise is going to be able to solve the USA's terrible health insurance "system" also believe that Obama and others are, indeed, Nazis who want to euthanize their parents and grandparents.

"District 9"

2009-08-14T23:59:00.003-04:00

I just saw District 9, and it was pretty interesting, if quite gory—what with the alien weapons being able to vapour-splatter human heads. There’s plenty of action but also lots of things to think about, which is not a frequent combination—to say the least. The movie is about a displaced alien population (nicknamed the “Prawns”) that’s been trying to get it together over the past couple of decades to get off of Earth and back home. However, they’ve been forced to live in this massive slum, with the imminent plan for “District 10” involving a remote concentration camp. The government conspires to take advantage of an incident about a quarter of the way into the film that accidentally fuses alien “DNA” with a human. Also, not coincidentally, the film is set in South Africa. Unfortunately, though, way more action-inclined people will have seen Transformers 2, G.I. Joe, and other crap like that this summer.

Now that I think about it, the other fascinating thing about the film is that even though the aliens’ DNA seems to contain a substance that somehow powers their technology, they DON’T use the biological version of that substance in order to power their concealed/dormant spaceship. In other words, even though it would have been much faster (than several decades) for them to do so, the aliens don’t do “stem-cell” research on themselves! Something for everyone, I guess, not that most science-hating socio-cultural conservatives would be able to detect this particular hidden gem of a thread in the film.

The director, Neill Blomkamp, is Canadian (based in Vancouver, although born in South Africa), and I also watched his short film Alive in Joburg (2005), which is the six-minute "essay" that formed the basis for District 9.

The Kitchener Blues Festival

2009-08-10T09:59:00.003-04:00

The Kitchener Blues Festival was great, despite the rainy weather. Within a few hours, I heard Ronnie Hawkins & the Hawks (chaotic, with three guitarists and two keyboardists), Maria Muldaur (largely "swampy" Louisiana country/gospel-y blues), Leon Redbone (mostly olde-timey songs, along with a pianist), and Elvin Bishop (excellent band, including lead vocals by most of them).

"Durham County" - mark III

2009-08-07T11:13:00.002-04:00

What I find interesting about Season 2 of Durham County (I’ve watched the first two so far) is that there are three categories of people:

Major characters who should be, but aren’t all that messed up (Sadie, Ray Jr., and Audrey)
Major characters who are messed up, but professionally shouldn’t be (Mike, but especially Penny)
Minor characters acting about like we’d expect (Mike’s partner and lieutenant and Penny’s husband)

It’s also interesting to note that Michelle Forbes has recently been in US (True Blood and In Treatment), Canadian (Durham County), and British (Waking the Dead) TV shows. Thus, perhaps she’s the quintessential Anglo-American “cult” series actress!

summer Grove articles

2009-08-07T09:07:00.003-04:00

My Grove Dictionary of American Music articles on Canadian, US, etc. film composers from June and August of 2009:

Howard Shore
Michael Danna
Jeff Danna
John Debney
Michael Kamen
James Horner
Hans Zimmer

my summer "EMC" articles

2009-08-07T08:47:00.005-04:00

My Encyclopedia of Music in Canada articles from June and July of 2009:

Film Scores
EMI Music Canada (formerly Capitol Records – EMI of Canada)
Sony BMG (formerly BMG) Music Canada
Warner Music Canada
Universal Music Canada
CBC Recordings
Music Industries
Calgary Philharmonic Orchestra
Manitoba Chamber Orchestra
Ken Whiteley
Country Music
Jim Cuddy
Michael Buble

"Durham County" - mark II

2009-08-06T16:01:00.003-04:00

I have now watched the rest of the first season of Durham County (2007, 6 episodes), and I have warmed to it more. It’s obviously way more “cult-like” than such other cop shows as Law & Order and Flashpoint, but, given that, I would want to hold it to a higher writing standard. One can excuse ridiculous coincidences in things like True Blood (to a certain extent, since it’s obviously “fantasy” anyhow), but a supposedly realistic drama should at least be reasonably realistic.

Maybe Durham County begins to make more sense in Season 2 (2009, 6 more episodes), the first four of which I’m about to watch. I appreciate the basics of the characters fine, but I just don’t quite like how they’ve come together in the writing, at least so far. The show may be somewhat more like British TV, but I could also certainly see some scholar in film & TV or cultural studies explaining why it is the way it is, based on it being a hybrid of US and British TV “cult drama” approaches.

Also, just because American TV produces such crap as Two and a Half Men and Grey’s Anatomy (and, from what I can see, that horrible new "sex in space" show) doesn’t mean that there haven’t also been excellent “cult-like” US shows other than True Blood. Six Feet Under and Dexter are the most obvious examples, but Durham County isn’t nearly as well written as either of those. However, we do need to support such Canadian attempts.

"Durham County" (TV show)

2009-08-05T15:05:00.002-04:00

I just started watching the Canadian TV series Durham County (the first two of the six from 2007's Season 1 so far), and I like it OK. However, it’s rather unrealistic that “psycho neighbour man” (Ray) could be that psycho and that angry, not to mention homicidal and leaving blatant clues everywhere, without anyone discovering the real him after what has presumably been several decades. We're also supposed to believe that he has a substantial, decades-old, combative history with his new neighbour (Mike), who just happens to be a homicide cop. As G.O.B. (Arrested Development) would say: Come on!

The “hiding in plain sight” serial-killer aspect seems to be modelled a bit on Dexter, but Dexter (the character) is at least extremely intelligent and very careful, and the fact that Ray isn’t particularly either of those things merely makes everyone else seem just as stupid as he is. The troubled/angry-cop angle parallels certain aspects of Law & Order: SVU/CI. The teenaged kids (death-obsessed and arty, respectively) are similar to the transition-to-college, outsiders “finding themselves” shtick that was a substantial part of Six Feet Under. The desperate housewives seem like “Desperate Housewives,” although I’ve never really watched that show, so I can’t be sure.

That’s my take on it so far: well-produced and well-acted, but rather derivative of certain US shows. The other recent Canadian cop show, Flashpoint (also starring Hugh Dillon), is much more mainstream, “user-friendly,” and straightforwardly formulaic, but at least it delivers an unusual (SWAT-team) approach that has recently been unexplored elsewhere.

"Drag Me to Hell" and "Orphan"

2009-08-04T21:32:00.000-04:00

Another recent film pairing, but both in the horror/suspense genre, are "Drag Me to Hell" and "Orphan," both of which feature eastern European immigrants as scary, mysterious "others."

"Food, Inc." and "Moon"

2009-08-04T09:06:00.001-04:00

Oddly, the current films "Food, Inc." and "Moon" make an interesting ideological pairing, because both question the wisdom of letting monstrous corporations make the decisions about how to control our resources.

True Blood 2.7

2009-08-03T11:23:00.000-04:00

A lot happened in True Blood 2.7. Some of it clarified things we already suspected, but it also raised new questions, the most obvious ones being whether or not Jason is now dead (highly unlikely) and whether or not Godric is actually imprisoned (which also seems highly unlikely). Something is also not quite right with “flapper girl” (Lorena, Bill’s maker), but I can’t quite figure out who she’s working for or with and why. The homoeroticism has also been ramped up somewhat, but there are still a lot of lingering questions about what exactly Eric is trying to do (if Godric doesn’t actually need to be rescued, yet if Eric truly does love him). And aren’t we now only a few hours from the previously-supposed Godric-killing ceremony? Presumably, whatever that ceremony is, it is now going to be something other than what we’ve been led to believe it would be or else it is now not going to take place.

500 Days of Summer

2009-08-02T22:30:00.002-04:00

In 500 Days of Summer, I was amazed at how certain aspects of it are so “oldey-timey.” Even its scattered use of meditative voice-over and its use of a certain pop-rock songs are quite retro, the latter featuring not only the Smiths’ “There is a Light That Never Goes Out” (1986), but also a hilariously cheesy fantasy sequence making use of Hall and Oates’ “You Make My Dreams (Come True)” (1980) and even reasonable integrations (?!) of karaoke performances and arguments for Ringo Starr as the “best Beatle.”

As with so many of Woody Allen’s movies, this film has surface features of being a “romantic comedy,” but it’s actually far more philosophical than anything even remotely along those lines these days. Basically, a young woman (Zooey Deschanel) doesn’t want a serious relationship with a smitten young man (Joseph Gordon-Levitt) but “plays” with him for a while anyhow. However, the tone of the film, despite a few somewhat extreme moments (including its opening “dedication”), is surprisingly not really depressing or vindictive at all.

Despite the semi-retro vibe of parts of the movie, it is also set in a reasonable version of the present and in a gently post-modern, time-shifting way, as directed by former music-video director Marc Webb. It also features usually-underplayed aspects of Los Angeles, such as green spaces, architecture, park benches, “everyday” business, public transit, and relatively normal people. I’ve lived there for six years, so I know perfectly well that it’s not all movie stars and freeways, in the same way that I know perfectly well that 1980s’ music isn’t all about Madonna videos.

matchbook people & dance pop

2009-07-29T18:56:00.003-04:00

"Warriors' Dance" by the Prodigy (featuring animated matchbook people) is a cool video, but the song ain’t no “Fire Starter” (also by the Prodigy, 1997)! In a similar musical style, “Harder Better Faster Stronger” (by Daft Punk, 2007, the recent Grammy winner for Best Dance Recording) demonstrates exactly why I always thought that the vocal-effects dance song “Believe” (by Cher, 1998) was a waste of a great voice AND a great technology. Also, for me, a song has to work first as a song, and a good video is then “gravy.” Not that I care much for the Grammys, as “Believe” also won a Grammy for Best Dance Recording.

I think the best mainstream artist working in dance pop is Kylie Minogue. Check out “Speakerphone” from 2007’s “X,” for example. I don’t think there was a real video for that song, but the song is on YouTube. The same album’s song “The One” isn’t nearly as good musically, but the video is OK (it also helps that she’s so good looking!). I’m actually getting very tired of all of these low-fi videos on YouTube and am looking forward to this new venture of some of the major record companies, Apple, etc. to provide a better online product (including graphics, liner notes, lyrics, and HD videos) for about the same price that you’d pay for just the song. That’s what’s going to get the music industry back on track in the next couple of years.

Speaking of matches, I don’t know if this guy from Iowa is the one whose wooden matchstick art I saw in ship form at Baltimore’s American Visionary Art Museum, but it’s pretty cool. Check out the US Capitol building (478,000), Notre Dame of Chartres (174,000), and Hogwarts (602,000), for example: http://matchstickmarvels.com/models.html

True Blood 2.6

2009-07-28T18:55:00.000-04:00

My two immediate main questions are: (1) Who is the sudden new supply of V going to be for and why would vampires need that? and (2) Is it actually Pastor Newlin (as opposed to just his wife) who is somehow allied with Maryann?

I think these two questions are related. Newlin is clearly not who he had earlier appeared to be, and probably both Newlins have something to do with what Maryann is doing. Also, the mysterious, mind-reading hotel clerk who disappeared a few episodes ago is probably a shape-shifter who is “usually” someone else and is very likely a Daphne-like Maryann minion. That’s probably how the Newlins know what Sookie knows, without the vampires knowing that they know.

I think we will find out that Maryann is just as ancient as Godric (presently aligning human and supernatural forces against his) and that V is the drug used at Maryann’s “ceremonies.” One possibility is that the visit from Eric’s lieutenant Pam to Lafayette was actually either Maryann or Daphne (probably Daphne), taking her form. An extension of that possibility is perhaps that Lafayette never WAS held prisoner by Eric and Pam at all, but by Maryann and Daphne, as an elaborate infiltration/control tactic.

Some people probably didn’t like the digs at the Catholic church, but, given the show’s historical flashbacks, it certainly could further “go there.” Another possibility is that the freaky “Protestants” (a bit like Mormons, obviously) will end up being presented as even more demented than the idea of a vampire Pope in the distant past. That’s verging on silly, Dan Brown-like territory, of course, so I hope that however they connect these dots, that it somehow makes sense.

The US Health Care "system"

2009-07-27T22:47:00.002-04:00

I'm amazed that so many people in the US actually want to let the country's private, medical-industrial-complex continue to steamroll over nearly 50 million uninsured citizens, including tens of millions of children. "Single-payer" systems do not indicate socialism: they indicate civilization.

The pervasive US paranoia concerning anything actually controlled by the government is quite silly. Governments successfully provide health care in MANY countries (many non-communist countries, I shouldn't have to add, but will), and almost no-one in the US (or anywhere else--OK, maybe the Amish and/or the Hutterites) doesn't actually want health-care coverage. Most people in the US who don't have health coverage are in such a circumstance because they can't afford to be so covered. To suggest (as so many have) that such people are merely penny-pinching anti-capitalists is ludicrous.

A country should look after its citizens, not let corporations cover only the one who can afford it, cut everyone else off once they're sick, and leave a disturbingly large percentage with no coverage at all. Yes, there are wait-lists for certain procedures in Canada, but very few people (and almost infinitely fewer than 50 million, I shouldn't have to add, but will) actually die from this sort of thing. My grandparents all lived in Canada their entire lives, and they all lived long, normal lives and died of natural causes between 75 and 86 years of age (averaging 82). The only "death panels" are run by private insurance companies.

Gates-Gate

2009-07-26T23:08:00.000-04:00

A purportedly racially-sensitive police officer in Cambridge, MA should certainly have known who Henry Louis Gates, Jr. is.

Here's a halfway decent explanation of the events of the incident: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5jNB2UIYUUjAgKgBwiQ44eO6TDJEQD99MACLG0.

Whether or not either man over-reacted, there is no way Crowley should have entered the house until Gates returned to the door with his ID. And Whalen (the Harvard alumni magazine employee who made the fateful, initial call) also should certainly have recognized Gates.

True Blood 2.5

2009-07-25T18:54:00.000-04:00

Given the actors involved, I assumed the "ancient" language in this episode was Swedish or modified Swedish, but who knows? Viking? Pict?

I also still don’t entirely understand the connection between shape-shifters and the “beast mark.” If Maryann “made” Daphne into a shape-shifter (which seems likely to me), then did she also “make” Sam at some point, such as when he was younger. If she did make Sam, then is it possible that he also has the “beast” marks? Apart from all of that, for some people Maryann merely (at least so far) causes these Dionysian orgies and/or is “controlling” on a more superficial level (as she is with Tara and Eggs). Clearly, that is all building to something.

I’m interested to know who the actual wealthy owner of the house is that we were originally meant to believe was hers—possibly connected with the weird Christians? I still think that Sarah (hot Christian chick) is somehow connected to Maryann (NOT to vampires) and that they’re setting up an ultimate sibling showdown between Sookie’s “gang” (vampire-friendly, somehow including the few mind-readers we know of so far) and Jason’s “gang” (“God hates fangs,” somehow including the few shape-shifters we know of so far).

My guess is that Sarah already is a shape-shifter (made and “marked” by Maryann) and that Tara will also be made into one.

Harry Potter (2009)

2009-07-17T18:53:00.000-04:00

HP was fine, although there were a few extended moments where people were just standing around without really anything happening. It made the movie seem a bit over-long to me (and I think it actually is long), and I found that odd, given how much they must have to leave out from the books. 3D might make up for it, because the visuals are pretty great, even without 3D. Also, there’s too much “teen angst” about “snogging” (although also some funny and touching moments, I suppose), not quite enough ass-kicking, and some key actors (esp. Rickman) relatively underused compared to some of the other films. Broadbent is a nice addition, though.

True Blood 2.4

2009-07-16T18:52:00.001-04:00

I guess Maryann has now been clarified as being the “beast,” although the “Tinkerbell sex goddess” side of her remains fairly unexplained. Also, unfortunately, Jessica has now reverted to being an annoying teenager. I liked it when she was going to get it on with the nice boy from town in the other episode (the act of which was almost “civilized,” in the very particular context of the show), but the hotel boy is pretty much just a male prostitute, as far as I can tell.

Sookie encountering that fellow mind-reader is reasonably interesting, as long as she actually learns something useful from him in the next episode. I also found it funny that Jason pretty much had a boner throughout the entire episode, because of the hot Christian chick. My guess is that the entire fellowship thing is mainly a ruse put in play (and I still think it has something to do with Maryann) in order to sacrifice “powder keg” Jason in the service of defeating the vampires (presumably while Sookie, Bill, etc. are also in Dallas). It’s probably all building to an insanely intense season climax involving just about all of the main characters.

my two books in preparation

2009-07-16T18:52:00.000-04:00

I heard on July 15th that “Rush and Philosophy” (which I’m co-editing and contributing towards) is going ahead in the Popular Culture and Philosophy series of Open Court Publishing. Now, I just have to figure out how to have it not take up too much of my time between September and April, especially given that my Simpsons’ music book for Oxford UP is also likely to be approved shortly. Could someone not have given me these book deals well BEFORE I was about to abandon musicology?

Nurse Jackie

2009-07-08T18:51:00.000-04:00

I watched the first five episodes of “Nurse Jackie” and have quite enjoyed it so far. It’s better than “House,” in many ways, because she is the way she is (and quite rationally) because of her very difficult job situation (which has featured very realistic cases, at least in the first two episodes), as opposed to House, who does what he does (irrationally) as side effects of being the only one who might (usually intuitively) be able to solve the cases, which are ridiculously unrealistic. In the real world, House would not be employable, especially at a teaching institution! However, Jackie probably would be employable, because cleverly coping is “real,” whereas genius is almost always irrelevant.

My favourite sequence so far: the wiggly cart that you think is the just-mentioned cancer meds on route, but is actually because of Jackie and the “nice” doctor having sex. I also like the “dumb” husband, because he goes so much against the grain of sitcom stereotypes (he has a normal job, is fairly clueless, makes pancakes for dinner, is cuckolded by his wife, and so on). The show has obviously been largely developed, produced, and written by women!

My favourite line so far: “Puke away from the ear!”

However, “arrogant doctor boy” bugs me, mostly because he looks and acts so much like Tom Cruise (i.e., Tom Cruise when not acting).

True Blood 2.3

2009-07-03T18:50:00.001-04:00

I was really hoping for a re-camp-ified Lafayette as a vampire (which would have been awesome), but they’ve denied us that!

I’m quite liking young vampiress Jessica (the actress is actually 24—I felt compelled to check!), and I was, of course, rooting for “loner-loser-boy” to get it on with her.

As for Maryann, I’m very sure that she actually IS the boar-beast. The scene with Andy at the party pretty much clinched that for me, as she showed up out of nowhere exactly simultaneously with the pig disappearing. Also, in the novels the creature is called a “maenad” (Dionysian mad-woman), but I believe in this case the idea is updated to combine it with shape-shifting. It’s unclear as to what exactly the boar-beast attack turns one into, but Sookie recovered from this, although Daphne obviously did not. It must have something to do with further enabling people who already have special, non-vampiric powers (Sookie, possibly Daphne, probably Sam in the past, but not Tara or “cute-black-boy”) with additional, yet-unspecified “powers.” And, since Eric and the other vampire big-shots haven’t seen this before, it’s possible that Maryann is some kind of (comparatively) recently-concocted ueber-anti-vampire. I even think she may be the secular arm of the weird, anti-fang “Christians” that Jason had hooked up with, with the secret “insider wiccan/witch/whatever” being that fairly naughty wife of the leader. (There’s rather more “Maryann” in her than there should be!)

True Blood 2.2

2009-06-22T18:48:00.001-04:00

When Maryann showed up towards the end of season 1, she was clearly positioned as some kind of “alternative lifestyle type” (perhaps Wiccan, or at least “former hippie”) who had somehow managed to accumulate wealth and become a mysterious benefactor. This is all still fairly unexplained, though, in the same way that “doggie Sam” was relatively unexplained until rather well into season 1. She seems to be able to “control” people (and shape-shifters) and is arguably positioned as a “good witch” (by 2009, as opposed to 1939, standards), but the question really is this: what does she have to do with vampires? (Didn’t her pseudo-Latin or “alien” or “DEAD!” brain-language remind you of the vampire language we sometimes hear spoken by Eric and his cute sidekick?) And what was with all the food and all the sexy dancing? Maybe the “Tinkerbell” thing, the excess food, the controlling, the weird language, etc. has something to do with the vampire/shape-shifter equivalent of “multiple souls.” Her “flitteriness” also reminds me of that original series “Star Trek” episode with those people infected by something that makes their physiologies “run fast” (so that they are invisible, but also highly susceptible to injury.) Clearly, whatever category Maryann is in, she’s at least as “powerful” as Eric. Maybe she actually is “alien” (or something else) and has to consume all that food in order to keep up her human appearance. That would be an interesting twist, and the actress did once play a recurring role as an alien on “Star Trek: TNG”!

I found ep. 2 otherwise oddly “flat,” in terms of the main characters, because Jason and the freaky “Christians” had to be made to seem “off,” as much as possible, so that many of the others (Jessica, Tara, “cute black boy,” and even Sookie and Bill) were made to seem somehow less “interesting,” at least until Eric, etc. changed Lafayette towards the end and Bill showed up at Jessica’s house at the very end. Setting up Lafayette’s new turn (presumably in ep. 3) perhaps also explains why he was made to seem so much less, uh, “queer” in ep. 1. He should be quite interesting as a vampire!

I found the episode’s music quite interesting, especially the hymn-like instrumental music when Sookie looked at an old picture (it vaguely looked like herself, Tara, and Gran from a few decades ago, but I’m not sure), which abruptly (and very pointedly) cut out for the next scene of Jason and the “Christians” at the “Bible camp.” The anti-fang “praise songs” and “Christian rock” were also pretty funny.

"True Blood," season 2

2009-06-17T14:47:00.000-04:00

It’s great to see True Blood again (Sunday evenings, with season 2 having started on June 14th)! I only just recognized one of the actors, Michelle Forbes (portraying Maryann, a mysterious, rich woman), as someone who had played a recurring role on Star Trek: The Next Generation, as well as characters on Homicide: Life on the Street, early seasons of 24, and David Duchovny’s girlfriend in Kalifornia (1993). I barely even recognized the character Lafayette (Nelsan Ellis) being held in “Scandinavian” vampire Eric's (Alexander Skarsgård's) dungeon, and I certainly don't remember seeing Sookie (Anna Paquin) so fully naked at any point during the first season. Speaking of which ;-) my computer does seem to be up to the task of playing high-definition videos.

Computer Technicians are the New Auto Mechanics

2009-06-05T18:12:00.000-04:00

1. My notebook computer’s fan started running ten times more often than it used to.

2. At store #1 (BestBuy) a blasé technician (for free at least) blew compressed air at it from the outside, which accomplished nothing.

3. An earnest technician at store #2 (Notebook Galaxy) took it apart, blew compressed air at the insides (finding some dust, allegedly), did hard disk and memory diagnostics (there were no problems), and charged me $45. I assumed everything was fine.

4. However, the computer started seriously overheating, and two weeks later (at Canada Computers, store #3) I bought an external cooling device for $33, which helped a bit, but it bothered me that this would be required. Also, since I didn’t hear the computer’s own fan anymore (at startup or ever), I suspected that it had stopped working and that its imminent demise had been the problem all along.

5. Two days later, I took the computer back to store #2, and the same guy took it apart again, saw nothing wrong, put it back together, could not replicate my overheating issue, and charged me $23. I concluded that my slightly flaky powered USB hub must somehow have been the problem, and I exchanged the cooling device for a new hub at store #3.

6. I got back home and installed the new hub, but the computer’s fan resumed going ten times more often than it used to! This symptom, of course, suggested that the technician at store #2 had just unplugged the fan the first time around and actually did nothing substantive on either visit, which is why he guiltily (and in the absence of his boss) only charged me half the usual amount the second time.

7. In any case, I’ve spent $101 for absolutely nothing, except seeing the insides of my computer not once, but twice.

Thanks, Musicology!

2009-05-30T11:11:00.000-04:00

From 1999 to 2008, I taught 31 sections of 22 courses at seven different universities. I have also presented 23 conference papers and invited talks, have two books presently in development, and have published eight chapters or articles and 72 reference entries. I know that there are plenty of recent (is 2003 recent?) Ph.D.s out there with "entitlement" issues, but my record speaks for itself, despite not having been applied to a tenure-track position. 2009 is the first year since 1998 in which I will not have taught at least one course, and it is also the first year since 2000 in which I will not have earned at least $1800 doing professional choral singing. The result of all of the above has been (1) bankruptcy and (2) a new (i.e., actual) career direction into computer applications development.

Conservative attack ads on Ignatieff

2009-05-27T11:50:00.000-04:00

The Conservative Party attacks ads on Liberal Party and Official Opposition leader Michael Ignatieff are actually about deflecting the fact that Stephen Harper has been Canada's most US-cozying Prime Minister in history. Harper is probably also jealous that he's never been featured on the cover of GQ magazine.

Has no-one else noticed that the tell-tale speech-tick in the lifted-out-of-context Ignatieff clip about "his America" reveals that he probably doesn't actually consider himself an American. Also, for Ignatieff to say self-deprecating things about Canada or about himself (such as having only missed Algonquin Park, having considered Britain his home, or being arrogant) makes him MORE Canadian, not less. I'm sure that if he had been given a position at one of the three Canadian universities reasonably on par with Oxford, Cambridge, and Harvard (McGill, UBC, and U of T) that he would have remained in Canada for those "missing" thirty-four years. In fact, he returned to Canada (to U of T's Munk Centre for International Studies) BEFORE running for office or being discussed as a possible Liberal Party leader, and his ties to Canadian political and intellectual history run extremely deep. Nothing even remotely the same can be said of Harper.

An internationally-respected intellectual, writer, and communicator is exactly what Canada needs (we haven't had a PM like that since Trudeau), and Stephen Harper is extremely far from that, as The Daily Show reminds us whenever there is a G8 meeting. The Rick Mercer Report's item of Ignatieff and his wife moving into Stornoway (January 13th), with the "help" of Bob Rae, even helped show that "Iggy" isn't really all that arrogant, especially when compared to Harper.

"Second Career"

2009-05-22T16:53:00.000-04:00

I'll know in a month or so if Ontario government "Second Career" funding is forthcoming for a training course I hope to take in Computer Applications Development at Conestoga College in Kitchener from September 2009 to April 2010 (plus a paid co-op work term next summer). My paperwork was finally completed yesterday at Career Development Services. Employment-wise, I've been calling myself "severely under-employed" (writing a few encyclopedia articles and singing in a few choral concerts and church services), so the time is definitely right for this.

I've been living in the Kitchener-Waterloo area 90% of the time since last July. (I occasionally house-sit in Toronto for a few weeks here and there.) I was also accepted into a 16-month program at Seneca College in Toronto, but the 8-month "post-degree" (in my case, post-three-degree!) program at Conestoga College is actually a lot more suitable for me, and I just moved to a new (shared) place in Kitchener (very close to the college, actually), and I'll try to stick it out here until next summer.

Choral Concert in Oakville

2009-05-22T16:25:00.000-04:00

I'm singing in the following concert tomorrow:

Magnificat - Oakville Chamber Ensemble

Choral Music of the 16th, 17th, and 18th Centuries

G. Puccini - Credo in G (Puccini’s Mozart-era ancestor)
A. Vivaldi - Magnificat
T. Victoria - Regina caeli laetare a 5
T. Victoria - Alma Redemptoris a 8
Monteverdi - Lamento d'Arianne: Lascia
Gastoldi - Baletti (l'acceso - amor vittorioso - l'inmorato)

Time: 7:30PM Saturday, May 23rd
Venue: St. Simon's Anglican Church, Oakville ON

Bankruptcy (D'oh!)

2009-05-22T16:21:00.001-04:00

I filed for bankruptcy (in Canada) 8 days ago, but for several months I've already been (1) keeping a budget and (2) not using any credit cards, so it hasn't really affected my life very much so far. It should be over with after nine months, but I probably won't be able to get credit or a loan for seven years! I also owe money in the US, but my creditors there are apparently not allowed to come after me right now.

"Angels and Demons" vs. "Arrested Development"

2009-05-19T21:48:00.000-04:00

Professor Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks): "Those statues are pointing at it: the anti-matter bomb must be down there. Come on!"

Indeed.

The primary merit of this movie (unless you really like Hans Zimmer scores) is that it will fund Ron Howard's directorial work on the Arrested Development movie.

Gob Bluth (Will Arnett): "I've made a huge mistake. Come on!"

"Star Trek"

2009-05-18T16:20:00.000-04:00

Star Trek (2009) is a fun, fast-paced movie that is reasonably consistent with the tone, humour, and "edge" of the better elements of the franchise's various TV series and movies (1966-2005). It will likely do quite a bit to restore Star Trek as a widely-shared cultural institution. In line with that, the movie makes some use of Alexander Courage's theme music for the original series, and Michael Giacchino bases some of his original score on the "open-interval" trope used for the American west by Aaron Copland and Elmer Bernstein and reasserted for science-fiction by John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, and others. In addition, the ethnically "eastern" Federation captain of the prologue (the actor's parents are of Pakistani/Muslim origin) and the movie's variety of non-human aliens moderately update the multi-ethnicity of Star Trek's "liberal universe."

The characterizations of Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Uhuru, and Pike are fine, but the mannerisms of McCoy, Chekov, and Scotty are especially commendable for being "true" to their respective stereotyped origins as a cantankerous Southerner, a Russian whipper-snapper, and an energetic Scotsman. However, certain things about the movie ring a bit "untrue," especially if you know more than an average amount of earlier Star Trek. For example, was it ever previously suggested that Spock had programmed the Kobayashi Muru test on which Kirk ended up "cheating" by re-programming it? Was Chekov really on Pike's Enterprise, given that he wasn't on the original series until its second season? Could the movie's central characters really have gotten past certain emotionally fusing and/or alienating incidents? Or, as is quite possible, are things the way they are in this movie mainly because most of its storyline is contained within an alternate timeline?

The incorporation of original Spock (Leonard Nimoy) as "future Spock" is fairly convoluted, as are the gratuitous "CGI monsters" in an action scene on an "ice planet." Speaking of ice planets, the aspect of young, rural "hick" Kirk being goaded on to greater things in order to come to terms with the "destiny" of his father reminds one very much of a certain young fellow in the other main sci-fi franchise of the past 43 years. However, Jim Kirk in Star Trek (unlike Luke Skywalker in the original three Star Wars movies) rises to become an important figure within about two hours – and I do NOT just mean the running time of the film!

Susan Boyle

2009-05-18T16:18:00.001-04:00

I barely follow the "Idol"-type shows, because I find nearly all of the music to be complete and utter rehashes of existing things. On the other hand, practically everything about those shows is already predetermined or, at least, media-fabricated. Thus, in such a context, isn't it at least slightly OK that a relatively "normal"-looking, middle-aged woman (Scotland's Susan Boyle) was even allowed to appear, as opposed to exclusively "well-above-average-looking" 19ish-year-old "girls" and "boys"? You can't even audition for most of the "Idol" shows if you're over something like 27, but I suppose the producers and judges of this particular show were just "covering their middle-aged asses" (in a sad, politically-correct kind of way) by letting her through to that point. I never expected such producers to have any reasonable amount of artistic or social integrity in the first place, so why should this particular "stunt" offend me? Besides, if the general public is looking for "gifted musicians" on such shows, they deserve exactly what they usually get. Everyone who deserves better than that should instead watch the excellent 2006 documentary "Before the Music Dies." See http://beforethemusicdies.com/

"The Simpsons" & Music

2009-05-18T16:17:00.000-04:00

My editor is pleased with my updates to Chapter 1 of Be Sharp: 'The Simpsons' & Music. I will shortly revise Chapter 3, and then the book will go to the external reviewers. I am optimistic that this book will be published in 2010. In addition, "Intertextual Music & Discursive Parody in The Simpsons" (which I presented at a conference at McGill in Montreal in April) has been accepted for the 4th Annual ECHO conference, Music and Humor, being held at UCLA on June 5 and 6. Eric Wang, one of my 2008 teaching assistants, has agreed to present it for me.

"EMC" articles

2009-05-18T16:13:00.000-04:00

My Encyclopedia of Music in Canada articles from March, April and May 2009:

Peter Oundjian
Choral Singing
Ensemble Anonymous
Arion Male Voice Choir
Winnipeg Philharmonic Choir
Bluegrass
Rap
Cantatas
Canadian Electronic Ensemble
Blues
Heavy Metal
The Internet and Music

(Yes, that IS all over the map!)

For my existing EMC articles, do a search on my name at: http://canadianencyclopedia.ca/index.cfm?PgNm=EMCSubjects&Params=U1.

Kalsubai

2009-05-18T16:10:00.000-04:00

After "finding" and posting a copy of the album cover, I managed to "track down" the opening song and first single, "My Pal in (d)Rome," from the album A Defining Characteristic of Intelligence (1974) by the Canadian-British progressive rock band Kalsubai. The music is heavily influenced by King Crimson, Genesis, and early world music "fusions," and it thus provides a sort of cross between "psychedelic progressive" jazz-rock (perhaps also a little bit along the lines of the Mahavishnu Orchestra) and what would later be called "new age" music" (but along the relatively "rock"-oriented lines of Mike Oldfield). "My Pal in (d)Rome" is mainly noted for having reached #41 in the US "Top 40," although it also reached #34 in the UK's "Top 30" and #21 in Canada's "Top 20." Magically, the song includes approximations of all of the instruments mentioned on Facebook by people who "remember" this album: Shakuhachi flute, clarinet, Mellotron, harmonica, and a Hammond organ "solo," in addition to drums and percussion, jazzy guitar-chord comping, fretless bass, and weirdly-echoed, semi-pompous (!) lyrics and vocals. See http://durrellbowman.com/recordings.htm.

Rush book

2009-05-18T16:07:00.002-04:00

In March, I heard from an upstate New York teacher (Jim Berti) who is interested in putting together a book called Rush and Philosophy in the ongoing series that began with Seinfeld and Philosophy. After some discussions by email, I agreed to co-edit (and contribute to) this book, contacted a number of likely contributors, and proposed that abstracts be submitted by the end of May. For my own contributions, I will use elements from my dissertation, an article on Canadianness I had recently submitted to an academic journal, and my "Rush Tributes" article that may still be published elsewhere. Hopefully, we would be able to get this published in 2010. I still also hope to publish my own book on Rush (i.e., more closely related to my dissertation), possibly in 2011.