Was local news ever good? Because recently it’s gone from bad to downright hilarious.  Between ridiculous human interest stories, to complete and utter misinformation, it’s no wonder cable news stations are doing so well right now.

Last week Improv Anywhere set up an awesome April Fools prank in which they randomly “invaded” a funeral.  Turns out it was a hoax set up for April Fool’s and no actual funeral was involved.  However, some local news station picked it up, and reported it as fact.

Apparently, in order to make it onto the nightly news, a story doesn’t have to go through any fact-checking, or verification at all.  Really, all it needs is a YouTube video, and it’s fit for broadcast.

And if I need to watch Al Roker struggling with a newfangled piece of technology one more time, I’m going to throw up.  Network news caters to the lowest-common-denominator, and the result is a newsroom staffed with people in that very bracket.

No one has been as much a staple in my network news upbringing than Sue Simmons.  This woman must be a complete nutjob off the air, because if you Google her name, you’ll find a few choice YouTube videos.  I really can’t say anything about them that the clips themselves don’t say.  Click on to watch.

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So apparently I have a blog or something. And I haven’t updated it since the summer. Whoops.

Anyway, that’s about to change, as I’ve updated the layout completely, and I’m going to (re)start posting here often. Let me know how the new look works out – I can change it pretty easily now, and I think it’s much cleaner than it used to be, at least.

Just wanted to drop a quick thank you to everyone who came out on Friday. If you’d like to relive (or just live) the experience, here’s a playlist of the whole show, minus the last song in which I thought the tonic was a whole step lower than it actually was. That selection is omitted for everyone’s sake.

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Alright, kids, it’s shameless plug time!  Make sure to come out and see…

THE EIGHTH SEA

LIVE AT SULLIVAN HALL

(formerly The Lion’s Den)

FRIDAY, AUGUST 15

With
THE ACADEMY BLUES PROJECT and CAPE KIDNAPPERS

214 Sullivan St.
New York, NY
Show starts 7:30pm, Eighth Sea on about 9:30

Just sayin’.

On vacation I took the time to listen to a few versions of Little Shop of Horrors, since I think I’m supposed to be playing it soon.  It’s fantastic in all its forms (though what the heck were MD and album producer thinking in the original Broadway recording?  Speed everything up so it’ll fit on an LP?  Drench it all in reverb and delay?), but it got me thinking about revivals and such.

People get attached to original cast recordings, and I never gravitate to them when another option is available.  I’m zeroing in on why I never like them, and I think it comes down to orchestration.  When a show is first let into the wild, the emphasis is, and shoul be, on the content itself.  The singing, the lyrics, the melodies–the things that make it a show.  That’s great, but oftentimes the orchestrations are the afterthought.  They’re usually prepared a couple days before they need to be played, and the orchestra is just wallpaper for the singing.

In a revival situation, however, the time that would normally be spent composing or actually changing the show is sent on polishing, like fixing problem areas, and reorchestrating.  It happened recently when Les Mis was brought back to New York, and dear God were those orchestrations nice.

The same happened when Little Shop was revived.  The band got an additional trumpet and reeds section, the tempos were standardized, and the piano became a little more subdued.  And, man, did it sound nice and full.  It made the whole thing sound really polished, and this is why it’s my favorite recording of the show now.

There are certainly exceptions, but this is why I favor revivals so much.  They get a similar budget and rehearsal time for a work that’s already been through its paces.  As long as the casting was done right and the director has some sense, the music and arrangements are really given a chance to mature, and this is what makes them sound so much better.

Well, I’m back from vacation.  I’ll probably have some anecdotes, pictures, and movies soon, but right now I’m just too tired to face all that.

And of course, a massive, massive thank-you to Brian for his impeccable wit and intelligence while I was gone.  He’s inadvertently raised the bar for this site.  So, you know, prepare to be disappointed.

I would, however, like to point out an ad that just went by on a site I was browsing:

And then it links to an “experiment” in which they showed 120 people an OS they claimed was the next Windows, but it was really Vista.  I imagine the results showed that these people loved the software when they didn’t know it was Vista, but I can’t be sure, since the site won’t even load under Firefox or Safari, and I won’t touch IE with a 10-foot pole.

But that’s not even the point.  What’s alarming here is that Microsoft apparently deems Vista’s image enough of a problem and enough of a public laughingstock to all but acknowledge its poor reputation in its own advertising.  “If you pretend to know nothing about what the experts claim, you REALLY WILL LIKE IT!  We promise!”  So slap on a blindfold, and maybe it’s not so bad.

Personally, I think that instead of wasting time on these “experiments” they should just hurry up at that drawing board they’re getting back to.  It doesn’t matter to me, though, since it’s too late–they’ve already lost a Windows customer in me.

Greetings from the trenches of the classical guitar world! This week your intrepid reporter is in search of some mad guitar skillz at the 20th incarnation of the National Guitar Workshop Classical Guitar Summit in lovely New Milford, CT.  In fact, I’m preparing this dispatch while seated at the front window of the charming Bank Street Coffee House in that same city.  The coffee is excellent; it’s a highly recommended stop if you’re ever here in New Milford.  In any case, I’ll spare you the guitar shop talk and poetic waxing about the finest of instruments (do head on over to my usual haunt if you do want to suffer in that particular fashion, though), and instead hip you to something every musician or music lover should check out.

The back story:  One of the courses I’m taking here at the festival is called “The Sense of Sound” and it’s taught by the encyclopedically brilliant,  musically unparalleled, and astoundingly inspiring Julian Gray, who also happens to be my teacher down at Peabody (you should be very jealous).  The course is meant as an examination of the two meanings of the word “sense” and an exploration of how the two possible understandings of the phrase “the sense of sound” affect music making.  In other words, answering the questions  ”how does one make sense of music, and how does a performer go about expressing that sense to a listener?” and “how do all of a performer’s senses work together to produce musical sound?”  Today Julian pointed out that when some individuals set out to make sense of music their genius, or their curiosity, or whatever else leads them to discover something that had never existed before — that new styles are forged only when a new understanding of musical grammar or emotional content is reached.  To prove his point he played two recordings of the same cornet player, one Louis Armstrong, on either side of his discovery of jazz.  The first, from I think 1931, smacks of the typical, it could be any dixieland trumpeter tooting out a bugle call.  The second, however, from 1933, is a revelation.  It swings, it groves, there’s breath in sound of some notes, and pitches swirl in an intoxicating stew of heartfelt emotion.  It’s also blatantly clear that the playing is Armstrong’s. It could be no one else.  What’s incredible, though, is that the arpeggio of the bugle call still looms large.  The basic musical material is exactly the same.  What’s different truly is that Armstrong understanding of what that bugle call is and means.  He truly birthed jazz by making sense of the arpeggio in a new and unprecedented way.

Thinking about musical innovation in this way is, I think, eye opening.  We’ve had the same 12 notes for more or less 800 or so years, and the system of organizing them that still predominates both popular and “classical” music we’ve had for about 400.  But just think for a second about the range of styles, both personal and collective, that have come and gone and come back again in that time.  Think about how much grew out of so little.  Words don’t quite do justice to this concept, so go out and grab an Armstrong collection and compare early and later stuff(seriously, do it, don’t just look at me like I’m crazy).   Check out the world of difference between the two — he’s playing the same notes, but man does he make sense out of them in wildly divergent ways.

Without divulging too much about the present whereabouts of this page’s usual wordsmith, I’ll tell you that he’s presently enjoying the company of his extended family while afloat on some sort of raft or sailboat.

Meanwhile, I’ll be enduring the gathering of mine while crammed in to my parent’s backyard today.  Oh how suffering enjoys parallels.  Consequently, I’m short on time for writing today, so here’s something to keep you occupied.

The World Famous Muppets