Leonard Cohen of the Day

"Well the last time that I saw him he was trying hard to get
a woman's education, but he's not a woman yet
and the last time that I saw her she was living with a boy
who gives her soul an empty room and gives her body joy"
(Death of a Ladies Man)

Quote of the day

I know you need your sleep now, I know your life's been hard,
But many men are falling where you promised to stand guard.....
-LC

Arild Begins

Just got back from the Rochester Philharmonic Orchestra's first performance with Arild Remmereit in his new role as Music Director (apparently he has guest conducted on 3 previous occasions, but I do not believe I saw any of them).  He is from Norway, but spent much of his life in Vienna, Austria.

I'm always willing to give a guy a try, and like to start with an open mind, but when he mentioned that all the programs he would be doing this season would have a FEMALE composer I was not pleased.  Not that I have anything against female composers (honestly, I didn't really know there were any in the classical field, but they have certainly done fine in pop) but I find the idea of choosing music on the BASE of the composer being female no less loathsome than choosing on the base of the composer being Aryan.  In Arild's defense (and please do not think I am being overly familiar by using his first name, the program calls it "Arild's Inaugural"), from the very beginning of Amy Beach's Symphony No. 2 in E minor, "Gaelic", Op. 32 I was impressed.

This was music I had never heard before, but it was fascinating, stirring in a mildly disturbing way.  There was nothing weird about it, she did not seem to feel she had to be different than the men, just very good.  Symphonies are not my favorite form of music, I think my attention span is just a bit too short for works of that length, but this one did not drag at all, and it often enchanted.  The conductor mentioned before beginning the symphony that this was not part of the standard repertoire and our applause might be what makes that change....or not.  I quote from memory: "So if you do not like this piece, be sure to boo loudly!"

I don't think I've ever been encouraged to boo at a classical concert before, especially not by the conductor, but his efforts seem to fall on deaf ears: at the end all he got was loud applause and a standing ovation with not a single "boo" to be heard in the crowd.

After the intermission we got four shorter pieces on the program: two by Norwegian composers (Halvorsen and Svendsen - both unfamiliar to me but I was glad to get to know them...the first was a quirky march that almost made you want to find some battle to march into, the second a romance featuring the concertmaster as soloist) and two by Strauss (and unfamiliar waltz and a familiar polka).  While no single song left you quite as impressed as the symphony that started it, each one was really unpretentious and enjoyable...you regretted having to sit instead of being on your feet and moving with the music.  I think that this is actually more in spirit of the times of the compositions, these guys were the rock stars of their centuries, and people listened to them to party.

At the end the applause was a bit awkward...we were kind of expecting to do the applause (not standing ovation this time, but only because it feels a bit odd to do a standing-o for a three minute polka no matter how damn good it is) with the standard two calls back for additional bows and pointing out the star performers in the orchestra, but he didn't let us....each time he jogged back from leaving the stage he started another piece without giving us time to stop clapping, and they were all fun, slightly silly pieces (one involving the whole orchestra chanting "tick-tock" repeatedly throughout an otherwise quiet part of the piece).  One was concerned that unless the audience learned just the right applause techniques he would never let us leave...and one wasn't entirely sure that would be a bad thing.

He capped these pieces (I think there were four in all, including this last) with the Radetzky March, with the audience clapping the beat, and him turning around and conducting the audience to do quiet little claps for the quieter section and thunderous claps for the fortissimo.  This guy is a master.

One thing puzzled me, and he alluded to it.  Beach's Symphony No. 2 was the first symphony composed by an American woman.  Why did she start with No. 2?  My current working hypothesis is that she wrote a Symphony No. 1 while she was on steroids, and this one was disqualified by the Olympic committee on that ground...but I don't think the Olympic committee existed yet, and if it did probably would not have extended it's influence over classical music.....inquiring minds want to know!

HT MR

Vuvuzela virtuoso visiting Eastman Theatre?

Seems unlikely, but clearly so far the biggest winner at the World Cup is this delightful little instrument - and the biggest losers are those condemned to have to hear it unwillingly. Perhaps, as with garlic, the solution is "If you can't beat them, join them."

Now we can not only see any web site to the background of vuvuzela sounds, youtube has added a gadget (soccer ball shaped) that lets you mix the audio of the clip with the appropriate sounds.

Another loser would be astrology, after France rather convincingly showed that it is NOT useful when selecting your soccer team.


Update: the horror!

Quote of the day

"You cannot stand what I've become
you much prefer the gentleman I was before -
I was so easy to defeat, I was so easy to control,
I didn't even know there was a war...."
- Leonard Cohen

"Slip and fall down carefully"

...an article on Chinglish, via MR.

The menus of local restaurants might present such delectables as “fried enema,” “monolithic tree mushroom stem squid” and a mysterious thirst-quencher known as “The Jew’s Ear Juice.”

The same link collection also takes us to this:

Quote of the Day

"My reputation as a ladies' man was a joke that caused me to laugh bitterly through the ten thousand nights I spent alone."
— Leonard Cohen

Quote of the Day

But Lady Gaga is a more or less average-to-petite young woman, and she totally rocks the weird fashion. She makes me want to run around in a PVC bodysuit with a rooster hood, or no pants with giant hoof-heels, or whatever weird thing you can imagine. She is really inspiring.
- Prettier Than Napoleon

The Leonard Cohen concert

My brother Joerg encouraged me to post a review of the concert from last weekend.

It seems a bit silly to review it - as long as Leonard Cohen was there, he could pretty much just sit on the stage and grunt, and it would still be one of the high points of my life.

He didn't just sit and grunt, though, his performance was jaunty. He skipped onto the stage and trotted his way right into "Dance Me To The End of Love". This is a song that my wife Jocelyn first heard on a Madeleine Peyroux album, without knowing that it was a Leonard Cohen song. I guess that is how most people hear their Leonard Cohen songs, at least those who haven't been privileged to see him in concert.

Considering he is 75 years old, the physical approach to his performance might be a bit ostentatious - there is just NO WAY he is in as good a shape as he wants us to believe. Nevertheless, you can only fake so much, and it is clear that it is not only women who have been exceptionally kind to his old age (for non-Cohen afficionados, that is a reference to his "Because of a few songs/Wherein I spoke of their mystery/Women have been exceptionally kind to my old age").

I suppose when you are Leonard Cohen, you can pretty much pick which musicians you want to tour with, and his picks were impressive. My friend Matt (who accompanied us with his wife Colleen) commented that there were a couple of instrumentalists on stage that he'd be willing to go to a separate concert just to hear them alone. Cohen gives them due credit, introducing each at least twice, with some idiosyncratic words of praise. Javier Mas appears to take precedence, but each one gets an opportunity for the spotlight, and makes good use of it. The angelic Webb sisters even presented us (as LC put it, "on voice, harp, and gymnastics!" with synchronized cartwheels.

Having seen another performance in Canada a few months ago, I can testify these are not "cookie cutter" presentations....this time there was a song ("Darkness") I had NEVER heard before (yes, turns out it was new). "Ain't no cure for love" was launched without the narrative lead-in I heard in Canada (and that is present on the album, with a catalog of drugs taken and a mention of the study of religions, "but the cheerfulness kept breaking through") - in fact, he didn't seem to be in a chatty mood that night, but he really gave the performance his all.

At our hotel, Jocelyn met a man who was also there for the concert and was following LC to see another concert in a few days. He mentioned that next spring LC planned to tour in France. Jocelyn, a recent convert to Cohen, would be willing to travel that far!

Your Honour

Blast from the past ... I'd love to have a version of this for karaoke!

Spotlight personality

Not only was Carl Michael Bellman a great composer of drinking songs, he had a whole genre of jokes named after him. One from my youth, before I knew it was a Bellman joke:

An Englishman, a Frenchman, and a German all died in the war and were sent to hell. The devil greeted them and said that he admired them for their bravery and wished to give each of them a chance to escape damnation. If any one of them could set him a task he could not perform, that one would be sent up to heaven.

The Englishman made the first attempt: one of His Majesty's greatest warships was sunk at Scapa Flow....can you restore it to its former glory? A hundred demons were set to the task, and it took them only 5 minutes to raise and repair the ship.

The Frenchman tried next: in the bombing of our cities, ten of our finest artworks were destroyed - can you bring them back and enrich our culture? A thousand efreets were dispatched, and the art was resurrected in 15 minutes.

As the Englishman and the Frenchman toddled off to eternal damnation, still pleased they had done something for their fatherlands, the German made his request: I'm going to fart now - can you paint it green?

Satan was baffled and the German was saved.

Most informative retrospective on Michael Jackson....

This one at Language Log actually explains Ma ma se, ma ma sa, ma ma coo sa.

That practically BEGS an explanation of "chamone"!

White Bride in a Goth Wedding....

In case you've been irritated by music videos that just don't seem to match the words, here is your relief.

There's actually a set of these (music videos with sound and subtitles replaced by new lyrics to match the actions), brought to my attention by the blog of the enticingly geeky Jacqueline.

Oh - I challenge you to watch my favorite without giggling at least a little.

A bosom makes a VERY good pillow....

You've probably heard this song, it got a lot of radio play, but I'd bet you never made any sense of it....the name is Brimful of Asha (click on the link to get a much deeper explanation), but apparently it has been understood as many other possible words, including "Grim Poodle Basher". Pretty much the only part that made sense to me was the "Everybody needs a bosom for a pillow" interjection.

Anyway, I really enjoyed reading the explanation in my link!

"It's all for your protection..."

Heard this on WBER, liked it so much I tracked down the lyrics, found (with the youtube video) HERE.

Lyric excerpt:

I do not have the things I want but I can’t find,
Just show me something real and make it.
Everywhere begins to be the same,
Other words we use that might contain,
An ounce of truth for every treason.
Where was it you said you had to go?
Life is just a game of ‘who you know’
The ones we love and mostly cherish.

Primal Emo...

Apparently, there really is something universal about our music: emotion. A study using Western music and members of the African Mafa tribe who had never heard it before showed that anger, sadness, and fear in our music is understandable even outside our culture.

Fritz enlisted members of the Mafa, one of about 250 ethnic groups in Cameroon. He traveled to the extreme north of the Mandara mountain ranges, where they live, with a laptop and sun collector to supply electricity in his backpack.

Their studies showed that both Western and Mafa listeners, who had never before heard Western music, could recognize emotional expressions of happiness, sadness, and fear in the music more often than would be expected by chance. However, they report that the Mafa showed considerable variability in their performance, with two of twenty-one study participants performing at chance level.

Both groups relied on similar characteristics of music to make those calls; both Mafas and Westerners relied on temporal cues and on mode for their judgment of emotional expressions, although this pattern was more marked in Western listeners.

By manipulating music, the researchers also found that both Western listeners and African listeners find original music more pleasant than altered versions. That preference is probably explained in part by the increased sensory dissonance of the manipulated tunes.

HT Future Pundit

New Rochester blog...

Let's see how it goes, only one blog post so far - but it is informative:

Sisters of Murphy

I love the name - apparently an Irish play on the name of the Leonard Cohen song (and the band) "Sisters of Mercy". Playing, appropriately enough, at Murphy's Law (I've seen them at the Krown)

Lyric of the week

Life during wartime - Talking Heads

Heard of a van that is loaded with weapons,
packed up and ready to go
Heard of some gravesites, out by the highway,
a place where nobody knows
The sound of gunfire, off in the distance,
I'm getting used to it now
Lived in a brownstore, lived in the ghetto,
I've lived all over this town

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
No time for dancing, or lovey dovey,
I ain't got time for that now

Transmit the message, to the receiver,
hope for an answer some day
I got three passports, a couple of visas,
you don't even know my real name
High on a hillside, the trucks are loading,
everything's ready to roll
I sleep in the daytime, I work in the nightime,
I might not ever get home

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
This ain't no mudd club, or C. B. G. B.,
I ain't got time for that now
Heard about Houston? Heard about Detroit?
Heard about Pittsburgh, PA?
You oughta know not to stand by the window
somebody might see you up there
I got some groceries, some peant butter,
to last a couple of days
But I ain't got no speakers, ain't got no
headphones, ain't got no records to play

Why stay in college? Why go to night school?
Gonna be different this time
Can't write a letter, can't send a postcard,
I can't write nothing at all
This ain't no party, this ain't no disco,
this ain't no fooling around
I'd like to kiss you, I'd love you hold you
I ain't got no time for that now

Trouble in transit, got through the roadblock,
we blended with the crowd
We got computer, we're tapping pohne lines,
I know that ain't allowed
We dress like students, we dress like housewives,
or in a suit and a tie
I changed my hairstyle, so many times now,
I don't know what I look like!
You make me shiver, I feel so tender,
we make a pretty good team
Don't get exhausted, I'll do some driving,
you ought to get some sleep
Get you instructions, follow directions,
then you should change your address
Maybe tomorrow, maybe the next day,
whatever you think is best
Burned all my notebooks, what good are
notebooks? They won't help me survive
My chest is aching, burns like a furnace,
the burning keeps me alive
Try to stay healthy, physical fitness,
don't want to catch no disease
Try to be careful, don't take no chances,
you better watch what you say

Lyric of the week

Nobody's Side - from the musical "Chess"

What's going on around me
Is barely making sense
I need some explainations fast
I see my present partner
In the imperfect tense
And I don't see how we can last
I feel I need a change of cast
Nobody's on nobody's side

And when he gives me reasons
To justify each move
They're getting harder to believe
I know this can't continue
I've still a lot to prove
There must be more I could acheive
But I don't have the nerve to leave

Everybody's playing the game
But nobody's rules are the same
Nobody's on nobody's side
Better learn to go it alone
Recognize you're out on your own
Nobody's on nobody's side

The one I should not think of
Keeps rolling through my mind
And I don't want to let that go
No lovers ever faithfull
No contract truly signed
There's nothing certain left to know
And how the cracks begin to show

Never make a promise or plan
Take a little love where you can
Nobody's on nobody's side
Never stay too long in your bed
Never lose your heart, use your head
Nobody's on nobody's side

Never take a stranger's advice
Never let a friend fool you twice
Nobody's on nobody's side
Never be the first to believe
Never be the last to deceive
Nobody's on nobody's side
And never leave a moment too soon
Never waste a hot afternoon
Nobody's on nobody's side
Never stay a minute too long
Don't forget the best will go wrong
Nobody's on nobody's side

Better learn to go it alone
Recognize you're out on your own
Nobody's on nobody's side