Thursday, February 25, 2010

Winter


Winter sucks.
Fuckabunchowinter.

Think about it, and you might rationalize it away: you've a bad attitude, a lack of tolerance or sport any one of the multitude of less than admirable examples of spiritual or constitutional shortcomings.

Which are easy to have, even for the saintly, who can blessedly manage somehow to find this sort of  spicy dicey hardship somehow perversely salubrious or rudely character building.
Because in winter there is no color, save for grey, white, brown that crackles and jags and stings if you rub into it, slip over it, fall hard onto it,  at any odd or unfortunate careening angle.

When the sky is not overcast, rendering all that's above, beneath, within and without into a bone zinging shaley metallic pale, still and bemoaning the impending and too early jointly mortis worthy of an octagenarian (reminders, unto themselves and all youngers that yes, this will only grow ever worse and worse and worse as life cycles and rolls creaking and shuddering through the sadistic changing of the seasons until all stiffened frames succomb to rest finally in this cold...hard...earth, forever), when the sun manages to shine (usually during a resident high pressure system..tauted by the insideously upbeat and agitpropped weatherwonks and meteorlogical lizzies---"isn't this glorious?"), it is replete with clear, cold, brisk and brash air that brings blood to your tissue quicker than you can stuff vaseline into and around your poor reddened toward raw nostrils.

Winter sucks.
Fuckabunchowinter.

And that's during a nice dry spell.

When on-high mare's tails auger the approach of a gloom-seething low-pressure system, we're faced with the prospect of either a lucid and drizzly cascading cold--that will permeate every fabric, invade every cranny, and angle for each and every orifice. That or sleet, snow, or maybe merely that no-nonsense falling ice itself. Sometimes the shiverish rain falls like chilled water onto a sub-freezing surface, for that wonderfully vacuum sealed layer of Zamboni-ice on which not even a penguin can gain nominal purchase. Good luck there, granny.

Sometimes--most times lately, the deluge is delivered in the form...of...(big NASA-looking ski gloves on now, please) snow...flurries, dusting, 1 to 20, who in hell really knows...

...and that is something that truly challenges even the most stout-hearted and broadly-backed bubbas of our species. More on that later, apparently.

More to follow, indeed.

Winter sucks.
Fuckabunchowinter.




Sunday, February 7, 2010

Taylor Swift's Live Intonation Problems

Article in The Tennessean



Everyone and anyone is liable and likely to be challenged with endemic obstacles in any live performance arena, be it musical or otherwise. I'm concerned that the younger generations are coming up not only to accept remedial technology as part of the process, but to expect it as a safety net, even in a live situation.

Ms.Swift certainly appeared to not have a firm foundation on which to stand in the face of what may have been an in-ear (a relatively new technology) monitor discrepancy. If she were more experienced, and indeed experiencing a malfunction, we might have seen her take one of the plugs out, to enable herself to hear the live room. There are many variables minded by numerous operators that may have been askew.

If one views and listens to video of early Rock-n-Roll/Soul performances, you'll see that many of those fine singers had NO monitors whatsoever--in-ear, speaker wedge, anything. They were in the moment, on the stage, nothing but a microphone between they and the audience. In other words, delivering the truth--on their own. Every now and then, you'll see a finger in an ear, the original tactic to hear one's own pitch. They knew what the score was, and they were players, even on a rough night. Ms. Swift was relying on an external.

Today's technology has enabled singers with noticeably limited skills (and, hey--it's only Rock-n-Roll, its a widely forgiving genre) to make commercially successful products. Nothing new, but every now and then the clueless and helpless factor seems embarrassingly in evidence.

To blame the audience and indict them for being discerning is absurd, insulting, really. No technology can mask this empty and baseless defense.

Friday, February 5, 2010

On Music In Film

Film is an abundant, multitudinous art form which contains, in discrete and discerning fashion ALL art forms. In this respect, the layers and routings of narrative structure have all expressive art forms as realms unto the realm of an emotional, spiritual, political, resolute human statement. That, of course, in the director's idiom to achieve the efficient end of purposeful, resonant and effective storytelling. All comprising elements, including music, and choices therein should be deliberate and poised to contribute to the story beats, and the larger arching phrase, with flexibility to accommodate emerging discoveries and remedy potential obstacles along the way. As a composer, I prefer a collaboration that starts before anything is seen or heard, to discuss tone, tilt and comparative reference works. As with all collaborative projects, each project progresses in its own distinctive, and ultimately unique fashion. Music and sound design, as one of these many elements, its presence or absence, tone, mood, texture and its place in the aural mix is as crucial and important as any other in the long list of artful aspects that comprise the whole work. I do believe, as an aside, that storytelling in film is, first and foremost, a visual medium. Many endemic decisions are simple ones in light (!) of that fact.

Tuesday, February 2, 2010

Palin More Qualified For....

A new survey for a liberal website shows GOPers overwhelmingly believe ex-AK Gov. Sarah Palin (R) is more qualified to serve in the WH than Pres. Obama.
More than half, 53%, say Palin is more qualified than Obama, while 14% say she is not. Meanwhile, 63% of self-identified GOPers say Obama is a socialist.
The poll, conducted by Research 2000 for the liberal DailyKos website among 2,003 self-ID'd GOPers between Jan. 20-31, is clearly intended to embarrass the party. It surveys GOPers on questions about Obama's birthplace (36% do not believe he was born in the US, while 42% think he was) and whether ACORN stole the '08 elections (21% think they did, 24% say otherwise).
39% of GOPers, a plurality, think Pres. Obama should be impeached, while 32% say he should not be. And 31% of GOPers say Obama is a racist. In most questions, Southerners choose the anti-Obama side in higher proportions than those from other regions in the country.
Palin leads the pack among possible WH contenders, according to the Kos poll, though not by much. She scored 16% of the vote if a GOP primary were held today, leading ex-MA Gov. Mitt Romney (11%), ex-VP Dick Cheney (10%), ex-House Speaker Newt Gingrich (7%) and ex-AR Gov. Mike Huckabee (7%).
MN Gov. Tim Pawlenty (R) scored 3%, while Rep. Ron Paul (R-TX) and Sen. John Thune (R-SD) both won 2% of the vote. 42% say they remain undecided.
The poll had a margin of error of +/- 2%.

The REAL Americans must carefully and proactively navigate, not negotiate, this unhinged dia-tribe as so much in(s)anity while not validating/dignifying it by over-addressing it in any rational manner. 

I have accepted the extreme and vociferous right as absurdist-politik. There is no realm within which to constructively co-exist.

It's worth pointing out that this isn't an altogether new dynamic phenomenon in American politics, but at present, the political wing of the Republican Party is adrift. This just may be the GOP's opportunistic smoke-screen of populist rabble-rousing implementing the low-brow cult of personality at their disposal at the moment with Ms.Palin. The sad and sick part of the equation is our nation's ship is also adrift, with much threatening our economic stability, and the Right is posturing as resolute future-workers while the dollars, from a trickle to an ever corrading stream, continue to migrate upward and away from the broad majority of Americans.

China has already achieved status as the premier manufacturer of solar and wind energy hardware while we continue to "make history". And what does the GOP have to say about that? Not much, save for maybe "drill, baby, drill", but I'd bet that they're privately investing heavily in the meantime before China calls in the balance of our national debt.  All the while, drilling away, hollowing out the American middle-class from the inside.

~JC