The Fredösphere

Aworks found one of many Virgil Fox Youtube manifestations.  You gotta credit Fox for blowing the dust out of the pipe organ world with his Heavy Organ tour, but here, he disappoints.  With the funeral home decor, the fruitcake attire, and the middlebrow attitude in his introduction, he seems to be laboring under an ambition to leave no organist stereotype unresuscitated.

I did enjoy hearing again his interpretation of Ives' Variations on America.  This, along with The Unanswered Question, is among Ives' few unambiguously successful compositions.  To my knowledge, it was Fox's recording of this piece on the Wichita Wurlitzer that most closely achieved the ideal, optimized combining of performer, instrument, and composition.  In my only conversation with Michael Daugherty, I asked him if he knew of Fox's America recording (since the topic of the day was organ music) and he did.  Michael Daugherty knows everything, apparently, since he remembered which record company produced it, and asked me to confirm.  Sorry, Michael; I didn't realize that information would be on the test.

For sound clips of the Wichita, go here and scroll down.  Also have a look at the beautiful album art for the two-volume set of direct-to-(vinyl)-disc album "The Fox Touch."  For in my previous, vinyl-centric listening life, these records were my most precious possession.  Each side, about 20 minutes of music, was performed in a single take, as necessitated by the technology.  The (few) blatant clams only added to the charm.  They were as close to live as vinyl could get.

Poor Virgil; the Youtube video does not hide is ugly hands.  He comes off better in a video of a work he championed, Symphonie Concertante by Joseph Jogen--although his Nixonian form factor is on display.  "Let me make each note puurfectly clear."

Labels: Organ, VideoClip

I'm not angry--just hurt.  The Great Firewall of China is blocking Daniel Wolf, but found the Fredösphere too compliant (or, worse, insignificant) to be worth blocking.

Meanwhile....

Gawker's cool new SF blog, called io9, found a study that shows too much communication stifles creativity.  I'll try to summarize:  the right number of communication channels within groups--some, but not too many--allows members of the group to develop several ideas simultaneously.  Too much communication dissolves sub-groups and causes all members to converge too quickly on a single idea that initially appears to be the most promising.  Thus, too much communication is bad for innovation.  The study's conclusion dovetails nicely with Paul Cantor's claim that, in a nation (such as France) with a single metropolitan area dominating culture, and a history of top-down government patronage, cultural diversity and innovation achieve sub-optimal results.

It also dovetails nicely with my long-standing practice of warning the Wifeösphere on the dangers of over-communicating.

Furthermore, it's Source Fource!  I haven't seen anything this good since Captain Euro came along. 

Labels: Creativity, Culture

Tuesday evening, I anxiously watched the weather, and rejoiced as the clouds thinned out.  I gazed at the moon through my binoculars, and noticed that the thin lacework of clouds, if anything, made the view more dramatic, with a layering that gave Moon a sense of context and proportion.  Around 9:30pm, I started to wonder what was going on.  By 10:00, a profound sense of betrayal settled in.  Somebody, somewhere, somehow, screwed up.

The next morning, I met the screwer-upper, and he was me.  I reread the email from my friend Doug, the amateur astronomer, and discovered the eclipse was on for Wednesday night.  (Rain or shine.)

Last night's weather was painfully clear and bright; perfect conditions.  I was struck by the sharpness of the Earth's shadow, and how its curved shape gave me the sense of the spatial relationships of two heavenly bodies too large for us normally to comprehend.  The only other time in my life I've had such a sense of vertigo while intuiting the roundness of our world was the time I viewed the tippy-tops of the skyscrappers of Chicago from a vantage point across Lake Michigan in New Buffalo, Michigan.  Each time I felt a momentary fear that, if I wasn't careful, I could fall right off this crazy spinning thing.

You know, don't you, that Moon's orbit is gradually increasing?

Drift away, but steal a backwards glance until the Sun grows cold.

Labels: sci-fi

I promise, as a representative of the Software Interface Designer Community, to kill myself in ritual fashion to atone for the criminally bad UI of an alarm clock formerly owned by James Lileks.

Meanwhile....

Last Sunday I unleashed folk music on my Lutheran congregations.  This was not some 70s folk-ish abomination wherein the Kyrie chant is accompanied by a guitar played by Sally Field in a nun suit.  No, I'm talking about a hard-core folk abomination with banjo and washtub bass.

I'm not joking.

Well, the washtub was used only at the University Lutheran Chapel, since the regular bassist couldn't make that service, and we sing in the balcony there so the congregation never saw (and, I hope, never noticed) the washtub. 

We sang my arrangement of "There is a Fountain Filled With Blood," a vivid, not to say morbid, hard-core independent revivalist Freewill Baptist metaphor if there ever was one.  This rendition redeemed the previous attempt to perform it in a church service, years ago, which was ruined when one of the trio of singers left the sanctuary just before it was time to sing, on the deeply mistaken belief that he had time to run an errand.  (Later, I found out he was annoyed we started without him.  I wanted to punch him in the nose.)

My banjoist boasts of near-contact with folk music royalty.  He explained to me who Lloyd Chandler is:  the writer (maybe) of the original version of the song, "Conversation With Death," (AKA "O Death") which was adapted by Ralph Stanley and made known to the wider public by its use in the movie O Brother, Where Art Thou.  Dan, my banjoist, mentioned proudly that he once visited North Carolina and helped install a septic system in the home of one of Lloyd Chandler's cousins.

So, I've sung in a folk band with someone who installed a septic system for a cousin of Lloyd Chandler, who wrote (probably) the song "O Death."  I am so going to use that the next time I play Name Dropping.

Labels: Composition, OldTyme

No doubt I'm the last to find out.  The new movie Jumper was partially filmed right here in Ann Arbor.

Labels: local, movie

I do hope you are catching the YouTube sneak peeks of the Harlan Ellison documentary, Dreams with Sharp Teeth.  Start here (bad language alert), and also don't miss Mr. Ellison's unambiguous (and salty) opinion on the new all-content-is-free era we seem to be living in.  Don't overlook the irony, as you watch it, that you downloaded it for free.

Labels: Fiction, VideoClip

My previous post on random album cover generators proved to be hugely successful, by my standards.  Do read the comments, which have links to other great examples of serendipitous album art.

I strongly recommend you read what Books Under the Bridge has to say about religion in science fiction.  It's a series of four blog posts, each with a long, stimulating comments section.  Read part one, part two, part three, and part four.

In the comments of part one, you'll see I grab an opportunity to flog one of my favorite religion-in-SF novels, The Mote In God's Eye, which is remarkable for the casual (and to me, believable) way religion is depicted:  always there, in the background, neither impotent nor menacing.  Also of note are the very long comments by SF author John Wright, a former atheist and current Christian (hmmm, what are the implications of that word "current"?  What will he logically turn into next--a Rosicrucian?  An anarcho-socialist post-Jesuit with a soft spot for vegetarian triumphalism?) who, oddly, is a skeptic on the question of including religion in any fiction at all, except in its extreme forms.  (Read his argument; it's more plausible than my summary makes it sound.  More plausible, and somewhat convincing, but not completely.)

Labels: Design, Religion, sci-fi

I grabbed a meme from Scuffulans Hirsutus and gave it a try.  Here are the rules:

1 - Go to wikipedia. Hit “random”.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
The first random wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.

2 - Go to Random quotations:
http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3
The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.

3 - Go to flickr and click on “explore the last seven days”
http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days/
Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.

4 - Use photoshop or similar to mix it all up.

I think my result is highly serendipitous.  I chose the font Justinian to tie in with the Latin theme of the band's name and the (probable) ethnicity of the woman in the image (by flickr photographer Luiz Alberto).  The album's title sounds like an earnest plea on behalf of the poor of the third world:  our proffered solutions don't work because we never trouble ourselves to listen to the poor.  (In fact, the title's source is a quote from Tolstoy:  "Historians are like deaf people who go on answering questions that no one has asked them.")  I'm pleased with the S-shape of the unjustified left edge of the album title snaking its way around the woman's elbow and fist--but I'm an amateur at graphic design, so probably it violates some rule of taste written down in the secret rule book of graphic design techniques that only real graphic designers are allowed to read.

I'd say the result is better than Don's (of Scuffulans Hirsutus) thanks to dumb luck.  It makes me wonder how many times one would need to turn the crank before a genuinely compelling album concept would pop out.  Maybe not too many.

Labels: Design, Meme

It really does look like Obama has a lock on the graphic design vote.  Cool, calm, and beautiful.

(Like everyone, I like Obama, but this post does not constitute an endorsement.  I'm a bit put off by the hype.  My pipe dream for this election was that Fred "voting for me will be by invitation only" Thompson could somehow win without burdening the country with his campaigning.  There's something achingly appealing about a candidate who attends a fundraiser and ends up as the only person present not working the room.  Alas.)

Labels: Design

Music: the international language!

Labels: fun