chaosvizier (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
chaosvizier) wrote2007-03-30 11:50 am
chaosvizier) wrote2007-03-30 11:50 am
Introspectifying
Hey! Hey you! Want to learn something new about me? Click here for the goods!
I can't believe you fell for that. Suckers.
First, the quick and dirty summary of stuff.
-Went to Canada with![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
barbarienne and drlaurac for Ad Astra. Despite getting ill, it was fun.
-Rehashed my mouse-apprehending duties in my office. This one had dug a substantial hole in someone's potted plant and was living there. That's ballsy.
-Went to Pittsburgh. The less said about that, the better.
-Got compared to Peyton Manning. But not in a good way. It's funnier that way.
-Tookhotpantsgalore to see Beethoven's 3rd Symphony. Then we ate and drank a lot. A whole lot.
-The 24th of March was World Tuberculosis Day. Tuberculosis kills 1 person every 20 seconds. It's mostly a third-world disease. I say mostly because, amazingly enough, I've had TB. Badly enough to have been hospitalized for it. Who knows how I caught it? It's a mystery.
Anyway...danicia tagged me with this meme. Three weeks ago. Yeah, I'm slow.
List seven songs you are into right now, no matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, and include one or two sentences explaining *WHY* you chose a particular song.
Post these instructions in your LiveJournal along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to.
So this put me into an introspective mood. I know, that's crazy, I don't introspect ever. It cuts into my chocolate consumption time in a big way. But after a bit of introspectating, I managed to come up with seven choices. This was harder than it might have been for most people, because I'm not heavily into music. Or rather, I like music, but I don't have music on and around me 24/7. Nothing even close. So my "seven songs" are just songs that I always have on the brain. Perpetual earworms, as it were.
1) Southern Cross, by Crosby, Stills & Nash. There's something about the melody in this song that stays in my head all the time. It's soft, catchy, and kinda sad. Also, they use the word Papeete. That's worth bonus points right there.
2) Pictures At An Exhibition, by Modest Mussorgsky. The introductory trumpet solo is one of my favorite short bits of classical music. It is a simple melody, repeated with the rest of the orchestra several times throughout the composition, but it is most striking when played alone by the trumpet.
3) I Wanna Rock, by Twisted Sister. You're probably thinking "You don't exactly strike me as the most... METAL of individuals", and maybe I'm not. But for this one song, I can become metal. I can be metal for Iron Maiden too, maybe even a bit metal for Guns & Roses, but this one song by Twisted Sister is the epitome of metal for me. Real metalheads may scoff at me in the comment section below.
4) More Than A Feeling, by Boston. I fully blame "Guitar Hero" for this one. Well, not totally. The melody has always been sitting there in the back of my brain, cropping up every once in a while with the refrain, but then I played "Guitar Hero" once, and that was it.
5) Ode To Joy (Symphony #9, 4th Movement), by Ludwig von Beethoven. Plain and simple, an energetic piece of music that almost everyone can recognize. If there's a performance of this whole symphony, it is not to be missed. I love Beethoven's works just in and of themselves, but this is probably the high point. Also, German lyrics. Which I can sing. Poorly.
6) Flash Gordon, by Queen. You know, everyone has one guilty pleasure movie. A movie that's universally understood to be bad, and yet, when you're channel surfing and you catch a clip of that movie, you have to stop and watch the rest. Well, "Flash Gordon" is it for me. And Queen makes a campy movie even campier with its opening theme. KING OF THE IMPOSSIBLE!
7) King Of Pain, by The Police. Sting comments aside, this is, for me, a moving song. Death and distress all around. A solid melody. Words I can sing without sounding too much like a frog. And a catchy tune, again, that gets stuck in my head and plays over and over, but pleasantly.
These of course aren't the only seven songs I like. And as you can see, my taste in music kinda sprawls everywhere- I'm not a particular fan of one specific group/artist, just of individual songs and works. My heaviest interest is classical/instrumental music, but again, I'm not a diehard fan, or a master of understanding the genre. I'm just a guy who likes listening to a couple of fun things.
What do you think?
I can't believe you fell for that. Suckers.
First, the quick and dirty summary of stuff.
-Went to Canada with
barbarienne and drlaurac for Ad Astra. Despite getting ill, it was fun.-Rehashed my mouse-apprehending duties in my office. This one had dug a substantial hole in someone's potted plant and was living there. That's ballsy.
-Went to Pittsburgh. The less said about that, the better.
-Got compared to Peyton Manning. But not in a good way. It's funnier that way.
-Took
hotpantsgalore to see Beethoven's 3rd Symphony. Then we ate and drank a lot. A whole lot.-The 24th of March was World Tuberculosis Day. Tuberculosis kills 1 person every 20 seconds. It's mostly a third-world disease. I say mostly because, amazingly enough, I've had TB. Badly enough to have been hospitalized for it. Who knows how I caught it? It's a mystery.
Anyway...
danicia tagged me with this meme. Three weeks ago. Yeah, I'm slow.List seven songs you are into right now, no matter what the genre, whether they have words, or even if they're not any good but they must be songs you're really enjoying now, and include one or two sentences explaining *WHY* you chose a particular song.
Post these instructions in your LiveJournal along with your seven songs. Then tag seven other people to see what they're listening to.
So this put me into an introspective mood. I know, that's crazy, I don't introspect ever. It cuts into my chocolate consumption time in a big way. But after a bit of introspectating, I managed to come up with seven choices. This was harder than it might have been for most people, because I'm not heavily into music. Or rather, I like music, but I don't have music on and around me 24/7. Nothing even close. So my "seven songs" are just songs that I always have on the brain. Perpetual earworms, as it were.
1) Southern Cross, by Crosby, Stills & Nash. There's something about the melody in this song that stays in my head all the time. It's soft, catchy, and kinda sad. Also, they use the word Papeete. That's worth bonus points right there.
2) Pictures At An Exhibition, by Modest Mussorgsky. The introductory trumpet solo is one of my favorite short bits of classical music. It is a simple melody, repeated with the rest of the orchestra several times throughout the composition, but it is most striking when played alone by the trumpet.
3) I Wanna Rock, by Twisted Sister. You're probably thinking "You don't exactly strike me as the most... METAL of individuals", and maybe I'm not. But for this one song, I can become metal. I can be metal for Iron Maiden too, maybe even a bit metal for Guns & Roses, but this one song by Twisted Sister is the epitome of metal for me. Real metalheads may scoff at me in the comment section below.
4) More Than A Feeling, by Boston. I fully blame "Guitar Hero" for this one. Well, not totally. The melody has always been sitting there in the back of my brain, cropping up every once in a while with the refrain, but then I played "Guitar Hero" once, and that was it.
5) Ode To Joy (Symphony #9, 4th Movement), by Ludwig von Beethoven. Plain and simple, an energetic piece of music that almost everyone can recognize. If there's a performance of this whole symphony, it is not to be missed. I love Beethoven's works just in and of themselves, but this is probably the high point. Also, German lyrics. Which I can sing. Poorly.
6) Flash Gordon, by Queen. You know, everyone has one guilty pleasure movie. A movie that's universally understood to be bad, and yet, when you're channel surfing and you catch a clip of that movie, you have to stop and watch the rest. Well, "Flash Gordon" is it for me. And Queen makes a campy movie even campier with its opening theme. KING OF THE IMPOSSIBLE!
7) King Of Pain, by The Police. Sting comments aside, this is, for me, a moving song. Death and distress all around. A solid melody. Words I can sing without sounding too much like a frog. And a catchy tune, again, that gets stuck in my head and plays over and over, but pleasantly.
These of course aren't the only seven songs I like. And as you can see, my taste in music kinda sprawls everywhere- I'm not a particular fan of one specific group/artist, just of individual songs and works. My heaviest interest is classical/instrumental music, but again, I'm not a diehard fan, or a master of understanding the genre. I'm just a guy who likes listening to a couple of fun things.
What do you think?
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You should have seen my 3-year-old's face recently when we got a new CD player for the kitchen and I pulled out my CD and started singing along at the top of my lungs. German is just so much fun to bellow. SEID UMSCHLUNGEN MILLIONEN! DIESEN KUSS DER GANZEN WELT! "Uh, mom...?" *child backing away slowly*
yeah...anyway...so I sang in the choir for that one when I was in college, and it was teh awesome.
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The whole symphony is just amazing. The instrumental parts are good. The vocal parts are good. The fast parts are good. The slow parts are good. Each movement by itself, to me, could stand alone as a solid piece of music. All of them together makes about 70 minutes of kickass.
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mwaAtVgsl4E&mode=related&search=
Laufet, Bruder! :P
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And I do agree, Beethoven's 5th is even more powerful in a way. But it's the chorale of the 9th that gives it that microscopic edge over the 5th, for me. Heck, throw in the 6th and the 1st, and it's a tough call for third place.
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On a vaugely related note, the Philharmonic are doing both Beethoven's 5th and Mozart's Requiem (not on the same night) in October. I don't know if individual tix are available for the Requiem--it doesn't seem so, but the website sucks. Despite my current feeling of "I don't want to give the Philharmonic any more money until they join the 21st century," I would be willing to go to those. You want me to look into it?
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Depending on when in October that is, that would be pretty badass. More for the 5th than for the Mozart. Ludwig for the win!
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...do you know whether it's the Sussmayr or the Levin?
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P.S. You didn't tag anyone.
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1) La Petite Mort - Erin McKeown - Nothing wrong with a little funky folk music. Amanda and I saw Erin perform live at the Falcon Ridge folk festival last year and I've always loved her music. She plays good folk music but she keeps it funky and groovy.
2) Gulf War Song - Moxy Fruvous - Yes I'm listening to some a capella, wanna make something of it. I really like the harmonies in this song.
3) Sister Janet - Tori Amos - I've always liked Tori, ever since "Silent All These Years" came out all those years ago. Weird lyrics and wonderful piano arrangements. I tend to like her softer side.
4) Fast As I Can - Erin McKeown - Some more Erin again, for the same reasons as above
5) Rescued - Jack's Mannequin - New Age, Pop Punk music. The lead singer here is also the lead singer for Something Corporate.
6) Butterfly - Tori Amos - Again, the softer side of Tori.
7) I've Had It - Aimee Mann - It takes a lot of time to get used to Aimee's sound, but once you do, its really worth it.
From my top 7 songs on my iPod, I can see that while I"m at work (where I listen to my iPod the most) I can see that I like things on the low end of my musically tastes. No heavy metal of Grunge Rock or anything to get my adrenaline pumping whilst sitting here coding all day.
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And when they make a counterargument and spell it "The Horror of YIG", bitchslap them.
Plus hey, bagpipes.
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I was wandering around at Dragon Con one year and I got near the phone banks. On the phone was the girl in Gwar (I don't know names) in full costume. She was talking in a sweet (almost squeaky) voice saying "Oh honey I miss you too. I love you *kisses*" That just totally ruined the band for me.
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"Ode to Joy" fan here too. There were two Robert Fulghum essays that discussed this -- the first was about him saying that it ALWAYS picked him up out of mental doldrums, that no matter how down he was, if he listened to this then by the end he usually was charging around the house doing air-conducting and singing along in Germanesque gibberish. The second one came about because of the first one -- his local symphony read the essay and invited him to come and join them as a special guest to play the kettle drums onstage during "Ode To Joy" one night. Which he did. And loved it.
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Ode to Joy does indeed inspire and lift up. It's not quite as energizing for me as Handel's "Why Do The Nations" or "Thou Shalt Break Them" from Messiah, because those two pieces have me demolishing small nations by the time they run their course. "Ode to Joy" is more... empowering? I don't know... it's different. But still. Bad Ass.
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Frequently it doesn't. It usually fades out somewhere during the "oooooh ooooooh" right before it.
A Van Morrison song's alteration actually bothers me more -- "Brown Eyed Girl" will come on the radio, I'll be grooving to it, they'll get to the last verse, and sometimes I'll hear:
"...Sometimes I'm overcome thinkin' bout
Laughin' and a-runnin', hey hey,
Behind the stadium, with you..."
And I feel like shouting, "No, they are MAKING LOVE IN THE GREEN GRASS behind the stadium, you prudes!"
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"King of Pain" though is one of those songs that I just can't hear without slipping into the Weird Al version.
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