When Memes Attack

Aaaaghhhh, I've been slimed by a meme! Resistance is futile, though—at heart, I'm basically a 15-year-old girl who totally gets off on online quizzes and the like.

Total volume of music on your computer?
My, how the world has changed. Remember back when people told you with great affection about their LP collections? What do you mean, "no"? Anyway, Windows Explorer says 39.5GB, 7800 files. Like Nick, virtually none of my classical CDs has been ripped.

Last CD you bought?
Funny you should ask! I was just thinking that I hadn't gotten around to posting my most recent Amoeba Run—you know, since I'm on hiatus and all. (This break isn't working quite like I anticipated...) In the spirit of Coolfer's Four-Word Reviews meets Gay Haiku, here's the most recent pull. (Caution: audio samples scattered throughout.)

- The Sixteen singing major American unaccompanied choral works

Reich's Clapping Music
Juxtaposed with Revecy:
I add my applause!

- Rolando Villazón's Gounod & Massenet Arias

Strained, uneven tone,
Plus he looks like Mr. Bean.
Wherefore all the hype?

- two discs of Andrew Imbrie's music

He's like Diebenkorn,
Key in the West Coast arts scen...
(Sorry, I'm yawning.)

The others I haven't gotten around to listening to yet: Icebreaker's Cranial Pavement and David Lang's The Passing Measures (more juicy Cantaloupes); Kyle Gann's Long Night for three pianos, all played by Sarah Cahill; Halfliði Hallgrimsson's choral/orchestral work Passia (dunno why, always been curious, just cuz he's Icelandic); and a couple Britten discs, Slava playing the Cello Symphony and some string orchestra music. As you can see, I limited myself to the classical ghetto on this trip.

Song currently playing?
Stereo Maracanã's "Freestyle Love" from a Muquifo Records compilation M. R- picked up for me on one of his trips to Brazil. I gave him a budget and an outline to work with, and he came back with several dozen fantastic discs that are mostly impossible to get here, and even if you could they'd be four times the price. This particular compilation was of interest to me because of the inclusion of Superagua, who made I think my favorite chill-out album in recent memory. I'm big on getting compilations of local stuff when I travel, just for the chance to be exposed to people I'd never hear on my own.

Five songs I listen to a lot or that mean a lot to me?
Well, this is basically an impossible task, picking five songs. The last song I fixated on was Lauryn Hill's Tell Me, but I finally got that one out of my ear. Nothing's replaced it yet, and I'm happy to keep it that way. So instead, here are five that hold some meaning for me:

- Sibelius Violin Concerto. You know how some couples have 'Their Song'? I guess OMC and I have the Sib VlnCo, which we sat around and listened to on our first date. This should give you some idea of our weenieness. The recording of choice that evening was Max Vengerov's. Equally entertaining—but in a completely different way—is Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg's, uh, spirited reading on EMI.

- This Is Prophetic! from Adams's Nixon in China. Fate somehow put me in the room when Dawn Upshaw recorded this, and if you had to pinpoint a moment when opera started to matter for me, this would be it. For whatever reason, in the course of hearing and seeing her sing Pat Nixon's aria, and then later listening to it in the context of an album of American opera arias, the form suddenly became relevant. I remember listening to No Word from Tom from Rake's Progress shortly after that, and by then it was clear that the opera gates were fully open.

- Andy Bey, Something to Live For. This was recorded in the same room, come to think of it. Andy was singing with Fred Hersch at the piano. All the lights had been dimmed, it was nighttime, and when Andy began to sing I was immediately swathed in velvet. Somehow in our lifetime the only male vocalists anyone cares about in popular music are super-high tenors. I myself had always dismissed any thoughts that I might have something to say as a solo singer in large part because I thought my range wasn't appropriate for solo work—after all, who wants to hear a bass sing anything other than "ding-a-dong-ding blue moon?" But here was Andy, exploring, exposing and sharing so much of his life by singing this song in his rich, warm, flexible, compelling, beautiful, expressive and low voice, and my whole relationship with male low voices (and, of course, my own voice) changed.

- Anna Russell, Je n'ai pas la plume de ma tante. Anna Russell is my hero, especially being a singer with no voice but grrrreat ahtistry as I am! After all these years, this parody of French chanson still makes me laugh really heartily from the belly every time. If you haven't heard it, imagine chapter one of a Berlitz French for Travelers guide being set to Debussy. Voulez-vous une tasse de cafe? HA! I'll try to post some audio this weekend.

- Bjork, Hyperballad. OK, I gotta get back to work so this is going to be short. I've probably listened to this track more than any other of Bjork's. But the main reason it's in this list is because I think this may have been my real introduction to electronic music. It revealed something to me about the textures that can be achieved and the depth of layering involved in creating electronic music. Plus it's an awesome song. I don't usually buy CD singles, but this one was worth the $8 at HMV.

Five people to whom I'm passing the baton?
Rambler Tim Rutherford-Johnson, Devin Hurd, Robert Gable at aworks, Heather in the Wings, and A-Ro from The Noize. Don't disappoint me; I'm genuinely interested.

Comments

[Nick]

OMG, when I was in college the music department would have a weekly one-hour recital that was intended to teach performers how to get their acts together and perform on stage. Of course, one only had to perform once in a semester, but some of us more nerdy music students couldn't get enough of bringing weird music to all the faculty and clueless students. Once upon a time, my best friend and I arranged it so that after one of the recitalists had finished and the applause was dying down, we continued clapping. Everyone stared as we got up from our seats, walked from the audience onto the stage (while still applauding), and broke into the initial rhythm of Clapping Music. We managed to perform the entire thing without screwing up or laughing (which we often did, out of sheer joy).

When I was a wee boy, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg came to my little hometown in Texas to play with the Symphony. I remember asking her autograph and being horrified to see that her with her marker she'd made her name look like nothing but a series of heartrate graphs. How could someone with such control over arms, wrists, and fingers have such deplorable handwriting?

P.S. This.

[mezzogregory]

Get out of my head. We are so on the same wavelength with Dawn. I'm deeply jealous you were present at Upshaw's recording of "This is prophetic". When I first heard "No Word From Tom" I couldn't imagine who this fantastic composer was. (The piece came to me out of context. No liner notes.ARGH.)When I found out it was Stravinsky, I balked. So I went and got the Gardiner recording with Terfel and York, which is fine, but "No Word" simply wasn't the same. Sad face.
Hojoto

[sfmike]

You got turned on to opera by Dawn Upshaw singing Pat Nixon's aria from "Nixon in China"? That's got to be some kind of first, dude and congratulations.

I used to go standing room at the San Francisco Opera in the mid-70s but I found the form rather silly, to say the least, until I heard a good cast perform Mozart's "Don Giovanni" and I had one of those blinding revelations, "Oh god, this stuff is supposed to be good." This was quickly followed by productions of Britten's "Peter Grimes" with Jon Vickers and Janacek's "Jenufa" with Sena Jurinac and Elizabeth Soderstrom. After that, it was all over and I was a committed slave to opera.

Who was playing at the Hemlock last week, by the way. I'd promised Mr. Amarkhanian I would be there but fell asleep before it was time to start (yes, I'm turning into an old fart).

And mezzogregory, everyone's musical tastes are different, but if you're still "balking" at Stravinsky, then anything you write about music is deeply suspect for its sheer ignorance.

[mezzogregory]

Sfmike,
I love Stravinsky. I would have been less shocked if the music had been part of his primitivist oeuvre. "No Word From Tom" didn't sound like anything I would have expected Stravinsky to write at the time. Perhaps balked isn't the right word. Guffawed? Spit milk out my nose? However, no one denies the sheer level of my ignorance. There's so much to know about music, that I will spend a lifetime just getting around to finding out how deeply ignorant I am.
Hojoto

[M. C-]

Blevin Blectum and Chris Willits were at Hemlock; Heather noted her reactions here. We had surprisingly similar reactions, considering the fact we didn't even talk about the performance afterwards! Heather spells it out differently and much better than I would; basically I found Blevin's set entrancing in its variety and intensity, whereas I found myself falling into a trance in Chris's set due to its homogeneity.

Nick, tx for that track, and here's something else to ponder: how could someone with such control over arms and wrists almost have sliced off her finger while cooking?

[LD]

Dahlin, have you heard Rolando Villazon live? There's always hype, but where there's smoke, there's usually a fat cigar, and Rolando is a stunning latin lyric voice. I was there at his Met debut (opposite the Fleming in Trav): smallish instrument but manages to pierce through, and once it reaches you, you're taken to another place where you don't care if you're raped. Now, rape is a serious thing, but with a voice like that, he gets clemency straight from the pope. And speaking of pope, I hear that he and his personal secretary are ... ooooops.

[Coach Outlet]

future political Coach Outletand to ensure their re-electability after passing unpopular measures

head of state will oversee