Dancing about Architecture

I don’t know the correct format for screenplays, so this is just free form.

Camera zooms in on four people playing Scrabble: 3 are modern-day Moneybags types, slick and smooth. The fourth is a little girl.

As is usually done in Scrabble, they take turns putting down words. The little girl puts words like “bunny”, “flower”, and “Mortimer” (her pet rat’s name, but I guess the audience wouldn’t know that) down. All living things. The business guys keep putting the same word down on the Scrabble board: “CO2” (yes, I know that Scrabble doesn’t have “2” tiles). Maybe every time they do this, they also take some Monopoly money out of “the bank”. Maybe not. That might be mixing up games too much.

At any rate, eventually, the rich guys run out of spaces to put down more “CO2″s. So, they start pushing the little girl’s words off the board and adding more “CO2″s.

After a while, they knock over the table holding the Scrabble board and walk away (I guess they got bored). One of them casually pushes over the girl in her chair as he’s walking away. Maybe he walks back and, in an absent-minded manner, picks up the small little girl’s purse that fell out of her pocket, opens it, finds there’s nothing of worth in it, and tosses it aside.

Alex Ross’s appearance at the Fitzgerald with Fred Child and the Turtle Island String Quartet last night was excellent. I wish it could have been twice as long (maybe on successive nights) so he could have covered more of the book.

For example, I wish he could have talked about the “Death Fugue” chapter, which I found especially fascinating. What does it mean when someone like Hitler is an appreciative (and knowledgeable) classical music (or just music, for that matter) fan? They did talk about Shostakovich and Stalin however.

Anyway, the last bit of the talk about the current state of music was excellent and I’m sure very inspiring for young composers. Me, if I were a young composer, I’d want to be a Milton Babbitt “Who Cares If You Listen”-noise rock composer.

Ross is appearing next on Nov. 10 at the Miami Book Fair (details TBA). For more details on the book tour, go here.

Click here if you’re a trombone player.

Does the barber who shaves those and only those people who don’t shave themselves shave himself? Only Zen master King Tubby knows the true answer.

Alex Ross is right when he says it’s hard to think of a great Hollywood film score written for a comedy.

Bernard Herrmann did the score for Hitchcock’s The Trouble with Harry, which is definitely a comedy. I watched the movie on TV in Madison, Wisconsin one afternoon when I was going to school there, but I don’t remember much about the score. All I remember is that the movie was quite funny and Shirley MacLaine was quite young and attractive in it.

Of course, The Simpsons isn’t a movie, but the music by Alf Clausen (and the theme by Danny Elfman) is quite good.

I’ve never seen Airplane!, but, if the music by Elmer Bernstein is one-eighth as good as his score for To Kill a Mockingbird, then it’s quite good.

Which brings up the question: Could a brilliant score for a total screwball comedy ever really be accepted as being brilliant? As brilliant as the score to Vertigo or Psycho is considered to be? A lot of comedic film scores really only show their brilliance when listened to in conjunction with the film. A good example of this is the hard-sync scores for Who Framed Roger Rabbit (by Alan Silvestri) and Carl Stalling’s brilliant work on the Warner Bros. Looney Tunes shorts.

Alberto Gonzales doesn’t recall. Click here to listen.

Here’s a good article by Cary Tennis: “I’m dying to be a musician”.

And while we’re on the subject of punk: “Death and glory” and “Redemption Song: The Ballad of Joe Strummer”.

Before you settle in for the long-awaited, super-sized weekend, take a trip to downtown St. Paul for the Tuesday Salon on November 21 at 7:30 p.m.

We have three very interesting and diverse solo performances. Stan Woolner will play his own composition on piano; Paul Reiners displays his chops on the laptop; and spectacular clarinetist Kate Berning-Alfred joins us to play a piece by Jeff Lambert. Also featured will be Chris Granias and Carei Thomas on dueling pianos.

Tuesday Salon, presented by the American Composers Forum with support from Zeitgeist, presents today’s composers and sound artists in the Twin Cities area, ranging from New Music to New Jazz, from Avant-garde to Avant-pop, from Euro-American to Non-Western traditions.

the next TUESDAY SALON
Tuesday, November 21 * 7:30 p.m. – Featuring works by CHRIS GRANIAS, JEFF LAMBERT, PAUL REINERS, and STANLEY WOOLNER, and performances by clarinetist KATE BERNING-ALFRED and CAREI THOMAS.
Studio Z, 275 East Fourth Street, Suite 100 in St. Paul
Admission: FREE and open to the public

This is a protest song: Click here to listen to “Whatever”.

WHATEVER

Verse 1:
G…………………………..
Cov-ered in a cloak of de-cen-cy,

C……………………..G…………..
Liv-ing in the land of the brave and free,

G…………………………………
Drink-ing the nec-tar of sweet suc-cess,

C………………………G…………
Step-ping o’er the bo-dy of Ten-der-ness.

Prechorus:
C……………………………
And it doesn’t matter what you do,

A…………………………….
And it doesn’t matter what you say,

Verse 2:
Trapped in a place that does-n’t know me,
An-gry wind blows through the streets of this town,
Back home, the flood wa-ters are now gone,
Back home, there’s black pes-ti-lence in the well.

Prechorus:
And it doesn’t matter what you do,
And it doesn’t matter what you say,

C………………………………
And it doesn’t matter what you think,

E………………………………..
And it doesn’t matter who you could be.

Chorus:
C omit 3………………………..
The truth is whatever they say it is,

C omit 3………………….
The lies are whatever they do.

R.I.P. Joe Strummer. God bless Mick Jones.