#ROW80 3RD QUARTER 2013 – POST 3 – THE 12TH MAN ON AN 11-MAN TEAM & HURRY MONDAY

Now that right there is one of the stupider titles I have composed. Stupider still, is the fact that it took 4 tries to type “stupider.” More on that later. In this instance the 12^th man is the audience and is more a metaphor than anything else. Because? The 105^th man in a 104-man team would have no meaning to anyone. So, What am I talking about, huh? The audience. Our wonderful, wonderful audience, who come out to listen to whatever-the-hell we're doing that night, day or afternoon.

This is about the size of the Opera venue I played in; it seats 5000 and was always sold out.

I suspect orchestral composers started putting G.P.s (not gps, you gamers) but Grande Pauses in music to take a sort of “audience attendance,” if you will. To see who's paying attention, and who's carving “I ♥ Mikey” on the seat in front of them, who's rustling candy paper and who's talking in class. Here's how it happens. The orchestra is thundering along in about the 3000^th measure of some reeeaally boring symphony by Anton Bruckner, and then there's this huge, gaping hole, where it all just stops. You're supposed to hear *cricket, cricket* What we are all treated to is “I FRY MINE IN LARD!” From the nosebleed section, or the cheap seats.

This is frowned upon, unless agreed to by the entire audience. There's always some bald guy or old bat in front, who has a crush on the Concertmaster. Don't do this, unless you're prepared to thumbwrestle during intermission. Oh and dressy t-shirts and flip-flops are required. For the orchestra, too.

I'm already wishing I were dead, because the violas thundering part is 58 pages or tremolo, which is a very fast shaking of the bow on the string on one note; it requires small muscle movement and is okay for short periods, but it do cramp the muscles over time. What Beethoven giveth, Bruckner taketh. Bruckner and Mozart are both giant bags of dicks in my book. So, of course, when we sneak back in, in a pianississimo, I'm trying not to laugh and my Russian stand partner is muttering under her breath, “Nyet, you no look at me...*snort*” and we're off to air-viola playing, while we hiss-laugh.

We were kinda like this, only she wasn't a guy and we didn't play backwards. We got along well, which lots of stand partners don't. Actually, I've had very little trouble with stand partners over the course of my career. But Rita was fun. She came from the Kiev Philharmonic and played boatloads of viola; just an awesome player!

You know you're at a really classy concert when you play the “Star-Spangled Banner” and some goon in the cheap seats yells “Play Ball” before the opera begins. I thought Maestro Coppola was going to climb out of the pit and hunt the guy down and bite him. All 4' 2' and 96 years of him. Man! What a little ferocious tiger! I was very, very careful to always stay on his good side. I've seen him eviscerate violinists with 3 words. People never got fired by him. He just slowly tortured you to death.

Here is Maestro, either praising the 1st violins, or chewing them out, it is hard to tell. He always looks like this. His brother Carmine Coppola, who played flute in Detroit, did too.

 

Warning: This is the inaugural rehearsal for I can't remember which Puccini Opera and it's rough, for the 1st 22 or 23 seconds. It gets more polished as we go. Typically, we got the music cold and had 3 rehearsals and 3 performances.

I was playing at one concert on a stage where there are several venues, and across the street, Jeff Beck was playing. Some stoner must have gotten his concerts wrong and been really stoned, because at one point during a Brahms symphony I was playing with the orchestra, and natch, wouldn't ya know, a very, very quiet part, dude pops up and yells "Motherfuckin' Jeff Beck rocks, Man!" and then, pops back down. The surprising part is that no one turned a hair. I'd already started my career as a rock-and-roll violist and had heard it all, as had my colleagues.

Be sure and do this at your next Mozart concert, or Bruckner. The orchestra won't mind. The security can be a bitch, though.

Audiences can surprise you, but that's the great thing about live music. You never know what is going to happen. Either on stage or off. I was playing in a small theater in Columbia, South Carolina once. This is where I got locked in the bus and had to crawl through the driver's window with Wolf and concert black, but the strangeness had just begun. That night, sitting in the pit, which was floor level with the audience, there was a couple in completely stunning Klingon makeup and regalia. I kept sneaking peeks at them. They thoroughly enjoyed NYGASP's “Pirates of Penzance.” They came back stage after the show and thanked us in Klingon. Talk about cosplay; impressive and elegant.

ghaH 'ej Duvan, vo' columbia south carolina

So, I never knew what I was heading into when I went on a tour, but I always looked forward to tours. I miss them, but it would be impossible now. So, I share them with you.

Well, Monday can't get here fast enough. I will get the results of my DaTScan and we'll see. I am trying to not get my hopes up, because I know this is an arduous process and can take as long as 6 years to diagnose, but I get tired so easily and have been sleeping for as many as 11 to 14 hours. I'm back on my bipolar meds and so, of course, my tremors are worse and by the end of the day, I'm in pain, particularly in my back and shoulders. We shall see. And of course, I missed Wednesday's check in. Bills to pay and shopping to do, which is like this Lawrence-of-Arabia type odyssey, hah.

#ROW 80 1st QTR – POST 28 – WHEN WORLDS COLLIDE, OR MUSICAL TASTES OVER THE CENTURIES

I have been roaming this planet for nigh on 60 years and have yet to feel that anything is really too much, or I am too old to grasp the latest in culture or technology. My parents were very much into trying out with somewhat middling success, old stone-age computer games, PONG, or TANK, or whatever the current game was at the time on BETA Max and all sorts of horrible stuff.

I am currently having a good run of luck, telling those idiots on Twitter, something like "@Microsoft will pick your PC". I keep sending them messages like, “Thanks for the advice, I'll be sure to get that Commodore 64, you assholes. It sure beats the blue screen of death.” Some idiot actually answered that. I also told them I was thrilled for the quick response regarding the Atari that I should purchase. Microsoft. Motto: We can accommodate any level of stupid.

Same thing with music. I follow 2 shows pretty religiously; "Grimm" and "The Following." Imagine my glee when they both used some Rammstein which is a hugely popular death-metal band out of Germany and employs very traditional old world (read Beethoven and mostly, 2^nd Viennese school types of song-writing.) I find them to be most distinctive, not only in sound, but they are one of the only bands since Pink Floyd and the Police who compose and perform songs in odd meters, like 7/4. That really thrills me when bands are so willing to take a chance like that. They will be remembered years from now. Some of my younger friends don't get it.

“But Mary,” they'll say. “You're eleventy-billion years old, how can you like this stuff?” 3 words. I've played it. And much more. One thing about most musicians, we're always scratching around for good contemporary music that pushes that envelope. Cutting edge, but not shit. There are those who think that Alban Berg is horrid, and Arnold Schoenberg is terrible, and that's fine. I do like them. But, please God, no Anton Bruckner. We had a rehearsal one night, and for some half-assed reason, the conductor decided the violinists weren't putting enough whatever into their tremolo. He spent an hour and a half on that shit and 4 wind players fell asleep and out of their chairs. I fall asleep playing Bruckner. He's glacial, but I don't hate him like I hate Mozart, but still, he runs a close second. I have yet to run into any neo-Romantic, or really contemporary music that wasn't pretty awesome.

Well, actually, I take that back. I had to listen to some total shit in college. I remember 2 pieces (mercifully, only 2) by student composers; always a crap-shoot in my opinion. I can't write music worth a shit. I took Composition and wisely decided to hang up my feathered quill after the “sure-fire method” provided me ever so kindly, by Mr. John Hathaway, provoked him to comment, “God, that's terrible!” And, it truly was. I never tried to conduct either, as that would be akin to cows trying to drive; a force against nature. Leave me to my true talent; the viola. I just pretend to play violin and I don't even pretend that I do. I come right out and tell people that I can't play the fucking violin. Yet, for some reason, people insist on hiring me to play the damned thing. I guess they feel the need for some random stupid, especially if it's in the 1^st violin section.

Anyway, these 2 student composer pieces were going to change the face of modern classical music I am sure. To what I am not sure. One was for 2 upright pianos, and a celesta, a sort of tinkly little drawing-room sort of keyboard-y contraption. This piece was as much about the placement of the instruments as the performance, which tells you something about the quality of the music right there. It was a giant fail on both counts. The pianos were set very close together, with the celesta jammed in between the 2 pianos. The players sat with their backs to the audience and proceeded to beat in a very clamorous and monotonous manner for 3 movements. There were no changes in tempi, dynamics, just a bunch of clanging around, then stop. More wild clamorous clanging. Caesura. Repeat clanging. And so forth. Finally, the people stood up and faced the audience. Wild applause at the end, because at last, this abortion was over and done with. The players took their bows. I didn't have any tomatoes or rocks to throw, so I was rather put out. And no shots rang out; the firing squad having fallen asleep.

The next opus, was by some guy named Duckworth. His piece was called something asinine like “4 for 440.” He had 4 oboe players in every corner of the concert hall and all they did was play a 440 A for about a zillion years. The gimmick here was that they did the same A in different meters, different lengths, triplets, 16^th notes, yada yada yada. It sucked. About 5 minutes into it I was already calling it “that piece by Duckshit.” 45 minutes later, this snore-fest was still going on, as these asshat oboe players were flinging this same A all over the hall. The atmosphere was funereal. You couldn't hear any breathing; I think the patrons had died. Death by double-reed boredom.

I hate gimmicky music like this. We had to go to these concerts in college and I think we were made to, because our Professors did and so, we were made to suffer, because I sure didn't get anything out of any of it, except what not to do, should I ever write music (yeah, that was gonna happen) and a passing grade. I actually got stuck playing in one; a god-forsaken trombone and viola duet. The stupidest pairing of two instruments ever and “complete” with interpretive dancing, another stupid art form that is usually performed by 70-year old women in church, to some avant-garde mass, written by a music minister who flunked 1^st and 2^nd year composition, but insists he was just “misunderstood." Balls. He sucked as a composer.

These dancers, in leotard unis and hoods, snaked their ways over the theater seats, towards us, the hapless musicians. Maybe there was a point to be made there, but I was edging my way to stage-left, on the chance they were carnivorous. I didn't want to be some sort of low-rent “Le Sacre du Printemps,” by Igor Stravinsky. Low-rent, hell. This would have had to come from e-Bay, or half.com, were they around in the '70s, it was that bad. I can't remember how the damn thing ended. It just sort of stopped, as if the “composer,” who was also the trombone player lost interest in the whole enterprise and called it a day.

To the riotous applause of 3 people, 2 of whom were the trombonist's parents, I packed up Wolf, beat feet and got the Hell out of there. The piece was like this: 20 minutes of me playing staccato, and the trombone was farting and here are the Snake people coming at us from the audience. I didn't even want my name in the program. Come to think of it, I don't think there was a program, thank God. So, I was safely anonymous.

So, yeah, I love contemporary music, but good stuff, and none of that was it. Give me some “Bohemian Rhapsody” or “Dust in the Wind” or Pink Floyd's “The Wall” or Styx's “Domo Arigato,” or Alan Parson's Project, “Psychobabble Rap” or “Eye in The Sky” all of which I've played. Along with Mahler, Smokey Robinson and all the rest. But, I am eclectic; I cut my teeth on Richard Strauss, Beethoven, Brahms, Rachmaninoff, Stravinsky and Shostakovich and Tchaikovsky. Throw in some Rimsky-Korsakov and Ipolitov-Ivanov to keep it interesting. As long as it's good.

Next up: The Young Person's Guide to Opera

ROW 80 4th QUARTER POST 9 – NEURON CENTRAL AND TV

Well, I had a thought, but it got lonely and left. It’s been that sort of morning. Fuzzy, unfocused. Interesting dreams. In one of them, Governor Moldemort, was on the television bellowing about how all the fine citizens of Florida needed to quit running over, killing and eating all the squirrels. JC, in his usual forthrightness, hollered at the TV, “What a dumbass!” I screeched out, “That’s telling him!” and woke up. Every limb is zinging. I look at my toes. My right batch of toes look like crushed up peanuts. My left ones look like the cat’s toes when you tickle them, all spread out. WTF??

I lay back down and RIGHT then my brain decides I need to be treated to a variety images of shoe racks for the next, oh, hour it seems like, every time I close my eyes. Of course, this comes with an interestingly frantic sound track of that horrible 50s music that we were all treated to in some class or other, when the teacher had no lesson plan, an extra projector and a spare reel of “Cavalcade of Road Graders Through The Ages.”

The giant screechy thing is exciting; the film was not. On the plus side, I think the music was written by the last of the great "Amphetamine" school of composers, who sadly died at the age of 13, after staying up for 72 months. He wrote 948 symphonies. They all sucked. His name was Benny Something-or-other. We studied him in Roger Muti's Music Boredom class 102. Next week, I transferred schools and my sanity to somewhere else.

Even as an 8-year old, I found this selection of music hysterical. Some serious voice would intone, “The road grader is a magnificent feat of the highest in mechanical technology… blah, blah, blah,” and the string sections would be playing some frantic, frenetic, pretend-happy Leroy Anderson-style scale thing, complete with xylophone and 64^th notes…beedle-beedle-beedle-beedle-beedle-beedle-beedle. Ad infinitum, ad nauseam, up and down the fingerboard, for the entire film.

Yes, I've played in this; I've also played in it's more horrible cousin "Cascading Strings," or "Castrating Strings," as I called it; I have my standards. I am an artiste. 

So, this is not making for a restful time. The hours are ticking by. At least I know why I can’t sleep now and don’t feel so crazily out of control as I did, when this all started happening. Still, I am unable to fall into slumber. I notice something kind of cool. With my eyes closed, my brain remembers how to “track.” My eyes don’t do this when they’re open. So, I’ve figured out how to scan from right to left, with my eyes closed. Now, I can “see” a “panorama” of the shoe rack that my brain is treating me to by scanning from right to left! Now, I’m all excited. I wonder why this doesn’t work when my eyes are open; why my eyes don’t work in tandem. It’s not just that; my brain “sees” one image; it sees 2 and it has for years, even before I went blind; sadly, I have “slacker” brain.

Well, still getting the Leroy Anderson track. Brahms would be nice. I keep seeing shoe racks, then a scramble like a bunch of ions on a TV tube. Channel changing? More shoe racks. Shit. No cable here. This would be a nice time to mention that we have no television. We huddle around my computer monitor, like cavemen around a fire at the Dawn of Man. Being Old Crocks is a primeval business. While we char roasted beast or squirrel, in spite of Governor Crowbar’s abjurements, we watch the very best shows that Crackle, HuluPlus, or Amazon Prime have on tap. Lately, it’s been “Lost” Season 2, so we’re going tribal right now. We’ve been to visit Jack Bauer and Angel.

I find now that I’m writing I pay much more attention to the structure of these stories and how the characters themselves react. I find Angel to be fascinating. The idea of grace through redemption is so oddly comforting and beautiful and pure to me, after decades and years of evil. He truly understands that he has a mission to fulfill at huge cost to himself. Even Spike, though his motivations, towards the end of the series seem a bit less pure, deserves his chance at redemption. He wanted a soul. As people, as men, they are fleshed out; they bicker, fret over trivial stuff and when they have to, they step up. They try not to fail. Their characters work. Maybe because the series  itself is only 5 seasons long. Still, I wanted more of “Angel.”

Jack Bauer I also love; however, by Season 8 of “24,” his only redemption, as a character comes in what he does at the very end. I am not spoiling this for anyone, especially those people named, ahem, Andi-Roo, but up until that last, through seasons 5 through 8, though entertaining as all hell, he gets, well, predictable. As all hellz and kickass as he is, alas, it got old for me. I found myself saying, “Ah yes, the old Jack (fill in the blank) move.” As wonderful as the show and as complicated and, unfortunately, dead-on as I think some of the geo-political nightmares depicted truly are in that series are, it went on  too long. What Jack did at the end made all of the same-old, same-old okay. Chloe flat-out rocked.

We are only into the 2^nd season of “Lost,” and frankly, I already have about 47 million questions, but I’m not familiar enough with the landscape right now to ask. I like how the characters are seemingly connected prior to the plane crash. Whether or not, J. J. Abrams and David Fury can really pull it together with subtlety remains to be seen. David Fury is the one constant with the 2 prior shows and I admire his work. If his name is on a show, I want to watch it. The same for Josh Whedon and several others. As I stated earlier, I never really started paying close attention to writers, directors and show runners before my own attempts at writing and I’m learning from this; it’s amazing. I may be an infant when it comes to celluloid, but I do understand enough about thematic structure and literature to know when I am in the company of some people with pretty solid writing chops. These are a few of them, to say the least. And of course, that also includes my dear AR. She writes the hell out of her bloggy-blog.

Well, this was not where I was going with this post, but my brain wanted to go here and so here we are. SDBN, Now With Added Moms tomorrow (link) and Sunday check in here on “Homeless.” No riots or stabbings scheduled here on Nebraska Ave,33605, but you never know. There’s a BBQ later. We may have some unscheduled muggings.

OH SHIT! We're all dead now! Governor Crowbar told Florida to quit eating vermin. We'll be extinct by sunset!