Cycho Librarian

For a couple years in college, I got to play radio DJ. I know that I wasn't especially good, but I like to think that at least I played good music. Our college radio station was pretty low tech at the time. We liked to say that we were broadcasting with the power of a light bulb (a 100 watt transmitter on the highest point on campus). And our equipment was far from sophisticated: an ancient board hooked up to a couple cart players, a couple turntables, and a couple CD players. As you can imagine, with a bunch of college kids running a radio station, it could sometimes be a challenge to make sure that you stayed on the air. Someone doesn't show up for a shift, or they don't pot up the right channel, and nothings going out. Dead air meant someone had screwed up, or the transmitter had crashed (again). So it always amuses me when I hear professional radio stations hit dead air. But it never really occurred to me why that might happen until today. I had known for a while...

A piece from the 1970's followed by a Bach chorale in church this morning got me to thinking about "classical" music. I'm not talking about actual classical music, composed between 1750ish to 1810ish. I'm talking about what Joe Normal probably thinks of as classical music. That is, stuff you hear in church, at the symphony, or at the opera. I've been thinking about how inaccessible modern classical music is. Don't get me wrong, there's a lot of modern classical music that I love. It's just that unless you've grown up on it and trained your ear to hear what's good about it, a lot of the time it's just so much noise. The problem is that it's virtually impossible to tell the good noise from the bad unless you know what you're listening for. On top of that, there's a lot of jokers out there who think they can write good classical music who frankly can't. What I can't figure out is how we got to this point. Classi...

The missus and I were out to eat tonight, and Barry Manilow's "Copacabana" came on. This song has two very different connotations for us. For me, I want to make fun of it by doing a silly little dance and try to remember the alternate lyrics I've heard for the song. For my wife it reminds her of the elementary school teacher who made her entire class sing his songs. At any rate, this led to a discussion of musicians who appear to be gay. I assured her that Manilow was straight, although she still has her doubts. The conversation then veered to Liberace, and the inevitable point that anyone who thought Liberace was straight was either clueless, deluded, or both. Bringing things to a more contemporary period, we then discussed Elton John and finally Michael Stipe. Just as we reached this point in the conversation, "Copacabana" ended and to our utter shock "Radio Free Europe" came on. You just can't make up coincidences like that. From ther...

My uncle was in college in the late 60's, and did the whole college-protest thing. He had a VW microbus and was in a rock band that actually pressed a 45. I've still got a copy around here somewhere. When I was in college in the early 90's and there was something of a garage-band revival going on I played it for my cohorts at the college radio station, and the music director liked the cut so much that we actually put it on rotation and got it charted in our listing with CMJ . Sadly, we're once again stuck in a nowhere war that no one seems to know how to stop. So it's time to bring back the protest song. My uncle rewrote the lyrics to that A-side cut, and my cousin who's in video production put together a video for it. The cool part to me is that since the song is so clearly 60's in style this sounds like an old-school protest song. So, props to Chris and Mark, and I hope the rest of you enjoy it.

I would not describe myself as a Black Sabbath fan. I definitely don't fit the profile of your average Ozzfest attendee. And frankly I have very little patience for that demographic. I just don't think that they appreciate music. Yes, I am a snob. But even though I'm not a fan, I do enjoy a lot of the music that Black Sabbath put out in the 70's. You have to admire rock music that can be transcribed for marching band and still sound cool. But seriously, it's remarkable how many of their songs like "War Pigs" have entered our cultural consciousness, and their staying power is phenomenal. The fact that a several current bands have covered the song is a testament to that. One of my personal favorites is the Dresden Dolls' version, which I think they only do live. You gotta love a "Brechtian punk cabaret" duo covering a song like that on keyboard and drums. This morning on the drive in I was listening to Cake's cover of " War Pig...

I suppose at this point it's fairly well known that Hillary Clinton was searching for a campaign theme song . Overlooking the obvious questions as to why a political campaign needs a theme song (Bill made a good point with Fleetwood Mac in 1992, since then it's been gratuitous), this has been a fairly entertaining series of events. It got her scads of attention. There was clever marketing around it on the web. Involving the public seemed like a good idea. Unfortunately, the public are morons. Today we find that the masses have spoken and have selected Celine Dion's "You and I" as the winner. Huh? Okay, putting aside the fact that Celine Dion... how shall I put it... sucks, has anyone outside of Quebec even heard of this song? Probably not, because it's atrocious! At least the release video, a spoof on the Sopranos series finale, was clever and funny (although dear old Bill was wooden as ever in delivering his lines. How can someone who can give good spee...