Whatdoyakno?

In a newspaper article about a new book, The Age of American Unreason, by cultural critic Susan Jacoby, the author tells of a dinner conversation with a student who was about to graduate with honors from Michigan State University in 2006. After the author mentioned President Franklin Delano Roosevelt's "fireside chats," the author watched as the student "looked absolutely blank" in response.

Is this par for the course?

The article goes to reach the following conclusion:

"A slew of new books, studies and films all tell a similar tale: Americans — especially young Americans — don't know much about much. Overfed on self-esteem, pop culture and digital entertainment, students are starved for genuine literary, historical, scientific and mathematical knowledge, critics say."

This complaint is nothing new. Down through the ages, adults have complained about the lack of knowledge of the youth of their times. But the charges seem more serious if not paradoxical now.

On the one hand, with the advent of the Internet, students of all ages, have every bit of knowledge known to "man/womankind" readily available, and know more. On the other hand, the bombardment of media of all types, including the Internet seems to lead to short attention spans, and less depth of knowledge. In certain respects students are given more challenging assignments, and courses are more advanced than ever before, on the other hand, many aspects of our modern life are being dumbed down. It will be interesting to see whether this knowledge gap winds up over the next few years.

Beach Music (Chesil that is)

"Chesil Beach" is a short novella about time in two parallel universes--in this case the world of the male and the world of the female struggling toward maturity in 1962, just before the world opened up to the freer sixties. The words on the page faithfully record a wedding night drama in almost real time, while lurching briefly back to the beginning of the relationship and forward through fifty or so years of life in just a flash of a few pages.

Two characters are stuck in time in a seaside resort beside a small eighteen mile strip of pebbles extending into the sea. Their story is part small part large, part trite part dire, part tender and part pathetic. In the short 200 pages, the author tackles topics of universal interest -- innocence and naiveté, confidence and self-delusion, desire and repression, opportunity lost or rejected -- and creates a small but complete universe around them.

The author, Ian McEwan keeps us on the edge of sympathy for each character, but stays with the male figure--even though it is female, Florence, that creates art as a tremulous lead violinist in a string quartet, while the male, Edward, only drifts through life being a rock record shop owner. The male starts as a ardent historian interested in writing short biographies of semi-obscure figures who lived close to the center of important historical events, but his ideas freeze when he confronts the bride he considers "frigid." The virginal and inexperienced male is demanding just a few years from the sexual revolution of the later sixties. The female is also virginal and inexperienced, but is closer to being non-sexual and pleads for time to adjust to the demands of her mate. But he cannot wait, and cannot find the words to communicate, and loses the love and the ambition of his life. Words fail both of them, and that's the book side of things.

Meanwhile, in the parallel universe of the CD version of the book, the beautiful narration by the author with his smooth British accent is a perfect fit for the words of the novel which have more of a reality coming through his voice. The narrated version creates a more vivid view of the distance between two selves, two subjective views of life: two who try to be “one,” and fail miserably.

Reading the book and hearing the CD at the same time, casts a huge spotlight on a small speck of time.

De-Bugged

After fighting off assorted Trojan Vundos, Downloaders, and pop-up ads, I am hoping to be back with more normal posts. It is a tough virtual world out there, but hopefully the worst is over. My XP was considered "unstable" and "open to attack," and Windows Security Pack 2 was summoned to the rescue (I hope). I am cautiously optimistic, but we will see.

Been Doing Some Hard Travelin'

Since my last posting, I have been to the northwestern part of Germany, to Amsterdam, and then back to the U.S.A. for a trip to Nashville. Each trip had a music and education connection. In Germany, I chaperoned a talented high school symphony orchestra rehearsing endlessly with their German gymnasium orchestra and then playing two challenging concerts very well. The concerts included pieces by Mendelssohn, Tchaikovsky, a tango, and some interesting vocal pieces by Vaughn Williams.

In Nashville, I attended an education conference, and one night went to the Grand Ol Opry, and the Country Music Hall of Fame. The sense of tradition at the Opry at the Ryman Auditorium with the traditional radio show, and the old and new artists was refreshing and very comfortable.

2008 Finds

Picking up from last year, a new discovery is Priscilla Ahn, with musical ties to Regina Spektor and Norah Jones (a little silkier than the smokey-voiced Norah) and a debut album on the way on Norah's label (of course), Blue Note. Her site on My Space lists a good "coolection" of influences--Ani DiFranco, Pink Floyd, Jack Kerouac, Neil Young, Syd Barrett, Jeff Buckley, the color yellow, Radiohead, Nick Drake, Sufjan Stevens, Andrew Bird, Ayrton Senna, Pinback, The Kinks, Sparklehorse, Juana Molina, love lost-love found. Another find is Kate Gaffney, a strong-voiced folkie from Philly. A third 'newie but a goodie' is Bodies of Waters, a rather joyous bunch from LA with influences from Polyphonic Spree to the Mamas and the Papas to Arcade Fire to Sufjan Stevens. The group lists many more as their influences, but also describe themselves as "abba meets the muppets."

2007: A Year of Disc-covery

2007 was a very good year for discovering new and old music. The Internet has become a great source to learn about new or undiscovered artists or rediscover or discover for the first time known artists. For me, it has left radio and other sources of new and old music in the dust. Although DC finally has a pretty good new radio station in 94.7 the Globe, and a top notch classical station in WETA, radio is no competition for the Internet. While I still love listening to the radio on long trips and the discoveries that come with it, the Internet is an unlimited, worldwide jukebox virtually without limits. As the nation and the world in 2007 continue to get more divided and fragmented (as does some of the music), there are signs that there are more fusions and experiments across categories and nations and cultures, due in large part to the Internet and the exchange of information that has come with it.

The recording industry in 2007 did not seem to be any closer to developing a solid business model for selling and distributing music, but that is another sad story for the future. In the meantime, some of the new groups I came across and liked in 2007 included Regina Spektor, a talented pianist/singer from the Bronx by way of Russia; and her Swedish echo in Maia Hirasawa; Last Town Chorus, an off-beat cover group with a unique sound; two Israeli artists, Geve Alon, and Yau Decklebaum; Sense Field, a group that evolved from hard rock to emo to oblivion; Innocence Mission, who reemerged with a new album in 2007 that lived up to the group's name; Eleni Mandell, a talented singer/chanteuse; the Concretes, and Victoria Bergsman's new group, Taken by Trees both hold promise; Okkerfil River, an interesting sounding Austin indie group; Michael Nyman, a talented British composer of film/classical music; Jon Brion a multi-talented multi-instrumentalist, singer, American film music composer, and record producer; Scala and the Kolnasy Brothers, a young Belgium female chorus that dramatically covers modern rock hits; the Cinematic Orchestra, an inventive English flash-jazz group; Silversun Pickups, a smooth latter-day Smashing Pumpkins; the National, a group with a relaxed Leonard Cohen-like sound; Caribou, a feathery psychedelic Canadian group; Panda Bear, an experimental sound from Noah Lennix; Lamb, an inventive disco group; Sara Bareilles, a clever Internet popster; Kate Havneviks, a promising Norwegian indie rocker; Porn Sword Tobacco, an experimental group name for Henrik Jonsson from Göteborg, who assembles sounds, drifts away, picks up again, re-adjusts, levels noise, adds piano, guitar, organ, bass, and thinks of new chords; Amy Winehouse, a very talented but somewhat self-destructive force; Charlotte Hatherley , a spritely rocker; Marissa Nadler, an indie folker; Sophie Millman, a Russian/Canadian jazz singer; the Yellow Jackets, jazzers to the core; the Great Lake Swimmers, a group of fresh sounding Canadian indie folkers; Sallie Shapiro, an electro-poptress, and Emilie Autumn, a classically-trained turned goth violinist. There were also strong albums in 2007 from Radiohead, Wilco, Feist, Spoon, Josh Ritter, the Shins, and the Boss.

In live performances there were strong performances from stalwarts like Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello together, Vienna Teng, Southside Johnny, and the Boss. The year ended with a broadcast of Brian Wilson's Kennedy Center's award show--that gave him well-deserved recognition (he ironically smiled little after producing the well-regarded "Smile").

And so it was a very good year for music. And the next year looks like it could be equally good if not better. Happy New Musical Year!

It's Not Really There

Sometimes the book is better than the movie. In this case, the review was better than the movie. What can I say. I liked the movie, but I loved the review in the NY Times.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/movies/21ther.html?_r=1&8dpc&oref=slogin

The review was well-written, well-organized, and convincing in its enthusiasm. It was (in a way) everything the movie was not.

From the review, I could picture the movie I wanted to see. Unfortunately, that was not the movie I saw. Sure, I loved the music; there was a lot of great original Dylan, and some very good covers. And the movie had its moments--the prepubescent, African-American Dylan named Marcus was pure fun and his scene with Richie Havens was infectious. The town of Riddle was fun to visit. But much of the rest of it was not as much fun--especially the Richard Gere part as Billy the Kid, and the Julianne Moore part as Alice Fabian as Joan Baez, which was beginning to approach "A Mighty Wind."

For me, "I'm Not There," was partially, but not all there. For a neighboring moviegoer, it was a form of unusual, if not cruel punishment that was not quite torture, but she did not understand why she was being held there so long.