An Open Letter,

To the old-timer who sat in front of me during the Vox Angelica performance in Huntsville last Friday night. For the purpose of his identification, this gentleman was tall, wore a yellow sweater-vest, his glasses were on a lanyard, he has a daughter called “Summer,” and was talking to a couple who seemed to be in town from Alaska. During the intermission, he spoke with another gentleman who seemed to be French. He looked and comported himself like a common socialist academic.

Dear Sir,

Thank you for your tutelage. Were it not for your excellent commentary, both during the performance and intermission, my wife and I would have had the poor taste to enjoy the performance. The trouble is that neither of us normally ingest very much choral music of the sort performed that night. In fact, the only reason we had attended in the first place was that one of the performers is a colleague of my wife.

We were noticeably confused, through our lack of education and refinement, by what sounded to us to be an excellent presentation of Modern English carols. We did not even understand, in our ignorance, that we were supposed to execrate the concept of the Modern English carol. Now that we have been exposed to them, we may condemn them with our noses held high! Though they sounded quite nice, we were not fooled!

We also were not fooled by the enjoyment portrayed by the performers. They are performers after all, and their seeming satisfaction with a job well-done was no doubt some sort of subtle subplot designed to draw attention away from that fetid heap of a concert.

When the performance was over, we though it was not a second too soon. We, like you, were wroth with the audience for having the pluck to applaud, let alone stand. However, on the matter of the standing ovation, I pointed out to my wife that it was more likely a function of being able to get out of those horrid pews than to show any affection to the performers.

My wife and I had never attended a Vox Angelica performance before. With any luck, we shall seek you out at next year’s performance as well, so as to continue the lesson of putting one’s head up one’s arse in public settings that you taught so well this time around.

Sincerely,

The Editor

Let the music play.

So, I’m trying to get some sleep, and I’ve got the iPod on. I’m listening to an album that I haven’t heard in more than ten years. It is Bark at the Moon by Ozzy. I had this on tape in middle school, and I remember it being really good. Ok, maybe not good, but at the very least enjoyable. However, now it is absolutely hilarious. Perhaps I find it hard to take Ozzy seriously because of his recent TV show. But he had such a strong start with Black Sabbath. As an aside, it seems like every time I turn on Sirius 19 “Buzz Saw” they’re playing “Sabbath, Bloody Sabbath.”

Back to Bark. I swear this album seems like other people writing songs for the dopey old Oz man to sing. Don’t get me started about “Spiders in the Night.” That one is just freaking silly. You can’t do anything but laugh at that, even if you like “Lullaby” by the Cure (which I do). “Journey to the Centre of Eternity” starts out very nicely. Before it is all said and done, it ends up sounding a lot like Oingo Boingo’s “Weird Science.” And “Slow Down” sounds suspiciously like Eddie Money’s “Take Me Home Tonight,” which is bad enough. However, the one that made me crack up so bad that I had to get out of bed was “So Tired.” This song sounds SO much like ELO’s “Telephone Line,” I just don’t know what to say. However, I knew I had to get up and write these down before I forgot them.

Iron Maiden, on the other hand, I didn’t get introduced to until probably about 1992. This was on the Plan-B skate video Questionable. I don’t remember if it was Brandon’s video or Shannon’s. One of them got it from somewhere. That video did more to shape my musical tastes than probably any other single source out there. I don’t remember many of the skaters. I was never a skater myself, so I really didn’t obsess over knowing who did what trick on the video. But the soundtrack was something else. I have found here a listing of the song names and the skaters who used them. Looks like there are 22 songs. A few of them were not so good (O.P.P?! What was he thinking?!). Most of them were excellent. Some bands, I went out and found immediately, like Pennywise and Bad Religion. Some are just down-right impossible to find. Del the Funkee Homosapien, who didn’t stand out on the video, I would later rediscover as Deltron 3030 and Gorrilaz. Some of them liked to smoke pot in New Orleans (Louis Armstrong), and some of them aren’t allowed in the country any more (Cat Stevens). Hey Cat, there’s a million places to go, you know that there are… just not here! Primus and the Doors, I already knew. The Beasties were there too, but I really didn’t remember Green Day being around that far back…

Over the years, I have put some effort into collecting the songs from this video. It is not as if I was on the quest for the holy grail or anything (I’ve alredy got one, you see…), but yeah, there was some effort. Obviously the ones that stood out in my memory more got picked up first. Over the years, some of those got lost, played-out, etc. The song that I remember the most was “Aces High” by Iron Maiden. I remember finding the tape in my grandfather’s pawn shop. No case. Just the tape. Most of the writing was worn
off, but enough of it was there to see “Aces High.” The tapes were $1 each, and I remember picking up a few that day. Several of the songs on that tape struck me as being intense. Rime of the Ancient Mariner, 2 Minutes to Midnight, and Powerslave were the best (in addition to Aces High). Powerslave seems to have the Egyptian thing going on, and I really dig it. It took me a listen or two to convince myself he was saying “Eye of Horus” instead of “Horrors.” The Egyptian motif on the cover art finally made my mind up. Being the Stargate-SG1 fan that I am, I find it quite enjoyable today. I haven’t really heard any of their stuff from other albums, but I think I’m going to check some out.

One of the things I’ve been pulling from my Napster subscription is jazz, featuring some of the really great jazz drummers that for what ever reason I’ve never been exposed to. One of the first I grabbed was the Bluebird recording of Night in Tunisia performed by Art Blakey and the Jazz Messengers. You should click on the link for that because Amazon has some samples you can listen to. This recording was made in 1958. I don’t think my dad had started elementary school by that time. I have had the title track of this album playing in my head constantly for the last month. I like the alternate take as listed on the Amazon site.