It is with a heavy heart that we bid a fond farewell to the Mozart of our time, Eddie Van Halen. Van Halen passed away after a lengthy struggle with lung cancer. He is survived by his brother, drummer Alex Van Halen, and his son, Wolfgang Van Halen, who joined the band as its bassist in 2006.
Van Halen was truly one of the guitar greats of the twentieth century, the second half of which witnessed the rise of many guitar heroes to the pinnacles of superstardom, particularly in the 1970s and 1980s.
But Van Halen’s licks didn’t stop with memorable riffs. He could play neoclassical passages with ease, weaving them into songs about partying and and lusting after one’s teacher. Learning his signature solo, “Eruption,” became a rite of passage for budding guitarists in the 1980s and beyond. Van Halen also dominated on the keyboards—much to the chagrin of perennial showman David Lee Roth—as is clear from the entire album 1984, one of the best albums of all time. Who can resist jumping when hearing the opening strains of “Jump“?
This week’s posts are going to be a bit more treacly than usual, as I’ll be out of town later in the week and am pressed for time (it’s the end of the quarter, which is always crunch time). I will hopefully be able to cover the vice-presidential debate this week, but otherwise, I’ll be sticking to more lighthearted fare.
To that end, I thought I’d share about my visit Saturday to the Soda City Market, a weekly farmers and crafts market in the tradition of “European street markets,” per the market’s website. It reminded me a great deal of Aiken’s Makin’, just in downtown Columbia: lots of wood crafts and foods you’d only eat a festival.
I’ve missed festival season thanks to The Age of The Virus, so it was good to get out and see throngs of people buying wooden bric-a-brac and eating fair food. Many festivals have been cancelled this year, or have seriously downsized (the Ridge Spring Harvest Festival, for example, just put on its “Battle for the Ridge” barbecue cook-off this year, and cancelled the other festival events) to comply with health and safety guidelines.
The brouhaha over Judge Amy Coney Barrett’s appointment to the Supreme Court will provide ample blog fodder in the days ahead, but there is plenty of time to get into senatorial wrangling. Mondays should be eased into a bit, so I’m taking today to write a short review of one of the best (and probably most over-reviewed) films of all time, The Empire Strikes Back.
Growing up as a chubby kid in the 1990s, I was a huge Star Wars fan. That was long before the new trilogy retconned/soft-rebooted everything and destroyed the legacy of classic Star Wars, and even before the prequels made the flicks even more cartoonishly ridiculous. I’m not even a huge critic of the prequels—they were never going to live up to the perfection of the original trilogy—and I enjoyed some of the fun world-building and thorny trade blockades of Phantom Menace (although that’s all a bit too technocratic for a space opera). But the magic of the original trilogy is more than the sum of its parts, and it’s based on rich storytelling and exceptionally strong character development, with nearly every major character growing and evolving over the course of the three films.
That was readily apparent in Empire, which my girlfriend and I saw (for five bucks!) on the big screen Saturday evening. It has been many years since I’ve watched the original trilogy, and I’m regretting that now. Empire catches the main trio of Luke Skywalker, Princess Leia, and Han Solo at transitional points in their development: Luke at the beginning of his Jedi training with Master Yoda; Leia assuming great command responsibilities in the Rebellion while also wrestling with her feelings for Solo; and Han feeling the tug of his old life (and debts) while maturing as a man capable of great self-sacrifice for his friends.
This year, I’m teaching a new Pre-AP Music Appreciation course at my school. The goal of the course is to teach students the language of music, as well as the different instruments, along with a broad survey of Western music from the Middle Ages to the present. For the first week, we discussed dynamic contrast, tone color/timbre, and began going through the instruments typically found in the orchestra. We’ve also listened to some excellent music, including a particularly dramatic performance of Franz Schubert’s “Der Erlkönig.”
After we covered the different orchestral instruments, we listened to Benjamin Britten‘s “The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra,” performed by the WDR Sinfonieorchester Köln under the direction of Jukka Pekka Saraste. Britten’s piece takes a theme from seventeenth-century English composer Henry Purcell, an important Baroque composer with a distinctly English sound. Britten has the entire orchestra play the Purcell theme, then each section takes a turn. Then each instrument in the orchestra—including auxiliary percussion pieces like the triangle—take solo or soli sections, starting with the piccolos and flutes.
It’s a charming bit of modern classical music, and this performance is a particularly good one. The camera crew makes sure to highlight each section of the orchestra and each group of instruments as they perform (the oboes are particularly fun, as one oboist looks like his head is about to burst from concentration). I remember Ben Shapiro recommending the piece to a listener who wanted to introduce his young children to symphonic music, and stating that his own young daughter loved it.
After thirteen (!) variations on Purcell’s theme, Britten introduces a lively new theme, starting with a jaunty, acrobatic piccolo solo, and then slowly building back in the woodwinds, strings, brasses, and percussion in turn. The whole thing swells to a mighty crescendo, with a powerful, full orchestra finale. When I played it for my Pre-AP Music Appreciation students Friday morning, a few of them were awe-struck. We finished listening in the closing minutes of class, and one student left saying, “This is my favorite class”—always satisfying to hear as a teacher.
Of course, who couldn’t love a class that involves listening to and talking about great music? As our primary resource, I’m using Roger Kamien’s Music: An Appreciation, the eighth brief edition. We’re also using YouTube heavily to locate quality recordings of music, such as the WDR Cologne Symphony recording featured in this post.
I’m hoping to sit my niece and nephews down soon to listen to Britten’s piece, as I think they’ll enjoy all the instruments. It might be a tad long to hold their attention, but it can easily be enjoyed in small chunks. My niece is particularly musically inclined, and I think will have fun seeing and hearing the different orchestral pieces in turn.
After all, if we’re trying to save Western Civilization, that means learning to appreciate some our highest cultural creations—and sharing that love with the next generation.
Way back in 2001, good ol’ John “The Derb” Derbyshire wrote a column for National Review called “Hillary’s Style Crash.” That was back in the days before NR kicked Derb to the curb for writing his controversial piece for Taki’s Mag “The Talk: Nonblack Version,” in which Derb dropped some unpleasant nuggets of wisdom. That piece went up during the first round of the past decade’s worth of race riots, back before most of us realized it was mostly ginned up controversy.
Regardless, while I don’t agree with Derb’s race realism overall, he does offer up some remarkably insightful commentary. His weekly podcast is often the highlight of my Saturday mornings, and he comes across as an intellectually curious, gentle man who sincerely cares about his adopted country. His best commentary involves cultural matters, and that 2001 piece offers up a great insight: conservative girls are prettier, but progressive girls are easier.
It’s been awhile (3 April 2020) since I’ve written a Phone it in Friday, which means I’ve been doing my job and writing actual content on Friday, not just slapping together listicles of random thoughts (that link is not intended to diminish Audre Myers, a far more engaging random thinker than me). That said, today seems like a good opportunity to phone it in—after a day of baby wranglingyesterday, and a fitful night’s sleep (thanks in part to some heavy, but delicious, meals).
I’m also planning on unveiling my 2020 Summer Reading List in tomorrow’s SubscribeStar Saturday post (subscribe for a buck to read it!). Ergo, it seemed like an excellent opportunity to highlight some good Internet reads from the past couple of weeks.
In my darker moods, I can’t help but notice in what a bleak future we live. Sure, there are many elements of America that still exist, and some of which are strong, at least in some parts of the country. But things like constitutionalism, rule of law, respect for wisdom, faith, and a great deal many other wonderful items are daily disrespected, ignored, and/or abused.
I’ve been on a kick lately of watching dystopian films, that genre—next to zombie movies—that Americans love best. Last week I watched the 1974 cult classic Zardoz (starring an out-of-work Sean Connery), a film that shouldn’t exist given the nature of studio politics (it’s a rare example of a studio saying, “Make whatever you want,” and the director took it seriously). I also watched the less classic Equilibrium (2002), starring Christian Bale.
Zardoz explores a distant future in which frosty, immortal, aloof, and bored elites, the Eternals, live in perpetual paradise while employing vicious, gun-toting Brutals to exterminate the excess population of Earth. Equilibrium tells the story of a society, Libria—a mash-up of America and Britain, it seems—that, in order to prevent a fourth global war, outlaws all emotions, on the premise that art and literature inflame men’s passions to destructive degrees.
While it might not qualify as a “dystopian” film, I also viewed the Coen Brothers’ classic Barton Fink (1991), about the titular writer—a successful Broadway playwright who writes theatrical productions about, of, and for “the common man“—who cashes in on his success with a move to Los Angeles to write for Capitol Pictures, where he immediately develops writers’ block. Fink is a 1940s Jewish intellectual who pontificates frequently about his desire to tell the grubby, realistic stories of everyday people, yet he keeps ignoring his shabby hotel neighbor, Charlie Meadows, an insurance salesman who tells Fink repeatedly, “I could tell you some stories.”
The past few days I’ve really been pushing my music (see here and here), mainly because Bandcamp waived the commission it takes on sales of musicians’ work yesterday (1 May 2020). They’re foregoing their cut again the first Friday of June 2020, so I’ll likely be pimping out my electronic ditties again in a month (although, of course, feel free to pick up tunes any time).
I’ve maintained that Bandcamp site the better part of a decade, and until this week, I hadn’t made a single sale. Perhaps the poor-mouthing about the impact of The Virus on musicians opened hearts and wallets. To those of you that did purchase my work—I sold seven copies of my full discography (seven releases available now for $15.75), with many buyers paying more than the minimum—I offer a big and hearty THANK YOU. Seriously, you have no idea what a morale boost it is to have your support.
As for the poor-mouthing, one of the lessons I’ve learned about music is that fans aren’t buying the music, per se, although that does have to be good; rather, they’re buying you and your story. It’s a frustration for many artistic types that they labor over their art, putting all of their heart, soul, sweat, and blood into it, only to see people more interested in their personal lives than their music.
Tomorrow—Friday, 1 May 2020—Bandcamp is waiving the commission it takes on sales of musicians’ work. That means every purchase made on the site from midnight to midnight Pacific Standard Time tomorrow goes completely to the musicians (other than PayPal processing fees)—another 15% in our pockets.
The Age of the Virus has really taken its toll on musicians. As I wrote last Thursday, a substantial portion of my income in 2019 came from music lessons and gigs—nearly 17% of my gross income for the year.
With The Virus holding full sway over us, shutting everything down, there are far fewer opportunities for musicians to earn a living—except by way of online album sales.
As such, Bandcamp sacrificing that 15% commission is a huge act of charity for its users. It also means that it’s the best time to support musicians you love—like me!
Bandcamp gives musicians the opportunity to sell their music in high-quality digital formats directly to fans. One nifty feature is that artists can offer their entire discography in one go, often at a discount.
To that end, my discography—seven albums, EPs, and retrospectives, spanning fourteen years of artistic development—is on sale for $15.75. All of it. That includes my tour de force, Contest Winner EPand its hit single, “Hipster Girl Next Door.”
Another fun feature is that Bandcamp allows fans to pay more if they so choose. Indeed, when I announced on my Facebook artist page that the full discography was up for grabs, two fans paid $20 for it. Some artists have reported fans paying as much as $100 for a single album. I don’t expect that kind of generosity, but, hey—dig deep.
Regardless, there’s never been a better—or more necessary–time to support indie musicians. We can’t play gigs. We can barely teach lessons (some folks are doing so online, but it’s just not the same).
So, any support you can offer is always welcome. To purchase the full discography, you can view any of my albums (like Electrock EP: The Four Unicorns of the Apocalypse) and find a button/link that reads “Buy Digital Discography” (unfortunately, there’s no way to supply that link directly).
Of course, you don’t have to buy all seven albums—it’s just a good deal. You can also buy individual releases, like 2006’s Electrock Music (ludicrously cheap at $1 for twelve tracks!) or 2007’s Electrock II: Space Rock(just $5!).
But enough soliciting for now—there will be more of that tomorrow. Let’s get to the ostensible purpose of today’s post—TBT.
