JCHRants

There’s An App For That

08.27.2011

Time and again, I’m told to write something periodically to you, Dear Reader, in order that I may keep me at the forefront of your digital consciousness. But lately? I……………….got nuthin’. Or rather, I got the beginnings of two dozen amazing bits of music-oriented prosody; but nothing complete. Ironically, when there’s a ton of stuff going on, that’s when I have the least amount of time to write. And the corollary, of course, is when I’m most loquacious, is when musical activity is moving along a steep incline of torpor. At the risk of conjuring the spirit of Andy Rooney: [...]

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Dying Is Easy

08.12.2011

Culture, Detroit

Comedy really is hard. I recently saw Le triplettes de Belleville again and was reminded of this fact. It’s one of the great achievements in animation—hell in all moviedom. It’s funny, sad, warm and uplifting and it made me realise that very little recent art popular outside of animation has those qualities. But let’s face it: There has never been much truly great art that is a whole lotta fun. Do I have to feel like crap in order to have a transcendent experience? (No sex, drugs and rock and roll jokes, please.) But how many life-changing moments come out [...]

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The Origin Of The Mood Ring

08.3.2011

FAQs

There’s a pretty good book title in there, right? In the immortal words of Woody Allen, this is a joke; that’s not a joke; but it is a joke. I have been told over and over and over and over that much of my work can be easily divided into a few categories; rather like a cheap Chinese Restaurant Menu. I would often be asked to program concerts and create compilation albums based on a particular ‘mood’ because most listeners are doing so for a purpose. When I put together the compilation album Nice Cuts, the original idea was, in [...]

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Dennis Ritchie, RIP

07.8.2011

Culture

Computer Scientist, Dennis Ritchie died this week. There was nary a mention of it anywhere in the major media, except perhaps below the fold on A6. But he was a hero to me for many reasons—his influence on my musicianship not being the least. I grieve. And I hope in vain to convince you, gentle reader, who would rather read about the guy in the black turtleneck, that Dennis was one of the more important guys of the twentieth century and worthy of becoming part of your dinner conversation. The Requisite Preliminary Adulation A hundred years from now, when devices [...]

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Be Creative

06.27.2011

Culture

Maybe it’s this Great Recession or whatever but I can’t seem to turn around without hearing phrases like, ‘You just gotta be creative!’ or ‘You gotta think outside the box.’ Almost always this phrase is uttered in response to trying to ‘do more with less’. Sort of a ‘McGyver’ deal, I suppose. In other words, if you don’t have the money to hire someone to do ‘X’, just think up a lower cost solution ‘Y’ using the old noodle.

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The Problem Of The Great American Novel

06.18.2011

Detroit

But ya know why there hasn’t been a ‘Great American Novel’, one with the sweep of Tolstoy’s Russia or Shakespeare’s England, or Dante’s Florence? Because it’s really hard to start with a metaphor and then find a story to build around it. And that delusion seems to me now to be (irony of ironies) quintessentially American… If you build it he will come. If we start with a cool idea, all we need to do is throw enough man-hours at it and POW! To the moon, Alice!

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Rock Opera: Not

05.16.2011

Detroit

I have never seen a successful integration of rock n’ roll and classical music. The closest to the mark, in my opinion, was ELP’s ‘Pirates’. That’s ten minutes–about proper length for ‘prog’. It seems the longer one goes, the less successful the results.

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Mock ( “How’s The Opera Doing” Post)

05.13.2011

Detroit, Music Business

I keep getting asked how the opera is going. Actually, I’m getting asked less and less because interested parties are sick of waiting. But Detroit proceeds apace. What strains credibility is the lack of audio samples. And that, Dear Reader, is the point of this post. JUST ME AND THIS LI’L OL’ GUITAR There is this myth and legend—which used to be true—that songwriters sat down in a room with their geetar and the producer and performer say, “Now that’s a song! Sign that boy up!” But that ended decades ago. But I, in all my naivete, still feeling twenty [...]

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