Lady Gaga's Bird

Andrew Durkin wrote this article, Coo Coo For Gaga, about pop diva Lady Gaga on his blog Jazz, the Music of Unemployment.

I realize that the minutes I spent reading his article and watching the embedded video is time I will never get back. To me, the music seems comprised of very standard pop words, pop chords and pop melody dressed up with things very sexy and very glamourous and very flashy, making it irresistable in our culture.   Desire and danger combined sell well these days.

I was impressed when the Lady held her arm aloft for a period of time with her second finger extended. Yes, she was proudly flipping the bird to a stadium full of adoring fans. Has the meaning of flipping the bird somehow changed since I grew up? Naturally there's a Wikipedia entry about Finger Gestures.  (All the really important stuff is in Wikipedia.)

I screen captured one of the frames of her salute and edited it using my new photo editor software The Gimp. I've been using Gimp only a couple weeks and this was my first attempt at removing a dark background so I could replace it (in this case with blue sky.)  This process took much longer than reading Andrew's post and watching the video.  The difference is that I don't regret spending the Gimp time because I learned something useful about this excellent free program.

Here's the picture:

It comes from this video at about 3 minutes 56 seconds. 

Arm Hair Tags: Lady Gaga. . . Flipping the bird. . . The Gimp

30 Second Spots - The Rhino's Medallion

I've taken two previous 30 Second Spots (The Flight of the Rhino and The Medallion and combined the music into this piece The Rhino's Medallion. It might be helpful to go read about and listen to the two earlier pieces before listening to this. But then again ... maybe not.

Although I created this on the level of musical notation rather than audio mixing, it might be helpful to imagine this process as a strange form of "mashup" or "remix". Maybe it's a collage. Or a montage. It's definitely not a montuno.

Listen here.


133 seconds - Copyright (c) David Ocker

Last week I had a few minutes to cruise through a store devoted to Christmas ornaments. I was looking for more Christmas Penguins to photograph. There wasn't a single penguin in the store. When I saw this statue of a woman playing a violin my jaw dropped. I wanted to buy it just for the kitsch value - but even at half price it was too expensive.


Why an artist would want to portray the female form with such a huge, distended, horse-like hind section is beyond me. The object was quite tall, so maybe the ass serves as ballast to keep it from toppling over. They also had the same statue with the woman playing a flute instead of a violin.

I don't suppose she's any more non-anatomical than Barbie, just more abstractly offensive. If I were still doing Docker Awards this would be a great statuette to symbolize them.

If the embedded mp3 player doesn't work, click here.

Big Ballast Tags: 30 Second Spot. . . David Ocker. . . mashup. . . remix

30 Second Spots - What Would Barbie Sing?

click here to hear What Would Barbie Sing?

It's a song in the format: verse, chorus, verse, chorus. Not like me at all to do that.

Copyright © July 3-7, 2006 by David Ocker - 53 seconds

Leslie suggested the words to the chorus.



What Would Barbie Sing?
(verse)
I'm Barbie.
I'm Barbie
What would I sing for you?
(chorus)
Math is hard.
(verse)
I'm sexy
And plastic,
And Christian through and through.
(chorus)
Math is hard.
Math is hard.

No, the vocals are not on this track. Do a good Barbie voice? Feel free to overdub and send it in.

WWBS? was inspired by this recent article in the Los Angeles Times. It tells about advertising composer Tena Clark (a resident of Pasadena California) as she works to create the perfect musical signature for Mattel's little dollie Barbie. It's called a Sonic Brand. No, not like they do to cattle, I hope.

Since L.A.Times articles disappear after a while, here are some quotes that made me laugh and shudder:

Would Barbie be three notes, or four? Would they cascade up or down?

"Someday a little girl will walk through a store with her parents, and she'll faintly hear a few notes, and will turn to her dad and say, 'I want a Barbie doll,' "

If Barbie were a song, what would she sound like?

... research on how the brain processes music made a case for why three- or four-note songs could sell millions of plastic dolls or hamburgers.

Procter & Gamble Co. has experimented with in-store motion sensors that play the Charmin toilet tissue jingle when shoppers pass by its shelves. Companies are working sonic brands into in-store music and other background sounds.


I can only remember ever writing one other actual song in my life. That was back in college. I'm pretty sure the music is forever lost, but I remember most of the words. Here they are:

The Musician's Alphabet

Alban Berg
Claude Debussy
Edwin Franko Goldman
Henricus Isaac
Jerome Kern
Leopold Mozart
Nicolai, Otto
Porter, Quincy
Richard Strauss

That's as much as I remember. I'm pretty sure Vladimir Ussachevsky didn't get included. Anyone know a composer with just one name beginning with T. Or with initials W.X., X.W., Y.Z. or Z.Y. ? (Each name in the lyrics links to Wikipedia.)

Video -a Gloria Estefan trailer (What? I'm a sucker for her album Mi Tierra . Tradicion, the song on this video, inspired a piece of mine called Two Minute Warning. It was the last piece I ever wrote for live performance. You can ignore the video on this video.)

Barbie has appeared in a previous Mixed Meters post. That one also includes advertising and religious subject matter. Virgins and Suicide. Click here.

Explanation of 30 second spots

30 Second Spots
Media
Religion
Advertising

The Power of Commercials; The Supply of Virgins

My local NPR radio outlet announcer warned me not to be alarmed if I noticed a suicide bombing in progress this weekend in downtown Los Angeles. It would just be a realistic recreation of a suicide bombing intended for an Iraqi anti-bombing commercial. Here's a news article.

"That's not gonna work," I thought. "The best way to dissuade a suicide bomber is to give the guy a job with a future."




Or maybe find him a religion which promises virgins before he dies, not after.

But I like watching good commercials. And I like watching explosions. So I really want to see this when it's finished.

In our culture you can get people to change their attitudes or change their votes or spend their money foolishly by repeatedly showing them commercials.

Who would ever think a tv commercial could stop a fanatic in Iraq from blowing himself up?

Only someone who fanatically believes the "free-market" can solve any problem.


Maybe we should be showing Iraqis things like this. It's a commercial from Europe for "Lynx". (They sell the same crud in the US under a different name with different commercials.)

It's really a very sweet and well-told one minute story. Apparently it's too sexy for Americans. Imagine what the Iraqis would think. (Leslie likes the music. Click here if you agree with her.)

Maybe they could stop suicide bombings by running ads in the Middle East announcing that you stand a better chance of getting yourself a virgin by becoming a fundamentalist Mormon.


The supply of virgins is a big issue in parts of Utah. According to this article in the LA Times, Warren Jeffs (who might be in Texas following in the footsteps of David Koresh) is the head of a religion which "believes that men need a minimum of three wives to be granted complete salvation." I'm pretty sure they insist that all brides be virginal.


More videos.

Virgins must advertise. Here's a gay friendly tv ad (or is it?). Here's one in a mental hospital.

Not everything can be "virgin" but some things are just like it.

Non-sequitur: Trying to lose weight? Here's a video to help ruin your appetite.

Read 'bout Suicide Bomber Barbie by Simon Tyszko here.

Media
Religion
Music Video