In which Mixed Meters Turns Ten

September 16, 2005, was the day I started Mixed Meters.   Ten years have gone by and I'm still writing this blog.  No, this will not be a navel-gazing, soul-searching post in which I ask myself 'Why the hell am I still doing it?'.  Suffice it to say I the hell am still doing it and I doubt I'll stop soon.  Best not to wonder why and just go with the inertia.

Sixteenth of September, it turns out, is the name of a 1956 painting by René Magritte.  I'll let you figure out what the title means.  Here is the painting:

I did the first Mixed Meters' anniversary post at the five year mark.  Back then I added a picture of me on the my fifth birthday.  Here's a picture of 10-year-old me with my birthday cake.  I know it was my birthday cake because the cake says "Happy Birthday David".

These days I don't remember anything about the occasion.   There's no one around for me to ask.   I'm pretty sure this cake picture was not taken on my birthdate because I found another picture of a baseball game with the exact date of my birthday written on it.  It was my Mother's handwriting. 

I remember going to the game in Kansas City. The Internet tells me all the stats: the A's lost to the Boston Red Sox.  I remember the several hundred mile trip on the train.  The train ride has stayed in my memory for over 50 years.  I don't remember the game itself.  Not one bit of it.  Nor do I remember that this happened exactly on my tenth birthday.

Here's some trivia: I don't like baseball and I've always hated birthdays.

Anyway, ever since MM's Fifth Anniversary, I've posted something self-absorbed about Mixed Meters on or near September 16.  Here are the posts:

In which Mixed Meters Turns Five - besides seeing me at 5 years old, you can read the email I sent to my friends when Mixed Meters was a month old.  And there's an annotated graph showing the ups and downs of five years of hit counts.  Here's a quote:

Sometimes I claim that Mixed Meters has only three readers. That's supposed to be a small joke.

A Thousand and One Redheaders -  in honor of the sixth anniversary Redheaders, the random tag lines at the top of every MM page, are explained.  I add more every anniversary.  There are now almost 1400 of them.  Here's a quote:

TagLine[9] = "Mixed Meters - Similar to the intersection of two country roads."

In which Mixed Meters Survives Seven Years - a description of the silly categories I put my music into: 30 Second Spots, 10 Minute Breaks, etc.  And, in a chart, I reveal how many seconds of music I had uploaded for your listening pleasure until that point.  A lot.  Here's a quote:

Do you wonder how long 55,393 seconds is in hours and minutes? Well, go ahead, do the math.

Mixed Meters Is Eight Years Old - without a doubt, my most self-absorbed post ever.  This is where I wondered why I bother blogging.  I discuss expectations, free time, the Four Ws, Garbage Day Periodicity and bucket lists.  There's a whole slough of my pen and ink doodles for you to identify.  Here's a quote:

During my lifetime the U.S. has invented the Tea Party, fracking, Miley Cyrus, megachurches, Shock and Awe, Dick Cheney, Walmart, the NRA, the rapture, Real Housewives, Three Strikes laws, Grand Theft Auto and mass murder in schools - to name just a very few things I would gladly live without.

Nine Years of Blogging - this was MM's 700th post.  I talk about birds, particularly a hummingbird named Red Thor and a nameless crow.  There's a silly moral at the end, it's photography advice.  Here's a quote:

Leslie saw me working on this post and asked "How long have you been married to your blog?

Here's another picture - me again still age ten, about to blow out the candles.  On the left is my Aunt Kate and on the right my Uncle Ben.  We still own the coffee table on which the cake is sitting.

So, that's the past.  And I hear you ask "What about Mixed Meters' future?"  I've hatched a plan for the next four posts.

You see, I have a small backlog.  There are three long essays and one piece of music which I never finished to my own satisfaction.  I never posted them.  These have been languishing in the "I'll get to that someday" pile.  I've decided that it would be a suitable Mixed Meters Tenth Anniversary Celebration to just post them as they are.  This will get rid of them and allow me to stop beating myself up for not finishing them.  Life is too short to have a "I'll get to that someday" pile.

The upcoming posts are:

Timeless Music (written circa October 2009)- I explore the notion of calling music "timeless".  I suggest religions exist for that purpose.  I mention famous musicians like Richard Wagner and Michael Buble.  Here's a quote:

Anyone can claim that certain music is timeless because choosing which music is timeless is a personal decision. Timeless implies that anyone, in any decade, any century, any millennium, will find the music meaningful. A genuinely timeless work ought to remain so regardless of changes in culture, economics or politics. It's a tall order.

Two LA Philharmonic Festivals of California Music (written circa January 2010) -  in late 2009 the LA Phil did a festival featuring California composers.  In this post I compare that festival to their previous festival devoted to California composers, way back in 1981.  So this is like a review of concerts 28 years apart.   Here's a quote:

Serious music in California desperately needs some sense of place.  My problem with these two Philharmonic festivals has nothing to do with the content chosen for them.  The differences between them no doubt reflect the differences of the times.  The big issue, however, is the length of time separating the two.

The Ring of Klinghoffer (written circa September 2014) - last year the Metropolitan Opera performed John Adams' opera "The Death of Klinghoffer".  There was a public brouhaha about it.  I tried to write a think piece based on the facts behind the opera.  Did you realize there were actually two murders and two hijackings?  I realized that one opera was not nearly enough to cover the subject matter and I started to outline plots for four operas which I proposed calling "The Ring of Klinghoffer".  I completely floundered on this task.  This is the longest and least finished article in this series.  Here's a quote:

Whatever meaning the life and death of Leon Klinghoffer could have had (should have had) for us has been buried by a war, more terrorism, several more wars and endless political and prejudicial propaganda.  Those things are all too real and all too deplorable and all too inevitable.  This can be an awful world.  No part of this story makes anything better.  Only worse.

Finale - Summer 2014 (short version) (composed in Summer of 2014) - this is not unfinished writing.  Instead it is unfinished music.  My series The Seasons in supposed to have one piece for each season on the calendar as the years pass inexorably.  I was never happy with how the music I composed in the Summer of 2014 turned out.  Time heals all ills, right?  Or some of them.  Here's a quote:

It took me more than 40 years to get around to using these ideas.  I'm old now and I'm allowed to dig around in my past without good reason.  I must have had lots of other ideas back then as well.  These two, for some reason, were never forgotten.

It's funny what gets forgotten and what doesn't, isn't it?

Here's another picture of ten-year old me, possibly taken on another night in another place, although I'm wearing the same outfit.  I think the little girl is my cousin Judy; she would have been about two.  The television is a Motorola.  Made in America.

If you've read this far you can congratulate yourself.  You've survived another Mixed Meters Anniversary post.  Expect me to pull out all the stops for the next major MM celebration, the Mixed Meters Centenary on September 16, 2105.  See you then.

---

René Magritte figured in this Mixed Meters post about rocks.
Here's a post about Ronald Reagan and my Mother.

American Slavery

The Internet provides me with lots of reading material; some of it is fascinating.  Recently I've come across four absorbing articles with a common subject matter - the American system of slavery. These have all provided interesting viewpoints, new information or intriguing analysis. At least to me.

You should be warned that Mixed Meters does not have a fact checking department.  Like so much of life, you are free to form your own beliefs.

These articles are good examples of why the past is never really past.  There is much relevance here to contemporary issues.  And we often need to be reminded that the explanations we are taught about why things happened are usually oversimplifications and possibly just plain wrong.

The four articles are:

The Second Amendment was Ratified to Preserve Slavery by Thom Hartmann at TruthOut.  These days the phrase "well regulated militia" is an excuse for the NRA to turn our country into an armed camp.  But back when they were agreeing to the Bill of Rights, one of the reasons for guaranteed gun ownership was the need for state militias to keep the slaves enslaved.  And the South didn't trust the Federal government to do that chore for them.

10 Things You Need to Know About Slavery (That You Won't Learn from Django Unchained) by Imara Jones originally from Colorlines; I found it on AlterNet.  Slavery was a source of skilled labor?  The American Revolution was intended to preserve the slave economy?  Southern anti-tax attitudes started as a way to maintain slavery?  Wall Street firms made fortunes from slavery?   Who knew?

The South's Shocking Hidden History: Thousands of Blacks Forced Into Slavery Until WW2 by Douglas A. Blackmon in The Washington Monthly (again, I found this via AlterNet).  A system of virtual slavery lasted nearly a century after the Civil War.  The rehabilitated Southern states passed laws that could turn any Black person into a criminal who could be "leased" to plantation owners.  Once released, he could still be forced to work, couldn't freely change jobs and probably owed his soul to the company store.

How presidential elections are impacted by a 100 million year old coastline by Dr. Craig McClain from The Deep Sea News.  In short, ancient geology gave rise to the best farmland in the South, the so-called Black Belt, where the largest plantations had the most slaves.  These areas now have high populations of Black people who are reliable Democratic voters.  As a result there is an electoral Blue Belt inside certain Red States.

---

I recommend AlterNet as a good source of liberal, progressive information and opinion.  I thank Leslie Harris and Jim Angus for alerting me to the other articles.

Here's an article about a Southern Republican who defended slavery - during the 2012 elections.

---

Slave Tags: slavery. . . politics. . . 2nd amendment. . . criminal lease

In which Mixed Meters survives seven years

On September 16, 2005 I posted to Mixed Meters for the first time - 69 words including the title.  I said I would be keeping my posts short.  That worked for about a year.  It wasn't long before I started sharing my short music pieces.  I called those Thirty Second Spots.

My written posts got longer and longer over the years and so did my music.  The name Thirty Second Spots seemed fine up to around 2 minutes.  Then I invented the name Three Minute Climaxes (pieces from 2 up to 8 minutes) and finally Ten Minute Breaks (so far the longest one is 12 minutes.)

These categories are fluid and largely pointless so of course I still adhere to them only when I feel like it.

Online storage space was a problem at first.  Most early pieces disappeared.  Eventually I found more room.  I started uploading historical live performances which document my pre-blog activities (roughly 1975 through 1995).  Within the last year or so I've started posting my recordings with the Peter Schmid Quartet and my very long day-to-day calendar pieces, The Seasons.  (Expect a new one next week.)

AND NOW ... there's a new feature to make finding and playing all those recordings much easier.

Near the top of the right hand column of Mixed Meters you'll see a box marked Listen To Music.  There are six options, each of which will open a page of links.  Each link has a [listen] button (a new window will open and the piece will play automatically) and a [read] button (a new window with the relevant MM post will open).  The Video option takes you directly to a YouTube playlist.

I'm hoping that you, my three dear readers, will find this addition helpful for exploring my music.  I'll be posting more music in the future and will update the links pages as I do.

---

About Timings

At first, all the Thirty Second Spots were less than a minute long.  I would list the length in seconds along with the copyright notice.  When a piece broke the 1-minute barrier I thought it would be cute to list the total number of seconds rather than use minutes and seconds.  After all, "64 seconds" is no more confusing than "1 minute, 4 seconds".

But I didn't know when to quit.  I've listed the lengths of nearly all pieces as a total number of seconds - no minutes, no hours.  For example I recently uploaded the recording of Vexations. You might think that it's over 6 hours long - but I say it is really 23,085 seconds!

Here is a breakdown as of today of all my musical categories with total timings.

Category	Number of Pieces	Total Time in seconds
30 Second Spots	34	1,887
3 Minute Climaxes	15	3,900
10 Minute Breaks	4	2,537
Videos	21	3,576
The Seasons etc.	9	11,307
Peter Schmid	5	1,973
Historical Performances	14	8,175
Vexations	1	23,085

That's a grand total of 55,393 seconds.  (Because there are a few pieces listed in two categories, the total is not an exact sum of column three.)

Do you wonder how long 55,393 seconds is in hours and minutes?  Well, go ahead, do the math.

---

Another post from the first day: In Which David Rewrites The Pledge of Allegiance.  (114 words)

30 Second Tags: 30 Second Spots. . . David Ocker's music. . . Mixed Meters is seven

A Thousand and One RedHeaders

Today Mixed Meters begins its seventh year.   Itchy.  Here's a short post from that first day, September 16, 2005 (also a Friday), entitled In Which David Rewrites the Pledge of Allegiance.  I was terse then.

You might have noticed that the layout of Mixed Meters has changed. The original version had gotten far too complex.  This is much simpler.   I will continue to tinker with the new look as time permits - until I'm bored.

Mixed Meters is proud to announce another, more important milestone: the number of possible RedHeaders has surpassed one thousand.

You ask "What are Redheaders?" They are the red random irrelevant phrases in the yellow box at the top of each Mixed Meters page, just under "Life Is Too Short To Listen To Ugly Music".  A different one is chosen each time the page is loaded.

The script which picks the random phrase each time was purloined from here.  Thanks to whoever wrote that.

Here are the first ten RedHeaders:

TagLine[0] = "Mixed Meters - now with 25% fewer Olympic Promos"
TagLine[1] = "Mixed Meters - produced in a facility that also processes peanuts."
TagLine[2] = "Mixed Meters - now with three rows of stadium seating."
TagLine[3] = "Mixed Meters - now a Party Of One."
TagLine[4] = "Mixed Meters - watching the world grasp for straws."
TagLine[5] = "Mixed Meters - you could get money back every time you visit."
TagLine[6] = "Mixed Meters - still trying to meet recruiting goals"
TagLine[7] = "We admit it - the weather girl*s sweaters are too tight."
TagLine[8] = "Only a few small animals were harmed producing this blog."
TagLine[9] = "Mixed Meters - Similar to the intersection of two country roads."

I've always liked the one about two country roads - not that I know what it means.  Many of them make no sense.  Some are downright embarrassing.  Some refer to news items extremely far out of date.  Many refer to television commercials.  There are in-jokes for musicians.  And pseudo-clever word play.

TagLine[214] = "Mixed Meters - not recommended if your life is like the Springer Show."
TagLine[215] = "Mixed Meters - Breaking the Endless Cycle of Boom and Chuck."
TagLine[216] = "Mixed Meters - Now With Calming Oatmeal."
TagLine[217] = "Mixed Meters - The Felt Hand of Dog."
TagLine[218] = "Mixed Meters urges you to be a pliant consumer."
TagLine[219] = "Mixed Meters - a Whack-a-Mole from Hell."

There's a joke:

TagLine[277] = "Two Muffins are baking.  One says SURE IS HOT IN HERE.  The other replies HOLY SHIT! A TALKING MUFFIN!"

There are quotes from famous musicians:

TagLine[447] = "Never Leave A Wet One On Your Neighbor's Doorknob (Joe Newman)"
TagLine[449] = "It*s Much Better Than The Prefabricated Concrete Coal Bunker (Bonzo Dog Band)"

TagLine[731] = "Damn, Damn, Damn, Damn, Damn (Alan Jay Lerner)"

And a short science fiction story:

TagLine[629] = "He had awakened screaming, clutching the transport controls in terror, for so many days in a row that hearing birds chirping and seeing sunlight streaming through the studio window caused him to wonder whether he had somehow transformed into a piano sonata by Beethoven or Brahms."

It just goes on and on.

TagLine[1000] = "Life is too short to read Mixed Meters"

Here's a picture of a dragon fly which I snapped this morning in our backyard. (It should enlarge if you click it.)

TagLine[102] = "Mixed Meters - because no one gives a fuck what I think."

ADDENDUM:  Apparently Google's robots are starting to catalog the redheaders along with the actual Mixed Meters' posts.  Here's a result from someone who searched for the terms "mixed meters in music"

The Lifespan of Classical Music | Mixed Meters
mixedmeters.com/2011/06/lifespan-of-classical-music.htmlJun 12, 2011 – Mixed Meters.
LIFE IS TOO SHORT TO LISTEN TO UGLY MUSIC.
Strange Blog Behavior May Be Caused By Elevated Hormone Levels ...

TagLine[471] = "Strange Blog Behavior May Be Caused By Elevated Hormone Levels"

RedHeader Tags: Mixed Meters. . . Red Headers. . . David Ocker

Sevens

I've never participated in a meme before, not for lack of opportunity. If you have no idea what a meme is, click here. In this particular meme (Sevens) you're supposed to post the rules of this meme, answer them, then tag others. Weird, because I've seen the same meme elsewhere - with sixes. Maybe it's time for Eights.

The rules:

• 1. Link to your tagger and list these rules on your blog. I was tagged by Alex, the Seaweed Music Girl.
• 2. Share 7 facts about yourself on your blog - some random, some weird.
• 3. Tag 7 people at the end of your post by leaving their names as well as links to their blog.
• 4. Let them know they have been tagged by leaving a comment on their blog.
• 5. If you don't have 7 blog friends, or if someone else already took dibs, then tag some unsuspecting strangers.

My Seven Facts

• 1. My Mother, a life-long coffee drinker and cigarette smoker, claimed to have spontaneously stopped smoking tobacco and drinking coffee while she was pregnant with me, but as soon as I was born she again wanted a smoke and a cup. I've never smoked and for the first 40 years or so of my life the smell of coffee made me ill. (I still don't smoke, but now I adore coffee and can drink unlimited amounts any time of the day without effect.)
• 2. I grew up in Sioux City Iowa, where there was a large pile of manure between the stockyards and the Interstate, not far from the Missouri River. When the wind was right, you could smell it at our house. A potentially bad job could always be excused by saying "It's better than shoveling shit."
• 3. In high school I read Eugene Ionesco's absurdist The Bald Soprano (in this wonderful pictorial edition) and I couldn't believe how much it seemed like my own life. Later I became a big fan of the equally absurd Goon Show.
• 4. In college I changed my major from Math to Music because the music courses began over 2 hours later each morning than math classes. Since then I've consistently made career choices based on how late in the day I could sleep.
• 5. In graduate school I taught myself to juggle using oranges picked by my roommate Wildman from trees belonging to the percussion teacher, John Bergamo. Oranges are very bad things for inexperienced jugglers because they split when dropped and get sticky juice all over. Eventually I took a juggling course at CalArts. Juggling was the only talent I graduated with that I didn't already have when I matriculated.
• 6. I have a huge tendancy towards motion sickness and I can't read in any moving land-based vehicle. Just glancing at a map while riding in a car can make me dizzy. Fortunately, although I'm a musician, I've never had to tour extensively. I really like sleeping in the same bed every night.
• 7. Here's a piece of music I wrote in a particular seven meter that I heard on an Internet radio station devoted to Afghani music.Read a little more about it here. I like music in non-standard meters - like five, seven, eleven. And I liked music which changes meter so much I named my blog after it. And I think the Diabolus in Musica is not what you've been taught - it's really the Back Beat.
• 8. The pictures in this post were left over from an aborted blog post entitled "Purple Things on the Grass".
  

My Tagees:
Andrew Durkin
Paul Viapiano
Peter (the other)
Atlanta Carter
The Improvising Guitar
Addison deWitt
Palm Axis
Kraig Grady

Seven Tags: one. . . two. . . three. . . four. . . five. . . six. . . seven. . . meme. . . David Ocker

One Year of Mixed Messages

Hey, over on the right where it says "Hey! Over here on the right.", is Mixed Messages - a whole other blog. My other blog. One of my other blogs.

Today (May 8, 2008) is the one-year anniversary of my first post to Mixed Messages. In 29 more years I'll make a big deal out of it.

Click here to see the initial Mixed Messages post. Or just look at this picture. The three little duckie squeeze-water-pistols are still in their individual cat-food-tin boats buffeted by the waves of our kitchen counter.


Mixed Messages is a TumbleLog hosted by Tumblr. Go start your own. I started mine because I wanted a way to post single pictures or little items frequently and easily. Each post here on Mixed Meters takes too much time and thought.

If you go to Mixed Messages most recent post you can scroll back through page after page of previous Mixed Messages posts using the hard-to-find "previous" or "next" links at the very bottom of each page.


Mixed Messages posts automatically appear in the right hand column here at Mixed Meters through the miracle of RSS, whatever that is. For a while the Mixed Messages pictures re-sized automatically when they appeared at Mixed Meters - but something changed and I can't fix it. So Mixed Meters readers can only see the left half of every Mixed Messages picture. Click on them to enable the workaround. It's a burden I'm willing to have you bear.

Gradually I settled on two principal categories for Mixed Messages content:

• my own original pictures
• music-related quotes which I found amusing (either because of their profundity or because of their utter stupidity. Can you tell the difference? Try it with this one.)

The most popular Mixed Messages post falls into neither category. (It gets a lot of hits from the search engines.)

Many of my Mixed Messages pictures (and hundreds more) can be see at my Flickr Blog.



Message Tags: Mixed Messages. . . blogs. . . tumblelogs. . . Mixed Meters. . . David Ocker

And the Ocker goes to ... me!

I'd like to thank the Academy for this honor. I'd also like to thank my Mother who made me an Ocker by marrying my Dad, and his father who changed his name at Ellis Island.

Even though I won this signal honor because I voted for myself (and I'm the only eligible voter) - the massive free publicity and huge increase in profits is well worth the trouble.

We winners of an Ocker enjoy longer lifespans. And when everyone recognizes us on the street we go into politics (in spite of knowing nothing).

The public certainly seems happy watching the glitz and glamour; they'd better be, because that's all they get.

Oscar Romero Awards
Oscar Mathisen Award
Oscar Peterson Awards
Oscar B. Hunter Memorial Award
Oscar Robertson trophy
Oscar Wilde Award
Oscar Wilde Award
Oscar Bruneman Awards
Oscar Foundation National Awards
Oscar Sattelite Communications Achievement Award
l'Oscar de Emballage
Oscar awards for dogs
Oscar de la Hoya
Oscar the grouch
Oscar Straus
Oscar Homolka
Oscar disambiguation
Other Oscars

Ocker Tags: Ocker. . . awards. . . academy

Mixed Meters Celebrates Its Bi-Sesquicentennial

The first Mixed Meters post, entitled In Which David Fails To Find An Interesting First Comment, was on September 16 2005. No one ever read it, so here it is again:

Every new adventure begins with the words "Why am I doing this?" It would be so much easier not to bother trying new things.

If you, future person reading these words, discover that this blog hasn't changed in months . . . years . . . then you'll know I couldn't find a good answer for the question.

My philosophy will be . . . keep it short.

This is the 300th Mixed Meters post. Or maybe the last one was. Hoo-ray! I must have found a good reason for blogging. I wonder what it is.


Obviously keeping it short is not one of my talents. Except maybe over at Mixed Messages - which is much more what I initially imagined for this blog - short throwaway bits.


On April 13, 2006, in honor of the 150th post, I misspelled Mixed Meters Celebrates Its Susquicentennial which featured several cool pictures of a dead tree.


Looks like I've got a tradition started here. Expect a self-congratulatory Mixed Meters announcement every 150th post. It's just like doing it every 100th post, but also divisible by 3, in honor of my three readers. You know who you are. Yeah. Yeah. I know.

The next in the series will be the tri-sesquicentennial which this web page tells me could also be called the semi-nonacentennial.


I've been working behind the scenes lately trying to clean the Mixed Meters code kludge - sweeping the virtual dirt under the virtual rug as it were. Trying to make it easier to find things, to make things look good even on pre-millennial video displays and forcing all the music links to work. I'd also like to create a footer, a section at the bottom to catch objects which fall off the screen.

It's all uphill work for this clueless web developer. I had hoped everything would be ready for this momentous celebration. Vainly hoped, as it turns out.


I'm gratified that the Mixed readership has been increasing over these (nearly) two years. although I still get only a small percentage of the hits which The Rest Is Noise does. That's the biggest music blog. But what can you expect? Alex Ross lets you read his blog for free.


Sincere thanks to all who check out whatever new non-sequiturs I come up with - and extra thanks to those who post occasional comments, gently pointing out when I overlook the obvious. If you're in the neighborhood, drop by sometime. I'll even get out the good scotch.


And, of course, this wonderful person deserves the most thanks of all.

Tricentennial Tags: blogs. . . sesquicentennial. . . skylights

More fours: bass + blog

Jason Heath's Double Bass Blog seems to have linked to Mixed Meters, probably by accident. Even so, many thanks. It seems like a happening blog, with many features and contributors.

I surfed past one DBBlog post entitled Advice for Aspiring Music Performance Majors. Of course I'm long, long past needing such advice myself but I never tire of reliving my own educational misery.

Here's two bits of advice from that post that seem quite true to me.

Music performance degrees are completely superfluous to your pursuit of a music performance career.

Finally, if you ever plan on doing anything at all outside of music performance ... then a quality, well-rounded education is essential.

Yup.

This picture, first shown in this Mixed Meters post In Which Bulls Hit High Notes, last summer, visually portrays the perils of positioning a bassist, and I don't just mean "in Texas". When there's a bull in the band, who you sit behind is more important than who you sit in front of.


Click picture for enlargement.

"Is it called a Double-Bass or a Contra-Bass" Tags: bass. . . Jason Heath. . . Double Bass Blog. . . music advice. . . music education

• Here's an MM bass-related post about Mingus
• and here's the Basses-R-Us Truck picture.
• And this post has a video of the Tielman Brothers that might make bassists cringe. (The real fun starts at about 2 minutes 40 seconds.)

Combining Four-letter Words: Oboe + Blog

Part One: BASE + BALL, DIES + IRAE, HIP + HOP

I received an email about my post In Which David Is Confused By The Second Coming. This concerned a piece of hip-hop music, The Second Coming by Juelz Santana, which quotes the Dies Irae. It was used in a television commercial for basketball shoes. I can tell you, it confused the hell out of me when I first heard it.

That post has gotten more hits than any Mixed Meters post ever. When you're one of the first to write online about a subject many people are actually interested in, I guess that's what happens. This wave of hits rose up and carried Mixed Meters along for a while, giving me a whole new understanding of the phrase "Surfing the Internet".

Anyway - like I was saying...

I received an email about my post on Nike/Dies Irae/Juelz Santana from Susan Spector. Susan plays oboe at the Met in New York City. That means she wears black clothing and sits in the big hole in front of the stage where only people in the first few rows can see her. Here is her picture from her blog Perfect Pitch showing the proper way to hold an oboe. What a grip.

Obviously a blog called Perfect Pitch is about BASEBALL Duh. Specifically her blog is about her team, the Mets. Susan is a big fan of the Mets.

Let's review: Susan plays at the Met and she roots for the Mets. What were the chances?

What brings

• Hip Hop and
• Baseball and the
  
• Dies Irae and an
  
• Opera Orchestra Oboist

all together in one post? I'm glad you asked.

Well, The Second Coming, that same music from the Nike commercial, is being used to rouse the Mets fans into something approaching excitement at their home games. Susan's first reaction, not unlike mine, was confusion. She has a good deal more to say about The Second Coming story and the meaning of the Dies Irae. Read her Perfect Pitch Post entitled Day of Wrath here.

Part Two: RICH + POOR, FEMALE + CRITIC, MUSIC + DANCE, POLITE + PEOPLE

In a more recent MM post Rich Critic, Poor Critic, I asked whether there were any female music critics out there. Another blogging-oboist (or oboe-playing-blogger), Patty Mitchell of OboeInsight, added a comment alerting me to the history of female music critics in the Bay Area. She also mentioned NY Times' critic Anne Midgette. Thanks Patty.

(Later without any help I remembered music critic Donna Perlmutter here in Southern California.)

In Patty's blog I found this article entitled To: Guy Who Screamed Obscentities at the Ballet the Other Night which links to a too-good-to-pass-up story told in this Craigslist posting.

Here's a sample.

It was then you yelled, in your beautiful gray-haired old crotchety man voice, "WILL YOU PEOPLE SIT DOWN AND LET THE *POLITE* PEOPLE SHOW THEIR APPRECIATION?!," slight pause, "YA ASSHOLES!"

Just read the whole thing for yourself. Gentility lives at the Ballet. At least the recent fist fight in Boston was at a Pops concert.


PART THREE: DEATH + MUSIC, CHAMBER + NIGHTCLUB, THEN + NOW

On Sunday, June 24, at my local Pasadena Starbucks I picked up an abandoned copy of the New York Times Arts & Leisure section. The featured column-one article was "Music That Thinks Outside the Chamber". I read the first few paragraphs finding these striking quotes:

...an acquaintance informed him that the two most boring words in the English language were "chamber music."

...for many people, chamber music is dead.

"Wow" I thought. "I wonder whose article this is."

I looked for a by-line. It was by none other than Anne Midgette. Since the death of classical music is turning out to be a frequent Mixed Meters theme I read on. A couple more paragraphs and I found this:

"At the moment supply outstrips demand," said John Steinmetz, a bassoonist and composer active in the chamber music field.

"Double Wow" I thought. John Steinmetz has been a close friend of mine for many decades. He and I were students together at Cal Arts, co-founders of the chamber ensemble X-tet, frequent performers of one anothers music and, these days, close neighbors (if only by the loose standards of Southern California geography). And here he was being quoted on the front page of the NYT Arts section above the fold. Way to go, John.

"I'd better read this entire article." my thoughts concluded.

(For those of you who wonder "What's a Bassoon?" imagine four oboes laid end to end and twisted around the body of the performer. This picture shows a somewhat younger John Steinmetz playing one.)


Anne Midgette's article dealt mainly with people playing chamber music in "non traditional spaces" Um, that means "bars".

Fine. Let's give this idea another try. In 1976, when John and I were studying at Cal Arts, the chamber ensemble Tashi (including my clarinet teacher Richard Stoltzman) played The Quartet For The End of Time at the Bottom Line in New York City. That concert was big news back then. Yep. And it really changed everything in the world of chamber music. Nothing's ever been the same since.

Apparently Anthony Braxton shared the bill with Tashi at the Bottom Line.





Oboe+Blog Tags: Perfect Pitch. . . OboeInsight. . . Juelz Santana. . . The Second Coming. . . baseball. . . nike. . . The Mets. . . Metropolitan Opera. . . female music critic. . . Anne Midgette. . . chamber music. . . death of chamber music. . . non traditional spaces. . . Susan Spector. . . Patty Mitchell. . . John Steinmetz. . . Richard Emmet. . . Frank Zappa. . . Tashi

Anne Midgette's fascinating 2002 article, A Critical Difference about being a woman and a music critic is here. (Thanks to Diva341 for pointing this out.)

The "Beats The Hell Outa Playing the Oboe" picture came from Roboflutist

Another MM post, entitled Who Is Weiden-Kennedy Anyway?, about a different Nike television commercial which used religious-themed classical music to sell basketball shoes.

Here's an article about the 2008 reunion of Tashi.

The picture of Richard Emmet, John Steinmetz, Frank Zappa and myself - and others like it - can be found on Richard Emmet's website.

X-tet's website can be found here.

John Steinmetz's website can be found here. He has been mentioned previously in Mixed Meters here and here. The little metal rat sculpture was given to me by John years ago. You'll have to ask him what it signified and why he wanted me to have it.

The New Yorker and The Hero Composer in Los Angeles

I think of Playboy and The New Yorker in much the same way. I was exposed to both publications in my twenties not with subscriptions but with stacks of hand-me-down back issues belonging to friends. Each magazine reflected an imaginary fantasy world of my young adult brain, one professional, the other sexual. I read both in the same way - starting at the back I would thumb through to the front looking for cartoons. As it turned out I was almost forty before I ever visited New York City, over fifty when I first rode the subway alone.

It's been quite a while since I've seen either publication. Recently I wanted to read the Alex Ross New Yorker article about Esa-Pekka Salonen. I know Esa-Pekka personally because I've worked on most of his new music since the last millennium (well, since 1999) and even edited some of his pieces for publication.

My neighborhood Rite Aid (that's a drug store) has a huge wall of magazines so I figured I could walk up there and get a copy. I found no New Yorker. A clerk asked a supervisor "Do we carry a magazine called The New Yorker?" I inferred that he had never heard of it. Later I found my copy hidden on a top shelf at Vroman's, a local independent bookstore. I've read there are now more New Yorker subscribers in California than in New York.


In case you run across a stack of back issues and want to read this fine article, the cover shows a young hip couple wearing black standing in front of a huge ersatz Jackson Pollock action painting completely absorbed by the tiny video screen of the camera they have just used to photograph that very painting. I can relate to their motivation completely; they want to save the experience for later. The remaining illustrations in this article are various ersatz accidental modern art pieces that I have saved for later (i.e. now) from my trips to that great gallery space called Pasadena.

Anyway, old habits remain and I opened my new copy of The New Yorker from the back and skimmed forward reading the cartoons. There seemed fewer of them and some inside illustrations were in color and the type was bigger. Does bigger type mean an aging readership with deteriorating eyesight? Probably.


Alex Ross describes Esa-Pekka exceptionally well - I could attest to every description of his personality and behavior. I wondered about just one thing: that E-P would only know who Jabba the Hutt was via his young son Oliver. I've discussed science fiction with Esa-Pekka several times - although the conversation ranged more towards Lem than Lucas.

In the rest of the article Ross talks of our acoustically fine concert hall and the exceptional orchestra which inhabits it, of the recently announced change in music directorship here and how the orchestra's administration has made miracles happen. Ross, always the optimist, concludes that Esa-Pekka's tenure in Los Angeles "may mark a turning point in the recent history of classical music in America." Wow, I hope I live long enough to find out if that's true.

In one bizarre episode Ross follows a Philharmonic cellist through a busy day - commuting on a motorcycle, teaching the Elgar concerto, and taking an improvisation lesson in Laurel Canyon from a teacher who tells him to "find the magic in the intervals". Yeah, dude, far out. Californians are like that. Got any papers?


But in the entire article this one sentence was most interesting to me:

Perhaps (LA Philharmonic President & Executive Director Deborah) Borda's boldest notion is to give visiting composers such as (John) Adams and Thomas Ades the same royal treatment that is extended to the likes of Yo-Yo Ma and Joshua Bell; Borda talks about "hero composers."

Ah yes. The "composer as hero" syndrome. I thought that was just a concept that I had come up with years ago to explain away the Philharmonic's tunnel vision of new music marketing. Apparently they do it consciously. Of course they do. Conscious or not, it predates the Borda years.

Over the years I've had the opportunity to watch this phenomenon both from a distance and from up close. The first hero composers that I remember in L.A. were Pierre Boulez and Wittold Lutoslawski. Back then I was producing concerts of alternative new music (i.e. an alternative to what happened at the Phil.). I think I would have given several important body parts for a performance of my music by the Philharmonic.


In my first years in Los Angeles new music was never programmed on the second half of Philharmonic concerts because a large portion of the audience would simply leave at intermission. In the late '80s I remember overhearing two subscribers discuss their least-favorite recent new music performances (an awful Mel Powell piece won hands down.) Once in the 90s, after John Adams had given a pre-concert lecture, I overheard a woman say "He seems like a very genuine person." And indeed he is. But so was Mel.

I'm not saying our music heroes don't deserve attention. But I feel strongly that the world of creative music should not be an all or nothing, winner take all place. There must be hundreds of composers in the US with the talent , experience, ideas and motivation for the job of Hero, if it were only offered. For whatever reason, very few are chosen. All four that I can think of in LA have already been mentioned here.


Selling composers as heroes works not because they are treated like soloists, as Alex Ross suggests, but because they are treated more like the classical gods, your Beethovens and your Wagners. My sense is that nineteenth century music sustains general interest in all classical music in this country. As a result we treat living composers by the standards we use for nineteenth century composers. It's a very top down arrangement. I've never liked it.

About the time of the movie Amadeus (1984) I got myself into a spot of difficulty when a local free newspaper quoted me calling the then composer-in-residence of the Philharmonic "the Salieri of new music in Los Angeles." What got back to this person was that I was accusing him of murder. (After that I was more careful to be specific about which interview comments were on the record and which not. By the way, that very reviewer has since won a Pulitzer prize.)

Back then I stayed on good terms with the composer by writing a letter to the paper explaining what I meant: that the composer-in-residence had great influence on deciding whose music was heard "at court" By "at court" of course I meant "at the Philharmonic". Now, 20 years on, Amadeus is pretty much forgotten and I've learned my lesson about making analogies.


These days I just compare the Philharmonic to an 800-pound gorilla. The analogy "at court" still works, however, and I even get to attend once in a while. By either analogy the Philharmonic is the only really big player in the local new music scene. The nearest competitor in the same weight class is the San Francisco Symphony. I've noticed that East Coast people tend to think San Francisco is much closer to L.A. than it really is, not just in distance but also in culture. Los Angeles is spread out over a huge geography - but it's not that big.

Finally, once Alex Ross finished his New Yorker article he wrote this in his blog: "You L.A. people are lucky." Yeah, probably so. But I'd like to suggest that he withhold judgment until he spends some time here during the months of August and September. That's when the sun burns your skin and the smog burns your eyes and the programming with fireworks at the only live classical music venue in town burns your soul.


Sign up for a free weekly New Yorker cartoon email here.

Paul Viapiano, also a Pasadena blogger, has this recent article about reading The New Yorker.

A previous Mixed Meters post - Los Angeles, New Music Backwater

Eustace Tilley Tags: The New Yorker. . . Esa-Pekka Salonen. . . Alex Ross. . . Los Angeles Philharmonic. . . new+music. . . composers. . . heroes. . . hero composers. . . John Adams. . . Thomas Ades. . . Pierre Boulez. . . Wittold Lutoslawski

Bunches of Bunnies - Bunches of Balloons - 2

Don't worry. Just more Blog Filler that won't trouble your busy schedule. Or mine.



Want music? Here's an excellent free album by the Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra, a group from back in the day when I was part of a different Los Angeles new music scene. Here's a Because They Are Dead post on the history of and sequels to the CRMO. (I'm amazed that I don't recognize a single name. It really was a different L.A. Or maybe my memory is worse than I thought. Yes, that must be it.)

Here's a photo of two more chocolate bunnies, sent to me by Deanna Hull, the pleasant and efficient factotum to a man whose publishing company name means "Empty Tea" in Chinese.


Can't live without my deathless prose? Here's a Renewable Music post to which I added a comment that wouldn't die about why it's completely natural for Classical music to be dead


Chocolate Bunny Tags: bunnies. . . balloons. . . blog filler
Cartesian Reunion Memorial Orchestra. . . Michael Tilson Thomas. . . Doctor Atomic

30 Second Spots: Bill Kraft's San Francisco Waltz Toon

Two weeks ago I traveled to San Francisco to hear 2 performances of A Flowering Tree, the newest opera by John Adams. I feel some pressure to write a few words about the piece soon, before John premiers his next opera.

In short, A Flowering Tree is about a man who is turned on by a woman changing herself into a tree. The plot comes from a South Indian fable and, according to John & director Peter Sellars the opera was inspired by Mozart's Magic Flute. A Flowering Tree is a beautiful love story. (Click here to read about some of the ways humans are aroused by non-operatic non-Adamsian transformations.)

Here's a picture of the composer, director, choral conductor and entire cast of singers and dancers (3 each) acknowledging the excellent performance by the San Francisco Symphony. I liked the way one dancer and one singer combined to portray a single character and also the simple but dramatic lighting effects. This is called "reduced staging"; it was very effective.


The orchestra music of A Flowering Tree is indeed quite magical. John has discovered some new avenues of orchestra sound to explore. And I marvel how well he can control musical pacing over more than two hours . As someone who struggles with music that lasts only a few minutes I wonder more and more how it's possible to construct such long pieces - and to get audiences to sit still throughout.

I spoke with John after both performances and, pretty much, the above is what I told him. Here's a picture of the entertainment, largely ignored, at the post-concert party.



I guess Indian music reflected the Indian origins of the story. I had an interesting conversation with Mike the sarod player. To the left of the tabla player you can see a brown, vaguely plaid, mass. That is the sport coat of the composer himself. Note the birthday cake for him between the two chairs.

The main backstage hallway at Davies Symphony Hall is adorned with row upon row of autographed headshots of famous celebrities who have performed with the San Francisco Symphony. I couldn't resist snapping evidence of a reunion between Star War's John Williams with Tutti Frutti's Little Richard.


If you're wondering why I took the time to make this trip - since I'm neither a fan of opera or even of live performance - it's because I've been copying music for John Adams since 1985. Getting out of my little cave and hearing a whole completed work of music helps me keep some perspective on the purpose of my own small involvement.

Meanwhile I spent my time wandering around in San Francisco's Civic Center - snapping pictures and marveling at being in a real city. This is part of a metal fence outside War Memorial Opera House, kind of an Art Deco Mandala or maybe a shield for a supernumerary spear chucker.


Most of the architecture in that part of San Francisco is large blocks of stony permanence adorned with guilty gilt trips and ostentation - the sort of thing intended to remind people that they are doing important work.

But my eye was more fascinated by the nearby headquarters of the AAA where architectural conformity must be a serious human burden. This 50's-ugly office building has a color somewhere between oxidized copper and travel-sickness vomit.

In the finest Mixed Meters tradition, here is a picture of a blank wall desecrated only by the AAA corporate logo mandala in starkly contrasting red and blue.



Several weeks before this trip I had doodled a melody - just 7 notes - on Bill Kraft's piano. He asked "What's that?" and I replied "I don't know, I just made it up." For some reason I didn't forget it and used it as the seed for this 30 Second Spot, constructed mostly in a San Francisco Starbucks.

click here to hear Bill Kraft's San Francisco Waltz Toon It's vaguely waltz-like, not cartoonish at all and even, uncharacteristically, somewhat somber. Or maybe the right word is "empty." I doubt Bill will ever dance to it.

Here's a biography of William Kraft - I've been working for him even longer than I have for John Adams.

Copyright (c) March, 2007 by David Ocker - 80 seconds

Explanation of 30 second spots

Other Mixed Meters Blank Wall posts: click on the blanks blank wall or blank wall or blank wall or blank wall or blank wall.

Flowering Tags: A Flowering Tree. . . John Adams. . . opera. . . Peter Sellars. . . San Francisco Symphony. . . architecture. . . William Kraft. . . Bill Kraft. . . 30 Second Spots. . . David Ocker