Voyage of the Downeaster Alexa

Voyage of the Downeaster Alexa,
originally uploaded by PeterWood.

I’ve just fused together two memes that have been popular recently: memorymaps and lyrical outlines. The result is a lyricmap. I’ve taken some lyrics from the Billy Joel song “The Downeaster ‘Alexa’” and annotated them on a Google Maps image. If you click through to the photo on the right, you will be able to hover over various places and read the corresponding lyrics.

You may see more of these in the future… I had fun with it.

About Jonas

Inspired by Will and the general meme that’s been going around, I’ve taken a song and rendered it into outline form. Source lyrics: Sing365.com.

• About Jonas:
  • carrying the wheel
  • thankful for all you’ve shown us
• Jonas’ requests:
  • sit next to me
  • pour yourself some tea
• Jonas’ grandmother:
  • at one point made tea just like the tea Jonas is offering
  • made tea for when Jonas couldn’t find sleep
  • lived during a better time
  • was located in a den
• The den:
  • Has been vacated
  • Story of vacating the den to be told
• Choo-choo train:
  • Departure: on time
  • Cost of ticket: your mind
  • Length of trip, according to driver: all the way
  • Willing to pay said cost: yes
• About Weepel:
  • has box full of your toys
  • toys are out of batteries
  • toys are able to make noise without batteries
• Tell me what to do:
  • Now the tank is dry.
  • Now this wheel is flat.
  • And you know what else?
• Mail received today:
  • Words of deep concern
  • From my little brother.
• News from little brother:
  • The building’s not goin’ as he planned.
  • The foreman has injured his hand.
  • The dozer will not clear a path.
  • The driver swears he learned his math.
  • The workers are goin’ home.
• Other notes:
  • Yeah, yeah, yeah!

New Sounds

We really enjoyed the soundtracks from two movies we’ve recently seen: The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, and In Good Company. So we purchased the complete soundtracks on the iTunes Music Store, for $9.99 each.

ppp|   |ppp

Both have some really great, listenable music. Life Aquatic has some nutty Casio-tone keyboard songs, as well as some contemporary hits rewritten into Portuguese as performed in the film by Seu Jorge, one of the ship’s crew members. Good Company has a good selection of very mellow music by artists such as Iron and Wine and David Byrne, and some nice original compositions from the score by Stephen Trask. Both are highly recommended for your listening enjoyment.

Musical Degrees of Separation

On the drive to work this morning, I let the iPod choose the music. Here are the songs that it picked on my ride in, in the order they were played:

qqq|”Three Doors” by VAST from Visual Audio Sensory Theater “20th Century Fox Fanfare” from Star Wars: A New Hope “Little Drummer Boy” from the Christianbook.com 2003 Christmas commemorative CD “Hey Now Everybody” by They Might Be Giants from Apollo 18 “Elysium” from the Gladiator motion picture soundtrack “Santa Evita” from the Evita motion picture soundtrack “Bad” by U2 from The Best of 1980-1990|qqq

I thought that a fun game to play might be to attempt to connect each randomly-selected song together in some way, sort of like playing the Kevin Bacon game, but not really. So, any takers? Can you connect all of the above songs together in some way? For example, did any of the composers or musicians collaborate on any projects, or appear in television or movies together? Or did any of the composers make reference to any of the other music, movies, etc? I haven’t tried figuring it out myself yet, but I’ll keep you posted if I get anywhere.

Update: I did “Shuffle Songs” again on the way home. Here’s what I got this time:

qqq|”High Speed” by Coldplay from Parachutes “Airbag” by Radiohead from OK Computer “Subway Fight” by James Newton Howard from The Fugitive motion picture soundtrack “Darkwood V: Passage” by David Darling from Darkwood “When You’re Gone” by The Cranberries from To The Faithful Departed|qqq

Still haven’t made any connections, but then I haven’t put much thought into it…

Tangle with the Woods

Saturday afternoon, Becky and I packed up the car and headed out to Tanglewood in the Berkshires to see Garrison Keillor and A Prairie Home Companion.

The weather was perfect - warm air, clear skies. We had a nice picnic basket all packed up with snacks, and added a couple of sandwiches and cookies from a Subway when we arrived in Lenox.

The entertainment was great, as any fan of PHC would expect. The atmosphere at Tanglewood, particularly in the lawn area where we were sitting, is incredibly friendly, laid back, and relaxing. It was wonderful to simply walk among the crowds, even while the performance was going on. The music and comedy routines could be heard easily from just about anywhere you walked - I even took a walk far back to take in this magnificent view, and I could still hear just as well as I could back at our seat. Families and friends were enjoying meals together on the lawn. Some had set up simple blankets, like Becky and I did, and had brought dinners with them. Others had elaborate setups on the lawn, complete with tables, mounds of grilled meats, and rings of candles set up around their spots.

With the food, the atmosphere, the company, and the entertainment, it was an amazing day over all, and we are certainly looking forward to visiting Tanglewood again.

I did take some photos, as mentioned above, and you may see them in the Tanglewood gallery.

In other news, on Friday, Becky finished reading the fifth Harry Potter book, Order of the Phoenix, and handed it over to me. I’m happy to say that as of tonight, I have also finished reading it. As before, it was an immensely entertaining piece of fiction, and I only wish that the final two books were already available for us to devour.

Finally, there are only a few more days left until Becky and I head out to Portland for the O’Reilly Open Source Conference. We’re both very excited for the trip! But before that, there are still a few days of work to get through…

TMBG

Saturday’s TMBG concert was great! It marked my fifth time seeing TMBG live in concert:

1. Newport Music Hall, Columbus, OH
2. Kenyon College, Gambier, OH
3. Avalon, Boston, MA
4. Avalon, Boston, MA
5. Avalon, Boston, MA

Suffice to say, seeing TMBG in concert is one of the few occasions I will frequent a smoky, crowded venue such as the Avalon. Their show was great, as always. They really know how to entertain a crowd! One of the best parts of the show was the ‘Radio Play-Along’… they hook up a KLH radio to the PA system, and then randomly tune to various stations. Then they try to play along with whatever is on the radio. Hilarious! As they said in the lead-in to RPA, “This is the part of the show that consistently disappoints! This is the part of the show that can tank at any time!”

TMBG managed to pack in a really full set of music into the hour and 15 minutes they were on stage. This time, I managed to bring along a notepad and jot down their set list. Unfortunately, there were a few songs I didn’t recognize (!!), but here it is:

1. Wicked Little Critta
2. James K. Polk
3. (???)
4. Black Magic Marker
5. Super Tasters
6. “No!”
7. Shout and Stomp (not a song per se…)
8. Birdhouse in your soul
9. The Guitar
10. Man it’s so loud in here
11. Don’t Cross The Street
12. Au Contraire
13. Rocket to the Moon
14. Radio Play-along (they tune in to random Boston radio stations and play along with whatever is on the radio)
15. Older
16. Another First Kiss
17. The Statue Got Me High
18. Doctor Worm
19. Drink!
20. Violin
21. Fingertips
22. Cyclops Rock
23. The Sun (is a mass of incandescent gas…) (The sun gets its power from the reactions of Route 95, Route 91, Route 84, and the Mass Pike…)

Encore I: 1. Christmas Tree (?) 2. Ana Ng 3. New York City

Encore II: 1. Robot Parade 2. Istanbul (Not Constantinople)

James Taylor and… who?

Many news and entertainment sites mentioned that James Taylor gave a live performance during the 45th annual Grammy Awards last night. But no one so far has mentioned who he was playing WITH… hmm… how about the 13-time Grammy winning Yo-Yo Ma? Huh? Did ya forget about him? Geez, just because he doesn’t sing? So James Taylor is a living legend… but let’s give a little credit to the guy who backed him up, eh?

Across a crowded room…

The first night, the distance between us was hundreds of feet. I could barely make out his face, even with the aid of theatre glasses. The next day, I was as close as I would probably ever get - a mere 15 feet. To me, he was no stranger. I own half a dozen of his recordings. I’ve followed him in the news for years. I’ve looked up to him since my youngest years. I have even seen him in concert once before, at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. But on Saturday, February 22nd, I was sitting in a church with him, listening to him talk.

Yo-Yo Ma is a man of international fame and fortune. He is without a doubt the premier cellist of our time. He is possessed of a charm and good-natured banter so often lacking in classical musicians. In his trademark black coat, red scarf, and overly-large glasses, he sat on the platform at St. James church in Boston’s Chinatown. He bantered with his fellow panel members, including Tan Dun, composer of “The Map” and the soundtrack to “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon”.

It was truly a joy to be able to listen to him play on Friday night and speak on Saturday afternoon. The Friday night program by the BSO, Yo-Yo Ma, and Tan Dun was truly incredible. Tan Dun conducted the entire concert in his crisp yet commanding style, including other pieces such as John Cage’s “The Seasons” and “Four Sea Interludes” from Ben Britten’s “Peter Grimes”. The real highlight of the concert, however, was “The Map” — a multimedia work that explored the indigenous music of Tan Dun’s hometown. The piece was commissioned expressly for Yo-Yo Ma, and composed by Tan Dun. The Map works its way through various native musical forms of the Hunan province of China. Antiphonal singing, tongue-singing, cymbals, pipes, leaf-blowing, and stone-drumming are among the concepts explored. The orchestra, lead by Tan Dun and voiced by Yo-Yo Ma, played orchestral responses to the native music, while huge video screens displayed video shot by Tan Dun while he was in Hunan. The orchestra often “interacted” with the video on screen. In one instance, Yo-Yo Ma held a “dialogue” with a female singer on the main video screen - she would call out to him in antiphonal song; he would answer back on his cello. The most fascinating concept for me was the stone-drumming. In the palm of one hand, the drummer holds a smooth, flat stone. In the other hand, he grasps a striking stone with a rounded end. By varying the distance between the palm of his hand and the flat stone, the drummer can produce a chromatic scale simply by striking the stones together. The flat stone can also be held over the mouth, and the mouth widened or narrowed to produce a different sound.

The next day, Becky and I attended a panel discussion entitled “Saving a Dying Musical Tradition.” While making The Map, a documentary filmmaker followed Tan Dun and recorded his own movie on the making of The Map, and this film was given its premiere screening at the panel. Yo-Yo Ma, Tan Dun, and an assortment of other related artists discussed “The Map” and the making of the video in The Map. Some of the most interesting comments of the talk came from Tan Dun and Yo-Yo Ma. Tan Dun spoke of his travels between China and New York City, where he mainly resides. He said that living in NYC gave him a greater appreciation of Chinese culture. Much like a fist pulling back to strike a surface, the further you get from a culture, the more impact that culture has on you and the more clearly you can see it.

One exchange was rather entertaining: during the making-of film, there was a scene in which Tan Dun was eating, drinking, and singing along with a group of young singers. Apparently, he had consumed a good deal of rice wine, and a red-faced Tan Dun was singing rather loudly and with much excitement. After the film was over, Yo-Yo Ma’s first comment to Tan Dun was: “What were you drinking, and do you sing that way at home??” The documentary filmmaker was also at the panel, and through a translator he told Yo-Yo Ma that some day he would like to go back to China and bring him along, and find him a nice girl. Yo-Yo told him that this was very kind, but that he would first have to ask permission of his wife.

The whole experience was incredible, and most likely not one that could be duplicated. Though, for those who were patient enough to read through all of this, I do have a special treat. I snapped several photos while we were at the panel discussion, and one was good enough that you can see The Man himself (after I did a bit of iPhoto ‘enhancing’): The Panel