The Vintage Reader

Here's an interesting musical quiz that was posted on Byzantium's Shores:

GIVE US AN EXAMPLE OR TWO OF AN ESPECIALLY GOOD OR INTERESTING:

1. Movie score.Lonesome Dove, by Basil Pouledouris (who passed away recently). Star Wars, by John Williams (of course).


2. TV theme. I'm with Byzantium's Shores on this one: Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is the best TV theme I can think of. As the seasons went on, the theme reflected the plot; as the Dominion War progressed, the music got darker and deeper, with more instrumentation in the middle and lower ranges. I didn't notice this until we watched all seven seasons in succession, but there it was. Wonderfalls had a great theme by Andy Partridge from XTC, but since only four episodes aired, most people haven't heard it.


3. Melody. "Stardust," by Hoagy Carmichael. It's intricate, and unpredictable, and really difficult to whistle at first, until you get the intervals down. I also love Ravel's "Bolero," which gets stuck in my head for DAYS sometimes.


4. Harmonic language. I'm skipping this one for the time being, because there's something right on the tip of my fingers that I can't quite figure out for this.


5. Rhythmic feel. Anything by Aaron Copland. And of course, "Take Five."


6. Hip-hop track. Any hip-hop I know is more appropriately classified as pop music, so I'm not sure it counts at all.


7. Classical piece. I'm going to go with Mozart's Requiem, because it's just... incredible. Honestly, despite being in orchestra all the way up through college (not to mention that my sister is a classical music FREAK and can hear a piece on the radio and say things like "Oh yes, I believe that's the Philadelphia Symphony Orchestra, with Eugene Ormandy conducting. Probably the 1968 recording"), I know just enough classical music to get some of the musical jokes in a Chuck Jones cartoon.* Of course, in college I was mostly in the pit orchestra, so I only played opera and musical theater scores (and beauty-pageant arrangements of pop standards, which are in a class all their own). Of those, Madame Butterfly (in English because that's how it was performed at my school) was my hands-down favorite.


8. Smash hit. "That Thing You Do," because I always liked the symmetry of a fake hit song actually becoming a hit song.


9. Jazz album. Paul Desmond's Take Ten. Basie Straight Ahead.


10. Non-American folkloric group. Well, I don't have one. I listen to "Thistle and Shamrock" occasionally, but even there, a good number of the groups are American. And the rest of them sound pretty much the same to me, but it's good cookin' music on a Saturday night.


11. Book on music. I'm With the Band? No, really, I don't remember any, although I read quite a few in my youth. I remember reading one about jazz by Nat Hentoff that I really liked, sometime in junior high or high school. I bought it at a book sale. It had a great cover.

BONUS QUESTIONS: (these were presented, but not answered, on Byzantium's Shores)

1. Name a surprising album (or albums) you loved when you were developing as a musician: something that really informs your sound but that we would never guess in a million years. I don't have a sound to inform, but if I did, it would probably be informed by an album called Wizard by an early jazz/rock fusion band, Matrix. They were incredible. I think they were mostly alumni from the North Texas State 1:00 Lab Band. I could listen to that album every day. And I did, in 1982.


2. Name a practitioner (or a few) who play your instrument that you think is underrated. N/A


3. Name a rock or pop album that you wish had been a smash commercial hit (but wasn’t, not really). Sam Phillips, Fan Dance. I thought "Reflecting Light" was bound to be a hit after Luke and Lorelei danced to it in the season finale of Gilmore Girls a few years ago (a la Alex and Ellen and "At This Moment"), but it wasn't. This is a beautiful album, and deserves more attention.


4. Name a favorite drummer, and an album to hear why you love that drummer. I don't have a favorite drummer, but if anyone ever asks this question at parties (I think that actually happened once) I tell them it's Buddy Rich and redirect the conversation to the strange but true fact that old jazz musicians used to die within months of my seeing them in concert (well, Count Basie and Buddy Rich, anyway). I was actually afraid to go to a Dave Brubeck concert a few years ago, but fortunately, the curse must be broken, because he's still hanging in there. In reality, however, my favorite is probably Gene Krupa, purely for "Sing, Sing, Sing," which is on pretty much ANY album that features Benny Goodman's greatest hits. I loved that episode of "Freaks and Geeks" where Lindsey's father tells Nick that Neil Peart is a hack (or something to that effect), and introduces him to Gene Krupa.

This list is meant for musicians; even though I don't consider myself a musician anymore, I think it's fun for anyone with eclectic musical tastes. And that describes most of my readers (all three of you)! So consider yourselves tagged.

*And also, like all schoolchildren in Tulsa in the 70s, I was bused downtown every spring for the Philharmonic's annual children's concert, where they played things like Carnival of the Animals and Peter and the Wolf and Leroy Anderson's greatest hits. AND I played in the Tulsa Youth Symphony, which meant that I took lessons from the principal clarinetist in the Philharmonic, and I'm sure he must have made me actually LISTEN to music from time to time, but I have absolutely no recollection of this. Even though the Philharmonic's attempts to instill some Cultchah in the children of Tulsa clearly didn't take in my case, I can't imagine Tulsa without the Philharmonic, and still refuse to believe that it's gone.

Labels: miscellany, music