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Open mic at The Red Light Cafe tonight

I hope to get an earlier slot for my 3rd try (i.e. before 11). I'll be playing the last three songs from The Journalist: "Through the Woods," "Where Was I?", and "(coda)". I think of these three songs as sortof a reverse sonata, with the tocatta at the beginning and the more thoughtful piece at the end. Many of the songs contain repeated themes from earlier songs.

"Through the Woods" is a perpetuum mobile chase scene in 9/8 with constant eighth notes throughout. The section using syncopated arpeggios (E D Bb C) is a theme that appears varied in two other songs ("The Crossing" and "The Photograph"). The middle instrumental section is based on the progression that opens the first song of The Journalist. The ending was inspired by the ending of King Crimson's "One More Red Nightmare" from Red. I like how the alto sax improv over a driving 6/8 just drops into silence as if pulled into a black hole. I don't think I quite acheived the same impact though.

"Where Was I?" is a short interlude. It's framed by a melody, for the left hand alone, which first appears in "The Map." The bulk of the song interrupts this melody with a symmetric structure of A B B A. The B is taken from "My Beautiful Day" and rearranged with power chords.

"(coda)" opens with a somewhat orchestral instrumental section. The subsequent verses segue into a final verse based on the chords from the closing section of "Falling" (and re-used as the close of "(coda)"). The lyrics for the final verse, I hear messages from the ether coming down into my short future, came to mind when I was naming my blog. The melodic motiv for the final words is the germ for the melody of the orchestral section, repeated immediately after.

Although I feel more comfortable when I talk between songs, these three work best uninterrupted. I think I'll open with some observational humor about Ovaltine. They really should call it Roundtine, you know.

Currently Listening To

I discovered Amy Beach's [Wikipedia] music at the public library back when I was in high school. New World Records published her Violin Sonata under the name Mrs. H. H. A. Beach--in the halcyon days of pre-feminism and pre-suffrage, women went by their husbands' names with the quaint 'Mrs' attached. Anyway, post-feminists re-branded her works and she's now herself again. She was part of the New England School of composers. I'm generally not a fan of early American music or art, but at around this period our composers start getting interesting. And I'm a sucker for this Romanticism.

The Kabao CD was handed out during his recent show at Django. A cool time was had by all, and now you can relive a few songs of that cool time.

Red is classic King Crimson from 1974 (30 years ago?!?). I can do without the free improv on "Providence," but the rest of the songs are models of creative rock composition. The mix of alto sax (?)--carried over from their earlier days too influenced by soft jazz--and noisynoisy guitar and drums is perfect. Some notable musical features: check out the diminished scale [Wikipedia] used in "Red" and the single-note solo played over a 13/8 meter in "Starless." Two sites provide analysis: King Crimson: Red - An Analysis by Andrew Keeling and Chapter Six: King Crimson III and Brian Eno from the online book Robert Fripp by Eric Tamm (who mistakes the opening scale in "Red" for the whole tone scale [Wikipedia], probably because of the tritone in the harmony). Correction: Mr. Tamm has below corrected my sloppy misreading of his analysis. In his book, he points out the whole-tone-scale root relationships. Subtle and different than my misrepresentation. Apologies.

I've been enjoying my recent acquisition of Kleptones music. They combine Queen and The Flaming Lips with various rappers by replacing the former's vocals with the latter's. It's called mash up [Wikipedia] for all you groovies out there. With these recordings, the pallid harmonies and limited song structure of rap is replaced with music that excels at both. The Yoshimi tracks contain the exact songs with the vocals replaced. The Queen tracks are more scattered and fragmented--The Kleptones create a new structure using Queen's harmonies.