I hate to say it, but I do have a few regrets in my life. I always admire those who claim to have no regrets, and until fairly recently I could claim to be one of those lucky few, as well. But I feel that it’s those people who have indeed lived their lives through having made some regretful decisions, who seem more “real” to me. True, the things I regret in my life, aren’t anything really drastic, but nevertheless, I seriously wished I didn’t have such mistakes in my memory.
Thankfully, the majority of my regrets are of concerts I didn’t end up going to, and those performers are still young, and their careers in music don’t seem to be ending anytime soon. Last winter, The Gorillaz were performing in Northern Virginia, and since I didn’t have anyone to go to the concert with (at least that I knew of) I didn’t go to the show. I was really bummed because not only are the Gorillaz one of my favorite bands, but due to the nature that the band is actually made up of fictional 2-D characters, their tour was a rarity.
Another concert I dearly regret not attending was when Mayer Hawthorne played The Black Cat last fall. Again, this musician is one of my favorite artists, and once more, I hadn’t anyone to go with. I didn’t even know that Mayer Hawthorne was in town, but on my commute home, I read a blurb about his show that night in the newspaper. I could have/should have turned around on the Metro and headed for the show, by myself, but I was uneasy going to the concert in a neighborhood I wouldn’t necessarily feel safe in, alone. Still, I really wish I had gone.
Most of the other poor choices I have made (usually alcohol-related incidents), while they were not the wisest ideas, I still do not regret what I did. For I feel that they were at least educational experiences. I like to think that if I had not made some poor decisions in the past, then I would not have learned from them (which I think I have, for the most part.) And thankfully, in the case of these concert mishaps, at least it really wasn’t anything drastic or extreme that occurred to me. So even though I am pretty sorrowful that I did not attend such possibly amazing events, if that’s the worst of my regrets, I think I can live with myself.
Sometimes I am especially fond of songs that rely heavily on repetition of a beat. Some people might assume that this means I like techno music, but actually I do not normally care for that style of music. Rather, I am referring to a constant rhythm and simple string of notes. Like, a phrase or line of music that goes beyond a few measures of repeating. Specifically, what I am referring to doesn’t included any lyrics like it does here.
I first approached this concept when I discussed the original, long version of Death Cab’s, “I Will Possess Your Heart”.
Two more fine examples of what I am trying to illustrate are the two songs below. Maybe you can better hear this such repetition. It’s more than just the repetition; it’s the face that the repetition stays interesting and changes when you don’t expect it to, thus keeping the listener engaged. As a commenter on YouTube wrote for the first video, “…I was dying for a chord change, then it came… and I melted.” Well said.
Last night, while strolling the vendors at the Holiday Market along F St. between 7th and 9th Streets. NW, D.C., I came across a performance by the University of Maryland (College Park)’s co-ed Jewish a capella group, Rak Shalom. The group was good, and they sang a number of songs in Hebrew which was impressive. One of the non-religious songs they sang was Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young’s, “Love The One You’re With.”
You know how the lyrics go:
“If you can’t be with the one you love,
Love the one you’re with.”
This song obviously, is not a song for people who are alone. I understand that the song is supposed to promote the general loving of everyone, and while that is a nice idea, what are you to do when you are all alone?
Last night I saw the newest hit musical, Spring Awakening at The Kennedy Center. In the most basic understanding of this show, it is a story about puberty, growing up, and the life of confused teenagers. The musical basically shows us what happens when kids are not properly taught about sex education, whether that means in school, by their parents, or their peers. The production I saw has won a number of awards and was a really fun experience, however, there some things I would like to discuss.
The setting of Spring Awakening (“a provincial German town in the 1890s”) was either a) completely unnecessary or b) not pronounced enough. The only way the audience was made aware of this setting was through the character names (such as “Ilse,” “Hanschen,” “Moritz,” and “Melchior (pronounced: Milky-OR)”) and the costumes. The set was very vague looking, had a ton of neon lights, and didn’t seem to be especially German. –This was all extremely distracting to me throughout the musical, and I couldn’t seem to get over the disconnect between the representation of the setting and the story. The production would have been just as successful in a monotonous black box with all black costumes; thus putting a much greater emphasis on the music and plot.
The music was genuinely really good and catchy. The score was rock meets pop with gospel influences. The energy was very similar to that of such shows like, Rent, Next To Normal, Hair, and Jesus Christ Super Star. The lyrics were modern with song titles such as, “The Bitch of Living,” “My Junk,” and “Totally Fucked.” The sound was fun and hip and I could imagine listening to the soundtrack for weeks.
The band was likely my favorite part of the show. It was a small, eight-piece band which was featured at the back of the stage. [A major shout-out to Conductor/Keyboardist, Jared Stein! My family and I met his father on a recent trip to Cleveland, Ohio where Jared’s father turned out to be the man behind the counter who helped us at the famous deli, Corky & Lenny’s.]
My favorite song of the show was, “The Dark I Know Well,” which was about physically abusive parents. I loved the low, sultry Alto voices of actresses, Sarah Hunt (Martha) and Steffi D (Ilse). Their voices were similar to the sound of Janice Joplin, only minus Joplin’s well known scratchiness.
The memorable song, “Totally Fucked,” is pretty identical to the commercials Twix candy bars have been making recently. Twix’s new slogan is, “When you need a moment, chew it over with Twix.”
(Blogging? I love blogging!)
This is the same message as the song in Spring Awakening. In “Totally Fucked,” a teen is caught between a rock and a hard place and is, as the songs says, “totally fucked.” He has no choice but to get in big trouble and so in his last “moments of freedom,” he breaks into song and dance –his Twix, if you will.
Also, this song features a chorus where the entire cast is singing the word, “blah.” While this was possibly creative in the lyrics department, it certainly was not original. The Gorillaz also have used “blah’s” in their song, “Rock It.”
The show was unique and disturbing in a very uncomfortable and awkward sexual way. Such highlights include a song about masturbation (which prominently shows a guy pleasuring himself, center stage); two full-on heterosexual sex scenes involving a naive virgin girl, which featured a bare-breast and the enactment of an orgasm and thrusting; my favorite – a homosexual love scene which had some kissing; and lastly, abortion and suicide.
However, I need to point out that during the gay scene, the audience seemed to find it humorous. Maybe the laughter was due to an unfortunate discomfort of the audience. Yet, during the heterosexual sex scene, the audience was dead silent. I thought this was very unfair to the subject of homosexuality.
Another point I would like to touch on was that all of the adults in the musical were played by two people; a man and a woman. This became extremely confusing since there was no costume change or anything to really help the audience know who the actors were portraying. An especially confusing example of this was a back-and-forth scene between the husband and wife for each of two teenagers. The audience is left to figure out when the actors switch from one set of parents to the next. Maybe a more successful way to portray the idea that “all adults are the same” would just be to get more people to play the adults but dress them all the same.
I would give this show an 8 out of 10. It was fun and highly entertaining, even though on a number of occasions, the plot was unbearably predictable and made me want to walk out (I didn’t). Also, beware for yet another musical/story to be heavily influenced by the over-done, “Romeo & Juliet” story line. Some of Spring Awakening’s lines seemed to be direct copies from Shakespeare’s play. Anyways, I would definitely recommend this show, but remember that it is R-rated, for nudity, profane language, violence, and sexual content. Enjoy the show!
CAPSLove 