Song of Fire

We’re lemmings when it comes to music

Jon O — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 01:40:44 +0000

In a study published in Science in 2006 ("Experimental Study of Inequality and Unpredictability in an Artificial Cultural Market"), Princeton sociologist Matthew Salganik and his coauthors revealed how the opinions of others influence the popularity of a song.

A ride featuring dead rock stars?

Jon O — Mon, 30 Nov 2009 01:37:27 +0000

A musical theme park? Please, tell me no. I thought this was a parody when I stumbled upon it online, but sadly, it's not.

Music the earth makes

Jon O — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 17:36:39 +0000

Gerhard Trimpin, a German-born sound artist who lives in Seattle, has designed installations over the years that use nature and the earth to produce music. An early piece was a water fountain in which drops of water, timed in complex rhythmic fugues, dripped into glass receptacles. More recently, he was inspired by a Seattle earthquake.

Picasso’s best guitar

Jon O — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 02:38:21 +0000

In the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. hangs a work by Picasso titled simply "The Guitar." Like the artist's other sculptures and paintings that feature guitars, this 1926 piece deconstructs the instrument, but it does so with such simplicity and elegance that it's easy to overlook it in the context of its more famous cousins.

Singing statues and stones

Jon O — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 02:59:48 +0000

During an imperial tour of Egypt in 129 A.D., the emperor Hadrian visited the singing statute of Memnon at Thebes, a well-known spot in the Mediterranean world where the colossal seated figure of a pharaoh was known to sing at dawn. Greek and Roman tourists named the statue after Memnon, the Trojan hero who sang to his mother each morning at dawn.

The Brady Bunch 40th Anniversary

Jon O — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 18:40:21 +0000

It's the 40th anniversary of The Brady Bunch, the early 70s sitcom about two southern California families — one a lady with three daughters, the other a man with three sons — who join households to make one big happy family. The show aired for five seasons (1969-1974), during which time my own adolescence paralleled that of the eldest Brady kids. My friends and I made fun of the show's simplistic, dated take on teenage life and family values, yet we were strangely drawn to the characters, and to the way that the family represented an ideal where the teenage dramas were resolved in half an hour with a minimum of pain.

Another nail in the coffin for live music

Jon O — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 01:05:15 +0000

In the Aug. 10 & 17 issue of The New Yorker, John Seabrook discusses the business of concert tickets, exemplified by everyone's favorite bad guy, Ticketmaster. Who doesn't resent those outrageous "convenience" fees and additional charges? But the problem goes beyond that. As Seabrook points out, the business of live music is dysfunctional.

The problem with jazz

Jon O — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 17:37:01 +0000

We take music for granted in our culture. We don't sufficiently value it. It's ubiquitous, so we don't seem to want to pay for it. We think of it like the air we breathe, and we wouldn't expect to pay for air.

Divine Order’s music lifts up your spirit

Jon O — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 01:05:34 +0000

Do you know how sometimes the most revelatory experiences can occur when you have no expectations, no idea of what you're about to hear? That's what happened when Allyn Johnson and Divine Order took the stage of that small, intimate jazz club and unleashed the most amazing, breathtaking music.

The demonically brilliant music of Sweeney Todd

Jon O — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 04:36:45 +0000

"Attend the tale of Sweeney Todd." So begins the 1979 musical by Stephen Sondheim about a London barber who murders his customers and the accomplice Mrs. Lovett who turns his victims into meat pies.