Ce Que J'aime Écoute

I've been on the internet for a while, waiting for pages to load, and so I think I'll spam a bit by writing down each song I listen to, along with any thoughts I have regarding it.

NB: I'm on the only computer at home which has internet, which has a pretty limited music library. I'm skipping any songs I didn't listen to.

Du Hast - Rammstein

I've loves this song ever since my history teacher played it for us. Till Lindeman (the singer) has a pretty fantastic set of vocal chords, and I love the mix between synth and the heavy guitars and drums.

Rammleid - Rammstein

Because everyone needs a bit of thrash every so often. I'm particularly a fan of the choir in the background of the verses.

Hallelujah - Handel

My sisters and I refer to Handel as 'Handi' because we've all done a hell of a lot of his stuff (we also refer to Purcell as 'Percy', but lets not go there). The Hallelujah chorus from Messiah just has that special something which makes a great choral work.
There's the perfectly balanced SATB score, with the parts playing off each other to create some fantastic layering; there's the rather small selection of orchestration (Harpsichord, Violin, Viola, Cello, Bassoon, Trumpet) which somehow just works perfectly); and there's the way that the accompaniment works with the music, filling gaps, and making it one of the most recognisable choral works ever.

Hot Stuff - Donna Summer

I got this song off the soundtrack of 'The Full Monty'. Good movie. Good song.
There's something fantastic about all the songs which are stereotypically drag queen songs (I Will Survive, I Need A Hero etc.).

O Fortuna - Orff

No comment necessary. Awesome incarnate.

Mrs Robinson - Simon and Garfunkel

I got this off the soundtrack of Forrest Gump before my sister Sarah had the brilliance to buy the 'Best of Simon and Garfunkel'. Whimsical guitars, and some of the best harmony you'll find anywhere, paired with surprisingly quirky and deep lyrics. I love it.

Empty Chairs At Empty Tables - Boublil and Schönberg

One of the most depressing songs of Les Mis. It really encapsulates all of France;s student revolts (May 68, anyone?). They thought it was a good idea at the time, and then looked back at their actions in retrospect and went 'Hmmm. Well. That was a bad course of action.'
To quote Raymond Aron: Once again Paris almost had a revolution, and then finished it as usual by voting conservative.
It was true then, and it's true now.

Valley Girl - Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention feat. Moonunit Zappa

This song is Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention at their art rocking best with Moonunit Zappa's inspired parody of a Sun Vally bimbo in the 80s.
This song encapsulates the entirety of Amy Heckerling's 'Clueless'.
This song encapsulates commercial America.
I grew up listening to this song.

Morgenstern - Rammstein

A choir singing Mass-like cadences in the background. A strong Bass voice in the forefront, underscored by some good industrial metal. Rammstein's great.

Rejoice rejoice. The sheet music of Les Choristes has finished downloading.
Now, should I be granted a school choir, I shall have music for them. Along with Michael Bojesen's 'Eternity', I'll be set (I would have also liked to use his 'Gloria', but that would be far too difficult for one of the school choirs).

Huzzah for downloading PDFs.

Hydrogen

I'm entering the Rostrum Voice of Youth public speakign competition, and as they provide set topics for us to choose from, I've chosen 'A modern curse'.

This is my speech. I've tried to make it as funny as possible.

Frank Zappa wrote in his autobiography that

“Some scientists claim that hydrogen, because it is so plentiful, is the basic building block of the universe. I dispute that. I say there is more stupidity than hydrogen, and THAT is the basic building block of the universe.

This is not a case of pessimism vs. optimism – it’s a matter of accurate assessment.

Not only is there more stupidity than anything else in terms of universal quantity, but there is a wonderful quality to this stupidity. It is so intensely perfect that it completely overwhelms whatever it is that nature has piled up on the other pan of the scale.”

I would have to agree. We are slowly becoming a stupid species because, in flagrant disregard for Darwin’s theory of evolution, we are allowing the stupid to survive, nay, flourish in a gene pool which is gradually being polluted by their lack of common sense.

When I say stupid people, which I will numerous times over the course of the next few minutes, I refer only to those people who for some inexplicable reason lack that innate sense of ‘If I do this, there will in all likelihood be some horrible violent consequence, so the most intelligent thing for me to do would be to abstain from my planned course of action’ which the rest of us were born with. That’s why the Darwin awards exist.

The Darwin awards are awarded posthumously upon those people who kill themselves in such ridiculously idiotic ways that they did the species a favour by removing themselves from it. Their catchphrase is: Chlorinating the gene pool – evolution in action. Recipients include three men who were playing Russian Roulettte.

Using a semiautomatic weapon.

We are in the grips of a modern curse. And that curse is niceness. You see, our problem is that society is too nice. Instead of dumping teenagers in the frozen steppes of Siberia, and waiting to see which ones make it out alive so as to ensure peak genetics get into the gene pool; we protect humans when they are at their most reckless and irrational point – young adulthood.

There’s a reason most car accidents involve people from the 17-25 years age bracket. It’s because at that stage, the brain undergoes a series of changes which temporarily (for lack of a better term) block the frontal lobe – the part of the brain which governs manners and sensibility – from interfering with our plans, thus making us more likely to engage in reckless behaviour.

There is however one important point: not everyone engages in stupid behaviour. Some people remain sensible. If natural selection were to be allowed to run rampant, those lacking the capacity for logic in their formative years would weed themselves out of the genetic mix eventually, leaving only the able-minded to go about furthering the species.

Instead we go about protecting these hoodlums. The ‘yoof’ of our generation. We force them to wear seatbelts, tell them not to binge drink, smoke, do illicit drugs, engage in unprotected sex. In other words, we tell them what they ought to have worked out on their own. We help them to survive so that they can propagate. And so they do. Society enables the survival of the genetically unworthy, and it’s slowly turning Australia into a nanny state.

Think about it. The big banks engaged in the mild stupidity of lending people money that they didn’t actually have to loan in the first place, and the government stepped in to save them from their own misdeeds. The government introduces mandates to ensure that instead of letting evolution do its thing, people lacking common sense aren’t presented with the opportunity to bungee jump off of buildings onto pavement, or to drive their cars off of cliffs while they watch solar eclipses instead of the road, or to go for a skinny dip with a killer whale whilst enjoying the combined effects of marijuana and alcohol.

The government mandates every aspect of our lives in which stupid people would be allowed to stupid themselves to death. The stringency of driving tests ensures that they actually need to be competent with a car before they are unleashed onto the roads to evolve. Occupational Health and Safety regulations ensure that regardless of whether they have the propensity to do so, no-one is allowed into areas where they could be injured and such as a result of falling tools or rampaging forklifts.

Even sports equipment carries warnings which seem obvious to the average person, but which allow stupid people to survive. For example, I play Lacrosse. On the back of the Goalie helmet is an inscription. It reads:

Lacrosse is a dangerous sport. Death or serious injury could occur while playing. Wearing this helmet will not prevent serious head, neck and/or spinal cord trauma. Do not use this helmet to ramm, stab or headbutt other players whilst wearing this helmet.

If people lack the common sense not to assume that since they’re wearing a helmet, they’re invincible, so they can feel free to attempt to impale others on it, they don’t deserve to live. I know it seems harsh, but it’s the truth. If they think a piece of moulded plastic with some padding on the inside and a mesh faceguard will mean that nothing can harm them so that they can now engage in behaviour generally restricted to mountain goats in the mating season, then if they maim or paralyse themselves whilst engaging in the aforementioned pursuit, they deserved it.

Another piece of evidence pointing to the fact that we are becoming a nanny state is the fact that Ponzi schemes have been declared illegal. In my opinion, if someone at the email address: fluffybunnyfuntime@hotmail.com sends an email claiming to be a Nigerian prince who will give one million dollars to everyone who emails him their credit card number, and the person receiving the email believes it and sends off their credit card details, it’s their fault. It shouldn’t be up to the government to protect them from their own lack of deductive powers.

A final example of stupidity is the advertisements for funeral insurance plans which are broadcast during every ad break on SBS. An ad I saw a few weeks ago began with the statement “A recent study has shown that there is a 100% chance that you will die.” If that sends people scurrying off to buy a funeral insurance plan which isn’t going to benefit them in the slightest, it’s faintly pathos inducing, but mainly funny.

As Paul Twitchell wrote in ‘The Far Country’:

As you grow older in your observation of the peoples of this Earth world, it becomes obvious that stupidity is the reigning virtue. The masses are always willing that somebody take the responsibility of caring for them.

Our curse is that through niceness we enable stupidity, and unless we take decisive action to give stupid people the freedom they need to remove themselves from the genepool, society will not progress.

Music

I'm a bit of a classical music nerd. I started piano and singing when I was five, cello when I was eight, and tuba when I was twelve. I headbang when I listen to Verdi.

As a result, people are often surprised when they find out that my favourite type of music is heavy metal.

It's really not that surprising - classical music and heavy metal are incredibly similar. In fact they need not even be different things - for example 'Hall Of The Mountain King' by Edvard Grieg, performed by Apocalyptica (four cello players who started off classical, and then diversified into metal).

Listen to 'Dies Irae' by Verdi, and then listen to 'Disposable Heroes' by Metallica. They're practically identical. Stylistically, classical music and metal are practically the same thing. They involve complex instrumental solos underscored with a supporting mix of instruments. Think of a metal band as a chamber orchestra on steroids.

In an orchestra, the viola is the equivalent of a bass guitar. Most of the time they started off as violin (or guitar) players (depending on which side of the metaphor you're following) getting all the - to quote Frank Zappa for a moment - 'bitchen solos', and then as the result of internal politics they get demoted to where they just stand (or sit) there playing sustained notes from here unto oblivion.

Admittedly, every so often, someone bucks the trend - Bach's 'Ciaccona', or '(Anaesthesia) Pulling Teeth' by Metallica - but generally, they're the butt of everyone else's jokes.

The double basses are just like the synthesiser player: they're perpetually frustrated because they're not a violin/guitar player. Their part is alright, but it's never amazingly enjoyable. Or challenging. Or interesting.

Brass players could are quite similar to the lead singer - they leave a lot of spit in the area around them. I'm in a brass band, and the moment rehearsal finishes, you walk with your eyes on the ground so as to avoid the massive pools of spit left by people's instruments. I the same way, lead singers spag. It's a fact of life. Sitting in the orchestra pit of anything is particularly unpleasant if you're a tuba like myself and you're near the back of the pit - right in the middle of the 'wet zone'.

Percussionists (with the exception of mallet and timpani) are just like drummers - half the time they can't read music. The Muppets really got it right when they made Animal the drummer.

Of course, the marvellous thing about metal bands, is there's minimal ponciness in their music. Ponciness is something I thoroughly dislike in music. Debussy was good at ponce. Admittedly late Mozart, Verdi, Wagner, Rossini, Handel etc. managed to compose some reasonably hardcore music, but the (in my opinion) good stuff is far outweighed by fluttery little flute cantatas and violin concertos.

There's also minimal postmodernism in metal. Don't get me wrong - I thoroughly like the concept of postmodernism in historiographical study, but I really dislike it in the arts. Listen to Elliot Gyger's 'I Am Not Yet Born' (on the Shall We Dream CD of the Sydney Childrens Choir - I'm pretty sure they're the only ones to ever record it); To Look Yet Not Find by Brett Dean; anything by Paul Stanhope or Joe Twist. Postmodernist music is unpleasant. It's unpleasant to sing (especially I Am Not Yet Born. Singing compound fourths is not fun.) and it's unpleasant to listen to. It's just not nice.

Finally, metal has the advantage of sounding astoundingly meaningful when written out. For the majority of last year, the folder in which I stored my school books had the lyrics from 'Welcome Home (Sanitarium)' by Metallica and 'On Suuri Sun Rantas Autius' by Matti Hyökki (a good performance of it is by the Tapiola Choir from Espoo, Finland. If you can't find that one, Gondwana Voices sang it in a collaboration with the Tapiola Choir on the New Light, New Hope album). People would read the Metallica and be amazed at how deep it was, did I write it myself etc. I would then rather enjoy their expressions when I told them it was Metallica. Metal, written out, sounds fantastic. I even enjoy the pleasantly ironic juxtaposition of the music with the lyrics - you wouldn't think they could attach a guitar riff to what is in essence rather good poetry, but they manage.

Which brings to mind one final pair of songs which are remarkably similar: On Suuri Sun Rantas Autius and Low Man's Lyric by Metallica. Listen to them. You'll see.