Soldier Songs - 9/6 and 9/7

"SOLDIER SONGS" Trailer from Corey Michael Smithson on Vimeo.

Tickets are currently available here.

Summer Camp

In June, the one and only Judas Priest released a brand new two-disc concept album called Nostradamus. Based on the title alone, I am thinking that it's probably either one of the best things ever, or the absolute worst. After hearing the single, however, I think it may well be both. (Hello orchestral introduction!) This gets to an issue I've been thinking about for a while: heavy metal as camp.

I've realized lately that part of what I love about metal is that, despite its inherent silliness, it takes itself so seriously. In this, it is both noble and totally absurd. Musically, especially within the Extreme Metal genres, the bands tend to be highly skilled, but the look of metal has always been problematic,

Judas Priest is a great examples of this. They are technical masters and musically solid--Painkiller is one of the best metal albums ever--but as for taste, well...

Alex made a great point about Judas Priest versus groups like Mötley Crüe, or even KISS. These latter groups, less musically skilled, seemed too aware of their over-the-top image to really be camp. To be camp--if we follow Sontag--something has to be so out that it loses the ability to judge just how out it actually is; and it has to be dead serious.

This in so many ways is the essence of what metal is about--extra-musically--and I can think of no greater example than Judas Priest. I mean come on, does it get any worse than this?



But could it get any better?!

"We learn from history..."

While researching Marc Blitzstein's The Cradle Will Rock, I encountered the following passage from Michael Parenti's Blackshirts and Reds: Rational Fascism and the Overthrow of Communism.

Somehow it felt relevant to share.

"Corporations like DuPont, Ford, General Motors, and ITT owned factories in enemy countries that produced fuel, tanks, and planes that wreaked havoc on Allied forces. After the war, instead of being prosecuted for treason, ITT collected $27 million from the U.S. Government for war damages inflicted on its German plants by Allied bombings. General Motors collected over $33 million. Pilots were given instructions not to hit factories in Germany that were owned by U.S. firms. Thus Cologne was almost leveled by Allied bombings, but its Ford plant, providing military equipment for the Nazi army, was untouched; indeed, German civilians began using the plant as an air raid shelter."

Eisler on Schönberg

"Long before aeroplanes were invented he anticipated the horror of bombing attacks on people in air raid shelters. He is the lyric composer of the gas chambers of Auschwitz, of Dachau concentration camp, of the complete despair of the man in the street under the heel of fascism. That is his humanity. It is proof of Schönberg's genius and instinct that he gave expression to all these emotions at a time when the world seemed safe for the ordinary man in the street. Whatever one may say against him, he never lied."

-Hanns Eisler, 1948

Guerilla Video

Newspeak performing 'sweet light crude' at Make Music New York.

Video by skwizzdemona.

a revolution of robots.

WALL-E is absurdly cute, ridiculously well-done, and ultimately quite moving. It proves, ironically, that there may well be no need for actors at all in the future, as long as there are programmers; that reality is creatable. (Although, I can't imagine that animation could have replaced the ever-skeezy Fred Willard as the single human actor on screen!) But what struck me in this film most of all was the strength of it's social criticism; this, I was not expecting.

Kids movies are good at this. If you go back to watch Who Framed Roger Rabbit, you'll find much of the same, (especially if you've read Eric Schlosser's Fast Food Nation for context.) One could also say the same about Ratatouille, though this might be more of a stretch. One finds this occasionally in popular culture, although it's usually done pretty cheaply, often through evoking fascist imagery. (See, for example, the sub-plot of Wicked...yes, I've seen Wicked).

But this was done well, I thought. Basically a Dystopian cautionary tale disguised as a kids film, WALL-E delivers its message strongly, if a bit too strongly at times via over-zealous monologues. As one might glean from my recent posts, I've been reading some Orwell lately, and so one could say that I am prone to Dystopian interpretations, but I was not alone in this opinion. EM leaned over to me at one point and whispered "This is some subversive shit."

The ultimate irony, though, is the audience. Here we are, a bunch of anesthetized Americans at the multiplex* sucking down cola, watching a film about anesthetized Americans at a proverbial outer-space multiplex sucking down cola--(well, liquid tacos). I imagine that many didn't even notice that the movie was about us; and that it was critical at that. This begs the question: what good is social criticism if no on notices?

What's more, as Roeper and Phillips said in their review: "There are a lot of movies that are anti-consumer, but you can still get the fun souvenirs!" And no doubt Disney has already started pumping the world full of more cheap plastic crap that we don't need. I hope at least they are using recycled materials, lest they create a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Though I have to say, the Buy N Large satire site is pretty fantastic. (Buy N Large is the Wal-Mart-type Big Brother that seems to have conquered the whole world. It envelops all nations under its banner. It is the ultimate victory of capitalism over, well, everything.)

In a nice twist, the site seems to have no mention whatsoever of the actual film.

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*Literally, we were at a hardcore multiplex in NJ. It was intense.

Thought for the day.

“Using the word ‘political’ in the widest possible sense. Desire to push the world in a certain direction, to alter other peoples’ idea of the kind of society that they should strive after. ... The opinion that art should have nothing to do with politics is itself a political attitude.”

George Orwell, Why I Write

Good idea...

...but I'm more of a loaded-handgun-under-my-pillow sort of guy.


(courtesy of EM)

U. Utah Phillips, 1935-2008

More soon...

New Life Goal

If I can continue to write pieces that make performers look this rockstar, I will die a very happy composer.

James Bobick singing Soldier Songs at the sitzprobe for VOX 2008. Photo (c) Jane Kung for New York City Opera

post-Vox tidbits

Many Thanks to Peter Matthews at Feast of Music for the kind words about the recent performance of Soldier Songs at Vox. There are some interesting bits about the piece that I thought I would mention here, just to provide a little background.

In his post, Pete talks about the final song heard at Vox, Two Marines. Like all the movements of Soldier Songs, Two Marines is based on a true story, although it is unique among the movements, in that the story was not culled from the interviews I conducted. Rather, it is based on a news story I heard in 2004 about Carlos Arredondo. I won't recount the story here, but you should check it out. Suffice it to say, it moved me deeply.

At the end of Two Marines, a quotation emerges on the piccolo, glockenspiel, and toy piano. A lot of people seem to think that they know the song was, but no one's quite guessed it yet. The song is, in fact, a World War One protest song, from 1915, called "I Didn't Raise My Boy To Be A Soldier." I included this quotation, first for what it brings to the subtext of Two Marines, but also for its suggestion that protest has always been as much a part of war as fighting, killing, dying, and mourning.

You can listen to the original here, in all it's crackly glory.


Photo (c) Carol Rosegg for New York City Opera

A fun game (with not-so-shocking results)

Good State

Bad State*

"Really?" State

*Originally from a Melly's Blog Post

"Modern musical technique is for use. ...

... The revolutionary composer inherits it, it is his jumping-off place. He should no more scrap it than a socialist society should scrap a machine because its functioning in a bourgeois system meant abuse or persecution or unemployment. ... I am as aware as anybody that the new music of the masses is not going to be the music of Schönberg or Stravinsky or Hindemith. But they were preparing the way. ... That they were unconsciously preparing the way, beginning something whose counterparts and possibilities they did not dream of, was none of their business. It is distinctly ours, who appraise them in order to use them; who digest in order to eliminate, but also to absorb."

- Marc Blitzstein, 1936

mp3s at wnyc

Terrance McKnight over at WNYC Fm has a recent post about the assorted Rzewski happenings around the city last week. Included in the post are live recordings of Newspeak playing Coming Together and The Price of Oil. I am listening to it now, and all I can think is: Mellissa Hughes is pretty bad-ass. Having seen her in a number of contexts over the last year, I am totally convinced.

The recordings up on WNYC are live, so, you know, there is some noise in there, but you get the idea. I am really happy with our version of Coming Together, but man, The Price of Oil is as ugly as, well, the price of oil. I wish the drums were louder in the recording for this latter piece. Not because I love drums...although I do love loud drums--something I hope to write about at some point--but rather because I know that in the space, the drums were REALLY loud, so I feel like you, the on-line listener, might not be getting the full, painful, effect.

Anyway, try to imagine really loud drums as you listen.

(And special thanks to Terrance McKnight for all his helping in bring our show to life!)

***Update: The video component has now been added to the page linked to above.***

meme.

Well, it's happened. I've been memed. Many thanks to Steve Smith for the much appreciate blogospheric exposure.

Here is where I explain the rules:

1. Pick up the nearest book.
2. Open to page 123.
3. Find the fifth sentence.
4. Post the next three sentences.
5. Tag five people, and acknowledge who tagged you.

Here is where I follow said rules:

"The lackeys that entered the office were five or six in number and the men in the shop were helpless onlookers while the scuffle went on, as their slightest move was met with a gun pressed to their ribs, no one being able to raise a hand, contrary to what the papers say. Ricardo and Enrique were literally dragged to a waiting auto, a block away, Enrique bleeding profusely from head to foot. The comrades were called yesterday for preliminary hearing, but not being yet represented by a lawyer, they refused to plead."

from A Letter from Maria Magon to Alexander Berkman
Life of an Anarchist: The Alexander Berkman Reader

And my tagged five:

Melly's Blog Mellissa keeps it real.


thank you campaign, Andrea has assured me that the posting hiatus will soon end. Judd also contributes.


ACB, So we all know that she's fantastic. You should read her blog.


Ted, Concert reports and posts on new pieces and various projects. Also, a fantastic picture of JC (no, not that JC) Check it.


The Motion Sick, Boston indie rockers, ex-band mates, d-list celebrity stalkers, occasional advice columns.

*So, apparently I don't read ACB's blog enough to know that she has been now hit thrice with this thing. Shame on me. So in this light I offer her an out, should she want it, and off as a fine replacement, Judd.