Obsessed!

Matthew Shephard (a differen't non-dead and very less famous one) made me incredibly curious about Raymond Scott, a brilliant, and somewhat bizzaare jazz (or maybe pseudo-jazz, there seems to be some debate) composer. Most people who have watched classic Bugs Bunny episodes will recognize pieces from his song "Powerhouse." Apperantly his music has been used in Animaniacs, Ren and Stimpy, and other animated cartoons. What I found really cool though was when I began reading about his invention, the electronium. It's a music generator of sorts. The way I understand it, it generates random sounds in different "instrument" categories and a composer listens to the sounds and decides whether they are appropriate for the current song he is creating. The noises are all electronically generated, it is essentially a primitive midi machine. But the sound clips I have heard of it are awesome. Apperantly this creation got him a job with MoTown as head of music research and development. This guy is incredibly awesome.

I disagree with his theory that musical art should be incredibly structured and that improvization is not a good thing. This is why people argue that he is in fact anti-jazz despite his jazzy sound. And I would tend to agree that it defies general jazz theory, but his music is wonderful none the less, and obviously follows jazz structures, so I would venture to say he is a jazz composer with his own unique musical theory.

What I think is so cool is how this guy saw that music would come to embrace technology in ways that many now still reject and despise. I want to know how much this guy has influenced modern jazz, hip-hop, electronica, and mixtures of the above, with his innovation. Or did he merely predict the future and not necessarily shape it.

EDIT in addition, if you want to see something interesting take a look at who is on the Raymond Scott preservation board. These are some pretty big names.

Another EDIT I would also just like to add that Raymond Scott has the coolest titles to his songs: "Dinner Music for a Pack of Hungry Cannibals," "Square Dance for Eight Egyptian Mummies," and "Dedicatory Piece to the Crew and Passengers of the First Experimental Rocket to the Moon" are some of my favorites.

-Brandon

I hate politicians

Republican's are supposed to be the responsible money handlers of the nation. Why is it then that the most respected Republican administrations all have a history of overspending and severe defecits? Well, the reason is fairly obvious, and rediculous anti-tax stance combined with a pro-military-funding stance makes for heavy losses. Fortunatly for them they have the social security fund to take cash out of so they can fund their oil wars. That couldn't possible lead to problems in the future, it's not like there are record numbers of people approaching retirement who are going to be taking that money.

Bush's most criticized action is obviously the war in Iraq. This war is causing some large financial problems in the administration. It's part of the reason that Bush has created the highest defecit in national history. The conservatives would have you believe it was the whole reason, as they feel justified spending that much cash on a "war for freedom." Everything I've read says that there would still be a defecit (much smaller, but there none the less) even without the war, which is pretty amazing considering the fact the a year before Mr. Bush entered office the US had the largest surplus in its history.

This financial situation has brought up some interesting new problems. First of all it appears that the White House has refused to fund a final (and already planned trip) to service the Hubble Space Telescope one more time. This seems to me to contradict Bush's earlier pro-space exploration stance. I thought, how dare he actually fall back on one of the few things I actually agreed with him on. Then I remembered the financial situation. In fact, I was reminded of it by another BBC article. Bush's largely unsuccesful war on terror has backed him into a position where he can no longer stay consistant on his earlier political stances. So he is forced into continuing a war that he is now stuck in. He, nor his administration can admit they've done wrong without hurting the entire far right and the military can't back out because they would leave Iraq in worse condition then when they came. So he is isntead forced to abandon the scientific innovation he publically supported earlier.

-Brandon

BLAT!

http://www.simonhoegsberg.com/
Stole this link from Fazed. It's an interesting idea, and there is something really cool about reading what these people are thinking. It's not any sort of obviously fabricated pseudo intellectual crap, these thoughts seem much more believable then any internal monologue you would hear in a movie or read in a book. I just thought it was kinda neat to browse through.

I watched Scratch with Steven yesterday. I'd seen it before but I hadn't known as many of the artists featured the first time I saw it. At the end of the film Cut Chemist and someone else (can't remember who) were doing a live performance using "In the Hall of the Mountain King." It sounded awesome and I have been looking for an mp3 of it, but apparently so are a lot of other people. It's a pity. I'd really like to hear the whole thing.

-Brandon

They're coming out of the goddamn walls!

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2005/01/20/1106110881621.html?oneclick=true
Apparently Sponge Bob Square Pants is "pro-homosexual" according to a member of some family "values" group.

The best part is that the guy criticizing it actually has none of his facts straight beyond the existence of the show. I love America.

Apparently pants are also tools of Satan.

I saw "Primer" last night at the Bijou Theatre. That movie is a total mind fuck. I need to see it again as I'm still a little confused. There was one line I didn't really catch in the film that I think turned out to be vital, so I was a little confused when it became important again. http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0390384/

-Brandon