The concert went pretty much like I expected: when they rock, they rock hard, and I enjoy it; when they don’t, they don’t, and I don’t. But their ballads aren’t bad. The only part I found cringeworthy was (synthesized) xylophone at the beginning of “Dog & Butterfly”. Ann got the pipes in the family, and they are still as strong as they were 40 years ago, but I enjoyed Nancy’s singing more on the gentler tunes. They played until 10:00, then came back for a two-song encore. How did bands and promoters get the idea that an hour and a half of music is acceptable? If you aren’t willing to play a longer set, bring along a younger band and give them a chance to get their music out there while your fans are arriving. Anyway, they had closed the main set with “Magic Man”, “Crazy On You”, and “Barracuda”, leaving me wondering what the heck they had saved for an encore. It’s an odd choice for a band with a moderately deep catalog of their own, but you won’t hear me complaining about covers of Led Zeppelin and The Who. In the middle of “Love, Reign O’er Me” the lead guitarist broke a string, but you wouldn’t know if you didn’t see the string hanging off his headstock. That’s impressive.

I took off Wednesday and Thursday to visit with people then, returned to festing on on Friday night to see The Arrogant Worms, a comedic folk trio. As in the past, the Worms’ lyrics and banter were hilarious, and customized to the extent that it is clear most of their non-musical humor is made up on the fly. They don’t display any better musicianship than what is necessary to perform their simple arrangements, and they aren’t even very good singers, but their songcraft is top-notch. Unfortunately, we were too late to get under the tent at Plaza Tropical and had some very annoying people behind and beside us talking through the entire show.

I then stayed for The Insidious Rays, who I had also seen in the past. This was a surprise, because when I saw them two years ago they announced it would be their second-to-last performance ever. They said the same thing this year, so maybe this is part of their shtick? I remembered them as playing experimental, psychedelic surf rock, and some of their music I still would describe that way. But there were also heavy punk and grunge influences, and even some earsplittingly awful noise-rock. All of the vocals were unintelligible, and I’m sorry to say I did not enjoy their show very much.

On Sunday I caught just the end of a set by local Talking Heads tribute group Start Making Sense. They were even better than the year before, and had an unbelievable crowd. It was a cool Saturday night, but some of those people have to have been there just to see the band. After that came Eric Steckel, who for the first time had his own band instead of being backed by Craig Thatcher’s group. He remains a prodigy, but I was not all that impressed with the other members of his power trio. Perhaps it was because some of the older material would not work with a single guitarist, but much of his set was new music. This was a nice change; I’ve heard him play “Come On In My Kitchen” and “Sweet Melissa” more often than I need to. The blues is still a strong influence on his playing, but this new music is more like virtuosic hard rock in the vein of Satriani or Vai. Like some other guitarists who are perhaps too technically gifted for their own good, his solos all sound great, but they also all sound the same, because the audience cannot connect emotionally with what he is playing. This was supposed to be a 2 hour concert, but they stopped after 75 minutes. Fortunately, we got a 20 minute encore followed by a 15 minute second encore.

Sunday was rainy in Bethlehem, so I headed home, sweet home.

Monday night I made it out to see West Side Winders, a rockabilly power trio from Chicago. About 15 minutes into their set all power to the stage was lost, and it took 20 minutes to get it up and running again. In the meantime, the guitarist picked up an acoustic and walked around the crowd playing Elvis covers with his drummer playing on chairs, tables, and the ground. I was only close enough to hear a small part of this, but it was a very cool, professional response to disaster. Only one song after power was restored the guitarist broke a string. (And did not have a backup ready to go; a very unprofessional response!) Instead, while a stagehand restrung his Gretsch he went acoustic again (with amplification this time) and they played what was the highlight of the show for me: “Folsom Prison Blues” with the third verse cleverly replaced by the lyrics from the first verse of “Pinball Wizard”. However, when they later spliced “The Beverly Hillbillies” into “Sixteen Tons” it already seemed like a tired gimmick to me. They also played a long medley of quotes, which I generally find distasteful. But how can I argue with seamlessly flowing from Henry Mancini to Led Zeppelin and Black Sabbath (and The Knack, and prototypical surf rock, and I would imagine some other references that I did not recognize)? I do wish they had played more of their own originals, because their lyrics were full of wry humor.

After that was Ana Popovic (guitar/vocals) and her band (organ, bass, drums). Officially she is a blues musician, but there were not many 12-bar progressions in her setlist, and the band has much more of a funky rock vibe. The first few songs left me unimpressed, but they eventually opened it up and I could see how calling her “the hottest guitarist in Europe” might not be hyperbole or innuendo. Near the end of the show they played a long, unfocused cover of Hendrix’s “House Burning Down”. I can appreciate not wanting to go with the overused “Voodoo Chile” and “Little Wing”, but this was not a good choice. To their credit, the band played for their full alloted two hours without a set break. Apparently this year they have asked all of their closers to go right through until 11:00 rather than stopping early and coming back for an encore (at least, that’s what Popovic and the Mighty Flyers did). Anything that takes 5 minutes of silence / applause out of the set meets with my approval.

You can find these cultural touchstones in music, when Metallica plays a melody from West Side Story, when Neil Young sings about Johnny Rotten and the King, when Bruce Springsteen writes an album based on the character of Tom Joad, and even (ugh) when Kid Rock fuses Warren Zevon and Lynyrd Skynyrd. Examples abound in literature, such as Joseph Heller’s take on Achilles, any other work that uses that phrase, the similarities between one of Heinlein’s titular characters and a familiar figure (along with a vast number of other literary characters), and Nabokov’s obsession with The Raven. Television and film do the same thing: Community’s Abed builds a job as a short-order cook into a ruthlessly efficient underground market in chicken fingers that would impress Michael Corleone, Spaceballs visits the Emerald City in addition to its more obvious parodies, etc. Also, computer games, youtube videos, visual art, and any other form of creative expression. It is even useful in “real life”, like when someone inserts a quote from a movie into their conversation.

Tapping into someone’s cultural memory is a very powerful thing. Comparing a new situation or character to one with which people are already familiar can provide as much detail as thousands of words. When I described the name of a bill as Orwellian, it saved quite a bit of explanation of the absurdity of naming something as its exact opposite. Through the power of analogical reasoning, it may even be possible to succinctly communicate a concept that cannot be expressed directly. This is exactly what I was trying to do when, recently struggling to describe exactly my interpretation of the psyche of Michael Scott, I instead compared him to Willy Loman. Placing cultural memories in different settings or scenarios from those in which they originated can be fantastically humorous. Shared cultural memories can help to form bonds between people as well. This is my goal (and to get a laugh) when I reveal my poker hand with the proud statement “all red”.

All this is well and good, but what happens when someone attempts to communicate through a cultural memory that their audience does not have? Part of my decision to start reading through parts of the literary canon a few years ago was to expand my cultural memories. I made a very poor choice in starting with what many consider the greatest novel ever written. While the primary reason that I struggled until eventually realizing it was making me dread reading and gave up was the writing style, it would have been largely a futile effort even if that were not the case. To gain anything more than a surface understanding of Ulysses, it seems one must have a working knowledge of the entire source material of Western civilization.

In the case of Ulysses, much of what I was missing was material I had never read. My much larger concern, however, is that cultural memories rarely seem to make it into the long-term storage center of my brain. I can remember obscure and useless facts quite well and experiences of my own life fairly, but my memory of fiction is exceedingly poor. I was able to come up with the examples above largely from material that I either had been required to study academically, love dearly, or have consumed often or recently. I started writing short reviews of everything I read here partially to mitigate this problem (also, I crave the opportunity to discuss these works with others who might comment), but I am not sure it has worked well. For most of the books I have read in the last four years I could probably write everything I remember in a fairly short paragraph, and most of that would come from the first 10% of the book. “To The Lighthouse” is a great example — I remember only that a young child hoped to visit a lighthouse, his father told him it would be impossible due to weather, and his mother wanted him to hold out hope. I believe that was on the first page or so. Of the actual trip to the lighthouse I can remember very little. I think they were boarders in someone’s home, along with an artist. There was someone else who belittled the artist because he believed women could not be creative. Some people visited a beach and lost a piece of jewelry. Or maybe that was from a different novel. The only thing I can say for sure is that I did not enjoy it.

There are certainly times when this lack of long-term cultural memory can be useful. I can watch a movie, read a book, and play a computer game that I have not touched in several years and be surprised by the punchlines and surprise endings as if I was experiencing them for the first time. But most of the time it is quite frustrating. When people quote movies at me, I more often than not can recognize that there is supposed to be some subtext but do not know what it is. In the books I am reading I know I am missing layers of meaning that I should be able to understand. When I must wait years between installments of a series, I have no chance of being able to understand the latest installment without re-reading its predecessors.

Perhaps I should just be glad that my brain decides to save programming language syntax and the route to the grocery store instead of plot points …

My thought is that a lover of electro-pop and rap music would never choose to pick up the guitar, but would instead practice scratching records, mixing samples, singing, etc. The kinds of interests that would entice someone to learn to play guitar are exactly those that the music of Ke$ha repudiates. So does that guitarist actually love his work, or has he resigned himself to the fact that he will never be respected by his peers and accepted this as a way to monetize his talents? What about all of the instrumentalists supporting boy bands, pop divas, or American Idols? Have any of them ever gone on to successful careers of their own? Am I just closed-minded when it comes to musical genres?

It strikes me that you might ask the same question about the members of the house band on SNL and other late-night television shows? Most of those guys are jazz musicians who took an opportunity for a steady paycheck. They have to play commercially-acceptable music on these shows, but it does not seem quite so antithetical to their art. Certainly, members of these bands such as Michael Brecker, Lou Marini, Doc Severinsen, and Branford Marsalis have had acclaimed careers outside of those bands.

There are legitimate questions as to whether or not the same people liking two artists really makes them “similar”, and the process of trying to embed very high-dimensional data into the plane inevitably results in artifacts that appear to affirm relationships that do not actually exist. Looking at this map, is the music of Duke Ellington really that similar to the music of Eminem and that distinct from Lee Morgan? Are Morgan and Ellington really more similar to Snoop Dogg than to each other and very far from Louis Armstrong? What does Garth Brooks have to do with rhythm & blues?

Not surprisingly, my own interests tend toward the extremes of the map, away from the vast desert of mainstream pop in the center of the continent and the northwestern electronica steppes. Start with the jazz musicians at the southwestern coast; move eastward through soul, funk, and blues to classic rock; drift northward through hard rock and into heavy metal (but avoiding the peninsula of extremism); then tiptoe to the northwest, sampling a taste of modern rock but never quite comfortable until you reach the punk coast; continue through to the peninsula of ska; and from there take a boat east to the isle of reggae. Where do you draw your own citizenship?

I created a last.fm account for myself a few months ago. If you too have an account, please be my “friend”. As a way to keep track of what I have listened to and look for trends, I find the service very useful. I am not so sure about its utility as a recommendation system, however. Last.fm uses what appears to be a binary model of interest: either you have listened to a musician or you have not. Perhaps they use weights based on how often you listen to a band, but the fact that some artists are much more prolific than others would complicate that. There is no easy way to differentiate between that which you love, like, or merely tolerate. (It is possible to “love” individual tracks, but I do not think that this is used for recommendations.) More importantly, there is no way to distinguish between musicians that you have not listened to because you are unaware of them and musicians that you have not listened to because you hate their music. Any system that attempts to learn without any negative examples is going to have serious difficulties.

Long ago I set out to create my own music recommender system for several class projects and my own interests, but found the task far too large for a single person. My system was to be album-based, so that it can work in spite of artists who have evolved significantly over their careers. Instead of the ambiguities in the last.fm data, users would be able to rate albums on a numeric scale, and would be encouraged to rank some music that they are familiar enough with to know that they do not like it. It would attempt to collect other data about albums (the year they were released, producers who worked on them, whether they are studio / live / compilations releases, etc) and about users (age, gender, geographical location, etc) to explicate how those features might explain some users’ ratings. Users would be able to generate custom recommendations by choosing an algorithm (k-means clustering, singular value decomposition, …) and a data source (user’s ranking, album data, user demographics) instead of the default. Unfortunately, even if I had been able to find the time to implement all of this, collecting all of this data from a large sample of the population would be impossible. That is the genius of last.fm; while the informative content of the data may be weak, it is collected automatically from people who opt-in.

I became a member of Pandora back when you actually had to pay for an account. I love the idea of their Music Genome Project attempting to find similarity based on actual musical characteristics, but they often seem to find the most superficial relationships while ignoring the factors that are important to me. Their system has a tremendous knowledge engineering requirement to determine the “genetic code” of each song, and it is amazing that they have been able to accomplish this feat. But does it actually make good recommendations? Only partially, in my experience. Based on a playlist of thrash and mainstream metal, it has selected the song “Hitman” by Metal Church for me. This is good; I like the song. But Pandora has played that song for me dozens of times and never any other track by Metal Church. It is possible that this is the one and only song they ever wrote in the style of music that I enjoy (I’ve not yet actively sought to hear the rest of their catalog), but this seems unlikely. If one of the objectives is to help me discover new music that I would like, then a little variety would be nice.

I did see three other openers, all of which were quartets. I believe they all played original music. (The songs from the last one sounded familiar, but I feel the same way about all music in that style.) I did not catch the first band’s name, but I think they may have been the Brendan Quinn Band. Their sound was purely blues-rock, but none of their songs were based on a blues progression. They were not bad, but nothing you could not hear in a pub in every community. The next band was Voice Of Reason, which played in a style like thrash metal but slowed down 20%. They had a powerful, operatic vocalist who sounded a lot like Bruce Dickinson to me. The rest of the band played like face-melting clockwork, but it was strictly rhythm. I would definitely see them again, but hope they add some serious lead guitar. I did not hear the third band’s name either, but they played modern rock. Not my thing, but they did it well.

The headlining Blue Oyster Cult came on just after 10:00, and played until 11:40. Instead of current member Richie Castellano on keyboards, guitar, and background vocals, former bassist Danny Miranda was featured in that role for this show. Allen Lanier he is not, but he filled in well enough. Rudy Sarzo looks almost exactly like videos from playing with Ozzy 25 years ago: rail-thin with overly long, spindly limbs and an impressive mane of hair. The rest of the band look like fairly typical, doughy middle-aged men. My memory of the setlist and rough order is: “This Ain’t The Summer Of Love”, “Before The Kiss, A Redcap”, “Burnin’ For You”, “Buck’s Boogie”, “The Vigil”, “Shooting Shark”, “Then Came The Last Days Of May”, “Black Blade”, “Godzilla”, Guitar Solo, “(Don’t Fear) The Reaper”, and encore “The Red And The Black”. The only adventurous choice was “The Vigil”, but it was surprising to not hear “Cities On Flame”. I cannot complain about the length of the show of any of the choices, but I sure would have liked to have heard something from one of their two most recent albums and one of their audience sing-alongs such as “I Love The Night” or “Golden Age Of Leather”.

During the first two songs I was concerned that Donald “Buck Dharma” Roeser was having an off night. Fortunately, after that he retuned his instrument (one of those strange looking guitars with no headstock and tuners at the bridge) and played like a man possessed for the rest of the show. On most songs he completely abandoned the solos he had recorded back in the day for blistering new ones. He especially killed on extended versions of “Burnin’ For You” and “Then Came The Last Days Of May”, but was fantastic throughout. Sarzo also put his own stamp on the songs rather than copying Joe Bouchard note-for-note, and it sounded good in most places. Due to the large proportion of the concert given over to the more radio-friendly portion of their catalog, I think Buck had more lead vocals than Eric Bloom. Between that, Buck’s incredible lead guitar work, and Eric’s pedestrian rhythm playing, it really seemed like the band is now Buck’s vehicle and Eric is as much in the background as the replacements filling out the band.

As I might have expected from seeing one of my very favorite bands, this was one of the best concert experiences I have ever had, well worth the 2.5 hour drive each way.

This instrument would consist of essentially a keyboard connected to a 24-track mixing board and a computer. When a key on the keyboard was depressed, the frequency associated with that pitch would be sent to the computer, which would generate a sine wave at that frequency. It would also generate a sine wave at each of the significant overtones of that frequency — an octave above, an octave + a fifth above, 2 octaves above, 2 octaves +a major third above, and so forth. These individual waveforms would then be mixed in proportions specified by the mixing board before being sent to a speaker. The first sixteen or so faders on the mixing board would control the intensity of the first 16 members of the harmonic series. The remaining 8 could serve auxiliary purposes, such as one that boosts the power of all even-numbered harmonics, another for all odd-numbered harmonics, another for overall volume, etc. A person would play this instrument with one hand on the keyboard to control pitch and one hand on the mixing surface to control timbre in real-time.

Because I lack both the electrical engineering skills and free time, this has remained only an unimplemented idea for many years. Today, while scouring the Internet to determine what keyboard instrument makes the percussive sounds of the first solo in “Time Of The Season”, I discovered that the idea described above is essentially that of the veritable Hammond organ, invented 75 years ago, and that the idea of custom-building a particular timbre through combining different members of the harmonic series is as old as the organ itself. The Hammond, and certainly the stops on a traditional pipe organ, are not necessarily designed to be adjusted while playing, but this is a possibility.

The only benefit that my device would have over the Hammond organ would be the ability to find timbres across a more continuous spectrum and greater ease of adjustment while playing. This last benefit may give it the ability to much more realistically mimic the sound of acoustic instruments however, since the timbre of an instrument often changes rapidly between the attack of a note and when it is held over time. Perhaps some day my dream of a note that begins with the full sound of a saxophone, slowly morphs into the pure fundamental of a piano, and accelerates to a breathy flute will come to pass.

The first image shows my modal register, which extends from F#2 through F4, although I can only comfortably produce G2 through D4. According to Wikipedia, a bass’s range should be F2 through E4, so I cannot quite sing low enough or comfortably high enough to be classically a bass. The baritone range is G2 through F4, which fits me if you include those notes that I can hit but not necessarily hold. I find this somewhat surprising, because when I sang in a chorus during high school I had many more problems with the upper notes written for the basses than the lower notes. Classical composers typically respected the edges of the staff, but the music we had from contemporary composers often reached several ledger lines above. Musical theater was the worst, in which I was often forced to sing in the falsetto register as the men’s parts were written in the middle of the treble clef.

Fortunately, my falsetto range (pictured above) extends from F3 through G5, with G#3 through D5 comfortable. Unfortunately, I think falsetto sounds at best strange and at worst awful, and have almost never used it since those days when I was forced to do so.

The final image is of my range in the vocal fry register. I had known for some time that I could produce low pitches with a very gravelly sort of timbre, but did not actually know that it had a name until I started doing some research for this post. While I sound bad in the falsetto register, the sounds I make in the vocal fry register cannot be described as musical at all. Apparently there is also a whistle register, but I do not know how to access it if I am even capable of doing so.

Since high school the only non-pop singing that I have done is singing hymns in churches with traditional music. Although these are typically arranged for four-part harmony (and very accessible bass ranges), basically everyone sings the soprano line and I tend to join along. Given enough time to work on it I could sing the bass parts, but I lack perfect pitch and cannot find relative pitch quickly enough for sight-reading (up a fourth, that’s “Here Comes The Bride”, now down a sixth, that is “N – B – C”, etc). Thus, I usually end up singing the soprano part transposed down an octave. Then when the melody line rises above D5 I have to drop down another octave, then return to a single-octave transposition when the melody comes back down. If I start down two octaves, then I have to jump up when the melody goes below G4. Almost every melody extends below G4, and a great many extend higher than D5, which makes it impossible for me to sing them in the modal register with a fixed transposition. As you can imagine, this is quite annoying, which is why I expected my range to be significantly less than that of the average untrained vocalist.

Today I was bored with the styles of music that I usually listen to and decided to give an album by the Gin Blossoms (New Miserable Experience) a try. I must have acquired it at some point in the last 15 years, but I do not recall purchasing it and had no idea what it would sound like. After a few tracks I immediately recognized it, and decided to see what Pandora would find similar when the album finished. Since then I’ve been listening to Counting Crows, Sister Hazel, Toad The Wet Sprocket, Goo Goo Dolls, Wallflowers, Spin Doctors, and all sorts of songs based on driving, jangly guitars and huge vocal hooks.

I’ve never been a fan of any of these bands and never owned any of their albums, but they all sound familiar. I know them from one place: the radio on my school bus going to middle school and the first two years of high school. Perhaps it is just nostalgia or a strange mood, since I do not normally find such poppy music very interesting, but at the moment I have to say that there was some damn good music out at this time.

Saturday I saw blues trio Mike Dugan & The Blues Mission, who were quite good but not unusual in a way worth writing about. Grayson Capps & The Stumpknockers, by contrast, were quite unique. Their music is quite low-key for a four-piece electric blues band, but it was not exactly blues either. Rather, it was more like gritty electric singer-songwriter fare. Capps’s lyrics seemed rather contrived, but it was an entertaining show.

I had elected not to see Jonny Lang and George Thorogood because if John Lee Hooker, Jr. was anything like his father, then that free show would be just as good and in a much more pleasant venue. I was surprised to find that the son has not taken up the guitar but only sings. He was backed by the usual rhythm section and a guy who played mostly horn stabs on a synthesizer in a very funky style of blues-rock. It was not quite what I was expecting, but very good. Unfortunately it was getting cool and had been raining lightly but steadily for some time, so I decided to leave during the set break.

After the debacles that were Boston and Earth, Wind, & Fire last year, I decided that I would never again sit in the lawn section at Riverplace. Yet, by the time I got around to purchasing a pair of tickets to see Crosby, Stills, & Nash the only place a connected pair could be found was in the lawn seating or directly in front of it. The gates were slated to open at 6:00 for the 8:00 show, so we were in line to ensure good placement within the lawn section by 5:15. About 5:45 the heavens opened up and we crowded under the Hill To Hill Bridge to stay as dry as possible. The opening of the gates was pushed off until after the thunderstorm had passed, which happened at around 7:00. The forecast still looked grim for the rest of the night, but there was no turning back.

Fortunately the rain held off and the show started about 8:10 with Stills and Nash playing guitars and Crosby standing awkwardly while the trio sang. By the fifth song Crosby had picked up a guitar as well, and more band members joined as the night progressed, including Todd Caldwell on organ, James Raymond (and Nash for a few songs) on keyboards, Joe Vitale on drums, and a bassist whose name I could not catch. None of the members have quite the voices that they did 40 years ago, but there is something just as beautiful in their ragged, weary voices today and the songs are just as haunting as ever. Each seemed to be sober and enjoying themselves, something that I understand was quite uncommon through the previous two decades. They sounded, quite simply, excellent. Crosby mentioned several times his appreciation for the employees of Martin guitar (headquartered in nearby Nazareth) in the audience.

The setlist contained most of the group’s hits (“Helplessly Hoping”, “Wasted On The Way”, “Guinnevere”, “Marrakesh Express”, “Southern Cross”, “Long Time Gone”, “Deja Vu”, “Our House”, “Almost Cut My Hair”, “Wooden Ships”, “Love The One You’re With”, and “Teach Your Children”) as well as a pair of Buffalo Springfield songs (“Rock And Roll Woman”, “Bluebird”), a Rolling Stones cover (“Ruby Tuesday”), and one each from James Taylor (“You Can Close Your Eyes”) and Bob Dylan (“Girl From The North Country”). Nearly all of the non-cover material came from the group’s first two albums, with two songs from Daylight Again and none from CSN, American Dream, Live It Up, After The Storm, or Looking Forward. They certainly could have expanded the setlist, playing only an hour and 20 minutes with a 10 minute encore. Indeed, when the road crew began dismantling the set 5 minutes after the end of the encore with the crowd continuing to applaud the general mood was of disbelief. I heard others mostly complaining about the lack of “Suite: Judy Blue Eyes”, while I would have preferred “Dark Star” and “Cathedral” myself. My correspondence with other fans reveals that the band has been playing a somewhat longer show elsewhere, so I do not know why this was cut short. Perhaps the decision was made while the weather still looked threatening.

All of my fears regarding the venue proved true. The sound from the stage was quite quiet where we were sitting, at approximately the same volume level as normal conversation. You would think this would be fine but, as before, there were a group of people directly behind us who kept up a conversation through the entire first half of the concert. Half of their discussions, ironically, revolved around the low sound level, which was only a serious problem because of them. I am a very sedate person by nature, but we nearly had a confrontation. SteelStax cannot be ready fast enough.

Overall, the festival was another great success. I do wish they would return to the transportation system they used in years past. Purchasing a pin in exchange for unlimited trolley rides to, from, and around the various venues was a fantastically convenient system. I tried taking the LANTA Loop into town once and found it to be much more of a hassle; so much so that I did not bother with it again. I continue to think that the festival could do a much better job of attracting young people by increasing their coverage of hip-hop, metal, punk and other genres that it seems to relegate to the ticketed shows or ignore entirely, but I understand that there are people pushing just as hard to return to an exclusively polka-based lineup.