Matt Ingenthron's Stream of Consciousness

Sunday November 26, 2006

Dvorak 7 and new John Harbison work at LA Phil

Saturday the 25th brought another in the LA Phil concert series. At first I was thinking of trading the ticket, but a performance of a new John Harbison piece was compelling enough to keep it. I'm not a huge fan or anything, I just like to tickle the synapses with something different more often than not.

I did enjoy the Harbison Bass Concerto. Yes, I did say Bass Concerto. It was hard to hear the bass during particularly subtle moments, but in general, it was a nice diversion from some of the other concerts. I did attend the pre-concert lecture, where the soloist and Mr. Harbison spoke about the thoughts behind the piece and solos for such an instrument. There was a bit of an in-depth disucssion of how different musicians tune the instrument (in 4ths or 5ths) and how people hold the bow that was interesting, but not as interesting as other topics from these folks could have been I'm sure.

I have to say, the Dvorak was better than I thought. I could live without the first two movements, but I very much liked the third, and the fourth was a good closer.

Wednesday April 19, 2006

New band to check out!

The Raconteurs may just be the most interesting band I'm looking forward to seeing this summer (rumor has it Radiohead will be in LA too, but that's not been announced yet to my knowledge). The Raconteurs are coming though.

For those who don't care at all about music, but care more about technology, you may want to check out the website. It might make you nostalgic. It's almost funny, since it doesn't even have the extended IBM character set-- you know-- the thing that made ancient DOS programs suddenly have dropshadows on 'windows'.

Anyway, The Raconteurs consist of (in the order on their website) Jack Lawrence, Brendan Benson, Jack White, and Patrick Keeler. Jack White (White Stripes) and Brendan Benson already have had amazing careers. The other two are from The Greenhornes. I've been listening to Steady as She Goes mixed in with some other things most of this afternoon. I highly recommend checking it out.

Friday August 26, 2005

More Concertgoing Before the Season's End

It's been a busy couple of weeks, so I apologize for no recent updates.

The awesome concert recently was the White Stripes. I'd initially intended to buy tickets for two different dates, but I accidentally bought two sets of tickets for the same night. The good news was I was able to sell the tickets. The bad news is after seeing the first concert, I really wish I'd had tickets for the next day. I tried on Ticketmaster, but no luck.

The concert? It was amazingly good! Loads of fun. The only weirdness was the "Passive Manipulation" song performed by Meg (complete with tympani).

It's a little weird in and of itself, but she sang it twice. I think the second one was a mulligan, as she was quite out of tune the first time.

The other amazing thing is that Beck made a guest appearance. They did one Beck song, and then Beck played bass guitar for one of Jack White's songs. Both were probably sketchy when it comes to music, but it was still cool to see. I wish I had a recording of that concert.

Last weekend I saw Coldplay at the Verizon Wireless Amphitheater. It was quite a good concert (Chris Martin knows how to make people get into a concert), but I have to say I've not been as into Coldplay with the release of X&Y. I don't know why really. I think it's too much falsetto. A worthwhile concert, but last time I saw Coldplay, it was in a smaller venue and I was much closer. This was crazy, the band was a long, long way away. And I'd bought tickets off of the Coldplay presale.

Thursday July 28, 2005

One more concert: Hot Hot Heat One more summer concert. Last night was Hot Hot Heat from Canada.

A good friend of mine turned me on to Hot Hot Heat a little more than a year ago. At the time, Make Up the Breakdown was the most recent album. I picked it up after listening to the previous EP of my friends. They're a fun band. Nearly all the songs sound the same, but they are all fun to listen to and interpret.

One favorite lyric: "You are my only girl, but you're not my owner girl".

or, "I was picked up and then put down in a culture counter clockwise turned around"

or, "Goodnight, goodnight, you're embarrasing me, you're embarrasing you".

They're known more for Bandages off of Make up the Breakdown than they are for any of the older stuff or the newer stuff on Elevator. If you have a chance, download a track or two. They're just fun to listen to. Very much a 'pop' kind of a rock band (and most 'pop' music doesn't appeal to me-- I guess I just never was popular).

The sad part about the concert is they weren't the headliner. Garbage was. I stayed for some of Garbage, but I'm not all that into them. I have to admit, they were better than I thought they'd be, but I went in with low expectations.

I wish I could have had a bit more Hot Hot Heat and I wish they had better audio checks and what not. The lead singer was clearly having trouble with his vocals getting out.

I hope they come back to LA soon!

Two summer concerts to go: Coldplay and White Stripes. I accidentally bought two sets of tickets to White Stripes-- if anyone needs a pair for the concert on the 21st, let me know. :)

Weekend concertgoing: Beck

I saw Beck this last Saturday. Very, very cool.

His full name is Beck Hansen. He's an interesting, modern musician. The way one revewier (whose name I can't remember and statement I can only paraphrase) best described Beck was as a musician who 'picks up the rubbish of popular culture and mixes it in an eclectic way'. I don't think I'm doing that quote justice, but you get the gist of it.

The only disappointment is that Beck seemed somewhat tired. He made mention of the fact that it was the last show of the tour. We didn't really get an encore. :(

Regardless it was an awesome concert. If you have a chance to check out Guero, the most recent album, I'd have to recommend it.

Monday July 25, 2005

Sane blog editing thanks to bloged!

I'm finally able to edit my blog without having to type angle brackets, yet have something legible! I'm not afraid of typing HTML, but it's not the most efficient way to create a quick blog entry.

Thanks very much to Henry Story's awesome work, I'm now able to use bloged running (in pure Java of course) on Solaris 10 on my laptop to edit a blog like any other sane person would use. I've lurked on the mailing list for some time, and even downloaded and ran the code once before, but since my blog wasn't snip-snap or a dumb directory, I couldn't do much with it until the latest release.

This means you'll see more blog entries out of me in the near future. :)