I misread that as "messing with saliva".

Tristero's excruciating 80s-government-drugs-PSA language aside, the subject-dependence of this whole thing is mostly brought home for me by my finding most of the music he chooses stultifying (I cannot stand white folk music, and most classical music sounds dead and cold to me, like some arcane ritualised dance whose prescribed movements are preserved without the feeling they purport to represent). Only Howlin' Wolf touches me at all, and that largely by its association with music I do listen to.

The diagram popularised by Sadly, No! is pertinent here. Music, of which I am a lifelong devotee, has absolutely nothing to do with drug-taking, of which I am also a long-time devotee (I'm writing this, for example, under the influence of some coffee). Music is art. Rothko has it: "it is our function as artists to make the spectator see the world our way - not his way". Music is, to use the word generically, viewed. Drugs alter the lens we use to view. That talk of one as a substitute for another is bunk becomes apparent when you consider how often they appear in conjunction, and how dramatically music is altered when viewed through various lenses (with apologies to Metaphor for the mixing).

SeanH, #2;
Hmmmmm...I See your most classical music sounds dead and cold to me, like some arcane ritualised dance whose prescribed movements are preserved without the feeling they purport to represent and raise you one Glenn Gould.

You shouldn't be so closed off, man. There's a lot of fantastic stuff to listen to under the enormous classes you just ruled out. The interesting thing about what you just said, about the artist showing the audience the world he or she sees, is that there are many layers of artist in music; composer, performer, and in reproduction the producer/sound engineer has a huge influence on the finished work. This is as true of classical and folk as it is of electronica or rap.

In addition, I find the "I can't stand white folk music" extremely suspicious. What does "white" have to do with music? Honestly?

"Who need life? I'm high on drugs!"

Only I'm not, more's the pity, because there's a lot of music I'd like to listen to -- and play -- somewhat elevated, for a change, like the good old days.

Damn Puritans, anyway. If they want to get high on cold showers, hard work, and a sense of self-righteousness, I don't tell them they're wrong.

I can't say I particularly enjoy listening to Classical music either, but I certainly enjoy playing it. If anything, it's more fun to play than popular music due to its complexity. Plus, I don't think that any music is dead and cold while it's still being interpreted by the live and warm.

JimR #3: I've listened to plenty of classical music, by plenty of composers, in plenty of interpretations - Mozart to Bach to Schostakovitch to Wagner to Glass, mostly through a growing sense of cultural inferiority from my inability to access whatever it was everyone else was so rapturous about. Nearest I came was finding some mashups dj BC did of Glass compositions with hip-hop tracks. There's no need to assume that because I don't like something, I'm "closed off" to it. I've tried and tried, but I can't find anything there.

As for what whiteness has to do with it, introducing that was probably a mistake because white invisibility is such a bloody huge and amorphous topic, not to mention tangential. Sorry.

Patrick,

I don't disapprove of recreational drug use. I don't approve of it, either. I simply don't care about it. I don't think it's that important one way or the other. Taking salvia sounds as interesting, as appealing, and as profound as watching a 2 hour season opener for Battlestar Galactica. No more, no less.

But it's true, I admit; I find something genuinely funny, as in funny haha, about middle-class white guys claiming deep spiritual insight from their hobby. I like building model rockets and it's thrilling to watch them take off. But I don't get all woo woo about it.

The only problem with recreational drug use, as far as I'm concerned, is when they're abused. But aside from truly evil substances, eg cocaine, it's a lot easier to abuse tobacco or alcohol than it is most other recreational drugs. As usual, Americans find far too much meaning and intensity in their pleassures. It's a puritan thing, I think.

Really and truly, I wasn't angry at Neal. C'mon, now, do you think someone's serious when they call salvia the Walmart of psychedelics? What does that even mean??? But I was poking a little fun at his pretense. I'm not saying get high on life not dope. I'm simply nudging him in the ribs.

Tristero: my apologies! I think time dealing with the dregs of the internet has set my irony filters far too low - I got your post completely bass-ackwards, and share your disdain for people who find something unspeakably profound in the things we enjoy about the world. I'm justly chastened, and lesson learned :)

SeanH,

I agree with you when you say you haven't found anything there in classical music. That is because music is, despite what They say, not a universal language. You need to know what the music is trying to say on its own terms, not on your terms, and that is true whether the music is hip hop, songs from children in the Ituri rainforest, or the string quartets of Shostakovich.

You may find what classical music is all about irrelevant to your experience of what music should be and that's fine, no one cares.

But the reason you "can't find anything there" is not because there is nothing there but because all of us need others to help us understand strange musics. Listening to a lot of, say, gamelan will not make the music more enjoyable if you don't like the sound. But once someone explains it to you....wow! Which brings up another point we agree on.

Concert music comes with terribly unfortunate cultural baggage. Many of the people who proselytize for this music are insufferable. Don't let them make you feel, for an instant, culturally inferior. They, not you, don't know what they're talking about. Just don't blame the music for the fact that a bunch of bozos like it.

SeanH,

I posted before I read your apology. First of all, no apologies ever necessary. Truly. If people don't use strong language, I start to worry they don't care and that is far worse in my book!

On the other hand, I hope I haven't offended you in my suggestions regarding your interest, or not, in classical music. It is very difficult to talk about these things without sending like a pompous jerk. This is music I love, obviously, but I certainly don't think the less of anyone who doesn't! My wife and daughter are not big aficionados, for instance, nor are most of my close friends.

The only reason I suggested what I did is that you seemed genuinely puzzled by what you were hearing. And again, I don't see any reason why you shouldn't be puzzled: the music is very strange sounding until you understand its language. Ditto me and hip hop!

May I recommend to you the various TV series by the composer Howard Goodall.

No doubt they're floating around on the Tivo-in-the-Sky. He's enthusiastic. He's classically-trained. And he explains stuff by playing and singing the stuff.

Anyway, he reckons that classical music, up until the 20th Century, was essentially popular music. The rich paid for a lot of it, but it was something everyone could listen to. And then things went sour. You stopped being able to hum the tunes.

Luckily, there were people around such as Cole Porter and The Beatles, and they dragged the rather stale music of the Music Halls into what could be called the new classical music.

And people such as Bernard Herrmann were taking the ultra-elite ideas of the fifties and sixties and using them in movies. The soundtrack to Psycho was at the bleeding edge of the time's classical world, but who would care about it without the film?

As for white folk music, may I suggest The Kipper Family. I once had the pleasure of meeting them on a blacked-out Humber Ferry.

Only a little off-topic, may I recommend Pandora.com as a place to find music that you like?

You train it by telling it if you liked what you just heard.

I tried starting at two very different places, and eventually they converged.

(delurking)

#7: I don't disapprove of recreational drug use. I don't approve of it, either. I simply don't care about it. I don't think it's that important one way or the other. Taking salvia sounds as interesting, as appealing, and as profound as watching a 2 hour season opener for Battlestar Galactica. No more, no less.

But it's true, I admit; I find something genuinely funny, as in funny haha, about middle-class white guys claiming deep spiritual insight from their hobby. I like building model rockets and it's thrilling to watch them take off. But I don't get all woo woo about it.

Now that's what I call a high-quality paper tiger. Naked contempt wrapped in a glib coating of "just kidding!" Profundity can be found in the most anywhere - in the orchestra hall, in the cinema, on a sunny day at a lake, even on the couch watching a DVD. (such as The Passion of Joan of Arc featuring Visions of Light.)

(relurk!)

Kip W @4:

If they want to get high on cold showers, hard work, and a sense of self-righteousness, I don't tell them they're wrong.

I think the self-righteousness is the active ingredient there.

A.J. @14, a recent issue of VIZ had a brief "Meddlesome Ratbag" strip where she learns that a pair of newlyweds have moved into a fifth-floor apartment next door. Acting quickly, she constructs a tall and unwieldy pile of junk and places the baby's playpen on top of it and phones the couple to righteously inform them that they have no right to indulge their carnal lusts where a child might see them.

I've never managed to express it better. I see something like it when I turn into a road with nobody around for a half a block, and you can see someone trying hard to speed up enough that they can pretend I somehow inconvenienced them, and they can work up a nice froth of indignation, culminating in a little hornrgasm ("honk!").

tristero @#7:

But it's true, I admit; I find something genuinely funny, as in funny haha, about middle-class white guys claiming deep spiritual insight from their hobby. I like building model rockets and it's thrilling to watch them take off. But I don't get all woo woo about it.

Yet you seem to get all woo woo about your listening-to-music hobby. How is that different?

NelC #1: I misread that as "messing with saliva".

I like "Click Click Boom" by Saliva. The video, in particular, featured a moving transfiguration of a mosh pit hero.

(delurking again)

Myself at #13: Profundity can be found in the most anywhere.

This is what a 7-week old daughter does to your language skills. The sentences "Profundity can be found in the most unusual places." and "Profundity can be found almost anywhere." were fused together as the result of a terrible teleporter accident, resulting in a hybrid that should be put out of its misery.

(Preferably with a massive orchestral tutti courtesy of Howard Shore.)

(re-relurk!)

I want to know if white folk music is the Corries or Gjallarhorn or Stompin' Tom, myself.

Or, you know, the wide, wide country I left out of that question because I really oughtn't even consider trying to make that question comprehensive.

What, precisely, does Maddy Prior singing Puritan hymns ("Who would true valour see?") have in common with Rita McNeil singing "Men of the Deeps"? Besides compression waves?

tristero @7: "I wasn't angry at Neal."

Patrick didn't mention anger. He said "The practice of sneering at other people’s pleasures while claiming superior virtue for one’s own is no lovelier when liberals do it."

Think, oh William Buckley rather than Jerry Falwell. Still unlovely.

And this is as unoriginal a thought as any, but why oh why is a drug like this already banned in 6 states? Why upon hearing of a new psychedelic drug, is the default assumption danger and fear, rather than curiosity? (And I say this as someone who hasn't done dope since it started getting so strong in the early 80s, and never did anything else illegal.)

I can climb Mt Rainier and other tall mountains in my state without let or hindrance. People die on them every year; others are terribly injured. Legislators would never dream of outlawing climbing. But "recreational drugs"...

Argh. I can't even think straight about this; I go straight to annoyed and pissed off and frustrated and "Why are they like this!"

For what it's worth, the Harry Smith anthology (Tristero's first link, which I'm assuming evoked the "white folk" comment) has lots of black performers on it.

Mary Dell, #16: That was the impression I got as well.

Side comment: I have long recognized that it's much easier for me to accept someone not liking something I like (aka "mileage varies") than to accept someone liking something that I consider absolute garbage. However, I also recognize this as being MY flaw, not that of the people who happen to like things that I hate, and I strive to keep it under control.

As I'm enmeshed in an ongoing struggle with my brain chemistry (depression, more-or-less managed, I'd want to check out research on how Salvia works before I played around with it. I know what I'm doing to my system with alcohol and caffeine, and I acknowledge the self-medicating aspects; I like opiates WAY WAY TOO MUCH to risk them for anything short of a broken bone; and I suspect that some of the other things I played around with twenty years ago may have exacerbated my issues, no matter how much fun they were at the time.

So I wouldn't want to try any Salvia before I understood what it was doing to my serotonin and dopamine receptors.

As for music -- even though I studied flute when I was younger and played a fair amount of Baroque music, and sang Bach cantatas in my high school chorus, I seem to lack concentration when it comes to most classical/orchestral music. I can't help thinking of it as Film Score and trying to match it in my head to romantic vistas, X-wing dogfights, or what have you. I probably like Philip Glass as much as I do because I first heard his music in Koyaanisqatsi, and so there were visuals. The orchestral pieces that were written as ballet scores appeal to me more for the same reason.

To tie music and whiteness and drugs together: my theory is that marijuana was easy to outlaw because the perception was that it was a thing black people did, with their jazz and their dreadlocks. Scary! And because marijuana is one of the best mind-altering drugs (that is, hardly addictive at all, pretty much impossible to overdose on, not particularly causative of assholery, potentially even protective health-wise), it's the flagship for the rest. So because of racist cooties the whole armada was sunk.

You notice that far worse drugs which white people were long accustomed to, ie alcohol and nicotine, are perfectly acceptable. Morphine I think lost out because of its associations with the scary Orient.

II don't express "naked contempt" for Neal's attitude. I just think it's funny that educated middle class white guys need an excuse to get ripped out their minds every once in a while. I think it smells like Puritanism, like you have to justify what you're doing, as if the simple fact you enjoy doing it isn't reason enough.

You've never kidded a friend for getting a little too pretentious about his hobbies?

Look, whatever floats your boat. Including finding God in the things you enjoy. I simply find it amusing that someone like Neal has to justify something he enjoys as a quest for spiritual fulfilment.

Speaking of hobbies, listening to music isn't my hobby. It's part of my job (and it's also a passion which I've practiced every day, sometimes all day, for over 35 years). My hobbies include geology, rocketry, and blogging.

Sherrold @ 21 I can climb Mt Rainier and other tall mountains in my state without let or hindrance or put a lake boat in the Nisqually when the snowpack is melting or jump over Granite Falls. Minor hallucinogens are at least free of the need for search and rescue, or corpse recovery.

And dlbowman76, "Profundity can be found in the most anywhere" is full of profound music. Grammar and syntax are only models for expressing meaning, not meaning itself.

There's no poetry, and profound error, in assuming that activities one doesn't find pleasurable are by that fact either trivial or immoral. Making a better world probably does not involve making everyone else enjoy what I enjoy (although I can't see any harm resulting from more Mozart, Willie Nelson, and great big very smelly roses).

Tristero... Please take your comments about educated middle class white guys and shove them you-know-where.

re.: #25 - The history of Morphine (the opiate rather than the band, although that does slide on-topic rather neatly,) and public attitudes towards widespread drug-use in the west were really more transformed by an epoch: The Great Binge. In 1879, Cocaine was marketed by Merck as a treatment for Morphine addiction. It's major competitor drug sold by Bayer? Heroin. Add to this the effect of the Great War in producing many thousands of new chronic-pain sufferers, and well...

my theory is that marijuana was easy to outlaw

Naw. Marijuana was easy to outlaw because it's something that anyone can grow at home and get a product that's as good as any you can buy (just try that with beer, whisky, or music).

Since people can do it at home cheaply and easily, the Mafia couldn't make any money on selling it, and Congress couldn't make any money on taxing it.

Anything that Congress and the Mafia can't make money on is going to be illegal before you can blink.

[also delurks] I tend to see music as merely a method of tinkering with my brain-chemistry - a very effective one with few side-effects that I disapprove of (except for the constant expense of buying it or going to the concerts, but I am okay with this - on the other hand, I prooobably spend as much as my friends do on pot, so I have no legs to stand on). It's just a drug that goes in through the vibrations of the ear, rather than the digestion of the stomach.

JESR @ 27... Well said. And how are your roses? I take that they are great, big, and very smelly.

Serge, the roses are just beginning to open, although they are smelly indeed. The Buff Beauty that grows along the south wall spends the night breathing out apricot and rosewater sweetness, so that the act of opening the kitchen window becomes a trip in and of itself as waves of perfume roll in with the morning dew.

#24, Rikibeth -

I seem to lack concentration when it comes to most classical/orchestral music. I can't help thinking of it as Film Score and trying to match it in my head to romantic vistas, X-wing dogfights, or what have you.

I'm not quite clear on whether this is a problem because you think you shouldn't do it, or if it is a problem because you want to and don't succeed, but I think it is a perfectly acceptable (if possibly uncommon) way to enjoy classical music, and I'm pretty sure some non-ballet classical (the 1812 Overture springs to mind) that is intended to evoke exactly this activity.

Hm. I think maybe "evoke" isn't the word I wanted. "Inspire," or possibly "invoke" would be much more correct.

#35 - Perhaps you'd care to revoke?

I wish you wouldn't joke.

(Weak, I know. I need practice.)

Tristero, since you're here, I'd like to thank you for Voices of Light. (As tristero says, music is his job as well as his passion. This is one of his works, available in a good recording. I recommend it to everyone else reading; see tristero's very clear and useful liner notes and the whole libretto (PDF).) It's been a real comfort to me this year and last, particularly around the anniversary of my father's passing. There's something about the particular mix of elements that hits that spot in me where the music resonates and says, yes, this is how it feels.

I keep taking a stab at a longer review for my LiveJournal, but so far no soap. If that changes, I'll mail you a link. :) In the meantime, thanks again.

Like NelC, I misread that part of Patrick's post, only I misread it as "messing around with stevia."

"Oh, wow," I thought. "That must be like one heck of a sugar high."

JESR @ 33... opening the kitchen window becomes a trip

When Sue asks me to water the top level of our big flower bed, the bottom of my pants rub against some very bushy catmint. Then I come back in and, before I know it, Agatha the cat-genius is rubbing her head against my ankles.

Dave Bell @ 11: Anyway, he reckons that classical music, up until the 20th Century, was essentially popular music. The rich paid for a lot of it, but it was something everyone could listen to. And then things went sour. You stopped being able to hum the tunes.

I think it would be more accurate to say that classical music used to cater to listeners at all points of the complexity spectrum. People have been complaining about not being able to hum the tunes (or hear the words, or tolerate the dissonances) of the more esoteric contemporary-to-them composers since the Middle Ages, at least (who posted that French comedy video of the priest complaining about thirds? It's funny, and pretty accurate).

Often, yesteryear's impenetrable edifice is this year's popular sensation. Having recently been to sold-out, standing-O performances of Stockhausen's Hymnen and Messiaen's Turangalîla-Symphony (the latter by a community volunteer orchestra), I don't see any reason to believe that the twentieth century will be any different.

Rock and jazz (and maybe even folk, if you consider artists like John Fahey) play out the same way; both have traditionalists, experimentalists, and in-betweeners.

NelC #1: That was my first take, too. "Wow, are they doing some kind of weird biofeedback with hormones, and then measuring the levels in saliva?"

As an aside, if you're going to be genuinely happy or excited about something, you will be easy for outsiders to ridicule. (Anyone who has read SF for awhile has probably noticed this.) The alternative is being too self-conscious to really open up, and either not fully enjoying things, or not telling anyone about it. This applies, even to middle-class white guys[1] who get all excited about their oddball hobbies and interests.

[1] Why social class or race has anything to do with this is beyond me. Is it somehow more transcendent when a poor black grad student gets stoned to avoid working on his thesis?

dlbowman76 @ 29: Minor nitpick, I think the first wave of American opiate addicts was following the Civil War (which fits neatly with the timing of cocaine introduced as a cure), not the Great War (WWI). And what of laudanum, possibly one of the first "mother's little helpers," long before Valium?

(If this were Livejournal I'd be breaking out the icon with Paul Bettany as Stephen Maturin, captioned "got laudanum?")

R. M. Koske @ 34: I feel like I shouldn't do it, especially if I'm all dressed up in fancy clothes and sitting in Symphony Hall. It feels as though I ought to appreciate the music For Its Own Sake, because certainly the proper Bostonian matron sitting next to me can't be thinking about X-wings or hordes of Orcs, right? And of course there's the internalized voices of my music teachers scolding me for not continuing with flute lessons and thus not learning more music theory so I lack the foundation for appreciating the music's technical aspects.

I don't have that problem with the 1812 Overture. That has lifelong associations of picnic blankets, crowds, and fireworks, and therefore doesn't require Serious Technical Appreciation. The Calvin & Hobbes quote about "'Interesting percussion section.' 'I think those are cannons.' 'And they play this in crowded concert halls? And I thought classical music was boring!'" definitely applies.

Bruce @39, me too! I didn't misread the word itself, but I got it mixed up with stevia conceptually.

Speaking of hobbies, listening to music isn't my hobby. It's part of my job (and it's also a passion which I've practiced every day, sometimes all day, for over 35 years). My hobbies include geology, rocketry, and blogging.

So, it's cool to be passionate and woo woo about things that are part of your job, or that you do all day long, but not about hobbies?

Maybe you just need a better hobby.

Tim @ #41: "French comedy video of the priest complaining about thirds"

Oooh! That sounds amusing, but Google doesn't seem to help me find it. Do you have a link? Thank you for any leads you can provide!

#30 James D. Macdonald: Naw. Marijuana was easy to outlaw because it's something that anyone can grow at home and get a product that's as good as any you can buy (just try that with beer, whisky, or music).

Since people can do it at home cheaply and easily, the Mafia couldn't make any money on selling it, and Congress couldn't make any money on taxing it.

Well, that's probably an additional factor adding to the outlawing of marijuana, but I can't see it being a prime cause: there are lots of things you can do at home to avoid the economy that are legal... Like, growing tomatoes. I mean, they're a member of the nightshade family! Should dear little old ladies be risking themselves with such things?!

The campaign against pot, though, back in the day, focused on stuff that seems just totally nuts until you look at it as a standin for race fears. Like, "pot will make you violent and crazy"? What? But there's always the stereotype of the violent black guy to back that up.

On a separate thread, about classical music: my favorite modern classical is the stuff Joe Hisaishi does for Miyazaki films. I pop the soundtrack to "Howl's Moving Castle" into my car CD player at least once a month.

Rikibeth @ 43... certainly the proper Bostonian matron sitting next to me can't be thinking about X-wings or hordes of Orcs, right?

How do you know? Maybe she IS thinking of X-wings or hordes of Orcs. L'habit ne fait pas le moine, the French saying goes. The habit does not make one a monk.

If I hear any part of Holst's Planets, I think of John Glenn. If I hear Stravinsky's Rites of Spring, I think of dinosaurs.

Tristero #9: I don't think I agree. I would say that music is indeed a universal language. With several hundred dialects.

I love some classical music, while some leaves me cold. I love prog rock, but reggae, soul, modern jazz and the various outgrowths of disco mean nothing to me. And I like folk, but haven't met any blues that really grabbed me yet. I know these other forms use the same "words," the same sound-groups and rules of grammar, as the ones I like. It's not that I can't understand them. It's just that they don't quite sound right to me.

Hmm. Not sure if that made any sense. Oh well.

I just want to plug that Harry Smith anthology again, for those who missed it. This anthology's original release in the '60s was one of the major triggers of the folk revival. Listen to it and you will realize that traditional American folk music is deeper, broader and profoundly weirder than many people realize. (Nearly half the Holy Modal Rounders' material comes out of this set.)

Oh, and Harry Smith, the eccentric "old-time" music fanatic who put it together, was an Aleister Crowley follower and way into drugs, apparently including a wide range of psychedelics. I'm not sure how to tie that back to the theme of this post, but it sure feels like there is a connection.

Music certainly can alter your brain chemistry, or at least your cognitive state; I've posted here in the past about how intensive exposure to art has changed mine as profoundly as psychedelic drugs.

But it's definitely not the same... More later.

Eric @ 46: Sorry, I can't find it either. Perhaps the person who originally linked to it (Abi?) will refresh our memory.

Serge @ 49: I think I can guess what you think of when you hear "Ride of the Valkyries."

ISTR several past discussions with music snobs who'd been decrying the facile lyrics and repetitive melodies of Broadway musicals and modern pop music, to which I responded "Sondheim, and classical operas in their original historical context". But my personal familiarity w/ classical music is mostly through secondary exposure-- like Rikibeth, echoes/quotations in film scores[*], but also various re-contexted spoofs such as Looney Tunes, Tom Lehrer, Monty Python, and PDQ Bach-- though OTOH this is true for a lot of other music as well; just yesterday while reading ML, I had the shared experience of "Hey, waitaminnit-- you mean 'The Ballad of Irving' has an *original*?"

[*: which can be fun to listen to in their own right, as well as provide pointers to common sources such as Holst (the rest of "The Planets" beyond Mars[**]), Orff (the rest of "Carmina Burana" beyond "O Fortuna"), and Verdi's and Mozart's respective Requiems.]

[**: I was strangely entertained to read that Hans Zimmer had been sued for plagiarism over his score for Gladiator, after he openly cited "Mars" as an influence without realizing that "The Planets" was still under copyright.]

merryarwen @ 31, yes, exactly.

Under ordinary circumstances, I just keep my nearly-full 30g iPod on "shuffle" as I go through my day, but I've got specific artists/albums/playlists that I use for their mood-altering effects. If you walk in on me and I've got R.E.M.'s "Reckoning" playing, I'm probably trying to compensate for a nasty shock.

The most interesting thing about this is that I've been able to make it work for others. I have one friend who lives on the other side of the country, but when she puts up a Livejournal post describing her state of mind, I can read it, mentally listen to her voice, sit with it a minute, and then write back "Put on the soundtrack for The Harder They Come" or "This calls for Elvis Costello" or what have you, and usually, it works.

It even works if she doesn't already know the music. I introduced her to "Famous Last Words" this way and it did exactly what I'd hoped.

He was being silly.

Insert obligatory remarks about Humorless Liberals (TM)...

Clifton Royston @ 51: Nearly half the Holy Modal Rounders' material comes out of this set.

Although they were fond of substituting their own lyrics for the traditional ones...

That said, I was surprised to find out that such oddities as "Don't you marry a railroad man/For a railroad man will kill you if he can/And drink of your blood like wine" come straight from the originals.

Tim Walters @ 56, now I have to wonder if "railroad man" was a 19th-century adaptation of what maybe started out as "highwayman."

And does anyone know if there's research backing up my guess that the American ballad "Streets of Laredo" derives from the older "Pills of White Mercury?"

And, damn, I now really want that collection, and money's going to be tight over the summer. :(

Tim Walters @ 52... I can guess what you think of when you hear "Ride of the Valkyries."

And, for a long time, whenever I'd hear Copland's The Red Pony, I'd think of George Pal's Time Machine.

#42, albatross -

As an aside, if you're going to be genuinely happy or excited about something, you will be easy for outsiders to ridicule. (Anyone who has read SF for awhile has probably noticed this.) The alternative is being too self-conscious to really open up, and either not fully enjoying things, or not telling anyone about it. This applies, even to middle-class white guys[1] who get all excited about their oddball hobbies and interests.

I'm poking at trying to unlearn the habit of suppressing/hiding my joys (dorky and otherwise.) It's quite frustrating to know that I'm impeding my own happiness that way without having a clear path out of the habit.

#43, Rikibeth -

*nods* I can totally sympathize with that feeling. I think you should do it anyway. *grins*

I keep finding myself bored in the last third of live concerts. I seem to just hit my capacity for paying attention and wish I was anywhere else. (This has happened at classical concerts, an evening of middle eastern music and dance, and a performance of the Lord of the Rings Symphony*.) I find myself staring at the audience or performers and noting their clothes and habits and almost tuning out the music. I'm hoping the return of my mental acuity from going gluten-free will cure it.

*The LOTR symphony suffered, I'm sure, from my unfamiliarity with the films. My attention span wasn't up to them at the time they came out and I haven't seen them yet. It was extra frustrating because the concert was conducted by the composer. And I was bored. Argh!

Tim Walters: Well of course! What could be more traditional and authentic than changing the words and music around every which way?

Rikibeth: If "Pills of White Mercury" is about a rake dying of syphilis, then I believe I've read about that song connection to "Streets of Laredo". (Perhaps that would also put the former in the line of possible ancestry for "St. Louis Infirmary Blues", one of my favorite songs.)

R. M. Koske @59, yes, me too, and yes, last third of a classical concert! Although I don't feel QUITE as bad about looking at the audience and their clothing because 18th-century operagoers in their boxes did just the same.

It doesn't happen with rock concerts (no matter how long) because the music is broken up into 3-to-5-minute songs, with LYRICS. (I will not muddy the discussion by bringing up the Grateful Dead's "drums->space" interludes or similar offerings from other jam bands, because that never involved sitting still and only listening; at a minimum, there was trancelike dancing involved, and you can well imagine what other enhancements.)

And it doesn't happen with otherwise-silent films like Koyaanisqatsi because there are visuals, and an implied narrative.

I wonder if it has something to do with the way I process information -- I am and always have been the sort of person who can't remember a spoken instruction for long enough to complete the task, but give me something written down and it's as good as done.

Feeling in a dreadful fashion?
Why not try St. Matthew's Passion.

Breaking out in dreadful hives?
You're in need of Charles Ives.

Stuck in several bad positions?
You need Music for 18 Musicians.

Are your insides feeling gnawed?
Have a little Scheherazade.

Had an accident with the mascara?
Quickly! Put on some Rautavaara!

Left the door-key in the lock?
The only recourse is a little Bartók.

Clifton Royston @ 60, yes, that's the "Pills of White Mercury" I was thinking of. These guys learned their version from the Old Blind Dogs, same as I did. And I first learned "Streets of Laredo" in the recorder instruction book I had when I was seven years old, which is still upstairs in my music bag, I think, but the cover is worn off and I can't remember what it was called so I can't link to it on Amazon. It had a sepia photo of all the sizes of recorder on the cover, and was full of folk song snippets, most of which I would never have heard outside recorder class.

dlbowman76 @ 62, now I want Edward Gorey illustrations to go with that!

Isn't it always the way that right after one posts one's (filthy) prosody, it occurs to one that "Ligeti" rhymes perfectly with "Spaghetti".

And if you dig Edward Gorey, check out Tom Gauld.

Madeline F #47: In the case of marijuana, it was also the fact that it was used by, gasp, Mexicans that made it easy to outlaw. Cocaine was more directly associated with blacks, and opiates with Asians.

Meth, on the other hand, is mostly associated with underclass whites. And my impression was that cocaine was a mostly white/rich people drug, till the invention of crack.

I think these were all backfilled justifications, right? First you decide you want to ban pot or meth or whatever, then you find reasons.

#67 albatross: My suggestion is that first they decided they wanted to protect society from the shocking degradation it was heading for... Which "shocking degradation" was kids listening to jazz and using chemicals other than the fruit of the barley. The problem they were looking to solve was "brown people getting more visible", and the solution was, "let's try blocking off some stuff that THEY do that we don't (right? right?)".

If meth, or extacy, or another white-associated drug had existed back when the drug war started, they might have been given a pass... But probably only if they were used by the rich guys who made the laws, since classism is a factor, too. Now that the drug war is endemic, anything new is going to get plowed into it.

Rikibeth @ 57: now I have to wonder if "railroad man" was a 19th-century adaptation of what maybe started out as "highwayman."

Maybe... but are there songs accusing highwaymen of uxoricide and cannibalism?

Serge @ 58: My guess was this.

Clifton Royston @ 60: What could be more traditional and authentic than changing the words and music around every which way?

Depends on who you ask. A lot of Folks (as in John Fahey's "I can't be a Folk, I'm from the suburbs") were and are surprisingly uptight; a song-collector trick to get a recalcitrant singer to start up with his repertoire was to sing a version of a well-known ballad from one state over, at which point the collectee would be likely to say "Dang it, where'd you get that nonsense? That's not the way it goes. Here, let me sing it the right way for you."

A guitarist of my acquaintance was once told bluntly "if you can't play old-time, don't play," for having the temerity to throw in a short bass fill.

dlbowman76 @ 65: Isn't it always the way that right after one posts one's (filthy) prosody, it occurs to one that "Ligeti" rhymes perfectly with "Spaghetti".

If it makes you feel any better, it doesn't, quite; the stress is on the first syllable, so after he leaves the concert hall, you can say that he did so "Ligeti-split."

Or not.

By coincidence, Soho The Dog has a great post today about the Classical Audience Problem. Warning: contains snark.

Tim Walters @ 69... Heheheh. I thought that might have been what you meant. Either that, or that episode of Lost in Space where Dr.Smith pyscho-analyzes the god Thor and declares that all his problems stem from childhood unhappiness even though he was never a child.

#69 - I must remember to look into that remedial Hungarian course...

...or better still, pop over to BBC3 and listen to the superb Paul Lewis play Ligeti's Musica Ricercata!

tristero 7: Taking salvia sounds as interesting, as appealing, and as profound as watching a 2 hour season opener for Battlestar Galactica. No more, no less.

Leaving aside for the moment the question of whether them is, in fact, fightin' woids, I assure you the profundity of a two-hour season opener of BSG is far, far greater than the transitory and fundamentally illusory "profundity" of taking salvia, and I do so with complete confidence though I have never taken part in salvia at all, so there. Unless you mean the old BSG, in which case I suspect (though can't be sure) that you are insulting salvia. If you don't know the difference, I will make a note to laugh in your face should we ever meet.

I find something genuinely funny, as in funny haha, about middle-class white guys claiming deep spiritual insight from their hobby.

I do not know your race and don't care, but since you don't know me, I will tell you that I am a middle-class (by heritage, though not by present income) white guy, and I find this statement offensive. Regardless of your race, it is racist to assume that what middle-class white guys do cannot be spiritually profound, and to dismiss as a "hobby" what may be the whole center of someone's spiritual life.

You phrased it generically, but even if you were specifically talking about salvia, there are many spiritual paths (not mine) that involve taking mind-altering substances to gain insight. Try saying "I find it funny that a bunch of poor Huichol Indians claim deep spiritual insight from their hobby [of taking peyote]," and see how that feels.

___, 10: Ditto me and hip-hop!

Someone played some hip-hop for me one time. I liked the music OK, but I could hardly hear it because some guy kept shouting the whole time.

dlbowman76 13, 18: Well, with posts like these, I hope your re-lurk fails permanently! "Open the lurk bay doors HAL." "I'm sorry, Dave, I can't do that. You'll have to keep commenting."

tristero 26: Speaking of hobbies, listening to music isn't my hobby. It's part of my job (and it's also a passion which I've practiced every day, sometimes all day, for over 35 years).

So the fact that you get paid for it makes it more spiritual? That seems backwards to me, but then I come from a tradition where we keep spiritual things out of the money economy because doing them for a living influences your decisions about doing them at all. In any case, I don't see why your job is more spiritual than someone else's hobby.

Moreover, just because you're lucky enough to get paid for doing something that's your actual Work doesn't mean you're better than those of us who toil at just-a-jobs for money to pay for the opportunity to do ours! No doubt you would consider all the things I do that fulfill me the most "hobbies" and dismiss any spiritual value they might have, including my daily devotions to Ganesha.

Boy, do I ever not like being sneered at for being less fortunate in life than someone else.

Serge 28: |: hear :|

dlbowman76 29: Yep, and in fact Heroin has that name because it's "hero" (rescuer from the hell of morphine addiction) and "-in" (chemical sounding name), IIRC.

Jim 30: Yes, but the REASON it was outlawed was propaganda led by the timber industry. The drug effects were just the excuse; they wanted to outlaw hemp. You can make paper from hemp, you see. This effort was led by William Randolph Hearst, who was the kind of person who makes me wish I believed in Hell.

Bruce 38: WAIT WAIT WAIT. Are you saying tristero == RICHARD EINHORN?!?!!? Whoa, talk about cognitive dissonance...half of my brain is still going "grr!" from the above annoyances, and the other is in a paroxysm of fanboyness.

I wonder how that will settle out. Probably it will be OK; Orff was a far worse person than tristero, and I enjoy his music greatly.

#73
Xopher, you didn't already know that?
My faith in your omniscience is shattered! [/lol]

No, I didn't. *blush* I never really noted tristero as a specific person until today.

Go ahead and laugh at me. But wait 'til it's YOUR turn!

'sokay, PJ. I didn't know it, and now that I know it, I don't know what it is I know, so whad'ya know.

Hm. My hobbies, the ones I call hobbies instead of time-killers, are things I do because when I do them right they give me the kind of deep satisfaction that sure feels like some kind of spiritual thing. Or I wouldn't be doing them.

And apart from that, everything else I had to say has been taken care of by other folks here. Carry on, everybody, you're doing an excellent job.

Regarding hemp prohibition, the racial overtones were and are quite real, but there were also commercial interests involved, especially after WW2.

IIRC, the big newspaper chains of the time had already bought their own lumber companies to supply their own paper, which effectively put them in competition with any new source -- like hemp fiber. Likewise for the clothing manufacturers and their own fiber sources -- hemp makes extremely durable clothing, to the point where people might actually have realized that buying "the new fashions" every year (as prompted by TV and magazines) was a major and unnecessary money sink. And then there were the growing oil interests, threatened by hempseed oil.

Attacking hemp-as-drug let these corporate interests suppress hemp production in general. Of course, they also started calling it by its Mexican slang-name, to disassociate the "demon weed" from that "miracle fiber" that had been so valuable during WW2....

The classic discussion of this is a volume titled The Emperor Wears No Clothes, by Jack Herer. I have a 1995 edition (via the late, lamented, Loompanics), but google google... hey, the dude's got a website, with the book's text online. Also available for purchase there (even signed) or on Amazon. Multiple electronic versions online at Electric Emperor, to suit your connection speed or other issues. (Apparently the fast-connection version has Shockwave video.)

Hmph. How does one measure out 1/4 gram of Perotin? And what about bands like the "Sons of Champlin" or "Cold Blood" or "Tower of Power" (or even some Stan Kenton or Louis Armstrong) where the boundary lines between the music and the chemicals that enhanced/inspired it are blurry in one way or another.

Even when playing with those bands (and yes, I have played with some of those) I tend not to imbibe anything more potent than the occasional Heineken, but I'm not going to say no to others who want/need something more to get them in the zone, unless it messes up my focus.

Simplicity really does not seem to work well when it comes to dealing with sapient species, does it?

I'm another who ends up tuning out at real-life classical music concerts. I do know that I am music-impaired in some odd way: I have a hard time identifying songs on the radio until I actually hear their lyrics (or it gets to a part that I know so well that I can mentally "hear" the lyrics that go with the music). So I don't fret too much when I do end up sitting through a concert and spend half the time observing how groups of violinists drop in and out, or waiting for the percussionist to pick up a new set of instruments (Mahler's 9th Symphony, which I saw last month, was rather amusing on that front - 3 percussionists and at least 9 or 10 different instruments). I figure it's all part of the action - and at least live concerts are much more entertaining on that front than just listening to recorded music that doesn't have lyrics!

Madeline F #68: Alcohol prohibition was associated with the use of booze by working class whites, and one of the arguments for it was that it would promote working class family life. The middle class feminists who supported the temperance movement and prohibition believed that they were protecting working class white women.

oliviacw @ 79, I think that's how a lot of people recognize songs. I know it took me a fair amount of training my ear to be able to associate names with Irish jigs-and-reels (actually the hornpipes and polkas came first because they were easier for me to play).

OTOH, I have a weird faculty for recognizing instrumental similarities. I drive my roommate crazy with "Hey! The opening riff for MCR's "Teenagers" sounds just like the one for "Rose Tint My World" from Rocky Horror!" and similar observations and she can't hear it.

Now that I think about it, people have probably been watching classical concerts the way that you do for a long time. It'd explain the Toy Symphony -- which, when I went to look it up to see if it was Handel or Haydn, Wikipedia tells me may actually have been written by Leopold Mozart. But I was taught the usual attribution, Haydn.

David #77:

I once saw a talk from him, at the University of Missouri. It was, and I do not say this lightly, the largest and smelliest load of BS I recall receiving during all my college days. Batsh-t conspiracy theory linked to physically impossible scientific claims linked to incompetently done technobabble. (I especially liked the bit about how tobacco in US cigarettes was "the most radioactive substance known to man.")

Maybe his book is clear, well-written, and accurate. I certainly had no interest in buying it, once I'd listened to the author for an hour or so. (FWIW, I was and am a supporter of legalizing pot, among other things.)

Tim @41 & 52, Eric @46, Yup, saw & liked it. Comes from way back at Open thread 110, #204 <g>, linking to a YouTube clip called Kaamelott - The perfect fifth, part of a 'Kaamelott' series. I did LOL (quietly (LQ?)) at 'diabolus!', remembering being told of it in my childhood music class.

James, #30: In addition to that, marijuana also fell foul of William Randolph Hearst's anti-hemp campaign, as covered by David @77. Never mind that the hemp used for paper and textile manufacturing is not the same as the marijuana plant -- it all fell under the same ban. Imagine if somebody had claimed to be growing Mary Jane as a cover for bootlegging the other kind!

Rikibeth, #43: That was one of the criticisms launched by purists against Fantasia at the time of its original release -- that by putting visual images with the music, Disney would make it forever impossible for anyone who had seen Fantasia to appreciate the works in it as they SHOULD be appreciated.

They were both right and wrong. I don't see Fantasia images in my head when I'm listening to the Toccata and Fugue, because they were so abstract. But Rite of Spring or the Pastoral Symphony? Hell, yeah; the animated stories have indeed become connected with the music. And y'know what? There's nothing wrong with that. The purists, in this particular instance, are all wet; I actually get more enjoyment out of listening to those works with the Fantasia visuals running in my brain. (Corollary: I do have to skip the Elgar sequence in Fantasia 2000, because that's NOT a set of images I want associated with that piece. No big deal; I have others, more personal to me.)

Besides, how do you know the Proper Bostonian Matron sitting next to you isn't doing the exact same thing? People are full of surprises. :-)

Eric, #46: Here you go.

Bellatrys, #55: Does that count as the "Oh, c'mon, where's your sense of HUMOR?" bingo square?

I notice he got taken to task in the comments on his own post as well as here. If a whole bunch of people say you look like a duck...

Serge, #58: Certain parts of "Jupiter" from The Planets will always remind me of Conan.

Xopher, #73: Who's Richard Einhorn? Is this a New York Culture thing?

Rikibeth, #81: I hear those similarities too! Did you ever notice that CCR's "Up Around the Bend" and "Who'll Stop the Rain?" have basically the same opening riff, just with different instrumentation and emphasis?

And my partner is continually bemused by the fact that I know a lot of contradance standard tunes by name -- to him, they all sound alike. But y'know, after dancing for 20 years, I bloody well ought to recognize the most common tunes!

#73 - Vielen dank! Actually, I should say that on the topic of addictive drugs, our hosts have a lot to answer for. That's right, I am an addict. I thought I had things under control. My vision was clear. I could focus on today. My shelves had stopped creaking with the alarming squeak of wood that knows when its had enough. And then, and then...it was a little thing. The smallest of emails. "Would I be interested in free e-books?" I shuddered. No, no, a thousand times no! But the devil in my right ear whispered, "the shelves wont mind a few hundred kilobytes or so...go on...you've earned it." A few days later, in my inbox arrives Spin...

Now here I am, a gibbering wreck. My wife looks at me in despair as I mutter "Half a Crown...I can't wait twelve weeks for Half a Crown!" I used to have control. I used to have a firm grip on today. Now my vision is clearer than ever, and the past and future stretch out infinitely.

And now...I simply can't get as worked up as I'm told I should be about whether Michelle Obama wears sleeveless dresses.

Eric@46, re:"French comedy video of the priest complaining about thirds":
Oooh! That sounds amusing, but Google doesn't seem to help me find it. Do you have a link? Thank you for any leads you can provide!

The show is called Kaamelott, and you can see the referenced clip here. Plenty more clips on YouTube, although you do want to either understand French or cherry-pick the ones with English subtitles.

Rikibeth, #24, yes, I already use Celexa, Phenobarbitol, and codeine; I'm not trying something like salvia.

As to music, my mind tends to drift unless I'm part of the performance. I don't like classical music at all unless I'm part of the group. It's the overlapping working togetherness of music that I like, and listening doesn't really give that. (Yes, that does mean I sing along with the CDs I play.)

Argh. This is a conversation going fun places, and I want to respond to a bunch of stuff, but I need to be up for work tomorrow and I've already been up too late on Making Light once this week. /But/, a few quick observations before I crash:

- I vaguely thought it was here, but I could be wrong, where someone said something like, "I have lots of argumentative friends, and at some point I got tired of defending things I liked, and defending myself for liking those things." I think that applies here. It's good not too get so wrapped up in our superiority that we diminish someone else's simple enjoyment, whatever they're enjoying and whoever they are. (I have lots of argumentative friends. Figuring out how to divert conversations, and trying not to drag down others' pleasures, is something I'm working on.)
- This, I think, is one of the reasons classical music has a bad rep -- the "It's Good For You" crowd have gotten ahold of it, as have the high-culture snobs. Screw that. Culture is supposed to be FUN, dammit!
- Classical music, performed well, can be wonderful. A concert hall is not necessarily the best place to enjoy it, though -- I too find that, in a concert hall, my attention tends to wander. First, I think that's okay -- I don't know as single-minded attention is really necessary for appreciation. Sometimes when I can dip in and out of a piece while I'm working and discover it, often over years, I enjoy it more.
- Jazz and pop and classical all use notes and rhythms, but they use them very differently -- I'm not sure I'd call them even different dialects of the same language. The "grammar" -- the structure -- of a jazz or pop song is significantly different from that of a jazz song, both in how individual phrases are put together and in how the whole piece is put together. I'm not hugely educated on this, but I've played a bit of all of those, and they require surprisingly divergent skillsets both to perform and to appreciate. I'm still not there with, say hip-hop, but I'd like to find some stuff that speaks to me. (Some of the new stuff by the Ting Tings, a British band ("Shut Up and Let Me Go," "That's Not My Name"), feels influenced by hip-hop to me, and I like it. Maybe it'll be my gateway drug. :-)
- White folk music -- when I'm in the right mood and it's performed the right way (which may just be me on a harmonica in my room), "Shanendoah" can make me cry. Some of that's situational and associational, but there's power in the music itself too. (I don't think you were saying there wasn't any; I grew up with it, and I've got a soft spot in my heart for it.)
- It's hard to make music as exceedingly good as some of the pro stuff, but it's actually fairly easy to make stuff that's okay and have fun, and I'm sad that that's fallen out of fashion. (Ditto homebrew beer.) You don't have to participate in the creation of music to appreciate it by any means (and too many people have probably been turned off by being forced to take lessons), but creating music is fun and gives you a different kind of appreciation.

Anyhow, I should crash now.

Life's short -- have fun, wherever you find it. :-)

Carl @78: "Hmph. How does one measure out 1/4 gram of Perotin?"

Don't let the neums fool you: it's mensural music. Figure out how many breves to the gram and work it from there.

re: #61, Rikibeth

It doesn't happen with rock concerts (no matter how long) because the music is broken up into 3-to-5-minute songs, with LYRICS.

What counts as "a song" and "a rock concert" for these purposes? Magenta's Ballard of Samuel Layne and Metamorphosis are both about 20 minutes long and part of their gig at Cardiff recently. Similarly Panic Room's Endgame (10 minutes) and The Dreaming [1] (20 minutes). Is it the substructure that counts, so that the songs are just part of the pieces?

"A dewdrop exalts me like the music of the sun" Hedgehog.

[1] No Sandman connection as far as I can see.

Rikibeth #57: Yes, there is research backing up your guess about "Streets of Laredo," and a wonderful collection to go with the research: The Unfortunate Rake. "Saint James Infirmary" is a member of this ballad family also.

Kevin Riggle @ 88, agreed about the amateur music-making, and the fun to be had thereby. Irish seissiuns are especially good that way, as there are a lot of tunes that are not that technically difficult, and acceptable pennywhistles can be had for ten bucks, and are pretty easy to learn, especially if you've ever played ANY woodwind, but even if you haven't. Oh, and usually? FREE BEER.

hedgeprog @ 90, point. The concerts I go to these days tend to be the sort of bands you find on Warped Tour, which makes for shorter songs. The ones with longer pieces tend to be gothy electronica, so I'm not sitting still bored, I'm dancing. I'm not as involved with prog-rock, and the only two concerts I've been to that could fall in that genre are the Moody Blues (1987) and Anderson, Bruford, Wakeman and Howe (1990). Both experiences, while not awful, contributed to my overall wariness of nostalgia tours. (And yet I'm going to see the Cure tonight. But they have a new album coming out! And, and, I've been a fan since 1985 and I've never seen them, so.)

I'd almost be inclined to think of prog-rock as "orchestral compositions played on amplified/electronic instruments, sometimes with lyrics," rather than "rock concert." It may be the division between "music for sitting still and enjoying" and "music for DANCING."

Hector Owen @ 91, thank you! (YAY I'M NOT CRAZY! Or, maybe crazy, but not MISTAKEN.)

And Lee @ 84, yes, I've noticed that with the CCR songs. I love CCR, but to my ear they fall into that tricky grey area between "have a distinctive sound of their own" and "all their songs sound the same." This is a tricky distinction that I am forever arguing with my housemate. I have decided that, for her, TEMPO changes are what make or break that distinction, because she really can't seem to hear some of the other things I do. (And no, she isn't tone-deaf. She's a better singer than I am!)

Corollary: I do have to skip the Elgar sequence in Fantasia 2000, because that's NOT a set of images I want associated with that piece.

I rather liked it, myself, but I can see your point. Meanwhile I loved the flying whales and the entire Firebird sequence (no, no pagan imagery at all, why do you ask?).

Alas, 2000 is currently "in the vault", preventing me from giving Disney my money for a piece of intellectual property I'd really like to own. See how well preventing piracy works?

#73, Xopher -

|: hear :|

That stopped me cold for about thirty seconds, but I figured it out and now I think it is terribly clever.

#81, Rikibeth -

Ooh, that talent for spotting similarities makes me wish you danced ballroom.* I've got a few pop songs that I'd swear were tango, but my dance teacher couldn't hear it. I couldn't (and can't) tell if he was being rigid or if I'm imagining things.

And to everyone who said I'm not alone with attention-drift at concerts, thank you! I feel much better about the whole thing.

*Hm. Maybe that makes it a question for Susan?

Lee @ 84... Certain parts of "Jupiter" from The Planets will always remind me of Conan.

Hopefully the one with Grace Jones, and not the one where James Earl Jones wears that stupid wig.

Lee @ 84... Certain parts of "Jupiter" from The Planets will always remind me of Conan.

Hopefully the one with Grace Jones, and not the one where James Earl Jones wears that stupid wig.

R. M. Koske @ 95 -- I've got a few pop songs that I'd swear were tango...

Which ones? Since I started ballroom dancing, I can't seem to hear a song without also registering what dance rhythm it is. Or trying to, anyway.

Debbie, I did/do that too! Learning foxtrot was a really interesting exercise in listening to music for me because it was the first time I realized that even when music was in a four-beat measure, it could have an eight-beat "pulse."

I never played the first two songs I wondered about for my teacher, because I was embarrassed about being an N'Sync fan. (Given the content of our discussion, I'm pretending real hard that I'm not embarrassed now.) They're from Celebrity* - "Just don't tell me that" and "Tell me, Tell me, Baby".** They sound to me like Argentine tango. It's especially obvious in the first one.

The other sounds like international tango, and it is "Creepin Up on You" by Darren Hayes on his album Spin. That one I'm nearly certain about because he counts off a rhythm at the beginning of the song that is absolutely the international tango's basic progressive step. "Slow, slow, quick-quick slow." But my teacher said it wasn't tango. I dunno.

There's another song on that Hayes album that sounds like it ought to be something ballroom, but I can't figure it out. "Strange Relationship" sounds like I should recognize the rhythm, but I don't.

*I'd also love it if anyone can tell me what I'm hearing in N'Sync's "Pop" from that album that makes me want to bellydance to it.

**Song titles like these amuse me. Do you want to be told, or not?

R. M. 95: Thank you! That was in fact EXACTLY the reaction (both parts) I was hoping for hardly daring to dream of!

___ 99: Sounds like tango snobbery on the part of your teacher, rather than something wrong with the rhythm (I don't actually know those songs, but if a beginner can tango to them, an expert can tango to them...but then an expert can waltz in 4/4).

We wants to know! We does!

#100, Xopher -

I don't know that a beginner can tango to the N'Sync songs. With argentine tango, my experience has been that it does indeed absolutely take two to tango - I was following, and therefore not in control of what was happening at all. I also just plain didn't get very far in my lessons.

I strongly suspect that tango is considered very sexy in part because Argentine tango is the most obviously dom/sub ballroom there is.* The follower doesn't move, not even to shift weight, without direction from the leader.

Combine that with my minimal lessons, and my efforts to tango alone are literally off-balance and unbelievably limited. I can imagine someone dancing tango to those songs, but I'm not positive it can actually be done, and I definitely can't do it.

*I think it all has an element of it, but it's most obvious with Argentine tango.

R. M. Koske @ 95, that is DEFINITELY a question for Susan, as she has people waltzing to Metallica sometimes.

All I know about tango is that they used "Roxanne" for one in Moulin Rouge.

#102, Rikibeth -

I'd forgotten about Roxanne! I like that one. It is the same flavor of tango (Argentine) that I'm suspecting the N'Sync stuff to be. My ballroom teacher would use Roxanne, so I'm not positive his problem was narrowmindedness. He'd also use "Lady Marmalade" from that movie for cha cha. Which was fun, but also damn exhausting.

Xopher @ 73... Serge 28: |: hear :|

Would you care to explain it to me? I'm probably an idiot if I have to ask, but, hey, that has never stopped me from asking questions.