Music

Music is a necessity. Though I focus mostly on alternative/industrial/EBM/electronic styles, my tastes are eclectic and wide-ranging.

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Out for the Seattle Symphony’s performance of Handel’s Messiah. The last time I was at a performance of the Messiah, it was as part of the choir, along with both parents (also in the choir) and my brother (in the orchestra). It’ll be nice to be in the audience with Prairie for this performance!

An Old Music Meme Revisited

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For no particular reason (and certainly no good reason), resurrecting a silly little meme from a few years ago…

Some silly pointless statistics on my iTunes music library:

Best-Selling Singles of All Time

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Archie Henderson on Twitter:

I am a music historian, and with @AdrianRMG I have researched the best-selling single of every decade all the way back to 14,000BC. Here’s a thread:

This is a really amazing piece of musical historical research, and I strongly recommend going all the way through the thread. The snippets he was able to track down are incredible.

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Old mashup from DJ Wüdi: Just Can’t Get Flexible in 1999 (Depeche Mode “Flexible” and “Just Can’t Get Enough” vs. Prince “1999”).

The only inspiration I can remember for these is that I like the source songs and I had the acapella for “1999”. I do like the way it came out.

🎵

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New mashup from DJ Wüdi: Closer to Virginity (nine inch nails “Closer” vs. Madonna “Like a Virgin”).

Originally did this “live” when DJing back in the late ’90s by quick-fading between the tracks; this version is my first attempt at using Logic Pro X.

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Closer to Virginity (nine inch nails vs. Madonna)

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This is a bit of silliness that had its genesis years ago — around twenty, actually — one night when I was DJing at Gig’s Music Theater up in Anchorage. With nine inch nails’ “Closer” playing, when it got to the chorus, I slap-faded over to Madonna’s “Like a Virgin”, creating (however clumsily) the mashed-up chorus, “I want to fuck you like a virgin…”. Not only did it get laughs, but every so often I’d have people come up and ask me to do it again (never an easy task when doing it live).

Many years later, and with better technology (albeit technology I don’t really know how to use; this was my first real experiment with Logic Pro), I decided to come back and attempt a more modern version of the idea.

Mostly, I think it works. Enough to post, at least. While I’m not sure this one is worthy of the dance floor, hopefully it at least gets a few laughs.

Download: DJ Wüdi – Closer to Virginity (7.5MB .mp3)

Alligator House Dance Party

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Nothing terribly fancy here — just an hour’s worth of playing around, entertaining my nieces (ages 10 and 7) during a visit. But since this was my first mix in a few years, and I didn’t train wreck too horribly, I decided to go ahead and toss it up.

(“Alligator House” is the nickname for our home, as it’s green in color and the angled roof of the carport out front makes it look vaguely like an alligator.)

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Ken Burns’ “Country Music”

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Prairie and I just finished the Ken Burns Country Music documentary, and really enjoyed it.

While country definitely isn’t my primary genre, I’ve grown up with a fairly healthy appreciation for the roots of American music, and there are some songs that have long been part of my musical consciousness (“Will the Circle Be Unbroken”, which features prominently in this documentary, has long ranked as one of my all-time favorite songs, and particularly the recording that plays over the ending moments of the final chapter of the film). This film — all sixteen hours of it — is a fascinating look at where country music came from, how it was influenced by and influenced other genres in turn, and generally how it’s been a strong part of the American musical landscape.

I was somewhat amused that in some ways, due to the film’s chronological structure, the final chapter was the least musically interesting for me, as it concentrates on roughly 1986-1996. That was the era of country music that I grew up in, and it’s also the era I find least interesting, and part of why I don’t tend to consider myself a country fan, however much I enjoy country music from earlier eras. Except for the modern, post-9/11 ultra-nationalistic era — which Ken Burns doesn’t get into, stopping his history just before the turn of the millennium — it’s the era of country I find least interesting.

Most interesting to me was the Carter family and Johnny Cash. Both were artists I knew to some extent, but their stories were fascinating, and were some of my favorite parts of the film. Their influence is such that it could even be argued that this was a shorter documentary about the Carter/Cash dynasty, with a lot of extended detours into the rest of the country music ecosystem that had them at the center.

Neat stuff. And if you have any interest in American culture and music, even if this isn’t a style you generally pay much attention to, the film is well worth the time it takes to watch.