Classical music ringtones

I'd like to get some suggestions for a few new classical music ringtones.

Since I got my first Android a year and a half ago, I've made a minor hobby of cutting music clips together into new MP3's that make good ringtones. My all-purpose ringtone up till now has been Vivaldi's Concerto for 2 trumpets in C. (Click the link for a recording on YouTube.) Now that I've replaced my phone, and I'm a bit sick of hearing that all the time, I'm looking for more suggestions.

My dad's got his own personal ringtone: "Jupiter" from Holst's The Planets.

My sister, being a muppets geek, gets some theme music from Labyrinth.

Lynnea's ringtone revolves around a fact about her: Every girl's crazy about a sharp dressed man.

So anyway, I'm looking for more suggestions about music to cut into other ringtones. The clip in question needs to be loud and attention getting, and preferably upbeat so I'll be in a good mood to get the call. It also should be only instrumental. Classical is preferred but obviously some rock fits the bill.

A comic genius has died

John Reed Dies at 94

I won't be surprised if most of you never heard of the guy.

Here's a semi-obscure fact about me: I love Gilbert and Sullivan plays. Love em. I can rattle off the plot lines and characters of ten of their major plays, and have at one time or another memorized at least one song from each of these, and in many cases a significant chunk of the score. (But I'm not gay! Not that there's anything wrong with that.)

A large part of the credit goes to my father, who took my sister and me to see HMS Pinafore when I was eleven. The production was so good that he hired the director to handle a family-only production of The Mikado for my bar mitzvah, in which I played the role of Koko, the comic lead.

Dad was also an early adopter of the brand new audio technology known as Compact Discs, in the early 1980's. Some of the first CD audio recordings he bought for his extensive classical music library were soundtracks from the D'Oyly Carte Opera Company, and I think every single one of them featured John Reed in a major role.

See, G&S operettas are almost universally comedies, and I love comedy, but the major plot is usually some quasi-serious topic involving a love story with some significant and frequently bizarre obstacles. So there are a lot of famous songs that are essentially love ballads, and I tend to skip past those. The part that I like is where the funny guy shows up, who is either a walking satire of some trope of Victorian England, or makes wry and sarcastic observations about such tropes. This guy's signature song tends to be very rapid paced and difficult to say. Not only does he have to provide spot-on comic timing and delivery, but he has to flawlessly spit out tongue twisters, on pitch and at as fast a tempo as possible. These are called "patter songs."

That was John Reed's gig. If you know any of his material, it will probably be "I am the very model of a modern major general" from The Pirates of Penzance. He also played my role, Koko in The Mikado, and I'm sure that at 13 years old I shamelessly ripped off his performance as much as I was able to. His other roles included a prancing, self-absorbed poet who represented Oscar Wilde, a self-deprecating impoverished nobleman, and a lecherous old judge... among many others.

When I was a teenager I went to a summer camp in Colorado, and each year after the month of camp ended, we always went to the University of Colorado in Boulder where John Reed had taken over the theatrical organization and cranked out a new Gilbert and Sullivan production every year. He was about 70 years old at this point, but he kept on stealing the show when he managed to show up in his traditional parts, or wrung a similarly excellent performance out of whatever younger actor was available to replace him when he couldn't go on. A highlight of these shows was that the funniest songs would get a series of encores, each one more over the top and wackier than the last.

John Reed made to 94, and it seems to me like he had an unusually long, enjoyable, and hilarious career. So as a sign-off for one of my favorite performers of all time, I'll toss off a verse from Jack Point, his character in Yeoman of the Guard, for comedians and Fools of all generations:

I can set a braggart quailing with a quip,
The upstart I can wither with a whim;
He may wear a merry laugh upon his lip,
But his laughter has an echo that is grim!
When they're offered to the world in merry guise,
Unpleasant truths are swallowed with a will -
For he who'd make his fellow creatures wise
Should always gild the philosophic pill!

This one goes out to all my high school friends

Hey guys, remember back in the 80's when you used to listen to the radio, and hear old fogeys play music from the 50's, and reminisce about the good old days, and you would laugh about how out of touch they were? Yeah, good times.

This morning as I drove to work, I heard the guys on the local morning show rocking out to Van Halen, Aerosmith, and music from Rocky and Top Gun. Then in between each song they would talk about the 80's and laugh amongst themselves.

So my first thought was: "Ha ha, listen to those guys talk longingly about the music of days gone by. They sound OLD." My second thought was: "Man, this music is awesome. I sure do miss it."

This is a couple of months too early, but welcome to the two thousand tensies! If you were born in the 1970's like me, this will be the fifth decade you have witnessed. Enjoying yourself?

I used to own a whole bunch of Bloom County books, and I remember a plot sequence where Binkley had a dream about his future as a middle aged man. The year in his dream was... somewhere around 1996. Face it folks, we're now living in The World of Tomorrow!!!

I'm tagging this in a note to all my Facebook friends who went to high school with me. If you have been on my list but we haven't talked in a while, feel free to leave a comment on this post or the FB link and let the old gang know how you're doing.

Is there anything the internet doesn't have??

When Keryn and I were kids, my parents used to take us to Colorado every year for summer camp. When we were picked up, we'd usually go to Denver, where there was a yearly Gilbert and Sullivan festival, and also a melodrama. Many fond memories.

After the melodrama performers did their play, they would often use the second half of the show to perform short skits, songs, and audience participation activities. One year, they performed a song where each singer played a part in a brass band. That was the only time I have ever heard that song before.

This morning my sister was humming the song, and I immediately recognized it. I joked "I bet I'm the only person in the world who would recognize what you're singing." She replied "Well, maybe it's on YouTube."

Joking aside: it is.



Turns out that the melodrama performers were ripping off (excuse me, I believe the polite term is "homage") a very excellent number from the Dick Van Dyke show. And now I get to hear it again.

For good measure, it also turns out that evil muppet genius Jim Henson also performed a version of this song.



Oh wait, wait, last minute addition. This is our Colorado melodrama troupe. Not the same players after all these years, but definitely the same group.

Music and patriotism

I've been a bad blogger lately. It's been well over a month since I've written a proper post either here or on Castles of Air. Partly that's because I've had abundant life stress on multiple fronts, which I don't really want to go into here. But I think it's a good time for me to update various things that have interested me lately.

I have a chorus concert coming up tomorrow evening. The music selection is better than it has been in a while, so if you live in Austin and like music, there are worse ways you could spend your evening tomorrow night than buying a ticket and attending.

The lineup is:
W.A. Mozart, Missa Brevis
Leonard Bernstein, Chichester Psalms
Haydn, Te Deum
Frank Tichelli, Earth Song
Randall Stroope, Homeland

The last two obviously aren't as well known as the other three. Both of them are a lot more musically simplistic but very emotional sounding. The Tichelli strikes me thematically as sort of a hippy song -- "The shattered earth cries out in vain..." and "Music and singing have been my refuge" and ends with "I'll see peace." It's corny but the music is actually quite nice. And there's a giant PowerPoint presentation over our heads, with pictures of people crying or enjoying themselves, and sunsets and rainbows and things.

Now, the last one, the Stroope, is interesting. It is set to the tune of "Jupiter" in Holst's The Planets. You can hear the original performed here, or a high school chorus singing Stroope here. It does seem to be very much geared towards a high school group, fairly lacking in subtlety and also very patriotic.

Now, typically blunt patriotism turns me off. I like the way Ambrose Bierce described it in The Devil's Dictionary: "In Dr. Johnson's famous dictionary patriotism is defined as the last resort of a scoundrel. With all due respect to an enlightened but inferior lexicographer I beg to submit that it is the first." It's not that there's anything wrong with being proud of your country, and inspired to make it as good as possible. It's just that naked worship of country, as in "My country right or wrong" or "Why do you hate America?" rubs me the wrong way, just as all blind faith would.

But while rehearsing this piece, I've found myself getting choked up a few times. When I analyzed this feeling, I noticed I'm actually feeling more real patriotism than I have in a long time. I don't feel that the country is being run perfectly, but I think that policy is again being driven by people who care a bit about research and results more than ideology. Feels good.

Dragging some more meaning out of "Dr. Horrible"

I have the Dr. Horrible soundtrack on my iPod now, and as I listened to the music again after all these months, I realized that the story had and continues to have a meaning that really resonates with the things that have happened in my life. As I've not written on my personal blog in a few weeks (but I'm still active on atheistexperience.blogspot.com, so keep an eye on that too!) it's time to indulge my inner geek with another look back at this wacky little web movie.

This post WILL contain spoilers, but really the movie has been available for months -- what's taken you so long? Go watch it, I'll be here when you get back.


(spoiler space)











Dr. Horrible is a story about change and transition, and it is relevant to me because it was released at almost the precise moment in my own life when a period of major transition started to happen. It's still happening, and if anything the changes are accelerating. My friends will understand what life experiences I'm talking about, and I don't feel like I need to get very detailed. I'm just talking about the movie.

For a while after watching the ending, I just hated it. It made me mad, because Joss Whedon "pulled a Joss Whedon" and killed a major character as usual. In the last scene, Billy appears on camera for about three seconds looking completely lost and forlorn. And I concluded: "He's going to be miserable for the rest of his life, he'll never get over that loss."

But as I've gone and revisited it, the meaning has changed in my mind. Let's not forget that Billy's loss is Dr. Horrible's gain. The Doctor WON. He really did. He achieved his lifelong dream, acquiring fame and respect, no longer being a joke or a dork or a failure.

Just compare the very first moment of the movie - where Billy gives this pathetic and unconvincing giggle as his signature laugh - to the scene where Dr. Horrible freezes Captain Hammer and lets out a full throated villainous cackle. That was a great moment: the scared little joke of a kid has been overtaken by his inner darkness. It's darkness that he was striving to achieve, and he did it.

Far be it from me to say that it's admirable to achieve your lifelong dream of committing crimes on a vast scale and making people fear and run from you. That's totally against what I believe in, duh. But this is the Whedonverse, where values and priorities are sometimes mixed up and turned upside down, and you just have to accept them in context. Captain Hammer was a braggart and a bully, and Billy was an abused underdog who just wanted to make something of himself. That's the way it goes in this story, evil is the new good. Swallow your disbelief and move on.

Let's face it, Penny was a sweet girl -- and I would GLADLY groom Felicia Day any day of the week -- but she was absolutely wrong as a potential partner for Dr. Horrible. Not only was she sweet and caring, which are decidedly Non-Evil character traits, but she also revealed herself to be utterly shallow with her last line, when she still couldn't see through Captain Hammer's persona of coolness and realize that he was a huge dick. Sure, she looked uncomfortable during her scenes with him, but she had plenty of chances to drop the Hammer, and she still chose him in the end.

So Billy looks fleetingly unhappy in the end, and he's got some pain. So what? "Billy" is not the character he wanted to be at all. Billy wanted to be Dr. Horrible right from the start... and he got it. He won.

And is Dr. Horrible destined always to be unhappy and in pain from his inner Billy? I think not! He'll meet other girls. EVIL girls. If power could be an aphrodisiac for a gargoyle like Henry Kissinger, it's gonna work wonders for the doc, who looked totally in his element when he donned the new and improved Evil Suit. Just look at how quickly Captain Hammer's fickle groupies dumped the guy and switched to holding up a picture of Dr. H during the last song. This is not an ending that shows a guy emotionally ruined; this is the triumph of evil -- which in the upside down universe, is good.

I can't help it, I like the ending now. And "Slipping" is a great song that signifies that victory, a victory not quite complete yet, but about to become reality. It's really all about Billy's new winning attitude.

Furthermore, I suspect that my new perspective on the movie IS exactly what Joss and the other writers had in mind. After all, they were going through a major life-changing experience too. They had been poorly treated by the studios, and had taken a very risky stand which involved losing their income for several months. That's a scary thing to do, but it was done with the understanding that it was an investment to ensure that they, and those who came after them, would be better off in the long term because of the writer's strike. Change always means loss, and loss is scary, but it is hopefully a localized loss that will lead to a net gain.




In unrelated (?) news -- wish me luck on my job search. I'm a little scared myself after an impersonal layoff that I couldn't do anything about. Yet I do believe that I'm going to come out ahead, better for the experience, and it won't take very long.

One-Eyed Doll, and an encounter with the law

Austin being billed as the live music capitol of the world, I really should get out and see more actual live music. Last night, Ginny and I went with our friends Azzurra and Jerry to see a band in concert called One-Eyed Doll. Ginny's been a fan of this group for a while now, I have heard them by proxy and liked what I saw.

I don't drink much, so I made myself designated driver by default... however, I started out the evening with a rum and coke, followed by a Heineken, then cut myself off completely (three hours before we would leave).

One-Eyed Doll gave a great performance. There were only two people in the band, a lead singer/guitarist named Kimberly, and a drummer named "Number Three." Kimberly dresses up like a very weird doll, with frilly and stripy clothes, pigtails, some wacky face paint, and enormous boots. Number Three wore a suit and black tie and a porkpie hat. Kimberly likes to leap off stage and crawl around on the floor a lot. She also interrupted the music several times for "story time," which was hilarious.

The music is kind of punk/thrash combined with some very satirical themes in the lyrics. For instance, "Suicidal Serenade" goes:

Happy, happy, happy, happy,
happy, happy, happy, happy,
happy, happy, happy America!
WE THE PEOPLE
FALLING IN MASSES TO OUR GRAVES
DRINK THE POISON
SUICIDAL SERENADE

-- the first part being sung in this cute, innocent little girl voice, while the second part is shouted and played with heavy guitar crunch.

Ginny is working on ingratiating herself with this band, and we spent a while chatting up the two members before they started. They are fun people. We crowded up front to the stage while the preceding band was playing, about 30 minutes before OED started. We got a great view of everything, including her frequent audience dives.

Ginny and Azzurra also got to go up on stage with four other girls and a guy during one song. Kimberly gave them all silly hats (Ginny had a bicycle helmet) and they all moshed around on stage.

By far my favorite part of the concert was when we got to play the finale ourselves. See, as the last song was wrapping up, Kimberly passed her guitar around the audience, where it wound up in Ginny's hands. Ginny did some random picking... which you would think sounded bad, but the amp was crunching the sound anyway, and the drummer had the beat going, so it sounded like passable music. Then I hit a high note to make it sound like an actual song ending. It was pretty cool.

Anyway, after the show the other three in my group all had another drink, and I politely abstained. It was voted that we go get some food, and I got behind the wheel... immediately proceeding to make some incredibly dumb mistakes. Jerry was giving me directions to an unfamiliar location, and I forgot to turn on my headlights for several minutes. Then I got on a street that I assumed was one-way, and in the dark, crossed over the yellow line for a few seconds before correcting my mistake. And, of course, I was being quietly followed by a cop the whole time.

So to make a long story short, I got pulled over for drunk driving. Two cops spent fifty minutes (as timed by Azzurra) trying desperately to prove that I was drunk (rather than merely an idiot) before deciding to let me go. During that time, I was incredibly, ridiculously polite. I mean, I was heroic. I think "Grace Under Pressure" by Rush should be my new official album.

Anyway, they interrogated me to try and catch an inconsistency. They waved lights in my eyes. For a very long time. They made me stand on one foot, and walk a line in a parking lot. They REALLY wanted me to be drunk, but seriously... I wasn't.

So that was my first sobriety test ever. Meanwhile, Ginny was talking to a third cop the whole time. (There were two cars on us!) She said "Look at this guy, you can see he's not drunk! He hardly even drinks at all! And he's a huge nerd!" Well, something to that effect... I have to fill in parts of the conversation with my imagination.

It was nerve wracking and embarrassing, but I came through it unscathed, and we got our food, then ate while hanging out with our friends for another hour or two. Ultimately we got home a little after 5 AM. So if I sound tired today on The Non-Prophets, you know I have a good excuse.