I’ve been an American Idol fan for the last couple years, but some years I’m busier than others, and I don’t always pay a lot of attention to it. DVR helps, but between being busy and watching the Olympics, I’d put Idol on the back burner. I finally got back into watching it last week and I was less than impressed on a number of levels. The contestants weren’t great and neither were the judges. I think Ellen DeGeneres is hilarious, and I absolutely loved her 2009 commencement speech at Tulane.
But I’m not totally sold on Ellen as a judge. I love her jokes, but her comments on the contestant’s performance are often a little too nice. And what music background does she have, anyway? She’s a stellar comedienne, but that’s no qualification for this show. And Kara DioGuardi is still less than outstanding. She’s not bad, but she’s not great, either. The bottom line is that the two of them combined can’t replace Paula Abdul and her drug-addled ramblings. And once Simon leaves, I fear the show will be headed way downhill. I’m sure they’ll try to pick up some curmudgeonly Brit to replace him, but I doubt it’ll work. Continue reading ‘inconsistent American Idol judges’
Think back, for a moment, to your 4th grade music class, when you learned to play the recorder. Yeah, it was a colossal waste of time. But you probably learned “Every Good Boy Does Fine” and “F-A-C-E.” Those are the notes of the treble clef. Pretty easy to remember, right? But, as you probably realized, it takes a lot of practice to get used to it, and most people probably gave up on that stupid interest and lost any interest in playing music. But there are certainly a great many music-literate musicians and singers out there, and they know that it takes time to learn something like this. And it turns out that there’s a whole host of different clefs. Any clef (there’s actually a whole bunch of them) takes some time to learn. Continue reading ‘the bass clef’
From the day after Thanksgiving through the 12 Days of Christmas, I’m pretty much a total Christmas music junkie. That includes spending a lot of time listening to the local all-Christmas music station. I’m not usually a fan of the modern, sappy stuff; give me a centuries-old carol or at least a 40s or 50s standard. But one tear-jerking song is so deliciously terrible that a shiver of excitement runs down my spine every time it comes on the radio. I speak, of course, of “The Christmas Shoes.” If for some reason you haven’t heard it yet, please check out the music video of it on youtube and have a good laugh before reading my dissection of it. (That video features scenes from a TV movie adapted from the song.)
First, some background courtesy of Wikipedia. The song was based on an Internet rumor which was brought to the attention of a member of the Christian music group NewSong. Now, I don’t know who this group is, but Wikipedia’s page on them says that they are notable for their charity work for underprivileged children. I have no reason to doubt that the members of NewSong are fine, upstanding members of their communities who do many good things, and I applaud them for that, but does that excuse coming out with the worst Christmas song ever? You decide. And to help you make that decision, I’ve prepared a detailed explanation of just how laughably terrible this song is. Click here to read it!
I like “The Star-Spangled Banner” a lot. I am definitely not one of those people who wants to see it replaced by something else.* However, when the song is performed, whether at sporting events, graduation ceremonies, or anywhere else, it is most commonly performed in a manner which invites complete and utter musical disaster. More often than not a lone singer, completely unaccompanied, stands at the 50-yard line or homeplate or wherever and stumbles his or her way through a mess of a rendition. It rarely ends well.