Category: Music

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I was going to write a review of last night’s Tori Amos concert at the Greek Theater, but I realized I already wrote most of it about the Concert at Royce Hall back in April.

We got tickets for this one because it was a new tour, and we figured there was a chance it would be a different type of concert. Eventually it became clear from her newsletter that it was going to be the same type of show—just her, a piano, two organs and a synthesizer—but hey, we liked the last one, and we already had the tickets!

As it turned out, it was the same type of show, but a very different selection of songs. I tried to write down everything I remembered her playing last night, and compared it to the list from the last concert, and there are only 5 songs in common, all from the new album!

Some of the interesting bits: Continue reading →

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Leave it to MapQuest to remind you that the nearby railroad actually is the Atchison, Topeka & Santa Fe (and immediately lodge the song into your mind).

Actually, I’m also reminded of a Forbidden Broadway bit on a musical version of Anna Karenina, which finished with the parody, “On the Ashkabad, Tblisi and the Kiev Express.”

Of course, that may have something to do with the fact that we went out to see The Musical of Musicals: The Musical last night at the Laguna Playhouse. (It’s a musical, by the way.) It features a cast of four performing the same melodrama plot five times, once each in the styles of Rodgers & Hammerstein, Stephen Sondheim, Jerry Herman, Andrew Lloyd Webber, and Kander & Ebb. The musical styles were dead on, the show was hilarious in its own right, and it was packed with in-jokes so if you’ve seen enough of the shows they’re lampooning, it’s even better.

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I woke up this morning to the music from Episode III playing on the clock radio. What’s odd is that I recognized it immediately despite the facts that I had not listened to the soundtrack, and the section I heard was all new music. None of the recurring themes from the other films was present, and yet it was unmistakably not only John Williams, but Star Wars. I let it run just to be sure, waiting for a familiar theme or the announcer’s voice (can you call someone on a classical station a DJ?), and sure enough they identified it as “the title theme from Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith.”

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Two weeks ago (April 25, specifically) we went to a Tori Amos concert in LA. It was a vastly different experience from the others we’ve been to. You see, she started out as basically her and a piano, and each album has added more and more layers of instruments. It always reminds me of a scene in Death: The Time of Your Life (Neil Gaiman has been friends with Tori since she was working on Little Earthquakes) in which Foxglove’s manager(?) is explaining that as she gets more popular, they have to book bigger and bigger venues, and beyond a certain size just a girl and her guitar isn’t going to cut it: she needs to hire a band.

Well, the “Original Sinsuality” tour provided some clues going in: It was a short tour, the venues—in this case UCLA’s Royce Hall—were comparatively small (which is why the show sold out in 10 minutes), and it was named after a “quiet Tori” song. She dispensed with the band entirely. It was just Tori Amos, a grand piano, two kinds of organs and another keyboard I couldn’t quite identify. We heard songs you never hear in concert (“Yes Anastasia,” “Doughnut Song”) or wouldn’t expect to (“Toast”), even when she takes a break from the band and does a piano set.

So, onto a review: Continue reading →

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AKA stuff I wanted to write about earlier this week but need to just slam out while they’re still topical.

  • Judge slams SCO’s lack of evidence against IBM. Also Groklaw’s take. After all the wild claims they’ve made without providing evidence, it’s nice to see even the judge is getting sick of it.
  • Coke may try out coffee cola – Yeah, it’s a month old, but it’s news to me. (Incidentally, I hate CNN’s practice of deleting stories from their website. That’s where I read about this earlier this week, and I had to go hunting for an article that was still up.) [Note: I’ve had to track down a third copy of the article.]
  • MP3tunes.com shuns DRM – former MP3.com founder starts a new legal download service, and sticks with unencumbered MP3s instead of messing around with ultimately-flawed digital rights management. I’m reminded of Cory Doctorow’s famous talk on why DRM is bad for everyone.
  • Beware the unexpected attack vector – Your enemy may not come at you from the direction you expect. Set up sentries around the beach, they’ll get you through the ocean. Set up a firewall, they’ll get you through web browsers. It’s mainly about computer/network security, but it has an interesting story explaining why there’s only one major newspaper in Los Angeles.
  • CSS Zen Garden parody: Geocities 1996 – I’ve been meaning to post a link to this for over a month. It’s fully valid code, and manages to bring back the worst of 1990s web design.