Re: (TV) Television: the name - and other stuff

["Mark G. Ryan" <mgryan@cruzio.com>]

: Jesse Hochstadt <Jesse_Hochstadt@Brown.edu> wrote:
> 
> it a little difficult to sing. (Has anyone here besides me had the 
> experience of casually singing a song alongside a friend or friends - 
> I'm just talking walking down the street here - only to find that 
> when a pause comes, they jump ahead to the next vocal line rather 
> than allowing as much time/rhythm to elapse as should be there? I'm 
> never sure if it's because I have a better rhythmic sense or vice 
> versa - though I tend to side with me.  8^)=  )

Try leaving your mouth open during the pause.  Singers mostly go by
"monkey-see, monkey do".  It will confuse them completely. :-)
Or, you could draw staws to see who is the choral conductor for
the evening.  And there's always filling in the pauses with "Fah-la-la".

> Bacharach's tunes are very melodic, and I've often read that his 
> music is actually quite sophisticated and difficult to sing - it's 
> just that Dionne Warwick (his foremost interpreter) made it _sound_ 
> simple.

She was great.  Too bad she ended up pitching the "Psychic Friends Network".

Whitney started out just as good (say on the Material album), but ruined 
her voice trying to sound more "black" (in order to avoid being labeled 
an "Aunt Tammy" by certain people who care more about interest group 
politics  than about music). Sigh.

> 
> Mark, I'd note that the Kronos Quartet did a string arrangement of 
> "Marquee Moon," though I think it's missing much of the magic of the 

Now how did I miss that?  Must have been running the other direction
as fast I could go.

> original and doesn't substitute much of anything in its place. Bowed 
> instruments just don't have the percussive attack of electric 
> guitars, so playing the song on them tends to emphasize the melody 
> and weaken the "riffishness" - so this example may just buttress your 
> point. (I've never heard the Kronos version of "Purple Haze," but I 
> suspect it suffers from similar problems.)

Why is it that classical musicians are unable to play pop tunes without
putting in musical "scare quotes", as if to say "see, we are cool, we can 
play this primitive music."  There's always a smirk, a wink and a nod.

> I always wanted to start a (preferably rhythm-oriented) band called 
> the Beatless - just for the record store filing advantages!

Fantastic name.  Not a bad description of some of the Beatles songs, 
IMHO.

Mark
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