11-Nov-99 More on music
Years ago someone asked me what radio station I listened to on my way to work. “A lot of the time, nothing,” I said. Horrified, he exclaimed, “You drive in silence?” Well, I still do a lot of the time. My commute these days is so short I don't have time to get bored, and it's on city streets, not freeway traffic jams. Sometimes I do think to turn on the radio, though. What I want to know is, if you get to work in the middle of a good song, do you sit in the car in the parking lot until it's over?
The last time I did that was several weeks ago, and I admit, it was remiss of me not to have noted it here at the time. The song was the old folk chestnut Freight Train, about the first song anyone learns when they're learning fingerpicking guitar. Maybe you have to have tried to play it to appreciate the difference between being able to play it and making it beautiful. The recording on the radio that day was beautiful, every note clear as a bell and in just the right place, with background runs that you heard clearly but that didn't distract from the melody. I couldn't get out of my seat until the song was finished. That's the way I felt about the first song Rishell & Raines played last night at the WUMB concert; every note was clear and perfect, and there were runs and riffs that you wouldn't have expected that took your breath away.
I've recently found, mostly because of Charley's recommendation, WZBC. It's the BC student station. BC is a Jesuit school, trying to assert itself as a nationally ranked football power, and you'd expect it to be pretty straitlaced. The radio station is the exception. You can check their web site or tune to 90.3 if you're in the Boston area. Their spots pretty well tell the story. “Winter, spring, summer, or fall, ZBC plays it all. ” “You're listening to WZBC. Your friends must think you're wierd.” “And now, a cutting edge new song from a Boston band that nobody at <commercial station> has ever heard of.” There's pretty much no telling what you'll hear from them. Sometimes my first reaction is that it's noise (not the noise of a heavy metal band playing too loud, more often like a vacuum cleaner in the next room) but after a few seconds I start to see the structure of it and relax in the soundscape. You can be confident it won't be Spice Girls or Britney Spears, though.
I've started to fool around with style sheets. Can you tell? If you think the link colors are terrible, let me know. I should be able to change them for the whole month with one file. Personally, I think this is gradually starting to look like a web page.
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