A Brief Rant

I'm at a conference, and just made the connection that a certain host on a semi-competitive station in my city was wooed by WNYC to host their evening program for the reasons that I hated listening to him: casual, non-traditional. Long story made short, WNYC wants to redefine classical music by playing live Bjork and Rufus Wainright concerts during evening "classical hours." People, when you are trying to lure young people to classical music by pandering, it will not build an audience for classical music. You are building an audience for eclecticism, which we already have. I love listening to my 80s New Wave satellite station one minute followed by a CD of another genre, and then turning back to classical. I don't need my classical station to program eclecticism for me. Maybe I just made the wrong assumption about the session given today by WNYC called "Turning News Listeners into Music Listeners." I thought it was going to talk about classical music audience growth. It did not. The session offered some ideas that could be implemented even by my station, but, mostly I just didn't buy it as the way of the future. I know I'm being rather vague, but rants do tend to be irrational.

In short, while I am for the Southeastern Festival of Song incorporating Springsteen songs in their concerts, I am not for airing Bjork on a classical station. I featured Rammstein on an Art of Song show, but will never air Duran Duran on Afternoon Classics, no matter how much I think D2 and Bach rock. While I will giggle with my interview guests, I will not giggle during Afternoon Classics. When we try to bill eclecticism as classical music, we are shortchanging the latter. When we artificially make connections between pop music and classical music, we are setting up new barriers. If WNYC wanted to be really revolutionary, show how Messiaen influenced Bjork by playing the Turangalila Symphony, and not just talk about Messiaen, play a little bit of Messiaen, and then play an entire live concert by Bjork. If you want to do something really radical, play classical music. Enough is enough. Stop the pandering. Just as free concerts develop an audience who expect concerts for free, eclecticism will not build a new audience for classical music.

Web Cameraderie

Wanda and I have entered the murky domain of Skype users. It's one of those things which turn out to be much more useful and entertaining than we ever thought possible, sort of like the DVR for the TV. I would never, ever have chosen a DVR, but it came with the HDTV receiver from the cable company, so we started using it. Now we can't live without it. Hate watching live TV. Can't do it. Wouldn't be prudent.

Turns out, I really like video chatting with my family. It makes me happy to be able to see them when I'm talking to them. I don't get to see them physically often, and so this really is the next best thing, way better than a normal telephone call. The potential future uses are many, what with kids looming on the horizon (still no word back from the gov't regarding out I600-A - we'll update when that's resolved, I promise) and all. And, with Wanda due to take several trips without me this Spring, it will help us to stay connected (we got her a spiffy new little webcam for her laptop that's WAY better than the one that's attached to my desktop). We really need each other for our end-of-working-day post-mortem, and this will help make it seem not quite so far away.

Stealing from my friend Meeeeeeeegan

She's right, this is a fun little quiz, so I'm posting my results here. Everyone play along!

You Are an Orange Rose

You represent desire and enthusiasm Your vibe: Sexy yet familiar Falling in love with you: happens instantly - it's a fast ride

What Color Rose Are You?

Truth in Advertising

Here's a look at a section of screen from my most recent "My Yahoo" page load:



Yep, I'm pretty sure that about sums it up.