George Washington Bridge

George Washington Bridge, a piece for symphonic band by American composer William Schuman, has been played by every American bandsman. Written in 1950, Schuman presents, in a language used by many mid-20th century populist and social realist composers, visual and visceral impressions of the great bridge. Through the use of polychordal harmony, alternately flowing and brutally truncated melodies, jazz-inflected syncopation, and his trademark jagged, almost architectural juxtaposition of the instrumental choirs (Glass! Steel! Concrete!), Schuman evokes images of massive strength, frenzied activity, serenity, desolate loneliness, and the boundless, bare-knuckled optimism of post-war New York City. I first played GWB in the late 1960s at Interlochen. The Bridge, and all bridges in general, had by this time assumed a central place in my personal mythology.

This post refers back to my April 9 post. Bridges and bridge building represent to me a human endeavor that I consider quasi-sacred. People come together to plan and create something real, of "bricks and mortar", that says, with emphatic conclusiveness, "connected". Things, people, and ideas can flow in a bi-directional, facile, and direct fashion, between locales that were separated previously by arduous, mind-numbing, soul destroying, segregation-imposing journeys. The two principal characteristics needed by a bridge to support "connectedness" are immense strength and easy access. Paradoxically, an immensely strong bridge requires continuous loving care and maintenance to survive.

I first met the GWB in 1962 as a passenger in my grandfather's car. He took me (Stevie, look at this!) over to Jersey and back. I had imprinted upon The Little Red Lighthouse and the Great Gray Bridge by H. H. Swift a number of years earlier, as is common for many people of my generation, but nothing prepared me for the display of benevolent but brutal power by the George Washington Bridge. "HEY STEVIE" it roared, "I'M DA GEORGE FUCKIN' WASHINGTON BRIDGE!!! I'LL TAKE YA OVER AN' BACK OK, BUT DON'T GIVE ME NO SHIT. NONE!! HUH...WASDAT? YEAH, HE'S MY BUDDY, DA LITTLE RED LIGHTHOUSE...WE'RE PARTNERS, SEE? WE DO EVERYTHING LIKE A TEAM! YA GOTTA PROBLEM WIT' DAT??"

Seven summers later, I played Schuman's George Washington Bridge, and images roared through my mind that begged to be expressed. Below is a photostory. The images are from all over the 'net. The music is played by the Keystone Wind Ensemble, Jack Stamp, Director.

You May Already Be a Brand

Totes, the umbrella company, developed a celebrity tie-in to market said umbrellas. The campaign was beneficial to Totes (moved product) and the celebrity (allowed her to establish herself as a brand). The celebrity was Rihanna, a teenage singer from Barbados.

She was launched to brandom with:

(1) A song: “You can stand under my umbrella, ella, ella, eh, eh, eh.” (perky!)

(2) A photo spread (eminently fuckable, see entry for 21 may)

(3) Customized Rihanna branded umbrellas featuring sparkly fabrics and glittery charms on the handles, made somewhere in the Third World. (Thinnngssszzz...see entry for 9 apr)

Reported in the NY Times: “We’ve worked hard to build me and my name up as a brand,” Rihanna says. “We always want to bring an authentic connection to whatever we do. It must be sincere and people have to feel that.”

How or why do people wish to shed the surly bonds of humanity and touch the face of brandiosity, to paraphrase the prototype of the modern brand, Ronald Reagan? Obviously money, but the back story is more interesting. Let's examine traditional brands and their modern perversions.

This brand is well known to guitarists. It represents the 170+ year efforts of a single family and their associates to build excellent guitars, mandolins, and ukuleles. (1) The brand is not associated with the actual product, although the brand label (logo) is applied to every instrument. Rather, it is associated with the abstract concept of consistently high quality through a long time period and multi-century utility. (2) Nor is the brand associated with the current head of the family and business owner, who is viewed as merely the custodian of the quality of production associated with the brand. (3) Nor was the association of the brand with the concept of desirability established in the minds of consumers by overwhelming, hyper-repetitive, neo-Pavlovian, electronic injection of stimulus-response operands into an electronically networked, uncritically receptive commercial pseudo-culture, which simultaneously acts as an operand delivery system and a ubiquitous popular-culture.

It is point (3) that highlights the difference between the "Rihanna" brand and the "CF Martin" brand. Marketing experts may say "Times have changed. Your descriptor "pseudo-culture" is inaccurate. These are meta- or neo-cultures! (drumroll...) AS ABE "sincere" HONEST, "authentic connection" LINCOLN SAID, We must think anew and act anew! That's Marketing 101!"

Yep. George Orwell showed us what was in Room 101.

More USENET

Audiophiles kill me. $500 AC power cord? Unfortunately they have invaded the boutique luthier world. A while back, I auditioned six "one man shop" super high end OOO size guitars. They all sounded fantastic, but turned me off. Then it hit me...they sounded like great studio recordings of guitars!!! I stuck with my mahogany top 1929 Gibson L-0.

My favorite "Richard Cranium" USENET newsgroup recently hosted an audiophile flame war. I contributed.

WHAT ARE THE BEST SPEAKERS?

from STEREOPHILOPAEDIA (May, 1999):

...however, the absolute, ultimate best perfect loudspeaker was made from 1969-71 by Woofertweeter Audio Transducer Works, Ltd. of Mahwah, NJ. Approximately 112 identical copies of James Chambers' French Horn bell were fabricated by three retired female identical triplets who survived the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire and spent their remaining working lives tuning shofars. Once the bells were completed, Moe Blattbogen, founder of Woofertweeter Audio Transducer Works, Ltd., brought them to his uncle Julius in Queens, NY where they hand stretched and fastened (using Kosher hide glue) the world's supply of foreskin skin to the large end. Back in the Woofertweeter Audio Transducer Works, Ltd. workshop, Moe attached his secret electromechanicalacoustic transducer and fashioned the cabinets from wood salvaged from an unidentified upstate Jewish Summer Sleep-Away camp cabin. 110 units were sold. Seven are known to exist.

There's Always USENET

When I need a good dose of morons, mentally ill savants, and people with direct brain-rectum connections, I lurk on high-traffic usenet newsgroups. In this nook of cyberspace, most if not all NG subscribers form virtual communities, that is, they do not know each other personally (as opposed to low traffic niche interest-based NGs populated by festival goers, etc...these groups contain cyber-messaging emanating from real communities).

One group I enjoy in particular (in the rec. domain) is dedicated to discussion of classical music recordings. Much bandwidth is devoted to the statement of unshakable opinions and personal insults. When flame wars reach the sub-e.coli level, I post a parody of the discusion in the form of a satire employing the stilted, faux-academic prose found in "serious" music reference works or classical/jazz/audiophile aficionado magazines.

WHO WAS THE MOST INFLUENTIAL WIND PLAYER OF THE 20th CENTURY?
from Grove's...

Ivan Ivanovich Gletkin (Hero of the Soviet Union, Kennedy Center Awardee) is universally considered the most influential piccolo player of the 20th century. Although he had no students (ed. note: the remains of 311 bodies unearthed at his dacha near Odessa await identification), he has won great accolades as both a Soviet and American orchestral musician. After study at the Third Smolensk Institute for Piccolo Pedagogy, his first professional appointment was Domra Primo with the Samarkand Folkloric Ensemble. Upon auditioning for Mravinsky, he became a member of the Leningrad PO at the start of the Nazi siege. After Gletkin's first performance with the LPO (unedited Ilya Murometz Symphony by Gliere), Mravinsky convinced him to walk up and down Nevsky Prospect playing double high Db 24 hours a day at ffff for 900 days. His action broke the Nazi siege. After the war, he defected to the US ("more freedom...sex...turnips...play precious Bundy piccolo") and joined the National Symphony (DC) under Kindler. He served as associate principal off-stage flute and Union shop representative ("all-union", he liked to point out). Gletkin was a Kennedy Center Awardee, primarily for his annual ritual of piping the mice out of the Kennedy Center basement into the Potomac. Upon retirement, he became a Selmer clinician, and was featured soloist with numerous school bands playing "Flight of Bum Bee" on the "parallel tritone double piccolo", an instrument of his own design. He is buried in Brooklyn, near Sheepshead Bay. An inscription on his tombstone (in Russian) may be translated as "Death to Spies!" or "Why not pretty oboe player sit on face?"


WHY I DESIGNED THE BEST SAXOPHONE MOUTHPIECE
Interview from "jazz or jizz", New York, August 1991

joj: Tell us about your set-up.
Idris Abdul bin-Ahmed bin-Felaffel: Man, I used to use this old Brilhart on the alto...Bird's...there was enough smack in it that after two gigs, I was hooked...on the bari, Mattson refaced an old Ford exhaust manifold for me. Reeds were always Vandoren #5s. On the tenor, this dude named Porter machined a metal mouthpiece that he said was a control rod off a nuclear reactor at Brookhaven...man, my tone glowed...

Hmmmmm.....

One of the unusual things that living with a fatal, incurable neurodegenerative disease like ALS does is affect your brain in weird ways. Yes, your motor neurons die, and lurking in the background is the certain knowledge that final wishes will be communicated with eye blinks, but lighter stuff happens. Your entire world view morphs into something people try for a lifetime to achieve. Memories become a source of comfort. Friends and loved ones become central. A lifetime of career achievements become peripheral. Pains in the ass become pinpricks, with the emphasis on "pricks". All food tastes great. Traffic jams are meaningless. Very few things truly suck.


But for me, my bullshit detector/surrealistic humor generator went on overdrive!!


Here are some gleanings from today's inet:



TECHNOLOGY
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StaffAppraise 1.00
Performance appraisals are frequently neglected in our churches. This may be because the pastor does not feel he has time, does not know how to give effective evaluations, or does not understand their importance. StaffAppraise is designed to make it easy for pastors to give their staff performance appraisals which truly benefit them.




NEWS
Teacher accused of sex crime writes to Hogan's son
International Herald Tribune - 20 hours ago
AP ST. PETERSBURG, Fla.: A former teacher accused of having sex with students sent a letter of support to the jailed son of Hulk Hogan, authorities said.
Nick Hogan Gives Up Solitaire E! Online
Teacher -- Hot for Hogan? TMZ.com
ABC News - Reality TV World - The Associated Press - ProWrestling.net
see all 1,036 news articles » (ed. note: 1,036?)




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