South Park Creators Get Zen (via Alan Watts)

Life is like a musi­cal per­for­mance, sug­gested the philoso­pher and author Alan Watts. The cut-out ani­ma­tors Trey Parker and Matt Stone, known for their acer­bic (if shrilly-voiced) car­toon South Park decided to ani­mate his mini-lecture, to great effect:

What a remark­able lit­tle clip! I found this via the blog of another Matt,  Danc­ing Matt, whose YouTube videos I also admire. Good thoughts for a warm, sum­mer morn­ing in August.

Summer, Finally

Not so Hazy and Not so Lazy

Maybe it’s because we have our first bona-fide day where you could go out with­out a jacket. Maybe it’s because the sun truly doesn’t set until nearly around 8:30. Maybe it’s because Granville Mar­ket is brim­ming over with sweet local straw­ber­ries, most of the spot prawns and aspara­gus are past, and the heir­loom toma­toes are start­ing to appear. All of the above is con­tribut­ing to a feel­ing that we have finally passed into the sum­mer season.

For me, being between contracts/jobs and with some time on my hands, it means that I can enjoy some of this, although I’m cer­tainly not spend­ing my days at the beach. Next week, being the Canada Day and Fourth of July hol­i­day week, both Pam and I are going to get a lit­tle sum­mer break, with a trip to Whistler with my brother and his fam­ily. We’ve been look­ing for­ward to that for a long time.

Plan­ning for the Autumn Demise of Clas­si­cal Radio in Vancouver

Sum­mer is also the time when a few things end. This morn­ing was the last time that Tom Allen would do his ‘cage match’, a whim­si­cal fea­ture of ‘Music and Com­pany’ where he would pit one piece of music against another and call for a vote. This week’s final cage match theme was: ‘With a bang or a whim­per’, since it will be the last one of these bits of fun…forever. Rep­re­sent­ing an end­ing with a bang was Chabrier’s ‘Ah Hur­rah’ from the Opera, Le Roi Mal­gre Lui. The oppo­nent (rep­re­sent­ing a ‘whim­per’ or soft end­ing) was the last move­ment from Haydn’s clever Sym­phony No. 45, ‘The Farewell Sym­phony’ (where one by one, the musi­cians leave the stage until there are only 2 first vio­lins left to end the piece, a clev­erly chore­o­graphed hint to Haydn’s patron, the Prince Niko­laus Ester­házy that his court musi­cians as well as his com­poser were all home­sick and wanted him to close up the sum­mer palace so every­one could return home to Eisenstadt).

It was a typ­i­cal cage match; one part joke, one part seri­ous, one part drama. Like just about every­thing Tom Allen does on the pro­gram, it makes one think a lit­tle, and sets up the day. I will sorely miss this along with some of his other reg­u­lar fea­tures. Prob­a­bly my favourite comes at about 6:30 AM: This Day in… which observes some event in his­tory that shares today’s date. Today’s was the first solo cir­cum­nav­i­ga­tion of the globe in a boat by Joshua Slocum, a Nova Scot­ian sea­man who fin­ished the trip that he had begun in Boston three years ear­lier in 1895 on today’s date. Like so many other ‘This Day In…‘s, I didn’t know about this event, and felt the joy I often do from gain­ing a bit of knowl­edge just as I’m start­ing the day.

With­out going off on another rant about the stu­pid­ity and wrong­ness of the CBC get­ting rid of the best clas­si­cal music morn­ing pro­gram in the world, I’ve finally accepted the inevitable and made plans. A cou­ple of weeks ago I picked up (on sale) a curi­ous new device at Lon­don Drugs: a BLIK Inter­net Clock Radio. It’s a standard-looking radio (unfor­tu­nately with infe­rior speak­ers to the Bose Wave Radio that we’ve been using for the last 10 years or so) that ‘tunes’ to a stream­ing radio sta­tion on the Inter­net rather than local FM (although you can do that, if the Inter­net is down). I’ve tested it, and while there is about a 20-second delay while the sta­tion ‘resolves’ to the URL you’ve cho­sen, it will indeed allow you to awaken to over 9,000 dif­fer­ent sta­tions all over the world (although in prac­tice the num­ber one would want to tune to is a small frac­tion of that num­ber). I was able to set the pre­sets to the BBC’s Radio 3 (which I knew well from my days as a Grad Stu­dent), the local CBC Radio 1, NPR in Boston, as well as the national NPR sta­tion. I’ll look for some other sta­tions, as there are 8 pre­set slots. As you can imag­ine, retriev­ing and sift­ing through 9,000 sta­tions in a tree-like menu using a ter­ri­ble LED screen is a bit of a chal­lenge (oh, if only Apple would make one of these– I guess they do, it’s called a Mac Mini with mouse, key­board, speak­ers and a small flat-screen mon­i­tor run­ning a browser with some pre­set stream­ing radio sta­tion book­marks, but even some­thing like that is too large for a night-table). Most of these sta­tions have us wak­ing up at 9:00 AM East­ern on North Amer­ica, or 68(!) hours ahead in the UK. I fear that at noon 2:00 in the after­noon in Lon­don we may not get a com­pletely morning-friendly clas­si­cal music feed, so I’ll have to search fur­ther until I find a new place to tune to. Both Pam and I hope that we don’t have to resort to NPR, which always put me in a bad mood in the morn­ing, par­tic­u­larly now that it has moved so much far­ther to the Right polit­i­cally than it used to be (hear­ing the appalling Cokie Roberts sneer at the Democ­rats every Mon­day morn­ing got my blood boil­ing early in the week — funny, but that was my word, but appar­ently it’s still what she is doing, defend­ing Dick Cheney on the TV Pro­gram ‘This Week’).

While they are get­ting rid of Clas­si­cal Music on Radio 2, I do remem­ber the some­what encour­ag­ing news that the CBC said that they were going to add a stream­ing clas­si­cal music chan­nel on the Inter­net. I doubt if it will have the incom­pa­ra­ble Tom Allen on it, but at least there will be a Cana­dian alter­na­tive for our move from FM Radio to almost exclu­sively Inter­net radio from Labour Day on.

Things to Do When You are Between Jobs

It’s been a lit­tle over a week before my last day at IBM. I was frankly blown away by the good-bye that I got from cowork­ers that Fri­day. We all went out to a Thai feast in Burn­aby (and by Thai feast, I mean it just kept com­ing and com­ing until we started gig­gling as each dish was brought to the table; Pad Thai? Sure, Crispy Fish with sauce? Why not!? More Stir-Fried Veg­eta­bles? Of course!)

I packed up my desk (I had spent over a week mov­ing books and toys from it to home in half a dozen trips). It was a strange time, with my time alloted to the project over, and work still need­ing to be done the project I’ve been work­ing on. I hope that I haven’t left too much hang­ing; Some of it was depen­dent on details of fea­tures that had not been defined yet, but where I had to leave wire­frames (which are essen­tially dia­grams of how screens should look and what should be on them and where) par­tially fin­ished, I tried to make it clear how they could be com­pleted. I said many good-byes to friends and col­leagues, and drove home from Burn­aby, a lit­tle dazed (hey, it was prob­a­bly all that food at lunch).

On Sat­ur­day, we decided to play tourist all over again. We went to the open house of CityTV and took a sta­tion tour, meet­ing most of the crew of Break­fast Tele­vi­sion (which I must con­fess, we’re not reg­u­lar view­ers of, but it was fun, nev­er­the­less). I won a CityTV Umbrella, and we got some Cold Stone Cream­ery Ice Cream at the end of the tour. I like the sta­tion; It’s small and has a lot of per­son­al­ity, and they run Jeop­ardy each evening (and also carry Reaper, which is a lot of fun and another series filmed here).

Sat­ur­day Night, I went to the ticket office at the Orpheum just before the Sym­phony Con­cert, and got a last-minute seat for the con­cert (only $15!). I heard the VSO play one of my favourite pieces, Prokofiev’s Third Sym­phony. I love it because it’s mostly loud and fast, and almost never lets up. In par­tic­u­lar, the third move­ment is some of the wildest and most vivid music that Prokofiev ever wrote, and much of the drama of the piece is due to the fact that it’s taken from his opera ‘The Flam­ing Angel’, which chron­i­cles a young nun’s psy­chotic break­down and pur­suit of a man she believes is an angel, com­plete with an on-stage exor­cism and chase through the streets. Not your usual opera fare, and cer­tainly not your usual Sym­phony. The orches­tra did a fine job, but I sus­pect that it was too racy for the crowd, who didn’t give it as much of a stand­ing ova­tion as they did for the Tchaikovsky Piano Con­certo in the first half. Ah, when will they stop doing this?! Once again, peo­ple, when every per­for­mance gets a stand­ing ova­tion, it ceases to mean anything!

The rest of the week­end was a bit qui­eter, but things picked up again today, with a job inter­view. I’m not going to write more about that until things set­tle down either way. Pam also has a lead on a con­tract, so it’s prob­a­ble that the free time between engage­ments for both of us is prob­a­bly going to come to an end soon.

Tomor­row evening is a spe­cial SIGCHI event: the film designer Syd Mead (who was respon­si­ble for the rev­o­lu­tion­ary sets and scenery of Blade Run­ner) will be in town speak­ing, fol­lowed by a screen­ing of the final cut of the movie.

Battle of the (Military) Bands

Never has there been a bet­ter musi­cal metaphor for the dis­as­ter of the Bush Pres­i­dency than this audio clip from the visit of the Pope Bene­dict XVI to the White House on April 16^th. Thanks to my hero, Tom Allen of the CBC (who will be trag­i­cally let go this fall, much to my agony, but enough about that for the time being), his sharp ears picked up this amaz­ing fiasco of Hail to the Chief:

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Here’s the quote from Tom Allen’s Junk Drawer:

Here’s the musi­cal event Charles Ives waited for his entire life. On April 16, 2008, Pope Bene­dict XVI vis­ited the White House. Two musi­cal groups were there to wel­come him — the Her­ald Trum­pets from the US Army Band, and the President’s Own Marine Band. The Pres­i­dent, not sur­pris­ingly, was there, too. Pro­to­col says that any time the Pres­i­dent of the United States turns up in an offi­cial role, the band has to play “Hail to the Chief.” As you hear from the clip, pro­to­col appar­ently doesn’t say they have to play it in just one key. The story is that one group came to rehearsal and the other didn’t, so they ended up, at the big moment, play­ing the same piece in dif­fer­ent keys. I’ve received, pre­dictably, con­tra­dic­tory reports of which group, the Army or the Marines, fired in the wrong direc­tion, but the result was a direct hit for music fans who like their mil­i­tary bands on the exper­i­men­tal side. It’s fantastic!

I found out this morn­ing that it was because one of the groups was a ‘civil­ian’ group. This was the musi­cal equiv­a­lent of ‘friendly fire’ between Amer­i­can troops and Mil­i­tary contractors.

An Answer to One of my Protests

OK, I real­ize that I’m becom­ing a bit of a bro­ken record, and I promise that these post­ings about the CBC are reach­ing an end. After all, each of us have to ‘get a life’.

Nev­er­the­less, I couldn’t resist post­ing this, because it shows just how the blather the CBC spouts about mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism and other BS is being used so that these peo­ple can get their way, a commercial-style radio net­work with next to no chal­leng­ing or intel­lec­tual content.

Here’s the back­ground: In addi­tion to my let­ter to the CBC, I left a sub­mis­sion at the ‘Con­tact Us’ form on the CBC Web site, and here’s what I got in today’s email :

Dear David Drucker,
Thank you for your email about upcom­ing changes to the week­day sched­ule of CBC Radio 2. We’re enthu­si­as­tic about the changes being planned. It’s good news for all Cana­dian per­form­ers and all Cana­dian lis­ten­ers. How­ever, we know some peo­ple have mis­con­cep­tions of why we are mak­ing these changes and how the new sched­ule will look.

The ques­tion fac­ing CBC is whether we use Radio 2 to reflect excel­lence in all Cana­dian music and musi­cians or just a part of the indus­try; and whether we serve a broad spec­trum of Cana­dian lis­ten­ers or just of a por­tion of the audience.

Allow us to pro­vide you with a lit­tle back­ground to the proposals.

First, we rec­og­nize the qual­ity and pub­lic value of “seri­ous” music. Clas­si­cal music will remain the most broadly rep­re­sented form on Radio 2 while we expand the spec­trum to include other forms of music for adult Cana­dian listeners.

Next, it may inter­est you to know that Cana­dian per­form­ers of all stripes release about 30,000 pieces of music every year. Less than 1 per cent of those receive reg­u­lar air­play on com­mer­cial radio sta­tions. The rich diver­sity of Cana­dian music and musi­cians is clearly not being heard on Cana­dian air­waves. Music gen­res for which Canada is famous through­out the world cur­rently have lit­tle expo­sure on CBC Radio’s music network.

Since CBC’s man­date charges us to “reflect Canada and its regions to national and regional audi­ences, (and) actively con­tribute to the flow and exchange of cul­tural expres­sion” as well as “reflect the mul­ti­cul­tural and mul­tira­cial nature of Canada” the pub­lic broadcaster’s adult music net­work must be a home for these artists and this music.

Finally, we also believe there will still be some lis­ten­ers who desire noth­ing but clas­si­cal, or jazz, or adult singer-songwriters. So, this fall, CBC Radio will be launch­ing three 24-hour-a-day web radio ser­vices to serve each niche exclu­sively. Obvi­ously we would rather have a full FM net­work for each genre, but since that is not pos­si­ble, the online solu­tion is another option for Canadians.

Radio 2 is now and will be remain a music net­work for adult Cana­di­ans. Our val­ues of thought­ful­ness in pre­sen­ta­tion and excel­lence in per­for­mance remain intact. Our com­mit­ment to offer an alter­na­tive on the dial con­tin­ues. The kind of lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence will not change; the music high­lights will just come from a broader spectrum.

We’re pas­sion­ate about Cana­dian music. Radio 2 will be the only place to truly reflect the incred­i­ble breadth and depth of tal­ent that exists in this country.

Again, thank you for writ­ing. We look for­ward to your feed­back when the new shows are intro­duced in the fall.

Ray Rusk
Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Offi­cer
CBC Audi­ence Relations

I’m get­ting the stan­dard party line I’ve seen in other media: Clas­si­cal doesn’t rep­re­sent true Canada; We’re not cut­ting out Clas­si­cal music (or now an even bet­ter sub­tle insult: ‘Seri­ous’ music; gee, why don’t they call it ‘Long-hair music’ or ‘Egghead music’); we’re just mak­ing sure that every­one is rep­re­sented, so Clas­si­cal Music has to go to make room for the other Cana­dian artists. That bit about ’30,000 pieces of music’ is, I sus­pect, plucked from thin air.

Never mind that the myth­i­cal ‘audi­ence’ they are talk­ing about (instead of ‘por­tion of that audi­ence’) doesn’t exist. The peo­ple who lis­ten to Radio 2 by def­i­n­i­tion lis­ten to Clas­si­cal Music because if the CBC didn’t broad­cast that, they wouldn’t lis­ten to Radio 2. The alter­na­tive to Radio 2 is, let me see…Oh right: noth­ing.

Never mind that Cana­dian com­posers and Cana­dian Clas­si­cal Music are going to con­tinue to be phased out of the air­waves. The biggest bald-faced lie in the email is this one: Clas­si­cal music will remain the most broadly rep­re­sented form on Radio 2 …

Sorry, pop­u­lar light clas­sics from the hours of 10AM through 3PM, when no one but home-bound seniors will hear them is not ‘most broadly represented’.

To under­stand just how much the oppo­site of ‘most broadly rep­re­sented’ is, here are some facts not men­tioned in the let­ter:

The CBC Young Com­posers Com­pe­ti­tion has not been held since March 9, 2003. It, as well as the CBC Young Per­form­ers Com­pe­ti­tion have been sus­pended for the past four years. The Canada Coun­cil pro­vided the fund­ing for the $10,000.00 grand prize.

The CBC set the clas­si­cal music bud­get for CBC Records to 0 in Feb­ru­ary 2008, pre­cisely on the eve of their first Grammy win by Cana­dian vio­lin­ist James Ehnes and the Van­cou­ver Sym­phony Orches­tra under Bramwell Tovey on the CBC Records label. That’s right; the first Grammy win, and these guys get rid of the record­ing label. Many Clas­si­cal Music per­form­ers launched their careers on a CBC Records label recording.

The com­mis­sion­ing bud­get pre­vi­ously devoted to com­mis­sion­ing new works from com­posers is now spread out to cover jazz, pop musi­cians, and some unspec­i­fied amount of con­tem­po­rary clas­si­cal music.

CBC can­celled Two New Hours, a multiple-award win­ning pro­gram that was aired for two hours a week in the incred­i­bly prime time slot of Sun­days 10pm to mid­night. This pro­gram was ded­i­cated to the music of liv­ing Cana­dian com­posers. It was can­celled in March 2007 in its 29^th year.

CBC can­celled Music For A While, which aired clas­si­cal music daily from 6pm to 8pm.

CBC can­celled In Per­for­mance the flag­ship Clas­si­cal con­certs program.

The CBC dis­banded the CBC Radio Orches­tra: North America’s 70-year old last remain­ing radio orches­tra and plat­form for count­less pre­mieres of new Cana­dian com­po­si­tions cit­ing lack of resources. The next day, they ran a full-page ad in the Globe and Mail cost­ing an esti­mated $30,000 to con­vince us of the same party line that I was read in the let­ter. It’s worth not­ing that there was not a sin­gle clas­si­cal music (com­poser or per­former) listed in the ad. Instead, the rep­re­sen­ta­tion was pri­mar­ily from com­mer­cial record­ing labels and oth­ers involved in pop­u­lar music.

That bit about a ‘web’ sta­tion is utterly ridicu­lous as well.  Will I be able to lis­ten to the web sta­tion in the car or on the Sky­train? Will I have to rig up a com­puter in the bed­room so I can wake up to it in the morn­ing? Will kids in school who have never been exposed to Clas­si­cal Music dis­cover their Internet-based sta­tion?  Maybe in 5–10 years we’ll have per­va­sive Inter­net con­nec­tiv­ity so that stream­ing audio is avail­able at all times, includ­ing while trav­el­ing at decent qual­ity, and is next to free for all, but not today. Like mag­a­zines that stop print­ing paper edi­tions and only pub­lish on the web, putting most of the CBC’s Clas­si­cal Music solely on the Inter­net is pretty much get­ting rid of it from main­stream listeners.

It’s sick­en­ing to be read a party line that is disin­gen­u­ous at best. That bit about mul­ti­cul­tur­al­ism is a smoke-screen.  Do you think they are going to be play­ing a lot of Pak­istani and Chi­nese music? ( And isn’t ironic that so many Chi­nese are huge fans of Clas­si­cal music and are build­ing con­cert halls like mad in China while the CBC takes it away from lis­ten­ers in Richmond?).

If the CBC says that peo­ple like me ‘just don’t get it’, that ‘The kind of lis­ten­ing expe­ri­ence will not change; the music high­lights will just come from a broader spec­trum’ and should sim­ply lis­ten to web radio, what they really mean is that they are sim­ply inter­ested in mak­ing more money — just like they do on TV by air­ing ‘Hockey Night in Canada’ — by pre­tend­ing to be ‘mul­ti­cul­tural’, and then run­ning a com­mer­cial Easy Lis­ten­ing sta­tion. The pat­tern they’ve fol­lowed from the last 3 years plainly shows it.