Ah, so that was you at the symphony.
I could probably tune out classical music more easily and let my mind wander. I haven't been to hear classical music in a very long time, though.
At least at classical music events, I spend a great deal of time wondering whether I am noticing or appreciating anything that an educated ear would apprehend, or whether my tone-deaf perceptions and comprehension are little better than those of a dog, cat or draft animal in similar circumstances.
Things I will do while watching live music:
-Watch the musicians to see what they're doing individually and how they're interacting on stage.
-Listen to the mix; if there's something I think should be changed and I know the band/sound person, I'll go say something.
-Walk to other parts of the venue and listen to the mix from there.
-Watch the crowd reaction.
-Pay attention to what the band members do between songs and how they talk to the crowd.
-Bop my head/shake my leg along with the beat, if it's a good beat. (For a really good beat, I'll start full-on dancing. That happened recently when I saw this band from Texas at a small house show.)
-If I get bored, go outside to hang with the smokers.
At least last night, we spent a good part of the time while listening to live music amusing ourselves alternately listening to my mom complain about the ppoinsettias blocking our view of the stage, watching her sneak up to the stage to push a couple plants out of the way, and waiting for a high school performer to trip over the now out of place plant. Also, spent much of the time reading the program to see what would be up next.
Seriously, all of you should get off my lawn, I was born old, and I've never either had any or been any fun. But a couple of threads ago, someone was saying that there are a lot fewer live music jobs than there used to be -- weddings have DJs, bars are less likely to have bands on an ordinary night, that kind of thing.
And part of it seems to be that live music is always now at a volume level that makes doing anything other than total focus on it impossible. Having live musicians in a nice restaurant doesn't happen any more, because they'd make everyone miserable. I dislike unrelenting loud noise more than most people, but I think the volume level that's become a norm for bars/clubs/live music generally is unpleasant for most people, and by enough that even music that doesn't seem excessively loud when measured against what's become normal is still enough to be unpleasant. (I'd make an exception for venues where people are literally dancing.)
In conclusion, I'm still no fun but if anyone gives me any lip about this I'll hit them with my cane.
I generally stand the entire time, since there is nowhere to sit, and get incredibly tired and desperately want to sit down, or go home, by the time the headlining band is starting to set up their instruments.
Don't have a problem with the volume.
Do close eyes.
The ideal is head bopping/dancing/singing along. In actuality I frequently zone out and start thinking about work and then get angry at myself. I usually only pay attention to the crowd if there's somebody nearby doing something obnoxious.
I'm not sure if 6.2 is at all correct about live rock shows (have always been dangerously loud), but it certainly pertains in restaurants. Here's Adam Platt complaining about it.
I do wonder what the volume range at rock shows is though. They seem to vary from "this too loud to have a conversation and my ears will be ringing tomorrow" to "this is painfully loud and I need to cover my ears." It seems like smaller clubs tend to be louder.
I think if I'm bitching about anything coherent, it's that the volume level of "live rock show" has spread to "anyplace there'd be a live musician" (and lots of places where the music is recorded). And that being transported by the overpowering volume and totally wrapped up in the music is certainly a thing that some people want sometimes, but most people don't want it all that often, because if it's not a transporting experience it's boring and uncomfortable.
10 is correct. Also, I would rephrase it as "Why is it too loud to talk to people at most wedding receptions?"
When I go see live music, I'm pretty much actively listening to the music the whole time, plus maybe 25% people-watching but the music is still the soundtrack to that movie, so. But then I kinda don't like people riding in my car with me because they keep talking while I'm trying to listen to the stereo.
If I catch my mind drifting during a live show, I chastise myself for missing what I came there to hear.
If there's dancing, then I'll join right in. I quite like dancing.
One source of marital conflict is that Jammies absolutely will not take any instruction about how to 2-step, but he also does it wrong. He's so conflict avoidant that it means that we just don't ever dance together, which is something I really enjoy and would like to do.
Obviously this could be easily solvable, but I never think of it until we're somewhere with loud music and dancing.
There's a meta issue -- I'm fairly uninhibited about being no fun, generally, and I'm bitching anonymously online rather than where I'm actually throwing cold water on any real people. But there's a lot of social pressure for people who do have fun to (a) care a lot about music, to the point that fussing about going to see a band just because there isn't going to be any place to sit and getting a drink will be a hassle and you'll be waiting uncomfortably for an unreasonable amount of time while the band sets up and and and makes you generally a loser, who doesn't care about music like cool people do, and (b) same thing about objecting to volume levels: louder is more fun, and not liking louder makes you anti-fun. Which means that there's not room for much social or consumer pressure toward making live music less of a boring and unpleasant experience -- there might be a lot of people who agree with me about this, but in any RW group of friends making plans, they're very unlikely to pipe up about it.
The secret to 2-stepping is that you must ignore the music, because it's a waltz step, done to 4-4 time. Quick-quick-slow. Jammies always wants to do quick-quick-slow-slow, because that makes more sense. That is a perfectly nice dance, but it's not 2-stepping, and so he needs to clarify if he's going to deviate.
Jammies always wants to do quick-quick-slow-slow, because that makes more sense.
History's greatest monster, or world's greatest lover: you decide!
Actually I'm not sure how Jammies' version makes more sense. The real one repeats every 3 beats, and his repeats every 5 beats.
I used to like dancing back when I ever did, but that was college. Live music I've seen since college has been in venues where maybe you could sway in place some, but not enough to be having fun. (My dancing style was characterized mainly by flailing energetically but with no sense of rhythm. I enjoyed myself, but certainly looked like an idiot.)
It's good to know that it's not just issues like whether to talk about Rasberry or tawny crazy ants makes Texans feud.
Oh, I know why Jammies' makes more sense: you always use the same foot to start with. With the three beat version, you switch which foot starts each time.
I have no idea how to two-step, but doesn't the name indicate that it should be some kind of two-beat thing?
Wikihow says Jammies is closer to right.
I spend some of the time focusing intently, and the rest at a lower level of focus while I think about math. Or, if its loud music that I love, I sing along.
Wikipedia and every Texan agrees with me.
Next up, confusion about why people outside Texas don't consider "the two-step" to be synonymous with "dancing".
LB is right about the noise levels. RWM loves music, but volume is a huge limiting factor on her consumption of live music. This was true even when she was younger and cooler.
24: Not according to the comments.
"Jammies Always Two-Steps Wrong" has the makings of a great country ballad, heebie, in case you're looking for some woman-scorned material. I think it's even better with his real name, but what can you do?
With his real name, it has the trappings of a Country Gold Takes on Social Change classic.
As for volume, I agree with LB et al. that it's generally too loud. I carry these earplugs on my keychain and will put them on at even moderate volume levels. (I'm probably extra-sensitive about hearing loss, after realizing that years of sitting next to loud amps/drums without hearing protection is probably the main reason I can no longer hear anything above ~16K.)
26: Actually, wikipedia explains everything, and says you're right about everything but ignoring the music. You're dancing to 4/4 music, so you need four beats, and quick (beat), quick (beat), slow (two beats) is four beats. That should work just fine with the music, shouldn't it?
I spend a lot of time at shows kind of hoping that they'll take me out of my head and stop the normal background chatter of my anxieties. It usually doesn't work.
I'm almost always focused directly on the band. (I can't *stand* people who go to a show and then talk through the headliner's entire set. If you want to have a chat, go to a regular bar!) A lot of the time I'm watching the musicians trying to figure how much of what I'm hearing is actually being played live and how much is prerecorded.
31: Exactly!
I'm loving the Wikipedia two-step page. Both your versions are listed as two-steps, obviously yours first. The double two-step is also known as the triple two-step! This is awesomely confusing. Someone needs to do a study of whether the couples that two-step together stay together and how they happened to know the right variants.
33: Yeah, you're right. I think what makes people find it confusing to learn - and people generally do -is that you are stepping three times, so the next round starts with the opposite foot. Also the slow step feels like the beat you're emphasizing, so you're being heavy on the 2nd and 4th beat while the music is generally on the 1st and 3rd. It definitely feels awkward at first.
I generally stand the entire time, since there is nowhere to sit, and get incredibly tired and desperately want to sit down, or go home, by the time the headlining band is starting to set up their instruments.
I used to have this problem. Once I remembered that most opening bands suck and stopped feeling a need to show up for their sets, it went away.
36: The few times I've waltzed, I've had the same problem -- the switching feet every measure thing feels weird.
I actually think Wikipedia is wrong that in the claim that the 2-step is the same as the Texas Polka. With the polka, you put the slow step on the first beat, and time the quick-quick on the 2 1/2 and 3rd beat, so that it comes out even with the measures. It feels much more natural.
I've written here before that the best live music show I've been to was for kids and toddlers. It wasn't cutesy music, but it was at a club, at three in the afternoon. They started exactly on time. Everybody was instantly dancing, because they were four years old or parents. The band played for half and hour, took a ten minute break and played another half hour, all of which they carefully explained to us No one was cool. It was over by late afternoon.
It was fantastic, the set-up I had always wanted but never knew was possible. Music at night with cool people is not nearly so good.
HG, if there isn't already dancing, you should start it. Everyone else is just waiting for you.
I'm willing to do that, sometimes.
Anyway, you should make Jammies dance with you at home until the two of you have arrived at an accommodation.
We might have to. I do like dancing, but Jammies hates admitting he's wrong, but I also feel like enough of an outsider here that doing the wrong two-step would make me uncomfortably self-conscious.
My wife got me, and then 50-75 people, to make a conga line at a Sonny Rollins show once, snaking through the crowd (outside, no seating). The band was so well entertained by it, they wouldn't stop the song they were playing.
I generally have pretty good luck with live music. I'm sure I've already told the story before about wandering out in Spokane after a Dead concert with a group of friends -- all of us pretty seriously high (faces painted day-glo, if that helps get the picture) and ending up at an Elvis impersonation contest at a smallish bar.
I think if I'm bitching about anything coherent, it's that the volume level of "live rock show" has spread to "anyplace there'd be a live musician"
This is absolutely false.
I don't go to as many concerts as I used to, lord knows, but I do go to a lot of concerts, and I hate over-loud rock shows, so I know whereof I speak!!!
I either have bad luck with the one show I go to every few years, or I'm really a delicate fleur in terms of what volume I can tolerate, then. Probably both.
Went to a concert last month, Gaelic Storm (which I only knew from the movie). Good fun. They did a thing midway through where they had each half of the theater singing a different part of the chorus of some Irish or faux-Irish song, led by the singer on that side of the stage. At the conclusion, our singer declared us the victors, and started singing We Are The Champoins, and then the other side started We Will Rock You, the whole thing devolving into a call and response from Night at the Opera.
High quality old people fun, I tell you.
No, never went to a St. Johns waltz party. They did sound like fun, though.
Anecdata: I like music. I like (some) live music, but I don't go to many shows for many of the reasons listed -- it's often too loud, often it's difficult to follow the lyrics and that makes me feel slightly stressed, and two hours, or so, is often longer than I'm willing to really focus the music.
I sometimes feel kind of badly about not enjoying live music, but . . . *shrug*
I have seen some amazing shows, and all of the ones that I've been really passionate about were essentially house concerts, with the musician playing unamplified to a small group who were paying close attention. There is something really wonderful when you have a crowd who is attentive enough to be able to immediately follow changes in mood without the musician having to make really broad gestures (and having a musician notice that they don't need to be dragging everybody along).
It does seem like no room is allowed for anything in between rapt attention and piped-in ambience anymore. The one time I went to the Star/ry Plo/ugh in the PRB, there was some acoustic performance going on, not horribly loud, but still everyone gathered around them and stared daggers at my friend and me for trying to talk quietly. If there's no room for speaking during Irish folk music at an Irish pub, I think, something has gone very wrong.
Why are we googleproofing Star/ry Pl-ugh?
heebie, you should let Jammies win this one. His way is a perfectly valid form of two-stepping (It was the way I learned and danced at a country bar for years). If it's easier for him, especially since he has to* lead, he'll be looser and have more fun, and maybe he'll eventually pick up the other version. People who will judge you for doing the "wrong" version are dicks.
*What with patriarchy and all.
I do what Flip does in 3, and have at least ever since I started doing it professionally. Last night I spent most of the time thinking about how much I didn't want to write a review of the concert, and the rest of it trying not to fall asleep, since they'd cranked the heat in the hall to compensate for the frigid temperatures outside.
We saw some fun music at the St@rry Plo//0Ugh# a month ago and plenty of people were talking during it. Other people were listening.
Oh lots of things. Sometimes I am absolutely absorbed and transported; sometimes I'm tuned out/thinking about love and death or Love and Death. Sometimes I'm tuned in and it's enhancing my inner state of whateverness. There are pieces I feel certain you can't concentrate on the whole time. I definitely was not rapt for four hours for Einstein on the Beach, though I loved it.
I was thinking about this question ~15 hours ago at a concert.
Oh I just started reading the comments and realize I was mostly thinking about classical music. And the answer might be different for non-classical.
This has been a comment. Thank you for reading my comment.
It's such a mess that women tend to know more and care more about dancing and that men have to lead. I'd be much more willing to dance if I didn't have to lead.
Wait two-stepping is quick quick slow pause quick quick slow pause, isn't it? So it's really not a waltz?
I am now hearing a version of The Waltz narrated by Heebie in my head. I am also commenting too much.
I hate dancing unless it has specific steps, and then I am merely bad at it. Heebie and I should two-step sometime but I only know how to follow so you're going to have to lead, ok?
I figured probably the remedy for commenting too much was commenting more. Hi!
Also the volume level of music in bars and stuff makes me almost unable to have a conversation sometimes.
Bars are too loud. This makes me grumpy. I'd probably complain about restaurants, too, but I never go out to eat.
Gaelic Storm
Friends, let us not admit the passage-by, untouched, of this ripe little apricot.
By now the Unfogged I thought I knew would have made at least half a dozen jokes about easy-listening bodhran radio stations with DJ Venus O'Flytrap.
A snippet of the thing is on the internet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O4AQxjP-qaE
In terms of spectacles we've seen here, though, this one is going to be tough to beat: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ft3QzimB80M
67 me obviously. No idea why the computer forgot who I was.
This show was better than I expected: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qgQCAJ9yUkg
The answer is simple: bang your head.
Actually that only works for about 2 minutes max but whatever. I'm currently fantasizing about camping for three days in a muddy field in France with gross metalheads to go to this festival. Seriously, check out the Hellfest lineup -- it is insane.
69: Not to rain on the metalfest [secret devil sign], but isn't a significant portion of several of the black metal bands in prison for murder?
Semi-OT My kid's newest line is basically begging to be written into some kind of hardcore anthem: "I'm not taking orders from you. I'm taking orders from my mind."
the rest of it trying not to fall asleep
This was me at the Janelle Monáe concert a few weeks back. Sadly I didn't manage to succeed (although the parts I was awake for were amazing). Stupid jetlag.
71: That seems a bit over-simplified as an explanation for murdering.
72: That'd actually fit pretty well into my current brief. "Grievant, like Halford's kid..."
The American Hellfest seems to have a badder-ass lineup than does the French Hellfest.
but isn't a significant portion of several of the black metal bands in prison for murder?
The background is kind of interesting. Way better than the drive by bullshit in this country. Arsons, plots of torture, etc.
It was fantastic, the set-up I had always wanted but never knew was possible.
The Adult Rock Show starts at 7...
55: I don't know, it's an identifiable place?
Almost all of the live shows I've been to (which is probably fewer than twenty) are bands whose work I know well, so I enjoy the particular performances of pieces I know, and maybe try to fit any new pieces into what I know about them. Those shows are fun, and I can pretty much just pay attention to the music and performance the whole time. The handful where I didn't know the music - usually shows where I knew someone performing but didn't know or care for their work - I mostly remember being bored and not quite getting it.
Meanwhile I will just drop the name of the Plough and Stars no problem. Plough and Stars! Plough and Stars! Haha! Can't take me, demonic summoned familiar of an Irish bar! I'm invuln
Threadjacking: I have a cross-country flight tomorrow and will need to pump after clearing security. (I have to check out of the hotel in the morning, then go to several hours of meetings, then straight to the airport, so I don't see a way to avoid the pumping-at-the-airport question altogether.) Would camping out in a family changing room for 15-20 minutes make me a monster raving asshole? Is there a better option?
You might look up the specific airport to see what accommodations they have. Frex, if your flight leaves from Knoxville, TN, you're in quite a bit of luck.
83 - Robert Harrison Blake knows what happens when you mess with the Church of Starry Plough.
84: You need it because of family, so I think you're clear on the monster thing, but I hope there is a better option that is less likely to smell of poop.
If you're feeling flush, pay $50 for a day membership to the Admiral's Club (or equivalent for your airline) and go and use either the private bathroom, private shower area, or if yours doesn't have those the desk/work areas. Then have a cocktail.
If I go to see live music, I'm generally pretty attentive to the music, unless the band are unexpectedly crap. I don't go to gigs that much any more. Down from a peak of at least one a week through most of my teens and early to mid twenties, to a couple a year these days, sadly.
Scrolling through the thread above, I'm Apo in 12.
I have less tolerance these days for truly loud music, though. The loudest bands I've ever seen have been fairly recently, and they've been nominally _jazz_ acts in clubs. Acoustic Ladyland, for example:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1dqr1W-4-Wo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R990oiRxy6U
Way way louder than all the metal bands I saw in my teens, to the point of physical pain.
||
Live blogging from crossfit:
A: [something about the movie Invictus and Nelson mandela]
B: the apartheid movie? Was that South Africa or Australia?
Me: South Africa
Trainer: apartheid?
B: yeah, the thing where ... (Stumbles around an explanation, not sure if he should mention race or not)
Trainer: what? Apartheid?
I thought he was kidding, but eventually it became clear that nope, he really hadn't heard of it. I gave him the two minute version, and he was appropriately wide-eyed and shocked, or willing to play the part, at least.
Him: so kind of like here, in the south?
Me: yeah, a lot like Jim Crow, except up to the 90s. And black people were in the majority there, ruled by a white minority.
Him: wow, and in their own country.
He said the "in their own country!" line a few times. I think he was connecting apartheid with colonialization, which is fine, but it sounded oddly like he was contrasting apartheid with Jim Crow, where the people were not in their own country? Anyway.
|>
It does seem hard to believe, but then again, apartheid officially ended almost 20 years ago, and if the trainer is quite young ...
That's bascially the conversation we had with Jane about it! Without the stumbling around unsure about mentioning race (oh man). Poor baby trainer.
One thing I'd forgotten, but was reminded of in the various tributes, Mandela only served one term. I knew he'd handed over to Mbeki fairly quickly, but I don't think I'd remembered he was only president for 5 years.
A couple of weeks ago I tried to explain to Jane why I find "Do They Even Know It's Christmas" almost inconceivably (in the sense that I am freshly shocked every year that people just go on and play it in, like, shops), though unintentionally, offensive. (Seriously, though!!)
That... was not a banner day for communicating ideas successfully to a three-year-old. Necessary concepts that she doesn't have a firm grasp on include:
- Christianity
- Religions in general
- Charity
- Africa (this one is getting clearer this week!) or any African countries (ditto)
- The relative weath of nations (as opposed to and related to that of individuals)
- Condescension
When my son was three, he was able to condescend at a 4th grade level.
Ah, the old theory vs. practice divide.
Does it seem likely that "It always seems impossible until it's done" is Mandela apocrypha? I heard it the other week, and can't find it with any citation or as part of a longer quote.
94: I just tried having that same conversation with my 8-year-old. It didn't go much better.
Jim Crow, where the people were not in their own country?
In the sense that Sith Efrika had a black majority and the US didn't, maybe?
'course, the Boers would tell you* that it's their country as much as it is anyone else's.
* and the San, and others would tell you that they are full of shit ...
Not saying that being in a minority makes it any less your country, of course - just that that might have been what this chap was getting at.
Connecting it with colonialism is interesting because Cape Colony was the first country in the whole of southern Africa to allow its black citizens to vote freely, on equal terms with the whites, as far back as 1853. (A right later eroded after the Boer War and through to the establishment of apartheid). Everywhere else was ruled by a bunch of hereditary dictators (aka "kings").
Sith Efrika
I wonder if the South African accent is so grating because it's associated with apartheid, or whether it's just independently the platonic form of an annoying accent in English.
My good college black friend (every white liberal gets one) and I had a running joke where we'd use the "Bit sir, ye'r blick" line from Lethal Weapon II.
Maybe that should be "bleck." Somewhere in between.
Not saying that being in a minority makes it any less your country, of course - just that that might have been what this chap was getting at.
I'm pretty sure that the thought process goes: white people invaded Africa, where black people already lived. In contrast, white people are naturally in the US, since time immemorial. I'm not sure if there's a "black people were imported to the US" or "black people are equally natural to the US, but no more so than white people" coda to the thought process.
The only live shows I've really enjoyed were George Clinton and the P-Funk All Stars (where I was so stoned I could barely walk, a condition I had not until then realized was possible), and the Preservation Hall Jazz Band, which was brief and un-amplified. Otherwise I get bored or the intensity of the sound triggers my fight-or-flight reflex.
It does seem hard to believe, but then again, apartheid officially ended almost 20 years ago, and if the trainer is quite young ...
Yeah, I'm sure this guy is in his early 20s. Also there is absolutely zero chance of apartheid being mentioned in a Texas public school, outside of an AP class, maybe.
In high school, I fell asleep a couple of times during particularly loud shows -- if I'm stressed enough and fight or flight isn't an option, my body has a tendency to say "fuck it" and nap. On the veldt, I would not have been a survival type.
It's a shame that "Freeee-eeee Nelson Mandela" wasn't a better song. If there'd been some reason to keep listening to it once he'd been freed, young people might remember know more about him.
re: 102
New Zealand English is equally annoying, without the same associations [sorry Keir!].
I have rarely heard the words "Free Nelson Mandela" without my brain appending "with the purchase of a Nelson Mandela of equal or greater value."
I do the same thing with "Free Willie".
if I'm stressed enough and fight or flight isn't an option, my body has a tendency to... nap.
LB's cousins are fainting goats.
New Zealand English is equally annoying
A friend of mine was utterly confused on being told by an airport employee in Auckland airport that in order to get on his flight to (I think) Christchurch, he would have to see the Mystic Chicken.
"The what?"
"The Mystic Chicken. If your flight is to Christchurch, you have to go to the Mystic Chicken."
It took four or five repetitions before he worked out that the chap was saying "domestic check-in".
110: For me it's always been "to good home".
Talking about SA accents it's worth distinguishing the white ones (which have basically two variants I can distinguish, roughly Afrikaner and non-Afrikaner), and the black ones. The one I think people find grating is the Afrikaner accent. The various black SA accents are mostly inoffensive AFAICT.
re: 113
Hah. One of the people involved with a standards thing I work on [internet image stuff] is a kiwi with one of those accents.
'Yis, meht, wi ihr plinning to publish a new drift iv the documintition'
I was quite insulted when a French colleague admitted that he now found the Kiwi guy easier to understand than me.
I do the same thing with "Free Willie".
I USED TO WORK IN CHICAGO
IN THE OLD DEPARTMENT STORE
I USED TO WORK IN CHICAGO
I DON'T WORK THERE ANY MORE:
A WOMAN CAME IN FOR SOME FLIPPERS
SOME FLIPPERS FROM THE STORE --
FLIPPERS SHE WANTED
FREE WILLY SHE GOT!
I DON'T WORK THERE ANY MORE.
I don't notice Kiwi accents as grating at all, but that may be because the implicit contrast when I knew a lot of Kiwis was Australians. (And I suppose, come to think, the NZ woman I knew best had elocution-lessons/actress voice, so around her I just felt scruffy, mumbly, and badly brought up.)
I find Kiwi accents frustrating because they're hard to place. Listening to one I keep feeling like they're sliding between a Californian accent and a stereotypical Australian one.
I find Kiwi accents frustrating because they're hard to place. Listening to one I keep feeling like they're sliding between a Californian accent and a stereotypical Australian one.
Huh. I find Kiwi accents very easy to place. I'm much more likely to misplace mild (to my ears) Australian or Saffer accents. Is suppose it helps I have relatives there, but it's not like I'm short of friends from Australia or South Africa either.
I guess most of the concerts I go to these days are mostly unamplified (basses still have their little amps, y'know). What were the concerts with amplification I have been to in the past month or so? Let's think!
Surplus 1980 + Fred Frith/Jordan Glenn/Jason Hoopes trio.
LOUDNESS: Surplus 1980 was kind of loud, but more objectionable was the fact that they seemed to be imitating punk & post-punk tropes rather than really inhabiting them. The instrumental parts were good though!
Rhys Chatham's "A Secret Rose".
LOUDNESS: well, pretty damn loud, but not, like, My Bloody Valentine loud. I listened without earplugs and it was fine.
Is it possible there's been nothing else? Surely I must be overlooking something?
85: Frex, if your flight leaves from Knoxville, TN, you're in quite a bit of luck.
Should be in the airport in a few hours. But will be flying in, and don't anticipate the need to pump.
I had to go clutch some pearls at the idea that quick-quick-slow was a waltz step, even in Texas, but if the point is the parity change: fair enough.
Waltzing is so symmetrical and balanced (WHEN DONE RIGHT) that it's probably the easiest dance to be back-led through, Unfoggetarian, if you feel like propping up the plaster mask of patriarchy. (Also, women who have learned to dance only as follows with terrible leads mostly know how to back-lead, if not consciously.)
Also, tea dances are in the afternoon and on schedule. Unfortunately the people who grew up waltzing have about died off and there's a lot too much seventies sway music in DJd tea dances now, IMO. I was totally spoiled by the social dance scene in the Bay Area and am trying to collect other transplants to make a claque of fast waltzers.
I remember two things from the 8 years of dance lessons I took.
1. I don't like dancing.
2. A waltz is long-step-step.
I fell asleep at a superb performance of a traditional Cambodian story. It was during the `heaven is dreamy and completely without conflict' scene, and as good a nap as I've ever had. I would feel bad if I thought the performers knew, but at least I was sitting all the way in the back.
At classical music performances I'm usually... sort of trying to guess what comes next? or how they will play it? Less intently than if I were arguing with someone; about the same way I listen to math lectures. Makes for a nice alternation between sinking into stuff I expected, ahhhh! and really noticing the surprises, Ahah!
Everywhere else I'm hoping to dance. (Though I have talked at the Stary Ploo. It's craic! )
It's a shame that "Freeee-eeee Nelson Mandela" wasn't a better song.
I remember that song being praised in a LRB essay which was critical of most political music. Looking for it now, the original appears to have disappeared from the net, but I see that I quoted part of it before. I don't know how seriously it was intended, but it nevertheless make me appreciate the song more.
Long step forward, quick step sort of sideways, feet together, you're always facing the same direction?
Without what I assume is a backwards step and also a partner involved 130 sounds sort of like walking forward while avoiding little piles of dog poop.
130: Did I mention that I really didn't like the classes?
124: There is a lot of waltzing in Texas! Come join the fun!
I still have a reasonably amount of Scottish soundingness, so I feel disassociated from attacks on NZ accents.
I dunno, heebie, if you think qqs is a waltz we may be divided by a common language. Not that I dislike country waltzes, but they're the slowest quarter of the kinds I know.
131 to 132? Okay, Moby. And: eight years! Grade school, or being kind to a sweetie?
Grade school. Mom was terrified of me being unrefined and it was the only cultural activity in town.
a claque of fast waltzers
For our wedding dance, Mrs. K-sky and I hired a teacher to choreograph a Viennese waltz to the New Pornographer's "Go Places." It was pretty damn boss if I do say so myself. Low dip, jump and spin, lots of ground covered. And now my father-in-law has The New Pornographers on his iPhone.
Also there's tons and tons of non-country brisk oom-pa-pa waltzing in Texas, but you may be the only English speaker in the room.
Polish-speaking people live in Texas?
The classes I took definitely covered the polka, but I've repressed it.
138, that was the first dance at the wedding I went to last fall.
Looking on the website of the radio station of my hometown (to see if they still had "Polka Time" every day), I learn that one of my sister's high school classmates (i.e. people who were freshmen when I was a senior) just became a grandparent.
As I will turn 36 soon, I recently realized that I probably have classmates who are grandparents. OUCH.
"Ouch" as in "how did I get so old", not "poor them".
145: what? What kind of hillbilly-ass school did you go to? Grandparents??
18 with a kid who has a kid at 18? That's not all that implausible. I've got family who did 19 and 21, making the older generation a grandmother at 40.
And that's family in my generation, not the 1890s.
Aw, I like Kiwi accents. South Africans, however, tend to sound evil to me, and I am entirely sure that is because of the history.
Meanwhile I was born in 1982 and the set of silver from my great-great-grandmother's wedding dates from 1870.
148: I would argue that 18 and 18 (or younger) is actually a lot less likely than 19 and 21. At least, unlikely enough that among a population of a few hundred people the chance that one of them has hit that marker is not terribly high. In my high school class of 450 or so I can think of a maybe like four people (including one friend of mine) who had kids in school or shortly thereafter, and it's hard to imagine that the likelihood that one of those kids went on to have a kid before the age of 18 is all that high, assuming relative demographic similarity of the kids' environment. (Which is not necessarily a valid assumption, which is why I asked heebie what kind of hillbilly-ass school she went to.)
College town in hillbilly's ass, Florida.
True hillbilly towns have, I think, 25% high school pregnancy rates. Grandmas at 36, easy-peasy. We had our fair share of pregnancies but nothing like 25%.
I've been there. It didn't seem that hillybilly-assy for the South.
The kid who was voted "Most Popular" had fathered like three different kids by the time the vote was taken, I remember. I found that very funny, and didn't think terribly hard about what it might be like to be one of the mothers.
156: That's fair. A university takes a big bite out of the hillbilly's ass.
Anyway, it was an IB program located in the poor high school* so there are plenty of people who will continue to be poor for generations, and it would be easy to have grandkids.
*obviously for the most perverse of diversity reasons: this school will look so diverse on paper, as the rich white kids flood the opportunity-program and the poor black kids get very little resources, because on average the IB program makes the high school look resouce-intense!
I'd imagine that most kids in a public school in Gainseville Florida who had kids before graduation were the precise opposite of hillbillies.
Like in bed, they were opposite a hillbilly?
They were hillbillies with moustaches.
A first cousin of mine was a grandmother at 37. There's a hillbilly section of Trampa, I guess.
Southern Koan: What is the opposite of a hillbilly? The answer is not to play the game.
The opposite of a hill is a holler, so I think it's probably a hollerbilly, unless there's an opposite of the "billy" part, too, in which case I dunno.
I had read 139. I don't find it works for Strauss, etc., at tempo, and it screws up people who learn slow/American ballroom/choreographed waltz and then try to progress to fast/historical social/improvised waltz.
The fastest stuff I'm learning now is Norwegian/Swedish/Finnish, which is related to oom-pa-pa but they think of the German style as being unbecomingly bouncy and expressive. Dwarf Lord thinks the skandia style is based on skiing, and it's true that when you get it it's unbelievably fast because there's no energy wasted on anything but turning (also true of Viennese with a very different look).
OTOH I sympathize with the What's the Two-step? problem; there seem to be as many patterns learnt as `The' Fox-Trot, and the Dwarf Lord and I default to different ones.
But 39's about a polka; if you're *waltzing* on the 2 1/2 beat, then all the more strongly WTF? Eventually you have to be moving perfectly smoothly through all the beats because anything else is wasting energy.
This is why the hambo is hard.
I haven't linked this in a while. Or this.
I can also well believe that Texas has a complete and satisfactory dance tradition that doesn't ever need the fast rotary waltz. Many have been happy relegating Strauss to chocolate commercials, etc.
Oh right, I'm confusing waltzes and polkas. It's all Tejano to me.
This book on the sociology of indie rock is good:
http://www.amazon.com/Empire-Dirt-Aesthetics-Rituals-British/dp/0819568112
Basically, the experience of a concert is much different at the front and and near the back. At the front, people are seeking an altered state of consciousness through dancing. Once you stand near the back, people have a much different experience.
(I don't know how long I've been confusing _Heaven's Gate_ with _Ishtar_.)
I've rily niver noticed inything griting abite Kiwi iccents. This may be because all the Kiwis I've ever met are really nice people. That said I can imitate it for about 10 consecutive sentences before degrading into Seth-Efrikan.
This reminds me of something amusing. I can imitate a politically loyalist Ulster accent (like the Reverend Ian Paisley) near perfectly - the key is in the intonation and prosody - but last week it struck me that this is a totally obsolete skill. I had some odd reason to get my bluenose on, and then realised I hadn't done it for several years and the Reverend would be leaving us soon.
The weird thing is that whatever Commonwealth accent you fake, once it starts to slip, it goes South African. It's really odd - you do fake Jamaican, Welsh overtones creep in, and suddenly it's Pik Botha.
On the dancing subthread, I'm still fucking delighted that my northern soul spins won actual! appreciation! so much so that I repeated the trick at a party and tore my desert boots across the left heel, where I obviously take off from by preference.
This one is just for you, clew. No one else click on it.
Kiwi accents grating? I thought it was all about the carefully modulated murmur down there.
re: scrollback
My mum was a mother [me] at 18, and a grandmother at 38 but, bonus hillbilly points, it was my younger sister who had a baby.
The lowland Scots were the OG hillbillies.
Thanks, CharleyCarp. It's the high-waisted trousers that really tie a bow in it.
Hopefully people will still check this thread -- I just watched this interview with Jeff Warner, and it's great, and I wanted to recommend it to people (particularly the first 10 minutes, it gets a little bit overly New Englandy after that). I've seen him in concert once, and thought he was amazing, and I think the first part of the interview captures what I like about him. He has an amazing background (he tells the story of how his parents taught "Tom Dooley" to Allen Lomax) is an surprisingly good singer and performer (at first impression he might seem slightly hokey, but he isn't) and has an amazing ability to bring to the surface the emotional charge in traditional songs.
Anyway, people should watch it.
My grandmother had my mom at 16, and my mom had my brother at 22, so grandma became a grandma at 38. Having relatively young grandparents (my dad was also born when his mom was 16) is something I'm really grateful for.
I love so much that Jammies' mom had him at age 20. And that she enjoys babies and children so much.