Matt’s Blog

Last weekend some friends of mine graciously had me along for their yearly tradition of building a giant paper mâché dragon which we parade around town to celebrate the Chinese New Year.  We garner many strange looks, along with a few cheers of encouragement.  Some years we get kicked out of establishments, others we don’t.  But it doesn’t matter.  This year was just as much fun as any other.  It’s good to have friends who are willing to do weird things.  I get sick of watching movies.

I also learned to bend a note on my harmonica.  I’m still terrible at playing the thing, but bending was a lot of fun to learn.  Once you start doing it, it comes so easy.  None of the tips I read online really helped me though.  What I finally did to get it working was to whistle, starting at a high pitch, and then lowering it (without the harmonica).  Once I had done that a few times, I just did the same thing into the harmonica, and it worked like a charm.  So, for those players out there who want to bend, ignore all the tips about “blowing down” (whatever that means) or moving your tongue back in your mouth (that is part of the movement, but not all).  Just whistle and pay attention to what you do inside your mouth, then do the same into the harmonica.  It’s easiest to draw hole four, and don’t use the tongue blocking method to produce the single note, use the whistle method instead.  That will get you better sounding notes in the long run anyway.

I’ve written about Neil Young before, and I’ll do it again.  I happened to finally see the film “Neil Young: Heart of Gold.”  It showed at Sundance last year and I was up there, but I didn’t get a chance to see it.  So I finally got it from Netflix.  The film is just a few short interviews of him and a few of his bandmembers before a concert they put on at Ryman Auditorium, followed by the full length concert.

Honestly, I didn’t care too much for most of the music.  The music isn’t what I like about Neil Young.  What I like is the man, I love a person who can just follow their passion, wherever it takes them.  Granted Neil Young’s took his into fame and riches, but he followed it nonetheless.  Even now that he’s old and his voice is giving up, he still sings.  And you can tell he loves it, because that’s why his music is so popular.  He’s one of those artists that can really transmit emotion through music.  His stuff isn’t just catchy tunes, it’s really transmitting feelings and thoughts and perspectives, just as good art should.  That’s why you can’t classify him into one genre of music, he’s all over the place, folk, rock, even down home country.  He doesn’t need a genre, or to be marketed.  The music alone is enough.

This was an opera I went to see today with some friends.  It wasn’t my favorite, but there were some parts I really liked.  The whole first act was excellent.  The conflict that the composer felt hit pretty close to home for me.  He had written an opera about a woman who gets dumped by her boyfriend and went to live on a deserted island to wallow in misery, but the Majordomo ordered that the performance of a comedy troupe be mixed in with the performance of the opera.  The composer is devastated, because he feels that the comedy troupe is a disgrace and such a performance would ruin the work that he has done.

He goes on to lament about it, saying that the world is not what he wanted it to be, and that he would rather burn the opera than see it performed like that.  He’s the kind of person that expects too much out of the world and is way too dissapointed when it doesn’t turn out the way he expected it.

The second act of the opera had it’s moments of hilarity as the two stories were intertwined, which I appreciated immensely, but then the opera alone took charge and it was pretty boring from there.  Still it was worth it for the good parts.  Opera is just so interesting.  The way these stories have been preserved for so long is great, because it’s a chance to see how people viewed storytelling in the past.  Storytelling is such an intrinsic part of a culture, that an old opera like this one is a glimpse into the way the world was.

You’ve got to admire an artist like Neil Young. He’s had an extraordinary career, one that many musicians would love to have. And today he’s sixty years old, and still singing. Still recording albums, and controversial ones at that. I guess he just loves it to much to stop. I hope that whatever I happen to be doing when I’m sixty is to enthralling, that I choose not to stop.

There is definitely a different style being expressed by the Dixie Chicks on their latest album, “Taking the Long Way.”  It’s more than apparent that their priorities have changed in life, all three now with husbands and families.  There is no rough and rowdy track as we’ve come to be used to on their previous albums.  Instead, the songs are more emotionally charged, they express sentiments of the difficulties of being happy (It’s So Hard) and being examples for future generations (I Hope), instead of mattress dancing and stuffing people in their trunk.

Though I must say, this is exactly what I expected from the Chicks.  There has always been a progression in their albums.  They’re not the average band out just for the money, releasing cd’s every year.  They take their time, and every album has it’s own style.  This one is mellow, in for the long haul.  I liked it very much.