The OFFICIAL Unofficial Achewood Message Board
Trivial Pursuits => Arts & Entertainment => Topic started by: pmcd9 on December 17, 2010, 08:16:57 pm
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I don't work in retail and I haven't done a whole lot of shopping the last few Christmas seasons so I actually like Christmas music. I love a lot of the old favorites and some of the quirky ones too. Admittedly There's a lot of bad Christmas music, but it's mostly unoffensive to me.
Trans Siberian Orchestra and Mannheim Steamroller on the other hand are just fuck*ng terrible. Awful awful music. Yet they are both wildly popular.
That's not very interesting or noteworthy I don't guess, but I'm pretty interested in the taxonomy of this music. What brought us to this is what I want to know. How did we get from White Christmas (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7A03tpV-70k) to Wizards in Winter (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AkAhmH40kiM)?
Popular Christmas music has always followed closely along with popular music trends from whatever time period it was created. But TSO and MS sound like they take their musical cues from The Final Countdown.
Anyway, if that topic doesn't interest you go ahead and rag on some Christmas music in general I guess. I know that a bunch of you hate it.
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TSO is basically Savatage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDVoajxYdWI) and an orchestra.
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Manheim Steamroller has always bothered me. Especially their name. And Manhattan Transfer. Them too.
I don't hate all Christmas music, but there was this extremely overwrought version of I'll Be Home For Christmas (lots of orchestral swells and the "if only in my dreams" part at the end was more or less shouted) that was played at the grocery store I worked at for the last 6 weeks or so. It's so bad that I'd like to find the recording. I was thinking Bing Crosby, but his version on the youtubes doesn't seem to be it.
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Did you just badmouth The Final Countdown? That is risking a beatdown from "The Best in the World" Bryan Danielson (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bksg5OwTeU).
(If you don't watch the whole thing at least skip to when the guy in the yellow comes out. That is an awesome high-five technique that he employs)
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Did you just badmouth The Final Countdown?
Okay, I can leave them out of it. How about Extreme or maybe Queensryche.
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TSO is basically Savatage (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GDVoajxYdWI) and an orchestra.
That video is fucked. So is that song. So is that band.
Okay, I can leave them out of it. How about Extreme or maybe Queensryche.
Hey man, I liked Queensr˙che when I was 15. (Ignore the umlaut at your peril, sir.)
To be fair, though, there doesn't seem to be much difference between any of the bands mentioned here. I'm not really sure why the whole metal xmas thing took off. But, as you say, I hate xmas music.
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I was so prepared to hate Christmas music when I was hearing it 8 hours a day...
but I kind of love Christmas music.
There is some that is pretty bad. But the classics are all good in my book.
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I find myself polarized on Christmas music.
Play a Christmas song and I will probably either really love it or really hate it.
A dude is not lukewarm on the holiday songs.
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I find myself polarized on Christmas music.
Play a Christmas song and I will probably either really love it or really hate it.
A dude is not lukewarm on the holiday songs.
But what about Mannheim Steamroller and Trans Siberian Orchestra specifically?
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that was played at the grocery store I worked at for the last 6 weeks or so.
yo dude, join the club! (or you are saying you no longer do that?)
...but seriously, we should hang out again. be on the look-out for free events.
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The best Christmas album is the Bob Dylan Christmas album (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLGEdMQGoyU). The second-best Christmas album is the Ringo Starr Christmas album (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2yUdThuU1WE).
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There is some that is pretty bad. But the classics are all good in my book.
So when the Christmas season started and we started playing Christmas music on the satellite radio at the store, I seriously thought about quitting. Note that most weeks I only work two four hour shifts. But after ten minutes I was ready to poke my own eardrums out.
After a couple of days of that, I was manager for a shift, and I was all "oh thank god I can play Bruce Springsteen now." But the boss stopped by to pick up some stuff and said "now remember, we have to play Christmas music."
And I asked, is that the only Christmas station? And she said, there is another one, but it's more pop, like Mariah Carey. And I said, isn't there a classsical one? And she said, that's the one we've been playing - you know, Bing Crosby and stuff.
So after she left I went online and of course there is another station, with, like, choral music and so on. Classical and TRADITIONAL Christmas music.
Argh. I try not to be a snob, seriously I do, but Bing Crosby is not CLASSICAL.
The thing is, I really love Christmas music. But I mean traditional Christmas music. Like, I can still sing all the alto lines to, you know, Hark the Herald Angels Sing and Joy to the World and so on, without needing a score, despite not having been in a chorus in about a decade. I spent formative years of my youth performing in a folk music Christmas theatrical production. I own wonderful Renaissance Christmas music CDs and wonderful folk music. Songs that people have been singing at this season for centuries.
And then someone tells me that Bing Crosby is classical Christmas music and I just want to go live in a cabin in the woods with internet.
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And then someone tells me that Bing Crosby is classical Christmas music and I just want to go live in a cabin in the woods with internet.
That's just like when my roommate tried to tell me Metallica is classic rock.
Seriously though, I don't think some people understand that, in music anyway, there is a distinction between classic and classical.
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Now I am thinking of an experiment where I see how many hours I can tolerate the Charlie Brown Christmas CD on repeat.
I bet it is one million hours.
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Seriously though, I don't think some people understand that, in music anyway, there is a distinction between classic and classical.
OK, so perhaps this is a fact about language change instead of about musical ignorance, and I should remind myself that there is no point in railing against language change.
Sigh, no, I don't think that's going to help me get through sixteen hours of that radio station next week.
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****SCRIPTIVIST
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yo dude, join the club! (or you are saying you no longer do that?)
...but seriously, we should hang out again. be on the look-out for free events.
Yeah, I have a different full-time gig starting on Monday. We should. We should. Maybe we could start a fire in our condo association's empty pool.
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But what about Mannheim Steamroller and Trans Siberian Orchestra specifically?
Ah but I consider encouraging Thread Wander to be my sacred duty.
So it is important to stretch the premise as much as possible.
(I think that both of the above, I really love the first few times I hear their Christmas songs in the season and then hate like hell the rest of the way. So it still works.(
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I have never heard of Trans Siberian Orchestra. I have heard the name Mannheim Steamroller but I don't know what their music is.
I think perhaps I will leave it that way. I just realized that I am actually scheduled to work TWENTY hours with the Christmas radio station next week, so I have enough problems as it is.
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Maybe this is what made the Grinch so grinchy.
Either that or his parents were mugged and killed in a dark alley after a screening of Zorro.
By Santa Claus.
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I have never heard of Trans Siberian Orchestra. I have heard the name Mannheim Steamroller but I don't know what their music is.
I think perhaps I will leave it that way. I just realized that I am actually scheduled to work TWENTY hours with the Christmas radio station next week, so I have enough problems as it is.
I first heard of TSO from Snopes (http://www.snopes.com/photos/arts/xmaslights.asp). Of course not long after Snopes confirmed this it got turned into a beer ad
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It would be better if it was TSOL. I could probably listen to more xmas music by them. Well, until they got all hair metal.
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I was going to argue with Wombat and say that people are Wrong if they think that Bing Crosby is Classical music, and then I remembered that there are people out there who think it is stupid and incorrect to say that Bach was a classical (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_period_(music)) composer.
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I was going to argue with Wombat and say that people are Wrong if they think that Bing Crosby is Classical music, and then I remembered that there are people out there who think it is stupid and incorrect to say that Bach was a classical (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Classical_period_(music)) composer.
And all of those people are on the internet.
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To be fair some of them probably refuse to use the internet. Or watch television. Those ones are probably in universities though.
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It is a perfectly common and normal thing for a word to mean different things in different contexts. Bach is a classical composer if you are comparing him to John Lennon and not a classical composer if you are comparing him to Mozart. But Bing Crosby is never a classical act no matter who you are comparing him to. SIGH. Did I mention TWENTY HOURS next week.
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Bach is a classical composer if you are comparing him to John Lennon and not a classical composer if you are comparing him to Mozart.
Hey, my other favorite Achewood quote!
IT'S ALL, CHING CHONG WING WONG (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=02212002)
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Hey, my other favorite Achewood quote!
IT'S ALL, CHING CHONG WING WONG (http://achewood.com/index.php?date=02212002)
ahhh the halcyon days
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Yeah, I miss Achewood. Ah well.
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It is a perfectly common and normal thing for a word to mean different things in different contexts.
Just to be clear, I understand this: the dude (professor) who was lecturing about the history of western music did not. Although he seemed resigned to the fact that people were going to keep calling all of it Classical Music, instead of Western Art Music or something like that.
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Just to be clear, I understand this: the dude (professor) who was lecturing about the history of western music did not.
Oy.
When I'm about to poke my own eardrums out later today, I will try saying to myself "at least you're not a college professor anymore."
Twenty hours of Christmas music this week starts in 1 hour and 15 minutes. I would seriously have quit this job over this last straw, being at the end of my tether after several hard months, and God knows I have become skilled at telling people to take this job and shove it. But A, I am not enough of a jerk to quit a job at a store the week before Christmas especially when I like these people and my dogs love hanging out there, and B, my agent and I just agreed on the topic of my next book and this job is a good place to collect material.
WISH ME LUCK.
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stay strong, just five more days and then it's nothing but valentine's ads
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Oy.
When I'm about to poke my own eardrums out later today, I will try saying to myself "at least you're not a college professor anymore."
Twenty hours of Christmas music this week starts in 1 hour and 15 minutes. I would seriously have quit this job over this last straw, being at the end of my tether after several hard months, and God knows I have become skilled at telling people to take this job and shove it. But A, I am not enough of a jerk to quit a job at a store the week before Christmas especially when I like these people and my dogs love hanging out there, and B, my agent and I just agreed on the topic of my next book and this job is a good place to collect material.
WISH ME LUCK.
Good luck, and I'm oddly cheered to hear that you get day care, after your fashion.
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stay strong, just five more days and then it's nothing but valentine's ads
"every kiss begins with 'kay'!"
"he went to jared!"
[[puts fist through TV screen]]
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"every kiss begins with 'kay'!"
"he went to jared!"
[[puts fist through TV screen]]
Aren't those 2 places, technically, the same store?
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I will try saying to myself "at least you're not a college professor anymore."
Oh, womz, you're my goddamned hero for saying this.
I am 31 years old and I still get lectures from my mom that I should'a just hung out in college until I got a doctorate and became a professor of such as English or Comparative Religion.
And I try to tell her "Mom, I know I have lived a weird life and teaching is a noble field but it was never for me. I would have ended up taking my own life had I become an academic."
Holy crap. My mom has been a nurse her whole life and has never wanted for a job and so she holds all other career paths against the standard of "safety".
And she thinks academia would'a been "safe" for me which... is deluded on all kindsa levels. I love my mom but... she is deluded on all kindsa levels.
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What decade is your mom living in? The odds of your getting a job as a professor in either one of those fields is so low that they ought to be legally restricted from admitting any more students to graduate programs. Seriously. I used to be undergrad program director and I would have sued myself for malpractice if I had heard myself advising anyone to go to grad school in English with the goal of becoming an academic.
Seriously, do you need me to call her up and slap some sense into her? Because I swear I would do it.
Or have her read this. I think he is right about everything except that 30 is too old to find another career, which is absurd.
http://www.selloutyoursoul.com/2010/11/02/ph-d-job-hell-an-open-letter-to-thomas-h-benton-a-k-a-william-a-pannapacker-how-%E2%80%9Cgraduate-school-in-the-humanities-just-don%E2%80%99t-go%E2%80%9D-destroyed-my-ph-d-and-saved-my-life/ (http://www.selloutyoursoul.com/2010/11/02/ph-d-job-hell-an-open-letter-to-thomas-h-benton-a-k-a-william-a-pannapacker-how-%E2%80%9Cgraduate-school-in-the-humanities-just-don%E2%80%99t-go%E2%80%9D-destroyed-my-ph-d-and-saved-my-life/)
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My mom got a job as a nurse in a rural area where no one wanted to work, in the middle Seventies, and has been insulated from all sense of the job market ever since.
Her sense of what are "good stable" jobs is frozen in 1976.
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Sounds like my ex with the whole "English and Psychology degrees ought to get us both $70k/year"
Or if we're lucky, $70k/year total. You know, with us both having second jobs.
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my agent and I just agreed on the topic of my next book
Just to put things in perspective for you, I hope that someday before I die I can utter that very sentence.
Congratulations!
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Thanks. Long before I die, I hope I can utter "my agent read the damn already-finished fiction I sent two months ago and told me she loved it and can sell it," but in the meantime, I do realize how much better I have it than most people.
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But what about Mannheim Steamroller and Trans Siberian Orchestra specifically?
Someone's gotta be the Thomas Kinkade of Christmas music. Someone's gotta be the culture for people who have a favorite NOW disc.
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Someone's gotta be the Thomas Kinkade of Christmas music.
WHY???
No, I guess you are right. Sigh.
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Somebody has to be the Thomas Kinkade of every popular endeavor. The trick is to get them all in one place, so we can round them up and ship them off to the work camps.
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I had to google Thomas Kinkade, but yeah, that makes perfect sense. They are all Republicans!
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My step-mom is a commercial artist - meaning she does these prints of cats and stuff, and puts them on mugs and calendars and stuff like that. She has met ol' Tommy a number of times. He's just a guy who sort of hit the lottery with the lowest common denominator-type art. It happens in art, music, literature, whatever. Dean Koontz, anyone?
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How does that work? Does she pay a royalty to whoever owns the image - or does she use her own art?
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It's all her original art (http://www.howardmandville.com/Pages/Artist%20pages/ross.html).