Everywhere you go in Hong Kong, the number one edible product is pork. There is no avoiding it, and attempting to keep Kosher there would be incredibly difficult. Our professor showed as a picture of some "premium grade beef" where the primary ingredient was pork. When you ordered chicken fried rice, guess what it came with, little pieces of pork. And while pork was everywhere in Hong Kong, music was not.
Sorry for the lame intro about pork. It really has nothing to do with music except for the fact that people care about digesting the pig more than musical notes in what HK dubbed itself as "Asia's World City." Asia is a continent rich in musical tradition, foreign scales, and unbelievably talented child prodigies, but the live music scene was a mixed bag of pork rinds.
On my first day there, I ventured out to find a digital camera. While making my purchase at King Dragon, I discovered a high-end audio set-up in the back portion of the store. After flipping out from some of the sweet equipment, the owner of the store played me some Stan Getz on his Boston Acoustic 303s. He was so proud of the fact that they were not made anymore. They did sound nice, and it was really the last I'd hear of good music in Hong Kong.
On my way out of the store, I asked some of the younger employees if there were any good live music spots in Hong Kong. They said no. I asked about any good jazz spots. They said no. Anything??
The owner responded, "Hong Kong is not the place for music."
I walked out disappointed, but I got a sweet camera. He was right though. I had read this in guides and online, but I would not be stopped.
On the second day of our trip, Jason took me to an Asian music instrument store which he had bought a Sanxian from on his previous trip. I learned to play his Sanxian over a couple weeks freshman year, and fell in love with it and wanted to buy one of my own. We arrived to the instrument store, divided East and West, piano or Sanxian, violin or guzheng, guitar or zither. The Chinese place such an important emphasis on maintaining their Chinese "essence" while adjusting to the changes of modernization. The ethereal harmonization of the guzheng really tantalized me. The store clerk bowed the zither a little and made it sing, but it could only play two notes! I needed something more involved.
Then, I saw it. I played it. I bought it. I asked what it was called. He said, "B'at." I carried it around for the entire trip. Played it at Buddhist monasteries, in Kowloon Park, and on the beach in Lantau Island. My connection to the B'at was deep and it became a part of my musical family. Its easy tuning of G-D-G-D made it easy to play, and it resounded with nearly Appalachian tones. I played the B'at like a bluegrass instrument and got some attention from the locals in the park. It was fun, and I had some Chinese essence in me. Maybe a little pork isn't too bad.
But nevermind my instrument, back to other people's. After many nights of going to sleep early trying to overcome overall exhaustion from an all-intensive trip and being 12 hours ahead of bodily-time schedule, I decided to go out and find some nightlife in the infamous Lan Kwai Fong (LKF) District. LKF is bar after bar after bar after bar each with a different theme. I had read that some of the bars had cover bands.
The first bar we went to with music was "Insmonia." After a beer, we headed to the back where a Filipino cover band was playing songs by Bryan Adams, AC/DC, and Bon Jovi. I guess cover bands are the same all around the world. The singer was talented and could really wail. And while I really wanted to hear the keyboardist take some mean solo, cause I knew he could, the real solo attention was on the shredding guitarist. He could sweep pick the dust of the floor, but I wish his guitar was not counterfeit. It was missing some markings that would definitely make it a Fender and it sounded way tooooo dark for a Maple fretboard and his relatively treble-ey settings on his beautiful tube amp. Despite my criticisms, he really was excellent and understood the international language of rock. I gave him a "rock on" sign and he stuck out his tongue like an East Asian Gene Simmons. A beautiful moment.
My final musical stop for the trip was the bar next door, an Irish pub which I noticed was playing some funky music. I went up to the DJ. His specialization was funky old-school rap and grooving beats. I requested some Parliament, and he was more than down.
Later in the evening, some of my classmates were unfortunately trying to start shit with the cool DJ because he wouldn't play Bon Jovi. I told the kid to go next door where the cover band wouldn't stop playing Bon Jovi. He didn't care. He asked the DJ, "What? Did Bon Jovi fuck your girlfriend or something?" Of course, the DJ got in his face and asked him if he wanted to get 'randy.' The Sternie continued provoke him to until the DJ's buddy came over and stopped any trouble from happening. Despite all the pork in Hong Kong, I know who the real pigs were. We ate, we drank, we brought nothing of value to the country accept for stupid kids at bars. If we could do better and listen to the sounds of the country, maybe the music would be a little better. Maybe an appreciation of culture instead of an appreciation of nightlife will enhance creativity between the two cultures. I'll be back searching for more and playing on the streets again with my b'at, trying to find the music somewhere.
Postscript: the b'at is actually called the Chinese Pipa and is a relative of the Iranian barbat. it is a relative to the lute, and incredibly difficult to tune.
Thursday, March 27, 2008
Lots of Pork.
Monday, March 24, 2008
Lambada für Elise by Pavel Steidl
Guitarist Pavel Steidl rips Beethoven (not the dog) a new one with his rendition of Fur Elise.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Moving Pictures
Filmcritic.com gives their opinion on what bands and artists they think should have movies made directly from their songs, in a similar style to Across the Universe. Bands that make the list: Radiohead, The Ramones, Nirvana, and Rush. Personally, I want to see the Aerosmith film about a girl named Janie, with a gun, on a killing spree. Check it out.
Read More......Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Getting Better All the Time
Just a little followup to my review, I found this snippet while meandering around the internet about the use of Gomez in that Philip's ad back when the boys were just baby Brits. Apparently the guys beat out hundreds of other contenders for the Philips spot.
Read More......Monday, March 10, 2008
I Know, I Know...
I know, I haven’t updated the blog in a week. But I’m back from a penalizing essay and slew of assignments to give you a round robin of upcoming album reviews. I gotta bunch of albums starting with the letter “A” for the next couple of weeks!
Abandoned Shopping Trolley Line by Gomez: Strangely, this album was my introduction to Gomez, and I fell in love with the sweeping Dead-like soundscapes of “Buena Vista,” but after listening to Gomez’s Bring it On, I learned their true strength is in melodic and innovative songwriting. So while “Buena Vista” can be a fun intro to anyone who’s into spacey music, Abandoned really shows Gomez’s strengths on some songs you’ll wonder even why they’re B-sides (as this entire album is, I should’ve explained that before…). Songs with those quirky yet catchy hooks you learn to love from Gomez include “Bring You’re Lovin’ Back Here,” “78 Stone Shuffle,” and the tasty alien-bossa-rock number “Flavors.” “Hit on the Head” is short and sweet, but “Steve McCroski” isn’t nearly short enough. Gomez, obviously in the midst of the electronic explorations, let the acid drop a little too hard on their heads with this one. It’s drawling and the loud whines sound like a cat stuck in a computer. But these are B-Sides, so you can’t be too harsh. Even though Abandoned Shopping Trolley Line isn’t an official studio release, there are some quality numbers. Go get Bring it On or In Our Gun first, preferably both. Then definitely buy this guy, sit down, put on “Wharf Me” and lose yourself.
My Favorite Musical Moments: Either when they steal a page right from the Grateful Dead's songbook with "Wharf Me" with that shimmering quivering guitar, or finally figuring out who does that "Getting Better" cover from the Philips commercials.
Rating: 3 1/2 Stars (out of 5)
Sunday, March 9, 2008
And the winner is...
So the first Cognitive Frequency contest has come to a close!
The lucky winner is Julia! You can pick up your calendar any time.
Because I thought more people would be interested than turned out to be the case, the second contest will be put on hold until a more interesting prize turns up. The final calendar will go to the first person to come get it.
My album review will come soon, promise.
Saturday, March 1, 2008
So the summer is eternity for you?
Here's your chance to have your voice heard and to score sweet swag to boot! The first Cognitive Frequency giveaway officially starts now!
So I am on the Insound.com mailing list because I like to browse their catalog of merch and see what’s selling hot that week. Insound is based in New York and primarily focuses on the ‘indie rock’ genre. They offer good prices and when there was a problem their staff was super helpful. Because they are relatively small, you get a sense of the staff and I like that personal touch. Plus when you order stuff, you always get tons of free cool stuff, posters, stickers, booklets, it’s a lot of fun.
When they added the option to buy albums from them digitally, I lauded their ‘Save the Album’ campaign, not providing single track download because I very much agree with supporting the fact that an artist took time to arrange an album in a specific manner. It’s part of their work too. A lot of famous bands helped make videos to support it to, including Colin Meloy.
So in a nutshell, I am a big fan of Insound. Check them out sometime.
Anyways, like I was saying, I got an email from them earlier this week and was browsing their site, when I came across their 2008 calendar. For one cent. Even though it is now March, making a sixth of the calendar kinda pointless, I couldn’t pass it up. In fact I bought the max limit of three. So I could start what would hopefully become a trend here at Cognitive Frequency: contests!
This beautiful 6” calendar not only features an awesome band each month (like Rilo Kiley, Hot Hot Heat, Minus the Bear, and Marnie Stern) but also marks important birthdays and milestone dates in ‘Indie rock’ history. Plus, each month feature a discount code, and a Guns N’ Roses fun fact! Everyone needs a little Axl now and then.
So I am giving the first of these beautiful calendars away to one lucky reader here! Here’s how to enter: Just post your name and three albums you think I should review. I’ll pick a winner, at random, sometime on Sunday the 9th who will win a calendar and maybe some other goodies with it (in the spirit of freebies) plus my very first album will be off of the list. Because this is also in part a stunt to help promote our blog, tell your friends to enter this contest and increase your own chances to win!
The next contest, which should go up tomorrow, will be a little more involved. I just need to work out some of the details.
In other news, I sadly had to miss the National playing at NYU but if anyone out there saw it and wants to write a guest review of the concert, please contact me.
Thursday, February 28, 2008
How to Savor an Album
During second semester of my freshman year of college, my brother gave me a gift. An incredible one: a hard drive loaded with over 60 gigs of music. Combined with my own music collection, that made way too much music. Thanks to the virtues of the NYU interweb, I also (and ashamedly) downloaded craploads from ourtunes, the iTunes sharing network. Again, I had way too much music. I couldn’t handle it. I cried for days. How was I to approach this cumbersome task of listening to everything?
Days passed and I still couldn’t handle the pressure. My body curled like a painful footcramp where you can feel your toes digging into your soles. I tried a bunch of crazy balls-to-the-wall approaches of listening to every song: alphabetical order one after the other, songs by track length, or any other funky way iTunes could organize my despair. I was so focused on getting through the music that I could never get into the music. There would be artists that I would want to keep listening to over and over, but my obsessive drive to finish my task stopped my natural musical urges.** My obsession died around the middle of the A’s during the alphabetical album crawl. A year and half passed, and I still barely recognized half of the artists and albums on my iTunes. Determined, I found another obsessive solution, but this time more enjoyable.
The new perilous and obsessive track was not much different from one of my previous ones. To listen to my music alphabetically, album by album. I would listen to each song over and over until I knew the words, could sing the guitar solos, and air-drum the rhythm perfectly. I haven’t gotten too far. I’m only about half-way through the A’s in a matter of 4½ months. But it’s paid off. I love my music so much more.
The greatest joy to be found in listening is by hearing out an entire album. I don’t care about the digital age and how it promotes the buying of ninety-nine cent single songs and that’s all people really care about, the singles, the singles, the singles, blah, blah, blah. That’s bullshit to me. Artists go on the road, and they write songs. Lots of them. Then they hit the studio and iron out the details. Every song on an album is one they care about, and they put it on the album because they feel it’s worth listening to. A song becomes much more when you hear that happy chord alleviating the pain from the previous painfully sad song, or that pulsing drive from drum and bass opening an album, or a subtle acoustic closer after a tragic harmonic denouement. These are things that matter to the artist.
This doesn’t mean you can’t love individual songs. You must. But understand that they have a role in your favorite artists’ greater expression. Once this is appreciated, you can more fully delve into those individual songs.
From the albums that I deep dig into and other personal favorites, I’ll be giving you my albums to savor, ones to hold close to you late at night, or to run out with during the fire. They’re albums that influenced my views on life and music and are essentially essential. So Fucking Important. These albums will be labeled thusly as savory.
If you disagree, bring it on. If you have an album that you find just as important, write about it. Don’t be shy. Coyness will not be allowed.
**Always listen to these urges. It doesn’t matter if there are demonic voices in your head telling you to listen to The Stooges or JoJo, they’re probably coming from some deep suppressed urges in your subconscious. The very same as the Freudian death drive. It’s what we need to survive.
Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Come Join the Youth and Beauty Brigade
"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture - it's a really stupid thing to want to do." –Elvis Costello, amongst many others
I am glad to have been invited to this community, though as my opening quote may indicate, I am not quite sure how, exactly, I want to approach this. I guess the best way, I see, to start is at the beginning.
I was in sixth grade when I bought my first, of many, CDs. It was Ben Folds Five’s The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner (If I were being completely truthful, I’d talk about my adolescence and its relationship to ‘Weird Al’ Yankovic albums, but that is all together too commonplace and not quite as influential as one would imagine.). Honestly, a lot of Reinhold Messner would go over my head until much later in my life. I was compelled to buy it because my friend Dan DeMaria (who continues to shape and influence the music I listen to) had shared with me an album that his cousin had shared with him: Ben Folds Five’s Whatever and Ever Amen. Although I did not recognize it then, there was a technical proficiency on that album that still amazes me. I was young and inexperienced, so I trusted in my friend’s musical tastes. Yes, it would be the first of many times that I would give it peer pressure.
From there, I would spend the next two or three years influenced by popular culture, buying albums of catchy radio singles. It was at this time, I also started playing the bass guitar. And while my teacher was more than patient with me, both in terms of the music I listened to and the infrequency with which I practiced, I also began to explore the back catalog of the classic rock greats.
By the time I was in high school, my lifelong friendship earned me a place in a four piece garage band. Though we were young and relatively inexperienced, I stand by my position of weak link of the band. Either way, though, it was fun. We played a few shows at talent shows, for parties, or just because we wanted our other friends to be impressed with us. As Dan became more and more invested the whole singer/songwriter aspect of our band and explored more and more of the local music scene, he was exposed to more and more new and lesser known work. And subsequently so was I. So that began a long journey down the proverbial rabbit-hole in a world that was simultaneously Do-It-Yourself and extremely collaborative.
In case you couldn’t tell where this was leading to, some would consider my music tastes as "mainstream indie hipster with a side of mainstream indie emo” or some variation on related words. Though, as many that try to write or think about music, I hate labels. I’ve already written several papers, in varying degrees of scholarly quality, about the ever increasing arbitrary-ness of musical labels and divisors. I think I will save the rest of this debate for another post though.
Those of you who know me, know I find a certain pride in being a little elitist in my choices of music. But also know that I am not opposed to guilty pleasures derived from either nostalgia or just plain good hooks (I mean dance parties need music you can dance to).
It is my intention to share with you the best of both newly emerging and staple classic music of what was once seen as ‘indie’ and is quickly blurring that line with ‘mainstream.’ I am self-depricating and may mock many musical stereotypes, especially ones that I am guilty of. I enjoy music through concerts, dance parties, and as a soundtrack to whatever I am doing. I try to avoid dance clubs, music explication, and lining up Dark Side of the Moon to The Wizard of Oz. I am a big fan of Top 5 lists, and you are sure to see many from me. Here’s a couple now:
My Top 5 Desert Island Bands:
5. Rilo Kiley
4. Ted Leo and the Pharmacists
3. Ben Folds Five
2. Death Cab For Cutie
1. The Decemberists
I’m sure I’ll explain my choices in another post, one that will, once again, reflect more upon me than the actual music.
5 Really Good Albums from 2007 (Though I am uncomfortable labeling them ‘Top 5’):
5. Radiohead – In Rainbows (I am pretty sure I would get kicked out of NYU if I didn’t mention them)
4. The Field – From Here We Go Sublime
3. The National – Boxer (Though I am critical of all the attention it’s getting, it’s not necessarily undeserved)
2. Bishop Allen – (As a high school and college student, I have a certain fondness for anything remotely related to TheSpark.com and, in a nutshell, this album is like Modest Mouse meets Mickey Mouse, all clever fun)
1. Band of Horses – Cease to Begin
So I hope you have an idea of my musical tastes, how I think, how I write, and if you’re interested in hearing more from me.
And, as a point of interest related to this whole notion of ‘indie’ music, Filter just ran an article about ‘Indie Music’ and ‘Indie Comedy’ with John Krasinski and The Shins (basically equating The Office to The Shins). And while I don’t agree with a lot of the content, it’s still a fun read because I would want to hang out with everyone involved in the interview (cross pimping: I also happen to run a newly emerging tv blog, for those interested).
“Some people talk about me like a revolutionary. That's nonsense; all I did was copy B.B. King.”
-Eric Clapton
Novo Amor
I happened upon Roberta Sa on Pandora Radio. Her voice is beautiful, and so is she. Check it out. I'll look for an album so I can review it for the blog. Also some sweet Portuguese Guitar (I believe) playing. Novo Amor indeed!
Driven to Tears
Music as diplomacy should be our next foreign policy. The New York Philharmonic got it right in North Korea unifying both parties not with sticks or carrots, but song. It is truly a beautiful story.
Monday, February 25, 2008
Owner of a Lonely Heart
Move yourself
You always live your life
Never thinking of the future
Prove yourself
You are the move you make
Take your chances win or loser
The Critical Period Hypothesis
-Psychology Gleitman, Reisberg, and Gross
So all my little chickadees here comes your exposure to the world of music according to me. Let this be your own critical stage with your young under-developed musical minds. There's so much out there in the world for you to listen to and feel good about yourself, or feel bad. But as long as your adolescent and nascent brains are developing a vast musical vocabulary, let me and the other contributors to this blog help drive your next CD, vinyl, or iTunes purchase (or free download but please don't).
We will provide album reviews, thoughts on music and how it affects our lives, thoughts on our own music writing processes, how songs and albums interact with our lives, the ways we rock out, and plenty of sweet articles/videos/quotes/excerpts about psychology, life, and music to always keep you informed on how the world works.
The contributors to this blog will include myself, Ariel (REL) Bitran, a good friend of mine Jamie (Jaimito) Straz who attends the UofMiami, a skinny Asian boy named Ryan (Ryan) Harrington, Kyle Deas, and members of my nuclear family: Alberto Bitran and Debbie Bitran. Hopefully, this diverse candidate selection will provide not only interesting musical vantage points but polarizing writers who all greatly dislike some of another's music.
So now put this link in your bookmarks toolbar so you can click on it everyday drooling, wanting to know more about how the contributors and I can enliven your lives with our melodic narratives. Do it. Now.
Insert cheesy music quote here: "Music produces a kind of pleasure which human nature cannot do without" Confucius