Raging heartbeat
Yesterday I was all one big heart and had vibrating pants.
To be more specific, I went and saw a Pink Floyd show at Oslo Konserthus. It was an all right show with a fantastic saxophone player but the sound wasn't quite right.
After only sitting there for a little while I started wondering whether my heart had moved over to the other side, then down in my stomach, into my arm, my leg... and then I realized that my pants were vibrating. Ok, so the bass was slightly overdone. The worst was that the music was played so loud that it sometimes hit your ears so that it hurt. Towards the end I wasn't even able to enjoy the music since it hurt so badly (and I know the people around me were hurting too). This was really sad since they played the best songs towards the end.
So to sum up: Sound quality/setup really bad. Song selection not so good. Performance kind of boring. The light show was really cool sometimes. The big bonus though was the saxophone player which almost made it worth it to go to bed in pain.
Nature's music
So Carlson, what is wrong with playing the Clarinett....;-)? I actually played it myself long time ago. Clarinett and saxophones are not that unsimilar even though I have only tried the first.
It is possible that the band had gone deaf by playing the music but I think it was more the setup and my seat that were a bit unfortunate. The sax player was good though and saved the show. Maybe because he was the only one that seemed to be enthusiastic. The other band members just stood there and almost seemed to be doing playback. Then again, I was told that Pink Floyd were pretty dead on stage too.
I might not be the best to judge on the song selection. I am really only aware of the later part of Pink Floyd's song selection which I think is fantastic but I haven't really tried to listen and appreciate the earlier parts of their career.
I liked that you Anonymous pointed out the fact that quiet places are getting more scarse. I too grew up on a farm and can truly appreciate quiet once in a while. There are few things better than a walk in the woods or on the mountain just taking in the subtle sounds of nature!
-The Almighty Medium Geek
Smelly clarinets
The two instruments may look similar, but if the saxophone is a wild and beautiful lynx, the clarinet is a smelly old housecat. Or something.
My domain name was coined by a trumpet playing friend of mine. It is SFKS - the Swedish Association for a Clarinet Free Society. Unfortunately I have not put up a web page yet, but one day I will.
Sax is the answer
Of course the sax player was the one to save your day.. or concert at least. Just imagine how terrible it had been if he played e.g. the clarinet! ;-)
I saw that the guy is a representant of Cannonball saxophones. Never heard of it before, but these days new brands pop out all the time. It seems they have a lot of unique patents and exclusive materials, so maybe it is one step further than those "order 1000 and get your own name on it" horns from China.
Music and noise
I used to work in a music bar. I really like live music - just the simple stuff people play, sometimes a bit ordinary, sometimes really amazingly good.
If you watch a band develop over the years, you also tend to watch them going deaf - from the drummer to the sound engineer. And as they do, they crank up the volume. The systems that were used at live concerts in the 60s generally meant people heard nothing more than the people around them shouting and screaming. The systems they have now can register on seismographs and blow out your eardrums in a night.
We have music in the car, the shop, the train, the lift, TV on in the bar, reception, the living room. It's playing over the top of engines, traffic, air conditioners, vacuum cleaners, construction sites, people walking on hard floors with hard shoes. That plays over the top of the sound from CRT monitors, lights, that only a few people hear.
When I was young, on the farm, at night there was almost no sound, and with a basic cloud cover no light (not enough to see my fingers when I put my hand on my nose). The last time I was there you could hear the trafic on the new freeway 15km away, all night. You could see the glow. Quiet places are becoming rarer, and we are growing up deafening ourselves.
:-(
Bad song selection is just a question of taste. But Rock and Roll music really is harming people - not through its morally dissolute lyrics, or the promotion of a smash-your-TV-each-night lifestyle, but through basic physical damage. The kind of thing that would have a Court Martial finding against an interrogator for breaching the rules of basic human decency that are expected to apply even in wartime.
Good thing the Sax player was there...