Food Containers As Instruments

Okay.  The opossum story:  opossum in the chicken house.  Got it out with a shovel...the dog would have nothing to do with it.  Don't have a gun, so put opossum in trash can.  Thought I would give it a 50/50 fighting chance by taking it to the river and tossing it over the bridge.  Poor opossum.  I hope he's okay.  Won't be coming back to the chicken house any time soon, I reckon.

I notice in posts prior I mention the idea of "more later" and then fail to write the more later.  Well, I'll work on that.  More later.

Lots of music going on this week: Sarah White and the Pearls are recording (and, yes, I will  less).  Seussical: the Musical.  Keith Morris and the Crooked Numbers...Two shows with Doug Schneider and Kate Lambert at Westminister Canterbury in Richmond, where none other than THE James Erb (Google that guy) told me he enjoyed the show from beginning to end.  That may have been the nicest compliment I've been payed about anything.  I used to eat at their house on Wednesday nights before choir rehearsal and I will always remember that he would not eat bread with spaghetti--too much bread product.  His brilliance is unique and his humor is broad.  He arranged a version of "Oh! Shenandoah" that is sublime.  He and his wife Ruth are two of a kind.  Awesome.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d5-vwK12ZFs

So, on Saturday morning, I meet up with John and we talk about his PhD dissertation, which will be about generative music.  We also get into some esoteric recording.  See post below.  Hanging out with John Priestly, one can expect anything, so it's good to go in with no expectations.  Coffee.  Check.  Music.  Check.  Intelligent Conversation.  One sided, but check.  Recording weird sounds.  Check.  Being almost forty but feeling 17.  Check.  Mind expanding.  Check.  My admiration for John's intelligence.  Check.

He introduced me to Brian Eno's and Peter Chilvers's program Bloom.  That stuff is crazy cool and brought up much discussion on the idea of  music ownership, composition, and collaboration.  Look it up.  Creating systems of music to reproduce notes randomly (or not so randomly) intrigues me.  I have been a fan of Eno for a long time (our son was born as we listened to Discreet Music on repeat [an idea I think Eno would commend]) and I enjoy seeing how he is climbing the face of music entire, scaling to new heights of creativity.  So we experimented with sounds.  He posted it on his site.  Below.

Stuart meets the ceramophone...(photo by John Priestly)

http://priestley.matxer.org/soundreading/?p=34

So, there we have it--bowls as instruments.  Maybe next time: food as instruments.  Send me your thoughts.  More later