Rhymes With Porridge

In a year where Guitar Hero is making (sound) waves, let us not forget that a guitar-with-buttons is something that has been around for a while. While we can skip over the Top Of The Pops-style synths-with-straps, the various MIDI guitars have led to the Ztar, a cool (if ridiculously expensive) piece of equipment deployed to great effect on last week’s Later with Jools Holland by Pendulum. Check it out.

(I can’t actually play guitar so if you’re a guitar purist and think this is the greatest travesty since Dylan went electric, I’m sorry for your troubles).

Some wry (and in one case) critical comments here and here. And yes, that is Al Green clapping along.

I have a particular personal marker that has nothing to do with other feasts or trees or decorations - it’s the return of Xmas In Frisco, an utterly off-the-wall web radio service from SomaFM that runs for about a month a year, full of alternative takes on the season of joy (as well as some familiar Christmas and holiday favourites). I’ve listened to it each December since 2002. This year, it has started a few weeks earlier than usual (as explained by the producers here) - while normally I’d complain about such a signpost being changed, it’s impossible to say a bad word about this channel. (The channel does contain many bad words though - don’t say I didn’t warn you).

For a sample of the kind of stuff that they play, see the constantly-updated live playlist - and of course, click here to listen. And if you haven’t already done so, have a look at the list of other (year-round) channels here. SomaFM is web-only, has no ads and is listener-supported. Support them here.

A lovely little post about the two different covers for Margaret Atwood’s Massey Lectures on “Debt”. I have the UK edition (bought on the day of publication) and it’s wonderful, though I wouldn’t have said no to the North American cover either. The Massey Lectures are a great Canadian institution and are going from strength to strength in a multimedia environment. Do check it out, and this year’s lecturer is of course brilliant and engaging in how she addresses the topic - surprising quite a few people it seems.

I’m not liveblogging this as I’d rather spend the time playing with numbers and simultaneous reading/watching/listening in a way that makes sense to myself rather than try and find a way of being coherent to others. How very Web -1. So this is it for me in terms of ‘election night blogging’ (although it is in fact mostly written in advance as I’m a cheat).

I’ve pretty much stayed up for the last two presidential-cycle US “election nights”. As far as I can remember, in 2000 I was watching CNN and keeping track of numbers myself on a handwritten chart (with occasional forays onto the Web on - shudder - dial-up), and in 2004 it was simultaneous Sky News (TV) and NPR (audio) (both via cable in Dublin, on the TCD campus) and a certain amount of Web goings-on, although a lot of sizes just seized up at crucial moments. This year there’s again a pile of sources although there is a cut-off in that I have an early start in the morning (and will probably just skip sleep entirely) including a 2 hour train journey where I’ll be totally cut off other than whatever radio reception I can get. (Just for the avoidance of doubt, I also stay up for significant UK and Canadian elections, though for Irish elections I’ve always been doing something at a count for a candidate so that’s a totally different experience).

Some utterly random links from wot I’ve read so far today:

Huffington Post data aggregator. Wahey! And the unstoppable fivethirtyeight.com.

Reasons to ignore exit polls. And apparently the US networks are getting ready to call the election earlier than usual.

The New York Times tries to give some signposts to the evening. All subject to change of course. The good people on the UEA American Studies blog are running a handy map.

The Guardian’s liveblog. And that from the pogge bloggy types in Canada, here and some Irish troublemakers here. Here’s an explanation of how the BBC is doing its job - a nice peak behind the scenes. Neil gave in and went to Leviathan and Ben bemoans that he is outnumbered. Keith is in Virginia and, when not getting kicked out of disreputable establishments, is producing interesting things.

During RTÉ’s celebration of John Adams in 2007, a major omission was the art of the voice. Adams of course has authored a number of (for the genre) well-known operatic works, including the epic Nixon in China, the controversial Death of Klingoffer and the overlooked (in my view) ’songplay’ I Was Looking at the Ceiling and Then I Saw the Sky.

Adams’ latest opera, Doctor Atomic, is at the Metropolitan Opera in New York this season. It will be shown across the UK as part of the Met Opera HD series in small cinemas (those affiliated with the Picturehouses group, typically arthouse or membership places - here in Norwich, it is Cinema City) on Saturday 8th November at 6pm. It’s the latest step in the very long-running Metropolitan Opera international broadcasts, first heard in 1931, which has gone from AM to FM to TV and now to various methods of digital distribution.

In advance of all this, check out this interview with Adams in the Observer (with responses and raised eyebrows from On An Overgrowth Path, who also highlights this; see also Jessica Duchen). Adams has a book out too, called Hallelujah Junction. Critic Alex Ross (author of what is probably the best book on 20th century music yet written, The Rest Is Noise) discusses the Met’s production in the New Yorker, here, and adds some nice sound samples, here. (With thanks to Ross’s blog). And finally, the Met has a neat minisite with piles of stuff to read, watch and hear.