Fiat Lux

Audio historians have found a set of French “phonautogram” recordings from 1860 that predate Thomas Edison’s recordings by more than 10 years.

On a digital copy of the recording provided to The New York Times, the anonymous vocalist, probably female, can be heard against a hissing, crackling background din. The voice, muffled but audible, sings, “Au clair de la lune, Pierrot répondit” in a lilting 11-note melody — a ghostly tune, drifting out of the sonic murk.

What’s even cooler, you can download the clip yourself and listen to it. The quality’s not great, but it’s clearly a woman singing. Very neat.

Wow, this sounds like it’s going to be fantastic … unfortunately I’m on the wrong side of the country to really enjoy it:

Michael Tilson Thomas and the San Francisco Symphony have been asked to open a major celebration of the life and career of Leonard Bernstein next fall.

The festival, sponsored by the New York Philharmonic and Carnegie Hall, will open on Sept. 24 with Thomas conducting the San Francisco Symphony in an all-Bernstein concert at Carnegie Hall. The concert not only launches “Bernstein: The Best of All Possible Worlds” but also kicks off Carnegie Hall’s 2008 season.

The gala concert will feature cellist Yo-Yo Ma and singers Dawn Upshaw and Thomas Hampson. The program will include the “Fancy Free” Suite, Symphonic Dances from “West Side Story,” as well as selections from “Mass,” “Songfest,” “A Quiet Place,” “Wonderful Town,” “On the Town” and “Candide.”

The two New York organizations are teaming up to honor Bernstein to commemorate the 90th anniversary of his birth and the 50th anniversary of his appointment as music director of the New York Philharmonic.

*sigh*

If you haven’t heard the news, the Big Daddy of exercise podcasts, DJ Steve Boyett, has gotten a new sponsor. That’s great, but the downside is that his old, un-sponsored mixes are going offline.

So get over to his site or to the iTunes podcast directory before November 1 and download anything you haven’t already downloaded.

Another week, another random mix.

1) Lohengrin Prelude - Wagner
2) Shape of My Heart - Backstreet Boys
3) Beat Box - Matisyahu
4) Blood Of Eden - Peter Gabriel
5) My Hometown - Bruce Springsteen
6) It’s The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine) - REM
7) Not A Day Goes By - Mandy Patinkin Say It Isn’t So - Hall & Oates
9) Still Take You Home - Arctic Monkeys
10) my funny valentine - Sting

#2 is a little embarrassing. At least it’s the only song of theirs in my collection.

So around lunchtime yesterday, Scott IMed me with some Big News: a co-worker of his was looking to unload two tickets to The Police concert at Oakland Coliseum. Did we want to go?

HELL YES!

The Police broke up before I started going to concerts, so I always assumed I’d never have the chance to see them live. Then, when they announced their “30th Anniversary tour” I figured there’d be no way I’d manage to snag tickets. Instead, the tickets came to us. Nice how that worked out.

I didn’t have time to do much planning, and cameras weren’t allowed anyway, so this is the best I could do for a photo:

I’d never been to a stadium concert before, and the sheer size of the venue was definitely a drawback. But other than that — and the absolutely horribly bad opening act — we had a fantastic time. Wikipedia has a full set list, if you’re interested in that sort of thing.

Despite Stewart Copeland’s grousing, the band sounded very tight and polished to me. There were one or two moments when I thought I caught a bobble as the band transitioned into the next song, but other than that, they played extremely well for just short of two hours, including encores. Sting had to work fairly hard to get the audience energy up (I think this is where the stadium size was an issue) but the last 40 minutes or so was a big rock-out.

In short, if you get a chance to catch the tour, do so. It’s worth it.

Haven’t done one of these in a while:

I Want To Come Over - Melissa Etheridge
Tenth Avenue Freeze Out - Bruce Springsteen
Indestructible - Matisyahu
Desperado - Eagles
Everybody Wants To Rule The World - Tears For Fears
Mercy Street - Peter Gabriel
A Bit of Earth - The Secret Garden (Original Broadway Cast)
I Feel Fine - The Beatles
Church Of The Poison Mind - Culture Club
Complicated (The Matrix Mix) - Avril Lavigne

As a reminder, The Rules: Open iTunes or your iPod. Load up your entire library. Put it in “random” mode. Write down the first ten tracks that come up–and no fair putting in ones you think will make you look cool, or omitting ones that make you look like a total dork.

If you like listening to music streamed via internet radio, or from websites like Pandora, you might want to click through and read the FAQ at Save Our Internet Radio.

On March 1, 2007 the US Copyright Office stunned the Internet radio industry by releasing a ruling on performance royalty fees that are based exclusively on the number of people tuned into an Internet radio station, rather than on a portion of the station’s revenue. They discarded all evidence presented by webcasters about the potentially crippling effect on the industry of such a rate structure, and rubber-stamped the rates requested by the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America).

Under this royalty structure, an Internet radio station with an average listenership of 1000 people would owe $134,000 in royalties during 2007 - plus $98,000 in back payments for 2006. In 2008 they would owe $171,000, and $220,000 in 2009.

There is no way for a station with 1000 listeners to make that kind of money. That’s over $11 per listener in 2007. No Internet radio station currently operating comes even close to that kind of income. Also keep in mind that 1000 listeners is not a large number. Popular stations like Radio Paradise, SOMA, Digitally Imported, radioio, etc have many times that many listeners.

In other words, if they are allowed to stand these rates are a death sentence for independent Internet radio stations. The only stations that would survive would be those who can afford to operate at that kind of loss, such as AOL (who would owe over $20,000,000 in 2006, far in excess of their income from radio).

Unless the Feds change their current ruling, it’s looking like RIAA has been able to strike a death blow against all but the biggest and best-funded companies that stream music online.

Hat tip: Craig.

Although I’ve owned an iPod for quite some time now, and have bought at least 50 individual iTunes, today was the first time I actually bought an entire album from iTunes. It’s one I’ve been meaning to buy for a while but never got around to it, and decided I’d rather not wait for it to be shipped.

Rock out to Matisyahu, all y’all!

And now I need to remember to burn a copy to CD.

Thanks to the kindness of some friends, Scott and I were able to see the new musical “Lestat” in San Francisco last night.

Overall, I’d give it three out of five stars. The show has a lot going for it, it was entertaining, and the majority of the flaws are fixable ones. Whether it will ever make it to 5 stars, though, I’m not sure.

First, some technical observations. The show is done with relatively minimal set; heavy use is made of projections onto various screens. It worked better for the Paris scenes than the other locations, but overall I was OK with it. Using projections on the screen as special effects when the vampires attacked was a nice touch; and I also liked that there were no fangs and minimal blood effects. Costumes were overall good, although Gabrielle’s last costume was just weird, and I’m not sure why they chose to do the ensemble in black and white for “Welcome to the New World”. It didn’t fit. Lestat’s costumes also could use a bit of help — he seemed underdressed much of the time compared to the rest of the cast.

With one exception, the cast was very solid. I particularly liked Lestat and Gabrielle - both had powerful voices and did a good job with their roles. The actress who played Claudia was also very good - her number, “I Want More” was a highlight of Act 2 - but she was also obviously not 10 years old, and that bugged me a bit. Armand, Louis and Marius were also effective. However, the actor who played Nicolas was clearly not as good as the rest of the cast. His acting was weak and so was his voice. To be fair, Nicolas is a tough role - playing a depressed person isn’t easy - but that doesn’t excuse the vocal weakness. Perhaps he was having an off-night, but if that’s as good as he gets, I hope they recast the role for Broadway.

Before I go into the book, lyrics, and music, I want to talk about the big problem with the show, because it impacts all the rest and I’m not sure they’re going to be able to sucessfully resolve it. That’s the fact that they’re trying to cram a tremendous amount of plot — two 300+ page books — into one three-hour event. The problem is, the plot has been cut down to the barest bones of Lestat’s life story, and I’m not sure what else they could possibly cut without either ending the story sooner or deviating away from Anne Rice’s story. And yet, there’s just too much plot.

This impacts everything else. The evening felt rushed, like we were on a whirlwind tour and never had time to sit back and really enjoy the moment. The need to drive the plot forward hurt both the book and the lyrics (the latter moreso than the former; although Taupin’s inexperience with the genre probably didn’t help). The music was fine but could have been stronger in Act 1. All of the really memorable music comes from Act 2 — I particularly liked “Welcome to the New World” and “Sail Me Away” (sure to be the single off the cast album when the time comes) — but other numbers might have been better if they weren’t so focused on driving plot, plot, and more plot.

The other problem caused by the deathmarch through all this plot is that there’s a minimal focus on the emotional attachments between many of the key characters. There may be more purpose here than just driving plot, though. Readers of Rice’s vampire novels are well aware of the significnat amount of homoerotic subtext in these books. I don’t know if a conscious choice was made to de-emphasize that aspect of the story, or not, but this aspect of Lestat’s life is virtually invisible. This missing part of the story becomes even more obvious when you see that the relationship between Gabrielle and Lestat is well laid out and their bond discussed in several different scenes, but virtually no time at all is given to Lestat’s bond with Louis. One minute they meet, the next, they’re living together and Louis is unhappy. Later, when Lestat talks about how happy he was in New Orleans, it’s hard to see why unless you have your memory of reading the books to fall back on.

“Lestat” is only in the first week of previews, and is still being worked on. Much may change before its San Francisco run ends. At this point, I’m reasonably sure the show will make it to Broadway, but I also don’t see any Tony Awards in its future.

UPDATE 12/30: I’m noticing an uptick in traffic to this page. Please be aware that the show has gone through some changes since I saw it and that my comments may not be a valid criticism of the show as it currently stands. Also, I’d love to hear some feedback from other folks who’ve seen “Lestat”.

Looking at this assortment, I’m tempted to call it the “WTF Edition”. What a mess. That’s what you get when you randomize the entire list though.

Iko Iko - Cyndi Lauper
Wide Open Spaces - Dixie Chicks
Windswept - Bryan Ferry
Carolina On My Mind - James Taylor
Don’t Stand So Close To Me ‘86 - The Police
Shape of My Heart - Backstreet Boys
South Ferry Road - The Hooters
Baby Grand - Billy Joel
A Dream Is A Wish Your Heart Makes - Cinderella
God Save the Queen - The Sex Pistols

No new cat pix today, sorry to say.