Glass is Good
On a whim, I decided that it would be good to know what, besides The Monkees and Huey Lewis and the News, happened in 20th century music, so I queued up a Philip Glass station on my Pandora Radio.
Based on under two hours of listening, I officially declare avant-garde music to have gotten a bad rap. Glass is eminently listenable!
I’m also struck by how a lot of movie scores seem to have been influenced by Glass or minimalism in general. I’m thinking of music from The Remains of the Day and Jon Brion’s score for Magnolia.
In other news, a lovely Debussey track called Arabesque No. 1 came up, but I couldn’t keep from being reminded of Jack Horkheimer, Star Hustler, a cheesy old public television show that used that piece as its theme. It ran on our PBS station in the 80s. Does anybody else remember that show? No? OK.
‘Cause here it is again! Man, I love YouTube.
Now, I was going to try to head off any needling about the geekiness of having ever watched this show with the defense that I have only ever seen it because it came on right after… Doctor Who.
(Sigh.)
November 11th, 2008 at 5:38 pm
Star hustler? Exactly what definition of “hustler” was this guy going by, and did he not understand the connotations of the word?
November 11th, 2008 at 11:45 pm
I just looked up “hustler” and you’re right, none of those definitions really work in the astronomy context
November 12th, 2008 at 2:45 pm
Yes, yes. But what about Love & Rockets, man?
November 12th, 2008 at 9:45 pm
Good stuff! I’m trying to figure out how to coax my Love & Rockets station to play more Love & Rockets. But I find them to be kind of late-Joy Division-ish. I mean that as a compliment.
November 12th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Is it bad that I like that synth intro with the Debussy piece better than the piano version in the Pandora sample?
November 12th, 2008 at 11:06 pm
Well according to Wikipedia:
“The show’s theme song is Isao Tomita’s electronic rendition of Claude Debussy’s Arabesque No. 1, from Tomita’s album Snowflakes Are Dancing.”
And widely available for purchase, I’m sure.
There’s also this:
“From its inception until 1997, the show was named Jack Horkheimer: Star Hustler. With the rise of the Internet, however, viewers began reporting that search engines were leading children to the website of the more popular Hustler adult magazine. As a result, the producers quickly renamed the show Star Gazer to avoid the confusion.”
Heh.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:08 am
No need to purchase it. Here it is:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZmSH7BsNSrM
Although now we are really traveling down the road to Dorkville. I can’t take more than 30 seconds of pictures of unicorns.
November 13th, 2008 at 9:18 am
I realized after I sent it that my Love & Rockets comment was probably the most unintentionally funny thing I’ve said in a long time: hustler, astronomy; Love, Rockets…
November 13th, 2008 at 5:05 pm
Elihu, wow. that’s really something. I don’t know quite what to say about that. Except this: that video is awesome!!!
November 13th, 2008 at 5:06 pm
Sy, it’s sounding like an SAT question… hustler is to astronomy as love is to… ___
November 13th, 2008 at 7:14 pm
Haaaa! But I was drawing a parallel the other way: Hustler is to Love as Astronomy is to Rockets! All right. The horse is sufficiently beaten. My apols.
I wish my sound card were operational!