by Ethan Johnson
August 31, 2007

There are moments when I have to stop what I'm doing, and marvel at this wonderful internet. Seriously. Sure, it gets hyped into oblivion, and it's not always all that it is cracked up to be, but just as physical reality ("meatspace") has its shortcomings and marvels, so too does the internet. This is one of those moments.

Through the magic of referral logs, I discovered that a LiveJournal site called Junk Drawer for My Brain linked to a recent article of mine (so disclosed). I don't usually read LJ material but I decided to click around the linker's site and see what else was cooking.

In short order, I found a post titled "One of the greatest moments in my life". Rather than reading a second-hand account from me, I recommend reading the original post and circling back for my commentary, as desired. I'll wait.

Wow. That is a story (and audio clip) that had me leaning back and thinking, "now this is what the internet is for!"

I too harbored fantasies of covering anime soundtrack items on stage, but never got my act together. If it were possible, I would have covered "After, in the Dark/Torch Song" or the semi-a capella version of "Voices" by Yoko Kanno from the Macross Plus soundtrack. This isn't anime, but I would have loved to peform an entire side of Poland by Tangerine Dream, but either way that was waaaaaay too much music for one guy to master, let alone form some sort of rag-tag group of musicians to crank it out - assuming we got the OK from the composers.

Pretty cool that this person covered video game music from the 1990s with permission. Yes, it sounds like a bunch of high school kids performed it, but in the bigger picture I'm impressed that they were able to perform the piece. I'm not a gamer and am unfamiliar with the material, so I can't judge how this performance differs from the original work - though I will assume that the original work had slicker production values. Nice to hear, literally, that it was indeed possible to translate such works to the humble high school stage.

Parenthetically, I tend to approach music from a "production" point of view, which probably ruined the experience for me irreparably. I kept trying to piece together one-of-a-kind musical experiences rather than "just" playing tunes for a small crowd. I would have loved to open a show with the first half of "Lament" by King Crimson, but again, my reach exceeded my grasp.

I finally sold off most of my music gear about a month ago and essentially shut the door on ever performing music live. I thought I'd be more crushed about it, but as I survey the music scene in all its forms I don't feel like I'm being denied much. I wrote songs because I could, I learned just enough about the guitar to strum reasonably competently, but little more, and I'm pushing 40, man. Let the kids full of piss and vinegar eat/breathe/sleep music and live out of their cars. I'm happy doing scrapbooky things in obscurity, and not sweating out recording contracts and the next breakthrough hit.

I have my own magic musical moment that I'll cherish forever. (A story for another time.) Nice to hear that I'm not alone. <EM>

Bonus link: Well, gee, let me think.