shits and giggles

Today I saw the OSM perform via closed-circuit television, lulled into a catatonic state by the tantalizing swish of many bows in sync with the tantalizing swish Kent Nagano’s luxurious tresses. That man has the greatest head of hair in Montreal, but all anyone ever kvells about are his conducting skills! Geez. Judging by the appallingly feathered ‘dos I see walking all over this town, it kind of figures.

When I used to think of closed-circuit television it reminded me of public executions, but now closed-circuit television makes me think of Beethoven! Thanks, Kent!

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***Compulsive Purchase Alert***

One of my favorite podcasts interviewed Carl Wilson, a critic and editor for The Globe and Mail, who has published a book called about musical aesthetics called Celine Dion’s Let’s Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, for which he immersed himself in Celine’s music exclusively for several months. Another interview with the poor man:

(the whole thing:) http://thetyee.ca/Books/2008/01/10/Celine/

“Celine seemed like a very good example to use because she’s very, very commonly mocked and insulted by the ‘tastemakers’ while having this enormous global audience, millions and millions of people who love her. I wanted to understand what was setting these two groups of listeners at odds with each other and whether that conflict had any bigger social meanings.

“I wanted to know if taste is really innate or if it’s maybe a bit more subconsciously chosen. I wanted to understand viscerally as well as intellectually what’s at stake in taste.

“Because I’m Canadian and lived in Montreal for many years, I’ve always taken Celine’s success a bit more personally than a lot of Top 40 music — I’ve found her a bit more specifically embarrassing and hard to take than most pop stars. So that personal edge seemed to me to give the whole enterprise a bit more grounding than if I’d chosen someone else at random.”

“Someone who seems too open and sincere, I think, is assumed to be unsophisticated. Celine and her songwriters and producers are reaching for a model of sophistication that’s a much more pre-1960s show-biz model, out of the days of supper clubs — although pumped up with modern production techniques. These are matters of taste but they’re also matters of social position. Not necessarily the performer’s social position — because art is such an all-encompassing concern for most artists, it’s completely possible for a self-taught creator to appropriate all the available techniques and tones — but that of the listener.”