May 29, 2006
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Here's an ultra-cool, slightly subversive video of the amazing Stomp percussion ensemble, pulling mind-bending music out of everyday objects -- from blenders to aerosol cans to a set of stereo toothbrushes -- as they explore an invaded apartment.  Check out Music for One Apartment and Six Drummers as soon as humanly possible.

Nice piece on the dumbing-down of film music by Scott Eyman in The Palm Beach Post.  Even studio execs are getting concerned:  "I'm so sick of music where there's nothing to it," says George Feltenstein, a Warner Bros. vice president. "What we're hearing represents a continuing cultural wearing away of the arts in society in general. This is a culture where Andrew Lloyd Webber is taken seriously as a composer, so it shouldn't be any surprise that we're gradually losing musical theater or good film scores."

Aside from being Memorial Day, today's also the anniversary of the infamous 1913 premiere of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, with its screaming fistfights at the Theatre des Champs-Elysees.  Kevin Elyot had an interesting piece in The Guardian in March suggesting that much of the uproar may have been deliberately arranged  by Serge Diaghilev.  Whether he did or not, there's no denying Elyot's slightly mangled metaphor that the premiere "kickstarted the 20th Century, sending shock waves down its cultural spine."