The Music Court

I caved. It is not even Thanksgiving and the need for Holiday cheer (not to mention the perpetual playlist) has led to a disgusting amount of Christmas music played on the radio. It seems as if this holiday begins earlier every year. Eventually, Christmas will end, we will celebrate New Years, and then we will have Christmas preparation for the entire year following. Every year will be Christmas, it will be a year-long event.

People have great memories of the holidays. I celebrate Hanukkah (so Anthony likes to poke fun at me that I will never have the experience of running down and seeing presents under a tree) but it does not matter what holiday you celebrate, there is just something about the time. The weather is cold, you sit bundled up in a warm blanket with hot cocoa and presents, wrapped up and mysterious. You may know what you are going to get, you annoyed your parents enough about that new video game, but there is still this sense of the unknown. There is sincere excitement. It does not matter how old you are. The holiday season is just wonderful.

But, does it need to start so soon. I want to be able to stuff my face with my grandmother’s stuffing before I have to start listening to Christmas cheer. I like getting the gluttony out of my system first. So, in honor of the early Christmas music, the Music Court will start off the holiday right with a poll about Christmas albums…The Worst Christmas Albums Ever!

There are a lot of worthy candidates. Do your research and make a choice. I know it will take me a while to decide. Good Luck!

Woohoo! 10,000 views. I must say that I never thought we would reach this mark but I am so glad that I was wrong. Thank you visitors for your continued visits to this blog. Josh, Anthony and I are eternally grateful. That may have been over the top, but, it does not matter. I can only hope that we can reach the 100,000 view mark sometime before I graduate college, or… at the end of this year. Hey, a person can dream can’t they.

I would also like to apologize for not notifying you guys of 2/3 writers of this blog’s escapade to Oswego this weekend to visit brothers of Delta Sigma Phi. We had an awesome time and, even though Sunday is usually an off posting day, I thought I would put up my response to the court poll, even though, as I am sure everybody realized, picking the best Beatles song is just hard.

I thoroughly enjoy The Beatles music. Yeah, that may be the best way to put it. I don’t know if I could put it any other way without sounding obsessive and, well, weird. As the initial post said, The Beatles can be split up into three different hair stages. When the hair was well-kept, short, and conservative, The Beatles were putting out pop songs that, while certainly corny, were still the best and most catchy of the time. The hair began to grow and the albums Rubber Soul and Revolver came along and The Beatles were not the innocent fab four any longer. When the hair became unkempt, The Beatles had succumbed to drugs and psychedelia and, like with their pop masterpieces of a few years prior, their psychedelia was the best. Yes, one thing with The Beatles was, no matter what type of music, they were arguably playing in the top tier.

In the poll I attempted to sample from all types of Beatles music and, trust me, it was so tough to get it down to five songs. That was painful, imagine how hard it was to pick one. Yet, as I have been saying for many years, there is one particular Beatles song that sticks out because of its lyric, musicality, originality, and plain awesomeness. Yes, while I can sing the “na, na, na” from “Hey Jude” forever and while the sounds of “Elanore Rigby” send shivers down my spine and while the lyrics of “Let it Be” get to me every time and while “Yesterday” is just beautiful, there is one song that does it for me completely and that is “A Day in the Life” off of Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band.

Here’s why.

There is just something striking about this masterpiece that is symbolic of The Beatles, incredibly well-written and thought provoking, and is just good music. The song has three parts, similar to the Beatles progression into the band they became in the late 60’s. The song begins in the late middle stages of the Beatles with the first verse which focuses on a dreamy melody and an interesting lyric which is highlighted in the most eye-opening line, “He blew his mind out in a car, He didn’t notice that the lights had changed” which just breaks you out of the airy state the song puts you in. The harmony is quintessential Beatles which is perfect. But, after the verses something odd happens. The voices drop out, the music becomes a little louder and starts building up to a climax, the Beatles middle stage is done and taking over is a weird psychedelic mix of the contradiction of cacophonous and oddly harmonious music. A thousand pianos hit a disjointed note and all of a sudden it seems the song will certainly fall off a cliff and fly away into nothingness, but, no, Stop! We have traveled back in time to early Beatles. The alarm clock rings and the day begins. He gets out of bed, finds his way downstairs and has a cup, grabs his coat and his hat, makes the bus two seconds flat. The song bounces up and down like a happy tune, like the Beatles singing about seeing a face they can’t forget. But then he finds his way upstairs and his a smoke and somebody spoke and I (he) went into a dream and, just like that, we are back into middle-late Beatles strung out harmony, back to the verses of the Beatles that continue to transcend time, back to the build up of the end of the song, the early-middle-late Beatles all mixing together to form that moment of pure bliss and after it is all done the song stops and left echoing around the track is the perfect chord, the defining E, that every instrument plays. The Beatles end their best work and the record needle slides  to the endless inner core’s rotation, which is the least the Beatles could do, to allow your spinning mind a chance to recover.

The Beatles can be split up into three stages, each one awesome. They first popped on the scene as the innocent mersey-beat British band who sang about holding hands and love. After a few years the mop-tops started growing and the music became a little more experimental and rockier (a made up term by yours truly). The third stage was a psychedelic movement that saw many of The Beatles best lyrical and musical work. With The Beatles I think the only thing that may be hard is picking what is their best work and we are ambitiously going to leave that question up to you. Below in this incredibly tough poll, please do not hurt me if I do not pick your favorite song, I am going to list five of, what I believe to be the greatest Beatles songs of all time. Vote on what you believe is their best work and drop a comment telling me why your choice is the best song or why you believe another Beatles song is the best. I will be leaving a response soon as well.

In 1958, Bo Diddley done had an odd guitar, and on his guitar he had some strings. Strings here and strings there. Strings on the box guitar everywhere. Go ahead and listen to “Hey, Bo Diddley,” if that thoroughly confused you. The originator that was Bo Diddley was certainly a bit unconventional in both his lyric and his tremendous influence on the blues, and his originality was not lost in his guitar.

In our vote we have experienced a tie between the double necked guitar that Jimmy Page continues to jam on and “The Twang Machine” of Bo Diddley. My vote is for “The Twang Machine,” because not only is it amazingly original but it is so different. Page put a guitar on a guitar, but Bo changed the shape of it completely and symbolically changed the shape of good old fashioned blues music. He was a pioneer and all of his history seeped into the rectangular shaped machine that always was adorned like the suitcase of some boxcar traveler.

When judging how “cool” a guitar looks many may look a little to hard into design. Yet, what Bo Diddley expressed in his twang machine was an element of simplicity. A simple box, four corners, no need for wild v necks or fire additions. The simplicity is striking and this adds to how impressive the guitar is. Impressive enough to trump all the rest of them. What do you think?

Well, I’m done, and no not in the “There Will Be Blood” sense but in the I have no more tests sense. So, tonight, I relax, and because I am happy lets go with a pretty cool post to get your night started off right with an awesome poll. We are going to stay with the theme of guitar for one more week because Josh suggested the poll idea and I thought it was pretty awesome. I am assuming that there will be a lot of others so please post them with a link to a picture at the comment. What we are looking for is guitarist’s signature guitars. There are some sick looking guitars out there but if they are not used by a specific guitarist all the time, we do not want them. Keep in mind creativity, design and originality. Okay, happy posting. The pictures of the guitars are above this.