Scott Stilson

Just listened to: The Goat Rodeo Sessions (2011) by Stuart Duncan, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile. A chamber-grass masterclass. 🎧 🎵

If Spotify “DJ” interrupts my listening one more time, I will switch to Apple Music.

“Orange Crush” (1988) sounds like R.E.M. had been listening to a lot of U2.

I do confess my having daydreamed today about fronting a U2 and Britpop cover band with college friends Aaron G., Jason, Aaron R., and Adam R., with Josh A. joining for acoustic numbers.

Ironically, and with apologies to Josh, it was late U2 (“Red Flag Day”) that first inspired the daydream. Also, friend of friend Chris F. was there, too, but I wasn’t sure how to fit in so many guitarists.

Scott: What needs to happen for a bill to become law?
Éa: Oh, I know! The bill needs to sing a song! 🎵

Man, that piccolo really makes your biceps pop!

— Sullivan

Oh, that? That’s just smooth jazz. Nothing to worry about.

— Sullivan, replying to an inquiry over his headset while playing Minecraft one night

Even though my feet ache, I’m still gonna rock and shake!

— Éa, in the middle of a marathon of energetic dancing at Megan’s wedding

I feel better dancing when I’m on a precarious rock wall.

— Sullivan, explaining why he was dancing all by himself on a rock wall outside the tent at Megan’s wedding

My favorite thing is to make that piano reveberate [sic] like an explosive bāss violin.

— Sullivan, pronouncing “bass” like the fish, explaining what he loves about playing his new instrument

Finding Christian music I like is harder than finding non-Christian music I like because the lyrics matter more: You not only have to find music you like, you also have to find a theological bent you agree with. And you’re working with a smaller subset of the populations, so the pickings are slimmer.

The family couldn’t get enough “Hayloft” as covered by Nickel Creek today. (Well, that and Éa liked Dave Edmunds’ “I Hear You Knocking.”) This made me uncomfortable.

“When informed that someone has achieved an American synthesis of Led Zeppelin and Yes, all I can do is hold my ears and say gosh.”

— Robert Christgau, of Boston (1976), in a capsule review makes me laugh out loud

They remastered Aqualung in 2011, and somehow I missed it. Now, if only Ian Anderson had been less crotchety about God and religion.

For the second consecutive year, I’ve been referred to Chris Kiver by an outstanding member of the State College Choral Society to audition for the Orpheus Singers: Colleen emailed me today about it.

Other than the remarkable depth to which my telling her as an aside that I wasn’t going to sing with the Choral Society this season felt like a confession, the thing I found most remarkable about my emotional response to this message was how much it stirred up again my desires to be a specialist. To pick something, just one thing, and concentrate all my energies into mastering it. Choral singing, solo singing, pop singing, hootenannies, improving neighborhood walkability, improving neighborhood bikeability, building relationships in my neighborhood, front-end web development, sales, tweeting, music appreciation—the list of possibilities feels endless. However, nothing pulls my affections like singing, perhaps because it’s the one with which I have the longest history, the one for which I feel most guilty not having pursued.

But unless my soul changes, I need to consider the following: I want to do those other things. If I plunge into singing to the depth I feel like I want to, I will not be able to tweet, organize Houserville Social Club, engage civically, work on my house, listen through the classical repertoire, or any of the other activities I so enjoy. I would only be able to stand utter commitment to becoming a singer for so long before I’d bail in favor of my life as an enthusiastic generalist.

With “40 (How Long),” U2 beat IHOPKC to harp & bowl by fifteen years.

I bought Carla some flowers today. Consider it an improvement on the one cut rose per year we’ve been married.

Singings lessons didn’t feel as good this week as they did last week. But I’m taking it in stride: As with Carla and local governance, I still have so much to learn about singing.

A cheer for the red team, whom we beat, 12–8, sung to the tune of “Rudolph, the Red-nosed Reindeer”:

O, how the black team loves you,
And we’ll shout it out with glee:
Good game, Red Bull frisbee,
You’ll go down in history!

Mommy, I love music more than chocolate chips, more than cookies, and more than princesses and beautiful ponies.

— Éa on hearing Vanhal’s Double Bass Concerto in E flat major on WPSU in the car with Carla

Scott: Éa, would you mind if I put on some tunes?
Éa: Yeah.
Scott [to clarify]: Should I put on some tunes?
Éa: Yeah.
Scott: Any objections anyone?
Éa: Tunes! But don’t put on any objections!

“Well, I think he can get a pretty intense look on his face when he’s playing something like this, but I don’t think he ever looks like a pirate getting an enema.”

— Scott describing Carla’s imitation of Itzhak Perlman playing the finale of Erich Korngold’s Violin Concerto in D. (Go ahead. Picture it.)

Sullivan (sheet music in hand): Mama, can you read this?
Carla: No, honey, it’s music. It’s not words.
Sullivan: Oh, well, can you sing it?
Carla: No, it’s piano music.
Sullivan: Well, WE have pirnano!
Carla: But I don’t know how to play the piano.
Sullivan: I know how to play the pirnano: You just press the keys! That’s how you do it!

[while listening to “Three Little Birds” by Bob Marley]
Sullivan: What are “every little things”?
Carla: Just everything. Everything’s gonna be alright.
Sullivan: God. ‘Cos he makes badness into…into…love-ness. He’s a nice guy.