Hollywood: the Epics @ Roy Thomson Hall

"These are not the seats you are looking for."

A friend called me up on Monday. "Are you free Wednesday night?" he said. "I've got a spare ticket for the symphony."

"Sure, I'm free," I said. "Wait -- what's playing?"

"Not sure," he said. "The theme is Hollywood movies or something."

"Oh," I said. "Well, as long as it's not Mozart."

I haven't been to the symphony in years, and I confess that even though I probably know more about classical music than the average person, I've never enjoyed the symphony. That is, watching a live orchestral performance has never blown me away like I always expect it to.

I always thought it was because I have a hard time reconciling what I see with what I hear. I realized last night that that's only a small part of it. I like music to be a little raw, and human. Symphony orchestras play as a single well-oiled unit, for the sake of the piece. The composition is human; the live performance rarely is.

The other problem with last night is the nature of movie music, or at least the arrangements put together for performances - brief suites or preludes that cobble together all of the soundtrack's main motifs (often running the gauntlet of tempos and treatments) in under 10 minutes.

Anyway, it was worse than I expected. The night was titled "Hollywood: the Epics" -- which meant the most grandiose scores from Hollywood's most grandiose movies. When Stormtroopers greeted us at the door, I suddenly realized that I am a classical music snob. I enjoy the Star Wars films; I enjoy (some) classical music. Putting them together, in my mind, is just plain wrong.

Seeing people get excited about the show also made me a little angry. A five-minute suite evoking hobbits and Sith Lords and Hollywood-style romance only scratches the surface of what orchestral music is capable of. I know it's important to make classical music more accessible, and get younger people in the seats, but there has got to be another way.

There were a few worthwhile moments, though. The overture from Around the World in 80 Days actually made us want to see the movie. ( And it made me want to dance with maracas. ) We also learned that Kubrick had added the classical soundtrack to 2001: A Space Odyssey as a placeholder for composer Alex North -- but after North composed his own original soundtrack, Kubrick decided to scrap it and stick to the classics.

Rosza's "The Lord's Prayer" from King of Kings also surprised me with its rich sound and constantly shifting chord progressions. You would have never guessed it was from a film. And I confess that John Williams' Theme from Schindler's List had a quiet gravitas; unlike typical Hollywood soundtracks, it held back, and the lead violinist performed beautifully.

It doesn't make up for the sappy "Lara's Theme" from Doctor Zhivago or the suite and "My Heart Will Go On" from Titanic. During the latter, I turned to my friend and whispered, "I'm going to poke my eyes out." When Darth Vader strolled onto stage at the end and chased off the conductor after the Star Wars suite, I thought, "I'm turning in my grave -- and I'm not even dead yet!"

So there you go. I'm a snob. But the day the Toronto Symphony Orchestra performs the film scores of Bernard Herrmann, I'm there.

Sebadoh @ Lee's Palace

Sebadoh is the band I would've loved to have seen when I was 18 and hanging out almost every night with my friend Colin. We'd sit in his dorm room and talk about music and literature and people we knew, or goof off in the piano room in the basement, him bashing away at the keys, and me singing. He wasn't a trained pianist and I wasn't a trained singer, but we got by. And believe it or not, there was no sex, drugs, or alcohol involved -- just the exuberance of youth. (We were too young and snobby to go to bars anyway, which was probably part of it.)

That's why I bought tickets to Sebadoh's show at Lee Palace. Not because of the music, but because of the memory of those times. I haven't even listened to Sebadoh for years. All I have are tapes -- tapes recorded off of Colin's CDs, all those years ago. Okay, I do have a secondhand copy of Bubble and Scrape that I bought last year, but -- I don't know. It's just not the same when it's not played off of a paint-spattered Maxell cassette with my writing on it (back when my writing was legible).

Did the music hold up after all these years? It did. Colin always did have interesting taste that bucked trends. The set was typical of what I remembered of Sebadoh's oeuvre: jumping back and forth from raucous, quirky, and introspective. The latter two I had always associated with Lou Barlow, so it was a surprise to see Eric Gaffney and Jake Loewenstein spending equal time at the mic (and taking turns at the drums). It struck me last night that Sebadoh is like the jazz pianist Thelonius Monk, who still swings even though his melodies are offbeat and atonal. Sebadoh somehow still manages to have catchy tunes even though you'd be hard-pressed to hum them in the shower the next day.

I seem to have missed the first opener, The Bent Mustache (which was probably a good thing judging from this YouTube footage, but I caught Flecton Big Sky. I can't find much about them, which is too bad, because they had a surprisingly rich sound for a single drummer and guitarist playing songs in the lo-fi tradition. So the only other things I can say about them is that the drummer was remarkably enthusiastic for a two-piece band, and the hirsute, portly frontman seemed like he would have gladly given you a CD if you bought him a beer.

The person that got the most applause last night, however, was the guy who got up on stage and proposed to his girlfriend. At Lee's Palace. Yeah. That'll never last.

Flecton Big Sky website
Sebadoh website
Sebadoh on MySpace

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Got my mouse finger and credit card ready for this year's Virgin Festival. Like last year, it won't break my heart to miss any of the acts, but unlike last year, I feel like this lineup is worth my $138. And I need an excuse to dust off my swan dress.

And on my calendar for April and May: Brad Mehldau, Sonny Rollins, Arcade Fire, the Joel Plaskett Emergency, and trips to Las Vegas and Seattle, both musical meccas in their own way. It's going to be a good spring.

I wanna take you to a gay bar

You know how every so often the perfect pop song comes along that encapsulates everything that's going on in your life at the moment? I remember tearing up at a Jane Siberry concert, shortly after a breakup, as she was performing "Love is Everything". All of a sudden the lyrics made more sense than they had when I was a teenager. And as a teenager, Sarah McLachlan's "Elsewhere" had such resonance with me that I can still sing you all the words today at the drop of a hat.

Well, now there's a new addition to the soundtrack of my life. It happened a couple of days ago: a guy stopped me in the street and asked if I would like to go get a drink with him at a gay bar.

So without further adieu, here is "Gay Bar" by Electric Six. Who would have known it was so true to life?

(Warning: this video contains comical footage of men in little shorts.)



(And no, I did not go with him to the gay bar. Even if I would have been a superstar.)

Put your right foot forward

Back after a bout with the flu -- and my maxed-out credit card, which is why I couldn't buy Neon Bible yesterday like a good indie hipster and had to wait one whole day to hear it.

Is it just me, or does David Bowie endorse bands that sound like him? (I guess it's normal to like the things you wish you had made.) Both TV on the Radio and the Arcade Fire have received his blessing, and their songwriting could totally pass as his. It's probably the grandiose, reckless, genre-defying and -adopting that does it. But whereas I think Bowie does it consciously, the Arcade Fire does in unconsciously. Like Final Fantasy, they just seem to write songs without any regard for the standards of pop and rock music.

I can't figure out why I liked Funeral. In fact, it took me a long time to like the Arcade Fire, mostly because I couldn't pin them down. It was only when I labelled them as "infectious" and left it at that that I could let it go. Neon Bible will no doubt be analyzed to death via all manner of music journalism hyperbole (I'm talking to you, Pitchfork), and all I will say is this: the Arcade Fire are still infectious, but I miss the enthusiastic abandonment of the singing on Funeral.

Arcade Fire website
Arcade Fire on MySpace
David Bowie and the Arcade Fire performing "Wake Up" on YouTube It's pretty surreal to see the celebrities in the audience rocking out to the song.

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Speaking of enthusiastic abandonment, I am currently hooked on the swaggering synth-and-brass disco-march-rock of the Wet Secrets, thanks to their 8-song EP, Rock Fantasy, being available as a free download on their website. It's the perfect soundtrack for my walk to work.

The Wet Secrets website
The Wet Secrets on MySpace