Old Tunes Update

Two music-related follow-up items:

Over on her LiveJournal, Kate has a more complete concert report from the Springsteen show, including a full set list, and some links to Springsteen resources.

Elsewhere in blogdom, the Blog on Bach is unhappy with my Old Tunes Experiment. The author seems to take the whole thing a little too personally, but I'd probably react similarly to somebody showing up in comments to start dogging Bob Dylan or the Afghan Whigs. Anyway, a couple of clarifications behind the cut:

First of all, I didn't say that I disliked Copland and Reich-- the only thing I said I actively disliked was the Opera Voice vocal tracks. The Copland pieces, I like just fine when they're playing, and the Reich stuff ("New York Counterpoint") is weirdly mesmerizing. I don't react to them like a vampire shown a cross, or anything.

What they fail to do is stick in my head. I haven't found myelf saying "You know what I really need to hear? Dvoark's 'New World' symphony." If it comes up on the shuffle play, I'm happy to listen to it, but I don't really seek it out. To be fair, the same is true of most pop songs-- about the only songs in the last-30-days shuffle that I'm actively seeking out are "Crazy" by Gnarls Barkley and "Hands Open" by Snow Patrol (yes, I know, I'm hopelessly lame. Whatever.), out of 100-odd tracks. I don't have as many classical songs on hand, so it's not terribly surprising that none of them hit that threshold.

The Blogger on Bach also offers a suggestion:

I'd suggest a counterexperiment to disprove the results that were obtained by Orzel et al.: have him or another volunteer attend ten classes from an enthusiastic music professor on fugues and have him or her listen to a live performance of the Wohltemperiertes Klavier afterwards.

Given infinite time and resources, that might well be a fine way to do things. Given my day job and finite patience, not so much.