Excessive Narcissism and Classical Music (Blog 114)

I’ve been thinking about the stuff that’s been on TV recently and in particular, the channel 4 program 8 Out of Ten Cats Does Countdown. If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a very non-serious, even anarchic take on the word and maths game, Countdown. I thought the comedy program was entertaining for a while, but as it went on I kind of came to the conclusion it sent out the message to society that fun is far more important than work. (If you can call letter and number puzzles work, which you kind of can). If I had my way, it would be on less. It got me thinking: What would my utopian society be like? Well first of all, how about making everyone like ME and making me king? Surprise! You thought this was going to be a deep blog, huh? No, this is surely my most narcissistic entry to date and it’s time to let loose. Furthermore, anyone who criticises Papa John’s will get sent to the local mental institution to do fun activities like working with clay and colouring in. (It’s for their best).

What else do I blog about? Very recently, I have started to get into classical music. I always assumed that would happen, but I had no idea when. To be more specific, I’ve been listening to Sibelius’s symphonies. Not so interesting? That’s what I would be thinking, BUT only if my multi-album wasn’t quite so weird. Why does it list the pieces of music in such a perplexing order? You’d think it would go ‘symphony 1’, ‘symphony 2’, ‘symphony 3’, etc., but it doesn’t it goes ‘ 1, 4, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7’. Having (partially) read the booklet that goes with the release, each symphony is supposed to represent a different stage of the composer’s life. In comparison, how would you watch a film if it jumped around the date so much? Imagine viewing the Forrest Gump character first as a child, then as an adult, then dead, then as a teenager. Ok, he never died in the film, but you get my point. Sibelius’s life story has been mangled to bits.

And here’s another thing: After doing some light research, I found that most regard his 1st symphony as his weakest, and his 4th as his strongest. Why did the least popular work start the album off, and why did the best one follow immediately after? Imagine going to a concert where no one really gets into it because no one likes the intro song, then they get the best one thrown at them in such a way they feel more surprised than anything else and therefore don’t fully enjoy the thing either. Then they just get a load of filler. As far as I’m concerned, that’s the worst way to structure an album or concert, possible. It’s expected to and should go ‘classic song, then filler, then best song.’ I’m not suggesting a world renowned composer such as Sibelius wrote loads of padding, of course not, but again, you get the point.

You know what? In my perfect world, I think my CDs would be structured more logically too. And I’d ban so called ‘hidden tracks’ in albums. It wouldn’t be so bad if they came as a surprise, but they don’t, because your offending CD will say it has around 10 cuts on the hifi display. The first nine will apparently be 3 minutes long or whatever, but the whole release will clearly last two hours. ‘Oh, wow, I’m so surprised!’, said no one ever. And what the hell is wrong with Korn’s ‘Follow the Leader’? It begins with twelve tracks of silence, making the whole CD hidden! According to Wikipedia the record was structured that way, so it had 25 ‘songs’, rather than 13. The singer is superstitious and fears the latter number, apparently. Ok the album doesn’t ‘scarily’ end on track 13, but it does start on it! So what’s the difference, it’s the same figure! What a nutter, no wonder he sings like a raging lunatic! And on that note……. Byeeeeee.