It's Grim Up North

I was wandering randomly around the world of blogs when I stumbled upon these lads.
It's Grim Up North

I very likeable music blog. Worth a look.

Dances of Death

Last week I had the pleasure of attending a school concert as my twelve year old son was performing with his rock band “Minus Jack” (The origin of the name: Jack was in the band, Jack fell out with each member in turn, Jack left, hence “Minus Jack”). As with all school concerts you attend knowing that you are going to have to sit through some interesting performances and some of the other type. As a parent you also attend knowing that whatever your offspring does on the stage, short of assassination, you will enjoy it and be proud.

The concert was introduced by a very entertaining and dryly funny Head of Music. We sat though soloists, duets, trios and the like from flautists, keyboard players, clarinettists and, of course, violinists. Forgive me if you have a budding violinist son or daughter but I am of the opinion that trainee violinists should not be allowed to perform in public until they have mastered a certain minimum standard (the standard of Nigel Kennedy). And why are they only ever taught to play slow dirge-like classical pieces. The day a child walks on stage, violin in hand and announces that he is going to play the solo from “The Devil Came Down To Georgia” or “Size of a Cow” I will be the first on my feet applauding. But anyway, I digress, it wasn’t violins I wanted to tell you about.

“Minus Jack” did their stuff and I liked it and was proud (and not just because rule 28 in the Good Parenting manual says you have to be proud but because they were very good) and I soon got over my desire to beat up the chap on the sound desk who couldn’t get the band’s mikes working until halfway through the first song.

There was an intermission during the evening which split the proceedings nicely so that we had music for the first half and dance for the rest of the concert.

Dance, wonderful uplifting dance? NO!

The dance half of the event kicked off with a piece from Cats and I must say the costumes and face paints were really good (read into that what you will).

Then we had a succession of dance pieces from soloists and small groups that they had prepared for their GCSE examinations. Each was introduced by the Head of Dance (a woman who managed to introduce one act with the words “more prettier” – and she teaches our kids).

We started with:

“A piece inspired by a painting of a man. In the dance the man comes to terms with no longer being a painting of a man but becoming a real man”.

Ok, all I saw was a girl on stage with a chair doing a very limited number of dance moves, but I have never claimed to understand interpretive dance.

Then came:

“A piece inspired by a picture of Little Boy, the bomb that was dropped on Hiroshima”

I wasn’t sure that I had heard correctly but a young girl came on stage in a Japanese dress and when the dance was ended she was laying on the floor so I guess I had heard right.

Things continued in a dark vein:

“Next, a dance inspired by the writings of a young woman who was physically and mentally tortured by her husband. The dance shows the agony the author suffered”

A girl in a red dress (maybe that was symbolic of the suffering, I am not sure) dances a little and ends up on the floor.

Darker yet:

“We now have an ensemble piece. Five girls from year ten are perform a dance based on the Diaries of Anne Frank”

A small girl dances on in a flowery dress. I guess this is Anne. My guess is proven correct when the other girls dance on in soldier’s garb and commence to spin, sway and push Anne around. The dance ends with Anne on the floor.

Darker still:

By now I am a little bored of dance, my bottom is aching with its lengthy proximity to a school chair, but I was unprepared for the next announcement.

“Three students form year ten will now perform a dance inspired by the recent war. The dance depicts the interrogation and torture of prisoner of war”.

Sure enough, we were “entertained” by two dancers delicately stomping a third one.

I couldn’t believe the items that had been chosen for inspiration. What happened to “Next we have a dance based on the coming of spring” or “Inspired by the sea” or by fluffy kittens or comical penguins? To be honest I almost felt let down when the finale was not based on the killings of the Yorkshire Ripper or bear baiting in Russia.

What was the dance teachers approach at the beginning of term?
“This year I would like you to all concentrate on death and suffering”
“But Miss, I wanted to do a piece about rabbits”
“Well maybe you could look at hare-coursing, from the hare’s perspective”

As usual the event over-ran, this time by 45 minutes so maybe torture and suffering was the aim all along.

Snow Way

The British are often accused of having a preoccupation with the weather but this winter has been so protracted and dry as to cause it to be even more of a conversation topic with my friends and colleagues over the last few weeks. One phrase that cropped up often, so often I actually heard myself saying it when I entered buildings:
“It’s trying to snow”

Now, this innocent little phrase started to annoy me. Exactly what is trying to snow, what does the “it” in the phrase refer to? The word “trying” seems to imply some sort of consciousness to the act.

It is as though there is some great snow god in the heavens attempting to make it snow down on us. To me, the phrase conjures the idea that there is a great deal of straining taking place to make it snow.

It invokes the idea of a great, cold, constipated sky putting in a great deal of effort to make it snow rather than the result of atmospheric changes, or maybe I should not take things quite so literally.

Hurry up spring.

Exclaimed and Questioned

For years, in offices all over the world, people have been writing reports, memos, letters and other office documents and then came email and suddenly people discovered the exclamation mark and, to a lesser degree, the question mark. We had obviously had to use the question mark before but as far as I can remember I hadn't used used an ! in office communications

What is it about email that makes people go exclamation mark and question mark crazy? When email came along people bagan to use SHIFT+1, and not just once. I have seen emails with 7 or 8 !s in row.

WHY???

Is "Brilliant !!!!!!" any more excited than "Brilliant !!!!!" and how is the power of an ! measured?
Does each ! weigh 1 excitement point making the above examples 6 and 5 respectively or are they measured like decimals where the examples above would equate to a 6 figure value (100,000) and a 5 figure value (10,000) which is a marked difference in the excitement level.
Maybe their measurement is similar to that of decibels which are done using logarithms and therefore each extra ! increase the excitement factor exponentially.

Enough.
Give ! and ? a rest. Learn to use some of the other punctuation.