Possibly a mistake to stay up till 3 am as I didn’t waken up till 9:30 – so a late start on matters today. First up, breakfast at home today, to allow Meg a chance to go out and about. Then I went to the library, to the computer shop (to get blank CDs), Matalan for some new shirts and then to get the car washed. £3.50 and the bird-shit was still sitting on the roof when I got home….
While Anne was out at the Hearts game (0-0 v Motherwell, European hopes totally out the window now – and, worse still for any true Hearts fan, Hibs beat Celtic 3-1 - QoS go back to fourth though with a famous 2-0 victory over St Johnstone), I produced the second batch of James Jamieson CDs and the first batches of the first three CBQ Deeperdown EPs having mastered the art of on disc printing – which looks great!
In the evening I returned to the Queen’s Hall for a performance by Karl-Heinz Stockhausen. This time I met up with Dr Prog, who had very kindly brought along some discs for me – Jethro Tull’s “Thick As A Brick”, Asia’s last album “Silent Nation” and a Tangerine Dream 2CD bootleg of a concert in Berlin in 1982.
Jim Park met us in the queue to get in and we proceeded to the bar. After a couple of nice Ginger Beers we made our way into the hall. Alan Brodie and his girlfriend, Penny, came in and sat a few rows behind us, while Dave Bann, owner of the best veggie restaurant in town (in which Jim’s an investor and so gets one free meal a week – or is it a month?) was also in our row.
While we waited for the “show” to start, after discussing whether we’d remembered to record tonight’s episode of Dr Who (“Dalek”), Jim and I work up a possible skit re an overexcited Dalek which may or may not make its way into his act at some point…he is a very funny man and I urge you to catch his live set sometime – check out his site at www.toecurler.com for dates (and his blog).
Finally Professor Stockhausen took to the stage, but merely to give an introductory talk. He asked us to listen for sounds falling from the ceiling to the floor. He complained about the shape of the room, bemoaning the fact that architects never build concert halls where his music can be listened to as intended. He returned to the large mixing desk in the centre of the hall and the lights were switched off for the35 minute piece, “Kontakte” from 1958, which was completely abstract.
It was quite amazing to sit in a darkened room with around 700 other people just listening to weird electronic sounds for half an hour.
At the end the lights went up and the Prof received an ovation.
After a twenty minute break which we definitely needed, as he must have insisted on the air conditioning being switched off - it was roasting in the room by now, he returned to the stage to introduce the second piece “Oktophonie”, from 1991.
This piece was 69 minutes long and Karl-Heinz told us it was fine if we wanted to leave the room at any point, almost telling us that this was going to be a bit hard going.
In the event, this piece was much more conventional than “Kontakte” and certainly didn’t seem to last for 69 minutes. I felt a lot of the sounds he was using were pretty cheesy and, all in all, this was a trifle disappointing, being something which I could probably have knocked together myself in an afternoon!
I definitely preferred “Kontakte”.
Dr Prog loved it and indeed Mini Disc’d it – I don’t know how that’ll turn out though – as Brodski says, you need a hell of an expensive set of speakers to get it to sound right!
Phil (Dr Prog) hung around in the hall and got the good professor’s autograph while Jim, Dave and I headed back to the bar for more Ginger Beer. Through a misunderstanding, Brodski & Penny ended up outside and, as he’d left his mobile at home, he didn’t know Jim and I were trying to phone him to find out where he was.
We stayed in the bar till around midnight, as Jim entertained us all with his quips and jokes, then I gave him and Dr Prog lifts to their respective homes and got home and hit the sack around 1 am.
Another good night, though there is definitely something of the Emperor’s New Clothes about some of Stockhausen’s stuff….
No comments:
Post a Comment