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Well… it’s lucky that a few days ago I decided to back up all of my stuff, because two days later my computer decided not to start up ever again. I’ve temporarily stolen my girlfriends laptop, but I don’t have any of my music on here. I hope it’s okay. I should get it all fixed up again tomorrow.
It better bloody be okay!
As everybody might possibly know (look, I like keeping things as vague as possible) a good chunk of the themes that John Williams shoved into the Star Wars trilogy were inspired by a variety of his favorite compositions. The wikipedia page for Star Wars Music lists a bunch of these inspiration/theme combos, and the inspiration for the main theme is listed (on wikipedia and everywhere else I’ve googled) as Korngold’s soundtrack to the 1942 film “King’s Row“.
It might well be blatantly similar, but I can’t comment, as I haven’t seen it. Yet. It actually looks pretty intriguing, but lets keep on track here…
Every time I listen to Nielsen’s symphony No. 5, composed in 1922. I keep hearing the bloody star wars theme. For anyone who can’t remember what the theme sounds like, have a hit on this youtube:
And here’s a snippet from Nielsen 5, start of the 2nd movement:
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Pretty similar aren’t they? Except the Nielsen has that delicious dissonance and is way more awesome. Please don’t kill me, internet Star Wars fans.
“Leck mich im Arsch” was apparently unearthed in it’s not-so-censored form (“Let us be glad” is so lame in comparison) about fifteen years ago at Harvard. The wikipedia page about this rather awesomely titled piece has unusually thorough references, which I won’t repeat here, but suffice to say it’s convincingly not a fake.
However, they give a the slightly more mundane explanation that it’s probably a reference to a line from a Goethe drama, rather than simply a merry little canon specifically focusing on, well, arse-licking. Still, you can’t be too disappointed with a title like that.
Are there any more beloved little gems like this out there?
After reading this depressing little number, starring a guy who lost the entire contents of his hard disk I just backed up all of my important stuff. My most important stuff most importantly (almost) includes the acres and acres of music which has been ripped and encoded from the CDs in my cupboard. In fact, the consideration of the re-encoding process that I would face in the event of catastrophic data loss which really prompted me to get my arse in gear.
It takes about 10 minutes to rip and encode each CD.
I have… around 480 MP3 directories, that is, CDs.
So, it would take me 4800 minutes, or 80 long and boring continuous hours to re-encode everything. Allowing a generous 10 hours a day, that’s over a week of sitting in front of my computer popping discs in and out of the drive. That’s most certainly not something I want to do.
It is, however, extremely nice to know that I do have the re-encoding option, should my computer spontaneously combust. or something. One of the great benefits of buying music on CD – instead of completely caving into the convenience of online distribution – is that you have on-hand a ridiculously high quality backup, both in quality of sound and quality of backup medium. I should go into this in more detail, but not tonight. I need to study some more before passing out. Eugh.
Pitchfork Gives Music 6.8, courtesy of The Onion.
I’m back around from a little jaunt a couple of lakes over, and this time I’m not supposed to be running off anywhere for at least a few weeks. Now if only I didn’t have to do that whole “work” thing.
