Pop music accords

Listening to music in the car on long road trips has always been a point of contention between us.

Ryan prefers his iPhone, full of carefully cultivated playlists for each season. The lists are filled with his favorite bands, such as the Black Crowes, Pearl Jam, Rush, The National and Jimmy Eat World, to name a few. He constantly tries to fine-tune my underdeveloped listening muscles. Car trips become an hours long game of me having to ineptly guess answers to "Who's this?"

I have particular trouble discerning four 1970s/'80s bands, prompting Ryan to create this mnemonic device: It's what you use to Journey from Boston to Chicago.

He just drops the correct band name out of the phrase as appropriate. The fourth band, in case you hadn't guessed it, is REO Speedwagon.  (All of them sound EXACTLY alike to me!)

Meanwhile, I prefer audiobooks on long trips. Ryan will listen along for a while, but he can only focus on them for medium-length bursts. And because he does the bulk of the driving, I switch over gladly when he needs a jolt of music.

When I do listen to music, it's usually pop. I confessed to Facebook last year that Sugar Ray's "Every Morning" is one of my Top 25 most played songs on iTunes. Other embarrassing gems on that list include Deep Blue Something's "Breakfast at Tiffany's," Mika's "Any Other World," and a pair of Taylor Swift songs: "Love Story" and "White Horse."

At any rate, this spring I got very tired of being the quizzed and never the quizzer. We were driving through Nashville in April and trying to find a rock station as a break from Ryan's Baseball Tonight podcast (the other thing he listens to for hours). And I happened across a pop station playing a Taylor Swift song. So I turned the tables on Ryan:

"Who's this?" I asked.

He guessed his default female artist (Pink), then Katy Perry, then finally got it right.

I knew the next artist, too. And so we passed the rest of the trip testing each other on pop songs from the 1970s to now. Ryan has learned that some pop station time makes me a much more agreeable car companion, and so he deployed this tactic liberally on the long stretches of our western trip.

As a result, we pulled together a playlist of the songs we heard most on this trip. It's up to you to decide which we liked and which just wore us down to the point of inclusion.

• Coldplay & Chainsmokers  - Something Just Like This
• The Killers - I Can't Stay (live)
• Justin Timberlake - Can't Stop the Feeling
• Adele - Water Under the Bridge
• Sia - Cheap Thrills
• Justin Bieber - Love Yourself
• The Chainsmokers - Paris
• The 1975 - Somebody Else
• Niko & Vinz - Am I Wrong
• Zayn featuring Taylor Swift - I Don't Wanna Live Forever
• Zedd and Alessia Cara - Stay
• Taylor Swift - Blank Space
• Bruno Mars - That's What I Like
• Pink - Just Like Fire

To convince you that Ryan was an active participant in this, I did make tapes: 

That's a wrap for this year.

Revisiting Prom: Musical enlightenment at Royal Albert Hall

On Sunday night I accompanied my classmate Anne to Royal Albert Hall as the official videographer for her short film on the BBC Proms, a classical musical festival. The Proms last eight weeks, running this year from July 15 until September 10, and they feature daily music performances. The festival is in its 117th season.

The stage after the Prom 13 performance. The choirs were tiered in front of the organ.

Most of the performances take place in Royal Albert Hall, including the one we attended. The hall opened in 1871 and is named after Queen Victoria's Prince Consort, though he did not live to see its completion. The Hall overlooks the fantastic memorial that the queen erected to her beloved.

Our view of the back of Royal Albert Hall from where we stood in line.

Anne and I had scouted the situation the previous day, and arrived at 5 p.m. to "queue" up for the £5 standing room-only gallery tickets to see Prom 13, a performance of Verdi's Requiem involving the BBC Symphony Chorus, BBC National Chorus of Wales, London Philharmonic Choir and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. There must have been 500 people on the stage. The music was amazing to hear; the BBC broadcast is available for the next six days or you can listen to this 1939 recording available through the Internet Archive. The gentleman behind us in line, while reassuring us that we would get in, said this was a particularly popular performance every year.
 


Almost as interesting as the music was the crowd. People brought wine and food into the hall for picnic dinners. Many people in our section never looked at the stage; they simply lay down with their eyes closed and listened to the music. Some wrote in notebooks or worked on laptops as they listened. One gentleman across from us -- clearly a musician -- played his "air" instrument as he listened. (I won't hazard to guess which instrument was his speciality. Definitely not guitar though.) Another man had the sheet music and directed the entire piece from our gallery -- baton and all.

There was absolute quiet during the music. Many people, including the usher, removed their shoes so as to not make any noise as they walked. There was no rustling of papers. No unzipping of bags. No ringing cell phones. No talking. Not even coughing -- then there was a flurry of it as soon as each movement ended. I have never experienced such rapt attention anywhere in my life.

Here's a link to Anne's video: