the full spectrum of music.

Note that I wrote this a couple of months ago when it happened, and am only now getting around to posting it. I hope that I am not a writer whose relevance is lost as time passes.

Saturday night was a night of music for me, and the full spectrum of music at that. I saw not one, not two, but three live performances.

Piedmont Chamber Singers
If not for my student ID, I would not have been in attendance for the 7:30 concert at St. Timothy's Episcopal Church. Rob is a member of the Piedmont Chamber Singers, but the bounds of our friendship does not cover paying for a $15 ticket to hear him sing. Luckily, student tickets were $6, and without getting into the moral discussion of whether I should be using my student ID to get discounts anymore, I would like to say that if I hadn't gone as a student, I wouldn't have gone at all.

Going was kind of an impromptu decision, so I was late, mostly because I couldn't figure out what to wear. I ended up looking severe and not at all feminine in some black pants and a gray sweater. I slid into a pew just as the Piedmont Chamber Singers or at least some other group of smiling people in black formal wear filed out.

Yes, yes, the music was lovely, the arrangements were splendid, and the direction was superb. Which is to say that my mind started to wander well before intermission. The theme was folk songs, and I started thinking about the ridiculousness of the group singing folk songs. These were white-collar, upper middle class Southerners singing about hunting caribou in Inuit. I felt that the moment someone decided to make an arrangement of a folk song, it ceased to be a song of the folk. The folk do not sing while wearing tuxedos, the folk do not sing from sheet music, and the folk do not drive to the event in their SUVs.

One other item of interest: An arranger of some of the songs was present that night, and it was his wife's birthday. The director made us all sing "Happy Birthday" to dear Olive. Aside from the people up front, there were professional, or at least well-trained, singers all in the audience. I'd just like to say that you've never heard "Happy Birthday" until you've heard it in four-part harmony with several lingering sopranos at the end of each line. I myself sang quietly, as I am neither professional nor well-trained, nor even any good at all.

The Finks
Part of my difficulty in choosing what to wear that night was the fact that I would be appearing at two very different venues. Before I went into The Werehouse, I took off my gray sweater for the second part of the evening. Don't worry - I had something on underneath the sweater; it wasn't that kind of evening. I had a vintage t-shirt on underneath, also gray, but I think it used to be black. I'd call that ready to see a rock show.

I didn't know I was going to see The Finks until I arrived at The Werehouse. I'd never heard of them, because they are a local band, and I am only recently local to the same area. I was lured into conversation with a banker sitting next to me who was here to see them. He was a fan. He told me about The Finks, and then we talked about chaos theory. It was a weird night.

They weren't bad. I toe-tapped to the music, but I didn't find it striking. The Finks are a regular local rock band, though I will admit that they are leagues ahead of most local bands. Plus, they put on an interesting show to watch. The guy in charge of the witty banter in between songs was not as witty as I would have liked, though he had his moments. Later, the banker who was a fan came back to me to ask what I thought. I might have exaggerrated my opinion a tad. He said, "Yeah, they're great! They're like the Pixies without the melody!" I decided that I agreed with him, and at that moment, I realized that one of the things I liked most about The Pixies was...the melody.

Captured! By Robots
I would just like to note that the exclamation point is part of the name of the band. The exclamation-point-in-the-middle is the new version of the umlaut-over-any-vowel-ever so prevalent in 80s metal bands.

The banker was at the Werehouse for The Finks, but as I told him, "I'm here for the robots." I'd never heard any of C!BR's songs. All I know that it was a guy who, discovering his talents for computers and therefore his lack of friends, decided to make his own band by programming some robots. The result ended up being like some cross between those giant mice at Chuck e' Cheese and Johnny Five's foul-mouthed cousin. There was a trio of politicians making up the horn section in the back and a pair of stuffed gorillas playing cymbals, though I think those were all more for show, as their command of their individual instruments seemed limited. The gorillas did talk, though. The drum-bot and the guitar-bot were pretty cool, though. They had personalities and they played instruments; if they'd been skinny and pale, I would've hit on them. Part of their speech seemed recorded, particularly during the songs, but at other times, the actual living person in the band was speaking through some microphone/speech modifier.

Casey told me once that Captured! By Robots is something everyone should see at least once, but that one viewing was probably sufficient. As entertainment, it was worth the fiver I spent, but as music...well, let's just say I didn't buy a CD. Although maybe I should have, again for pure entertainment value. C!BR's latest CD features songs about the movie The Ten Commandments, and anytime you have a song where you have Moses rapping that he is a gangsta' Old Testament style, then you have something special on your hands.

I don't know why the rest of the audience was there. Maybe for The Finks. In any case, about midway through the show, the one non-AI member of of the band just left for a song. And the robots played a whole song unattended. Me, I thought it was pretty cool, but about half of the audience members took it as a good opportunity to make an escape. Perhaps they thought the show was over, but more likely they figured it wouldn't hurt the robots' feelings if they snuck out then. I think a lot of people were there out of curiosity. I talked to a couple before the show who admitted as much, and even I could tell from my prior knowledge of C!BR and by looking at these people in their Gap gear that they were not going to stay the whole show. There's nothing wrong with that - foul-mouthed animatronic musicians are not for everyone. The same could be said for chamber singing and garage bands.