Time to Level Up!
Ah-ten-shun! The time is now 1700. End of the day on Friday, and time for your safety brief. You guys have to hear this from me, your senior NCO, so that you don’t get yourself into trouble. Of course, I know this will happen with some knuckleheads, but those are just a few. This is […]
Morning, recruits! The time is now 0630. I see that you fine men are in your PT gear, sleep-deprived, bleary-eyed, and shivering in the cold. Good! The cold will wake you up – and you better be frosty this morning, ‘cause I got some troofs to lay down to you. Listen up! Last time, I […]
Welcome back, troops. Stand at parade rest, please, as I have more information to pass along to you fine men. In my last article, I covered my story about why I enlisted in the military. Also, what are some preliminary things to consider if you want to enlist. I want to stress that you should […]
But I didn’t meet my mother in the USO. (Check the reference.) This past weekend, I was in the Philadelphia area and was interested in making another foray into southern New Jersey. I intended to meet up with Vince, since he lives there, and telegraphed my intention. He heard, obliged me, and we made it […]
Note: I plan to do these here on MG going forward. These are quick, and somewhat random, selections that I want to share to the wider audience. They’re obviously smaller, shorter, and more pointed than my longer articles on classical music, which you can see in previous posts. ‘Nuff said. To the music. Today’s […]
“If you meet a Buddha, kill the Buddha. If you meet a Ghost, kill the Ghost” – Zen koan I listened to Rob and Jack Napier the other day, discussing life after the Red Pill. Nothing that I haven’t heard before or have thought before. Just one more person, or two, saying it. The fuzziness […]
INTRODUCTION This is the first of a series of posts that I’m sending to the MGers. It follows the Salt Lake Sit-Downs that I did recently with Rob and Bullrush. I choose to do the series here to share some of my experiences from my time in the U. S. Army, to provide information so […]
If you’ve heard me on the MG shows before, I let slip out that I’m an Army veteran. I transitioned off of active duty more than ten years ago, in early 2010, and I plan to say more about that, and my experiences wearing the uniform, on the next Salt-Lake Sit Down with Rob. I’ll […]
We now come to the final period in this cursory history. If you thought that the 19th century was interesting (not to mention innovative), buckle your seatbelts. I mentioned in my last post that the 19th century faced some important trends that upended the older structures and forms not only of society, but also the […]
In my previous posts on both the Baroque and Classical periods, I didn’t spend that much time on them and the content might seem thin in parts. Part of that is because, in my opinion, there’s not that much to say, at first face, about either period. Oh, sure . . . in no way, […]
Last time, we looked at the Baroque period. J. S. Bach and G. F. Handel are the two giants of the period, but, like other periods in the history of classical music, there were many other composers of copious talent and industry. Sadly, they were forgotten over the years for a number of reasons, not […]
The history of classical music is quite old. I said in my first post that what makes the genre “classical” – which, by the way, is a term that didn’t appear until the 19th century – is that it’s Western art music. More formally, what makes it classical, Western, and art-y was that, beginning in […]
In my first post, I briefly mentioned that forms are important to classical music. Not only so that you won’t look like a doofus by referring to every piece as a “song,” but, as you go down the path of becoming literate in classical music, you can identify what is what and why that particular […]