Good Vibrations

You’d have to be a special kind of asshole to not appreciate how truly beautiful music is. But how many of us stop to consider how much blood, sweat and tears not to mention ingenuity and tenacity goes into crafting a song, or any piece of music for that matter.

I must admit that I’d given scant thought to this, until I watched the Brian Wilson biopic Love and Mercy this past Sunday. The Beach Boys are a household name to many, but I had no idea what a genius Brian really was.

While the film mainly portrayed a life tortured by (an apparent mis-diagnosis of) schizophrenia and other mental symptoms, Brian’s virtuosity was brought to the fore in the segment of the film where the song Good Vibrations was being recorded.

The song dubbed a “pocket symphony,” was recorded in 17 sessions at four different recording studios over a period of 8 months in short segments. Over 90 hours of magnetic recording tape was used and it cost between $50 000 and $75 000, a record production cost for a mere single. The techniques used by Brian and an assortment of musicians during the whole process was unprecedented.

In this segment of the film you can clearly sense the frustration and impatience of the other members of the Beach Boys and the personnel involved, because it’s quite clear they did not understand the genius at work, nor recognize history in the making.

There is quite a detailed account of the recording process over at Wikipedia for those with more than a casual interest, but there are probably better sources which explain the complexities in finer detail for the aficionados.

Freshly Played #7: Dueling Banjos

Dueling Banjos

For me, the most memorable part of the film Deliverance was the scene in which Ronny Cox on guitar, squares off against the inbred kid playing the banjo. Incidently, the composition made famous by Eric Weissberg and Steve Mandell for the film, was used without permission from the original composer Arthur Smith, who managed to sue the filmmakers successfully.

 

Steve Martin and the Steep Canyon Rangers

Steve Martin is an actor who is more famous for his comedic roles in films, but is quite an accomplished banjo player too. Here he is accompanied by the Steep Canyon Rangers on the Late Show with David Letterman.

 

Another Hoax Mail: Protest at Film Depicting Jesus and His Disciples as Gay

Gullibility and superstition are bosom buddies. Thus those who tend to be superstitious (usually the religious) are bound to be susceptible to gullibility as well. So, it was no surprise to me when I received another hoax email just the other day, in the form of a petition against the supposed release of a new film called Corpus Christi, and which claimed to depict Jesus and his disciples as homosexual; there were already 580 South African signatures appended to the mail.

In reality, there is no such film! How 580 people allowed this obvious hoax to spread, without even a cursory check on the veracity of the claims, is beyond me. According to Snopes.com, this hoax has been circulating since 1984 in one guise or another. But the thing that really bothers me is a reference in the mail to actions taken by another religious group when they perceive that their religion, gods or prophets are being maligned: “If the Muslims do what they believe to be right against their religion , where do we stand as Christians?” Are the originators of this hoax actually suggesting that Christians should resort to the same violent protests that sprang up all over the world recently, over some cartoons printed in a Danish newspaper? A total religious onslaught against freedom of speech is a serious cause for concern to all freedom-loving people.

Anyway, back to the 580 gullible South Africans who actually signed the petition: Where were you lot when Bill Maher’s Religulous was screened just a month or so ago at several cinemas across South Africa? I don’t recall any mails or petitions or protests. There was not so much as a whimper from the religious crowd when the film was advertised in the mainstream press, and eventually screened.  This inaction just confirms a very important observation: Religious folk are fixated with things that don’t exist (as in this Corpus Christi film, for example), but are  seemingly oblivious of real things (such as Bill Maher’s film, Religulous).

Grow Up or Die

It had to happen. I just had to go see Bill Maher’s movie, Religulous. And the chilling words from the closing scene “Grow up or die” is still echoing  in my mind. It’s meant to sound dramatic and that it certainly does, but how true is it?

Overall, I have to admit that I quite enjoyed the film. It’s generally very funny, although this could be attributed to skillful editing for the most part. Maher may have intended the film to come across as a personal journey in disbelief, but it does become quite “preachy” in parts. I should know, because I also indulged in a similar form of extreme Atheism in the past. Did the film strike a chord with the audience? Well, the approximately five other people who were at the screening were apparently stunned into silence, because I could clearly hear only myself laughing out loud, throughout the film. No doubt, they were believers to some degree, if not outright religionists. I’m not sure what to make of their silence, but it could probably mean one of two things. Either they were genuinely shocked at what they saw and were silently contemplating the apparent mirror image of their own behaviour, or they were disgusted into silence which only means that their attitude to atheism will only harden.

Just prior to exclaiming that we must “grow up or die,” Maher made another blatantly extremist comment while standing at the infamous Megiddo site in Israel, “Religion must die so man can live.” Sounds rather clever, but I don’t believe this will go down all that well with the religious community either. Maher also exhorts all atheists to publicly take a stand against religiosity in a manner which can only be described as proselytizing. I’ve exposed this type of behaviour as rather unethical, previously on this blog. I’m now of the opinion that religion should be allowed to run its course, with only a mild form of dissonance from Atheists in the form of teaching and encouraging rational thinking. Better that it dies a natural death while mankind slowly grows up.