With colds going around there wasn’t much disc ripping going on this week. I finally grabbed a stack last night in an attempt to broaden some night music choices and to make sure Tamiko had Elvis for the first day of school. Some jazz piano found its way into that stack (Andrew Hill, Herbie Hancock and Red Garland) as well as the Stan Getz / Charlie Byrd samba precursor to the Getz/Gilberto recordings.

Tamiko was teaching a poem by her colleague Hans Ostrom today in her ‘Literature and Music’ class. The poem is Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven, and she wanted to have some Elvis playing when the students shuffled into class. She has this wonderful memory of her first semester at Berkeley and the Introduction to Astronomy class she took with Alexei Filippenko. On the first day of class, she walked into a huge auditorium with pictures of the solar system playing on a slide show along with ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. She loved how the music set such a mood for the rest of the course for her, and she wanted to try and create a similar situation with today’s class. We talked about what a good Elvis song to walk into class would be. Of course, the beginning of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ is probably the thing that would work perfectly. The problem there though, is that you can’t have music playing when people walk in AND have them hear the beginning of that song (and really, you HAVE to hear the beginning of that song). So I suggested that she have ‘Viva, Las Vegas’ playing as they walked in, then follow it up with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. Maybe sandwich in ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ if there are still people coming in after ‘Viva, Las Vegas’.

Well, Tamiko got to the room and the computer didn’t start up (so she couldn’t reach the server) and she finally got the CD player up and running a little after class started. So she went straight for ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ (the perfect thing to do!) and what is the reaction she gets? ‘huh… Elvis???’. Come on kids! First day of school! Lit and Music class and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ on the stereo to kick off the class! Oh well…

Music in class (even in music classes) is always a little tricky though. I imagine the bustle of a large Berkeley auditorium with Pink Floyd playing loudly would almost feel like you are showing up at a concert. But one of the difficulties with playing music in class has to do with the fact that everyone is sitting and being told to focus on the pressing of the play button. They sit quietly, still, not moving and maybe giving it full attention? But how do they show that they are giving it full attention? What can they say about how the air in the room is vibrating? It’s hard enough for musicians to talk about music, but ask your average intelligent college student about what they just heard and they can be thrown into a kerfuffle. One or two chime in with a comment on lyrics (if there are lyrics) or maybe something about instrumentation, but most wouldn’t know really how to describe a strong back-beat or why it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. Or why Elvis crying out in a full voice ‘Well since my baby left me!’ veiled in studio echo just epitomizes loneliness, followed by the band’s one-two punch to his gut  that takes the left lover to the ground. And sure, Elvis has found the Heartbreak Hotel, but it isn’t until you hear his pathetic “I feel so lonely, I feel so lonely… I could die” that you really do think this poor guy may have had his last grilled peanut butter banana sandwich. He isn’t howling in anguish anymore, he’s pulling himself off the floor, and it has all happened in 30 seconds of music. Not to mention the heavy trudging implied by the bass, and the sparse instrumentation that shows how lonely this guy is at this moment.

But what I find most awkward usually is the sitting. I walked by a class the other day listening to Otis Redding at Monterey Pop singing ‘Respect’. This is a blistering performance. I won’t describe it… if you’ve heard it, you know what I mean, if you haven’t, you just need to find it. Anyways, this isn’t music that you sit still, listen to, then analyze. The students haven’t experienced it by sitting quietly at their desks. The problem is though, I don’t know if there is really an answer. You certainly can’t take them back to the late 60s to see Otis, throw them into the crows and let them feel the energy (but, wow, I so wish I could do that… it would be hard not to spend weeks in a place like that).

I have it lucky in some ways. Most of the music I play is concert music, and I can treat the session as though it is a concert listening experience. Listening to Xenakis in our music studio is different then hearing it performed in the concert hall, but turning the lights down and sitting back in that studio isn’t TOO far off. The disparity is certainly much less then hearing Otis Redding sing at Monterey Pop while sitting under fluorescent lights in a regular old classroom. But the problem is still there. Part of the blame is recordings… the fact that we can actually play this music out of the context in which it was created in means it will always be a sub-par experience if music is the focus. Tamiko was lucky walking into that astronomy class, it was part of an entire show that was there to wow students on the first day of school. Great soundtrack, great visuals and excitement in a room of several hundred. Well Prof. Filippenko, you don’t make it easy for the rest of us.