"I'll see you on the..."

"Banned Books" week ends today (Saturday, September 30). At the top of a couple of lists I saw was Harry Potter. Well, in celebration, I've been chugging along through book five, The Order of the Phoenix, and will have it finished soon. These have been very enjoyable. Other books on the list included a personal favorite The Catcher in the Rye, which I can understand being viewed on with caution. However, I tend to be of the opinion that dialogue and discussion is usually more effective than simply preventing people to read "potentially dangerous material". Mark Twain's books about Tom Sawyer and Mark Twain were on there, of course. Steinbeck too. My favorite reasoning for a book being banned was "Fahrenheit 451 for depictions of books being burned".

Tangentially shooting off from the whole banning, censorship, and dangerous art front, I'd like to mention that a co-worker and I have been talking about death metal and other very heavy forms of metal. His interests are in music that are lyrically much more intense than I prefer. But, we've been able to have fun talking about down tuning 7-string guitars and 5-string basses. double bass-drum kicks, vocal growl techniques, and other such metal ridiculousness. This aspect of modern culture is still interesting to me. Most people don't have the patience or conception to figure it out. That's very understandable because it's about blending cacophony and melody in absurdly layered pieces. Sometimes polyphonic, sometimes polyrhythmic. Always guttural. It's almost like the underbelly to music. What's curious about it is that a lot of people who like it also know their classical. Many metal guitarists are classically trained. The thing is, when Beethoven wrote his 5th, doing" duh-duht-duhta-duhhn-- duuh-duh-duhta-duhhnnn", people wondered what happened to melody. It's based on a rhythm. And it's a furious piece.

I think I'll close this by mentioning that housemate John just mentioned a band that refers to themselves as "Doom metal" and is called Necro Death. ;)