softservegirl’s Neighborhood

Har Mar Superstar - Game Night Har Mar Superstar Tour Dates 11/08/09 Aquarium* Fargo, ND 11/09/09 Waiting Room* Omaha, NE 11/11/09 Brick Kansas City, MO 11/29/09 Oxford O2 Academy 3, UK 11/30/09 Relentless Garage London 12/01/09 Thekla Bristol, UK 12/02/09 Wedgewood Portsmouth, UK 12/03/09 Cabaret Voltaire Edinburgh 12/04/09 Bodega Nottingham, UK 12/05/09 Brickyard Carlisle, UK 12/06/09 King Tut’s Wah Wah Glasgow 12/07/09 Ruby Lounge Manchester, UK 12/08/09 Plug Sheffield, UK 12/09/09 Academy 2 Dublin, Ireland 12/10/09 Stiff Kitten Belfast, Ireland 12/12/09 Concorde 2 Brighton, UK 12/13/09 Barfly Cardiff, UK * with Bang Bang Eche Read More Har Mar Superstar http://weheartmus... Har Mar Mall - I mean Superstar - is back, after five years of absent since 2004's The Handler......

Parking in the college area known as "Dinkytown" in Minneapolis can be kind of hard, especially when the meters on 4^th Street runs until 10pm. I didn't mind walking a few blocks to the beautiful Varsity Theater as the weather was nothing less than perfect that Friday evening.

Opening up for Har Mar Superstar are three very different genre and acts. Starting with Koo Koo Kangeroo (official / myspace), whose music styling is that of hip hop - for toddlers. Their songs are dead simple, like "AOA" (sample lyrics: "aye oh aye oh aye") and "Cheh Cheh Chi" and "LMNOP", but they're catchy and easy to sing along. The highlight of their set was when they threw down a white tarp-like covering and the audience was dancing under it like a party fort.

Wow, Bang Bang Eche (myspace) are young. Someone told me that they're about 18 years old, but they certainly look much younger. Their music is very punk high-energy and reminds me a bit of Arctic Monkeys influenced. My easily favorite song from their set is "Fist Full of Dollars", perhaps a reference to Sergio Leone classic film? They ended their setlist with "Die Hippy Scum". Oh, also, it's worth noting that bassist T'Nealle sported a three keyboard cat moon t-shirt. Adorable.

The odd group on the bill was two-person group, Lookbook (myspace). The band is basically guitarist Grant Cutler, who plays guitars and handles the pre-recordings, with vocalist Maggie Morrison. Their music sounds like 80s pop, not exactly the "body-moving" type of music that you'd think Har Mar's audience would demand. Not really much to say, except I think Maggie looks really cute and I will be talking about them in further detail on my "book"-theme news on Sunday.

Har Mar Superstar ♥ Varsity Theater, Minneapolis (11/06/09)

Compared to the last time I saw Har Mar Superstar, which was basically a man and his undies and boombox - he now has a full band, all dressed in white with a red cross on the back. Also, the last time I saw him, he basically stripped down after the first few songs - this time, he started off very heavily dressed with an African cover, hat, etc.

After the first song, he took off his hat. After "DUI", he took off the overall to reveal a Prince "Purple Rain" shirt. He kept taking off articles of clothing as the night went on. From "EZ Pass", to "Girls Only", to "Creative Juices"... the audience was loving it all.

Har Mar and Melinda Park singing "Powerline"

By the time "Brothers & Sisters" was played, he inevitably took off his shirt. The pants disappeared with "Apple Sauce", followed by "Turn it Around". The finale song was "Tall Boy", which Zach, from Bang Bang, and some woman called Melinda Park (or was it Mindy Park?) joined on stage to help sing the song. Park would later turn up again to help sing one of the encore, "Powerline".

The very last song, Har Mar sang an a cappella version of Boyz II Men's "It's So Hard To Say Goodbye To Yesterday". He would pretend the song ended and everyone would clap... only he would continue to sing the refrain. After the third false ending and after he said "goodnight", he came back and sang some more.

Har Mar's latest album is Dark Touches, available from Dilettante Recordings. Read Andrew's review of the album, pick up a copy at amazon

 11/07/2009 04:22:06 ♥ vu () ♥ harmarsuperstar.com ♥ myspace.com/harmarsuperstar ♥ twitter.com 

Gees can you believe this is the 78th Photo Quest?  Seems like I started this just a few months ago.  I thank all the loyal members for all their great photos and for teaching me more about photography.

For this weeks quest lets look at diagonal lines and how they contribute to a photo.  You can use diagonal lines to draw to eye to your subject or the lines can be your subject.  The human eye natural views an image by going from left to right.  By placing a diagonal line from left to right you are using that natural view to your advantage by now drawing the eye to your subject.  Make it easy for the viewed to know what your subject is.

Can you look at your photos and know what the subject is?  Do you look for the subject of your photo in your view finder or LCD before you click the shutter?  Do you remember the rule of thirds?

Now that I've filled you with questions....here is this week's quest.  Take some photos using diagonal lines.  Photos can be any that you have taken in the last year.  If you can't find a photo with diagonal lines or can't find a subject with diagonal lines around use a photo software to make some lines.  No excuses this time. 

Here is a great article on diagonal lines  http://digital-photography-school.com/using-diagonal-lines-in-photography.  Any questions...please ask!  Take care and  have a wonderful week.

Yikes there were some very scary photos this week!  Thanks to all the folks that send in photos, it was so much fun to see what you were doing for Halloween.  I miss Halloween so much.  The department I worked the for last 9 years didn't do much of anything for Halloween.  Now that I'm retired well, it was even less.  We are too far out in the country to get trick-a-treaters so it was like any other day here.  Darn it...I did get to see some cute photos of my grandsons dressed up.

Back to the quest I didn't see a bad photo in the group and we had tons of photos this time.  Darcy made my job easy by posting only one photo, thanks so much girl.  Her photo of her daughter as Wednesday Adams showed tons of creativity.  Darcy's daughter played with the photo in photoshop to make it spookier!  Great work there.

Then along came Cap'n wow frozen pumpkin fields and a great jack-o-latern...amazing work on that.  My favorite was the jack-o-latern photo. Taking the photo at night gave it a real Halloween glow.

Next was Yan with his great photos of Halloween in Japan.  My favorite was the friend dressed as an alien...great capture in a dark bar.

Now it was Amy Sue...boy she made my job very hard with all her great photos!  Thanks for the great photos of the kids trick-or-treating downtown.  What a great place she lives that the merchants give out candy..keeping it safe for the kids...very nice!  It was so hard to pick a favorite...so I picked two.  I loved the pumpkin and  hunted house photo.  The low light gives the photo a very nice Halloween spooky feeling.  Then I really like the Halloween old photo of the two kids under the movie poster.  Nice work there with making the whole photo feel very old.

Wow then there was Metz....so many, many photos my friend.  I felt like I was there with you enjoying seeing how your children had so much fun. Of couse it helps that her kids are so cute!  So my favorite of all the photos was Halloween 048 with the red tree behind your daughter!  That was an amazing photo, loved the red leaves that matched your daughters outfit.  Nice work there!

Xkcd is usually pretty good -- but this is genius.

Orbitals

Happy Friday!

So, one of the things I’ve gotten to spend some more time with during my – err – sabbatical from gainful employment – is my piano.

For those who’ve been around here a while, you might recall that a couple of years ago, I was stressing about and then actually enjoying learning a little music theory in the last piano class I had before I started taking private lessons.

So, last year, after I’d settled in and developed a bit of rapport with my teacher, I’d described the things I’d liked and not-liked about the classes I had taken.  One thing I’d said I’d appreciated (and that maybe it was my analytical-science side coming out) was the introduction to music theory that I’d had – how it helped shaped the way I heard and learned new pieces.  She suggested that I start a series of workbooks on music theory for the piano.

Fundamentals of Piano Theory (K Snell Series, Primer-Level 10)

I think this series is pretty good, and after a year or so I’m right in the middle of the set.  I’ve really enjoyed learning the hows and whys of how a musical composition is put together.  We’ve covered meter, scales, keys, intervals, chords, ornaments, motifs and have begun to analyze different compositions for melodic phrase structure.  There are also sections for ear training and sight-reading.  Altogether, I think they’ve really helped me be a better (and I use this word very generously) musician.

So, of course, reading and dissecting music naturally began to make me curious about how it gets created.  Do you start from a motif and build?  Do you start with a feeling and go?  What are the “rules” that make something sound “good”?  And so on…

Pretty Famous Motif

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And so, last month, I started another series: “The Craft of Music Composition”.  This also has several levels and naturally I’m starting at the entry level, since I’ve never written music in my life.  The first book has a sort of a lead-you-by-the-hand way that takes some of the intimidation out of the idea of putting notes to paper (or notes into Finale’ as the 21st century equivalent might be…) – while learning some of the common techniques used by composers.

Get Started

I’ve never really considered myself a “creative” person.  Insightful, maybe.  Analytical, for sure.  So composition is way out of my comfort zone – and maybe that’s good.  I don’t know that there will be any critical successes coming from my brain, but it sure is fun to sit and plink-plunk-plink at the keys and decide what you think sounds good.

Wish me luck!

First-world problem, *I know*, but yours truly has two, count 'em, two black tie events in the next couple of months.  Yours truly also does not own a gown.  Cocktail dresses?  Sure!  Too many to count.  But gowns?  Y'all, I'm 5'2".  Gowns are not my thing. 

That said, have I dreamed of my Oscar moment?  Have I coveted gowns I've seen starlets wear?  Yes, it has happened.  So I'm channeling that envy into figuring out what I want to wear for these two parties.  The gown has to be black, because it's a requirement for one party and no, I'm not buying two gowns.  I will wear the same one to both (completely different states, so it's all good).  Right now, I am in love with these two from BCBGMaxAzria, but they are completely out of my price range:

bcbg1.jpg

bcbg2.jpg

Apapell

Still, it's kind of exciting to think about wearing an actual gown to a super fancy event.  I'll probably end up going to Macy's and Century21 and just drowning in dresses until something in my price range (under $200 prefs.) sticks.  Keep ya posted.

The AL