The Show Must Go On

I was inspired by this song when I heard it at the Queen concert for the first time. It was performed and recorded just six weeks before Freddie Mercury, the lead singer of Queen, died of complications from AIDS. The song talks about how no matter what, we have to keep going, which was obviously adressed at the fact that Queen would be losing its front man soon and would try to carry on. I think this is a good life lesson to. in everyones' life there are going to be times when you don't feel like living or like your troubles are too much to bare but you have to keep fighting. Just like Freddie did, singing with a lung disease six weeks before his death. RIP Freddie.



Empty spaces - what are we living for?
Abandoned places - I guess we know the score...
On and on!
Does anybody know what we are looking for?

Another hero - another mindless crime.
Behind the curtain, in the pantomime.
Hold the line!
Does anybody want to take it anymore?

The Show must go on!
The Show must go on!
Inside my heart is breaking,
My make-up may be flaking,
But my smile, still, stays on!

Whatever happens, I'll leave it all to chance.
Another heartache - another failed romance.
On and on!
Does anybody know what we are living for?

I guess I'm learning
I must be warmer now..
I'll soon be turning round the corner now.
Outside the dawn is breaking,
But inside in the dark I'm aching to be free!

The Show must go on!
The Show must go on! Yeah!
Ooh! Inside my heart is breaking!
My make-up may be flaking!
But my smile, still, stays on!
Yeah! oh oh oh

My soul is painted like the wings of butterflies,
Fairy tales of yesterday, will grow but never die,
I can fly, my friends!

The Show must go on! Yeah!
The Show must go on!
I'll face it with a grin!
I'm never giving in!
On with the show!

I'll top the bill!
I'll overkill!
I have to find the will to carry on!
On with the,
On with the show!

The Show must go on.

How Can Asking a Simple Question be so Extravagant?

It's Prom season! And that means that all of the seniors are asking their sweet hearts if they will go to prom with them. The thing that I wonder is almost this: Why ask when you know that they will say yes? The answer is that it is one of the most fun things to do in your high school career and, from what I have heard almost as good as prom. I think that I have seen some of the most creative ways of doing it this year.

The first one was the way my girlfriend asked me. I got over to her house and I found a note on her door that said I was going on a scavenger hunt. As I kept going on the scavenger hunt around her house she left notes that had some of the most romantic moments in our relationship on them and always led me to another spot in her house. When I got to the basement, I opened all the envelopes to find the words "Will you go to prom with me" hand drawn in oil pastels. It was a great way to look back at the great times we have had and what was next. I was ecstatic she asked me.



The next one that came was by one of the most funny and creative people I know. First you need to know a few things. Or choir room has a projector screen and a wall of mirrors facing it. You will see that this is a major factor in the proposal. At the end of class on April fools day, our choir director put in a DVD for us to watch. It started and what came up was what I expected: John Burroughs High School Chamber Choir 2009. I know that is a great school and I figure that they had probably performed a sing we were singing really well. But then the screen turned grey and a voice said " we have a message for Ellen Bardsley." Everyone knew what was happening at that point but we were all intrigued. The video suddenly broke out into this orange and red and yellow background and would break into pictures of Lars sitting trying to think of how to ask her. In tyhe end he writes the words on a piece of paper but it is backwards. So he tells her to turn around and it is in the mirror forward and says, "will you go to prom with me?" Everyone ooohed and aaahhhed and she ran over to hug Lars. It was really fun and romantic. I think everyone agreed it was one of the best.

Then the final one came during the Queen Concert I mentioned earlier on my blog. Spencer, who was performing in the concert with the choir, went up to talk to the lead singer after the rehersal that morning. My girlfriend had wanted to talk to him to so we were waiting our turn while Spencer talked. After we heard what he had said we didn't have anything left to say. That night he was going to have the singer stop in the middle of the show and ask for Spencer's girlfriend to come down in front of the stage. Spencer was then going to had her a red rose and ask her to go to prom with him and then the band would play your my best friend. As it turned out she could get to the front of the stage. So she stood up at the edge of the balcony, the lead singer ran out into the audience and threw the rose to her(which she caught), and Spencer asked her from the stage and then ran out into the audience to see her. It was very spontaneous and huge. I wondered how you even think that you could do something like that but if that is possible, I'm sure that nothing is to much to ask someone to prom with you.

Gaga

Lady Gaga. She is a huge pop sensation and a total freak when it comes to how she dresses, but everyone loves her. But who knows how she got her name? The truth, she got it from a Queen song. when I was at the Queen concert, they performed the song Radio Gaga and the singer jokingly sang Poker Face by Lady Gaga during the opening. That was when it first occured to me that there might be some meaning behind the name she had. Turns out that she had always used Radio Gaga as her walk out music before she was famous and her manager sent her a text where raio had been autocorrected to say lady. And from that point on she was called Lady Gaga instead of her real name, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta.

The "Queen" of Rock Concerts

In my city, there is a symphony called Orchestra Iowa. They do lots of concerts every year and most of them include only classical music. That kind of music is great but every so often they do a concert which is truly amazing; a concert of Rock Classics. This year they did a concert of Queen music and it was amazing. And the best part? Some of my fellow show choir members and I got to sing in the show!

The Band that they play with is amazing. They are a cover band called jeans and classics and their lead singer, Mike Shaw, sounds just like the original performers of the songs. That combined with the flawless orchestra performance was enough to give me goose bumps. But what was even better was that we got in for free. They set a whole section aside for the choir and let us watch the first part until intermission. Mike and the rest of the band performed right to us and made me feel like I was some sort of celebrity. That could have been that we were the most responsive people in the audience since the audience wasn't really planning to come to a rock concert. Still, I was happy he even acknowledged us because he could have just passed us off as a bunch of high schoolers that he wouldn't give the time of day.

The singer also came out and talked with all of the choir members before we went on for the final half of the concert. He was super fun to hang out with and didn't seem to mind our endless prodding for answers to our questions. When it was time to goon for our performance, the whole group was totally pumped. we got on stage at this professional show and I thought I would be more nervous than I had ever been on stage but it was completely different. I think I was more relaxed rocking out on stage with all my friends than when I sing by myself and I know no one is watching.

We sang seven songs: We stomped and sang We Will Rock You, We Are the Champions, Flash, You Take My Breath Away, Who Wants to Live Forever, Somebody to Love, and Bohemian Rhapsody. Those are some of of my favorite Queen songs and now I love them all even if I had never heard of them before. The choir was great at singing them and it made the songs that much more amazing to hear with about a 50 voice choir backing the band up.

At the end the band did Fat Bottom Girls and Too Much Love Will Kill You for the encores and we sang along with those because we all knew them even without music. we also held up our cell phones and ipod lighter apps for the final song. As my girlfriend said it was like looking at a star filled sky as we saw all the cell phones in the crowd. The whole concert was amazing and I can't wait until next year!

Here are some of the songs

Star Guitars

When I was at church this Sunday there were two seven string guitar players and one of them had a double headed twelve string guitar too. Looking at these instruments made me wonder about other strange instruments and about guitars. This seemed like a good enough time as any to start to learn.



Doubled Necked Guitars were the first strange instrument I thought to look at. The Guitarist for Led Zeppelin uses among others. They are usually made with one six string neck and one twelve string neck but there are an infinite number of combinations. They are used for easily switching from on type of guitar to another such as fretted to fretless or with a different type of pick ups. They can be very crazy such as the Pikasso Guitar which has 42 strings!



I also looked at electric stringed instruments for fun. They allow the quite natured strings to be loud and to serve as rock style instruments like electric guitars. Here are some pictures of these odd instruments.



This is the electric cello that I own. It can be played acoustically but it is very quite since it doesn't have a body to resonate sound. I think it is cool because it is shaped like the Golden Books "G".



this is a typical electric violin. it has next to no body so it can't make very much acustic sound but it can with the pick up. electric string instruments (including guitars) can be amazing shapes because they don't have to have any thing but a neck, strings, and a pick up to play.

Are Hippie teens Hip?

Lately I have noticed that my little sister has been wearing a lot of peace signs and hippie symbols. I was thinking about how everything seems to be playing out in reverse of how it originally was when the decades are coming back. So I figure it is about time for the sixties and seventies to come back in style. But the real questions is whether the hippie attitude will return or if it will be just the style.

When I look around, it is clear that the hippie way isn't dead. People still play and listen to the music of that time, they still have some of the same beliefs, and they do some of the same activities. But modern hippie followers aren't really protesting anything. They are just doing this for the good time and because they like the sound and/or atmosphere. The feeling of family for all and inclusion is great but I do wonder if there isn't something that they could be fighting for.

In 1963, when the US started the Vietnam war, the war was against an enemy that had made attacks but hadn't declared war. We were fighting an enemy that wasn't a major threat to us at the time. People who were hippies were fighting against being in Vietnam when it was a civil war and didn't really need to involve us. Just because we had set up their government prior to the war didn't require that we help keep that government in power. But the government was trying to contain communism and letting Nam fall would have been contradicting to our goals.



The world is circling back to the point where we were with Vietnam. We started the war on terror because of the September 11th attacks. The Bush Doctrine which was put in place after that was that of preventative war. That means we were fight against a group that wasn't a huge threat. We didn't learn our lesson and we have installed a government in Iraq and afganistan that are corrupt and falling apart. People aren't happy with war but for some reason people aren't as openly protesting what is going on. If they did they could be real hippies. Right now they are too caught up in American issues and social life to protest what is going on in the world. Music is caught up in sex, drugs, and romance and hasn't had the motivation to change its ways and write music with meaning and validity for the world.

So that is where we are stuck. The hippies are just doing it for the fashion and the musicians won't use there talents to protest the world issues. My opinion is that hippies could easily come back but I doubt it will ever be exactly the same as it as before. It's only a matter of time before the next generation finds a reason to try and change the world.

Satire Desire

In class yesturday, we read a very interesting piece of writing. It was called,"A Modest Proposal," and it was by Johnathan Swift. The story is a strange piece of writing until you realize that it is a style called satire.


Wikipedia says satire is a simple genre of writing that uses wit and humor to portray a deeper meaning or idea. In Swift's essay, he said that he thought that the poor Irish families should just sell the young children they couldn't feed and then they wouldn't be poor, there would be more food, and there would be less overcrowding. He was kinding of course but what he was saying that the ideas that people were giving out for how to solve this problem were no better than this plan so why don't we just you his. that and the fact that no one was using the simple solutions that were obvious to everyone.



As I was considering satire and what it meant, it reminded me of a play I was in called Arsenic and Old Lace. This show is about two old ladies who, thinking that they are suffering from old age and can't stand their complaining, decide to put old men out of their misery by killing them. This causes problems for their whole family. the idea seemed very similar to what swift was doing but when I looked it up I found it was different. They called it a farce, very similar to a satire but it has no real underlying meaning. I agree that there isn't really any other meaning than for entainment.

Sweeney Todd was another show that came to mind when you think about killing and an underlying meaning. In this show, Sweeney is tormented by troubles and he can't stand his life so he draws the conclusion that all people must be as miserable as he is and they must want to die. And he also decides that those who are rich and wicked to people like him don't deserve to live. This is definently a new idea, but was it funny? I realized that this was more horror and thrill than comedy. That doesn't really have a genre but it isn't satire.

So maybe these weren't satire but it brought up a different thought: what can we do to stop these depressing thoughts that so many people have? I think it really comes down to knowing that we need to care for each other regardless of their class level or misery. you can't make death the option when people are sad or cruel, lest we become as those master who doth control us. And that will lead world to nothing good.