22 March 2009

huh?

Hyah!

Handel - as in George Frederic, as in the creator of "The Messiah". I admittedly don't care too much about Christmas music, or the holiday in general, but this is Christmas.

The Link fam has accidentally (and incidentally) misinterpreted and rewritten most of this masterpiece. I like sheep, too! You're missing out.

Hank Williams, Jr. - surprise! I think Bocephus qualifies as "real country". You know, how they do it in Dixie. Yee haw.

Harold Faltermeyer - a popular, prolific TV/film composer in the eighties... Ok, as far as most of us know, he just did "Axel F", the theme for Beverly Hills Cop. There's nothing wrong with that, though, since everyone on the planet knows that song.

Playing "Axel F" in high school pep band was nothing short of hilarious. Any time there is a clapping interlude, there will be a riot. How deliciously dorky. Further (not bragging), since I switched between xylophone and bari sax as necessary, I knew the bass line and the melody and would play them both simultaneously (yes, rather poorly) on the xylo or vibes... If clapping interludes are dorky, then self-duetting on top of the dorkiness is loser squared.

Harry Connick, Jr. - the second junior of the day earns a mention for his rendition of "It Had To Be You", which happened to be in the same key as the arrangement we did in jazz choir.

Two things: first, this song held the distinguished title of track #1 on the permanent singalong disc in the van. Who knows how many times we mutilated this little ditty, brass solos and all. Second, my apologies to our JC director for always singing the melody an octave too low, where only I could reach... You know I couldn't resist; that low C is just begging to be rumbled out.

Heart - the nutso classic rockers responsible for "Magic Man", "Crazy on You", and ooh, "Barracuda". Wow, she has a high voice. Chalk up credit for strange slidey tricks on guitar during the main riff of "Barracuda", but pass some cred to Rasputina for turning that song into a cello duet.

I'm not about to look anything up, but if you read through some ancient posts on the jarmstro's logs, you can find some quality Heart tales. Song titles lead to endless punning.

Henry Mancini - jazzster/composer of the theme for the Pink Panther. All I really have to add is that, as "normal" as that song may sound, it is an incredibly bizarre composition to play... Chromatics + sharps = confusion.

Herbie Hancock - not just a Chris Farley joke, it's a real person! In the jazz world, he's relatively popular for infusing funk-style rhythms and such into common chord progressions, as well as writing weird parts for normal instruments and vice versa ("Watermelon Man"). Forget all of that, though, because every musician of the past few decades instantly recognizes, and knows his/her instrument's part for, "Chameleon".

Herman's Hermits - pretty popular weirdos of the "oldies" era, eh? Unlike most of the one-hit wonders I've mentioned from that time, the Hermits could actually fill an album with real "greatest hits". Scary, since one of them is inevitably "I'm Henry VIII, I Am". No Sam!

Herman and friends often found themselves in the van-bombing CD collection, though they appear frequently enough on oldies radio that putting the disc in the changer was a bit redundant.

House of Pain - completely out-of-genre for today's post, it seems, we have a dash of rap/hip-hop/hard rock. I know them best from my brother's comically-censored tape of whatever album was so popular... Put on your fish kickers and kick some fish!

That was unexciting; any contributions?

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