Hola. I'm back. But you probably thought I wouldn't be?
The last two months have been eventless for the most part. The only downside was the midterm I missed for CS231. It's not that I forgot; I just happened to have thought to myself (for the past two or three weeks prior) that our midterm would be on a Thursday of the week, when in fact it was on a Wednesday (note to self: ALWAYS double-check dates from now on...). I missed it by 30 minutes. I was reading the newsgroup, and someone posted a message about walking back from the test. I was surprised. And shocked. And pissed. But it all passed. I hate that class anyway. A few people that took it actually received NEGATIVE scores. What bullshit is that? You should never be penalized for attempting an answer on a test. Especially something as hard as CS231 tests (the material itself is fairly easy). So...whatever. I wish there was a way I could get back at the class. I'll probably just badmouth UIUC after I get a good job.
Anyhow, I decided to add an entry now because I went to the Digital Underground concert last night. I thought it would be best to start off with something more "interesting" than my everyday life. Now the story begins:
A week ago, I went to an experimental music (using computers) concert at The Canopy Club (our music teacher told us about it (we have to go to five concerts and write a one page review for each); he performed one of his compositions). It was...interesting. Not exactly music, but my teacher thinks it is. Basically, they had some software running that allowed you to make your own instrument, and you could "play" that instrument in a lot of different ways (filtering sound and triggering a motion sensor with a special rod, just to name a couple). A couple of pieces (including my teacher's) boiled down to voice filtering. The soundscape at the beginning was the neatest part, although it dragged on longer than I wanted. They filtered the instruments played. A couple of other compositions involved dancing (using a rod as the trigger). But my favorite performance was "Post-Modern Living", simply because it was funny. It starts off with this guy listening some weird elevator, hawaiin music, and he was bobbing his head and walking kinda funny. Just goofy to see. Then this girl comes in, annoyed by the music. So she shuts it off and starts twirling this wand around and dances. The guy picks up his trombone and plays a loud note, which stops the girl. Then he goes back to listening to his music. This happened one more time. At the very end, the girl is doing her twirling and won't stop as the guy is playing his trombone. I guess you had to be there. It doesn't sound too fun with my description. Oh well.
What does this have to do with Digital Underground? Well, before the concert started, I was waiting in the bar/restaurant area of The Canopy. I'd never been there before, so I assumed that the people would be setting up to play in this area. So I'm sitting and looking at the fliers posted, and I see one for Digital Underground! I decided that I had to go. How could I not? They were one of the biggest reasons I got into hip-hop.
Yesterday rolls around, and I go to the concert at 9:20ish (it's supposed to start at 10). I'm standing behind some chairs in the middle of the concert room (I don't know what to call that big room). This girl (her name is Colleen) starts talking to me, and she's being kinda flirty. She asked if I was going to dance so I said no, then she asked why I wouldn't and whether I could dance. I said I could dance but almost everytime I try I usually get self-conscious and start to freeze up. And she was like "You, self-conscious? Why? You're gorgeous!" =/ So she was talking to me for like another 15-20 minutes. Talked about our majors, where we're from, etc. Just small talk. Then she said again that I was gorgeous and that I had a nice skin tone (I think this was in response to what nationality I was). She mentioned she was drunk though, which explains why she thought I was good looking (you drunk people know you'd hit on a fire hydrant if it looked good enough =P).
Finally, the opening band Five Block Shot starts playing. They were pretty good. Kinda reminded me of Rage/Limp Bizkit (mainly because 4 out of the 5 group members are white, and the two main rappers somewhat resembled Zach and Fred), although they didn't sound like either group.
They play for around 45 minutes, and now the place is getting even more packed (it was less than half full when I went, but nearly full as it got closer to DU's appearance). It took FOREVER for DU to come out. Somewhere close to an hour probably. Another hip-hop group started doing some songs, but it was only three. DU finally came on a few moments after the other group, although it was only Shock G, Money B, and some other guy. They started playing a bit of "Doowatchyalike", spraying beer and silly string into the crowd, then followed a couple of verses from "I get around" (Shock and Money's verses on the song, anyway) and played "Hail Mary", in rememberance of Tupac. They started smoking weed onstage at one point. Anyway, they also did a couple of verses from two Luniz songs (Shock works with them; I have the album he was doing the songs off of -- "Operation Stackola"). Shock even played the keyboard for a bit, starting off with the "Sex Packets" intro and then parts of other songs.
About halfway into the show, they start bringing girls up there for "Freaks of the Industry"; they had beads ready for any girls who'd show their boobies =P None of them did, but there was one girl there who got pretty freaky with Shock while dancing. She got beads for that. At the end though, Shock said that was the tamest group of girls ever in their touring history (go Champaign!).
Um...Shock went offstage for a few minutes, then came back on as Humpty Hump (I'd suspected for several years that they were the same person; now I finally know). Towards the end, he said he wanted to get some of the tightest emcees in the audience to come onstage and do some freestyling. So they brought up like 10 guys. I couldn't really hear what any of them were saying, but there was a drunk white guy who was absolutely horrible (of course he just got on there to be stupid). And then they closed the show with "The Humpty Dance", and that drunk white guy was up there dancing for a few seconds before a couple of the bodyguards took him offstage
After the show, I waited around a bit, hoping that I could get a few pictures with DU. I finally got one with Money and Shock. I told Shock that "The Humpty Dance" was one of the biggest reasons I got into hip-hop and said something like "Wow...you know who else likes that song a lot? Beck. I heard that he did a version of it on his last album, but I don't know if it made the final cut." I also asked if he knew what Saafir was up to, and he said that Saafir, Xzibit, and Ras Kass are going to start working on Gold State Project (finally!). I also got Shock's (err, Humpty's) autograph, along with a picture of Shock/Humpty.
And then I went home. It was around 2 AM. My back was killing me from standing up so long. But it was fun overall. I got to meet DU, yay
I guess it sucks that they've heard it all before when you tell them you've been a fan for 10 years, but oh well. I met one of the neatest groups in hip-hop, and that's all that matters on my side.
And that concludes this entry. Ciao?
[+dendum] Indian Classical Music
I saw a presentation on Indian classical music tonight, given by Professor Charles Capwell. It was fun and interesting. Indian classical has a huge amount of...scales? I think that's the term I should use. They're called ragas. Western classical has only two scales: major and minor (along with all those nifty modes). It wouldn't do me much use in trying to explain anything because I'm not close to partially knowledgeable about it. On a side note: tabla players, whose "status" in performances weren't considered important, have just recently been receiving more acclaim in their performance. Does this mean the end of the world?
The most enjoyable part of it all was when Prof. Capwell showed a clip of Ravi Shankar going back to see "Baba" (his guru, Allaudin Khan). I'm not sure why, but it was just touching. I guess because I've seen it before, whenever my parents went to see their older relatives, or even my grandparents. I never thought too much about it until now. These people who've been so important to you for much of your life are now old and near death. They might be gone the next day. Time is precious. I'm not sure where I was going with that. I wish my bhaia (grandpa) was still alive...
Anyway, the reason I even went to this presentation is because I'm planning on seeing Ravi Shankar next Friday (hopefully tickets are still available). I wanted to get some idea of what the music was based around. Most north Indian music is improvised (well, aside from that Bollywood crap). South Indian is a little less so, but improvisation still plays a big part. Of course, I'm only echoing what Prof. Capwell said. I have a peanut for a brain.
I've got the window open a bit and my small fan on. It feels niiiice in here. So soothing. Today was cool weather throughout. I tried to study on the quad earlier, but I ended up just enjoying the breeze.
Which reminds me: I've got a lot to do tonight. This is what I get for taking two days off
I want to read my mythology now kinda...maybe later. 1) Compose an 8 to 16 bar melody/theme for my sonata (last music project, woot!) and 2) Finish math homework and study for quiz (hard and harder). Bah. G'nite.