You heard us right! Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Cover Songs “There’s the whole world at your feet.” Mary Poppins (1964) Mary Poppins is a film released in 1964. Julie Andrews plays the character of Mary Poppins, a beautiful nanny that transforms misbehaving kids into well-behaving kids with the use of fun and a little bit of magic. This movie is one of the most whimsical films that Disney has done (in my opinion). It contrasts dreary England with the imaginative magic of a whole new world. That contrast makes the whimsy that Mary Poppins brings forth to the children and the audience for that matter, all the more sensational. Adding to the whimsy is a typically cheery soundtrack. The soundtrack includes classics such as Sister Suffragette, The Life I Lead, The Perfect Nanny, A Spoonful of Sugar, A Jolly Holiday, Chim Chim Cheree, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious,Stay Awake, I love to Laugh, Tuppence a Bag, Fidelity Fiduciary Bank, A Man has Dreams, and Let’s go Fly a Kite. These are all amazing songs sung throughout the film to highlight emotionally charged scenes. The highlighted song for this article from the gorgeous 1964 film is, of course, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious. Check the highlighted Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Cover Songs below! Cover by Harry Connick, Jr. Parodied Cover by The New Fangled Four Cover by Ryan Cassell and Bella Cassell Metal Cover by Andy Rehfeldt and Sara Hatchett Cover by Deredia Cover by Miche Fambro With so many amazing songs within the film, it’s hard to choose a single one to showcase the different covers available on the internet. But here are our honourable mentions. Mary Poppins A Cappella Medley by Backtrack Chim Chim Cher-ee by Amanda Castro Band

It’s one thing to have a passion for music, it’s another to want to protect it. Dennis James is an organist and historic preservationist. His passion for music leads him to preserve music from long ago eras. He focuses specifically on the genre of silent films. Something that not many people know is that silent films weren’t completely silent. They were often accompanied by musical scores. These scores are what Dennis James aims to preserve. This is an interview with Dennis James and Dylanna Fisher of Switching Styles. How did you start in music? I began my musical career at the age of seven by studying the “stomach-piano” (accordion). Because it was the local instrument of choice for budding musicians in Cleveland, Ohio in 1957. However, it was one day during Science Class in seventh grade. I had an epiphany that caused me to change instruments. I had the realization that none of my classmates wanted to hear my renditions of Lady of Spain complete with bellows shake. We had an electronic organ at home. Previously, I had embarrassed my older brother Rodger with competitive technique display in a bout of sibling rivalry when I was 9 and he was 12. I guess it was a no-brainer for me to make the shift finally when I turned 12. I played my first pipe organ a few weeks later on a visit to my accordion teacher’s church where he served as the organist and I think it was at that visit the seed was planted. Who inspired you within your music career? The very first was the brash, showy, ragtime/honky-tonk TV pianist Joanne Castle. She played regularly on the 1950’s popular Lawrence Welk television show. This was a particular parental “family entertainment” favourite at the time. In fact, I pestered my parents a lot about getting a piano. With an organ having already been acquired for my brother, the suggestion was made that I consider imitating another TV show musician, Myron Floren, who was the accordionist on the Lawrence Welk show. That bore fruit when, at age 6. I spotted an accordion in a pawn shop window near a favourite family restaurant in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. My parents bought it. They surprised me by giving it to me as a present on my 7th birthday. This led to my starting lessons immediately thereafter. How did your family impact your musical career? They were all very supportive. To the point that my Dad went so far as to build French door into the walls at the entrances to the room where the practice organ was located. It was difficult for the rest of the family to do anything, like watch TV, when I practiced. I’ll always remember starting a session and hearing those doors slide shut. They walled me in while everyone else went on about their business at home. How do you think your life would have been different if you continued with the accordion? I doubt if I would have stayed with music at all. I would have likely pursued my lifelong interest in oil painting or another similar interest. When did your interest in the silent film soundtracks begin? Gaylord Carter, the major touring film player at the time, flew in from Los Angeles to perform at the Tower Theatre’s Wurlitzer organ in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania (near to downtown Philadelphia). The film was Douglas Fairbanks in the 1920 swashbuckling adventure drama “The Mark of Zorro” and Gaylord played his own quite thrilling score made up of a combination of published theatre organ generics used in the scorings in the 1920s plus his own inimitable improvisation cascades. It was a sold-out house. I remember eagerly turning to my dad at the end. Then, I was thoroughly impressed by the cheers and standing ovation from the sellout crowd. I said to him those fateful words “I can do that!” I went home that very night after the post-performance reception. I pulled out some music paper. Then I wrote out his entire score from memory. To honor Gaylord Carter, I create my own score inspired by his work. I preserve about 20% of his efforts in my historical revival work. How old were you for your first organ plus orchestra screening at Indiana University? My recollection is it was done in the spring of 1970 so I would have been 19 Can you describe your first experience in silent film performance with live music? My first attempt to play my own prepared music to a silent film that starred a cross-eyed actor Larry Semon to be shown as an act within a high school variety show in 1967. I ended up stringing together a series of 1920’s popular songs as my score. It was in the summer of 1969. A couple of years later, I saw and heard the first live music silent film show. It had accompaniment by a professional theatre pipe organ player. It was during my first break after having begun freshman year studies at Indiana University. How would you describe Gaylord Carter and his music? Gaylord was not the “top” musician of his day. However, he is the silent film player that lived the longest – well into the revival era that enabled my career. He taught me such show business necessities as how to speak to an audience of 2,000-plus without a microphone. Since inevitably somewhere the microphone wouldn’t work; something has since happened to me several times! He was a cliche player. He focused on cluing essential basic emotional reactions to the film in the audience. And he was not very much concerned with the niceties of thematic applications. So, he paid little attention to motives developments and the rest that go into true music composition. What impact does music have in film? Thinking in particular of the silent films, I think it was best outlined LA Times article from October 2014 tat I keep on file: “Mocked, ignored, the victim of a massive cultural disinformation campaign that insisted these movies were too simple to take seriously, silent film has managed to outwit history. Not only is there a phoenix-like rebirth of interest in the medium, but the films themselves and the artifacts surrounding them are constantly coming to light in rich and unexpected ways. To be seen to their best advantage, however, silent films should be experienced, as they were in the medium’s glory days, with live musical accompaniment. To understand what makes silent film so special, the central place of music can’t be avoided. The live music enhances what we see, bringing us inside the film. As the late film authority William Everson explained several years ago, ‘The score minimized flaws. It added punctuation and feeling. It stretched the emotionalism and guided the audience into the right frame of mind.’ It’s a major crime, absolutely deadly, to show these films without the proper accompaniment.’ To enter this world is to understand why Mary Pickford, one of its biggest stars, famously said that “it would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talking instead of the other way around.” (Quote from “Silent films and their soaring music are rediscovered” by Kenneth Turan, from the LA Times) What appeal does a silent film with live music have to the audience? In my over 50 years of experience doing this, there is always a marvelling new fascination among the younger viewing generations. They are captivated by the live music component of what is now a nearly forgotten part of the original practice of exhibiting film. I recreate those days from nearly 100 years ago with my specialty approach. This involves performing stylistically authentic and period-appropriate live musical accompaniments at the film screenings. This original matching music to the period images facilitated the audience’s emotional responses in a manner already quite highly developed in the industry. There is a similar continuity to the present day with modern performances of other historically fully developed, music-enhanced theatrical music forms: opera, operetta, Broadway shows, ballet, vaudeville and so many others. My passion stems, I guess, by that I like the concept that it would have been more logical, thinking of film as an art form progression, for the silent film to have evolved from the sound film. To experience in live real-time experience movies the way they were meant to be. As performed in a large communal setting with the film image exactly as seen now 80 to 100 years ago, and heard with historically accurate original musical accompaniment performed with a thorough and fully realized respect for the past and with full confidence of serving the presentation desires of the filmmakers themselves. If one loves movies as do most moviegoers today, seeing and hearing, them as they were originally intended to be experienced simply should not be missed. Do you think that the appeal of silent films will change over the years? Of course. Those shifts in appeal are what enables the survival and periodic revivals for most all of the successful presentation art forms down through the years. I am certain that what people see and hear at the Metropolitan Opera today when a Mozart Opera is presented is quite far from the original 18th c. original conceptions and productions, if only from the changes in the instruments used and the stylistic nuances of the players. You’ve performed the soundtrack for Jekyll and Hyde, and Nosferatu, among others. Which of them stands out as a favourite? Well, my favourite career silent film scoring memory, dates back to 1993. I was living in Berkeley, California and renowned film preservationist and cultural philanthropist David W. Packard engaged me to play to the “The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg” silent film as my debut performance at his humanities foundation’s Wurlitzer pipe organ-equipped restored Stanford Theatre in somewhat nearby Palo Alto down on the Peninsula. I had already performed to the popular silent film version of the Heidelberg story under the auspices of film collector Paul Killiam at a film festival in the Midwest a few years previous. I found the score in my storage files. Preparations went along just fine. That is, until the day before the Palo Alto performance. David phoned and asked for any final setup details, arrival time and such, and during the conversation, he happened to mention that he was really looking forward to seeing Norma Shearer in the film. I flippingly replied that Norma Shearer wasn’t in the film. It was Dorothy Gish. A bit heatedly David said, “No, it is Norma Shearer with Ramon Navarro”. I said that I really didn’t want to argue about it. However, this 1916 film stars Dorothy Gish and Wallace Reid. There was this long pause. then we both realized that there must have been two silent film versions of the same story. David said he was screening the MGM 1928 one directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Well, that version was a film I had not yet seen nor known about hitherto. David gently asked what we could do and I asked to think about it a moment. Then I asked if he already had the print and was told the print was already in the booth. I told him to call in the projectionist and get him a room in a nearby hotel preparing for what I envisioned would be an all-nighter project. Then I asked him to set up a standard 6’ folding table in the theatre, bring in a photocopy machine, two cans of rubber cement, a ream of photocopy paper plus a paper cutter and a 1 1/2″ three-ring notebook. I said I’d be there in 45 minutes to begin. On my way, I stopped in at the Stanford University music library to get ahold of the Sigmund Romberg operetta’s vocal score. That’s what we did. And it indeed took a straight-through 23 hours and 15 minutes work session without any breaks to create an entirely new, precisely synchronized, all-Romberg plus period generics source music compilation score following the historical period practices of the scoring professionals as practiced in the silent film industry. This was predominantly assembled out of the operetta material just as I’d done with the earlier film starring Dorothy Gish titled, “In Old Heidelberg.” That film, however, was entirely different in every way from the Lubitsch 1928 version based on the same material. All of that prior scoring work was entirely unusable. David sat up with me all night in the little theatre office upstairs watching me work and observing closely, step by step, everything that I did. We would screen a scene of the film, and then I’d think about it a bit, scan through the entire Romberg operetta score for possibilities considering plot sequence, character assignments, scene atmospherics, emotional cues and implications, all while weighing the music styles and key orientations. I would find something that fit and place it in my mind. I played it through with my memory of the images while conducting myself along to ensure synchronization. Then, I pasted it up to assemble into the notebook. After that, I called the projectionist in again to run the next scene. We did that progressively, scene by scene, through the whole night and right on through into the next day. Finishing up the score assembly just 12 minutes before the start of my debut performance left no time to permit my actually playing any of it in advance. so the niceties of organ registration and key manipulations had to be done ‘on the fly.’ I’m happy to report that that score turned out so perfectly that I still perform it exactly as I assembled it that hectic all night session in 1993! How do you choose the songs or soundtracks to perform? The way I work primarily is through performance of either the original published scores that were distributed along with the film prints or scores I assemble faithfully following the compilation scoring guides sent along with the films to assemble scores from original period-published music intended for cueing purposes. There is this remarkable flow that happens where I’m looking at the screen and reading my carefully prepared and rehearsed music that causes the music to come out as a continuously synchronous emotion sequence matching the visuals like a perfectly fit glove on a hand. The visual cues go into my eyes. My brain processes the combination of audience reactions underway. It also considers the performance needs of the instrument at hand. Additionally, it calculates precision timings for the music tempos related to the unfolding scene contents and outcomes. This occurs in a fully synchronous spontaneity. I’m not even conscious of what the added expressive choices are in the real-time of performance having now been continually doing this for over fifty years. The basis of it all is informed by the time I spent many years ago working with veteran professional silent film scorers such as Lee Erwin, Gaylord Carter and Dr. C. A. J. Parmentier, all of whom were still active in the 1960s and 70’s when I was coming to the profession. Learning a lot of the basics of period stylistic revival and essential professional procedures really informed my nascent developing technique. As in the case of Broken Blossoms (1919), you’ve been called a musical detective. How did that start? My interest in finding and preserving historical film scores grew out of my discovery that there were actual original scores prepared for silent film accompanists to use back in the original exhibitions period. This discovery came about by my seeing the first page of the conductor’s part to Louis F. Gottschalk’s published full orchestra score to D. W. Griffith’s 1919 film Broken Blossoms. This was used for illustration in the seminal motion picture theatre architectural history book, The Best Remaining Seats, published in the 1960s. I chased down the author, Ben M. Hall who was based in New York City and then working as Time magazine’s film critic. He led me to an archive contact that held both the complete musical score with full orchestral parts, and a bit more hunting led me to a completely preserved theatrical print of the film. I decided to present my first organ plus orchestra screening at Indiana University with a performance that filled the 3,800 seat I.U. Auditorium accomplished with me at the organ together with a fellow student conducting the local Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. Can you tell me more about the film, Broken Blossoms (1919)? Here’s some information I have on file: “Broken Blossoms”, which stars Lillian Gish as a poor girl from London’s seedy Limehouse district who’s brutally abused her father and later falls in love with a Chinese man, is often regarded and dismissed as filmmaker D. W. Griffith’s apology for his celebration of the Klu Klux Klan in The Birth of a Nation. Because Broken Blossoms is so earnest a portraiture of an impossible love between the races, it’s tempting to accept Griffith’s claims that he didn’t mean any harm with The Birth of a Nation. Griffith, of course, was too smart to allow a film like Broken Blossoms to be taken as a simple blanket apology. Through the film’s poetic intertitles, Griffith tackles the complicated love between Lucy Burrows (Gish) and Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess). He also addresses the critics who accused him of racism with “the whip of unkind words and deeds.” The love story at the center of Broken Blossoms is deliberately overstuffed, but unmistakably coloured with infinite shades of biting irony and social critique. Griffith painstakingly evokes China as a serene Buddhist paradise, but Cheng’s philosophy of life is really no different than that of any good Christian. (Cheng tells a group of skylarking sailors: “What thou dost not want others to do to thee, do thou not to others.”) Cheng arrives in the godless streets of London and is soon seen as just another “chink storekeeper.” He’s handed a book about the perils of hell from a group of missionaries leaving for China on their way to convert so-called heathens, though they’re clearly oblivious to the horrors that reside within their own “scarlet house of sin.” The film’s feminist appeal lies in Griffith’s photojournalistic evocation of the Limehouse district as a deathtrap for women. Lucy is advised against marriage by a woman who washes clothes for a roomful of sweaty children. Just as Griffith felt he was falsely accused of racism, the film’s heroine constantly suffers the scorn of her vicious father. Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp) is a monster, but Griffith understands the man’s frustrated desire to lash out against something in the face of economic and masculine defeat. So horrible is Lucy’s torture at the hands of her father that she has to literally sculpt a smile from her perpetually downtrodden expression using the tips of her fingers. Beaten to a pulp by Battling, Lucy seeks refuge inside Cheng’s shop. She faints on the rug like a broken flower and awakens as his White Blossom. “Her beauty so long hidden shines out like a poem,” declares one the film’s intertitles, and Griffith recognizes the simple yet incredible power of an unforced smile. Cheng feeds this beauty with the rays he steals from the lyric moon. Because cinematic convention forbade physical contact between his actors, Griffith had to settle for grand poetic gestures and dramatic artifice to evoke the rapturous, nurturing love between Lucy and Cheng. For Griffith, Broken Blossoms was intended in part as a supreme act of reconciliation. But the film works less self-consciously as an ode to misdirected contempt, selfless love, and various modes of worship. Just as the film’s extended boxing sequence is an act of brutal masculine reverence, Griffith recognizes Cheng’s love for Lucy as an act of holy worship. Because social convention forbids their love, Lucy and Cheng persevere in death. And Griffith lovingly and hauntingly evokes this transcendence via a shot of a man worshipping in a Buddhist temple and ships dancing in the distant horizon. (This information comes from a film essay “Broken Blossoms” By Ed Gonzalez) When did you start performing for a live audience? Let’s see. I think that began around 1966. We bought a little Kinsman-brand “rock style,” very heavy, two manual Italian spinet organ device. This was before the single row of keys so-called “Keyboard” rock band instrument devices. We used it to drag around for my forays into pop music garage bands. These bands were quite popular for dance-playing in my South Jersey high school years. My first successful band was called ‘Vicious Omelette’ with the yolk half of the name came from the coats inherited from an earlier band called ‘The Yellow Jackets.’ I say success because the other one was an ONLY-covers band. One night, I found that at a dance when I’d got really fed up with playing that same organ solo from “Light My Fire” over and over again. I made up my own and played it on the spot. The lead singer who was in charge of the band stopped the song and ordered me to play the solo just like it was on the record or quit — so I quit. I met him again 25 years later at my high school reunion. he apologized, mentioning he thought I was the only really musically talented one, this after he was told that next night I was flying to LA to be on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno performing in the backup band with Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. Anyway, I wanted to call our new group ‘Vociferous Omelette,’ but the drummer couldn’t fit in all the letters when trying to paint it onto the bass drum, so we did a random page opening and finger point into a dictionary to find the shorter word Vicious. And that also gave us a great logo opportunity to have drawn a quite menacing angry omelette to go with the lettering. Our audition for Atlantic Records (one of our members had an uncle who worked there) went nowhere, but we did do a lot of gigs and met a lot of girls. How old were you when you started ‘Vicious Omelette’? That was a high school band, formed by my recollection in junior year, so I would have been 16 Can you describe ‘Vicious Omelette’ a bit more? Just a typical “Garage Band” of the day; lead guitar (who also sang), rhythm guitar, bass guitar, organ and drums. Funny memory is that the lead singer was rail-thin. He had a pretty girlfriend who had red hair chewed gum all of the time. When I went to my 25th high school reunion, a middle-aged couple came up to speak to me. I did not recognize him until noticing his wife had red hair and was chewing gum! Sure enough, they’d gotten married after high school. We chatted a bit remembering when I’d gotten thrown out of the band in the middle of one of our high school dance performances. We were doing a cover of “Light My Fire” and I’d gotten tired of playing the famous lengthy organ solo within that classic arrangement and had decided to make up something of my own. Our lead singer stopped the piece, yelled at me and fired me on the spot! At that 25th reunion, he said he always thought that I was the talented one and would be the one to go on into music as a profession! And, the very next day after that encounter I flew to Los Angeles (from New Jersey), and appeared with Linda Ronstadt playing my glass armonica on Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show. So I guess he was correct! Why do you think the audition for Atlantic Records went nowhere? Oh, we were terrible — a typical high school band really playing just to meet girls. What is one of your funniest stories about performing? Well, not in performing, but in studying with my first “serious” teacher, Leonard MacLain in Philadelphia. There was this one lesson when he told me the story of Louis Vierne, the famous 19th c. French cathedral organist, who was felled by a fatal heart attack while playing the organ during a service. He’d collapsed down onto the keys and so the organ roared out a cacophony of organ pipes playing simultaneously at full volume. So, they had to send someone up the little access stair path to the organ loft to pull the body off the console. And Leonard said to me, “Now, THAT’S the way we organists all want to go!” Well, he’d told me that story. The very next week I walked in the downtown Philadelphia studio entry door for my lesson. There was Leonard slumped over the keys of the Hammond electric organ! I knew he had been having heart problems. By then always taught with a little wheeled and mask-equipped portable oxygen tank by his side. So, his head was down on the keys. I ran over to him and shook him. He sat up and drowsily said, “Oh, uhm, sorry . . . I fell asleep.” Such drama! Do you have a favourite concert that you’ve performed at? I guess that would be the story of my very first “big” solo concert. My teacher did finally have a really big heart attack that slammed him into the hospital. This was just before the Fourth of July in 1967. He was scheduled to play a major solo concert for a national convention of pipe organ enthusiasts in Detroit. So, Leonard decided to send me out in his place. Now, I hadn’t seen a theatre organ except for a brief encounter with one in a residence installation when I was nine and hadn’t really played one yet at all. So Leonard had me brought into his hospital room, and we sat together with a little hand slide viewer, and he showed by photographs what were the controls on a full-scale top of the line custom four-manual Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ. He would say “now this thing does this, and when you set this then you better do that.” and so forth. The last thing he said was, “and when you arrive, put this pedal here on the far right side all the way down — the crescendo pedal that puts on all the stops without they’re actually being set — and then you put down all the way the shoe next to it — that one opens all of the chamber shutters”. And then he said to play a full double-hand chord on next to the bottom row of keys (the Great manual), “That’s the very first thing you do.” The point here was to let this little 16-year kid know what he was getting into. I did exactly that and nearly flipped back off the organ bench to the floor in fright. Such a sound, such power! You talk to any adolescent boy organist and you’ll find out it’s all about the power, and Leonard knew exactly what was going to happen — he was preparing me, and he did a really good job. I’m in Detroit and I’m supposed to play a two-hour recital, and I could only play for 40 minutes because that was everything I knew how to play at the time. The presenters quickly scrounged about and asked visiting professional New York-based organist Lee Erwin to fill in for the second half. And it all went very well — so that began my career as a performing professional organist. What appeal do performances such as yours have compared to the originals? The appeal for my work, I think, comes from the recognition of historical-cultural authenticity. I am a historical preservationist and my work is actually in continuity (as opposed to historical revival) for I perpetuate the professional scoring methods for silent films just as they were first conceived and performed by the originators of the art in the 1890s through 1930s. Most major productions had complete, written-out and orchestrated published scores played by instrumental ensembles ranging up to 60 and more players. The film studios made and released enough films so that the local cinemas could change their programming two or three times a week. And because there was no way to fully compose, disseminate, rehearse, and synchronize these large scale performances of that much music, what wound up happening is that, for many performances, each theatre’s staff keyboard musicians built up giant individualized libraries of music— pre-existing classical music, current popular tunes, one-steps, two-steps and foxtrots, hymns, marches, folk tunes, the entire gamut of music suitable to be repurposed towards film scoring. Beginning with Max Winkler who introduced the careful synchronizing techniques within compilation scorings, the main music publishers hired talented genre composers to compose specific mood-music cue fundamental resource material. The organists and pianists would have stacks of music organized by prevailing key and emotional content. When there was a chase scene, for instance, they would usually modulate into d minor and construct a sequence of published so-called allegros, hurries and agitatos as chase music. When there was a love scene, they’d go through their collection of romances and plaintives to play. It was this carefully tailored assembly kind of music scoring technique that was heard both from the solo keyboard players in the theatres and on an expanded scale, existing right along with through-composed newly composed scorings for fully rehearsed instrumental ensembles. Why is historic preservation important to you? I’ll rephrase that one — for those to whom it doesn’t matter, why ISN’T historic preservation important. For me, it is the center of my activity and basis for all of my endeavours. What are your opinions of the industry in the music industry? Well, I think the late Hunter S. Thompson said it best: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” How do online platforms like YouTube or YouTube impact the music industry? Well, in my particular specialty corner of the music universe, the impact has undermined my pursuing a professional career by giving equal access and referential instant comparative status permitting the unfortunate display of untutored, unprepared, minimally talented amateur and enthusiast activities. Do you think that the internet could improve in that aspect? If the general culture attention goes through a major shift, then, yes, likely the Internet could improve. The information needed in support of historic preservation efforts, though, is already there and readily available, and I don’t think the Internet itself has any bias one way or another in such usage. What are some of your fondest memories throughout your music career? It was 1969, and I was back in Indiana at college for my sophomore year and one night I was sitting around joking with my college roommate. A new Schantz-built concert pipe organ had just been installed in the school’s 3,800 seat I. U. Auditorium. There was a lot of talk about it in the department, and I was really eager to play it, so I came up with the idea to suggest showing this old silent horror film my dad had told me about, “Phantom of the Opera,” that he’d seen when it first came out in 1925. I figured I would do the Gaylord Carter bit I had seen in that Philadelphia “The Mark of Zorro” screening. Then I would get to play that new organ along with it. At that point, I was still in contact with New York based silent film organist Lee Erwin who had been summoned to share my 1967 Detroit debut performance. I’d played everything I knew as the first half of that program. Lee filled in to play the balance of the assigned program. Lee flew out from New York two weeks before this Halloween “Phantom of the Opera” event I’d connected to teach me his approach towards how to score silent movies. He loaned me some of his own written scores to study that he brought out with him from New York, and stayed at his own expense in a local motel and met me each day after regular classes. At the time I didn’t think it was all that unusual what with so much happening and me having gotten to the point of thinking musical friends just did things like that. It’s so odd now to think about these various important people. They are in this field of obscure endeavour. And showed up in my life right when I needed them. I would go to classes and come by after to meet with Lee. We’d talk about what I’d learned at school about that day. Then we’d have dinner, and he would teach me about film music. This was happening during a major peak of the Vietnam War protest era. There were all sorts of news coverage of some of the events at Indiana University at that time: the campus taken over and shut down by the students, ROTC building burnt down, and other more serious war protest events. I decided there was a real need and opportunity for some sort of comic relief. I provided it with my silent film scoring debut. Then, I went down to the student craft shop in the basement of the Memorial Union building. Then, I printed up 400 tickets by hand. I stamped them out on the craft press. Then I developed a rather clever campaign that included posting the phrase “The Phantom is Coming!” all over campus; little posters hung on the trees, chalked on vacant blackboards in classrooms throughout the day, pasted on stickers under the toilet seat covers in all of the dorms. It went on and on. And then on Halloween Day a front-page article in the school newspaper explaining the event. We’d sold only some forty tickets in advance and were prepared for an abject failure. However, to my great surprise, over 4,000 people turned up, and we had to resell those 400 tickets over and over again at the door. Wearing a cape and mask borrowed from the theatre department. I went on that night and began to play that newly composed score I had prepared with Lee. The energy of the occasion was so great, and I was so inspired. I almost immediately abandoned my carefully prepared composition to improvise something ever so much more appropriate to that event on the spot. Quite the thrilling way to begin what has turned out to be a full-length career. What are some of your upcoming events? 2019-2020 MUSICA CURIOSA & SILENT FILM CONCERTS October 31, Winspear Centre, Edmonton, Alberta, Canada 8th annual Halloween program presented by the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra. Conrad Veidt in Hands of Orlac with the Duo Filmharmonia performing the debut of an all-Chopin scoring featuring Piano, Organ and Theremin November 2, Museum of Art, Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland Cinematheque presents: Lillian Gish in True Heart Susie November 3, Historical Society Museum, Athens, Ohio 3rd annual Halloween silent film program: Lon Chaney in Hunchback of Notre Dame with solo classical organ scoring November 8, Glimmerglass Film Festival, Cooperstown, New York Silent Film Concerts debut: Last of the Mohicans directed by Clarence Brown with solo piano scoring EUROPEAN TOUR November 12, Mozarteum, Salzburg, Austria 13th Annual Silent Film Concerts series: Lon Chaney in Hunchback of Notre Dame with solo classical organ scoring November 13, Tanzmeistersaal in the Mozart Wohnhaus, Salzburg, Austria Glass Armonica program for “Week of the Museum” Mozarteum presentation series November 22, Venango Museum, Oil City, Pennsylvania Holiday Concert plus silent film Big Business starring Laurel & Hardy December 5,7,8, Jones Hall, Houston, Texas Glass Armonica performance in new symphony composed by Jimmy López Bellido December 20, Polk Theatre, Lakeland, Florida Silent Film Series: Rudolph Valentino in The Sheik Could you tell me a bit more about the upcoming event at the Winspear? This year’s Halloween night film at the Winspear is the 1924 Austrian silent horror/psychological mystery film Hands of Orlac. A new score is being performed by my film scoring duo: “Duo Filmharmonia” – Piano plus Organ. There are two performers, me playing Organ plus Theremin. I tour this with worldwide with Valencia, Spain-based concert pianist Dr. Michael Tsalka. We recently debuted at the Mozarteum in Salzburg, Austria. We presented another silent film project, Janice Meredith, scored with all Colonial American music. Also, we had a sellout presentation of another, our Silent Halmet film project (with all Sons of J.S, Bach music scoring) presented in the 2300 seat Elbphilharmonie new concert hall in Hamburg, Germany. Hands of Orlac deliciously twisted thriller that blends Grand Guignol ecstasies with German Expressionism. Based on a novel by Maurice Renard, it charts the mental disintegration of a concert pianist named Orlac (Conrad Veidt). His hands are amputated after a train crash, then replaced with the hands of an executed murderer. When Orlac’s father is murdered by the dead man’s hands, Orlac begins a steady descent toward madness. Made in Vienna, the hotbed of psychoanalysis, this 1924 Austrian bubbles over with sexual innuendo and Freudian imagery. Duo Filmharmonia bridges the worlds of film appreciation, musicology and historical preservation to revive works of art; timeless experiential recreations that transcend transitory fashionable alternatives emerging in silent film exhibitions today. Duo Filmharmonia’s loyalty to the original silent-period filmmakers’ visions may at first seem as anachronistic. He has become the emergent typical 21st-century experience of the historical film: a presentation visual art form begun in 1895 accompanied by musicians in live performance. Rather than overpower the delicate preserved images with the now-prevailing flamboyant, grossly popularized performer display foisted scoring impositions and mocking conversions for trendy ‘hip’ presentations, Duo Filmharmonia carefully provides authentic period-revival soundtracks. These truly support exquisitely restored silent films being presented in the manner the filmmakers themselves originally intended. The original audiences actually experienced. Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years? Touring the world just as I have been doing for the past 50 years.

We’ve talked with Dennis James about his experiences as an organist and as a student learning to play the organ. In the interview, he told Switching Styles a humorous story about one of his first teachers, Leonard MacLain. Organist and teacher Leonard MacClain is a household name for his skill and improvisation. It all started in Philadelphia, where MacClain started and continued doing what he loved best: music. Also known as Melody Mac, he was known for his melodies, especially with decades of experience as a theatre organist. His name didn’t stay only in the States. Melody Mac’s music with Epic Records gained him international fame. Some of his prominent compositions include “Days Without You are Endless”, “Smile Darn Ya Smile” and “Where You Are Concerned”. That’s not all his works, however. There are countless more in albums such as Choice Christmas Carols (1952), Theater Organ in Hi-Fi (1956), Joy to the World (1956), Operetta for the Theatre Organ (1957), More Theater Organ in Hi-Fi (Epic LN-3655) (1960), and Theatre Organ After Dark (1960). Throughout his musical career, MacClain was a music teacher. As such, He passed on his skills and knowledge to young musicians, one of whom was Dennis James. James is well-known as an organist and a historical music preservationist. The organ is the main instrument he uses, and he mainly preserves orchestral music. Much of his success, and arguably his passion, stems from MacClain, one of his first teachers. During one of the lessons with James, MacClain told a story about a famous French cathedral organist, Louis Vierne. Vierne was a French organist and composer at the end of the 19th century. While playing during a service at Notre Dame, Vierne had a massive heart attack. His body landed on the keys with a deafening roar as all the organ’s pipes played simultaneously at full volume. Vierne died on stage. Turning to James, his mentor said, “Now, THAT’S how we organists all want to go!” The next week after MacClain shared the story, James walked into the studio for a lesson, expecting to see his teacher waiting for him. Instead, he saw MacClain slumped over the keys of the Hammond electric organ. In a rushed panic, he ran over to him. The story about Vierne’s fate was still fresh in James’s head. Fearing the absolute worst, he shook him. MacClain groggily sat up and said, in a still drowsy voice, “Oh, Uhm, sorry . . . I fell asleep.” “Such drama!” James exclaimed, remembering the incident. There were unfortunate parallels between the two organists, MacClain and Vierne. MacClain had been having heart problems. At the time, he was using a portable oxygen tank and mask. The story seemed to be more foreboding than either realized. Later, MacClain had a major heart attack that landed him in the hospital right before the Fourth of July in 1967. He was scheduled to play a major solo concert for a national convention of pipe organ enthusiasts in Detroit. Certainly, he wasn’t able to make the performance. MacClain sent his student in his place to perform at the concert. The only problem is that the young 16-year-old James had never seen a theatre organ save for one short encounter when he was nine. He had never played one. To overcome this, MacClain provided lessons from his hospital room. Luckily, he had quite the experience with organs, including the Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ that was being used for the concert. Using a little hand slide viewer, he showed James the controls and techniques for the full-scale, top-of-the-line custom four-manual Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ. He went through each of the controls and explained from his bed how each of them worked. The last piece of advice he gave was to put the crescendo pedal down (the crescendo pedal that puts on all the stops without them being set), then do the same thing with the shoe beside it (the one that opens all the chamber shutters), and finally, play a full double-hand chord on the second last row of keys (otherwise known as the Great manual). This, he explained, was the very first thing you do. “The point here was to let this 16-year-old kid know what he was getting into,” Dennis explains, “I did exactly that and nearly flipped back off the organ bench to the floor in fright. Such a sound, Such power! You talk to any adolescent boy organist, and you’ll find out it’s all about the power.” James played the first 40 minutes of the two-hour recital, leaving visiting professional New York-based organist Lee Erwin to fill in for the second half. James describes, “It all went very well — so that began my career as a performing professional organist.” And it’s all thanks to his teacher, MacClain. His lessons were priceless to his students. He died later that year. During his 68 years on earth, he inspired his audience to grow as music lovers and musicians. An obituary in Theatre Organ Bombarde Magazine reads, “His passing is a genuine loss, not only for his many personal friends but also for the theatre organ world. But ‘Melody Mac’ has left us some superb theatre organ recordings and a long history of accomplishments on behalf of the instrument and the music he knew and loved so well. That he continued his contribution up to the closing hours of his life may be seen”. Vierne went out the way all organists want to – in a dramatic performance of their art. MacClain didn’t go out exactly as Vierne did, with a powerful roar from the organ keys. Instead, passing on the love of music to his students was much subtler and sweeter.

Feature Photographs taken by Manuel Jesús Rodriguez of The Cathedral of York The Middle Ages (476 AD — 1492), is an era controlled by the church and saturated with fearful respect of the church and of the Christian God. The Church ruled with an iron fist because of their ideas of divine rights. On this note, the church was the only one recording the history of music at this time. Everything we know about music from this period was recorded by the church. Churches were the few people able to read, write and play music. Because of this, churches were the main ones producing music. Thus, nearly all music would serve the purposes of the church. And honestly, they prefer it that way. Most of this music was under the genre of Gregorian chants, (aka plainchant, plainsong). Pope Gregory the Great receiving inspiration from the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove; Carlo Saraceni, c. 1590; National Gallery of Ancient Art, Rome. Gregorian chants got their name from named after St. Gregory I, who was pope during (590 to 604). However, it was in name only. Charlemagne, king of the Franks (768–814), brought this new style to his kingdom. The use of St. Gregory I’s name is to give it some authority and authenticity. Gregorian chant is a very monophonic tune, meaning there isn’t typically musical accompaniment to the voices. Its range is narrow, thus it’s rather monotone and doesn’t have many notes within its range and has limited motion in terms of moving between note ranges. This genre is based upon public religious worship in terms of lyrics, which is called a liturgy. Liturgy is the main part of its phrasing since it’s a religious or sacred genre of music. What this means is that most of the lyrics revolve around the church and the church’s uses. Here’s an example; “In Paradisum” by an anonymous musician. It’s a ninth-century antiphon plainchant used during a funeral. Typically, it’s sung at the end of the Requiem Mass as a final blessing while the body is taken from the church to the cemetery for burial. In paradisum deducant angeliIn tuo adventu suscipiant te martyresEt perducant teIn civitatem sanctam JerusalemChorus angelorum te suscipiatEt cum Lazaro, quondam paupereAeternam habeas requiem Which translates to…. May angels lead you into paradiseMartyrs receive you at your arrivalAnd bring youTo the holy city JerusalemMay the choir of angels receive youAnd with Lazarus, once a pauperMay you have eternal rest Sacred music (religious music) such as Gregorian chants were slowly on the decline while secular music (non-religious music) such as troubadour music and operas are on the rise. In the eras after the Middle Ages (600 and 1600), it was all but replaced. As well, we start seeing an increase in instrumental music as opposed to vocal music around 1450 and the start of the renaissance. This is said to start with the notes in the margins of religious texts called marginalia. This was a practice as monks got bored with copying the same thing over and over. Knight Duels Giant Snail; British Library, Royal MS 10 E IV Creativity within religious texts paved the way for creativity in general. It grew from there and started the separation between the church and the people. Headless Duel in the Summer volume of the Breviary of Renaud and Marguerite de Bar, Metz ca. 1302-1305 Going towards the renaissance, a revitalization of thought, art and of course music. Gregorian chants, plain chants or plain songs are a genre of the middle ages, an era long past. There are bands that continue the chant such as Gregorian (with a name very much on the nose), The Benedictine Monks of Santo Domingo De Silos, and Adoration of the Cross. In a beautiful combination of old and new, there are Gregorian chant covers of some modern hits making something altogether different. Several cover bands are using Gregorian Chants to blend the past into the present with chilling beauty. We talked about Gregorian a bit before as a modern Gregorian chant band. Here are two of their covers. Starting with “Losing my Religion” originally by REM, this is a great meta cover. Gregorian Chants fell out of general use because of the transition from sacred to secular; thus the loss of religion. Next from Gregorian’s album, The Dark Side is their haunting cover of Evanescence’s“My Immortal”. The original is hauntingly beautiful yet Gregorian adds a whole new level of haunting beauty. Rebecca Gorzynska has a phenomenal voice. In her Gregorian chants, her voice shines. This is a cover of Salve Regina also known as Hail Holy Queen. Pop songs, folk songs, Latin songs; those all make sense to transition into a gregorian chant. There’s a logical transition from one to another. However, hip hop is a genre that you wouldn’t expect in a gregorian chant. Sam Penrhyn-Lowe has provided a Gregorian chant cover of Travis Scott’s “Butterfly Effect“. Granted it’s a lot faster than a Gregorian chant but it’s still monotoned and absolutely gorgeous. Chants For Kids have done their own rendition of “Ava Maria” with adorable kids. This cover is beautiful and sweet in its own way. Metal and Gregorian chant is not a combination that first comes to mind about Gregorian covers. Nonetheless, it works so very well. This is a metal cover of “Miserere mei, Deus” of Gregorio Allegri, with Gregorian vocals by the Tenebrae Choir and metal instrumentals by The Pulltabs. Follow Switching Styles for more obscure and awesome topics!!

It’s one thing to have a passion for music, it’s another to want to protect it. Dennis James is an organist and historic preservationist. His passion for music has brought him to preserve the music of long ago eras, specifically in the genre of silent films. Something that not many people know is that silent films weren’t completely silent. They were often accompanied by musical scores. These scores are what Dennis James aims to preserve. This is an interview with Dennis James and Dylanna Fisher of Switching Styles. How did you start in music? I began my musical career at the age of seven by studying the “stomach-piano” (accordion) because it was the local instrument of choice for budding musicians in Cleveland, Ohio in 1957. However, it was one day during Science Class in seventh grade that I had an epiphany that caused me to change instruments. I had the realization that none of my classmates wanted to hear my renditions of Lady of Spain complete with bellows shake. We had an electronic organ at home. I had previously embarrassed my older brother Rodger with competitive technique display in a bout of sibling rivalry when I was 9 and he was 12, so I guess it was a no-brainer for me to make the shift finally when I turned 12. I played my first pipe organ a few weeks later on a visit to my accordion teacher’s church where he served as the organist and I think it was at that visit the seed was planted. Who inspired you within your music career? Well, the very first was the brash, showy, ragtime/honky-tonk TV pianist Joanne Castle who played regularly on the 1950’s popular Lawrence Welk television show; a particular parental “family entertainment” favourite at the time. In fact, I pestered my parents a lot about getting a piano, but with an organ having already been acquired for my brother, the suggestion was made that I consider imitating another TV show musician, Myron Floren, who was the accordionist on the Lawrence Welk show. That bore fruit when, at age 6, I spotted an accordion in a pawn shop window near a favourite family restaurant in downtown Cleveland, Ohio. My parents bought it, surprised me with giving it to me as a present on my 7th birthday which led to my starting lessons immediately thereafter. How did your family impact your musical career? They were all very supportive, to the point that my Dad went so far as to build French door into the walls at the entrances to the room where the practice organ was located. Since it was difficult for the rest of the family to do anything (like watch TV) when I practiced, I’ll always remember when I would start a session I would hear those doors slide shut walling me in while everyone else went on about their business at home. How do you think your life would have been different if you continued with the accordion? I doubt if I would have stayed with music at all, likely pursuing my lifelong interest in oil painting or some other such. When did your interest in the silent film soundtracks begin? Gaylord Carter, the major touring film player at the time, flew in from Los Angeles to perform at the Tower Theatre’s Wurlitzer organ in Upper Darby, Pennsylvania (near to downtown Philadelphia). The film was Douglas Fairbanks in the 1920 swashbuckling adventure drama “The Mark of Zorro” and Gaylord played his own quite thrilling score made up of a combination of published theatre organ generics used in the scorings in the 1920s plus his own inimitable improvisation cascades. It was a sold-out house and remember eagerly turning to my dad at the end, being thoroughly impressed by the cheers and standing ovation from the sellout crowd, and saying to him those fateful words “I can do that!” I went home that very night after the post-performance reception and pulled out some music paper and wrote out his entire score from memory. And to this day as a sort of tribute to Gaylord Carter, I build my own score around Gaylord’s work, preserving about 20% of his efforts encased in my own historical revival work. How old were you for your first organ plus orchestra screening at Indiana University? My recollection is it was done in the spring of 1970 so I would have been 19 Can you describe your first experience in silent film performance with live music? My first attempt to play my own prepared music to a silent film that starred a cross-eyed actor Larry Semon to be shown as an act within a high school variety show in 1967. I ended up stringing together a series of 1920’s popular songs as my score. It was a couple of years later, though, in the summer of 1969 that I saw and heard the first live music silent film show with accompaniment by a professional theatre pipe organ player. It was during my first break after having begun freshman year studies at Indiana University. How would you describe Gaylord Carter and his music? Gaylord was not the “top” musician of his day. However, he is the silent film player that lived the longest – well into the revival era that enabled my career. He taught me such show business necessities as how to speak to an audience of 2,000-plus without a microphone. Since inevitably somewhere the microphone wouldn’t work; something has since happened to me several times! He was a cliche player all wrapped up in cluing essential basic emotional reactions to the film in the audience and not very much concerned with the niceties of thematic applications, motives developments and the rest that go into true music composition. What impact does music have in film? Thinking in particular of the silent films, I think it was best outlined LA Times article from October 2014 tat I keep on file: “Mocked, ignored, the victim of a massive cultural disinformation campaign that insisted these movies were too primitive to take seriously, silent film has managed to outwit history. Not only is there a phoenix-like rebirth of interest in the medium, but the films themselves and the artifacts surrounding them are constantly coming to light in rich and unexpected ways. To be seen to their best advantage, however, silent films should be experienced, as they were in the medium’s glory days, with live musical accompaniment. To understand what makes silent film so special, the central place of music can’t be avoided. The live music enhances what we see, bringing us inside the film. As the late film authority William Everson explained several years ago, ‘The score minimized flaws, added punctuation and feeling, stretched the emotionalism and guided the audience into the right frame of mind. It’s a major crime, absolutely deadly, to show these films without the proper accompaniment.’ To enter this world is to understand why Mary Pickford, one of its biggest stars, famously said that “it would have been more logical if silent pictures had grown out of the talking instead of the other way around.” (Quote from “Silent films and their soaring music are rediscovered” by Kenneth Turan, from the LA Times) What appeal does a silent film with live music have to the audience? There seems, in my now 50 plus years experience doing this, there is always a marvelling new fascination possible among the younger viewing generations towards the live music component of what is now a nearly forgotten part of the original practice of exhibiting film; recreating those nearly 100 years ago days in my specialty approach of performing stylistically authentic and period-appropriate live musical accompaniments at the film screenings. This original matching music to the period images facilitated the audience’s emotional responses in a manner already quite highly developed in the industry. There is a similar continuity to the present day with modern performances of other historically fully developed, music-enhanced theatrical music forms: opera, operetta, Broadway shows, ballet, vaudeville and so many others. My passion stems, I guess, by that I like the concept that it would have been more logical, thinking of film as an art form progression, for the silent film to have evolved from the sound film. To experience in live real-time experience movies the way they were meant to be. As performed in a large communal setting with the film image exactly as seen now 80 to 100 years ago, and heard with historically accurate original musical accompaniment performed with a thorough and fully realized respect for the past and with full confidence of serving the presentation desires of the filmmakers themselves. If one loves movies as do most moviegoers today, seeing and hearing, them as they were originally intended to be experienced simply should not be missed. Do you think that the appeal of silent films will change over the years? Of course, those shifts in appeal are what enables the survival and periodic revivals for most all of the successful presentation art forms down through the years. I am certain that what people see and hear at the Metropolitan Opera today when a Mozart Opera is presented is quite far from the original 18th c. original conceptions and productions, if only from the changes in the instruments used and the stylistic nuances of the players. You’ve performed the soundtrack for Jekyll and Hyde, and Nosferatu, among others. Which of them stands out as a favourite? Well, my favourite career silent film scoring memory, dates back to 1993. I was living in Berkeley, California and renowned film preservationist and cultural philanthropist David W. Packard engaged me to play to the “The Student Prince in Old Heidelberg” silent film as my debut performance at his humanities foundation’s Wurlitzer pipe organ-equipped restored Stanford Theatre in somewhat nearby Palo Alto down on the Peninsula. I had already performed to the popular silent film version of the Heidelberg story under the auspices of film collector Paul Killiam at a film festival in the Midwest a few years previous, so I found the score in my storage files and preparations went along just fine. That is, until the day before the Palo Alto performance. David phoned and asked for any final setup details, arrival time and such, and during the conversation, he happened to mention that he was really looking forward to seeing Norma Shearer in the film. I flippingly replied that Norma Shearer wasn’t in the film. It was Dorothy Gish. A bit heatedly David said, “No, it is Norma Shearer with Ramon Navarro”. I said that I really didn’t want to argue about it. however, this 1916 film stars Dorothy Gish and Wallace Reid. There was this long pause and then we both realized that there must have been two silent film versions of the same story, and David said he was screening the MGM 1928 one directed by Ernst Lubitsch. Well, that version was a film I had not yet seen nor known about hitherto. So, David gently asked what we could do and I asked to think about it a moment. Then I asked if he already had the print and was told the print was already in the booth. So, I told him to call in the projectionist and get him a room in a nearby hotel preparing for what I envisioned would be an all-nighter project. Then I asked him to set up a standard 6’ folding table in the theatre, bring in a photocopy machine, two cans of rubber cement, a ream of photocopy paper plus a paper cutter and a 1 1/2″ three-ring notebook. I said I’d be there in 45 minutes to begin and I stopped in at the Stanford University music library on the way to get ahold of the Sigmund Romberg operetta’s vocal score. So, that’s what we did – and it indeed took a straight-through 23 hours and 15 minutes work session without any breaks to create an entirely new, precisely synchronized, all-Romberg plus period generics source music compilation score following the historical period practices of the scoring professionals as practiced in the silent film industry. This was predominantly assembled out of the operetta material just as I’d done with the earlier film starring Dorothy Gish titled, “In Old Heidelberg.” That film, however, was entirely different in every way from the Lubitsch 1928 version based on the same material, so all of that prior scoring work was entirely unusable. David sat up with me all night in the little theatre office upstairs watching me work and observing closely, step by step, everything that I did. We would screen a scene of the film, and then I’d think about it a bit, scan through the entire Romberg operetta score for possibilities considering plot sequence, character assignments, scene atmospherics, emotional cues and implications, all while weighing the music styles and key orientations. When finding something that fit, I would place it my mind and play it through together with my memory of the images while conducting myself along to make sure that it synchronized, and then pasted it up to assemble into the notebook to then call the projectionist in again to run the next scene. We did that progressively, scene by scene, through the whole night and right on through into the next day. Finishing up the score assembly just 12 minutes before the start of my debut performance left no time to permit my actually playing any of it in advance. so the niceties of organ registration and key manipulations had to be done ‘on the fly.’ I’m happy to report that that score turned out so perfectly that I still perform it exactly as I assembled it that hectic all night session in 1993! How do you choose the songs or soundtracks to perform? The way I work primarily is through performance of either the original published scores that were distributed along with the film prints or scores I assemble faithfully following the compilation scoring guides sent along with the films to assemble scores from original period-published music intended for cueing purposes. There is this remarkable flow that happens where I’m looking at the screen and reading my carefully prepared and rehearsed music that causes the music to come out as a continuously synchronous emotion sequence matching the visuals like a perfectly fit glove on a hand. The visual cues go into my eyes and my brain processes the combination of audience reactions underway, the performance needs of the instrument at hand and the calculations for precision timings for the music tempos related to the unfolding scene contents and outcomes the scoring in a fully synchronous spontaneity. I’m not even conscious of what the added expressive choices are in the real-time of performance having now been continually doing this for over fifty years. The basis of it all is informed by the time I spent many years ago working with veteran professional silent film scorers such as Lee Erwin, Gaylord Carter and Dr. C. A. J. Parmentier, all of whom were still active in the 1960s and 70’s when I was coming to the profession. Learning a lot of the basics of period stylistic revival and essential professional procedures really informed my nascent developing technique. As in the case of Broken Blossoms (1919), you’ve been called a musical detective. How did that start? My interest in finding and preserving historical film scores grew out of my discovery that there were actual original scores prepared for silent film accompanists to use back in the original exhibitions period. This discovery came about by my seeing the first page of the conductor’s part to Louis F. Gottschalk’s published full orchestra score to D. W. Griffith’s 1919 film Broken Blossoms. This was used for illustration in the seminal motion picture theatre architectural history book, The Best Remaining Seats, published in the 1960s. I chased down the author, Ben M. Hall who was based in New York City and then working as Time magazine’s film critic. He led me to an archive contact that held both the complete musical score with full orchestral parts, and a bit more hunting led me to a completely preserved theatrical print of the film. So, I decided to present my first organ plus orchestra screening at Indiana University with a performance that filled the 3,800 seat I.U. Auditorium accomplished with me at the organ together with a fellow student conducting the local Bloomington Symphony Orchestra. Can you tell me more about the film, Broken Blossoms (1919)? Here’s some information I have on file: “Broken Blossoms”, which stars Lillian Gish as a poor girl from London’s seedy Limehouse district who’s brutally abused her father and later falls in love with a Chinese man, is often regarded and dismissed as filmmaker D. W. Griffith’s apology for his celebration of the Klu Klux Klan in The Birth of a Nation. Because Broken Blossoms is so earnest a portraiture of an impossible love between the races, it’s tempting to accept Griffith’s claims that he didn’t mean any harm with The Birth of a Nation. Griffith, of course, was too smart to allow a film like Broken Blossoms to be taken as a simple blanket apology. Via the film’s poetic intertitles, Griffith not only addresses the complicated love between Lucy Burrows (Gish) and Cheng Huan (Richard Barthelmess), but the critics who accused him of racism with “the whip of unkind words and deeds.” The love story at the center of Broken Blossoms is deliberately overstuffed, but unmistakably coloured with infinite shades of biting irony and social critique. Griffith painstakingly evokes China as a serene Buddhist paradise, but Cheng’s philosophy of life is really no different than that of any good Christian. (Cheng tells a group of skylarking sailors: “What thou dost not want others to do to thee, do thou not to others.”) Cheng arrives in the godless streets of London and is soon seen as just another “chink storekeeper.” He’s handed a book about the perils of hell from a group of missionaries leaving for China on their way to convert so-called heathens, though they’re clearly oblivious to the horrors that reside within their own “scarlet house of sin.” The film’s feminist appeal lies in Griffith’s photojournalistic evocation of the Limehouse district as a deathtrap for women. Lucy is advised against marriage by a woman who washes clothes for a roomful of sweaty children and later bumps into a couple of prostitutes outside. Just as Griffith felt he was falsely accused of racism, the film’s heroine constantly suffers the scorn of her vicious father. Battling Burrows (Donald Crisp) is a monster, but Griffith understands the man’s frustrated desire to lash out against something in the face of economic and masculine defeat. So horrible is Lucy’s torture at the hands of her father that she has to literally sculpt a smile from her perpetually downtrodden expression using the tips of her fingers. Beaten to a pulp by Battling, Lucy seeks refuge inside Cheng’s shop. She faints on the rug like a broken flower and awakens as his White Blossom. “Her beauty so long hidden shines out like a poem,” declares one the film’s intertitles, and Griffith recognizes the simple yet incredible power of an unforced smile. Cheng feeds this beauty with the rays he steals from the lyric moon. Because cinematic convention forbade physical contact between his actors, Griffith had to settle for grand poetic gestures and dramatic artifice to evoke the rapturous, nurturing love between Lucy and Cheng. For Griffith, Broken Blossoms was intended in part as a supreme act of reconciliation, but the film works less self-consciously as an ode to misdirected contempt, selfless love, and various modes of worship. Just as the film’s extended boxing sequence is an act of brutal masculine reverence, Griffith recognizes Cheng’s love for Lucy as an act of holy worship. Because social convention forbids their love, Lucy and Cheng persevere in death. And Griffith lovingly and hauntingly evokes this transcendence via a shot of a man worshipping in a Buddhist temple and ships dancing in the distant horizon. This information comes from a film essay “Broken Blossoms” By Ed Gonzalez When did you start performing for a live audience? Let’s see, I think that began in around 1966 or so when we bought a little Kinsman-brand “rock style,” very heavy, two manual Italian spinet organ device (this is before the single row of keys so-called “Keyboard” rock band instrument devices) that we used to drag around for my forays into pop music garage bands quite popular for dance-playing in my South Jersey high school years. My first successful band was called ‘Vicious Omelette’ with the yolk half of the name came from the coats inherited from an earlier band called ‘The Yellow Jackets.’ I say success because the other one was an ONLY-covers band. I found that out one night at a dance when I’d got really fed up with playing that same organ solo from “Light My Fire” over and over again, so I made up my own and played it on the spot. The lead singer who was in charge of the band stopped the song and ordered me to play the solo just like it was on the record or quit — so I quit. I met him again 25 years later at my high school reunion, and he apologized, mentioning he thought I was the only really musically talented one, this after he was told that next night I was flying to LA to be on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno performing in the backup band with Linda Ronstadt, Dolly Parton and Emmylou Harris. Anyway, I wanted to call our new group ‘Vociferous Omelette,’ but the drummer couldn’t fit in all the letters when trying to paint it onto the bass drum, so we did a random page opening and finger point into a dictionary to find the shorter word Vicious. And that also gave us a great logo opportunity to have drawn a quite menacing angry omelette to go with the lettering. Our audition for Atlantic Records (one of our members had an uncle who worked there) went nowhere, but we did do a lot of gigs and met a lot of girls. How old were you when you started ‘Vicious Omelette’? That was a high school band, formed by my recollection in junior year, so I would have been 16. Can you describe ‘Vicious Omelette’ a bit more? Just a typical “Garage Band” of the day; lead guitar (who also sang), rhythm guitar, bass guitar, organ and drums. Funny memory is that the lead singer was rail-thin, and he had a pretty girlfriend who had red hair chewed gum all of the time. When I went to my 25th high school reunion this middle-aged couple came up to speak to me — the guy was a balding and kind of chunky guy whom I did not recognize until noticing his wife had red hair and was chewing gum! Sure enough, they’d gotten married after high school. We chatted a bit remembering when I’d gotten thrown out of the band in the middle of one of our high school dance performances. We were doing a cover of “Light My Fire” and I’d gotten tired of playing the famous lengthy organ solo within that classic arrangement and had decided to make up something of my own. Our lead singer stopped the piece, yelled at me and fired me on the spot! At that 25th reunion, he said he always thought that I was the talented one and would be the one to go on into music as a profession! And, the very next day after that encounter I flew to Los Angeles (from New Jersey), and appeared with Linda Ronstadt playing my glass armonica on Jay Leno’s The Tonight Show. So I guess he was correct! Why do you think the audition for Atlantic Records went nowhere? Oh, we were terrible — a typical high school band really playing just to meet girls. What is one of your funniest stories about performing? Well, not in performing, but in studying with my first “serious” teacher, Leonard MacLain in Philadelphia. There was this one lesson when he told me the story of Louis Vierne, the famous 19th c. French cathedral organist, who was felled by a fatal heart attack while playing the organ during a service. He’d collapsed down onto the keys and so the organ roared out a cacophony of organ pipes playing simultaneously at full volume. So, they had to send someone up the little access stair path to the organ loft to pull the body off the console. And Leonard said to me, “Now, THAT’S the way we organists all want to go!” Well, he’d told me that story, and the very next week I walked in the downtown Philadelphia studio entry door for my lesson, and there was Leonard slumped over the keys of the Hammond electric organ! I knew he had been having heart problems and by then always taught with a little wheeled and mask-equipped portable oxygen tank by his side. So, his head was down on the keys and I ran over to him and shook him. He sat up and drowsily said, “Oh, uhm, sorry . . . I fell asleep.” Such drama! Do you have a favourite concert that you’ve performed at? I guess that would be the story of my very first “big” solo concert. My teacher did finally have a really big heart attack that slammed him into the hospital. This was just before the Fourth of July in 1967. He was scheduled to play a major solo concert for a national convention of pipe organ enthusiasts in Detroit. So, Leonard decided to send me out in his place. Now, I hadn’t seen a theatre organ except for a brief encounter with one in a residence installation when I was nine and hadn’t really played one yet at all. So Leonard had me brought into his hospital room, and we sat together with a little hand slide viewer, and he showed by photographs what were the controls on a full-scale top of the line custom four-manual Wurlitzer theatre pipe organ. He would say “now this thing does this, and when you set this then you better do that” and so forth. The last thing he said was, “and when you arrive, put this pedal here on the far right side all the way down — the crescendo pedal that puts on all the stops without they’re actually being set — and then you put down all the way the shoe next to it — that one opens all of the chamber shutters”. And then he said to play a full double-hand chord on the next to the bottom row of keys (the Great manual), “That’s the very first thing you do.” The point here was to let this little 16-year kid know what he was getting into. I did exactly that and nearly flipped back off the organ bench to the floor in fright. Such a sound, such power! You talk to any adolescent boy organist and you’ll find out it’s all about the power, and Leonard knew exactly what was going to happen — he was preparing me, and he did a really good job. So, I’m in Detroit and I’m supposed to play a two-hour recital, and I could only play for 40 minutes because that was everything I knew how to play at the time. The presenters quickly scrounged about and asked visiting professional New York-based organist Lee Erwin to fill in for the second half. And it all went very well — so that began my career as a performing professional organist. What appeal do performances such as yours have compared to the originals? The appeal for my work, I think, comes from the recognition of historical-cultural authenticity. I am a historical-preservationist and my work is actually in continuity (as opposed to historical-revival) for I perpetuate the professional scoring methods for silent films just as they were first conceived and performed by the originators of the art in the 1890s through 1930s. Most major-productions had a complete, written-out and orchestrated published scores played by instrumental ensembles ranging up to 60 and more players. The film studios made and released enough films so that the local cinemas could change their programming two or three times a week. And because there was no way to fully compose, disseminate, rehearse, and synchronize these large scale performances of that much music, what wound up happening is that, for many performances, each theater’s staff keyboard musicians built up giant individualized libraries of music— pre-existing classical music, current popular tunes, one-steps, two-steps and foxtrots, hymns, marches, folk tunes, the entire gamut of music suitable to be repurposed towards film scoring. Beginning with Max Winkler who introduced the careful synchronizing techniques within compilation scorings, the main music publishers hired talented genre composers to compose specific mood-music cue fundamental resource material. The organists and pianists would have stacks of music organized by prevailing key and emotional content. So, when there was a chase scene, for instance, they would usually modulate into d minor and construct a sequence of published so-called allegros, hurries and agitatos as chase music. When there was a love scene, they’d go through their collection of romances and plaintives to play. So, it was this carefully tailored assembly kind of music scoring technique that was heard both from the solo keyboard players in the theatres, and on an expanded scale, existing right along with through-composed newly composed scorings for fully rehearsed instrumental ensembles. Why is historic preservation important to you? I’ll rephrase that one — for those to whom it doesn’t matter, why ISN’T historic preservation important. For me, it is the center of my activity and basis for all of my endeavours. What are your opinions of the industry in the music industry? Well, I think the late Hunter S. Thompson said it best: “The music business is a cruel and shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free, and good men die like dogs. There’s also a negative side.” How do online platforms like YouTube or YouTube impact the music industry? Well, in my particular specialty corner of the music universe, the impact has undermined my pursuing a professional career by giving equal access and referential instant comparative status permitting the unfortunate display of untutored, unprepared, minimally talented amateur and enthusiast activities. Do you think that the internet could improve in that aspect? If the general culture attention goes through a major shift, then, yes, likely the Internet could improve. The information needed in support of historic preservation efforts, though, is already there and readily available, and I don’t think the Internet itself has any bias one way or another in such usage. What are some of your fondest memories throughout your music career? So, it was 1969, and I was back in Indiana at college for my sophomore year and one night I was sitting around joking with my college roommate. A new Schantz-built concert pipe organ had just been installed in the school’s 3,800 seat I. U. Auditorium. There was a lot of talk about it in the department, and I was really eager to play it, so I came up with the idea to suggest showing this old silent horror film my dad had told me about, “Phantom of the Opera,” that he’d seen when it first came out in 1925. I figured I would do the Gaylord Carter bit I had seen in that Philadelphia “The Mark of Zorro” screening, and then I would get to play that new organ along with it. At that point, I was still in contact with New York based silent film organist Lee Erwin who had been summoned to share my 1967 Detroit debut performance. I’d played everything I knew as the first half of that program and Lee filled in to play the balance of the assigned program. So, Lee flew out from New York two weeks before this Halloween “Phantom of the Opera” event I’d connected to teach me his approach towards how to score silent movies. He loaned me some of his own written scores to study that he brought out with him from New York, and stayed at his own expense in a local motel and met me each day after regular classes. At the time I didn’t think it was all that unusual what with so much happening and me having gotten to the point of thinking musical friends just did things like that. It’s so odd now to think that these various important people in this field of obscure endeavour showed up in my life right when I needed them. I would go to classes and come by after to meet with Lee, and we’d talk about what I’d learned at school about that day. Then we’d have dinner, and he would teach me about film music. This was happening during a major peak of Vietnam War protest era. There was all sorts of news coverage of some of the events at Indiana University at that time: the campus taken over and shut down by the students, ROTC building burnt down, and other more serious war protest events. So, I decided there was a real need and opportunity for some sort of comic relief. I provided it with my silent film scoring debut. I went down to the student craft shop in the basement of the Memorial Union building and printed up 400 tickets by hand, stamping them out on the craft press. Then I developed a rather clever campaign that included posting the phrase “The Phantom is Coming!” all over campus; little posters hung on the trees, chalked on vacant blackboards in classrooms through the day, pasted on stickers under the toilet seat covers in all of the dorms. It went on and on. And then on Halloween Day a front page article in the school newspaper explaining the event. We’d sold only some forty tickets in advance and were prepared for an abject failure. However, to my great surprise, over 4,000 people turned up, and we had to resell those 400 tickets over and over again at the door. Wearing a cape and mask borrowed from the theater department I went on that night and began to play that newly composed score I had prepared with Lee. The energy of the occasion was so great, and I was so inspired, I almost immediately abandoned my carefully prepared composition to improvise something ever so much more appropriate to that event on the spot. Quite the thrilling way to begin what has turned out to be a full-length career. Where do you see yourself in the next 10 years? Touring the world just as I have been doing for the past 50 years.

A Night with the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra: From Clyne to Dvořák The Atmosphere Before the Performance As I walk into the Winspear, I’m jittery excited for the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra performance. Before the main event begins, the Winspear Centre’s vast hall is alive with the fragmented sound of musicians practicing their parts. Disjointed notes float through the air, creating a sense of anticipation as the audience trickles in. At precisely 8 p.m., a hush falls over the crowd, signaling the start of the evening’s performance. Applause erupts as Michael Stern, the esteemed conductor, strides confidently onto the stage. The hall, illuminated by the eager faces of the audience and the glimmering instruments of the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra, is ready for the night’s journey through music. Tonight’s program features the works of Anna Clyne, Tchaikovsky, and Dvořák, brought to life by a talented roster of 56 musicians. Each piece promises to take the audience on a unique emotional journey, from the ambiguous and evocative tones of Clyne to the timeless melodies of Dvořák. Setting the Stage with Anna Clyne The performance opens with This Midnight Hour, an orchestral composition by Anna Clyne. Premiering in 2015 at the Théâtre Espace Coluche in Plaisir, this piece stands out for its haunting beauty and narrative ambiguity. Before diving into the music, Stern offers a brief introduction. While he typically prefers to let the music speak for itself, he acknowledges the unique impact of Clyne’s work, describing it as evocative yet open to interpretation. Inspired by poems from Juan Ramón Jiménez and Charles Baudelaire, This Midnight Hour creates a vivid yet abstract soundscape. “The poems have nothing to do with one another,” Stern notes, yet they converge to inspire a composition that is deeply visual. Clyne deliberately refrains from imposing her narrative, encouraging listeners to craft their own personal stories as the music unfolds. This approach adds a deeply personal dimension to the experience, making each performance unique to its audience. A Journey Through Sound Stern explains the deliberate programming choice: pairing Anna Clyne with Dvořák creates a fascinating interplay. “We listen to Dvořák differently because of Anna Clyne. And we listen to Anna Clyne differently because of Dvořák,” he remarks, hinting at the layered emotional impact of the evening’s selections. As the orchestra begins, the lower strings immediately command attention with a forceful, pulsating rhythm. The quickened tempo mirrors the sensation of a racing heartbeat, drawing the audience into an emotional whirlwind. Moments of high-intensity panic are tempered by interludes of calm, only to accelerate once more into chaos. Throughout the piece, the music ebbs and flows, creating a dynamic interplay of tension and release. The percussion adds an almost primal intensity, with moments that make the listener’s hair stand on end. Images of pursuit, fleeting peace, and sudden panic seem to leap from the music. This thematic unpredictability keeps the audience captivated, their hearts responding instinctively to the shifts in tone and tempo. A Surprising Finale Before the performance begins, Stern shares an intriguing comment with the audience: “If at the end, you choose to giggle, you can.” This cryptic warning sets the stage for a finale that surprises and delights. The concluding movement of This Midnight Hour sharply contrasts with the rest of the composition. After an extended feverish section, the music takes an unexpected turn, eliciting laughter from the audience. The juxtaposition of dramatic tension and comedic release is both clever and disarming, leaving a lasting impression. Bridging the Old and New Anna Clyne’s This Midnight Hour is a testament to the power of contemporary composition. By juxtaposing it with the more familiar works of Tchaikovsky and Dvořák, Michael Stern and the Edmonton Symphony Orchestra create an evening that feels both timeless and innovative. The performance underscores how modern works can deepen our appreciation of classical repertoire and vice versa. As the audience departs the Winspear Centre, the echoes of the evening linger—a reminder of music’s ability to transcend time, challenge perceptions, and inspire individual interpretation.

Disney brings magic to every home, and Switching Styles is bringing magic to you with Snow White Cover Songs. “Someday my prince will come. Someday we’ll meet again, and away to his castle, we’ll go To be happy forever, I know Someday, when spring is here,we’lll find our love anew And the birds will sing And wedding bells will ring.” -“Someday My Prince Will Come”, Adriana Caselotti Disney’s Snow White Soundtrack Here are more Disney covers as promised in the Disney Medley article. It started with Cinderella, the princess in the pumpkin. Now it’s all about Snow White, the pale, poised princess. Snow White is one of the original Disney Princesse, with the film being released in 1938. It came out before the other princesses. Frank Churchill and Larry Morey. Paul J. Smith and Leigh Harline composed the music score for Snow White. Adriana Caselotti, the voice and spirit of Snow White, gave us the soft voice of a porcelain princess. The soundtrack includes soft dreamy songs, including “One Song”, “Someday My Prince Will Come”, “I’m Wishing”, “With a Smile and a Song”, “Whistle While You Work”, “Heigh-Ho”, “Bluddle-uddle-um-dum (Dwarfs’ Washing and Yodel Song)”, and “The Silly Song”. “Someday my Prince will come” is the song that stands out as the song of this Princess. Maybe that’s just me, but it’s a darn popular song to cover. Here’s the original with Adriana’s iconic vocals. Snow White Cover Songs Without any further waiting, here are some fantastic covers fit for a princess. Assalova provides us with a beautiful cover featuring soft, gorgeous vocals. Jacky Leun serenades us with a saxophone cover of “Someday My Prince Will Come” complete with some Jazzy flairs. Bethanie Garci, along with her gorgeous vocals and two cute kids in the vehicle, provides a really sweet cover of “Someday My Prince Will Come”. Swing’it Dixieband and Ami Oprenova cover “Someday My Prince Will Come” with a smooth, jazzy flavour and sweet vocals. Casey Jones Costello and Yunjin Audrey Kim combine their beautiful vocals with Yunjin’s majestic piano skills in this deep and powerful duet. This orchestral cover, performed by the talented Moonlight Serenade and Ghetto Swingers, gives us a beautiful rendition of “Someday My Prince Will Come”. Which Disney cover was your favourite Snow White Cover song? Let me know in the comments!!!

Naked Cyber Cafe & Espresso Bar is one of Edmonton’s prominent live music venues. Edmonton has a vibrant music community, especially in the downtown core. Not many people know live music venues beyond the enormous stadiums that host well-known and famous musicians like Marilyn Manson, Marianas Trench, Snoop Dog, Justin Timberlake, Garth Brooks, and so on. But there is so much more that Edmonton has to offer. This photo essay looks at one live music venue: Naked Cyber Café and Espresso Bar. You may find Naked Cyber Cafe and Espresso Bar if you’re looking for a music venue. However, you’ll have to know where to look. The venue is a bit of a hidden gem just off 104th and a bit away from the sidewalk. Naked Cyber Cafe & Espresso bar sits away from the sidewalk, almost hidden from view. This hidden gem is a place for Edmonton musicians to jam, perform and get their names out there. Local musicians have fantastic talent, and local live music venues are where they perform. Naked Cyber Cafe and Espresso Bar are examples of this. This venue is one of Edmonton’s live music Venues in the downtown core. The cafe is a cozy little cafe filled to the brim with art. When you first walk in there’s a wall of cute colourful drawings, complementing the badass paintings hung up behind the stage. A black and white cutout of Elvis Presley is illuminated by a red neon sign reading ‘Naked.’ Jalapeno lights frame the stage, lighting up the faces of the musicians. This venue is decorated as rather ascetic, which is a tribute to the range of artistry within their walls. Neon lights illuminate a black-and-white cutout of Elvis Presley, providing an artistic aesthetic. Thursdays are their open mic night where anyone can come in and perform. They have a fully equipped stage with sound equipment, lighting, and, of course, instruments. This Thursday ranged from classical piano recitals to acoustic covers to electronic music. Here is a photo essay finished for a school project at MacEwan University. These photos were taken during the open mic this last Thursday, showing the venue and the amazing artists who performed. Open mic night allows various musicians to perform their music their way. There’s certainly more to come from Naked Cyber Cafe and Espresso Bar. Keep tuned for future articles on the venue and the artists that perform there. Let me know what you think in the comments below!!

Misplaced Intentions is an Edmonton-based heavy-rock band that is aiming for the stars. They have a few cover songs but aim to include more original songs in the future. The band is made up of Matthew Lindholm (vocals and guitar), Tyler Baker (lead guitar), Landon Berezanski (bass), and Keilan Thompson (drums). The band has a way of defying expectations, says Berezanski, “Whatever the populace’s int Berezanski and Alex Fedorouk started the band in 2013 while at Backbeat, a music school on Whyte Avenue, where they attended for 2 1/2 years. Berezanski says Backbeat taught them everything they needed to know about being in a band, beyond the music. Backbeat helps bands cultivate their style, appearance, and sound, and even gain experience performing live. Originally, the band was called Grim Bishop. That was later changed to Misplaced Intentions (Grim Bishop seemed too Christian rock-esque). A single musical genre does not easily define its sound. Berezanski describes it as “’90s nostalgic new wave hard rock.” The band has been influenced by similar but distinct groups such as Rise Against, Monster Truck, and Iron Maiden Baker explains: “It’s kind of a mix between Billy Talent and Metallica. It kind of blurs the lines between hard rock and metal.” Lindholm adds: “We’re hard rock but not as hard as Avenged Sevenfold.” As far as the band’s new name, there isn’t an epiphany origin story, Berezanski says. “I’m pretty sure it was my idea, but I can’t tell you where it came from. We were sitting around thinking of a band name, and we might have been drinking. And it just kind of popped up.” However, the name encompasses the idea of the band “not being held to what people would expect us to sound like, not being held to maybe what’s hip and in right now, not being afraid to tackle those sounds.” Berezanski and Fedorouk were “the first generation,” Baker says. Lindholm and Baker soon followed. Fedorouk left Misplaced Intentions to join another band, FKB, creating room for the band to grow and shift, and adding Thompson as their drummer in February 2017. “It didn’t really take long for Keilan to fit in with the rest of us,” Berezanski says. “Where it may have taken a little longer to get him up to par with our music because we don’t really have anything recorded, the friendship of the band really didn’t take that long at all.” Michelle Langevin, co-owner and general manager of Yeg Music, has promoted Misplaced Intentions for over a year. She says she has noticed that shifting members hasn’t negatively affected the band or its music. “It’s collective, and the band works together. But it does seem like Landon holds the shit together, in a good way.” Berezanski, she adds, is the decision-maker. A long-time friend of the band, Madlyn Lung, describes Misplaced Intentions as “a group of friends who use the band as an outlet for a good time. You can tell they really enjoy their gigs and are proud of their music. And that makes them a joy to watch.” It’s more than friendship. It’s more than music. Being in a band is more than just being able to say, ‘I’m in a band,’ Berezanski says. “It has opened my eyes to the sort of world I want to be surrounded by. It has opened my eyes to the possibility of a dream that seemed like it was a little out of reach for a few years there. Honestly, if it hadn’t been for joining Backbeat, and joining what would become Misplaced Intentions, I don’t think I would have ever found that ambition that I have for it now.” Lindholm adds, “Music, for most people, is kind of like a catalyst. It’s definitely impacted me for the better. Being able to play on stage is an experience that maybe not a lot of people get to do. But, for me, it’s really not comparable as a feeling. Well, maybe one thing is more comparable, but I’ll leave the romantic sappy crap for another day.” The Edmonton music scene doesn’t have a huge reputation, Langevin says, and certainly is not on a par with cities like Toronto or Montreal. And that’s mainly due to venues. Live music venues are spread out in Edmonton; they aren’t focused in the downtown core. “Musicians-wise, talent-wise, Edmonton has a pretty good grip on that. I don’t think that’s our issue. It’s just kind of the spacing of our city, and there are different things that play into it. We’re getting really close to that level of Montreal or Toronto. We just need a little bit more support from the city, and then we can get more venues up and running.” Berezanski says, “It was getting a little spooky for a bit there. In the past two or three years. I started to notice a lot of the local spots that were bringing in local bands to try and grow that local scene were starting to sell their businesses,” However, the scene is improving, “with companies like Yeg Music and festivals like the Folk Music Festival.” Yeg Music is an artist-development company with 55 bands and solo artists. It promotes local bands and provides the bands with access to graphic designers, photographers, and, most important, gigs. Misplaced Intentions is not a direct part of Yeg Music for the time being, but the organization still promotes the group and books them for gigs. The band is striving to get gigs in addition to the ones Yeg Music sets up for it. It’s a way for the band to get more work and different types of work. It’s also a way to scope out the venues to see firsthand their type and size, as well as their audience and management style. “We can wait for Yeg to give us a show,” Thompson says. “But it would be nice if we could go and find our own. You kind of build it yourself, I guess, which is a very punk ethos.” The members of Misplaced Intentions want to grow as a band, and that involves writing new songs and getting a larger fan base. “Solitary Solution” is the one demo they’ve released, but more original songs are on the horizon. Since joining, Thompson hasn’t written any songs for the band, and he says he’s wanting to do just that. Berezanski says he wants to see the band “progressing to a harder sound and picking up the pace for a lot of our songs.” Thompson agrees: “Landon wants to go faster, which I’m totally OK with because I usually like punk music.” But it’s a long process, A song can take days, even months, to develop. With more music, the band can build a larger fan base. Currently, it’s fairly localized with a small following, Baker says. “It’s mostly just friends and people that we invite to the show that show up and that’s pretty much the only people that know us right now.” Berezanski says “Back in the ’80s, if you were in the underground music scene, you would pass around a demo cassette you made. It would pass from peer to per. It’s completely changed nowadays, and we got to take advantage of that. “With everyone on the Internet as much as they are, getting into all of those social media platforms is a big way to promote ourselves.” The band members say they hope to continue making music and improving as a band. Thompson admits that “we can continue coasting in the way that we have been, or we could try and do more.” Regarding the future of the band, Lung says, “Many bands don’t last, but Misplaced Intentions has been through many trials and tribulations and still continues to improve over time. Every time I go to one of their shows I notice how much they have improved since their last gig. “I’m not quite sure where time will bring them, but I’m sure that no matter what, they will continue to make music even if it’s just for fun, and I will gladly listen to them.” Baker adds: “Ideally, we’ll be touring the country, playing to sold-out crowds or whatever. And selling a lot of records. Realistically, it’s hard to say how far we’ll actually go. Pretty much wherever it goes, we’ll follow it.” “I don’t look at this band as a stepping stone,” Berezanski says. “I look at it as the ship that I will sink with if it does go down that way. This is the band that I want to be in.” Here are a few photos I took of the band, feel free to check out the rest of them here.

What happens when you take Black Sabbath and Ronald McDonald and then combine them within a parody band? You get Mac Sabbath. Mac Sabbath is a band that parodies Black Sabbath songs with a theme of fast food. The band includes Ronald Osbourne (vocals), Slayer MacCheeze (guitar), Grimalice (bass), and the Catburglar (drums) in full costumes themed after the McDonald land characters. Together they create drive-thru metal. Mac Sabbath performs at the Starlite room for the Grill Of It All, their first Canadian tour The concert, played at the Starlite Room, was part of their Grill Of It All tour. The band played last Thursday night with openers Frank and Deans and Electric Audrey 2. It was a flavorful concert of epic proportions. This is a concert that started with someone yelling out “Cheeseburgers!” At one point in the show, an audience member shouted “show us your nuggets!” right before Ronald Osbourne actually pulled out prop nuggets during one of the songs. That wasn’t the only thematically appropriate prop. There were props of nearly every fast food aspect you can imagine; an extra-large drink mic stand, condiment bottles, red and yellow confetti, busts of Ronald McDonald with lasers in their eyes, and even an inflatable burger bouncing throughout the crowd. Mike Odd, their manager, explains that they are time travellers that have come “from the 1970s to save us from the current state of music and food and bring us back to a time where music and food were more organic”. For a lot of metal fans, Black Sabbath is one of the purer forms of metal. Odd explains that Black Sabbath is the creator of “all counter-culture weirdo music.” Mac Sabbath provides a kind of nostalgia for Ozzy fans for a simpler time. Mac Sabbath Sounds Some of their songs include parodies such as “Chicken Is For The Slaves” (Children Of The Grave), “Frying Pan” (“Iron Man”), and “More Ribs” (“War Pigs”). Even though they’re in the world of fast food they aren’t endorsing it instead, they’re exposing the negativities of Fast Food. Mac Sabbath, although a heavy metal band, is kid-friendly. There isn’t any vulgar or offensive language in the lyrics making it appropriate for a wide demographic. Odd explains, “as far as the message goes, people expect it to be this gnarly heavy metal thing that’s going to be all adult-themed and stuff. But he keeps it all kid-friendly because he wants the kids to get the message too. He wants parents to be able to expose their kids to it because they should learn it at an early age”. Odd describes that although the show has a message, it isn’t preachy, “It’s super fun and this amazing clown that’s flipping burgers and really funny. And he’s this amazing wordsmith of jokes, these drive-thru metal jokes that he does. It’s just this amazing comedy heavy metal science fiction giant arena-sized show crammed into a stage.” What do you think? Let me know in the comments below!!

The Sims is a simulated world where you can live, love, have cats, make money, and the ever-hilarious woohoo (a sim euphemism for sex). It’s a wondrous world of complete creation where you can be a god, either a soft, loving, and caring one that provides pizza for every meal, or an evil, mean god that kills off a family simply to have a haunted house. Regardless of the morality of the creator, it’s a game of free and open creation. The Sims have a radio like any simulated world would have. It’s got its own music soundtrack (as do all video games). From the start, it’s had a form of instrumental soundtracks including an upbeat salsa for the loading screen, and of course the several classical orchestral soundtracks for the creative build mode. There’s a whole list of music in the Sims available at the Sims-wiki. The songs they play from Sims 2 onward mimic the songs of our world but in Simlish or Sims English. So it’s seriously weird because it’s songs in a gibberish language. But they’re good. There is a large assortment of songs from a range of artists. Seriously, there is a lot. Some of these songs include “Manos al Aire” by Nelly Furtado, “Double Vision” by 3oh!3, “Some Chords” by Deadmau5, “Ever Seen This” by Aceyalone and RJD2, “Saturday Night” by Jessica Mauboy. There are so many other artists that have their songs in Simlish and here’s a list of them on the Sims-wiki. Here is a small glimpse at the Sim soundtrack of real-world songs in Simlish. “Good Intent” by Kimbra “We Have Love” by Hot Chip “American Trash” by Innerpartysystem “Hot in Here” by Nelly “Pocketful of Sunshine” by Natasha Bedingfield “Want You Back” by 5 Seconds of Summer “Last Friday Night” by Katy Perry “Walking on Sunshine” by Katrina and the Waves “Classic” by The Knocks “Run Away With Me” by Carly Rae Jepsen

Literally every time Person: “So what’s your YouTube channel called?” Me: “Chetreo!” Person: “Sorry?” Me: “Che-tre-o” Person: “What?” Me: “C-H-E-T-R-E-O” Person: “Huh?” Me: “I CAME UP WITH THE NAME 13 YEARS AGO OKAY” — Chetreo (@Chetreo) February 26, 2018 Chetreo is one of the artists showcased in the Rick and Morty article about Rick and Morty themed covers and remixes. “The Universe Is Yours” and “A Really Long Time” are the particular songs from the article. Chetreo is a Swedish music producer with a passion for both entertainment and music. In the 13 years since Chetreo joined YouTube, he has over 35 million views and 132k subscribers. On his YouTube channel, he explains that “I try to combine my love for video games and movies with my passion for music”. Combining content from video games, movies, and shows with sound manipulation, he creates fantastic remixes. Chetreo has created remixes of a range of entertainment including Rick and Morty (of course), American Dad, Adventure Time, South Park, Bob’s Burgers, Shaun of the Dead, Lord of the Rings and even Google Translate among countless others. Q&A With Chetreo Here’s a Q&A from Chetreo with some of the most common questions that fans have asked him. Below are the questions and answers from the interview between me and Chetreo. How was your experience creating the Rick and Morty Remixes? Was there an aspect that stood out to you? It was a fun project. I didn’t expect myself to make one for each and every episode of season 3 but people really seemed to like them and I felt a big sense of accomplishment when I was done. Why did you start doing remixes of shows and movies? I’ve always been interested in manipulating sounds. Movies and shows were just a way to get material to work with. What’s the typical process of creating a remix? I usually start out with watching the source material a couple of times while playing my guitar. When I have found a melody or rhythm I like, I start building the track around that. How did you start on YouTube? My channel is about as old as YouTube itself. YouTube is a huge part of my daily life and I guess I’ve always wanted to contribute with content. How has YouTube helped you gain a following? What do you notice increases the number of likes and/or subscribers? Keeping a schedule helps a lot. There are ways to make YouTube’s algorithms favor your videos. But when you’re creating something artistic, like music, it’s hard to force something if you’re not feeling it. People just sharing the video will always be the most effective way though! Who are your musical influences? Anything that’s upbeat and energetic is an influence on me. I started out playing music in punk rock bands. So, I guess that’s where it started. Punk rock bands? How was that? It was a good way to practice your songwriting and musical skills! I don’t think you’ll find anything online about the bands though. How do you think YouTube functions as a platform for musicians that do covers, parodies, and remixes? I think YouTube is a great platform for things like that. The concept of “fair use” needs to become more straightforward and unambiguous though as many people/companies/countries have different interpretations of it! How do you feel about the internet in the music business? It’s both great and not so great. On one hand, I have access to this huge audience and can put out as much music as I want. But on the other hand, I’m just a small speck of dust in this new age consumption of music. I kinda miss buying a record and listening to it until you know every bit of sound on the album. I know you’re still able to do that, but it rarely happens with me when I’m spoiled with Spotify, YouTube etc… Copyright concerns are rather prevalent in covers, parodies, and remixes. What do you think of the concept of fair use? I think fair use is a greatly misunderstood term both from creators and content owners. Creators underestimate their rights and content owners don’t really see the positive aspects of having their content manipulated by creators. I know my remixes of shows and movies, for example, have made people actually watch the original content. I get comments like that every day. What are some projects you have in progress right now? I’m currently doing commissions for record labels and other YouTube channels but I have some collabs planned with other YouTubers in the future. Which labels have commissioned music from you? Mostly smaller, Swedish labels and corporations. I’m currently mixing an album for Enstöring Music. What advice would you give to musicians just starting out on YouTube? ‘Have fun doing what’re you doing’ is probably the most cliché thing I can say but it really is true. I’ve been making remixes since about 2011 and just got a bigger following this year. Where do you see Youtube in 10 years? I think it (hopefully) still will be around. The community, however, might be split up on other video streaming services considering the dissatisfaction from the YouTube creators (The Adpocalypse). Where do you see yourself in 10 years? Hopefully, still making music in some way or form! It’s still pretty uncertain as I’m fresh out of college but I hope YouTube plays a big part of what I become. Chetreo Songs Here are a few of his other songs, feel free to check out the rest of his YouTube. Fun fact: I was devouring a chimichanga while editing this video https://t.co/E1fc5VDcGjpic.twitter.com/96snux7ZD4 — Chetreo (@Chetreo) February 8, 2018