An instrument that's still ahead of its time

 I spent some time this weekend catching up on recorded TV shows, including one from this summer titled “Theremin: An Electronic Odyssey,” an odd 1995 documentary about one of the strangest musical instruments – and inventors – of our time. 

Leon Theremin – inventor, Soviet spy and all-around odd duck -- created his crazy self-titled electronic instrument about 90 years ago, and even today the theremin is something of a mystery despite playing prominent roles in dozens of Hollywood movies and hit songs like The Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations.”

Lydia Kavina plays a theremin (Courtesy of Wikipedia)The theremin is hard to describe, but in short it’s an odd-shaped electronic instrument in which the musician moves his/her hands near metal rods – without physically touching them – to create and manipulate sound waves. Its sound is wide-ranging but has been pigeon-holed as device to create spacelike sound effects. Visualize audio sine waves expanding and contracting and you’ve got the gist of how it sounds. 

I first learned of the theremin years ago, from a musician friend named Blake Jones, who regularly plays one on stage and on his recordings, both solo and with his band Trike Shop. His most recent CD, in fact, is titled “Theremins of Mystery” (listen to the audio samples for a flavor of the instrument’s odd sound or check out a bunch of videos featuring Blake’s theremin handiwork).

As the famous Robert Moog noted in the documentary, Theremin laid the groundwork for the electronic synthesizers — including the Moog -- that gained popularity beginning in the 1970s. But what strikes me is that 90 years later, the theremin is just as oddly fascinating now as it was when it first wowed high-brow audiences at Carnegie Hall, who heard it used to re-interpret classical standards. 

Perhaps these days, the theremin's future is not as a physical instrument but as an iPhone or Android app. Hmmm.

Mission Statement generator

I always bust up when Apple brags about its 100,000-plus apps in its App Store, eight times that in the Android store. Yeah, yeah, lots of volume, but there’s a ton of junk in there too.

But I'm as big a fan of good junk as anyone, and am getting tons of laughs from an app called the Mission Statement Generator that is priceless in a Dilbert kind of way. The concept is simple: Desperate for a corporate mission in these difficult times that will serve as a guiding light to prosperity? No problem. Simply fire up you iPhone or iTouch and problem solved. 

Case in point, is this statement – generated at random: “We build trust and teamwork to proactively coordinate client-centric expertise and also assertively actualize enterprise-wide leadership through continuous improvement.” Who wouldn't rally around something so inspiring?

Or this one: “Our mission is to dramatically fashion client-focused metrics in order that we may intrinsicly (sic) disseminate equity invested scenarios while promoting personal employee growth.”  Yeah, that’s what I’m talkin’ ‘bout!

One last one (although the app seems to have an endless supply): “It’s our responsibility to credibly leverage other’s alternative processes and holisticly (sic) foster distinctive synergy for 100% customer satisfaction.” Duh. 

"Talking Old Soldiers"

Bettye LaVette is an old-school soul singer who had something of a comeback a few years ago with "The Scene of the Crime," a CD cut with the Drive-By Truckers, of all people. But it's a nice pairing, with the band giving LaVette room to shine on a variety of cover songs.

For some reason I chose that album to listen to while cleaning a cluttered half of my garage. Not  sure why, but I'm glad I did. It's a great album, with excellent songs top to bottom.

But one song stands tall and that's "Talking Old Soldiers," a gritty re-telling of an old Elton John/Bernie Taupin song. LaVette gives, as AllMusic says, "the most incredible reading of Elton John's "Talking Old Soldiers," a sultry, sad ballad that is completely reinvented here. John doesn't own it anymore, even if he and Bernie Taupin did write it. The emptiness of her surroundings surrounds the protagonist, and there is nothing but vastness and the curse of memory and the frailty of age to express the ultimate truth of life's only promise: the graveyard."

Well said.