If sex is considered as impersonal as a handshake, I’m worried about what people are coming to think of music. The MP3 has been getting around for almost a decade now. In the beginning, MP3s moved through a point of contact; people exchanged mixed CDs looking for new music. People talked about their musical choices. They exchanged their musical intuitions. It was wonderful; it was convenient; and it never cost anything.
Nowadays, moving music around is so much less personal. People are searching through the Internet reading blogs, articles, Tumbles, and Tweets, searching for good music instead of sitting down and finding it themselves. Any song can be found and downloaded off some file-sharing website on the Internet. It’s all too cheap.
People aren’t finding new music together. With sex, at least someone else is there, but with music, we’re looking for action from something as impersonal as a computer.
Music has become a private affair — almost too self-indulgent. People aren’t exploring their boundaries. They’re just finding more and more of what they already know they like. What are we going to do next? Take music off MP3s and remix it ourselves?
Obviously, that’s what we’ve come to do. Remixes and samples abound in music right now. It’s getting a little old now, though. Originally, remixes seemed like compliments to an artist; remixes were your personal connection to your favorite musician. Now, however, remixes are getting produced on an assembly line with a standardized set of instructions. What is the definitive sound of this generation?
I’m almost afraid to say it, but this last decade of music is going to be known for the technology. Music seems to be amalgamating into some indefinable blurb. Over the last 10 years, no artist has really grabbed our attention. The big bands we hear now are the same ones we listened to back in the early ’90s. This generation has gone to the MP3 and the MP3 moves songs around like a musical prostitute.
-Stephen Epple

A lot of people say that fall is a nostalgic season, and I wholeheartedly agree. In my hometown of Harvard, Mass., fall is an important time because it is the season for apples, the ubiquitous fruit around town. Phil’s, Carlon’s, Doe, Westward, and Mountain View Orchards all offer their own ciders, pies, doughnuts, and various other apple-inspired products, along with the standard “U-Pick” options. We used to have the Three Apples Storytelling Festival in the center of town. We’d gather in the basement of our church, peeling and cutting apples for apple pies that the church would sell to raise funds. Because of this, October has always been a nostalgic month for me.

I recently read an article on Slate.com about Creed. The ’90s band is apparently back together, recording and touring. This brought back my memories of the music of the late ’90s and the early 2000s, back when I was moving through elementary and middle school. There was Smash Mouth, with “All-Star;” Creed, with the grunge-like guitars and vocals, singing with a vaguely Christian message; and, of course, there were the Backstreet Boys, *NSYNC, 98 Degrees, et al., of which every girl in my grade had a favorite member that they would one day marry. But my favorite back then was the Goo Goo Dolls. In fact, my first kiss was with a girl named Loren in seventh grade, and happened to the strains of “Iris.” All the seventh and eighth graders were in our school cafeteria, dressed up for our “Snowflake” semi-formal. As everyone paired up — many awkwardly — for the slow dance, I didn’t realize how prescient the words “sooner or later it’s over” would be.

The Three Apples Storytelling Festival moved out of town a few years ago. The apples are still there, though I’m 10 hours away throughout peak season. There have been more dances, more girls to dance with, and at least a few more kisses since then. But I’m past that stage. I have a girlfriend now, and we’re going on three years together. Yet, I still think back to the cafeteria, back to seventh grade, Loren, and John Rzeznik’s voice saying “everything’s meant to be broken.” It was the closest to heaven that I’d ever been. And maybe it still is.

-Tyler Alderson

A couple weeks back, I was hyping Eugene Onegin, a performance that showed at the Pittsburgh Opera House through Oct. 4.

I was lucky enough to catch it last Tuesday (no small feat considering my schedule nowadays), and watching it, I realized just how far Pittsburgh has come. Pittsburgh was — and still is — thought of as a working-class, hard-times town, complete with bad air, broken factories, and the like; not necessarily the place you’d expect to find great opera, dance, classical music, or other “high culture” things.

But with the Pittsburgh Symphony, Pittsburgh Opera, and other world-class cultural institutions, it’s a great time for the arts in Pittsburgh.

With the economic rebound comes a greater rebound in culture, and the Pittsburgh Cultural Trust, along with smaller arts institutions, has been a major part of this rebound.

Not only do we get the popular musicians of the day, but we have a wide variety of international artists coming through. Just this past March, Portuguese superstar Mariza was at the Benedum Center, part of a line of artists brought to the Byham Theater.

Starring in Onegin was Anna Samuil, a rising Russian opera star, along with Dwayne Croft and Suzanne Mentzer, both mainstays at the Metropolitan Opera in New York City.

The Pittsburgh Symphony has a world-renowned conductor in Austrian Manfred Honeck, and its Pops wing has the great Marvin Hamlisch, one of only two people to have won an Emmy, an Oscar, a Grammy, a Tony, a Golden Globe Award, and a Pulitzer Prize.

Broadway musicals routinely come through Pittsburgh on tour, with performances of Rent and Fiddler on the Roof featuring original cast members headlining shows in recent months.

Pittsburgh has also been the host of a dancing explosion, with many new experimental and modern dance troupes springing up.

So go out, see a show, catch a concert, or watch a dance performance, and remind yourself how lucky you are to be going to school in a city that is blossoming culturally.

Tyler Alderson