The First Music

The earliest I remember of music... Good music... Is in the early-nineties Disney movies. "Beauty and the Beast," "Aladdin," "The Little Mermaid," and "The Lion King," just to name a few. Alan Menken, the man responsible for these films' soundtracks, is an absolutely astounding composer. The songs in question are extremely well-written; they tell a story while still being great out-of-context. They're harmonically complex, but still sing-along-able.

This is the music I grew up with. I had all the casette tapes (remember those?) for these soundtracks, and sat in the back of mom's van, singing "Hakuna Matata" at the top of my lungs. Menken wrote melodies that, to this day, are instantly recognizable. This goes pretty contrary to most of the other cartoons I remember, which took classical or folk music and re-packaged it. (It's because of this phenomenon that no american can listen to Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" without fighting the urge to sing "Kill da waaaaaaabit, kil da waaaaabit" a la Elmer Fudd)

The point I'm trying to make is that all my love for music stems back to one man, one composer, who found a media through which his music would greatly impact a generation. Today, the popular Disney movies are produced by Pixar. For all it's achievements, Pixar uses little music. I'd be interested to see the results of this sad development.

-Brooks

Introductio

That's Latin for "introduction," for all you dead language haters... ;-)

I had a blog like this a while back, but it fell into disuse once I began using xanga. Sadly, no one really uses xanga anymore. It was my favorite of the peer-to-peer networks... ::sigh:: ... Oh well!

This is my attempt at blogging again. I'll post my contemplations about things I find contemplatable here... I've found that my own conversations with myself are rather humorous at certain times, and brilliant at others. Unfortunately, these usually occur at odd hours of night, and I'm not smart enough to write them down before I forget them. This blog (hopefully) will give me an incentive to take these contemplations, adaptations, and revelations more seriously.

-Brooks