In Daron's life, it's 1989, his band Moondog Three is starting to take off, and although the closet door is open now, he's barely got one toe out. He's told his closest friends and bandmates that he's gay, and he's sworn off sleeping with his lead s...
ANCIENT HISTORY I posted this photo in comments to a recent chapter, but thought I'd share it again here for those who missed it. When Daron describes Jonathan's laptop computer, this is the model he's talking about:
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I bought one for myself as a graduation present when I finished university and got a job in Boston, meaning a one hour commuter train trip each way, each day. Many early drafts of Daron's story were composed on the Toshiba T-1000. I had a Mac II at home and I would take what I had written each day out of the Toshiba and dump it to the Mac somehow. I don't even remember now how I moved the text, if it was by emailing it to myself, or if I could network the machines or if the T-1000 accepted 3.5-inch disks.
I did that commute every day for about a year. Then I moved to the Boston area and had to find some other way to get that two hours of writing time per day back again!
PANDORA'S BOX (of cool musical stuff...) This is already like two years old, but if you have somehow missed this video by "the 2 Cellos" (aka Luka Sulic and Stepan Hauser) it's basically sex on strings. Oh except the plot of the video is ostensibly they're fighting over a girl. But is it just me who interprets her reaction at the end as "Get a room!" eh?
As it turns out, folks playing classical instruments making witty and intricate arrangements of pop songs is an entire genre of its own now, at least according to what Pandora.com has played me ever since it (sort of randomly) played me the 2 Cellos (a different song) and I hit "thumbs up." This in fact opened a Pandora's box of stuff, not just by venerable rule-breakers like the Kronos Quartet, but track after track after track from groups, artists, trios, ensembles, etc... I had not heard of.
Of course, the mother of ALL these "classical goes rock" groups is Apocalyptica, whose INQUISITION SYMPHONY is still one of my favorite albums of all time. Apocalyptica are four cellists and the Inquisition Symphony is mostly covers of Metallica songs, with some Faith No More and Sepultura thrown in.
"Covers" is the wrong word, really. "Arrangement" is a better fit. Listen to this one of "Nothing Else Matters."
Fantastic, isn't it? Came out in 1998. (The Metallica song came in 1992.)
Wait, you haven't heard the original? Or you haven't heard it in a while? Okay here:
