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white kids making black music
Saturday, January 25 2025
I took 150 mg of pseudoephedrine at around noon today (while Gretchen and I were still playing collaborative Spelling Bee in the living room) in hopes it would help me power through the debugging of the storage of data objects in FRAM connected to one of my ESP8266s. But I kept being distracted by the laboratory floor. I'd see some little patch that needed paint and I'd repaint it. Repainting patches of paint on the floor isn't difficult or complicated, but it's enough of an artistic act that it causes me to go into a flow state and lose track of time. So it's easy for me to lose a whole afternoon this way. Suffice it to say, I didn't get much ESP8266 debugging done, though I did make a new command for the ESP8266's serial command line to respond to: "dump fram index." (I needed to see this index to help zero in on the problem.)
Today Gretchen wanted us to do something fun together, and her two ideas were to either go to the new brick & mortar manifestation of Little Loaf Bakery for lunch or to attend a School of Rock performance this evenng at the Woodstock Playhouse entitled "Earth, Wind, and Fire vs. Kool and the Gang." We'd woken up late, so I didn't really want to immediately drive to New Paltz for lunch, so I said I preferred the School of Rock option. Also, it would be hilarious watching largely privately-educated white kids performing deeply black music.
Our first destination in Woodstock was Pearl Moon, a conventional bar/restaurant in the building that used to house Wok 'n' Roll, a pan-Asian restaurant where I once ate $30 worth of sushi. Pearl Moon looked to be attracting a younger crowd than one typically sees at Woodstock venues (where the average age is still somehow older than us). They had a few vegetarian options on the menu, though to make them vegan would've required removing something expensive like goat cheese and still paying for it. So we both opted for Impossible burgers with fries, which they did very well (although the ciabatta roll was a bit tough for that sort of sandwich). I added a little Cholula hot sauce to my ketchup, which made it perfect for me. But Gretchen had already noted that the ketchup at Pearl Moon was better than usual. She asked our waitress about it and eventually learned that it wasn't the usual Heinz 57 but was a kind called Red Gold. (Gretchen really is a supertaster!). For drinks, Gretchen had some sort of strawberry-flavored hard cider, while I had the Rare Vos Ommegang Amber Ale, which had an appealingly meadlike flavor. Most of our dinner conversation was about Pamela Anderson, whom Gretchen had recently heard interviewed on Fresh Air. (Gretchen was iritated that the interviewer, who wasn't Terry Gross, ignored all Anderson's attempts to bring up her support of animal rights causes.)
At the Woodstock Playhouse, I quickly bottle a little $8 bottle of red wine and then Gretchen and I took a seat over on the right side of the audience (for someone facing the stage). Most of the people in attendance were kids and their parents, and Gretchen wondered if perhaps we were the only ones there without a relative involved in the School of Rock.
I wouldn't say I'm a fan of either Earth, Wind, and Fire or Kool and the Gang, though I'm deeply familiar with their music from having listened to so much pop music radio from the late 1970s to the mid 1980s. I know all the words (or what I think the words are) to all their famous songs, and I know in detail how the songs should sound. This was probably why some of the songs suffered horribly at the hands of these well-meaning white kids (and yes, all of them were white). A pitchy or otherwise bad vocal can ruin any song, and these songs depend on a joyous, yet precise delivery. For some songs, though, the kids did an amazing job and it was compelling enough for us to sway and move our hands. Later in the show, Gretchen compelled me to get up and dance with her at the end of the row of seats. I was reluctant at first, but when I finally got over myself and got to me feet, it felt good to move.
One of the most striking things about the groups of kids who perform music in the School of Rock is the diversity of their ages. Some of the kids look like adults, whereas others are so small that they might not've yet experienced a growth spurt. Gretchen and I referred to these smallest of performers as "tinies," and we were always interested in how much they contributed and how good they were. One tiny pot-bellied girl proved to be a pretty effective bass player, and a boy/girl pair of tinies sang an amazing pseudo-duet. The show started weak, but it built on itself, perhaps helped along by the performers gradually loosening up and feeling their way "into the groove." They ended with a dynamite all-hands performance of Kool and the Gang's classic "Celebration." When that was over, Gretchen made a beeline for our car (parked in the snowy lawn out front), and we beat the congestion that was certain to follow.
The all-hands performance of "Celebration" at the end of the School of Rock show tonight.
Click to enlarge.
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