micah holmquist's irregular thoughts and links |
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Welcome to the musings and notes of a Cadillac, Michigan based writer named Micah Holmquist, who is bothered by his own sarcasm. Please send him email at micahth@chartermi.net. Holmquist's full archives are listed here.
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Sites Holmquist trys, and often fails, to go no more than a couple of days without visiting (some of which Holmquist regularly swipes links from without attribution) Aljazeera.Net English Blogs that for one reason or another Holmquist would like to read on at least something of a regular basis (always in development) Thivai Abhor |
Saturday, October 26, 2002
Tomorrow afternoon -that is Saturday afternoon so technically this afternoon- one of my nine cousins will be getting married and, for better or worse, I will be attending the wedding and reception. This will be the sixth cousin I've seen get married. I really dislike wedding for their worth and this one will be interesting. The main course at the reception will be roasted pork, which is just another way of the family saying, "Except for Micah, we don't know anybody who doesn't eat meat or has come into contact with one of those Jews or Muslims." But that's all stuff I'm used to. What really upsets me is that MSU plays Wisconsin tomorrow evening at 7 and seeing the team at some stage of its annual meltdown -I'd like to be optimistic about the game but I'm not- is of course more important than any wedding. (I have a feeling I will be spending a lot of time "going for a walk" by sitting in an automobile listening to the radio.) Why I will bother to show up is something I really wonder about. But enough of my personal problems, let's talking about wedding reception music. Lost in the barrage of bad music played by the likes of Garth Brooks and Journey is what really distinguishes the music played at weddings. Namely the fact that songs have to be in a verse-chorus-verse-we-are-getting-a-little-daring-so-here-is-a-bridge format and can not be ballads about lost love or songs of any style that are overtly about anything serious. The first qualification takes out a lot of interesting music but is understandable and doesn't necessairly doom the evening. But the lyrical qualifications eliminate much, if not most, of the best music in that does meet the first criteria. So what you end up with is relatively slim pickings for a DJ to play. Still there are probably 3-4 hours of good pop love and novelty songs but what ends up killing the whole project -at least for me- is that every DJ I've ever heard operate at a wedding has middling tastes akin to those who program country music radio today. (That may be the harshest insult I can delve out to a person's musical tastes.) They don't know the good stuff from the bad stuff and want to snuff out anything that has an edge, not matter how dull that edge has become by this point. The results aren't pretty but then again neither are two people jamming cake into each other's mouthes. |