Peter Fenzel hosts with Mark Lee and Josh McNeil to overthink the Game of Thrones season finale, the death of Clarence Clemons, and the lost art of the saxophone solo.
SPOILER ALERT for Season 1 of Game of Thrones.
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In retrospect, we probably could have kept this podcast spoiler-free and thus made more people want to listen to it … it seemed as if the actual plot elements were going to be discussed, but we really ended up talking mostly about general characterization and audience reception. So I regret including the spoilers.
For those who didn’t listen to the podcast because of GoT and miss discussing it, I’ll posit the question to the panel that we used in the podcast – if you had to choose a pop culture character to be your father, who would you choose and why.
Answers were as such:
McNeil: Darth Vader
Lee: Vito Corleone
Fenzel: Dennis Quaid fictional father composite
We then talked about the quality of Randy Quaid’s parenting in _Independence Day_.
So it wasn’t all spoilers.
I wanted to call out X-Ray Spex, the late 70’s punk band, for what I always considered an unexpected but highly effective use of the saxophone. Laura Logic’s sax tends to drive the frenetic energy of many of their most memorable numbers.
Yeah, wished I listened before my other comment, X-Ray Spex are awesome. To me the sax layers a good counterpoint to the aggressive edge of the grainy guitar and vocals sort of punks punk, “Warrior in Woolworths” http://youtube/7b68GNBxqWQ could be an alt soundtrack to the Sergio prankster.
And the context Fenzel used dasein he was talking about celebrity persona vs. the actual human being, which I thought the South Park episode “Crack Baby Athletic Association” dramatized that notion really well by having the guitarist Slash be like Santa Claus, http://www.southparkstudios.com/clips/387411/vunter-slaush
Ah dangit posted that in the wrong comment box! It’s suppose to be a reply to Peter Tupper.
Here’s that awesome video of the guy pranking malls as the explosively sexy sax playing character Sergio, originally played by Jon Hamm on SNL. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GaoLU6zKaws
Sax solos today contend with the overwhelming presence of muzak, so there’s this struggle- authentic mellow vs. forced manufactured mellow that’s trying to turn into a zombie. It manifests in this strange way by having huge beefy shirtless sax players vigorously air hump away the docile shackles of muzak to make people feel again.
The sax players battle is the same as the punk rockers, but while punk lives for gnashing of teeth the sax players do it for authentic mellow flow- for a vigorous harmony with the world- not for an epic flaming battle that destroys everything. It’s funny seeing this aggressive thrust and struggle just to get back to mellow.
Speaking of blazing saxophone, I was kind of a fan of Candy Dulfer’s “Saxuality” when I was in middle school – because one of my best friends at the time played Sax, and we thought it was kind of scandalous – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-75OqDynVv4
When I think modern saxophony, I think of Infinity 2008, which uses a sample, and also of Callisto, who use it in a genre where it would otherwise not be heard: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9jbpZtE-Zm8
There was a philosophical term used in this podcast I’d like to know more about. It was pronounced something like “daseen.” How is it spelled so I can look it up?
“Dasein” Hubert Dreyfus gives an eloquent description here, http://youtu.be/nHH9o5WfJmA fast foreword to 5:36, it’s part 3 of a 5 part youtube thing but the total interview is only like 40 minutes and it totally worth watching in it’s entirety if you’re interested. I only just heard of the word/concept the day before this podcast which was a nice bit of luck.