Cover-a-Week #38: "Cannonball" by Damien Rice

Here's another cover!



http://youtu.be/U7Nsn_lWOLI

I've listened to both the original song and Vienna Teng's cover, and I must confess that I like Vienna's version better. (Really, I just like her voice more than Damien Rice's.)

P.S. -- More amazing channel stats: I have over 10,000 views total, including 1000+ views of "Finite Simple Group (of Order Two)" and 2000+ views of "Take Me Home, Country Roads." I am astonished, and more pleased than I probably should be.

Statistics, Demographics, Music, Art

Last night, I went to Vienna Teng's concert at the Highline Ballroom with Brett, who was in town this week. Vienna's touring her new album, Aims. Her sound in this record is rather different from her earlier work -- it's louder, more electronic, more contemporary. But it's still the Vienna we all know and love, and it's not the first time she's tried something new (see "Grandmother Song" and "Radio" from her previous album, Inland Territory).

One of the aspects of Vienna the songwriter that I admire is how she incorporates a wonderfully diverse array of experiences, abstract concepts, and places into her work. One never forgets that she's a true renaissance woman -- she just finished up a dual degree in business and environmental science (one of her passions is environmental sustainability), and she was a computer scientist out of Stanford undergrad. Aims's album artwork, for example, is quite inspired -- it's a population density map of Detroit:

http://viennateng.com/album/aims

It makes the demographics/stats/sociology nerd in me really happy. I've always loved maps -- centuries-old ship's maps, star charts, subway maps, hilariously inaccurate classical and medieval maps (like those inspired by Herodotus, for example), Tolkien's maps... (The maps room is probably the coolest underrated exhibit in the Vatican Museums compound.) Maps that convey information beyond mere geography, like this one, are even better.

On the subject of demographics... I can't wait until The Signal and the Noise comes out in paperback! It's another case of excellent concept meets brilliant cover design (the art department at Penguin has turned out some really thoughtful covers these few years; Moonwalking with Einstein and The Painted Boy come to mind):

http://www.us.penguingroup.com/static/pages/features/the_signal_and_the_noise

I get the sense that Vienna must have read some Nate Silver, and not just because she's an intelligent, multi-talented person with a mathematical brain and two advanced degrees. This occurred to me while listening to two particular songs on the Aims album, "In the 99" and "The Hymn of Acxiom." The former includes the phrase "said the signal to the noise" -- while the phrase (or a variation thereof) didn't originate with Nate Silver, Vienna does use the line in a song about social (im)mobility and economic stratification. "The Hymn of Acxiom" was, more obviously, inspired by Acxiom, a marketing/advertising company that compiles databases of personal information. It's actually rather creepy how much it knows about us -- Vienna even said as much when she was introducing the song. (Just a year and a half ago, she'd said in an interview that she was trying to figure out how to merge the worlds of music and sustainability -- I suppose she found it!) Even in her Inland Territory days, one could sense from her music that she was highly aware of, and engaged with, the social context in which she was writing (see "Stray Italian Greyhound," inspired by the 2008 presidential election, and "No Gringo," a commentary on the illegal immigration issue). 

The first step to addressing any issue is understanding it -- which is especially difficult with broad, longterm problems like climate change, food security, infectious diseases, &c. I particularly admire people like Vienna Teng and Nate Silver because they're not necessarily on the front lines, not really within the system or calling the shots, but they've nonetheless found ways to achieve great things in fields that they love and simultaneously contribute to our understanding of how our world works and how we might face the challenges of living in it. (Vienna's taken the approach of having two mostly separate careers, music and sustainability, that inform each other; Nate Silver has found an innovative way to apply his expertise, quantitative analysis, to a largely unrelated field.) Interestingly -- and I'm sure it's no coincidence -- all of these areas deal with multitudes, the masses, the People.

One of the great advantages of civilization, which elevates homo sapiens above non-sentient species, is our ability to consider and attempt to solve problems which affect humanity as a whole, as opposed to merely dealing with issues that affect our genetic kin and the small populations we interact with regularly. We're capable of viewing our species (and indeed, our world) as collectively valuable -- even the pieces we can't see -- and of thinking in the big picture, in the long-term, in lightyears rather than miles and millennia rather than mere decades. We acknowledge that which is greater than the individual, the genetic, even the human, and embrace the possibility that comes with it. (I am one, but I am of the many, and my words, actions, ideas may one day sway the multitudes, whether they know it or not.)

Cover-a-Week #20: "City Hall" by Vienna Teng

In celebration of the recent Supreme Court ruling on same-sex marriage, United States v. Windsor:


http://youtu.be/lkrvnkgKTu0

The song was originally written about the 2004 same-sex marriage initiative in San Francisco, but it's just as relevant today; it commemorates the victory of love, justice, and human dignity over the prejudices of a shrinking minority.

Also, Oscar Wilde's two pence: http://www.gocomics.com/thenewadventuresofqueenvictoria/2013/06/27

Cover-a-Week #16: "Lullaby for a Stormy Night" by Vienna Teng

This one's for Mother's Day.


http://youtu.be/w9AL7-pdOCA

I can imagine playing this for a small child on a dark and stormy night...

The Stanford Daily: An Interview with Vienna Teng

Vienna Teng, one of my favourite musicians in the world, is performing at TEDxStanford on Saturday. I got to interview her for The Stanford Daily; the resulting article is here:

http://www.stanforddaily.com/2012/05/18/vienna-teng-stanford-renaissance-woman/

She's extremely nice, and a great conversationalist to boot. I'm not sure what else to say about it (most of it's in the article, though of course, my editor and I had to cut quite a bit), but I think we had more in common that I thought we would, going into the interview.

Anyhow, I'll be seeing her perform this weekend. She said she'd sign my ukulele -- I'm excited!

The Breaking Light (Vienna Teng)

Vienna Teng/Alex Wong have a new single out! (It's been out for a while, but I only just realized that I neglected to mention it.) It can be found on Alex's website:

http://alexwong.bandcamp.com/track/the-breaking-light-live-at-yoshis

All proceeds go to disaster relief in Japan, so go get yourself some awesome music and help out the Japanese!

Another cool tidbit: it was recorded live (with a bit of audience participation), and I, along with a number of Stanford friends, were at the show at which they recorded it. *grins*

Music Video for Vienna Teng's "Gravity", and the Making Thereof

Despite it being the weekend before finals, I spontaneously went to a concert yesterday. I think I was justified; I had just finished two papers, my first final isn't until Wednesday, and it was Vienna Teng. I've mentioned her here before. One of my all-time favorite musicians, and one of the few "modern" musicians whom I really love.

Anyhow, she has one music video (that I know of, at least, but I checked), for her song "Gravity", and it's beautiful -- too beautiful not to share, so here it is:



And then, I found this (the making of the "Gravity" video):



Enjoy!

Vienna Teng

I went to a Vienna Teng concert at the Highline Ballroom with my sister last night. It was my sister's first modern music concert (my second, my first being a Vienna performance in San Francisco).

I've been a fan of hers since Lewis introduced me to her music last quarter. Her story is very interesting and very inspiring; she's a fellow (ethnic) Chinese-American and a fellow (former) Stanford student. She majored in computer science while she attended, and worked at Cisco for two years before achieving some success as an independent musician, whereupon she quit her job (much to her family's consternation, one might imagine).

Her website: http://viennateng.com

This was her last tour, at least for now. She's going to graduate school at Michigan soon (but has reassured us that she'll continue making music, if not performing, while in school).