h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

It's important to remember that labels like 'classical' and 'rock' are important for the purposes of grouping music together to classify it, but not important for very much else at all. You can enjoy stuff regardless of which section you found it in, and if it doesn't fit any section, it need only bother the classifiers. Some people have trouble with this concept.

Music is not made for classification.

And the same can be said for life in general. Is a tomato a fruit or a vegetable? Look...do you want some 'kin pizza or not?

Sky

but (and it is something that totally totally annoys me intensely) if a music shop groups things in genres, then if you're one of those people who only ever listen to country, then you're never going to try a band like, say, the Boss Hoss who aren't a country band but they have done some great stuff in a country stylee. Or you might not find Clapton because he often gets tucked into Rock regardless of what album it is, etc etc.

I've tried out authors because I wasn't wearing my glasses and taken the "wrong" book off the shelf and given it a go anyway. It's the same for music.

(cue Ed now with "why even alphabeticise anyway?")

Well...it's a thought.

I think it could work in supermarkets, too. Random shelf stacking would give a serendipitous element to dinner.

for supermarkets I don't flippin' care what order anything is in as long as they don't keep changing it (and yes, I know why they do it, but it just makes me cross and write rude emails to their head office)

They should all be like Aldi. It doesn't matter where in the world you go into an Aldi, the first thing you hit is the coffee on one side and the booze on the other...

Yearsandyears ago, I was burgled. Twice. By my neighbours. They stole all my CDs. The police officer I got my crime number from for insurance purposes advised me 'Don't underclaim!' Full disclosure: he was my brother-in-law). Anyhow - the insurance company gave a contract to replace them to a music store. They completely cocked it up and so I ended up getting about £2k of tokens, which meant I could have a grand old time buying speculatively.

The best think I bought was an album of Turkmenistani music that I bought solely on the strength of the performer's rather attractive hat on the cover picture.

http://2.bp.blogspot.com/_daIX4Qf_jqA/R2dTTuH6ylI/AAAAAAAAAj4/kn_frxYwEEg/s320/Ashkhabad+-+City+of+Love.jpg

Nice teeth, too.

Funny; in my local Aldi, the customers hit the booze before they go in.

"They should all be like Aldi. It doesn't matter where in the world you go into an Aldi, the first thing you hit is the coffee on one side and the booze on the other..."

In the Aldi in Eccles, it's bread products and coffee on either side of the first aisle by the entrance. Alcohol's the other side of the store, by the knock-off cola...

"Anyway can I ask just what is 20th Century Classical?" [Still Incognitas]

Here is a list of classical composers who spent all or most of their working lives composing between 1900 and 1999:

Rodrigo
Richard Strauss
Gerald Finzi
Prokofiev
Igor Stravinsky
Dmitri Shostakovich
George Gershwin
Maurice Ravel
William Warlock
Edward Elgar
Ralph Vaughan Williams
Walter Piston
John Cage
Elliot Carter
Samuel Barber
Francis Poulenc
Messiaen
Leonard Bernstein
Benjamin Britten
John Williams
Bela Bartok
Kodaly
Jean Sibelius

If you've heard of all of these, you get a gold star.

if you can think of some that I didn't think of, you get two gold stars.

I'm not sure what to give you if you've heard of none of the above, and have not even heard Ravel's "Bolero." But it's a big world.if you're happy with the artists that you like, that's what counts, i8sn'tit?

[In my previous post, I forgot to include Duke Ellington, Sir Michael Tippett, and William Walton. Shame on me! ]

Och, away...

Michael Tippett?
William Walton?
Harrison Birtwistle? (he even has a knighthood)
Arvo Part? (You knew that one!)
Henryk Gorecki?
Frederich Delius? (too early?)
Erik Satie? (ditto?)
Carl Orff?
Paul Hindemith?
Aaron Copland?
Kurt Well?
Dmitri Shostakovich?
Michael Nyman?
John Taverner?

(Not heard of Finzi, Piston or Carter, mind.)

And you had Schostakovich...and maybe one or two others.

You get many gold stars, Edward. I did include Shostakovich, plus some others in my addendum, but Copland and mnay others deserved to be on the list. Kurt Weill is someone I was going to discuss with you in a separate thread.:-0

Little known Sibelius-related fact:

'Finlandia' was the anthem of the Republic of Biafra.

I tried to make my list a global one, but I realize that the country I live in [the U.S.] has affected my exposure to music. For instance, the Brazilian composer Hector Villa-Lobos was missing from my list, as well as Australian Percy Granger. I only know *one* 20th century Chinese composer [Chiang Wen-yeh], and he is not well-known even in China. The whole Middle East is missing, as well as a large swath of southeast Asia.

German Aldis (Aldi Süd - we have 2 varieties here) have just finished (or are maybe still in the process of) reorganising. The booze used to be after the bread, but now it's opposite coffee to give them room for the bread machine.

They've moved the pet food too, because of it, and it's confused my shopping system.

Jayus. Has it come to this? We've run out of things to say and have resorted to discussing the shelf layout at Aldi.