Beethoven, Britney Spears And A Ghost

Beethoven, Britney Spears and a ghost were sitting at a table in a bar drinking beer.

The ghost said, “It’s interesting that you two are both musicians. Because I am the ghost of a piano.”

Beethoven asked, “An upright piano or a grand piano?”

Britney sipped her beer and asked, “What difference does that make?”

Beethoven said, “Well, after a few beers, is the ghost going to come with me to the men’s room or is the ghost going to go with you to the ladies’ room?”

Britney tried to swallow her beer but she laughed at the same time, choked, coughed and beer came out her nose.

Beethoven reached across the table and handed her his napkin.

The ghost got up and walked away from the table.

A Pointless Addendum:
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This is the sequence that got me thinking about ghosts recently —


It started a few weeks ago when I did the soundtrack for my stop-motion post Dinosaur And Woman: A Puppet Show. As I described in my Sunday post, February Ketchup, my microphone picked up stray percussion noises and I liked the sound and that got me thinking about music workstations and how that type of workstation is built around creating new sounds.

Then a while later, as I described in La Seule Chose Que Je Peux Faire, I tried out some music workstations in real life and a fellow told me about a new machine coming out from Korg, the Korg Kronos. When I looked up the Kronos at the Korg website, it contained this bit of interesting and passionate advertising on their page two:


In addition to being Korg’s premier workstation, KRONOS has it in its blood to satisfy the programmer, sound designer, and synthesizer enthusiast; the musician who dreams of turning visions of the cosmos into sound, of tweaking parameters to conjure invisible sounds from the ether. KRONOS rekindles Korg’s founding dream that is at the core of synthesis: the exhilaration and enjoyment of creating new sounds, sounds never before heard!


That reminded me that not too long ago there was a lot of energy among some musicians to put aside things of the past, old ways of doing things, old sounds, and focus on new sounds. As Korg put it, “...at the core of synthesis: the exhilaration and enjoyment of creating new sounds, sounds never before heard!”

That’s true, new sounds once were “at the core” of synthesis. Young people might not remember it. Nowadays in general most people basically use keyboards to conveniently emulate other instruments, but a few decades ago some musicians were passionate about the synthesizer being the instrument of the future because it could make completely new sounds.

So that reminded me of the book “Analog Days” which I knew existed but had never read. It’s a biography, of sorts, of the late, great Bob Moog, one of the pioneers of synthesized sounds. I looked up the book in the catalogue system shared by the libraries here south of Chicago and the only copy of the book was at the Oak Lawn Library.

And a long time ago, not long after I started doing this blog, I wrote that poem about ghosts at the Oak Lawn library for Jamie and ever since then when I think of that library I think of ghosts.

Anyway, I started this week by driving over to the Oak Lawn library and taking out their copy of “Analog Days.”

I ran in and ran out before there could be any trouble with the ghosts.


That’s the sequence that got me thinking about ghosts recently.