Music and McMusic

Within a 96 hour period,  I had two quite different experiences withe World of Music.  The contrast was stark.

1. On Saturday, I went to the Met Live in HD broadcast of Wagner's Das Rheingold, the first part of the Ring Cycle.  Stunning.  Simply Stunning.  I have wanted to see Wagner's Ring cycle for a very long time, and the Met is putting it on over the next two seasons.  (Part 2 in in May.)  A technically impressive set along with some amazing voices.  Quite the spectacle--which is, after all what Wagner is supposed to be.  The storyline of part 1 of the Ring Cycle is a bit weak--too many things going on at once which are all supposed to hang together into a coherent whole.  But, the weak plot is more than made up for by the moments of brilliance.  Eric Owen as Alberich was incredible.  Sadly, there Met doesn't seem to have a YouTube clip of this performance, but you can get a sense of the opera from another production of it here.

2. Big Time Rush's new album, clever titled B.T.R., came out yesterday, and I took Clara and Lily to go get a copy of it.  We listened to it in the car on the way home.  Big Time Rush is a fake band in the TV show of the same name and the fake band just put out a real album.  You can, if you want (and I don't recommend it) see a music video by the fake band here or here.  My kids love, and I mean love, this show--they laugh hysterically the whole time.  Clara has been almost as excited about this album as she was about the Selena Gomez album that came out a few weeks back.  Lily was excited enough to split the cost of buying the album with Clara.  (Emma, who refuses to admit she likes the show, will sit through every episode and laugh the whole time, but she didn't help buy the CD.)  For those of you who wisely skipped the links above, Big Time Rush's music is pure Paint-By-Numbers Pop.  Treacle.  Insipid.  And downright awful.

So, here is the interesting thing.  I could not get any of my children to go see Wagner with me.  My children like Big Time Rush.  Where did I go wrong?

By the way, you can see the original version of Big Time Rush here.  My kids wouldn't like that either.