My first teaching gig was 9th grade math, everything from Pre-Algebra, Geometry, to Algebra II/Trig. I was in my classroom after school listening to Red on my boombox, grading papers, and some of my students stopped in. I figured they had questions or wanted to talk about a test or something, but they were killing time before a game, just hanging out at the school, and decided to visit. We chatted for a while about whatever.
When "Starless" started, I said "Shhh! We have to listen to this." Let it play for a while. At some point they asked me what the song was about. I told them that as best as I could work out, it's about chilling, watching the sun go down, letting it get dark around you, then completely dark, and contemplating life, the universe, and everything (yeah yeah, but they didn't know).
When the fast part finally hit, it was like nothing they'd ever heard before. One of them (a trumpet player in the band) asked "What time signature is this?" Ahh, excellent question. I had no idea. Never figured it out before. I told him I didn't know, but it was some bizarro time.
"Yeah, sounds like cut time" says the other, and you could see the first one nearly collapse from embarassment. I told them it was like 7/8 or 11/16 or whatever, something like that. They didn't realize that such things even existed; they'd only ever played tunes in band in 4/4, maybe 3/4, and cut time was like whoa! So anyway, I hopefully expanded their brains a little bit with that, at least their musical brains. I was their math teacher. It was my job.
That's what I think of when I hear "Starless".
Topic: King Crimson Appreciation Thread (Read 95546 times)
