My favorite part of Crixmus (aside from a big ass pile of presents and strippers wearing Santa Claus hats) is coming up. Unsilent Night 2008! Yay!
From their website:
Every year since 1992 I've presented UNSILENT NIGHT, an outdoor ambient music piece for an infinite number of boomboxes. It's like a Christmas caroling party except that we don't sing, but rather carry the music, each of us playing a separate track that is a "voice" in the piece. In effect, we become a city-block-long sound system!
Join us and bring a boombox, or anything that will blast a cassette, CD or Mp3. (Cassettes sound the coolest, but we realize cassette players are getting scarce now.) The more tracks we play, the bigger and more amazing the sound is. In recent years, UNSILENT NIGHTs in New York and San Francisco have attracted crowds of over a thousand people, with hundreds of boomboxes… it's spectacular. If you'd like to participate, please e-mail the contact listed for your city for instructions. If you'd like to participate but don't have a boombox or a music player with speakers, you can just show up and join the parade. Everyone is an important part of the procession. Help us make a BIG (and joyful) noise. This is always a free event and all ages are welcome.
UNSILENT NIGHT has spread around the world. In addition to New York, UNSILENT NIGHT is presented in cities such as Los Angeles; San Francisco; San Diego; Santa Barbara; Philadelphia; Atlanta; Cleveland; Tallahassee; Tucson; Houston; New Haven; Boulder; Baltimore; Charleston; Asheville, NC; Manassas, VA; Milledgeville, GA; Bowling Green, OH; Banff, Alberta; Vancouver, BC; White Horse, Yukon Territory; Hamburg and Berlin, Germany; Middlesbrough, England; Melbourne and Sydney, Australia.
We went a couple of years ago and I loved it. At a signal, everyone in the group starts their music device, but because all those people can't hit Go right on time, the music is coming out in hundreds of different moments. The music is all chimes and bells and chants,so the divergence is not cacophonous, but beautiful. Plus it echos off the buildings as the mob ambles along, startling passersby and neighbors. I love it.
If there's one in your town, go, definitely go. http://unsilentnight.com/
And if you see a stripper in a Santa hat, give him a twenty. I'm sure he deserves it.
mr peenee, you better post another post...
ReplyDeleteGosh, we don't have anything that cultured around here, but I *did* see a stripper with a santa hat last night.
ReplyDeleteThe hat deserved 19 dollars. The face? Maybe 95 cents.