Driving the wrong way

On the way home tonight, I caught the second and third movements of Pinchas Zukerman playing (and conducting!) Beethoven's Violin Concerto in Costa Mesa on KUSC. And I drove myself 2 miles out of the way in order to finish listening to the piece. Because it was broadcast live (I think...maybe time of day has something to do with radio quality), there was a good amount of static, but it was still great.
Which gets me thinking about classical music. I was supposed to go to an LA Phil concert tonight - Dudamel conducting Mahler's 9th---which, BTW, apart from Beethoven and Schubert, is not the only 9th symphony after which the composer died, as the LA Phil seems to insinuate in this posting (http://www.laphil.com/tickets/performance-detail.cfm?id=4374) -- Dvorak also only composed 9 symphonies. But we ended up not able to get rush tickets because the concert was sold out (really?? Mahler's 9th?)

Anyway. In other news, I was listening to the country radio station, and realized the proportion of men to women singers is like, 9:1 or something ridiculous. There were 6 songs in a row that were all male singers. Hrm. And country music does all sound the same. In Hong Kong, a Taylor Swift song came on in a restaurant, and even though I had never heard the song before, I knew it was Taylor Swift. Because the music sounded like her other stuff.

I also had brunch in the loudest restaurant ever. Talk about sound pollution. This was at the Griddle in Hollywood - fantastic place that serves much larger dishes than is absolutely necessary for mid-day caloric intake. My friend and I were positively screaming across the table at each other.

In other news, I've been obsessed with this song: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PZZSsHQmz0E (Mads Langer: Fact-Fiction) Heard it on Castle Season 2.