My kids are involved in some kind of Greek “play” next week. I would be oblivious to this except that my wife asked for some music clips for the bad deity (heavy guitar) competing against the good deity (beautiful violin). It was a Devil Went Down to Georgia moment and I jumped right on it.
There were restrictions on the selections. For example, the clips had to be about 30 seconds, minimizing vocals. (The focus is on the differences in the music, though I suspect we want to avoid further spooking
Paul McCartney conspiracists. The vocal restriction put the kabosh on everything in my ZZ Top collection. After the gratuitous power chords, they jump into jump into vocals. The masturbatory intro to Dire Straits’ “Money for Nothing” would have been perfect, except the violin deity is supposed to prevail. (Fooey.)
Combing through my collection was fun, but I had to rule out most of it: Leo Kottke (not electric), Van Halen (risk of provoking the “David” versus “Sammy” argument among parents), Nirvana (depressing), Ozzy Osbourne (too familiar), etc.
A few hours later it hit me: AC/DC. Yes! The number of excellent riffs posed the opposite problem of which one to choose, but I ultimately settled on Back in Black.
Finding an isolated violin piece was tricky. The Celtic group Dervish has great stuff, but it’s mixed with flute and accordion. And too good. Tchaikovsky would have been tolerable before my kid’s nine months of “dance practice” drained any enjoyment I ever had of the Nutcracker. (Curse you, Drosselmeyer; why couldn’t you have given Clara the Gibson?) I finally found a nice Itzhak Perlman rendition of Brahm’s Concerto in D to sample from.
I clearly put too much effort into stuff like this, but I hope next time I’m called upon to provide musical background, there’s a tighter theme like “multiple artists doing the same tune.” It’d be fun to have Neil Diamond’s “I’m a Believer” run against the Monkees’ and Smash Mouth’s.