An interesting offshoot of my guest appearance on Jason Heath’s Contrabass Conversations podcast was Jason’s discovery of an ‘anti blog’ maintained by an anonymous individual calling himself the Angry Bassist. Although this character and his blog were news to Jason, I have been aware of them for a while now. I’m a little curious how Jason managed to overlook any blog with the word ‘bass’ in it for so long, but that is another matter altogether. But since Jason brought up this weird little situation I thought I would shed some light on it.
The most surprising thing about starting my blog was receiving a minor torrent of comments from an anonymous individual who, for reasons known only to himself, became outraged by my fingerings. ?? Weird but true. While I am certainly not above allowing myself to become the butt of somebody’s joke – oftentimes I feel playing bass in the CSO puts me squarely in the punch line of some monstrous, cosmic joke anyhow – I found some of the comments rather offensive, and the fact they were anonymous somewhat cowardly. The last straw came when one of my CSO colleagues became the target of a rather tasteless comment from Mr. Angry and I felt obliged to discontinue anonymous posting. The anti blog sprung up soon thereafter.
The blog is really more smarmy than offensive, although of late Mr. Angry seems to be scraping the bottom of his jar of smarmalade, posting more about the comic strip The Phantom than the CSO bass blog, but there is no telling when his unhinged mind might swing in my direction again.
I happen to know Mr. Angry’s identity. He is a self-professed ‘amateur’ bassist, although his company bio lists him as a ‘former classical musician’ (? maybe he plays only baroque now, who knows). At the moment I am waiting for the right dramatic timing to unmask him – I’m curious if any of his fellow 9-5ers know about his other identity or if it is a Clark Kent sort of thing.
Anyone wishing to have contact information for the person behind the Angry Bassist mask or his ‘legit’ blog address should feel free to email me, or in true comic book cliffhanger style:
Stay Tuned to this Blog!!!
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4 comments:
Prior to this posting, did Mr. Angry know that you know who he is?
Is public unmasking going to make him stop?
It annoys me no end that someone should be as rude and threatening as you describe, for no reason at all. See the frustrating story of Kathy Sierra and "Creating Passionate Users," a wonderfully insightful blog on internet usability which has been stopped because Ms. Sierra began receiving offensive e-mail and postings on other sites.
A few trolls can really spoil it for all of us.
Jacque
I'm pretty sure he became aware of it recently, if not before.
What he would do is anyone's guess. We're not dealing with the most balanced individual.
That blog is so hilarious, I can't believe it's not a parody.
Hi Micheal,
I'm a big fan of Chicago symphony orchestra in Korea. Why doesn't CSO visit Korea in near future? As far as I know, Chicago symphony has never visited Korea since it was established. In fact there are many CSO fans in Korea, and they even prefer Chicago symphony to great Vienna philharmonic. We would like to see the fabulous brass section of CSO which we could experience only through recordings!
Also I would appreciate if you briefly mention about the partnership with Maestro Chung who is the only great conductor Korea has ever produced. Thanks a lot!
Dae-Jin
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