It's all about the ATTITUDE

Yo Han had some attitude back in the day and a wicked sense of humor.

Academic Festival Overture (German: Akademische Festouvertüre), Op. 80, by Johannes Brahms, was one of a pair of contrasting concert overtures — the other being the Tragic Overture, Op. 81. Brahms composed the work during the summer of 1880 as a tribute to the University of Breslau, which had notified him that it would award him an honorary doctorate in music.

Initially, Brahms had contented himself with sending a simple handwritten note of acknowledgment to the University, since he loathed the public fanfare of celebrity. However, the conductor Bernhard Scholz, who had nominated him for the degree, convinced him that protocol required him to make a grander gesture of gratitude. The University expected nothing less than a musical offering from the composer. "Compose a fine symphony for us!" he wrote to Brahms. "But well orchestrated, old boy, not too uniformly thick!"

Brahms, who was known to be an ironic joker, filled his quota by creating a

"very boisterous potpourri of student drinking songs à la Suppé"

in an intricately designed structure made to appear loose and episodic, thus drawing on the "academic" for both his sources and their treatment.

Brahmmy got his start playing piano in sailor’s bars. The students at the University knew right away that he was shinin’ on the stuffed-shirts when they heard their tunes hiding in highbrow music. They cheered like maniacs.

All my life I’ve always wanted to render the Hungarian Dances with the I-want-to-rip-your-throwt-owt metal style that you could hear nestled in the 1879 Dance tunes.

Erock comes through for us with the attitude that was impregnated in them 146 years ago.