Movement of the hands of conductor Riccardo Chailly while conducting the Concertgebouw Orchestra in Mahler’s Symphony No 4, first movement. Carnegie Hall, New York City, 10 February 2000. Morgan O’Hara has more Live Transmissions pieces here.
Tag: music
Craig Schuftan: Hey! Nietzsche! Leave Them Kids Alone
“Who knew Lord Byron had something in common with My Chemical Romance? Armed with an encyclopaedic knowledge of pop culture, Craig Schuftan traces the history of romanticism in rock and roll, drawing comparisons between 19th century poetic giants and the heroes of indie, glam and emo music. In this talk with Zan Rowe, Schuftan explores the links between music, philosophy and literature and why nobody wants to own up to being emo.”
A cool song made entirely of sounds from Terminator 2.
(Source: http://mikefenton.tumblr.com/)
The Magic Flute. Today’s snowy day/working from home soundtrack.
The Decade in Music Genre Hype
What is good music?
A review of Roger Scruton’s new book, Understanding Music. I like this analogy, where he uses Wittgenstein’s idea that music is like a facial expression:
Just as facial expressions do not communicate something that can be understood so much as enjoin us to imagine what it feels like when we ourselves make such an expression, so too, according to Scruton, does some elemental aspect of musical experience enjoin us to engage our imagining in similar fashion. In this way, and because the experience of music is not, at least not typically, heard as a single expression, the imagination is forced to grapple with the musical shapes and forms as they unfold over time, following its movement as it echoes in, or is anticipated by, the movements of our body and rational imagination.
It is in this aspect of “enjoinment” – of the way we join with the music – that is the key to Scruton’s conception not only of musical understanding but also of its wider cultural and social value. Just as a grimace demands that we imagine the complex of unpleasant feelings and thoughts behind that particular belligerent facial expression, so too music may require us to identify with a world of sensibilities which happens to sit ill with us.
Amazing! Bird sounds from the lyre bird – David Attenborough – BBC Wildlife. When the lyre bird sings, it copies other birds like kookaburras, and even human things it hears like camera shutters, car alarms, and chainsaws (!!!).
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
A Soul Train line dance from 1973 — they’re dancing to Fred Wesley & The J.B.’s Doing It To Death. So good.
(Source: http://billa.tumblr.com/)
Favorite Albums of 2009
Like last year, I spent (way too much?) time going through iTunes to pick some stand-outs for my year in music. Like the previous list, most of these didn’t actually come out this year, but 2009 was the first time I gave them a serious listen. I’ll go month-by-month again, and holy cow January was amazing…
January
Two fantastic albums from Frank Sinatra: both Only the Lonely and the earlier In the Wee Small Hours deal with the same sort of late-night streetlight melancholy.
Rush, Permanent Waves. The Spirit of Radio is a great way to start the year, no?
From Nashville to Memphis is a great Elvis collection. It’s got most of the hits you expect, some lesser-knowns and some good covers.
And another crooner: Cool Spring collects a couple Chet Baker sessions over in Italy. When I Fall in Love is one of my favorites.
Ali Farka Touré. I listened to the Red and Green albums and the self-titled album later this year, but this month’s Niafunke was the best of all. I like the richer sound and more varied instrumentation here.
Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan, Dust to Gold. This is the only thing from him that I’ve heard. I wonder if it’s just the novelty that keeps me coming back, but I don’t regret it. Khawaja Tum Hi Ho (Master It Is Only You) is a good one.
February
My friend Kat Edmonson released Take to the Sky. w00t. Incredible voice and smart arrangements.
Eva Cassidy’s posthumous Somewhere is full of great covers. Some are folky, some are blues-rocky-y, and there’s the old ballad that just kills me every time, My Love Is Like A Red, Red Rose.
March
March was Igor Stravinsky Month around here. Thanks to Alex Ross’ tip, I picked up that 22-disc Works of Igor Stravinsky. When you’re exposed to a full life’s work, you may hear as much that’s mediocre as is brilliant, but you also get a sense of all the labor that goes into it.
The Song from the Hill is a set of recordings of the Wind Harp, this giant sound sculpture on a hilltop in Vermont. Spooky, droning ambient-type stuff.
The Byrds. Mr. Tambourine Man. This is one of those albums that’s just unbelievably chock full of fantastic songs. I had no idea.
April
Kind of a weak month compared to the first three, but I did enjoy Diana Krall’s Quiet Nights and a collection of Richard Strauss’ work for voice and orchestra, Four Last Songs.
May
Lady in Satin, my friends. It was one of Billie Holiday’s last albums. You’ve got her aging voice taking on all-new material, backed (atypically) with a string orchestra. It is so good. For Heaven’s Sake and I’m a Fool to Want You are the stand-outs for me.
A lot of John Coltrane’s stuff leaves me feeling “eh”, but I thought Dear Old Stockholm was really nice. Dear Lord is my pick.
This was my first exposure to Beach House. Treat yourself to their self-titled album and Devotion, and you will be in a happier place. Teen Dream will also rock you, no doubt.
June
I came across Miles Davis’ Legendary Prestige Quintet Sessions late in the month. Lots of good stuff there, collecting tracks from the same sessions that were released separately back in the mid-50s.
Back in college when I was in the orchestra, we did Ravi Shankar’s concerto featured on Sitar Concerto & Other Works. Perhaps the nostalgia influences this choice, but the other pieces are interesting in their own right.
July
Cocteau Twins were totally new to me. Heaven or Las Vegas is really excellent. See also Treasure and Garlands.
Maybe it’s not really summer music, but I finally gave Elliott Smith some attention. I think Figure 8 narrowly wins over XO and Either/Or.
I might be including Dr. Dre’s 2001 simply on the strength of its opening tune, The Watcher. Makes me wish he’d spent more time on the mic these past couple decades. Nice new take on the familiar G-funk sound.
August
A weak month, but I sat with another album it took me a while to catch up on: Bob Dylan, Bringing It All Back Home. It’s really good, y’all.
September
Another excellent month. Another round of success with The Byrds. This time it was Younger Than Yesterday and yet again, it’s another kind of ridiculously saturated-with-goodness album.
Follow that with Intimate Voices, with the Emerson Quartet playing works by Carl Nielsen, Edvard Grieg and my beloved Jean Sibelius.
This month was also the first time I’d heard Mahler’s 9th Symphony all the way through, so I can’t really compare this recording to interpretations. This piece is exhausting. In a good way, I think.
If you only know Erik Satie for his Trois Gymnopédies, then you are cheating yourself. His other piano works deserve your attention. The Gnossiennes are great.
I learned about Symphonies of the Planets from a friend at work. It’s ambient space music based on the NASA Voyager Recordings. Great stuff, if you can track it down.
I love Joanna Newsom, but had never heard her early, self-distributed Walnut Whales EP. That early organ version of Peach Plum Pear is so good.
I closed out the month with another epic box set: Rostropovich: The Russian Years, 1950-1974. Many of the recordings are premieres. And there’s even a few recordings with the composers (e.g. Shostakovich) accompanying on piano. I think that kind of personal, of-the-moment touch adds some life to the listening experience.
October
The 1st of the month brought John Coltrane & Johnny Hartman into my life. It’s barely a half-hour, but man, it is fantastic. My One And Only Love is the clincher.
October also turned into Leonard Cohen Month. Death of a Ladies’ Man might be the favorite, but I’m Your Man is close behind. See also: every other album. They’re all good.
St. Vincent. Actor. Go get it. When I blipped Human Racing, I mentioned that the album gets stronger as it goes on. I stand by that statement and also can’t help but recommend Marry Me.
I closed out the month with some great soul. Sam Cooke’s Night Beat will make you really depressed that he died so soon after. And Marvin Gaye might have stretched himself a bit thin on Here, My Dear, but I love some of the anger and frustration there. Check out When Did You Stop Loving Me, When Did I Stop Loving You.
November
November was Kraftwerk Month. I was familiar with the standard post-Autobahn Kraftwerk canon, but the early ones were nothing like I expected and also very good. Tone Float is trippy psychedelic-jam stuff from before they were Kraftwerk. And the self-titled albums are nice, but Ralf and Florian is probably my favorite from this era.
I’m not much of a Moby fan, but I was quite surprised with Wait for Me. The pace is more chill, the sound more personal. Really good.
In the same vein, a lot of Velvet Underground leaves me feeling “eh”, but Loaded, like the stuff from The Byrds earlier this year, is just packed with goodness. Though I hear it’s a somewhat divisive album…
December
It may be too early to tell, but right now I think the best has been the last three albums in Brian Eno’s Ambient series, Paul & Linda McCartney’s Ram, and, out of nowhere, Wulomei’s album Kpabi.
An Eroica Project. “This site uses the Eroica as the starting point for several different kinds of exploration.” (via)
The crisis in performance is, I believe, based on one simple fact. When it started, rock n roll was dance music. One day we stopped dancing to it and started listening to it and it’s been downhill ever since. We had a purpose, had a specific goal, an intention, a mandate, we made people dance or we did not work, we didn’t not get paid, we were fired, we were homeless. That requires a very different energy. To compel people to get out of their chairs and dance, it’s a working-class energy, not an artistic, intellectual, waiting-around-for-inspiration energy. It’s a get-up, go-to-work-and-kill energy. Rip it up, or die trying.
Little Steven (via austinkleon). There’s some good discussion of this in How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ‘n’ Roll. A while back I tumbled one of the good quotes about music critics versus those who dance.
Having Fun With Elvis On Stage (1974)
Having Fun With Elvis on Stage is considered by many critics to be the worst live album Elvis or anyone else has ever put out. This is because there were no song performances on it, only tape byplay recorded between songs – Elvis telling jokes, requesting a drink of water, and demonstrating eleven different ways to pronounce “Memphis.”
Gotta have it.
Yeasayer at Masquerade (Atlanta) on 6 Apr 2010 – Last.fm
Score. I’ve been wanting to see Yeasayer for a while now.
Passacaglia in C Minor. Aleksandr Hrustevich on the accordion playing one of Bach’s best. That’s just incredible. (via)
(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)
Organisation – Tone Float. 1970. Before they were Kraftwerk.
(Source: http://www.youtube.com/)
Doc Watson, age 16.
We have to start the concert at 8:00 and we have to stop sometime because the halls are rented for a certain time but the music goes on in your mind before and after you play. It’s really just an agreement you make to stop at a certain time. On record, it goes for 40 minutes because an album has these dimensions. It’s just an agreement. But really the music goes on.
Interview with Kraftwerk. Ralf Hütter and Florian Schneider talking with Synapse Magazine. September, 1976. On a side note, Ralf und Florian is a fantastic album.
Mark Larson 