Movies We've Just Watched discussion
LISTS, LISTS, AND MORE LISTS
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Stuff We've Just Listened To
Congrats on the article, P!In re: ABSOLUTE JEST -- I've got the BBC radio on here at work, and they're running one of Beethoven's string quartets, the one in F major, and I'm surprised at how much Adams lifted verbatim for his own piece.
Tom wrote: "Congrats on the article, P!In re: ABSOLUTE JEST -- I've got the BBC radio on here at work, and they're running one of Beethoven's string quartets, the one in F major, and I'm surprised at how muc..."
Ditto, Phillip. !
There was a story on ABSOLUTE JEST onNPR this week: I'll see if I can dig it up.
thanks for the adams article .. cool. been looking for something like that. it would be great to see a list of all the piece he's quoting ... i could definitely hear a couple of the symphonies, and one or two of the piano sonatas. the F major quartet that tom talks about above is also "sampled" by beethoven himself in the 7th symphony.cool beans
Tom wrote: "Congrats on the article, P!.."thanks! this is the second article or story to come out on the graphic scores. nice they are getting some attention. NPR did a radio piece on them a few months ago.
Adams has sampled some of his own works a couple of times -- the ending of HARMONIELEHRE is from an earlier work called LIGHT OVER WATER.
oh, i don't know that one .... love HARMONIELEHRE - seriously, i think the best performance of it i ever heard was at usc under the baton of daniel lewis ... so lucky to have been a student when he was there - i always went to listen to his rehearsals when i wasn't in class. learned more listening in those rehearsals with score in hand than any other class i took there.
It gets slow at the office sometimes, and I often have BBC3 Radio on to fill the quiet, and today they're running a live concert performance of FIDDLER ON THE ROOF, and it is just a nightmare -- acclaimed bass-baritone Bryn Terfel has zero warmth or humor, he comes off like Sweeney Tevye, the Demon Milkman of Anatevka.
oh dearbeen listening to a nice mix of things these past few days - some were presents i received, most were presents i presented:
paul desmond - live in toronto
miles davis - the complete birth of the cool
bill monroe - in the pines
john cage - 62 mesostics for merce cunningham
bill evans - the complete village vanguard recordings
bud powell - the genius of bud powell vol 3
shostakovish symphony 5 - neeme jarvi w/scottish symphony
sitting here in maine in the "sun room" while the first major snow storm hits and i thought it a good time to listen to mozart and dig into what he might have been thinking about at the end of his life. put on symphony 42 (the JUPITER) and wished that i was listening to ricardo muti conducting not nicholas harnencourt - the italians just have a way of digging into the music, not the score. back to composing works for solo saxophone
composed a nice piece for solo saxophone last night and played it for the family. life is good. then i started out on another piece but that one is going to take a while.ok, enough useless business, here's the hot tip of the day
thelonious monk trio with oscar pettiford and art blakey - listening to it this morning with coffee and it always puts me in such a good mood. i think it's just called MONK, if you're looking for it - a prestige release from the mid 1950's.
songs like
LITTLE ROOTIE TOOTIE
SWEET AND LOVELY
BYE YA
MONK'S DREAM
TINKLE, TRINKLE
THESE FOOLISH THINGS
BLUE MONK
JUST A GIGGOLO
BEMSHA SWING
REFLECTIONS
WORK
NUTTY
ASK ME NOW
JUST ME, JUST YOU
'ROUND MIDNIGHT
and
WELL, YOU NEEDN'T
just make life the sweetest it can be
listening to lots of bowie today ... here's a little eulogy that i posted on facebook:so yeah, bowie. i’m sure there are a lot of folks that will chime in on how important he was. he was certainly important for me. it seems rock n roll has always been around to make teenagers feel less weird, less freakish, less alienated. so who better than a gorgeous bisexual from another planet to reassure us that alienation was ok? bowie made queer seem more than ok, he took the sexual ambivalence and confusion that we all had and somehow made it irresistible. regardless of your sexual preferences, there’s a part of every teenager that is going insane while figuring out identity stuff. bowie seemed to have a really intelligent and humorous way of laughing it all off. and for kids like me, who had been raised on cheesy sci-fi and horror films, the idea that a being from outer space could walk among us didn't seem so far fetched.
i think it was 7th grade when vicki thompson said, “hey, sue patrick has the new bowie album, come over after school and check it out!” i knew bowie from SPACE ODDITY, which was huge hit on the radio in those days, but didn’t own any of his records. i got to vicki’s and she put on HUNKY DORY ... there were a lot of great singer songwriters at the dawn of the 70’s who realized how important it was to establish a kind of intimacy when posting a song. as HUNKY DORY played, i could hear that he was connected to this tradition of sitting down at a piano and pounding out a tune, but there was something so different about bowie’s delivery. i liked it immediately. but the real coup was when sue patrick showed up with ZIGGY STARDUST AND THE SPIDERS FROM MARS … she put it on and the three of us started dancing around the room. i think we listened to that album two or three times that afternoon. i was hooked for good.
i went out and bought ZIGGY immediately and then PINUPS followed and ALADDIN SANE followed even more quickly. seemed like bowie was on fire and was cranking out so much good stuff in a really short period of time. and it wasn’t the case that you would have three or four songs that were good on an album along with a few that you just had to sit through. every song had classic status written all over it. he passed through los angeles several times between 1971 and 1976, which was, i believe, the last time i saw him - i think STATION TO STATION had just been released. but i saw those ZIGGY STARDUST, ALADDIN SANE and DIAMOND DOGS tours and they were fantastic - here was a guy that understood theatricality and had a great band that would smolder or shred. but it was really bowie you always kept your eye on - you never knew what he was going to do but you knew it was going to be great. on albums like LOW he introduced us to drone and ambient music - and who’s this guy eno that he was working with? lots of us in the states discovered brian eno through bowie. thanks for that, david!
he was always reinventing himself - and i think that’s the biggest influence he had on my work. don’t repeat your self - just keep digging in and search - there are a lot of worlds to explore. as i write this, i realize i’m not sad that bowie has died. he visited us for a long time and offered up so much great music and kept inspiring us to keep searching. i’m happy he’s been released back to his planet - i’m not sure where that planet is, but i know it must be an amazing place and his peeps are probably happy to have him back! so thanks, david bowie, for so many wonderful things.
I found this:http://data.whicdn.com/images/9394430...
I once wrote about Bowie and my first introduction (age 14-15?) to him growing up in my small midwest town--talk about your alien..
I'm gonna copy what I wrote here:
(This was about my introduction to my German-born friend's record collection that her two older brothers passed onto her in high school. They were 10 years older than us, and one had some unfortunate incidents in his life that kept him from these...the whole collection changed everything for me, although I was already obsessed with music. I was just writing about some of the music we found there.....I hope I do the moment justice.)
....Then just odd random things one would miss only listening to the radio. The Monks. The Doors outside of radio based "Light My Fire", "Hello, I Love You", and "Touch Me." Old Genesis. Spirit.Traffic, Blind Faith, and Cream.Emerson, Lake and Palmer, who did the Jerusalem hymn on Brain Salad Surgery: "And did those feet, in ancient times/ walk upon England's mountains green, etc...And was Jerusalem builded here/ among these dark satanic mills." Country Joe and the Fish. Van Der Graaf Generator. Little Feat. The Grateful Dead ( I never really got that deadhead thing, nor do I follow Phish or any of the other jam bands, but I can see they are good musicians). Lou Reed, Nico and Velvet Underground. T. Rex. Tim Buckley. And. Most Importantly. David Bowie. Everyone knew Bowie was on Lennon's "Fame", but who the hell was he? Some strange dude..oh, yeah, he wrote that Mott the Hoople song, "All The Young Dudes" ("Carry the News, boogaloo, dudes.." ) He hadn't done" Let's Dance" yet.
I remember picking up Barb's copy of Diamond Dogs and dropping it on her flowered bedspread; the drawing was so shocking. Too weird for me; I don't think I want to hear this one, I said. Bowie as a Great Dane? In the same vein as Marilyn Manson, in his time. I didn't even want to touch it, like it might give me a disease. ( It's still not my favorite Bowie listening album, although I love "Rebel, Rebel", and yet I have the remastered album on right now). But Barb said, "Listen to this one.. "1984". ( By the way, it was 1976, so it was still the future then.) Twilight zone intro, that scratchy, ratchety guitar, Superfly piano, the operatic violins--who makes music like this? How do you think to put these sounds together? I was so hooked. Ending in Twilight Zone again. Music was definitely going to go in yet another direction, for me, for le monde. And Ziggy Stardust next --man, it wasn't a fluke, a cheap parlor trick.
Phillip: I thought of you when I read this about Bowie in Rolling Stone:The third song on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars attempts to outline the thin plot. "I'm the space invader," Bowie sings. "I'll be a rock & rollin' bitch for you." That pretty much sums it up. The song features some of the most jaw-dropping guitar work of Mick Ronson's career, and his solo grew to epic proportions during the endless tour in support of the album. "I would ... literally draw out on paper with a crayon or felt tip pen the shape of a solo," said Bowie in the reissue liner notes. "The one in 'Moonage Daydream,' for instance, started as a flat line that became a fat megaphone type shape, and ended as sprays of disassociated and broken lines. I'd read somewhere that Frank Zappa used a series of drawn symbols to explain to his musicians how he wanted the shape of a composition to sound. Mick could take something like that and actually bloody play it, bring it to life."
yay
my goodness, spent a lot of money at amoeba this month!here's what i've been digging ... by way of purchases:
music for merce - 4 CD box set of works composed for merce cunningham's dance company - just amazing stuff by john cage, david tudor, annea lockwood, and many many more
coleman hawkins - the complete keystone collection - another 4 CD box set of beautiful stuff from hawk from the 1940's. fantastic romps, sublime ballads ... you name it, it's all here.
david bowie - heroes (how many copies of this record have i purchased over the years? i have no idea)
david bowie - lodger ... the one bowie record from the berlin trilogy that i've never owned and rarely heard.
xtc - english settlement ... lots of great tracks here
grant green (guitar) - complete recordings with sonny clark (piano) .. blue note records put these guys in the studio and just sat on these recordings until recently. i think they held off because the recordings didn't fit into the soul jazz explosion of the mid-60's. really cool they FINALLY got around to releasing this stuff because it's just so good.
pierre boulez - the three piano sonatas ... nice range in these three works - the earlier schoenberg-influenced stuff in the first, the middle period, quieter, more moody work and the late spectral school showcase. all fantastic.
john cage - freeman etudes (for violin) books 3 & 4 ... i had books 1 & 2 and just found them completely fascinating. really really want to see these scores. they seem to accomplish the impossible.
john cage - ten - ryojanji - fourteen - these three compositions played by the ives ensemble. still need to get to this one!
juana molina - michael ... her third release and probably my favorite. this song writer from argentina plays all guitar and keyboard tracks and sings gorgeous melodies with musical accompaniment that is earthy (the guitar stuff) and otherworldly (the electronics stuff) all in one package.
brian eno, dieter mobius, hans-joachim roedelius - after the heat ... interesting mid-70's eno with these two guys from cluster - a german ambient project. it's got both worlds - the quiet ambient stuff with bits of song elements via eno.
bela bartok - the complete piano concertos ... that third concerto! brilliant, all of it.
anthony braxton trio live in dusseldorf, 1991 - genius at work
maybe there was one more in there somewhere that i'm forgetting
Tracy wrote: "Phillip: I thought of you when I read this about Bowie in Rolling Stone:The third song on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars attempts to outline the thin plot. "I'm the..."
yeah, i've been back in bowie land these past few days ... just playing LOW, HEROES and LODGER .. a lot. i haven't checked out the recent stuff, haven't been drawn to it. i'm probably missing out on something amazing. i have heard so many good things about black star - a few of my friends are on that album, which kind of amazes me. i'm sure i'll get to it eventually, but there are just so many amazing albums from the 70's that for nostalgia and other purposes just blows me the hell away. still addicted after all these years.
Phillip wrote: "Tracy wrote: "Phillip: I thought of you when I read this about Bowie in Rolling Stone:The third song on The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders From Mars attempts to outline the thin ..."
Bowie has been hard to get over for me--and completely unexpected that I would feel this way. Here in St. Pete I'm so glad I made the time to go to a Bowie tribute--so good to know so many people really did get the message, not just me in my little daisy-papered bedroom...
They really dug deep for some cool stuff.
Some Ziggy stuff, plus--
--A regga version of Suffragette City, with the guitar playing some sort of modified melatron-like effects
--The Man Who Sold The World with a trombone solo
--Fame and Golden Years
--Subterraneans,
-- this really old thing off Space Oddity "Memory of a Free Festival"
--"I'm Afraid of Americans"
--"Lazurus"
An altogether satisfying evening. I haven't really given Lodger a good listen either. Blackstar is definitely worth the time, I think.
Bowie was never on my radar at all, until fairly recently. I've been enjoying that BLACKSTAR album a good deal.
he was such an important part of my teenage listening and concert-going years. lost touch with a lot of what he was doing in the 80's.
I like those symphonies that Phillip Glass wrote based on HEROES and LOW.
I realized there are lots of songs on Lodger I like --I never had the album per se but pieces. "DJ" I particularly like.Thanks for the rec on Juana Molina: beautiful.
Saw HAMILTON last night, a strange experience. The show has been so extravagantly praised that I knew I was going to hate it, and I'm glad to be able to report that I didn't hate it. My interest in what was going on was in direct proportion to my being able to understand what the actors were saying/singing -- which means that the show, as far as I can tell, was mostly about George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, George III, and two brilliantly performed Schuyler Sisters. Mr. Miranda, the author/composer/ performer in the lead as Hamilton, seems to be in DIRE need of a vacation.If you're interested, by all means get your hands on the cast album. It is impeccably produced and you get the added bonus of being able to understand what Alexander Hamilton is saying/singing, which was true only about 30% of the time last night.
one of my students is in new york this week and very excited to see it.
caught a few more deals at amoeba over the weekend ...lee morgan - THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS 1958 - 1962 (12 original LPs on six CDs ... $16.98!) .. lee morgan is one of the seminal post-bop trumpet players - if you know coltrane's BLUE TRAIN, you've heard his clean, impeccable and witty phrasing all packaged in a gorgeous tone. morgan was shot to death by a jilted lover at a nightclub (slugg's, i think) in new york in 1972 at the height of his career.
the beatles A HARD DAY'S NIGHT ... watched the film again over the xmas holidays .... really don't know what took so long to get this back in my collection - it was the very first LP i asked for when i was like 4 or 5 years old.
fiona apple THE IDLER WHEEL - my girlfriend introduced me to ms apple, who i liked immediately, but her latest recording (probably not all that new in fact) is just her and a drummer and it's SO GOOD.
elmore james THE DEFINITIVE ... strange that this compilations claims james to be "delta blues", i would firmly place him in the chicago blues tradition. whatever you want to call it, these discs are the life of the party.
jimmy hamilton - CAN'T HELP SWINGIN' ... hamilton was second tenor, first clarinet in the ellington orchestra from the late 40's until duke passed away in the early 70's. he's got such a beautiful sound on clarinet, i can't get enough of it.
Phillip wrote: "caught a few more deals at amoeba over the weekend ...lee morgan - THE COMPLETE RECORDINGS 1958 - 1962 (12 original LPs on six CDs ... $16.98!) .. lee morgan is one of the seminal post-bop trumpe..."
Phillip, this might explain Elmore James: I think a lot of those delta blues guys traveled up and down the Mississippi and therefore spent a lot of time in Chicago
--Tracy the RiverRat
yeah, that's surely part of it ... but i don't hear any influence of say, robert johnson in james' playing.
Phillip wrote: "yeah, that's surely part of it ... but i don't hear any influence of say, robert johnson in james' playing."Well, if wikipedia knows what it's talking about (??) it says he was one of his biggest influences--plus it said he was born in Mississippi and died in Chicago, for what that's worth.
I know what you mean, though, he sounds more in the fast, electric blues tradition than RJ's more acoustic stuff. But, he does work a slide a little like Robert Johnson to my ear (who, granted, is much more spooky- soulful). Some of his acoustic versions do sound a bit more Johnson-y, I think.
I grew up going to bars all up and down that part of the country, and I gotta say, in those days ( 60's -80's), it was pretty rare to hear a straight acoustic player doing the old time stuff the way the original guys seemed to ( I wasn't there, of course-just those old spooky recordings): the venues wanted the fast, danceable stuff. Viva Rush Street..
right - i'm not even thinking the acoustic vs the electric thing, but that's certainly part of it.it's cool - it's all music.
Radiohead's new album, A MOON-SHAPED POOL, was just released and I like it a lot. The furious pizzicato-based opening track "Burn The Witch" is a marvel, and it soon settles down into a dreamier kind of vibe with moments of real loveliness, but this being Radiohead you can be assured that the loveliness won't be lovely for very long. Those Jonny Greenwood-arranged strings will go from sweet to scary and you'll wonder why your skin is crawling...I'm digging on this.
Tom wrote: "Radiohead's new album, A MOON-SHAPED POOL, was just released and I like it a lot. The furious pizzicato-based opening track "Burn The Witch" is a marvel, and it soon settles down into a dreamier ki..."I am completely lost with Burn The Witch. The entire world is in love with the track, and it leaves me 100% cold, even with the admittedly sweet instrumentation going on. The album is totally hot the rest of the way through, though.
It does come out of nowhere, doesn't it. I like the track a lot, though. Have you seen the video they made for it? Worth checking out.
i'm excited to hear it!i picked up LEMONADE for claudia and tore the plastic covering off and listened to it in the car on the way home from amoeba and, damn, it's really really good. the most interesting of beyonce's recordings musically speaking by far. and you know what? when all is said and done, i really like the sound of her voice - and she's learning to use it in new ways as well.
also picked up sun ra's LIVE IN HELSINKI 1971 - the 2 CD set has about 110 minutes of music and an epic interview. that squad ra was working with in the 70's was the gold standard and the band, as it was often the case on the road, is just on fire.
Here's the video/song of "Burn the Witch" :https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_co...
It's the only part of, besides the studio version of "True Love Waits", that I've heard of the album. I love "Burn the Witch"--it's beginning reminds me of something, but not sure what. They have a gift for that. Not sure if it's just another Radiohead song with that staccato or whatever it is--Tom you said pizzacato? Never heard of that---
Ah, wait, it's "The Four Seasons" !!! Brilliant Idea!!
pizzicato is when the strings, violins or violas in particular, pluck the strings rather than "arco" or, with the bow.
i like it.sounds like there is a mix of pizzicato and "col legno" .. when the string player bounces the stick side of the bow against the strings .. it's a great effect and, as tom said, one imagines that johnny greenwood had a hand in writing those string arrangements (you only have to have heard his writing for THERE WILL BE BLOOD to know the guy has studied ligeti and knows how to write for those instruments).
Tom wrote: "Col Legno all over the place, for sure."You guys are good music instructors, thanks;)
Tracy wrote: "Here's the video/song of "Burn the Witch" :https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_co...
It's the only part of, besides the studio version of "True Love Waits", that I've heard of ..."
Thanks for posting the link. Love the song, and the video too. Not crazy about the song's title, but I realize what they're getting at. Look forward to hearing the rest of the album.
Any idea where to listen to it? Spotify doesn't have the whole album yet.
Some blasts from the past -- a tune popped into my head, the little love theme from John Williams's lovely score for a sadly nearly forgotten film of JANE EYRE and there was nothing for it but to snag it on iTunes, followed by a couple cuts from his score for THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK, and I'm okay with that.
Thought you guys might appreciate this New Yorker article about Radiohead's newest, if you haven't already read it:http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cult...
Notice that there is also a Jonny Greenwood article on the bottom.
Well after giving it some time and associating it a bit with that awesome music video, I've warmed up to Burn the Witch a lot. Still doesn't strike me as essential, but hey, not everything has to be. Away from Radiohead, I've been on a bit of a Brazilian kick lately, especially the Novos Baianos album Acabou Chorare. One of the most good vibes albums ever, each track just perfect catchy and dancable MPB. Really need to dig deeper into these guys...
brazilia is a treasure chest - no doubt. there's the rich samba tradition, the bossa nova tradition, the brazilian forms of faro that came over from portugal ... i also discovered a lot of metal bands and surf punk bands when i spent three weeks in sao paolo in 1997. i don't think i've ever been in a place where so much live music was just populating every street and nook and cranny.
Tracy wrote: "Thought you guys might appreciate this New Yorker article about Radiohead's newest, if you haven't already read it:.""radiohead thinks the internet is turning us all into creeps" ... man, my girlfriend would wholeheartedly agree.
Tracy wrote: "Thought you guys might appreciate this New Yorker article about Radiohead's newest, if you haven't already read it:http://www.newyorker.com/culture/cult......"
and the same writer penned both articles ...
enjoy
http://www.infinitemiledetroit.com/