Category: Music

★

I came to David Bowie, as to all good things, late. My memories of his music in childhood were fragmentary: “Dancing In The Street” was a top 40 hit, and “Let’s Dance” impinged on my consciousness. Later, WNOR and WAFX played that of his material that had been admitted to the classic rock canon: “Suffragette City,” “Space Oddity,” “Changes,” “Rebel Rebel.” I had no idea what lay behind those works.

I came to the better parts of Bowie obliquely, which is appropriate. In the fall of my last year at UVA, Philip Glass’s “‘Low’ Symphony,” based on Bowie’s first album with Brian Eno, came out on CD. It went into my odd heavy rotation. I didn’t check out the album it came from until later, after their collaboration “Outside” had twisted my head, obsessed my thoughts, and ultimately left me cold.

Eventually I found “Low,” but the first listen befuddled me. Then “‘Heroes,'” which was an entirely different story – the title song is probably the only one of his works I can sing from beginning to end. Slowly I was catching up.

I made it through “Ziggy,” “Lodgers,” then “Station to Station.” At which point I began to appreciate what all the fuss was about. The level of the funk he was pulling off in that record!

By contrast the first listen to “The Next Day” underwhelmed me. I’m going to go back and listen to it again, but at the time my dominant impression was “He’s been sick.” The once mighty voice was thin, though still powerfully emotive. And I won’t claim prescience, but it did remind me of the way that Chris Whitley’s voice was eroded in his last recording, or Yauch’s. I probably didn’t think the C word aloud.

But I managed to leave that impression behind. Because the lead single from his now-final album, ★, lifted off the top of my head in a way that his work hadn’t for a while. The skittering drum work of Mark Guiliana anchored a performance by the rest of his band that was at once exhilarating and familiar after the modern jazz I had been consuming for years. And the aesthetic of the video… well, I finally understood Bowie as a complete artist. And I will probably have nightmares with buttons for eyes for a long time.

I devoured the album when it came out last Friday, pausing only over “I Can’t Give Everything Away.” It sounds like a valediction, I thought.

Then this morning, and the place in my mind that was consumed by Bowie’s vital comeback realigned in an instant. It wasn’t a comeback. It was a parting gift. Bowie’s performance in “Lazarus” was completely convincing because he knew what it was to be in a hospital bed.

So now he’s gone, and I’m left to marvel at the wild oracular talent, the body of work that it left, and how far ahead he was and how far I had to go to catch up with him.

Sarah was ninety years old

In the course of listening to all the music in my iTunes library at least twice (a multi-year project!), this morning I came across Arvo Pärt’s 1991 album Miserere. It’s a touchpoint for me—it was the first album of his music I ever bought, probably the first Hilliard Ensemble album I ever got, and one of the first albums of modern classical music I ever bought. (I think the first modern classical album I bought was the Kronos Quartet’s Black Angels.)

As I listened to it, I remember being simultaneously profoundly moved and confused by the third track, “Sarah was ninety years old,” scored for three voices, percussion, and organ. The piece begins in contemplative solo percussion, which gradually picks up intensity until the first vocal entrance, then repeats, until finally the long stretches are ended by the entrance of an organ and a soprano solo that spirals up into ecstasy (as Sarah conceives and bears a son at the age of 90).

Something that had puzzled me from my first listen was just exactly how it was that the percussion didn’t drive me nuts. The percussion consists of four-beat patterns of high and low tones, continuing initially for over five minutes before voices enter. How does it pull the listener in?

I think I figured it out listening to it this morning. Turns out, it’s math. The percussion part runs through permutations of three low tones and one high tone, with varying repetitions. So the first section goes:

  • L L L H (4x)
  • L L H L (4x)
  • L H L L (4x)
  • H L L L (4x)

And then it repeats, but now each permutation is only repeated three times. Then two. Then one repetition of each permutation, at high urgency and with a fierce percussive attack.

Then: the voices arrive.

And we realize that we have been counting the repetitions and that our breath has been quickening in anticipation of what happens when the pattern ends.

The work is literally minimalistic, but it’s also highly meditative. I don’t think anyone online has specifically written about how Pärt creates this effect, so I figured I’d share.

Enjoy!

New mix: My timing that flawed

Midsummer, so time for another mix. At some point I’ll break this meta-thing I have where the mix starts out party and ends up somber, but this will not be the mix to break the pattern.

A few track notes in line below.

  1. Blind Man Can See It – James Brown (In the Jungle Groove). This is a classic James Brown groove with nothing much else going on, but it’s on here for the first 30 second snippet of Brown talking with the drummer. Dag-a-dag-a-dag-a…
  2. Jungle Grove – Buckshot LeFonque (Music Evolution). I had written off Buckshot LeFonque as a kind of lazy exercise after the first album. I finally got around to checking out the second (and last) platter Branford’s gang waxed, and I’m glad I did. This track features some seriously hot playing as the group plays some live jungle.
  3. Blue Line Swinger – Yo La Tengo (Prisoners Of Love). Yeah, I know, there are probably a bunch of live cuts of this that are better, but this is the one I first learned to love.
  4. Lotus Flower – Radiohead (The King of Limbs). Get your Thom Yorke dance on.
  5. Song Of The Stars – Dead Can Dance (Spirit Chaser). Get your mid-90s cultural appropriation dance on.
  6. The Great Curve – Talking Heads (Remain In Light). I think this is the only track on this album that hadn’t previously made it onto a mix tape.
  7. Optimistic – Radiohead (Kid A). To think that I once considered this the happy song on this album.
  8. Idioteque – Virginia Sil’hooettes (Best of BOCA: The First 20 Years). I know, I know. But honestly I was blown away by what these Hoos could do in the studio.
  9. Ascension Day – Talk Talk (Laughing Stock). I’m still not sure what this song is about, but I do know that I haven’t been able to stop playing this album since I finally picked it up a few years ago.
  10. Total Trash – Sonic Youth (Daydream Nation). Is it bad that reading Kim’s autobiography made me want to listen to Sonic Youth songs that weren’t sung by Kim?
  11. You Get What You Deserve – Big Star (#1 Record – Radio City). Ditto the comment on track 6.
  12. Nicotine & Gravy – Beck (Midnite Vultures). Okay, here we go. I enjoyed this album ironically when it came out, now I just enjoy it. “I’ll feed you fruit that don’t exist/I’ll leave graffiti where you’ve never been kissed/I’ll do your laundry, massage your soul/Then turn you over to the highway patrol.”
  13. Beykat – Youssou N’Dour (Joko From Village To Town). I could listen to Youssou sing anything, even a track that would be at home on a Europop radio station.
  14. Rose Parade – Elliott Smith (Either/Or). Haven’t been able to let go of this one.
  15. Prïtourïtze Planinata – Bulgarian State Television Female Choir (Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares). Another album I came to late, and can’t stop listening to.
  16. Love Will Tear Us Apart – June Tabor & Oysterband (Ragged Kingdom). Surprising how well this works.
  17. Nothing But Heart – Low (C’mon). Fighting through.
  18. Cherry Chapstick (Acoustic Version) – Yo La Tengo (Today Is the Day! – EP). Have loved this tune for a long time in its original form. The acoustic is wistful and summer afternoonish.
  19. Into Dust – Mazzy Star (So Tonight That I Might See). Another track that echoes around my head when it’s quiet. 
  20. Fading Away – The Church (Gold Afternoon Fix). This may not have been the album that The Church wanted to make—stories of their fights with the producer and their despair at LA and their label are plenty—but it’s still an album that I know almost every track on.
  21. Bye Bye Beauté (Coralie Clement) – Nada Surf (if I had a hi-fi). Not the first time I’ve bought an album based on a cover. I originally wasn’t taken by too many songs on this cover album but this one kept at me, thank goodness.
  22. A Mother’s Last Word To Her Daughter – Washington Phillips (The Half Ain’t Never Been Told, Vol. 1). Very little dulcimer work in the gospel music I’ve heard. This is a fascinating track to sign off this mix as we go and see the King.

Bascom Lamar Lunsford: the Berea recordings

Bascom Lamar Lunsford, courtesy Asheville and Buncombe County on Flickr
Bascom Lamar Lunsford, courtesy Asheville and Buncombe County on Flickr

Thanks to Tyler, I’m spending the morning listening to archival folk music recordings and grinning from ear to ear.

I’ve written about cousin Bascom Lamar Lunsford before. In the years since the CD reissue of the Anthology of American Folk Music, which features several of his songs, quite a few folk artists have approached his tunes anew, with varying levels of success (check out Frank Fairfield’s version of “I Wish I Was a Mole in the Ground“). But nothing’s like the real thing.

So I was thrilled to get a link from Tyler on Facebook pointing me to the digital archives at Berea College with a collection of forty-two Bascom Lamar Lunsford archival recordings, plus a few large group songs and a newsreel, available for free listening and download. The quality of the recordings, made for Columbia University in 1935 and archived by Berea, isn’t great — there’s reel-to-reel noise on most of them, and the otherwise revelatory performance of “Mole in the Ground” is marred by uneven recording or playback, leading the pitch to wander all over. But hey–free Bascom Lamar Lunsford! Go listen!

More reading: a Bascom Lamar Lunsford/University of Virginia/Virginia Glee Club connection.

Listen: “Swannanoa Tunnel” by Bascom Lamar Lunsford from the Berea archive

An appreciation of John Oliver

Boston Globe: Tanglewood chorus director Oliver to step down.

I auditioned for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus almost ten years ago. In that audition, I showed my lack of symphony and opera experience by singing a work by Landini — a good audition piece for an early music ensemble, woefully out of place for a symphony chorus. But John Oliver took a risk on what he heard and invited me to join the chorus. And he let me continue to participate through travel, at least one blown reaudition, and the appearance in the chorus of many other more qualified singers.

In the process, he has taught me a great deal as a singer, including:

  • Sing with the whole body as an instrument. Be aware of the resonant space in your head, the position of your body, the depth of your breath.
  • Language matters deeply. Articulating precisely conveys not just words but meaning.
  • Memorization allows you to inhabit the music deeply and fully — and sometimes builds electricity in the performance via sheer terror.
  • Connect with the conductor and the audience.
  • Be committed completely. Don’t settle for less, in yourself or others.
  • There isn’t one “correct” interpretation of a musical work. Be open to what others bring to it.

There is much to be said for John’s tenure as founder and director of the TFC, and I’ll write it someday. For today, I’ll  just note my gratitude for this acerbic, demanding, opinionated… and secretly generous man, and for what he taught me as a singer.

New mix: In ragtown like I always was

It’s another new year, another mix. As always, this is no more or less than what happened to be kicking around my iTunes for a long period of time, so I make no claim for it hanging together. Except I’m kinda happy about the string of tracks from #2 through #13 and parts of the last stretch.

Some track specific notes:

“Papa’s Got a Brand New Bag”: Yes, yes he does. You can’t have this track, with James Brown yelling out “This is a hit!”, in a playlist and not have it leading off.

“Rotating Head (raga version)”: A tabla-heavy remix of a song most familiar from the “Ferris Bueller” soundtrack, this picks up the groove from Track #1 and takes it into…

“Seen and Not Seen”: Groove city. Check the way the handclaps, bass, and guitar work together. Much like the way the next groove builds…

“Autumn Sweater”: Here the groove is all drums and bass, especially bass. Love what James McNew does with the bassline during the break here.

“Electricity”: A break from the groove for a guitar based rocker. I had forgotten this album until Shuffle brought it back to me. A great track.

“Masanga”: An obscurity, this popped up on a compilation of sub-Saharan guitar that I found on Bandcamp over a year ago. I love the purely guitar driven groove. Seriously propulsive and fun.

“I Love This Life”: Also propulsive and fun, but almost all synths, I slept on this track from The Blue Nile for a long time. I’m not sure what “ragtown” meant to Paul Buchanan, but when I listen to this track I feel like I understand.

“The Statue Got Me High”: A non-sequitur but a fun one, and a great singalong.

“Mod Lang”: Gee, there’s a “groove” theme going on on this mix, which is unusual for me. I love how Chilton takes a handful of lyrics that are almost nonsense and weaves them into urgency.

“Courage”: A PG rarity that was released alongside the 25th anniversary reissue of So a few years back. Too lyrically heavy and overtly structured a song to fit comfortably on that album, I don’t know if it works well here either but I couldn’t cut it.

“Rain”: Groove, man. Complete with the backward bit at the end.

“JC”: Shift of tone to a minor key with a fair amount of distortion.

“After the Flood”: This track is the still heart of this mix. I stumbled across Talk Talk by accident, more or less, thought they had been on my list of bands to find for a long time thanks to the late lamented Lists of Bests. This is an incredible track, building from almost inaudibility up through some killer organ work into a long burn of a distortion guitar solo. I have listened to this one for days at a time.

“Try Not to Breathe”: Taking a breath, this is a song I didn’t think so much of until I was recovering from surgery a year ago. Then it made a lot of sense.

“No Love Lost”: The rare Joy Division song I like more as an instrumental, but there’s still something compelling in Ian Curtis’s delivery here.

“Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake”: Boy, Nika can really do apocalyptic, can’t she? Even if we don’t totally understand what she’s singing about.

“Svatba”: The transition from Nika’s wordless outro to “Lick the Palm” into the Bulgarian voices here was a happy shuffle accident.

“Accordion”: Another happy accident, another supremely bizarre rap from MF Doom.

“Super Mario”: Well, as long as we’re doing bizarre, I figure an a cappella version of an 8 bit videogame theme qualifies.

“Gallows Pole”: If there’s a theme wending through the back half of this, it might be covers vs. authenticity. The ballad, which started out as “The Maid Freed from the Gallows” in the Child ballads before being recorded as “The Gallis Pole” by Lead Belly, is colored by Plant’s rock god delivery until it’s hard to tell at the end who is swinging from the gallows pole, and whether the pole is literal or metaphoric. A neat trick.

“Tall Trees in Georgia”: Again, covers and authenticity. When Eva Cassidy was alive, she was lauded as a vocalist but not so much as an authentic jazz talent (I remember one review saying “She even covers Buffy Ste Marie!”). It’s a moving performance nonetheless.

“They Won’t Let Me Run”: A beautiful groove for an ugly story. 

“Holocene”: Was totally obsessed with this song for about 18 months.

“Let It Down”: Tension release necessary after the last few tracks.

“Rill Rill”: Speaking of authenticity, how about copping “Can You Get to That?” for this song about teenage girl angst? Well, yeah, and it works, so the hell with authenticity.

“(Won’t We Have a Time) When We Get Over Yonder”: Another Bandcamp find, this one is a different kind of groove entirely, almost an incantation until one of the Jordan River Singers slips over completely into a Spirit induced holler. And that leads to…

“The Times They Are A Changin’”: I was disappointed with the rest of this album only because it doesn’t live up to its title the way this lead off track does. “Times” is truly one of Dylan’s most gospel-like songs to begin with, and this version pulls out all the revival stops. A fantastic cover.

  1. Papa’s Got A Brand New Bag, Parts 1, 2 & 3 – James Brown (Star Time)
  2. Rotating Head (raga version) – English Beat (Lives of the Saints 5)
  3. Seen And Not Seen – Talking Heads (Remain In Light)
  4. Autumn Sweater – Yo La Tengo (I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One)
  5. Electricity – Spiritualized (Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space)
  6. Masanga (Congo) – Jean Bosco Mwenda (Hata Unacheza: Sub-Saharan Acoustic Guitar & String Music, ca. 1960s)
  7. I Love This Life – The Blue Nile (I Would Never – EP)
  8. The Statue Got Me High – They Might Be Giants (Apollo 18)
  9. Mod Lang – Big Star (#1 Record – Radio City)
  10. Courage (Radio Edit) – Peter Gabriel (Courage)
  11. Rain – The Beatles (Past Masters, Vols. 1 & 2)
  12. JC – Sonic Youth (Dirty)
  13. After The Flood – Talk Talk (Laughing Stock)
  14. Try Not To Breathe – R.E.M. (Automatic for the People)
  15. No Love Lost – Joy Division (Substance 1977-1980)
  16. Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake – Zola Jesus (Conatus)
  17. Svatba – Bulgarian State Television Female Choir (Le Mystere Des Voix Bulgares)
  18. Accordion – Madvillain (Madvillainy)
  19. Super Mario – BYU Vocal Point (Best of BOCA: The First 20 Years)
  20. Gallows Pole – Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin III (Remastered))
  21. Tall Trees In Georgia – Eva Cassidy (Live At Blues Alley)
  22. They Won’t Let Me Run – John Vanderslice (Cellar Door)
  23. Holocene – Bon Iver (Bon Iver)
  24. Let It Down (Bonus Track) – George Harrison (All Things Must Pass (Bonus Track Version) [Remastered])
  25. Rill Rill – Sleigh Bells (Treats)
  26. (Won’t We Have a Time) When We Get Over Yonder – Rev. W.M. Anderson & the Jordan River Singers (When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time: African-American Gospel, 1939-51)
  27. The Times They Are A Changin’ – The Brothers and Sisters (Dylan’s Gospel)

The Brahms Requiem at 41

Symphony Hall, orchestra rehearsal for the Brahms Requiem.
Symphony Hall, orchestra rehearsal for the Brahms Requiem.

(By which I mean, of course, my age, not the age of the work.)

I last wrote about Brahms’ Ein deutsches Requiem in 2009, at the end of a run in which we performed the work in Symphony Hall, issued an official recording, and reprised it at Tanglewood. It was a different time: James Levine was at the relative height of his powers and I was singing more regularly with the Tanglewood Festival Chorus.

We reprised the work a few years later under Christoph von Dohnányi, in a totally different performance. By that time I wasn’t blogging as regularly so I don’t have any notes from that run. I remember a few things, though: his tempi were brisk, his interpretation totally unsentimental, and his demands on the chorus’s diction were fierce.

This run, which concluded a week ago, was to have been conducted by the great Rafael Frühbeck de Burgos, with whom I was fortunate to sing a few times. But he passed away this summer, and the task of filling his shoes went to Bramwell Tovey. The chorus had sung with him before, but I had not, and had heard about his affability but not much about his musicianship. He turns out to be, at least with the Requiem, a conductor concerned not so much with putting an individual stamp on the work than with seeking how the text determines the flow of the piece. To that end he, like Dohnányi, asked the highest level of diction and pitch precision from the chorus. Our chorus conductor, Bill Cutter, helped with that, pitilessly letting us know when we could be doing better.

For this performance, my third time through the work, I had a pretty good idea of what some of the major challenges would be for me. I wrote about some of them in the post from Tanglewood:

I found what may be the real culprit of the sixth movement, for me at least. It’s not just the overall arc of the piece, but specifically the tenor part immediately preceding the fugue, where all choral voices respond… And the text is sung at absolutely full volume over some of the thickest orchestration in the work, and in the high part of the tenor range.

This is the rub, at least for me. The need to support the voice is strong, but at that volume and emotional fervor it’s very easy to tip over from supporting to tightening, and then the battle is lost and the voice closes progressively until it is difficult to get any sound out at all. Once that happens the following fugue is unsingable.

Well, friends, I’m here to tell you that I had the right problem area, but the solution was both easier and harder than I thought.

The hard part was in placing my voice properly. I have never had more than a few hours of formal voice instruction since I got my full instrument, and so it takes me a while to learn things that I suppose most voice majors know inherently. (The hazards of being a sciences major and not taking advantage of the meager vocal instruction offerings at my undergrad, among other things.) Sometime over the past few years, though, I managed to learn about two important concepts in voice placement: singing toward and through the mask, and keeping the ceiling of the vocal chamber high. What follows is an embarrassing amateur’s assessment of how this works; I welcome correction.

The “mask,” or the frontal bones of the face, is where a good portion of the resonant overtones of the voice develop, due in no small part to vibrations through the sinus cavities (yes, they’re good for something besides infections). But the voice must be directed through this part rather than being allowed to linger in the back of the vocal chamber for the resonance to take effect. Once it does, the difference is startling: a brightness and sharpness to the sound that cuts through surrounding noise for far less vocal effort. The challenges are in keeping the sinuses clear (no small task thanks to the common cold) and managing the position of the facial muscles that support singing so that the placement happens properly.

The full vocal chamber, otherwise known as the front of the face, the cavity of the mouth, and the back of the throat, is important in developing the fullness of the sound. Again, my amateur guess is that this has something to do with developing the right resonant frequencies. It turns out that for me, one of the most important parts of this process, in addition to the mask, is keeping the soft palate, which forms the ceiling of the vocal chamber, high and out of the way. If it comes down, producing sound on pitch is much harder, the sound is muddied, and if you’re singing through the mask and not taking advantage of the full chamber you get a sharp thin sound rather than a penetrating fuller sound.

This leads me to the other thing that was much easier in solving the problem. One of the things that makes keeping the soft palate in the proper place extremely hard is not being prepared for the next vowel sound that is being produced. If you are unsure about whether an e or an ah is coming next, the palate doesn’t know where to go, and producing any sort of sound at all becomes a challenge of brute force.

In this context, my prior problem about my voice “tightening” had a simple diagnosis: I was not comfortable with the text. By that point in movement six my memory was generally unreliable so I couldn’t anchor the Den es wird die Pasaune schallen. I finally figured out what was going on in one of our rehearsals when we started on the second repetition, Der Tod is verschlungen in den Sieg, sung on virtually the same tune, and I had no difficulty in keeping the voice from tightening. Why? I knew the words better! I didn’t have to force the sound, and that meant I could keep the palate high and the muscles in the proper place! All I had to do to make this a general solution was focus on ensuring that I had the right words!

So for this run I managed, most of the time, to keep the apparatus such that I was producing the right sort of sound throughout, and it made all the difference in the world. I even sang in my church choir the following morning; usually after a Brahms Requiem run I’m a ragged baritone for at least a week.

Lessons learned?

  1. Stay conscious of the mask and the ceiling of the chamber.
  2. Learn the damned text. First, if possible.

This should be fun as we head into the Rachmaninoff that we’ll sing next. It’s been a long time since I’ve had to learn that much Russian.

Symphony Hall, 2014
Symphony Hall, 2014

New mix: been so lonesome, just ’bout flew away

Percolating this one for a while, as usual. Genesis has been the end of a long hard winter, some outstanding old gospel 78s that washed up on Bandcamp, and a few songs (“Headspins,” “Genius of Love”) that seized my playlist and wouldn’t let go.

  1. In Your Eyes (Special Mix) – Peter Gabriel
  2. I Won’t Be Long – Beck (I Won’t Be Long)
  3. City With No Children – Arcade Fire (The Suburbs)
  4. Man – Neko Case (The Worse Things Get, the Harder I Fight, the Harder I Fight, the More I Love You (Deluxe Edition))
  5. Headspins – Splashh (Comfort)
  6. Little By Little – Radiohead (The King of Limbs)
  7. Weightless – Brian Eno (Apollo: Atmospheres & Soundtracks)
  8. Root Down – Beastie Boys (Ill Communication)
  9. White Girl – Soul Coughing (Irresistible Bliss)
  10. Can You Get to That – Funkadelic (Maggot Brain)
  11. Borrowed Time – Alexander O’Neal (Purple Snow: Forecasting the Minneapolis Sound)
  12. Bittersweet Me – R.E.M. (New Adventures In Hi-Fi)
  13. Genius Of Love – Tom Tom Club (Tom Tom Club)
  14. Patience – The Men (Campfire Songs)
  15. What Are They Doing in Heaven Today? – Dixie Hummingbirds (When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time: African-American Gospel, 1939-51)
  16. Stones In My Passway – Robert Johnson (The Complete Recordings)
  17. Royals – Lorde (The Love Club EP)
  18. Deeper Into Movies – Yo La Tengo (I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One)
  19. Too Much of Nothing (take 2) – Bob Dylan (A Tree With Roots)
  20. That Was My Veil – June Tabor & Oysterband (Ragged Kingdom)
  21. Wash. – Bon Iver (Bon Iver)
  22. Avalanche (Slow) – Zola Jesus, JG Thirlwell & Mivos Quartet (Versions)
  23. Green, Green Rocky Road – Dave Van Ronk (Inside Llewyn Davis: Original Soundtrack Recording)
  24. Water Wheel – Steve Gunn (Time Off)
  25. Ceremony – New Order (International: The Best of New Order)
  26. One Day – Angelic Gospel Singers with the Dixie Humming Birds (When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time: African-American Gospel, 1939-51)
  27. Winter’s Come And Gone – Gillian Welch (Hell Among The Yearlings)

New mix: something other than regret

Starting to have the energy again to think about posting here, which is nice. I’ve been down the grindstone for a very very long time, and now, faced with some unexpected downtime, I’m going to use the opportunity to catch up on a  few things.

Starting with this. I completed something other than regret, my 33rd mix in the modern era, on the 10th of November, and it’s all over the map, but with some pretty strong thematic material running through as well. I especially love the way that Laura Marling excavates on the three tracks from Once I Was an Eagle, which is my favorite album of 2013; the woozy, witchy, R&B-driven silliness of “Nommo (The Magick Song)” (“All praises due to the Black man,” indeed); the light touch of Antony’s “Crackagen”, and the way that John Fahey’s riff on Clarence Ashley’s “The Coo Coo Bird” fits so seamlessly with gospel. I’ve definitely got something other than regret.

  1. Song-Song – Brad Mehldau Trio (The Art Of The Trio Volume 3)
  2. Nommo- The Magick Song – Gary Bartz And NTU Troop (I’ve Known Rivers And Other Bodies)
  3. Is That Enough – Yo La Tengo (Fade)
  4. Blue Light – Mazzy Star (So Tonight That I Might See)
  5. Life & Soul – The Sundays (Blind)
  6. Take The Night Off – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
  7. I Was An Eagle – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
  8. Crackagen – Antony and the Johnsons (Another World)
  9. Everybody’s Heart’s Breaking Now – Lavender Diamond (Incorruptible Heart)
  10. Variations On The Coocoo – John Fahey (The Dance Of Death & Other Plantation Favorites)
  11. Where Shall I Go? – Sister Marie Knight (When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time: African-American Gospel, 1939-51)
  12. Don’t Give Up – Peter Gabriel (So (Remastered 2012))
  13. Incinerate – Sonic Youth (Rather Ripped)
  14. Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes – Sun Kil Moon (Tiny Cities)
  15. We’ll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning – Gram Parsons (G.P. / Grievous Angel)
  16. Breathe – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
  17. Turn Your Color – The Men (Campfire Songs)
  18. I’ll Fly Away – Southern Sons (When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time: African-American Gospel, 1939-51)

New mix: will you buy me a shaky heart

As I grow … well, older isn’t right, and neither is more mature, so let’s just go with “as I grow,” I find that what I listen to is less about lyrics and singing along and more about just listening. So, of the 19 tracks on this mix, six have no words at all, and a few more are mostly nonsense.

No real notes here, except to note that Jonny Greenwood’s Bodysong, from 2003, is an unlikely sleeper album. There are bits that remind me of Ravel, and Berg, and glitchy techno, and sometimes they come in the same song.

Also: why did it take me so long to listen to Bruce Cockburn? He would have been right up my alley in 1988 or 1989.

Also also: I’m in the crowd for that 2004 Sonic Youth performance at the Showbox. This one.

  1. Burning Of Auchidoon – Maddy Prior (Silly Sisters)
  2. Tree (Today is an Important Occasion) – David Byrne (The Knee Plays)
  3. Ready to Start – Arcade Fire (Ready to Start – Single)
  4. Lovers In a Dangerous Time – Bruce Cockburn (Stealing Fire (Deluxe Edition))
  5. Wiggle-Waggle – Herbie Hancock (Warner Archives)
  6. Everything In Its Right Place – Radiohead (Kid A)
  7. 24 Hour Charleston – Jonny Greenwood (Bodysong (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture))
  8. Concorde – Modern Jazz Quartet (Concorde)
  9. Track 4 – Sigur Rós (( ))
  10. Chemtrails – Beck (Modern Guilt)
  11. Sorrow – The National (High Violet)
  12. I Should Watch TV (M. Stine remix) – David Byrne & St. Vincent (Brass Tactics EP)
  13. Pattern Recognition – Sonic Youth (Live at the Showbox in Seattle (2004))
  14. Milky Way – Weather Report (Weather Report)
  15. Alone And Forsaken – Neko Case (Live from Austin, Texas)
  16. Hi-Speed Soul – Nada Surf (Let Go)
  17. After All – Christian Scott (Yesterday You Said Tomorrow)
  18. Bode Radio/Glass Light/Broken Hearts – Jonny Greenwood (Bodysong (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture))
  19. I Wanna Dance With Somebody – David Byrne (David Byrne: Live from Austin, TX)

The Colonoscopy Playlist

I can tell that I’ve reached that certain special age based on what my interactions are with the medical profession. And this week I had one of those really “special” ones: a visit from the camera snake.

As I was getting ready for the procedure, I realized that there were a lot of songs that were inadvertently funny in the context of a colonoscopy, and that there didn’t seem to be a lot of people putting them together in playlists. So I figured I’d do it so you don’t have to. (You’re welcome.) I posted a request for help on Facebook and got a lot of suggestions from my friends, so this was a real labor of love…from the bottom to the top.

  1. Baby Got Going – Liz Phair
  2. I Like to Move It – Reel 2 Reel
  3. Relax – Frankie Goes to Hollywood
  4. Shout – Tears for Fears
  5. Take It Easy – The Eagles
  6. When the Levee Breaks – Memphis Minnie
  7. Medley: Highway to Hell -> Shook Me All Night Long – AC/DC
  8. Highway to Hell – AC/DC
  9. It Looks Like I’m Up Sh*t Creek Again – Tom Waits
  10. Medley: “All Stripped Down” / “The Earth Died Screaming” / “The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me” / “New Coat of Paint” / “Chocolate Jesus” / “Take It With Me” ” / “Tango Till They’re Sore” / “Don’t Go Into That Barn” / “The One That Got Away” / “How’s It Gonna End” / “Make It Rain” – Tom Waits
  11. All Things Must Pass – George Harrison
  12. Chocolate Rain – Tay Zonday
  13. Everything Must Go – Manic Street Preachers
  14. The Waiting is the Hardest Part – Tom Petty
  15. Pants on the Ground – Larry Pratt
  16. From the Bottom to the Top – Frank Sinatra
  17. Way Down in the Hole – Tom Waits
  18. I’m Looking Through You – The Beatles
  19. Wide Open Spaces – Dixie Chicks
  20. I Can See Clearly Now – Johnny Nash
  21. Back Door Man – Howlin’ Wolf
  22. In Too Deep – Genesis
  23. Da Butt – EU
  24. Mega Colon – Fischerspooner
  25. I’m Beginning to See the Light – Bobby Darin
  26. Shine a Light – Rolling Stones
  27. The End – The Doors
  28. Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden
  29. Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash
  30. Moon River – Henry Mancini
  31. Boogie in the Butt – Eddie Murphy
  32. Baby Got Back – Sir Mix-A-Lot
  33. Show Me the Way – Peter Frampton
  34. Stinkfist – Tool
  35. John Mayer – Inside Wants Out
  36. Up in the Dark – The New Pornographers
  37. Searching With My Good Eye Closed – Soundgarden
  38. Shot in the Dark – Ozzy Obourne
  39. Way Down Now – World Party
  40. Already in a Daydream – Freddy Jones Band
  41. Bad Moon Rising – Creedence Clearwater Revival
  42. Scatman – Scatman John
  43. Into the Great Wide Open – Tom Petty
  44. Tighten Up – Archie Bell and the Drells
  45. Supermassive Black Hole – Muse
  46. Broken Hearts Are For Assholes – Frank Zappa
  47. Black Tongue – Gene Simmons
  48. Medley: ‘Fire in the Hole’->’Do It Again’ – Steely Dan
  49. Shake Your Booty – KC and the Sunshine Band
  50. Dig for Fire – Pixies
  51. Medley: ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ -> ‘Moanin” -> ‘Walkin” -> ‘I’ll Never Be The Same’ – Frank Sinatra / Art Blakey / Miles Davis / Art Tatum
  52. Better Days (And The Bottom Drops Out) – Citizen King
  53. Rolling in the Deep – Adele
  54. My Face Your Ass – Lambchop
  55. Pretty on the Inside – Hole
  56. The End – The Beatles

Welcome, Andris Nelsons

Boston Globe: BSO names Andris Nelsons music director, succeeding James Levine. An exciting day. I sang with Nelsons last summer at Tanglewood in a deeply felt (if a little idiosyncratic) performance of Symphony of Psalms. I also watched him conduct the BSO in a spine tingling version of Ravel’s La Valse that was easily the best musical moment of the Tanglewood anniversary concert. Can’t wait to sing with him again.

Careless Love: The Virginia Glee Club in the 1950s

Glee Club 1956 promo acetate

There’s not a lot to say about the Virginia Glee Club in the later 1950s, seemingly. The group lost one of its more influential directors, Stephen Tuttle, to Harvard in 1952, and saw two directors alternate during the remaining years. There were tours, sure; legend has it there were even panty raids on other campuses. But no LP survives from the period between 1952 for almost 20 years; no big commissioned work exists; nothing remains but a bunch of concert programs.

Except this. The image above is of an acetate recording that was made as a promo record and sent to radio stations. Seems that Donald MacInnis didn’t spend much time with his group recording because they spent time trying to get on live radio. We know they were broadcast on WTVR radio, probably as a result of this acetate.

(Aside: an “acetate” is actually made of aluminum—or, in the WWII years, glass—coated with a thin layer of lacquer. You could cut one live, and some did, but you could also copy prerecorded music onto it. It was common to use acetates for promotional recordings when the number of playbacks was unlikely to be high. You can see the aluminum under the black lacquer of this disk around the hole of the record.)

The repertoire on the disk is interesting, too. The Bach is pretty straightforward, but it’s followed up by a downright woozy version of “Careless Love,” and then by MacInnis’s own version of Tom Lehrer’s “The Hunting Song.” I’m trying to imagine that on a Glee Club program today. In fact, I’d pay money to see this paean to hunting, in which the protagonist bags 7 hunters, two game wardens, and a cow, on a modern day program.

It’s a fun recording, albeit short, at around 6 and a half minutes. 

New mix: my love invented all of you

This has been building for a bit. I had more work to do on it, then I thought it was done. Then I heard the last two songs side by side and realized they were the perfect coda. So it’s a little longer than CD length. Oh well…

  1. The Empty Page – Sonic Youth (Murray Street)
  2. Rock And Roll – Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin Remasters)
  3. Don’t Care – Klark Kent (Klark Kent)
  4. What Difference Does It Make? – The Smiths (Hatful Of Hollow)
  5. Manta Ray – Pixies (Complete ‘B’ Sides [UK])
  6. Carry Me Ohio – Sun Kil Moon (Ghosts Of The Great Highway)
  7. Vengeance Is Sleeping – Neko Case (Middle Cyclone (Bonus Track Version))
  8. Back Of A Car – Big Star (#1 Record – Radio City)
  9. Just Like Heaven – The Cure (Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me)
  10. Space (I Believe In) – Pixies (Trompe Le Monde)
  11. Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake – Zola Jesus (Conatus)
  12. Gravity’s Angel – Laurie Anderson (Mister Heartbreak)
  13. Water Babies – Miles Davis (The Columbia Years 1955-1985)
  14. Working For The Man – PJ Harvey (To Bring You My Love)
  15. Lil Wallet Picture – Richard Buckner (Richard Buckner)
  16. In the Devil’s Territory – Sufjan Stevens (Seven Swans)
  17. I Don’t Recall – Lavender Diamond (Incorruptible Heart)
  18. Dawned On Me – Wilco (The Whole Love)
  19. Morpha Too – Big Star (#1 Record – Radio City)
  20. Kiss Me On The Bus – The Replacements (Tim [Expanded Edition])
  21. Dauðalogn – Sigur Rós (Valtari)
  22. End of the Line – Sleigh Bells (Reign of Terror)

Whither iTunes Plus upgrades (again)

A while ago I wrote about how Apple’s offer to upgrade previously purchased music to iTunes Plus, their “drm-lite” offering that raised recording quality and eliminated copy restrictions, had gone missing.

At that point the issue appeared to be faulty infrastructure, since the link was sometimes available and since you could hit the page directly if you bookmarked it.

Today, it looks like the page may be gone for good. I haven’t seen it in the store in several weeks, and the bookmark now returns a “Could not complete the iTunes Store request” popup.

While I’m not entirely surprised—the promotion has been running for what, four years?—I’m disappointed. Because this is what I see in my smart playlist that contains the old, “FairPlay” encrypted, DRMed iTunes Store downloads:

671items

That’s right. 671 tracks, in about 178 albums, that were never made available for upgrade through the iTunes Plus page. I know, because every time something was made available in Plus, I paid the 30 cents per track or $3 per album to get my music out of DRM jail.

So my question to Apple is: what happened? Did the rest of the music never get “plussed” because of the labels? Or did you just forget?

I’ve read some speculation that iTunes Match is the new “upgrade to iTunes Plus”. If so, I’m still out of luck, because I have more than 25,000 songs in my library—all purchased legally, I might add, though some came from eMusic or Amazon, or were ripped from CDs or vinyl that I own.

So let’s see: I’m stuck with a bunch of DRMed music that I can’t unDRM, contrary to Apple’s iTunes Plus promises, and I can’t take advantage of the other legal path offered to me because I’ve been too good a music customer.

Is it any wonder that people just say “screw it” and download music for free?