Category: Music

I can honestly say I’ve never been so glad to get to the end of a week as I am today. Of course it’s not over; I have a stack of calls and meetings this afternoon. But as I look at the window in my new office at work I can already feel my blood pressure dropping. Bring it on, rainy weekend! I pwn j00z!

1. Mitch Hedberg, “Candy Bars” (Mitch All Together)
2. Beth Orton, “Absinthe” (Comfort of Strangers)
3. They Might Be Giants, “Narrow Your Eyes” (Apollo 18)
4. Brodsky Quartet (George Crumb, composer), “Black Angels I: Absence: Threnody II. Black Angels (Tutti)” (Death and the Maiden)
5. Choir of Trinity College, “Gloria sei dir. v. 3” (In Dulci Jubilo)
6. Charlie Haden and Pat Metheny, “Message to a Friend” (Beyond the Missouri Sky)
7. Luscious Jackson, “Under Your Skin” (Fever In Fever Out)
8. Sufjan Stevens, “Concerning the UFO Sighting Near Highland, Illinois” (Illinoise)
9. The Velvet Underground, “White Light/White Heat” (White Light/White Heat)
10. The MDH Band, “Satellite of Love (reprise)” (The Million Dollar Hotel)

Hat tip to reader Kate, the blogging intern at MASS MoCA, who commented on a recent post that unfrozen rockers Mission of Burma will be playing a gig at MassMoCA on Saturday, July 1:

Mission of Burma has an upcoming show you may want to check out. It’s at MASS MoCA (Massachusetts Museum of Contemporary Art), Saturday July 1 at 8:00 pm. It will be outdoors in Courtyard C if the weather permits, otherwise in the Hunter Center. Tickets are $22 advance, $26 day of show.

If you’re not familiar with MASS MoCA, it’s in North Adams, in northern Berkshire County. Directions are available on our website at www.massmoca.org.

Tickets may be purchased online or by calling the box office, (413) 662-2111.

Normally I don’t really post commercial advertisements in this space, but hey, it’s Burma. Thanks to Kate for the info.

As long as I’m posting the funk today, a note about Funky16Corners, which has just moved to WordPress.com. I gave the blog a shout last year after its appearance in BoingBoing and have been a regular listener since. Now that it’s off Blogger.com and on a more stable and modern platform, maybe Larry can take it to the bridge and create a full-on Funky16 Podcast.

So I get all jazzed up about Funkadelic and what does the iPod turn out for the Friday Random 10? With two exceptions, the most unfunky collection of tracks that never moved a booty. Somewhere Sir Nose is laughing. At least Gil Scott-Heron and the Felaesque Talking Heads track are holding him at bay.

1. The Mendoza Line, “Throw It In the Fire” (Fortune)
2. Gil Scott-Heron, “The Revolution Will Not Be Televised” (Evolution (And Flashback))
3. Gemma Hayes, “Day One” (Night On My Side)
4. Brodsky Quartet (Dmitri Shostakovich, composer), “String Quartet No. 12 in D flat Major: I. Moderato” (Shostakovich: String Quartets 11, 12, 13)
5. Talking Heads, “Double Groove (unfinished outtake)” (Remain in Light)
6. Paul Westerberg, “Looking Up in Heaven” (The Wired Cd)
7. Robert Shaw Chorale, “Medley: Good Christian Men, Rejoice; Silent Night; Patapan; O Come, All Ye Faithful” (A Festival of Carols)
8. Dave Brubeck Quartet, “Pick Up Sticks” (Time Out)
9. R.E.M., “What’s the Frequency, Kenneth?” (Monster)
10. My Computer, “Hole in the Road”

As if eMusic’s value proposition wasn’t already compelling (subscription prices as low as $0.22 a track, DRM-free 192bps MP3 downloads, a wide catalog of jazz, indie rock, and classical offerings), there’s now an even more compelling reason: many of the classic Funkadelic recordings on the Westbound label are now available for download from eMusic.

That includes the absolute masterpiece Maggot Brain, the fine self-titled album, the political party album America Eats Its Young, and the finest album title ever, Standing on the Verge of Getting It On, which features some really tasty Eddie Hazel guitar work as well as the stone classic “Jimmy’s Got a Little Bit of Bitch in Him.” Missing are Funkadelic’s earlier classic “Free Your Mind…And Your Ass Will Follow,” and the late “One Nation Under a Groove,” “The Electric Spanking of War Babies” and “Uncle Jam Wants You.”

There’s a lot to explore in what is there, though. Standing on the Verge and Maggot Brain alone should keep me occupied for weeks. Now if y’all will excuse me, I need to free my mind.

New at Art of the Mix: a low moon caught in your tangles. As odd as it sounds to say it about a mix with MF Doom and McLusky, it’s a mix about love. And Sleestaks.

I can’t stop grinning. This may be because I arrived home after 2 am this morning because of delays flying back from my business trip in Milwaukee and therefore am operating on a massive sleep deficit. But it may also be because of the juxtaposition of “Hey Ya!”, “Word Up” and “The Rubbers Song.” Heh.

1. Louis Armstrong, “2:19 Blues” (Louis Armstrong of New Orleans)
2. Elvis Costello, “You Turned to Me” (North)
3. Neko Case, “Knock Loud” (Canadian Amp)
4. Shannon Worrell, “Jefferson’s Lament” (The Moviegoer)
5. Neko Case, “Things That Scare Me” (Blacklisted)
6. Cameo, “Word Up” (Word Up!)
7. OutKast, “Hey Ya! (Radio Mix)” (The Way You Move/Hey Ya! [single])
8. New York Chamber Symphony, Gerard Schwarz (Richard Strauss, composer), “V. Le Trophée” (from Divertimento (after Couperin) (Schoenberg: String Quartet Concerto/Strauss: Divertimento)
9. The Postal Service, “Against All Odds” (Against All Odds [single])
10. The Pharcyde, “The Rubbers Song” (Stolen Moments: Red Hot + Blue)

After nine and a half months (!) of progress, two hard drives with a total of three-quarters of a terabyte of usable space, and over a thousand CDs, my project to rip all my CDs to losslessly compressed digital files is finished. There are other projects ahead, metadata updates (I have over two thousand tracks in my library with no year, for instance) and ripping obscure vinyl to name two. But the heavy lifting is over.

How heavy was the lifting? Heavy enough that I prepared a separate page with all the statistics and charts. But here’s the summary:

• Tracks: 13,978
• Total time: 42 days, 2 hours, 40 minutes, 51 seconds
• Disk space: 312.81 GB
• Artists: 1081
• Albums: 1029

Would I do it again, knowing what I know now about the time involved and the effort? Yes, in a heartbeat. I’m learning more about music all over again just by listening to things that I hadn’t pulled out in months, thanks to the ability to listen via shuffle (yes, life is random). Plus I can start reclaiming some space from the mass of disks that consumed a massive corner of my basement (don’t worry, they were elevated above the flood stage).

I don’t know why it took a month for me to notice, but my favorite independent rock station (outside of the one that works at in Richmond), KEXP in Seattle, started a blog last month. Like the station itself, the blog is highly eclectic, a mix of straight-ahead promotion, coverage of in-studio events, station news, MP3 blogging, and general silliness. They’re not shy about pointing to their listeners either, though I think I would have to point to this live account from the Goldfrapp in-studio appearance under any circumstances. Alison Goldfrapp made me blush, indeed.

I’ve written in this space before about Mission of Burma—both about their recent limited edition singles and the live show where I saw them open for the Pixies. I got their new release, The Obliterati, last week, which came with a limited edition concert DVD. And damned if the show they filmed wasn’t from that December 2nd show at the Tsongas Arena, opening for the Pixies.

I haven’t really had the time to absorb the show in detail yet; hell, I haven’t finished listening to The Obliterati all the way through. But I did see enough of the DVD to note that yes, the live show was just as amazing as I remember it, and yes, the crowd was about as sessile as I wrote.

It’s a heckuva present to get a memento of that memory, though. Thanks, guys.

I was able to take a day off today—much needed. Didn’t do much of anything really—though I did move forward on The Great CD Project. (Incidentally, I ended up following a combination of the two approaches I outlined in my prior post. I made the new drive a standalone concatenated RAID array using the diskutil command, told iTunes to move the music files there (using the Advanced tab of the Preferences, then using Advanced | Consolidate Music Library to move all the files there), and then used diskutil to add the old external drive to the RAID array. I had to unmount both external drives first before diskutil would allow me to join the second disk to the RAID array. The final result: one 744.5 GB logical disk. Yeah.) Current Project status: 12,858 songs; 286.52 GB; 38 days, 22 hours, 22 minutes, and 23 seconds of music.

So today’s list is from the iTunes library…

1. Herman’s Hermits, “White Wedding” (When Pigs Fly)
2. Dock Boggs, “Pretty Polly” (Dock Boggs: His Folkways Years)
3. Paul Chambers, “Omicron” (Whims of Chambers)
4. Sex Pistols, “Pretty Vacant” (Never Mind the Bollocks)
5. Big Star, “Way Out West” (Radio City)
6. Choir of Trinity College, Cambridge, “Er ging aus der Kammersein v. 4” (Michael Praetorius) (In Dulci Jubilo)
7. Christian McBride, “Jayne” (Number Two Express)
8. Hilliard Ensemble, “In III Nocturno, Responsorium 1” (Gesualdo) (Tenebrae)
9. Material, “Ciquiri” (Secret Life)
10. New Order, “Age of Consent” (Power, Corruption, and Lies)

I got back from San Francisco at 10 am this morning and spent the rest of the day catching up on email. But now I can breathe again, and it’s time for a special Random 10—since I’m sitting at my Mac, this will be an iTunes driven list rather than off my poor little iPod.

1. Smashing Pumpkins, “Shame” (Adore)
2. G Love and Special Sauce, “Stepping Stones” (Yeah It’s That Easy)
3. Liz Phair, “Whitechocolatespaceegg” (Whitechocolatespaceegg)
4. Miles Davis, “Introduction by Mort Fega” (The Complete Concert 1964)
5. Radiohead, “I Am a Wicked Child” (Go to Sleep, Pt 2)
6. Frank Sinatra, “The Gal That Got Away” (The Complete Capitol Singles Collection)
7. U2, “Some Days Are Better Than Others” (Zooropa)
8. Chris Isaak, “South of the Border (Down Mexico Way)” (Baja Sessions)
9. R.E.M., “I Believe” (Life’s Rich Pageant)
10. Bono, “Never Let Me Go” (Million Dollar Hotel)

Something I neglected to mention in my post yesterday about this latest illness was the solid eight hours of sleep I got yesterday, on top of eight hours last night. Today I feel odd; rested and yet not.

I can’t wait to be done with this cold.

1. Iron & Wine, “Evening on the Ground (Lilith’s Song)” (Woman King EP)
2. Nine Inch Nails, “Get Down Make Love” (Sin)
3. Choir of Trinity College, “Singt! Ihr lieben Christen all” (In Dulci Jubilo)
4. Lascivious Biddies, “BiddyCast: Camp Conway”
5. Peter Schickele, “Closing” (Two Pianos are Better Than One)
6. The Clash, “Hateful” (London Calling)
7. R.E.M., “Be Mine” (New Adventures in Hi-Fi)
8. Bob Dylan, “Nashville Skyline Rag” (Nashville Skyline)
9. Radiohead, “Palo Alto” (Airbag/How Am I Driving?)
10. James Brown, “Get Up, Get Into It, Get Involved” (Funk Power 1970)

I posted a while back about an old college mix that I had posted at Art Of The Mix; at the time I thought I would be writing about more of these old mixes. Funny how time flies. But today I posted one of the pivotal mixes in my personal tape history. Graduation Lieder isn’t really mine; my cousin Greg put it together while he was working at a campus radio station and gave it to me as a high school graduation gift back in 1990.

I can’t think of too many better gifts than to be introduced to such a concentrated bundle of great music. The irony at this remove is how much the landscape was about to change. All the REM influenced college bands like the Connells, Drivin’n’Cryin’, and Camper van Beethoven, who dominated the first side of the mix were to disappear, buried under the one-two onslaught of early 90s dance music and the grunge avalanche (which Camper would ride out by transforming into Cracker). A lot of the other artists were to undergo some radical evolutions as well. Björk, Frank Black, and Ian McCulloch went solo, the former more successfully than the latter two. The Chilis went through enough evolutions to merit a separate post of their own. And whatever happened to Living Colour?

Anyway, a great artifact and something that I hope you’ll enjoy as well.

Boston Globe: BSO brings full drama to ‘Oedipus’. The Globe generally liked our performance; Richard Dyer was kind enough to note that “the men of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus sang with excellent intonation and driving rhythm”—and not to mention that we sang with scores, a first in recent memory for a non-Pops concert.

Behind the scenes, what happened? I can only say that when a work with a lengthy unfamiliar Latin text meets a conductor who doesn’t believe in singing from memory, something has to give. It actually helped: most of us were singing from memory anyway, but being able to check the scores periodically to confirm the words in some of the lengthier passages really helped.

And I still have the thing stuck in my brain, in spite of every single piece of music I’ve listened to in the last day.

(Oh, confidentially to Keith Powers at the Herald: you write really well. How on earth did you write the following two sentences together: “Dohnanyi’s conducting was precise and erudite. The orchestra sounded like it actually liked playing for the guy.” Is that the job of an editor at the Herald: to dumb down a review by inserting random sentences in dumb-guy talk?)