Category: Music

So BlogCritics is doing its first critics’ poll for the best music of 2002, and as a registered BlogCritic I’ve submitted my ballot. (It was harder than I thought, mostly because there’s no authoritative list of which I’m aware for what music was actually released in 2002.) Anyway, for the curious, here’s my list (five nominees, tops, in each category):

album of the year

• Sea Change, Beck
• (), Sigur Ros
• Murray Street, Sonic Youth
• Blacklisted, Neko Case
• Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco

song of the year

• 45, Elvis Costello
• Deep Red Bells, Neko Case
• Disconnection Notice, Sonic Youth
• All We Have is Now, Flaming Lips
• Fell in Love With a Girl, White Stripes

songwriter of the year

• Beck
• Tom Waits
• Neko Case
• John Vanderslice

rock album

• One Beat, Sleater-Kinney
• When I Was Cruel, Elvis Costello
• White Blood Cells, White Stripes
• Blood Money, Tom Waits
• Life and Death of an American Four-Tracker, John Vanderslice

country/Americana album

• American IV, Johnny Cash
• Blacklisted, Neko Case
• Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, Wilco
• Jerusalem, Steve Earle

r&b album

• Don’t Give Up on Me, Solomon Burke
• Higher Ground, Blind Boys of Alabama
• Power in Numbers, Jurassic 5

jazz album

• Footsteps of Our Fathers, Branford Marsalis

electronic album

• 18, Moby
• Kinda Kinky, Ursula 1000

soundtrack album

• About a Boy, Badly Drawn Boy
• Long Walk Home (Music from the Rabbit Proof Fence), Peter Gabriel

best re-issue or compilation [box sets, re-mastered, or bonuses]

• Nirvana, Nirvana
• Best of 1990-2000, U2

best new artist

• Interpol

Laurie Anderson
Big Science
Warner Bros., 1980

O Superman, O Judge, O Mom and Dad, Mom and Dad.
O Superman, O Judge, O Mom and Dad, Mom and Dad.
Hi. I’m not home right now. But if you want to leave a
message, just start talking at the sound of the tone.
Hello? This is your Mother. Are you there? Are you coming home?
Hello? Is anybody home?

Well, you don’t know me, but I know you.
And I’ve got a message to give to you.
Here come the planes.
So you better get ready. Ready to go.
You can come as you are, but pay as you go. Pay as you go.

And I said: OK. Who is this really?
And the voice said:
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
This is the hand, the hand that takes.
Here come the planes.
They’re American planes. Made in America..
Smoking or non-smoking?
And the voice said:
Neither snow nor rain nor gloom of night
shall stay these couriers from the swift completion
of their appointed rounds.

’Cause when love is gone, there’s always justice.
And when justice is gone, there’s always force.
And when force is gone, there’s always Mom. Hi Mom!

So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
In your automatic arms. Your electronic arms. In your arms.
So hold me, Mom, in your long arms.
Your petrochemical arms. Your military arms.
In your electronic arms.

Run, don’t walk, to your nearest web browser and place your order at Amazon for the first recording by the Suspicious Cheese Lords, Maestro di Capella: Music of Elzear Genet. Being a huge fan (and former member), I had to post a review. Here’s what I said:

Elzear Genet, also known as Carpentras, was a prolific composer in his day who is relatively little known and little recorded these days. Hopefully this recording will help to change that. The Cheese Lords have selected a program of a never before recorded mass (Missa “Se mieulx ne vient”) and previously unrecorded motets to inaugurate their recording series.

The recording, made at the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, DC, is spacious and resonant, but the ensemble’s precision and nuanced dynamics are in evidence throughout. The motets show off several facets of Genet’s musical style, from chant-influenced polyphony to the rhythmic, almost dancelike “Jubilate Deo” and the haunting “Haec est illa dulcis rosa.” The mass is largely without the contrasts in tempo or style that a Josquin or Byrd would have brought to the form, but the prismatic unfolding of the music from the stately Kyrie through the more urgent Credo into the resolute Agnus dei is still a glorious exemplar of the art. Highly recommended for a window into the music of this era.

(Disclaimer: I am a former member of the group, but have not sung with them for quite some time.)

It’s a little humbling to realize you’re in the presence of someone great. Even one degree of separation from greatness can sometimes be intimidating. I just found out that one of my co-worker musicians from the pick-up band that played our holiday party is a recognized harmonica authority who once met Howlin’ Wolf. So not only do I know a world authority on the harp, I’m now only one degree removed from Howlin’ Wolf. Kind of a comforting thought.

Nirvana

In Utero

Geffen, 1993

Pennyroyal Tea
(Kurt Cobain)

I’m on my time with everyone
I have very bad posture

Sit and drink Pennyroyal Tea
Distill the life that’s inside of me
Sit and drink Pennyroyal tea
I’m anemic royalty

Give me a Leonard Cohen afterworld
So I can sigh eternally

I’m so tired I can’t sleep
I’m a liar and a thief
Sit and drink pennyroyal Tea
I’m anemic royalty

I’m on warm milk and laxatives
Cherry-flavored antacids

Confession: I’m one of those tiresome people that make mix tapes. Worse, I’m one of those people that go on making mix tapes after high school and college. Worse yet, I make them for myself and generally not for other audiences.

I think Nick Hornby missed out on this one. Mix tapes are worse than top ten lists. At least those are mostly spoken. Mix tapes live forever. And they come back to haunt you. Even if you trade, sell, or throw out the CDs from which the scary songs came.

I’m finding this in a big way at the moment. Now that my CD collection and I are reunited, I’m in the process of recreating all my old mix tapes as MP3 playlists. (There can be no deeper geekery.) In the process, I have to ask myself the painful questions. For instance: Why on earth did I precede that achingly lovely Górecki folk song setting with Dave Matthews’ “Jimi Thing”? (Granted it was before his cringe-inducing Alanis Morrisette duet, but still.) What was I thinking putting a twelve minute mind-numbing funk-jazz fusion number from Herbie Hancock featuring extensive electric piano pitch-bend solo on any mix tape? And why, why on God’s green earth did I put not one, but two album tracks from Jesus Jones on a mix tape—and why also two tracks from Ziggy Marley?

I guess it’s true. Reconnecting with one’s past means facing painful truths. I was a tasteless trend monkey. At least the tracks from the Pixies, Gastr Del Sol, Elvis Costello and others that also stud the tapes argue that there was an element of enduring taste as well.

I was going to claim that there is an art to sequencing a playlist, for tape or computer, having to do with maintaining mood, keeping appropriate tonal and rhythmic continuity (or contrast, as appropriate), and both pleasing and surprising the listener. But then I found there’s a web site that makes the argument for me: Art of the Mix. I suspect I’ll have to put up the mixes I’ve created so you can see how bad it really is. Another time. Here’s the list of mixes (in progress).

SF Chronicle: CD settlement money going begging so far. According to the article, if you bought a CD, cassette tape, or vinyl record between 1995 and 2000 at a retail store, you are eligible for a piece of the settlement that BMG, EMI, Warner, Sony, and Universal paid for price fixing. Also according to the article, only about 30,000 people have filed for their share of the settlement so far. You can file a claim online at www.musiccdsettlement.com.

Sadly, the maximum amount of the settlement is $20 (per person, not per CD purchased), or I’d be a rich man.

As I mentioned a week or so ago, I was graced with the Presence of Org last weekend—that’s George Cervantes, Cheese Lord to those who don’t know him. He brought a copy of the Suspicious Cheese Lords’ first professional CD, Maestro di Capella: Music of Elzear Genet (Carpentras). It was recorded in the Franciscan Monastery in Washington, DC and is fascinating listening. In fact, it’s hard to believe these are the same guys I used to drink lots of wine and sing with every Wednesday night. (In case you hadn’t gathered, since I left the group to go to business school I’ve felt like a kind of Cheeselords Pete Best.)

As soon as the album becomes available through Amazon, I think I’ll do a proper review for BlogCritics. Until then I’ll rest secure in the knowledge that the group is outstandingly good.

(Incidentally, I was wrong about the cover. While similar at a distance to a photo I took of the interior of the duomo in Siena, a photo that graced a concept cover for our first self-produced CD Incipit, the cover of the album is actually a stock photo of the interior of St. Peter’s Basilica in Rome. Sorry for the confusion.)

I’m more excited about being at work this morning than I thought I’d be—primarily because I expect no one to be in again today, meaning I can crank up the music. (Aside: having decent speakers in the office is pretty much a waste unless you can actually use them.) And today the music is KEXP. Specifically, the top 90.3 albums of the year countdown. Now this is a New Years’ Rockin’ Eve I can really get behind.

(FYI, the title reference is in memory of Joe Strummer, who kicks off the Clash’s great “Know Your Rights” with “This is a public service announcement—with guitar!”)

Boing Boing: RIP, Joe Strummer. There are a few punk moments that will live forever, and the Clash was foremost in a lot of them. It’s too bad I’ll be ferrying family around in my car today. I desperately want to crank up “Know Your Rights.” Or at least “Wrong Em Boyo.”

Long time readers of this blog will recognize the Suspicious Cheese Lords from my sojourn in DC last January. For the uninitiated, this is the pick-up men’s Renaissance vocal ensemble that I sang with in Washington for some very cool gigs, including a Smithsonian Associates program on the music and times of Chaucer, my C-SPAN debut (at the signing of Carl Anthony’s book on Florence Harding), and many programs at the Franciscan Monastery in DC, among others.

For a while, their domain was dark, but now cheeselords.org is alive and well, and bearing news about an upcoming recording to be distributed through Amazon (and, to my, by a certain Sergeant-With-Arms). I’m tickled prouder than pink. I’ve heard bits and pieces of the master before it was mixed, and I have to say that the guys have attained a musical standard previously reached only by certain British choirs. That they attained it after my departure should be taken purely as coincidence.

I should note that I took the photo on the cover during Lisa’s and my trip to Italy; it’s the interior dome of the cathedral in Siena.

Update 12/31: No it isn’t! Details…

The Cascadian performance yesterday was too long to do a detailed movement by movement analysis, but here are some highlights. We began the program in the balcony of the church, which we shared with a bunch of evergreens. The first piece, Tavener’s “O Do Not Move,” is brief but timeless. The tenors repeat the title three times, in three different modalities (minor, major, major with a diminished second), moving from conventional harmony to a more Byzantine sound. The whole choir then joins in, holding a minor chord while the sopranos sing the word “listen” in a descending Dorian scale; the piece then closes as it began. The text, O do not move/Listen/to the gentle beginning, calls the listener to move into a more contemplative and meditative frame of mind.

The second piece, Pärt’s “Magnificat,” also went well. Like most of Pärt’s vocal works, “Magnificat,” is constructed of alternating chant and triadic singing in relatively free meters and different voicings. The biggest challenges for the singer are paying attention and telling a unified story from beginning to end. Here I felt we could have better told the story; the Magnificat, after all, is Mary’s song of praise upon finding out she has been chosen to bear Christ. But the performance was generally good.

The third and fourth pieces, Tavener’s “Today the Virgin” and Górecki’s “Totus Tuus,” were both outstandingly performed. I had done the Tavener in the Cathedral Choral Society several years ago, and here the text was cleaner, crisper, and more expressive while losing none of the punch. (This is probably because the Cascadian Chorale has only 1/4 the members of CCS.) The Górecki was flawless and soaring, better than quite a few performances I’ve heard on CD, and raised goosebumps.

The Pärt Te Deum now ranks as the most challenging choral work I’ve ever sung. Like the “Magnificat,” Te Deum contains contrasting chant and triadic parts; it ups the ante with three antiphonal choirs, an orchestra that responds to each of the triadic sections, and a really long text (the piece clocks in at around 35 minutes). There were a few difficulties owing to the antiphonal arrangement, mostly sloppy entrances to chants, but overall I thought the piece went magnificently well.

The second half was the Christmas portion of the Messiah, which we performed at ludicrous speed. The music didn’t suffer at that tempo—the speed seemed to bring out the dancelike qualities of the early movements.

All in all it was a really satisfying concert to sing, and bodes well for the rest of the season.

Craig reminds me that I didn’t actually say anything about how the debut went, just that it happened.

Both arrangements were done by me and George Bullock, a jazz guitarist who works at my company and plays with the Charisa Martin Cairn Quartet. We started out trying “Accidents Will Happen” at Elvis’s tempo, but thankfully Charisa suggested that we take it slower after one run through where I mangled half the words. On the next run through, George played spare chords underneath while I straightened out some of the vocal melismas I had borrowed from Elvis. The resulting sound was a lot more subtle than the recording on Armed Forces and allowed me to bring out some of the anger and confusion in the lyrics while still staying melodic. I knew we had done well when we finished the last chorus before the “I know, I know” fadeout and the audience started applauding—even the ones who didn’t work with me. 🙂

“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” was really more of a showcase for George, since it’s a little low in my range, but I did my part by keeping the lyrics coming, playing a little with the phrasing and timing, and making the most of the few high notes in the song.

It was a great session. We’re already talking about trying to find ways to keep doing the music together.

So I just got back from a gig at the Liquid Lounge at Seattle’s Experience Music Project, where I made my solo stage debut.

Okay, okay, so it was my group’s holiday party. But it was the Liquid Lounge, and I did sing some Elvis Costello (“Accidents Will Happen,” as promised) and some Bing Crosby (“Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas”).

It was a fun time. Tomorrow is serious: the Cascadian Chorale’s Illuminatio concert. But it was fun to get up and sing music that was a little more relaxed.

I’ve referred to the Pärt Te Deum a few times but haven’t written much detail about it yet. It’s a difficult piece to write about. Almost a half hour long, much of it consists, as Steve Schwartz writes, of variations on D modality—major to minor and back. Many of the individual vocal parts do little more than oscillate around the notes of a ringing triad, from the third to the octave to the fifth and so on. But the music as a whole is a magnificent statement of faith. How does Pärt arrive from such simple materials at such a high spiritual peak?

The answer is partly structural, partly tonal, partly something else. The entire piece hovers around D, and Pärt makes it explicit with a D drone that begins in a low organ (or wind harp!) note, moves up to the basses and cellos, disappears in the middle, then returns in the violins and moves back down the octaves. Pärt’s deep faith is well documented, and my reading of the D drone is that it functions as a reminder of eternity, that regardless of the iterations of voicings and time, there are eternal truths.

The voicing tells the story of faith against this background. The entire piece is a colloquoy among plainchant, orchestra, and triadic singing. I read the melodic plainchant, which is ever changing, as humanity, and the triadic voicings (the third, antiphonal choir), which weave a more static melody from D major and D minor triads, as a choir of angels. One conductor I’ve sung under reads the orchestra as a kind of Greek chorus that comments on the interaction between the two.

With this framework, the piece can be read as a long striving of humanity to reach the perfection of the angels. So the first Sanctus, uttered in a unison D minor plainchant by the tenors and basses, is echoed in a D minor triadic Sanctus by the antiphonal choir. The entire piece is built on groupings of three: three choirs, three contributions of three part phrases from the orchestra, building blocks of chant + triadic song + orchestra, and so on, that Pärt varies for dramatic effect. Accordingly, there are three dramatic moments of unison between the plainchant choirs and the antiphonal choir. The first two are followed immediately by plainchant advancing the argument of humanity, while the third is followed by a chanted Amen and an echo of the Sanctus by the antiphonal choir that fades into infinity.

I may find more to write about in the Te Deum as we continue to work on it. I continue to learn more about the piece each time I sing it or listen to it.