Category: Music

This Georgetown talk is now on-line; the entire talk is structured around commentary on the economics behind particular musical tracks, including Desmond Dekker, Tarika, some doo-wop, and other favorites of mine.

I have been tagged.  They’re probably all songs by Gilbert O’Sullivan but if you wish to diversify, well…should I feel guilty about Split Enz "I Hope I Never," Harry Nilsson’s "Cuddly Toy," early Beach Boys songs, or Liz Phair’s "Whip-Smart"?  How about "Wooly Bully", by Sam the Sham and the Pharoahs?  Is Paul Simon’s "American Tune" noble or too sappy?  Upon reflection I don’t feel guilty about any of it.  I haven’t felt guilty about Abba for a long time though Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan may soon change that.

Average word count of top-ten songs during the 1960s: 176

Average last year: 436

That is from Harper’s Index, August issue.  I don’t think it can be a pure length of song effect.

In Paraguay the latest hit record — and yes it is a hit — is by the U.S. Ambassador singing Paraguayan folk songs in the language of Guarani.  Crowds love it, though one Paraguayan critic compared it to "the monotone of a tired bird."  The ambassador had no previous professional singing experience.  One Paraguayan Senator is asking his Congress to denounce the diplomat.  "Paraguayans cry when they hear it" is another, more laudatory assessment.  Here is the interesting story.

Here is a speech by the ambassador, excerpt:

We are not building a military base………  We are not stealing the Guarani aquifer………….  We are not buying up the Chaco…………….

The truth is that our agenda is very positive, both for the region and for Paraguay.

Thank you all for your contributions, here is my new insight into Obama, it won’t be new for long:

Obama
said that, growing up, he listened to Elton John and Earth, Wind &
Fire but that Stevie Wonder was his ultimate musical hero during the
70s. The Stones’ track Gimme Shelter topped his favourite songs from the band. His
selection also contained 30 songs from Dylan. "One of my favourites
[for] the political season is [Dylan’s] Maggie’s Farm. It speaks to me
as I listen to some of the political rhetoric."

…The jazz legends Miles Davis, John Coltrane and Charlie Parker were also included…

The worship of Dylan and Wonder and be-bop jazz is consistent with my view of him as a detached, universalist cosmopolitan.

Ever, with explanation and the MP3 link on the left.  And here are the lyrics.

Addendum: The guy actually has the best practical idea I’ve heard yet for your time travel trip back to 1000 A.D.  If you have a decent voice, use the catalog of the Beatles and others to become the greatest minstrel the world has seen.  It’s the low capital costs and low cooperation requirements that make the idea so appealing.

He [Glenn Gould] disliked giving autographs for the same reason he was wary of writing checks for fear the results might be unlucky.  But when he did give an autograph or sign a check (or any other document, for that matter), he always misspelled his own first name writing it as "Glen."  Kazdin once asked him why, and Gould explained that he had discovered years earlier that once he got his hand to start forming the two n’s he couldn’t stop and would keep going and write three, so he decided to abort the exercise after one.  Kazdin was skeptical.  "This supposed lack of manual control is a little hard to swallow coming from the man who could play an unbroken stream of thirty-second notes faster and cleaner than any other pianist on the face of the earth."

That is from A Romance on Three Legs: Glenn Gould’s Obsessive Quest for the Perfect Piano, by Katie Hafner.  This is an excellent book showing that the choice of piano really matters.  For the pointer I thank Kat.

Out here in Japan I am going through some of the old requests; here is one:

Recommendations re new jazz recordings

I have a few:

1. Anything by Brad Mehldau; he is a very subtle pianist, broadly in the mold of Bill Evans.  Start with his CD with Pat Metheny.

2. Saudades, by Trio Beyond.  Excellent guitar work on every cut; bluesy, lots of organ.

3. Pakistani Pomade, by Alexander von Schlippenbach; the sort of jazz that hurts most people’s ears.

4. Ramasuri, by Max Nagl.  An exhilarating blast, with strong overtones of Klezmer.

Those are my favorites from the last two years or so.  What do you all recommend?

Here’s an interesting article about the Brits, many of whom prefer "Always Look on the Bright Side of Life," the Monty Python song, for their funerals.  My probably unrealistic (and not morally binding) vision of my funeral is to forbid any tributes or even spoken words but make everyone sit through Brahms’s Ein Deutsches Requiem (Kempe or Klemperer versions, about 79 minutes long) and then simply close the event and send everybody home.

Whether this is an aesthetic preference, or whether I don’t want to let them talk themselves out of weeping over my death, I am not sure.

1. Piano: Mitsuko Uchida is a clear first choice.  Her box of the Mozart sonatas remains the best.  Oddly I don’t like her much in the rest of the classical repertoire, though her Debussy and Webern and Schoenberg are interesting (though not my preferred versions for the latter two, which are the steelier Pollini and Gould).  I also like Aki Takahashi, most of all for Cage and Feldman.

2. Conductor: Seiji Ozawa has remarkable talent and he can conduct almost anything without a score (not easy).  Still, he never really developed his own sound and he has to count as a missed opportunity.  First prize goes to Maasaki Suzuki, who has recorded a remarkable all-Japanese St. Matthew’s Passion and is doing a cycle of the Bach cantatas.

3. String Quartet: Tokyo is first-rate, get their complete box of Beethoven’s String Quartets.

4. Composer: Toru Takemitsu is the obvious choice, though I don’t much come back to his work.

5. Classical guitarist: Kazuhito Yamashita.  His transcriptions are mind-blowing, most of all the Stravinsky.  The fascination of the Japanese with transcriptions could command an entire book.

Outside of classical music I’ll recommend Kodo (and indeed all Taiko music, but only live, not on disc), The Brilliant Green’s "The Angel Song," and yes Yoko Ono.  Most of Japanese popular music is a blur to me, though not an unpleasant one.

Roger Payne loved those 1960s songs so much he lamented their passing: "Today’s humpback whale songs pale beside those of the sixties," he recently wrote in an open letter to the youth of Japan.  "The North Atlantic is so musically lackluster today."  I don’t think Paul Knapp would agree.  Today, there might be more beats, maybe fewer legato passages.  We may like the beat more than melody today, and it might be the same with the whales.

The subtitle of this excellent book is Whale Music in a Sea of Sound and it is by David Rothenberg.  Here is David’s previous excellent book, Why Birds Sing.

Here is a list by David Remnick, via Jason Kottke.  It is good, albeit a bit mainstream for my tastes.  I’m glad to see he likes Ascension.  I would add more late Miles Davis (Live at Fillmore and In a Silent Way, among others), Ornette Coleman’s Free Jazz, more Cecil Taylor, the Blakey/Monk album, Solo Monk (my favorite jazz album?), and some Stan Kenton as well.  I’m due to cover a reader request for contemporary jazz soon, so I’ll leave the moderns out of it for the time being.

"The style in which they write is simple and concise, how do they get their sentences so precise?" the rappers wonder.

And the chorus is a gem, too: "He reads the Economist so he can get the gist, its solid competence gives him confidence that his intelligence is correct."

The rappers also weigh in on accusations that the Economist pushes a particular line: "Yes, they have a bias; it’s pro-democratic. And pro-free trade; they are very emphatic."

The source is Chris Blattman.

That is a request from Bill Russell, a loyal MR reader, and yes I will get soon to more of your requests.  I’m no expert, but my picks are as follows:

1. Hank Williams Sr., get both discs and don’t look back.

2. The Byrds, Sweetheart of the Rodeo, The Flying Burrito Brothers (the first two albums), plus Gram Parsons’s Grievous Angel.

George Jones and Bob Willis and Merle Haggard are all in my view somewhat overrated.

3. Louvin Brothers, Tragic Songs of Life (some call it bluegrass), Dolly Parton, Dock Boggs, Patsy Cline, the essential Johnny Cash (there’s lots of it), and the country/gospel of Elvis Presley.  Dylan’s country music is good but is not his strongest suit.

Arguably the best songs of Ryan Adams (alas they are scattered but "Amy" and "La Cienega Just Smiled" are two places to start; does anyone know a more general sourcing?) are as good as anything in the genre.  I like Lucinda Williams as well plus Shelby Lynne, most of all I Am Shelby Lynne.

Alternatively, the best collections from the 20s and 30s are mind-blowingly good; for instance try American Primitive on John Fahey’s Revenant label, or the Harry Smith collections.  That’s some of the best American music period though in some ways the blues shouts are closer to rock and roll than to country.

I might add the whole list comes from someone who was initially allergic to country music, so if that is you give some of these recommendations a try.  Just think of it as White Man’s Blues.