Category: Music

It’s late and I’m very tired out here in Barcelona.  Here’s to silliness.  The pointer is from the ever-excellent Michael Blowhard.

I need to do this country in pieces, starting with music:

Classical guitarist: Segovia, starting with his recordings of Bach.  It’s not just amazing technique, these are some of the best musical interpretations of Bach by anyone playing any instrument.  They are what I call lifetime choices for one’s collection.

Spanish pianist, playing Spanish music: Alicia de Larrocha is the obvious choice.  Her Albeniz and Granados recordings remain unsurpassed. 

Composer: Varese sounds much better live than on disc.  I’ve seen Amèriques twice and both were experiences to remember; here is a bit on YouTube.  Chailly and Boulez understand the music very well but the sounds and textures and rhythms simply don’t all come through if you’re not there.  (Addendum: Whoops!  Varese was born in France.)  The number two pick is tough but Rodrigo is underrated by many serious listeners, in part because of his exposure through classical pops.  Try his solo guitar pieces and throughout keep him in mind as a precursor of ambient music.  Tomás Luis de Victoria is an underrated Spanish Renaissance composer.

Cellist: It’s hard not to pick Pablo Casals, who had extraordinary depth in his phrasing.  I still feel duty bound to point out that most of his recordings are unlistenable, if only because of the scratching.  The Bach is of historic importance but for actual pleasure his Schubert is your best bet.  Most of all the recording of the String Quintet.

Album about: Miles Davis, Sketches of Spain.  One of my three or four favorite Miles CDs, so an easy pick.  Admittedly the move toward an "acoustic-electric" sound does not appeal to all jazz fans, so this album remains underappreciated.

Opera singer: Lots of riches.  Placido Domingo is a good pick though you could argue for many other names as well.

Popular music:  Help!

Flamenco: I love it in small clubs but not on disc or even in mid-sized university music halls. 

The bottom line: There are plenty of peaks but overall I am struck by the unbalanced nature of the distribution.

Songs that only dogs can hear:

A Very Silent Night, recorded at a frequency only dogs can
hear, was so popular among owners it hit number one at
Christmas, but has been receiving mixed responses from
listeners.

When they say "number one," they mean "number one in New Zealand."  Thanks to John de Palma for the pointer.

Bryan Caplan raises the question, in a post that offers a very good description of my view on the arts and modernity.

My list is Bach, Handel, Purcell, Scarlatti, Rameau, in that order.  What about Vivaldi?  Corelli?  They are next in line for me.  Monteverdi comes in second if you count him as Baroque (I don’t).  What are your picks?

And to pursue Bryan’s question, who are the five best punk rock bands?  The Clash, The Sex Pistols, early XTC, Iggy Pop, and maybe The Ramones.  Honorable mention goes to The Minutemen, Wire, MC5, Rancid, The Dead Kennedys, and The New York Dolls.  X seems overrated to me, and Patti Smith and Sonic Youth and Velvet Underground I don’t quite count as punk, though I like their work and think it is important.  For that matter I wonder if Eugene Chadbourne might count.

I don’t agree with Bryan that the fifth best punk rock group is better than the fifth best Baroque composer, but I will say this: Baroque style dominated European music for many decades, whereas most of the best punk was from an unrespected niche genre produced in about a five-year time window.

That’s right, all of Beethoven, 87 discs.  Buy it here.  I’m not tempted, mostly because I already have multiple favorite versions and I am ultimately a big fusspot who can’t stand to hear lesser accounts of the master.  I was happy with the Bach box for $99 but he stands up to second-rate interpretations more readily and I never before owned the complete cantatas.  Still, some of you may find this a quick and cost-effective way to feel a sense of "Beethoven completeness."  But you’ll value the discs more if you buy them one at a time, or at least one box at a time.  Start with Quartetto Italiano doing the late string quartets, vol.1 is here.

Traffickers are drawn to musical acts because they provide an easy platform to launder money. There are other easy options, but none is so culturally prestigious. It is the glamour of the music scene that makes it irresistible to narcotraffickers, said Rolando Coro, a well-known disc jockey at Radio Tremendous in Morelia.

"They show up at the dances, these drug traffickers, and order the expensive whiskey, not just a glass, but the whole bottle," Coro said. "They have pretty women following them around. It’s fun for them."

Bands that make deals with drug traffickers get a crucial leg up on the competition. Tzin Tzun, the promoter, can spot them with ease.

Here is the full story, with further information about the recent killings of Mexico’s most popular musicians.  I wondered about this:

"Bands start to get popular and sometimes they want to keep more of the money," Tzin Tzun said.

Again, this is me reporting what I think are the consensus picks, not my personal opinions:

1. Best jazz album of the year: Charles Mingus Sextet with the Eric Dolphy, Cornell 1964.  Personally I like this CD very much, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone who doesn’t already know most of the essential Mingus.  Dee Dee Bridgewater, who sings jazz over a kora background from Mali, was another popular selection.  I often find jazz singing too facile but the African mix provides an appropriately meaty counterweight.

2. World music: Tinariwen, Aman Iman: Water Is Life.  They’re the desert nomads who were described as the world’s greatest rock and roll band by Slate.com.  Runner-up would be Segu Blue, by Bassekou Kouyate and Ngoni Ba.  Acoustic string music from Mali is in this year, plus there is Bembeya Jazz National, from Guinea.  Here is a very good NPR list of top world music picks.

3. Haitian CD: Erol Josue, Regleman.  A clear winner in this category.

4. Lee Perry collection: Ape-ology.  The best of the best.  Again.  It’s funny, but this category has a winner just about every year.  In the Coasian durable goods monopoly game, price is falling rapidly…

Here is one balanced appreciation.  The Wikipedia page is patchy but offers lots.  If you’re only going to buy one or two, I say start with Mantra and then move on to Stimmung.  The hard cores should seek out Spiral.  Gesang der Jünglinge is perhaps the most influential and seminal work, or perhaps Hymnen, order them here.  The junk includes the Helicopter Quartet, Tierkreis, anything with an American Indian theme, and most of material from the operas.  Gruppen you probably had to hear live.  Momente has compelling parts but it makes me giggle.  The piano music was good, although for me never a highlight.  It’s easy to take potshots at his pretentiousness and stupid politics, but he created more memorable and distinct sound worlds than any other twentieth century composer, except possibly John Cage.  It’s hard to imagine music without him.  Miles Davis and the Beatles would agree, and they were pretty smart guys.

Addendum: Here is a YouTube of Kontakte.  Here’s a bit of Gruppen.  Here is a bit of Hymnen.  But without real sound or live performance it mostly just sounds stupid.

In the 1920s he toured to rave reviews, though he recorded only a few piano rolls.  He played in a dramatic and virtually improvisatory nineteenth century style.  Yet he was shy, introverted, and "constitutionally precise."  Strikingly handsome, he lost his way with women, marrying eight times, frequently visiting prostitutes and also going with men.  "I’m addicted to Liszt, oral **x, and alcohol — not necessarily in that order," he remarked.  After the War he resurfaced in Los Angeles.  His debilitations prevented him from concertizing, so he sight-read orchestral scores for Hollywood directors, for pay, so they could judge potential soundtracks.  He allied himself with Bela Lugosi (a huge admirer) and, inspired by The Fountainhead, courted Ayn Rand.  He was rediscovered in the late 1970s: "never before had I heard a living pianist who played entirely with that 19th century sense of rhetoric which the old writers had described: the true "Romantic Style," wrote Gregor Benko (TC: a man who knows piano).  "Next to him, Horowitz sounds like he is playing a toy piano," explained another reviewer.

He toured Japan and a few recordings were made, though his technique was unreliable.  We are left with scraps, and there is nothing worthy on CD.  On LP his recording of Liszt’s "St. Francis Legend" remains a marvel.  The late Roy Childs — a Nyiregyhazi worshipper — used to play me N. on reel-to-reel, taped from private concerts.  His "Funerailles" was unforgettable.  Will these recordings ever be released?

We now have Kevin Bazzana’s Lost Genius: The Curious and Tragic Story of an Extraordinary Musical Prodigy; here is a not sufficiently positive NYT review. 

Here is a summary website for the man.  Here is a YouTube video, it is amazing for a few moments toward the end but mostly sloppy.  Here are two more YouTubes, the old clip has a young N. playing Liszt’s Liebestraum in the background, the other is another pianist playing one of N’s compositions.

The bottom line: Talent is not enough.

I think Radiohead has
everything going for them except their music. Radiohead initially came
to my attention after they sampled Paul Lansky’s "mild und leise" (an
excellent early computer music composition, available on Lansky’s
website) for their song Idioteque. Paul likes what they did with his
sample much more than I do. I find the drum track weak in comparison
with DnB practice which was so much further along by the late 90s, and
the voice is plaintive, thin, lacking all conviction. Radiohead looks
good on paper, a fusion of modern techno-derived computer music
techniques with rock music, but in practice, the tunes are
uninteresting, and the sound production is unexceptional. Another one
of many post-MBV disappointments that understand the ideas but not the
spirit of My Bloody Valentine. I don’t enjoy criticizing Radiohead
because they clearly mean well, and their music is carefully and
thoughtfully assembled. But they just don’t deliver brilliant musical
goods, and I’m somewhat puzzled by their mass success. But I am pleased
by it. It’s nice to see rock intellectuals getting serious attention.
And their recent Internet marketing experiments deserve attention, just
for trying something different. But I’d take the Pale Saints’ fully
realized "The Comforts of Madness" over any Radiohead album, by a very
large margin.

How much did you pay?  Just let us know in the comments, and those of you who wouldn’t otherwise answer, please answer and help us defeat selection bias at least in part.  Just as the heroic Tim has done (please see the second comment), I’m sure he stands up to terrorists as well.

And it’s simple: just cook the cheeseburger in milk, what’s so hard about that?  Do note the burnt milk will ruin any good pan you use.  If you’d like to read some Doris Lessing, The Golden Notebook is compelling even though it is one of those books which old school feminists feel no man can possibly like.  Just be wary of the date who tells you it is his all-time favorite book.  I’ve never been persuaded by Lessing’s science fiction but some of you will wish to try it.

Here is the link.  Over the last week I went back and listened to their major works again; I’m not that impressed.  Try Christopher O’Riley’s album of piano arrangements, and you will see just how thin and unmemorable their compositions are.  Admittedly not all great music would transfer well to the piano, but the Radiohead "sound" isn’t that original either, at least not compared to the frontiers of electronica or for that matter punk.  This morning I put on Boris’s Pink; it is hardly my favorite album but it was a welcome relief.

From Alex Ross.  I am eagerly awaiting Ross’s The Rest is Noise, due out mid-October; Ross is currently my favorite writer on music.

Here is the story, but no this model won’t much change the music industry.  Yes you really can download this album and "tip" Radiohead as you feel inclined to.  But note that:

1. Radiohead is an indie cult band with extreme loyalties from its partisans and the possibility of attracting more such partisans by seeming "cool."

2. Radiohead peaks high on the charts (#3 for their last release, if I recall…) but I believe they sell the product pretty quickly and don’t have a long run at the top.  Again, they’d like to widen their fan base.

3. Radiohead’s gambit has reaped enormous publicity, but this won’t be the case next time.

4. Many donors will give to a highly visible "cause of the month" (remember the outpouring of support for the tsunami victims?) but they won’t necessarily give on a regular basis.

5. Radiohead probably has an especially high ratio of touring to CD and iTunes income; see #1.  This scheme is a natural for them but not for Kelly Clarkson. 

What we will see is lots of lesser bands (and authors) giving their work away for free, but that trend has been underway for some time.  And by the way, Radiohead’s best album is Kid A.

When blogging I try to keep book rehash to a minimum.  But tonight I cannot resist making a point from Good and Plenty:

In the past most people didn’t much like or listen to most of the music they bought, or in any case most of the value came from their very favorites.  A relatively small percentage of our music purchases accounted for most of our listening pleasure.  So if people can sample music in advance, and know in advance what they will like, music sales will plummet.  This will be a sign of market efficiency, not market failure.

Admittedly copyright issues are being superimposed on this scenario at the same time, so the net assessment of current music trends is complex.  But when there is uncertainty about consumer tastes, falling output can be a strong Pareto improvement.  (It’s just like how having lots of dates is not necessarily the sign of a happy love life.)  Less music is being produced, but we’re getting more of the stuff we want.