Category: Music

What should I ask Ada Palmer?

by  Tyler Cowen in

I will be doing a Conversation with her.  She is a unique thinker and presence, and thus hard to describe.  Here is a brief excerpt from her home page:

 I am an historian, an author of science fiction and fantasy, and a composer. I teach in the History Department at the University of Chicago.

Yes, she has tenure.  Her four-volume Terra Ignota series is a landmark of science fiction, and she also has a deep knowledge of the Renaissance, Francis Bacon, and the French Enlightenment.  She has been an advocate of free speech.  Here is her “could be better” Wikipedia page.  The imaginary world of her novels is peaceful, prosperous, obsessed with the Enlightenment (centuries from now), suppresses both free speech and gender designations, and perhaps headed for warfare once again?

Here is her excellent blog, which among other things considers issues of historical progress, and also her problems with chronic pain management and disability.

So what should I ask her?

*The Lost Album of the Beatles*

by  Tyler Cowen in

The author is Daniel Rachel, and the subtitle is What if The Beatles Hadn’t Split Up?  This is perfectly fine as a music book (for Beatle fans, it won’t convince the unconverted), but I couldn’t stop thinking of the Lucas critique.

For the author, the Beatles “final last album” is a double album of the best cuts from Beatle early solo careers, and that is an impressive assemblage indeed.  McCartney’s “Back Seat of My Car,” for instance, was written in 1968, or at least started in that year, so surely it would have ended up on the last album.  Or would it have?  It didn’t end up on Let It Be or Abbey Road, so who knows?  As long as the end of The Beatles was in sight, perhaps each Beatle would have hoarded his best potential solo material.  Or maybe the other Beatles would have vetoed some of those songs, just as Paul in 1968 had decided that George’s “Isn’t a Pity?” wasn’t suitable as a Beatles song.  Or maybe John and Paul would have had to give more songs to George and Ringo, to keep the group together, but arguably to the detriment of the final album.  Most of the songs on All Things Must Pass are very good, but best suited to their own little walled garden.

In contrast, this economist believes that an additional album would have fallen somewhere between Let It Be and The White Album, with an overall sound somewhat akin to “Free as a Bird,” or perhaps also Ringo’s “I’m the Greatest,” penned by John and cut with George as well.  Good stuff, but I’m still glad they split.  Get that Q up, especially given that market power was present!

And don’t assume that Beatle behavior remains invariant across different policy regimes.  Lucas truly was a universal economist.

Wings at the Speed of Sound — a review

by  Tyler Cowen in

Was it Ian Leslie I promised this review to?  Time is slipping away!

Speed of Sound (songs at the link) was much derided upon its release in 1976, and more recently one scathing reviewer gave it a “1” score out of 10.  Yet I find this an entertaining and also compelling work.  At least Eoghan Lyng had the sense to call it “definitely infectious and decidedly hummable.”  But it’s better than that, and I would stress the following:

1. The album very definitely has its own “sound.”  Super clean production, a limpid clarity in the mix, and sparing deployment of guitar.  Not all of that works all the time, but there is a coherence to a production often described as a mish-mash.  The sound of the whole is best reflected by “The Note You Never Wrote,” a McCartney song sung by Denny Laine, placed wisely in the number two slot.  Nothing on either the disc or the original album sounds compressed, rather it all comes to life.  It’s better than the sluggish, overproduced, horn-heavy Venus and Mars.

2. The unapologetic presentation has held up fine, rejecting its own era of albums that were overloaded with ideas, overproduced, and too self-consciously parading their messages.  Speed of Sound is so deliberately unhip you can hardly believe it — who else in 1976 would pay tribute to “Phil and Don” of the Everly Brothers?  And Paul was thanking MLK (“Martin Luther”) when others were still flirting with the Black Panthers.  Surely he was right that “Silly Love Songs” would persist, so maybe people were hating on how on the mark he was.

2. At exactly the same time Wings was evolving into one of the very best live acts of the 1970s, far better than the Beatles ever were.  (Yes, I know it is hard to admit that.)  Their live act sizzled, and yes I did see it back then and I have listened to it many times since.  Check out the YouTube channel of jimmymccullochfan, for instance “Beware My Love” or “Soily,” or how about “Call Me Back Again“?  For Macca, Wings at this time was essentially a live band, and it proved to be his greatest live band achievement of all time (with some competition from his early 1990s shows), most of all pinned down by Jimmy McCulloch on guitar and Paul on bass.

You have to think of Speed of Sound as a complementary valentine to the live shows, a sweeter and more digestible version of what went into the road.  Most of all it is about Paul and Linda, about the maturation of Wings as a group, about opennness to the world and to each other (a recurring Macca theme) and about domestic life, with recurring melancholy thrown in.  Maybe those ideas are not your bag, but at least you can accept this as one piece of the broader McCartney tableau.

Now Macca knew you might not know about the live shows, but he didn’t care.  He figured he was giving you two monster hits (“Let Em In,” “Silly Love Songs”) in the process, and that was good enough.  And yes I agree he was too much the satisficer in this period.

3. The weak songs are “Wino Junko” and “Time to Hide” — 10% less democracy as Garett Jones says!  “Time to Hide” is almost good, but it relies too heavily on horns and then drags on.  “San Ferry Anne” also has a weak use of horns and the melody never quite takes off.  “Cook of the House” goes into a category of its own.  I’ll say only Wings [sic] needed to get this out of its system to move on to other approaches.  I am pleased, however, that the lyrics are fulsome in their praise of domesticity, compare it to Lennon’s effort in an analogous but not similar vein.  I don’t mind “dares to be appalling” as much as many others do.  Frankly, I enjoy this song.

4. Excellent are “Let ’em In,” “The Note You Never Wrote,” “She’s My Baby,” “Beware My Love,” “Silly Love Songs,” and “Warm and Beautiful.”  That is six very good songs on an album, with “Must Do Something About It” as “pretty good.”  The prominence of the former set on Beatles XM satellite radio should not go unremarked, as presumably listeners are not switching the dial away.  These songs are still popular nearly fifty years later.

5. “She’s My Baby” is the most underrated cut of that lot.  It starts before you realize it and it just gets down to business.  Thumping bass, innovative vocal, it keeps on going and then it segues into “Beware My Love.”  Does not wear out its welcome.

6. There is no good reason to mock “Silly Love Songs,” which is a classic, ecstatic in its peaks, and which deploys disco influences in just the right way.  The vocal and bass lines work perfectly, as does Linda’s vocal counterpoint.  It stays vital at almost six minutes long.  Once you step out of your ingrained bias, it is easy to see this is better than many of the classic McCartney Beatle songs.  I would rather hear it than say Lennon’s soppy “Imagine,” which is ideologically ill-conceived to boot.  Macca in this one is sly, mocking, and sardonic too, such as when he subtly refers to the problematic nature of mutual orgasm (“love doesn’t come in a minute…sometimes it doesn’t come at all…”).

7. “I must be wrong” in “Beware My Love” (plus the preceding guitar break) and “I love you” in “Silly Love Songs” are the two highlight moments of the album.

There are definitely disappointments in this work, but it is time we were able to view its contributions with some objectivity.  Wings at the Speed of Sound is an excellent album, still worth the relistens.  And I really am glad that the Beatles broke up — it meant more music from the group as a whole.

I never knew this was a Bacharach-David song

by  Tyler Cowen in

Little Red Book, by Love.  RIP, Burt Bacharach.  His was some of the first music I knew, most of all “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head.”  I don’t even think I knew he wrote that song, but it was in one of the first movies I ever saw in a theater.

Most of all, as a teenager, I thought of Burt Bacharach as “my parents’ music,” in a not entirely positive way.  I associated it with muzak, where his compositions were played often.  Then one day (long ago) I woke up and realized “Hey, Burt Bacharach is one of America’s great all-time great songwriters!”  Which he was and is.  It is a good thing in life to have these “Burt Bacharach moments.”  They don’t need to have anything to do with your parents.  But you should be able to wake up and one day just realize “Hey, that’s great!”  Burt Bacharach moments, keep them in mind.

I hadn’t known he was mentored by Milhaud, as mention in this WaPo obituary.  He was renowned as a good-looking playboy, leading to this:

His 2013 memoir “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” a title borrowed from one of his hits, revealed his shortcomings as a husband and father. An admittedly “selfish” man much of his life, he invited his ex-wives — Stewart, Dickinson and Sager — to contribute to provide their perspective.

I wonder what their “Burt Bacharach moments” were.

Those new Dubai service sector jobs

by  Tyler Cowen in

Fourteen years on, Atlantis The Royal — just a short stroll away from the original resort — is set to open this weekend along with much of the same extravagance. Beyonce will perform to a VIP audience for a reported $24 million and fireworks will light up the sky above the city’s famous artificial tree-shaped island of Palm Jumeirah.

Here is more from Bloomberg.  Via DL.

Masaaki Suzuki, a great achiever of our time

by  Tyler Cowen in

I think of Suzuki as on a par with Carlsen or Curry.  Here are a few simple facts:

He has recorded the complete cantatas of Johann Sebastian Bach, in pretty much perfect recordings. They are widely acknowledged to be the best Bach cantata recordings ever.  That amounts to 70 CDs of work.

He is currently recording the complete organ works of Bach.  Unlike the cantatas, I don’t think you can say they stand above all others, but they are in the top tier of Bach organ recordings.  Those will amount to — what ?…15 CDs or so.

His Bach harpischord recordings stand among the best.

Not long ago he conducted and recorded Beethoven’s 9th symphony and produced one of the finest renditions of an oft-recorded piece, one that has been taken on by most of the all-time greats.

He founded Bach Collegium Japan, and remains the music director.

Oh, I forgot to mention: “…he is also recording Bach’s concertos, orchestral suites, and solo works for harpsichord…”

Here is Suzuki on Wikipedia, he also records with his son.  Interestingly, his parents were Protestant Christians.

If you have any connections to Masaaki Suzuki that would help bring about a Conversation with Tyler, please do let me know!  How many others have his consistent record of achievement or anything close to it?

My Conversation with the excellent Rick Rubin

by  Tyler Cowen in

The Rick Rubin.  Here is the transcript and audio, here is part of the summary:

He joined Tyler to discuss how to listen (to music and people), which artistic movement has influenced him most, what Sherlock Holmes taught him about creativity, how streaming is affecting music, whether AI will write good songs, what he likes about satellite radio, why pro wrestling is the most accurate representation of life, why growing up in Long Island was a “miracle,” his ‘do no harm’ approach to working with artist, what makes for a great live album, why Jimi Hendrix owed his success to embracing technology, what made Brian Eno and Brian Wilson great producers, what albums he’s currently producing, and more.

And an excerpt:

COWEN: Do you think the widespread advent of streaming threatens the economic viability of a successful ecosystem for musical production and sale?

RUBIN: I think it can be. I don’t think it is yet. If you look at the history of recorded music, at the time that the Beatles were making albums, I think they were paid several pennies per album sold. Then over time, the artists got more leverage and were able to negotiate better deals. I think it finally culminated in the old music business with Michael Jackson who was getting maybe $2 per album that was sold, which was much more than everybody else. In the early days of singles, people were paid very little. Every time there’s a new format of music, the rights holders seem to take advantage of that.

Like when CDs first came in, artists got paid less on a CD than they did for vinyl, and it’s been very time. Every time there’s a new format, the artist gets paid less. Now, they only get paid less until their attorneys realize, “Oh, in our next deal, we’re going to negotiate to have better digital rights,” or better whatever it is. Then it eventually evens out because ultimately, the artists have a great deal of leverage.

Like now, for the handful of the biggest artists in the world, they probably make more money through streaming music than anyone has ever made in the physical world of music, but it’s very much of a top-down thing. It’s only the very top percent who have that. Eventually, hopefully, it’ll get more equitable. It always has. In every case, it has so I’m optimist that it will again.

COWEN: Do you worry about the decline in music education in American schools? Does that matter for popular music in the future, or do people just teach themselves? There’s YouTube, there’s streaming, whatever.

RUBIN: I don’t think it matters. I like the idea of learning what you want in school. If you want to learn music, it would be nice to have that option, but I think that people learn the things they love wherever they are, not in school.

And this:

RUBIN: Yes. I listen to The Beatles [satellite radio] Channel all the time. I love The Beatles Channel.

COWEN: As do I.

RUBIN: It was funny one of the things that when I was talking to Paul McCartney, one of the first things I said to him was like, “Oh, yes, you make all the music that’s on The Beatles Channel, right? That’s who you are. You’re the guy who makes the music for The Beatles Channel.”

Interesting throughout, and best experienced as a whole.  And here is Rick’s new book The Creative Act: The Way of Being.

What should I ask Rick Rubin?

by  Tyler Cowen in

I will be doing a Conversation with him, here is Wikipedia:

Frederick Jay Rubin is an American record producer. He is the co-founder (alongside Russell Simmons) of Def Jam Recordings, founder of American Recordings, and former co-president of Columbia Records.

Rubin helped popularise hip hop by producing records for acts such as the Beastie Boys, Geto Boys, Run-DMC, Public Enemy, and LL Cool J. He has also produced hit records for acts from a variety of other genres, predominantly heavy metal (Danzig, System of a Down, Metallica, and Slayer), alternative rock (The Cult, Red Hot Chili Peppers, The Strokes, and Weezer), and country (Johnny Cash and The Chicks).

In 2007, Rubin was called “the most important producer of the last 20 years” by MTV and was named on Time‘s list of the “100 Most Influential People in the World“.

So what should I ask?

And I am excited for his new book The Creative Act: A Way of Being.

What should I ask Noam Dworman?

by  Tyler Cowen in

I will be doing a Conversation with him.  Noam is the owner of Comedy Cellar, considered by many to be the world’s best comedy club, located in Greenwich Village, NYC.  There is a branch in Las Vegas too.  The Cellar also has its own TV show.

Here is Norm’s LinkedIn page.  Noam also makes music in a band, usually playing guitar.

So what should I ask him?

*The McCartney Legacy, volume 1, 1969-1973*

by  Tyler Cowen in

This book is an A+ for me, though perhaps not for all of you.  I’ve already learned so much in the first fifty pages (and yes I have read the other ones), most of all just how much the McCartney album was a very direct outgrowth from Beatles time.  It was much more a 1969 album and less of a 1970 album than I had realized.  The reader also learns how every song was put together.  Had you known that Paul regarded “Man We Was Lonely” as channeling Johnny Cash?  And I hadn’t understood how much Paul turned to morning alcohol (not just pot) right after the Beatles split up.

There is probably no book this year I will read more avidly than this one.  Highly recommended, at least for those who care.  You can buy it here.  You get almost 700 pp. from authors Allan Kozinn and Adrian Sinclair, do it!

My Conversation with John Adams

by  Tyler Cowen in

Here is the audio and transcript, here is part of the episode summary:

He joined Tyler to discuss why architects have it easier than opera composers, what drew him to the story of Antony and Cleopatra, why he prefers great popular music to the classical tradition, the “memory spaces” he uses to compose, the role of Christianity in his work, the anxiety of influence, the unusual life of Charles Ives, the relationship between the availability and appreciation of music, how contemporary music got a bad rap, his favorite Bob Dylan album, why he doesn’t think San Francisco was crucial to his success, why he doesn’t believe classical music is dead or even dying, his fascination with Oppenheimer, the problem with film composing, his letter to Leonard Bernstein, what he’s doing next, and more.

And here is an excerpt:

COWEN: How do you avoid what Harold Bloom called the anxiety of influence?

ADAMS: Harold Bloom was a very great literary critic, sometimes a little bit of a windbag, but his writings on Coleridge and Shelley, and especially on Shakespeare, were very important to me. He had a phrase that he coined, the anxiety of influence, which is interesting because he himself was not a creator. He was a critic, but he intuited that we creators, whether we’re painters or novelists or filmmakers or composers — that we live, so to speak, under the shadow of the greats that preceded us.

If you’re a poet, you’ve got all this great literature behind you, whether it’s Shakespeare or Walt Whitman or Emily Dickinson. And likewise for me, I’ve got really heavyweight predecessors in Beethoven, in Bach, in Mahler, in Stravinsky. Maybe that’s what he meant, just the anxiety of, is what I do even comparable with this great art? Another thing is, if I have an idea, has somebody already thought of it before? Those are the neurotic aspects of my life, but I’m no different than anybody else. We just have to deal with those concerns.

COWEN: Are you more afraid of Mozart or of Charles Ives?

ADAMS: [laughs] I’m not afraid of either of them. I love them. I obviously love Mozart more than Charles Ives. Charles Ives is a very, very unusual figure. He was almost completely unknown in most of the 20th century until Leonard Bernstein, who was very glamorous and very well known — Bernstein brought him to the public notice, and he coined this idea that Charles Ives was the Abraham Lincoln of music. Of course, Americans love something they can grasp onto like, “Oh, yes, I can relate to that. He’s the Abraham Lincoln of music.”

Charles Ives was a hermit. He worked during the day in an insurance firm, at which he was very successful, but spent his weekends and his summer vacations composing. His work is very sentimental, also very avant-garde for its time. I’ve conducted quite a few of his pieces. They are not, I have to admit, 100 percent satisfying, and I think a lot of that has to do with the fact that Ives never heard these pieces, or hardly ever heard them.

When you’re composing, you have to hear something and then realize, “Oh, that works and that doesn’t.” I think the fact that Ives — maybe he was just born before his time. He was born in Connecticut in the 1870s, and America at that time just was still a very raw country and not ready for a classical experimental composer.

COWEN: You seem to understand everything in music, from Indian ragas to popular songs, classical music, jazz. Do you ever worry that you have too many influences?

Recommended.