Category: Music

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.

What I listened to in 2022

by  Tyler Cowen in

I am listing only new releases:

Bach, Johann Sebastian, complete Sonatas and Partitas for violin, Fabio Biondi.  Perhaps the only recording I like as much as the older (stereo) Milstein performance?

Bach, Johann Sebastian, The Art of Life, Daniil Trifonov, The Art of the Fugue (favorite of Thomas Schelling!) is the main work here.  Schelling, by the way, was especially fond of the Grigory Sokolov recording of this work.

van Baerle Trio, Beethoven complete piano trios

Beethoven, Kreuzer sonata for violin and piano, Clara-Jumi Kang and Sunwook Kim

William Byrd, John Bull, The Visionaries of Piano Music, played by Kit Armstrong

Handel, George Frideric, Eight Great Suites and Overtures, by Francesco Corti on harpischord

Matthias Kirschnereit plays Mozart, the complete piano concerti, and two Rondos

Mozart, La flûte enchantée (yes in French), conducted by Hervé Niquet

Shostakovich/Stevenson, mostly Op.87, piano music, by Igor Levit

Szymanowski, Karol, Piano Works, by Krystian Zimerman

By far my biggest discovery was Benjamin Alard playing the complete keyboard works of Bach, mostly on organ and clavichord.  These are some of the best recordings of the best music I have heard, ever.

There is much more, but those were the highlights.  I listened to plenty of so-called “popular music” too, but I don’t think anything you would need me to tell you about.

*Love and Let Die*

by  Tyler Cowen in

The author is John Higgs, and the subtitle is Bond, the Beatles and the British Psyche.  I loved this book, and reading it induced me to order the author’s other books, the ultimate compliment.  It is not for everyone, nor is it easy to describe, but imagine the stories of The Beatles and James Bond films told as “parallel careers.”  After all, “Love Me Do” and Dr. No were released on the same day in 1962.

It is striking that they have been making James Bond films for sixty years now, and every single one of them has made money.  We are still talking about the Beatles too.  Will anything from current Britain have such staying power?

From the book here is one excerpt:

Had Paul not then finally found success outside the band, it is possible they may have agreed to a reunion.  The success of ‘Live and Let Die’, followed by the album Band on the Run, made Paul McCartney and Wings a going concern at exactly the point when a Beatles reunion looked most plausible.  Bond didn’t kill the Beatles, but it is a strange irony that once they had split , he kept them dead.

I hadn’t known that the Soviet edition of the Band on the Run album replaced the title track with “Silly Love Songs” as the lead song, as the lyrics to the “Band on the Run” song were considered too subversive.  There is for instance talk of a prison break in the song.  And when Paul much later performed a short solo concert for Vladimir Putin, he chose to play “Let It Be.”

The book excels in its portraits of George Harrison, especially in his solo career.  I enjoyed this tidbit about the Harrison family:

In 1978, George married Olivia Arias and in the same year they had a son, Dhani.  Dhani only discovered his father’s past when he was at school.  ‘I came home one day from school after being chased by kids singing “Yellow Submarine”, and I didn’t understand why,’ he has said.  ‘It just seemed surreal: why are they singing that song to me?  I came home and freaked out to my dad: “Why didn’t you tell me you were in the Beatles?”  And he said: “Oh, sorry. Probably should have told you that.”  It’s impossible to imagine, John, Paul or Ringo neglecting to mention they were in the Beatles to their children.

Recommended, for me at least.