Outside the album cover
The b3ta folk explore what happens just outside the border of some well-known album covers. The Simon and Garfunkel and Pink Floyd/Kool-Aid ones are pretty good.
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kottke.org posts about Music
Lost in a taxi
A short list of items lost in taxi cabs and how they were returned.
Thierry Belisha and Haimy Mann, jewelers from Montreal, left a suitcase full of diamonds and other gems in the back of a cab they took to La Guardia Airport after a show at the Jacob K. Javits Convention Center. Mr. Belisha, an Orthodox Jew, called several rabbi friends in Israel and asked them to pray for him, prayers that were answered when Hossam Abdalla, a Muslim cabdriver, found Mr. Belisha’s business card in the trunk and returned the suitcase (with all the gems).
The list is a sidebar to the story about a cabbie’s return of a $4 million Stradivarius to its owner and subsequent concert performed in the Newark airport taxi holding area, a delightful piece of reporting.
But despite the setting — or maybe because of it — Mr. Quint’s audience seemed particularly moved by his gesture. “I like that he came here,” Ebenezer Sarpeh, 46, said, in the accent of his native Ghana. “And, yeah, the music, I like it.” It was Mr. Sarpeh who burst into spontaneous applause on several occasions and started yelling “magic fingers” during one particularly deft moment. Later, he took a turn in front of the stage and his fellow cabdrivers laughed and cheered while he shimmied and moonwalked, the Newark Taxi Cab Association’s answer to Justin Timberlake.
100 essential jazz albums
David Remnick lists the top 100 essential jazz albums. Caveat:
I thought it might be useful to compile a list of a hundred essential jazz albums, more as a guide for the uninitiated than as a source of quarrelling for the collector.
The list is a companion piece to Remnick’s article on jazz DJ Phil Schapp.
Sad Kermit
A sad Kermit the Frog sings Elliot Smith’s Needle in the Hay (complete with The Royal Tenenbaums parody), NIN’s Hurt, and Radiohead’s Creep (in which Kermit says “fucking”). (via buzzfeed)
How to synchronize five metronomes
How to synchronize 5 metronomes. If you only watch one metronome video in your life, make it this one.
Mister Disc is a portable record player,
Mister Disc is a portable record player, like a Walkman or iPod for phonographs. There’s only 12 easy steps to listening to your favorite LPs on the go.
Careful reading the instructions will assure you of many hours of enjoyment from your new Mister Disc.
Whoever greenlit this thing must have been high at the time. (via episode #59 of Starcade)
A suggestion from the inbox: watch the
A suggestion from the inbox: watch the fascinatingly disturbing eagle vs. goats video with a soundtrack of Juan Diego Flórez’s encore-inducing tenor solo. Two great links that taste great together. (thx, andrew & rueben)
Update: The mash-up is now on YouTube…no separate soundtrack needed. (thx, james)
Did you know that there was a
Did you know that there was a ban on solo encores at the Metropolitan Opera? Not anymore. After Juan Diego Flórez busted out nine flawless high Cs in a tenor solo, the reaction from the audience compelled the singer into the first solo encore at the Met since 1994.
Peter Gelb, the Met’s general manager, said on Tuesday that he had asked Mr. Flórez weeks ago whether he would be prepared to repeat the aria, if the audience demanded. Mr. Fl’orez had already done so at other houses, including the Teatro alla Scala in Milan, where last year he became the first to violate an encore ban since 1933.
Mr. Flórez agreed to Mr. Gelb’s request, and the orchestra and chorus were warned. A system was established. Mr. Gelb kept an open line on the phone in his box to the stage manager. After the explosive reaction he gave the stage manager the go-ahead. The manager activated a podium light for the conductor, Marco Armiliato. Mr. Armiliato held out a questioning two fingers to Mr. Flórez. “He just smiled, and that means ‘Yes,’ ” the conductor said.
Flórez nailed all nine Cs in the encore too. The mp3 of the performance is a thrilling listen.
I’m really enjoying M83’s new album,
I’m really enjoying M83’s new album, Saturdays = Youth; it’s somehow both 80s retro and not. The AV Club gave the album an A and Metacritic gives it a rating of 69.
Two unrelated things:
- amazon.com/mp3 is a quick way to get to the Amazon MP3 store.
- The vast majority of the recent album releases rated by Metacritic are in the “generally favorable reviews” category. A few are rated “universal acclaim” or “mixed or average reviews” and only one is “generally negative”. Compare that to the ratings for recently released movies, which are much lower on average. Do people demand higher quality from their music than movies? Or is so much music produced (compared to movies) that the only albums worth compiling reviews for are the good ones?
Jsh Alln explains why the perfect pop
Jsh Alln explains why the perfect pop song is two minutes and 42 seconds long.
Here’s the problem: “More Than a Feeling” is four minutes and 47 fucking seconds long. I don’t have time for that kind of nonsense. That’s, like, one-seventh of my recreation right there.
Don’t get me wrong, slugger. I love “More Than a Feeling.” Those who don’t are your basic a-holes. But it’s like: We get it. The riff, the handclaps, the 10,000 multi-tracked guitars-nice. But then there’s another verse and another chorus and infinity more solos and just a really ridiculous amount of balderdash.
If you’ve got the time, there’s a related collection of 2:42 songs to listen to.
20 respectable rock and rap acts that peaked with debut albums.
20 respectable rock and rap acts that peaked with debut albums.
Most heard songs
What’s the play count on your most played song in your iTunes library? My top five are:
Emerge by Fischerspooner, 97 plays
Alpha Beta Gaga by Air, 76 plays
A Dream by Cut Copy, 68 plays
Take Me Out by Franz Ferdinand (Daft Punk mix), 68 plays
Around the World by Daft Punk, 66 plays
Sixteen songs in my library have been played 50 times or more. More than 70 songs have been played at least 35 times. I’m wondering where that lies on the scale of obsession…do I listen to my favorite songs more or less than normal? If you folks can be considered normal…. ;)
An interview with Robin Wilson, the thoughtful
An interview with Robin Wilson, the thoughtful frontman of the Gin Blossoms.
It’s very frustrating to me that most people don’t know [that the Gin Blossoms are still together]. We’re still very fortunate that we have a career and that we can make a good living playing our music. And we’ve got thirty-something-thousand MySpace friends, which is a great number. But, you know, I hang out with these young bands, like this group from Pittsburgh called Punchline-they’re friends of mine-and they’ve got seventy-five thousand MySpace friends. What it works out to, basically, is however many MySpace friends you have: that’s about how many records you can sell-at least…on your own.
And so, right now, with the way things are changing-record stores across the country are closing, CD sales are down, digital downloads are up. You don’t necessarily need a record company to sell. We don’t need a record company to sell our music to those thirty thousand people. We can do it directly. And thirty thousand people are more than enough to support our records and to keep our career going.
Short interview with bassist Colin Greenwood about
Short interview with bassist Colin Greenwood about the State of Radiohead, among other things.
Pitchfork: The Pitchfork review of Hail to the Thief put forth the idea that “anything Radiohead does from here on out will sound like Radiohead”…
CG: That’s like a late-night stoner comment. At about three in the morning — after you’ve put on Captain Beefheart and you put the red scarf over the light bulb — it makes a lot of sense. But the next morning you’re like, “I don’t know, maybe the world is fucked and we didn’t solve it.” So I don’t know about that.
Sounds like he’s got Pitchfork figured out. And as your musical sommelier, I’d recommend the 2007 In Rainbows with this interview.
This short blog post by Sasha Frere-Jones
This short blog post by Sasha Frere-Jones about rock show patron drink tipping practices is impossible to excerpt…lots of lovely little bits. Ok, twist my arm:
When Chromeo played, their crowd drank house vodka and Budweiser. Didn’t tip. Some of them did what I’ll call the slide-backs. They put a dollar down on the bar, wait until you turn your back, then palm their buck and walk away. Classy. When your night starts out with “What’s your cheapest drink?” that’s also not good.”
Top ten artists suffering the Lindsey Buckingham
Top ten artists suffering the Lindsey Buckingham Paradox.
The Lindsey Buckingham Paradox is what happens when otherwise brilliant musicians decide they’re better than their bandmates (creative differences, natch), strike out on their own with solo “careers”, and somewhat curiously never again manage to grasp his or her own genius in the way we all know is possible.
Sting clocks in at #2:
Stewart Copeland and Andy Summers brought their own special flavors to the Police party, and without them, Sting is just a big bowl of goddamned puffy cheetos. Like Bono, maybe, without the passion or, you know, cred.
GQ interview with Keith Richards. Do I
GQ interview with Keith Richards. Do I even need to say it’s rambling?
Q: You should sell your body on eBay.
Yeah, I think so. Apparently, I do have an incredible immune system. I had hepatitis C and cured it by myself.Q: How?
Just by being me.Q: Do you regret not moisturizing your face?
No. I leave that up to other people.Q: Ever think about getting Botox?
No one’s ever talked me into doing that. You’re lucky if you walk out of there alive. God bless you.Q: Are you still cutting your own hair? You’ve done that all your life, right?
Yes. I did this bit here yesterday. [holds up a few strands on the side of his head] Also, I’m letting the dye grow out, since I’m not on the road. If the wife likes it, I’ll keep it.
(via goldenfiddle)
If you can ignore the stupid one-logo-per-page
If you can ignore the stupid one-logo-per-page interface, check out the 25 best band logos.
Music video for Orbital’s The Box from 1996.
Music video for Orbital’s The Box from 1996. That’s Oscar winner Tilda Swinton, yo.
Harlem rent parties and Fats Waller
According to Wikipedia, a rent party is:
a social occasion where tenants hire a musician or band to play and pass the hat to raise money to pay their rent. The rent party played a major role in the development of jazz and blues music.
Further reading suggests that rent parties started in Harlem in the 1910s as a way to offset rising rents.
Harlemites soon discovered that meeting these doubled, and sometimes tripled, rents was not so easy. They began to think of someway to meet their ever increasing deficits. Someone evidently got the idea of having a few friends in as paying party guests a few days before the landlord’s scheduled monthly visit. It was a happy; timely thought. The guests had a good time and entered wholeheartedly into the spirit of the party. Besides, it cost each individual very little, probably much less than he would have spent in some public amusement place. Besides, it was a cheap way to help a friend in need. It was such a good, easy way out of one’s difficulties that others decided to make use of it. Thus was the Harlem rent-party born….
Jazz pianist Fats Waller was associated with these parties and lived a short but colorful life.
The ebullient young man with the dazzling jazz style was a big hit at the Sherman Hotel. His nightly audience included men with wide lapels and bulging pockets. One evening Fats felt a revolver poked into his paunchy stomach. He found himself bullied into a black limousine, heard the driver ordered to East Cicero. Sweat pouring down his body, Fats foresaw a premature end to his career, but on arrival at a fancy saloon, he was merely pushed toward a piano and told to play. He played. Loudest in applause was a beefy man with an unmistakable scar: Al Capone was having a birthday, and he, Fats, was a present from “the boys”.
The party lasted three days. Fats exhausted himself and his repertoire, but with every request bills were stuffed into his pockets. He and Capone consumed vast quantities of food and drink. By the time the black limousine headed back to the Sherman, Fats had acquired severeal thousand dollars in cash and a decided taste for vintage champagne.
I was inspired to read about rent parties and Waller by this interview with Michel Gondry, director of Be Kind Rewind. Gondry says about his film:
It’s important in the story that there’s a parallel between what’s happening in the film and what happened in the past with rent parties, which were very real. Fats Waller became the great musician he was through those parties. When someone could not afford the rent for one month, they’d make a party. You’d bring a dollar, and there would be a piano contest all night long. People making their own entertainment, that’s exactly what it is.
Here’s Waller performing one of his most well-known pieces, Ain’t Misbehavin’.
Good music in movies
Jad Abumrad from Radio Lab curates The Morning News’ Video Digest and selects clips from movies with good music.
1. See a map of the world made
1. See a map of the world made out of musical notes.
2. Now, listen to the map.
Update: I misread the text associated with the second link…the music does not correspond to the notes on the map. But anyone wants to give it a shot, send along an MP3 of your recording. (thx, bill)
Rebecca Mead on young composer Nico Muhly
Rebecca Mead on young composer Nico Muhly in the New Yorker.
When Muhly composes, the last thing he thinks about is the actual notes that musicians will play. He begins with books and documents, YouTube videos and illuminated manuscripts. He meditates on this material, digesting its ironies and appreciating its aesthetics. Meanwhile, he devises an emotional scheme for the piece-the journey on which he intends to lead his listener. Muhly believes that some composers of new music rely too heavily on program notes to give their work a coherence that it might lack in the actual listening. “This stupid conceptual stuff where it’s, like, ‘I was really inspired by, like, Morse Code and the AIDS crisis,’” he says.
A sampling (no pun intended) of Muhly’s music is available on the New Yorker site and on his personal site (which seems to be in a similar vein to The Believer and McSweeney’s Store, design-wise).
Just purchased: Jonny Greenwood’s There Will Be
Just purchased: Jonny Greenwood’s There Will Be Blood soundtrack on the recommendation of Alex Ross in the New Yorker.
Greenwood is better understood as a composer who has crossed over into rock. Trained as a violist, he worked seriously at writing music in his youth, and had just embarked on studies at Oxford Brookes University when, in 1991, Radiohead was signed by the EMI record label. He dropped out of college to join the band on tour.
Guitar Zero is a band that has
Guitar Zero is a band that has repurposed the Guitar Hero game controllers to make real music with them. Even better: they’ve posted the instructions so you can make your own. (thx, nick)
Reconsidered!
One of the problems of criticism is—what happens when it takes you just forever to realize that something is totally great? It took me until this week, and lots of it cropping up on shuffle, to realize that the latest PJ Harvey album, “White Chalk,” is absolutely her best. (Okay, second best—maybe nothing will ever be as cool as “Rid Of Me,” if only because who writes rock music in 5/4? ) Back in September, Pitchfork gave “White Chalk” a 6.8, and I would have given it a worse score even as recently as December. But of course, what does anyone know? “Uh Huh Her” got a 7.6, her Peel Sessions got a 7.9, “Stories from the City…” got a 5.5 and “Is This Desire?” got an Pitchfork 8.
The Kronos Quartet is playing at Carnegie
The Kronos Quartet is playing at Carnegie Hall late next month—and on the program is Clint Mansell’s “Requiem for a Dream Suite,” which is its New York premiere, sort of.
Too Soon/Not Too Soon
I had to go uptown to interview some people this afternoon and Laurie Anderson’s “Live in New York” came on the headphones on the way, which made me think about “Cloverfield” and 9/11 and “too soon” again. “Live in New York” was recorded at Town Hall on September 19 and 20, 2001. Is it in my mind, or does she sound uncomfortable singing “I feel like I am in a burning building and I gotta go” on “Let X=X” (iTunes link)? Nexis doesn’t deliver any useful accounts of the concert—just a review from Newsday which is appreciative but not very descriptive. (Also, though, now we know that the name “Laurie Anderson” has appeared in the New York Times an astonishing 799 times, and, yes, nearly all of them are her.) Also I’m not convinced she doesn’t get choked up during (iTunes link ahoy) “Slip Away.” (“What’s this? A little dust in my eye.”) Anyway, somehow that wasn’t too soon.
The audience at Saturday’s not-quite-Wu-Tang but still
The audience at Saturday’s not-quite-Wu-Tang but still Clan show (it was minus RZA) was “almost uniformly white.”
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