I spent most of last night working on a recording while ripping the Alexander String Quartet recordings of the complete Beethoven Quartets. So, blog writing took a back seat. Still have a couple of discs to do tonight, and I also added in two albums by It’s A Beautiful Day, both the self-titled first album and ‘Marrying Maiden’.

Around the time I was starting to work at Tower (almost 20 years ago!) my dad had placed a special order at the Tower on Watt Ave. for the first It’s A Beautiful Day album with ‘White Bird’ and ‘Hot Summer Day’ on . He had the vinyl of the album, but he had also heard that a CD of it had been made on the label ‘SF Sound’ which, ironically, was only available as an import. Randy Mendonza (who was the Tower regional manager, akin who I would later learn quite a bit from) found a way to get it for him. To say that he was excited would really be an understatement. The label had all sorts of other stuff as well from late ’60s SF, including Moby Grape’s albums and Quicksilver Messenger Service. I saw ‘Marrying Maiden’ come into the store as an import shortly after I started to work at Tower, and he was just thrilled to get it. It was a strange period… here was my dad, tracking down music that he already had, but was searching for it to get it again on the still somewhat new medium. As CDs now look to be on life support, it blows my mind that these albums are available now to get within minutes of searching. eMusic, iTunes… probably even as MP3 downloads from Amazon. Pretty stunning to see how CDs – the medium that would store music in pristine digital form FOREVER! has, already in 20 years, pretty much been replaced by the online database. And while things still do ‘go out of print’, I also wonder when such a notion will finally be a thing of the past.

The reason I threw these onto the computer last night though was because another friend of mine got his subsonic server also up and running, and I noticed Quicksilver Messenger Service on his library. He had gotten it from his dad, and I asked if he had heard It’s a Beautiful Day. He hadn’t, and within 10 minutes it was loaded onto my server, ready to stream. Pretty mind blowing to me that musical conversations, now with online examples, can happen so quickly (through Facebook chat no less).

The Beethoven quartet recordings with the Alexander Quartet is my favorite overall set. The group made this repertoire their sole musical activity for a number of years, and would tour with the Beethoven quartets to be played only by memory, at the request of the audience. They would start the concert by taking a poll of which early, middle and late quartet to play, then play them. This is so ideal on many levels. One the one hand, they obviously know this music at the level where they don’t need to look at the page anymore, and there is something pretty amazing about a chamber group that can truly pay attention to each other, creating a true musical conversation. Second, they were mostly supported in this by San Francisco State University where they were the quartet in residence and held chamber music workshops (workshops that I imagine produced some very fine chamber music musicians). Third, they were able to make a living by playing repertoire that is rather well-known and well-played, and the difference in their playing really stands out (the recordings have some astounding musicianship in them). Finally, to be a performer of this music and to show up at the gig and ask the audience what it wants to hear – AND have the audience be able to tell them. Wow.

The group has expanded its repertoire in the past decade or so, performing more of the classical repertoire as well as works even well into the 20th century. The other recordings of theirs that I have heard give the sense of a group that really relies on all the players to guide the performance. Their Mozart ‘Haydn’ quartets are beautifully done. But it is their late Beethoven that is really some of the best recordings of any music that I think I have heard. The A minor quart (op.132) is otherworldly. If you ever happen to see them coming to your area for a performance, make sure to get a ticket, and ask for it.