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Day 157. Toscanini.

Tuesday, November 9th, 2010

I think I am finally going to have to accept the fact that daily blog posts are a thing of the past for me. On one hand, work is keeping me so busy (and often into the night). On another, I have gotten little of my own composing done over the past few weeks. Part of me is bummed about this, but there is another aspect at play as well. As more and more of the CDs disappear from the front layer of shelves, more and more from the back are being pulled down for ripping. The quality of the discs here is still better then average for the most part, but there are lots of discs back here that, while I have listened and enjoyed them, they don’t necessarily bring up strong memories or personal history. I glanced over the blog as a whole a bit this past week and I have come across some strong memories that seem to be with me almost every day, and I also noticed that I have ‘found’ memories that I thought were lost (and now returned because of this project). I’m sure those aren’t done, but I am also sure at this point that they will be occurring with less frequency.

For me, starting this project almost a year ago was a needed distraction for what was a difficult time for Tamiko and me. Not between us, but due to situations in our lives that were, at the time, beyond our control in many ways. The blog provided some welcome distraction, and the enormity of the project itself gave me a positive outlet for some not always so positive energy. It also gave me focus on my life, family and one of the things that make me happiest in the world (music) at a time when lots of negative energy was flowing our way. I think this outlet for me helped me protect my girls from some of the negative that was hitting us and affecting me greatly at times.

Plus, there is just more music in the house now. Not that there wasn’t before, but the variety has grown considerably. Tamiko and I now have something different on every night as we wind down like we did when we first moved in together, Mira is discovering new ‘pretty music’ all the time and Celia and I start our evening reading with a new composer or musician just about every night. It’s pretty amazing how I have found something so great as a result of such a difficult situation (but, that is just how it goes sometimes).

Anyways, on to some music, and tonight I have been working on a stack of 11 2-Disc sets… the Toscanini / NBC Symphony Orchestra remastered and cleaned up sets the RCA put out in the late 90s. 6 discs of Beethoven, the pairs of discs covering quite a bit of the symphonic repertoire. All in mono. And while these are old recordings, it is remarkable how dynamic they are. I love watching videos of Toscanini conducting, and an image of him ‘shhhshing’ his orchestra almost always comes to mind (my friend Colin was able to do a wonderful imitation of this). It strikes me that Toscanini new that there was really a maximum of loud that you could get out of an orchestra, but with enough coaxing you could always get people to play a little quieter. This makes the louder parts seem more so by contrast, and this led to a large number of very dynamic recordings at a time when the technology in use was still quite limited.

Toscanini’s interpretations are seen by many people, especially today, as a bit off. I tend to find them a bit operatic, and sometimes overly dramatic. I don’t really have a problem with this, and like Glenn Gould I think that what you are getting is Toscanini performing a piece rather then just the piece itself. I wouldn’t suggest any of his recordings as the way to get to know a work (same with Gould – do NOT listen to the Gould ‘Goldberg Variations’ as the first version you listen to). Both are performers that you should go to once you know a piece pretty well. THEN – they are excellent examples of what great musicians can do with the art of interpretation. As I listen right now to Beethoven’s Seventh, I feel like I have a good idea about what is Toscanini and what is Beethoven. And the two are having a great conversation. It is my like I am having a seance as I listen to the ghosts of these two musicians play with each other… truly a treat.

Tags: Beethoven, Toscanini, Wagner
Posted in Celia, Classical, DAC Project, Mira, Tamiko | No Comments »

Day 156 … Cracker, Counting Crows, Jane’s Addiction and Shostakovich.

Monday, November 1st, 2010

So my 90s streak continued with a few other things thrown in. Counting Crows’ first album, the first Jane’s Addiction album, Cracker’s ‘Kerosene Hat’ and some Shostakovich all came off the shelves this week and most of it has been ripped.

‘Kerosene Hat’ is another one of those end of high-school discs that sticks in my mind. I think I got the promo for it probably right around graduation, and played it quite a bit over the summer. Though I don’t associate it directly with me and Tamiko getting back together, that was a good summer and those good feelings were mapped onto that and a few other discs. Which is funny because ‘Low’, ‘Take Me Down To The Infirmary’, and a GREAT cover of the Grateful Dead’s ‘Loser’ aren’t exactly chipper tunes (though I do remember clicking through over 60 tracks to get to ‘Euro-Trash Girl’ so that I could play it loudly as I drove down I-80 … and that song is just damn fun). Regardless of the mood in the songs though, I still remember how good the summer of ‘93 felt as we were getting back together, and this was one of those discs that was in my car.

‘August and Everything After’ was one of the discs that, about a year later, was in Tamiko’s apartment after I first moved down to Berkeley. It took a little time for Counting Crows to take off, but once they did they were certainly a band that was noticed around Berkeley. When I put the music on last night, Tamiko immediately started to bop to it, and like me I imagine there is the feeling of us starting our lives together in the Bay Area in the back of her head as well. At the same time, the guitarist from The Counting Crows also gave me (and my old Tower friend Jordan) an early lesson in the inequities of the rock and roll lifestyle.

I think it was between Christmas and New Years in 1994 when a guy came into Tower with a stack of $100 gift certificates (3 or 4?), and Jordan noticed when he was cashing them in that they were from Adam Duritz. Then Jordan noticed that the guy cashing them in was David Bryson (I think?), the guitarist for the band. It was funny – because we had a Counting Crows poster on the wall behind the guy. It was one of the biggest selling albums that year, and here he was cashing gift certificates from the lead singer! We were jazzed to meet him, but somehow the conversation got around to why he had these gift certificates. I remember him telling us that since Adam was the songwriter (and therefore got writing credit) that he was the one that made all the money. And while the rest of the band did ok, they were basically employees. They liked the gig (he wasn’t complaining), but he certainly didn’t have $400 of his own to go out and spend on music. So Adam had given them gift certificates to Tower that year as presents.

I think both Jordan and I were floored by this… this guy was on a record that had sold millions, yet he wasn’t a millionaire. Maybe with the next record, but that initial contract didn’t have him sitting pretty yet. While I wasn’t entertaining ideas really of rock and roll stardom anymore at this point (I was going to make millions as a composer of new music!!!), it still struck me just how messed up the music industry was (and of course I remember remembering this night a few years later when I saw a little clearer what my role in that messed up situation was).

Posted in Classical, Rock / Pop, Tamiko | 3 Comments »

Day 148. Dizzy Gillespie, New Order, ‘Next Stop Wonderland’.

Monday, September 13th, 2010

Again, I made the choices a couple night’s ago and just finished them up today… I’ll get back to letting the girl’s pick things again tonight, but there were a few things I just really wanted to hear.

First, I had ‘Temptation’ by New Order stuck in my head the other day and just had to hear it. I have a couple things by New Order on LP, but the only CD I have is ‘Substance’. ‘Substance’ really is a about one of the best greatest hits packages that a band AND fans could hope for. The hits are on there, as well as some notable B-sides from the heyday of the 12” single, and they didn’t throw radio edits onto the discs (instead opting for a two disc collection that really earns its keep). And as much as I love New Order, their albums rarely carried ‘great album’ status in my opinion, so this collection keeps me covered for the most part… and the way I know? When I put it on, even if I didn’t think I was in the mood for New Order, it only takes a couple of seconds to get into the groove of things and I will play at least on of the discs from start to finish quite happily. What will be interesting to see (to me at least) is how I will treat these discs now that they exist together on the server. Will I play both discs back to back? Or start getting choosier about which tracks I hear off one or the other? Who know, but I do think it is time for the girls to start dancing to ‘Perfect Kiss’ and ‘Bizarre Love Triangle’ before they are quick enough to parse the lyrics.

The other discs I ripped were what I would best categorize as mellow night time music. The ‘Next Stop Wonderland’ easily makes my top 10 soundtracks list, and is probably in the top 3 if I were to make a list (up there with ‘Singles’ and ‘In The Mood For Love’). Filled with Bossa Nova and Samba, the whole disc flows beautifully. It would also be THE disc I would give to someone who has never heard South American influenced jazz before. You get a nice mix of ‘authentic’ and ‘influenced’ with Astrud Gilberto, Marcos Valles, Antonio Carlos Jobim and Coleman Hawkins rounding out the disc. It is also one of mine and Tamiko’s favorite movies (one that we need to get on DVD… we haven’t seen it for some time). The quirkiness and mood of the movie goes wonderfully with the music, a wonderful example of the music enhancing the movie, and vice versa.

Finally, the last set I ripped last night is kind of a self-compiled one. Back when I was working at Tower, there was a week where a single disc titled ‘Jazz for a Sunday Afternoon: Live at the Village Vanguard’ and a live Dizzy Gillespie disc came out at the same time. The first one had a young Chick Corea on it and while 1970s Chick Corea (or worse, 1980s Chick Corea) never really hit it for me, I was curious to hear his early playing so I grabbed it. The Dizzy Gillespie disc (a live double disc) just looked good. So I took them home and discovered, while reading the liner notes, that these two discs came from concerts on the same day. The first was basically the opening act, and a few of the players stuck around to play with Dizzy Gillespie for his show. There were no marketing materials that linked these discs together, and I have no idea how many other people have all three of these discs and have brought them together, but what you get is about three hours of great jazz that represents a night at the Village Vanguard in the ‘60s. I pretty much kept these three discs together (fitting the opening group’s disc into the Dizzy Gillespie case since it had open slots) and have usually been able to put them out and listen to all three straight through.

I went ahead and labelled stored them under Dizzy Gillespie on the server so I could have them all grouped together. Once again, another instance where the new server based music system is going to work out better then the old CD based one (I never bought a CD changer since… they couldn’t play five discs at once, so I never really saw the use). There is some fine, fine playing in the opening groups set, and I can honestly say that some of Chick Corea’s playing gave me a huge appreciation of him. But what really stands out for me in this set is the instrumentation at the beginning of Dizzy Gillespie’s set… in addition to his trumpet and a standard rhythm section, there is also baritone sax, violin and trombone. And the violin mostly plays in its lower register. The result almost feels like a jazz ensemble influenced by Morphine … lots of lows, lots of sliding around and lots of gritty playing. The version of ‘Birk’s Works’ on here is amazing, and the concert ending ‘Sweet Georgia Brown’ closes out the whole night very nicely. Lots of energy with a bit of Dixieland influence, with an amazingly nimble baritone sax solo that gets things going after the head.

Looking forward to seeing what the girls pick out tonight though… I’m guessing Mira goes for more opera… we’ll see.

Tags: 'Next Stop Wonderland', Dizzy Gillespie, New Order
Posted in Jazz, Rock / Pop, Tamiko | No Comments »

Day 141. Elvis Presley, Andrew Hill, Red Garland, Herbie Hancock and Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd.

Monday, August 30th, 2010

With colds going around there wasn’t much disc ripping going on this week. I finally grabbed a stack last night in an attempt to broaden some night music choices and to make sure Tamiko had Elvis for the first day of school. Some jazz piano found its way into that stack (Andrew Hill, Herbie Hancock and Red Garland) as well as the Stan Getz / Charlie Byrd samba precursor to the Getz/Gilberto recordings.

Tamiko was teaching a poem by her colleague Hans Ostrom today in her ‘Literature and Music’ class. The poem is Emily Dickinson and Elvis Presley in Heaven, and she wanted to have some Elvis playing when the students shuffled into class. She has this wonderful memory of her first semester at Berkeley and the Introduction to Astronomy class she took with Alexei Filippenko. On the first day of class, she walked into a huge auditorium with pictures of the solar system playing on a slide show along with ‘Dark Side of the Moon’. She loved how the music set such a mood for the rest of the course for her, and she wanted to try and create a similar situation with today’s class. We talked about what a good Elvis song to walk into class would be. Of course, the beginning of ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ is probably the thing that would work perfectly. The problem there though, is that you can’t have music playing when people walk in AND have them hear the beginning of that song (and really, you HAVE to hear the beginning of that song). So I suggested that she have ‘Viva, Las Vegas’ playing as they walked in, then follow it up with ‘Heartbreak Hotel’. Maybe sandwich in ‘Don’t Be Cruel’ if there are still people coming in after ‘Viva, Las Vegas’.

Well, Tamiko got to the room and the computer didn’t start up (so she couldn’t reach the server) and she finally got the CD player up and running a little after class started. So she went straight for ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ (the perfect thing to do!) and what is the reaction she gets? ‘huh… Elvis???’. Come on kids! First day of school! Lit and Music class and ‘Heartbreak Hotel’ on the stereo to kick off the class! Oh well…

Music in class (even in music classes) is always a little tricky though. I imagine the bustle of a large Berkeley auditorium with Pink Floyd playing loudly would almost feel like you are showing up at a concert. But one of the difficulties with playing music in class has to do with the fact that everyone is sitting and being told to focus on the pressing of the play button. They sit quietly, still, not moving and maybe giving it full attention? But how do they show that they are giving it full attention? What can they say about how the air in the room is vibrating? It’s hard enough for musicians to talk about music, but ask your average intelligent college student about what they just heard and they can be thrown into a kerfuffle. One or two chime in with a comment on lyrics (if there are lyrics) or maybe something about instrumentation, but most wouldn’t know really how to describe a strong back-beat or why it don’t mean a thing if it ain’t got that swing. Or why Elvis crying out in a full voice ‘Well since my baby left me!’ veiled in studio echo just epitomizes loneliness, followed by the band’s one-two punch to his gut that takes the left lover to the ground. And sure, Elvis has found the Heartbreak Hotel, but it isn’t until you hear his pathetic “I feel so lonely, I feel so lonely… I could die” that you really do think this poor guy may have had his last grilled peanut butter banana sandwich. He isn’t howling in anguish anymore, he’s pulling himself off the floor, and it has all happened in 30 seconds of music. Not to mention the heavy trudging implied by the bass, and the sparse instrumentation that shows how lonely this guy is at this moment.

But what I find most awkward usually is the sitting. I walked by a class the other day listening to Otis Redding at Monterey Pop singing ‘Respect’. This is a blistering performance. I won’t describe it… if you’ve heard it, you know what I mean, if you haven’t, you just need to find it. Anyways, this isn’t music that you sit still, listen to, then analyze. The students haven’t experienced it by sitting quietly at their desks. The problem is though, I don’t know if there is really an answer. You certainly can’t take them back to the late 60s to see Otis, throw them into the crows and let them feel the energy (but, wow, I so wish I could do that… it would be hard not to spend weeks in a place like that).

I have it lucky in some ways. Most of the music I play is concert music, and I can treat the session as though it is a concert listening experience. Listening to Xenakis in our music studio is different then hearing it performed in the concert hall, but turning the lights down and sitting back in that studio isn’t TOO far off. The disparity is certainly much less then hearing Otis Redding sing at Monterey Pop while sitting under fluorescent lights in a regular old classroom. But the problem is still there. Part of the blame is recordings… the fact that we can actually play this music out of the context in which it was created in means it will always be a sub-par experience if music is the focus. Tamiko was lucky walking into that astronomy class, it was part of an entire show that was there to wow students on the first day of school. Great soundtrack, great visuals and excitement in a room of several hundred. Well Prof. Filippenko, you don’t make it easy for the rest of us.

Tags: Andrew Hill, Elvis Presley, Herbie Hancock, Red Garland, Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd.
Posted in Jazz, Rock / Pop, Tamiko | 1 Comment »

Day 122. Faure and Tchaikovsky.

Monday, July 5th, 2010

“Why did Tchaikovsky only write three symphonies? And why did he start numbering them at 4?”. I don’t know why Tchaikovsky’s first three symphonies get such little notice. Number two is quite good actually, and while one and three aren’t the sixth symphony, they aren’t that bad either. I imagine part of the reason is because he has so much good orchestral music that ins’t the first three symphonies that they just get skipped over. Plus, 4-6 fit neatly onto two discs. Kind of a ‘Tchaikovsky’s Greatest Symphony Hits’ of sorts. So – there are lots of collections of 4-6, and tonight I am ripping one of them (the Karajan / Berlin two disc set on DG). Also up for tonight are a stack of discs of Faure piano music, including a Pascal Roge disc that goes back to Tamiko’s apartment on Arch St. (so – more memories of open windows letting in Bay Area fog with piano music on in the background).

There actually aren’t too many discs that fit into this category by the way. For one, I had at this point in life, very little money to spend on CDs. I was paying for community college at the time, and had just moved to Berkeley and was renting a room in a house (that mostly just stored my stuff since I was mostly staying at Tamiko’s). Also, at the time I had a CD rack that held only 240 CDs, so that was pretty much all I owned, and most of those were on the rack in the room I rented. So when I come across the ones that did make it to her place, they stick out pretty clearly. At the time, I was working at the Tower in Concord (often until about 1 in the morning) and getting to her place probably around 1:30 or so. Tamiko was often still up doing homework, and we would put something quieter on to wind down for the night. Now that I think about it, we were usually up until 2 or 2:30 pretty regularly that first year I lived down there, and we would be up by 8am or so for 9am classes. Anyways, we had pretty good set of romantic piano music and some jazz to fall asleep to, and at the moment I’m thinking that might be a good thing to revive. Again, nostalgia and music can really go well together. Maybe we even have that old CD player boom box in the garage somewhere … hmm… At least the weather here in Tacoma right now would be co-operating. 60 degrees and some clouds rolling in on a July evening. Almost Bay Area worthy.

The Tchaikovsky recordings, like some other sets I’ve ripped in this project, actually get better because of it. While I still find ways to work the nostalgia of flipping over an LP into my daily conversation, I have never romanticized the notion of changing discs. And while symphonies 4-6 DO fit onto two CDs, they don’t fit nicely. Usually, the fifth symphony is split between disc one and disc two in these situations. While I would NEVER suggest that these should have been put onto three discs (raising costs, use of materials, etc.), I do know that I haven’t listened to the fifth symphony as much as I have listened to the fourth and sixth. I love that this problem is remedied with moving everything onto hard drives. A playlist can be however long you need it to be. Where CDs took us into the 74 minute (then 80 minutes) limit, now the limit is the size of your hard discs. No more need to break up works across discs. Operas can play straight through… and I can listen to Tchaikovsky 4-6 without interruption. Amazing.

While typing this all up, I also decided to try out iSub for Tamiko’s iPod Touch. Looks great. Don’t think we need the old boom box, we’ll try streaming Faure onto the speakers tonight!

Tags: Fauré, Tchaikovsky
Posted in Classical, Tamiko | No Comments »

Day 121. Górecki, Kanchelli, Gubaidulina and the Couperins.

Friday, July 2nd, 2010

Still a busy couple of days that included the completion of Richard Karpen’s recording for his piece ‘Strandlines’ for guitar and live electronics (which Stefan Östersjö will be releasing in the near future) as well as the release of SuperCollider 3.4 (which is uploading to Sourceforge as I type… for some reason, releases and their uploading to SF take a VERY long time, and with the release there are 8 packages to upload). So, while those finish I’ll briefly mention what was ripped last night and tonight.

A good amount of French baroque music, mostly harpsichord works by François and Louis Couperin (with a few smaller chamber works thrown in as well) and tonight a stack of CDs featuring Henryk Górecki, Giya Kancheli and Sofia Gubaidulina. I have the Kronos Quartet recording of Górecki’s third string quartet on right now, and like so much of his music I really like how slowly ideas develop and unfold. And it often has a bit of a romantic intense feeling as well that I think he pulls off. However, the build up in the first movement just disturbed a napping Tamiko, so I will take that as a cue to move on. I don’t blame her. Not happy night time music. I won’t move on to his thrid symphony either (the recording on Naxos which, as much as the Dawn Upshaw recording is ‘the favored’ version, I really thing this one is much better).

Should start having more time again to write more soon. I’m looking forward to things slowing down a little at some point soon!

Tags: François Couperin, Górecki, Gubaidulina, Kanchelli, Louis Couperin
Posted in Classical, Tamiko | No Comments »

Day 119. Wild and Wooly, Funk Blast! and I.R.S. Records ‘On The Charts’.

Monday, June 28th, 2010

Grabbed a few collections tonight, two that came out from the Experience Music Project here in Seattle, and a demo disc that I.R.S. Records put out in 1994 to celebrate 15 years of ‘being on the charts’.

The EMP discs I got with some weariness. EMP represents to me most of what I think is wrong in the world. It is an expensive ‘museum’ of Paul Allen’s memorabilia collection that is a headphone / PDA guided tour of, well, Paul Allen’s stuff. And the building is the biggest architectural disaster of Frank Gehry. I love his work usually, but this monstrosity is just hideous. And to top it off, when you go to the top of the space needle and look DOWN on it, the roof has had no design attention paid to it. No, if I was putting a building, especially one that is supposed to be interesting to look at, next to the Space Needle, what would I make sure to do? I would make sure it looked damn good from above. Anyways, the aesthetic problems, as well as the audacity that Paul Allen has to basically put his money into building a museum to store the stuff he has bought, then to charge an arm and a leg to close yourself off to the museum experience tells me that there would probably be problems with mix discs that the same place produced. The surprise is, they are actually pretty good. There are some small problems here and there, but they are, for the most part, pretty right on.

One set is a chronology of rock in the northwest called ‘Wild and Wooly’, and charts 50s garage bands up to Murder City Devils. The Wailers and The Kingsmen are represented, as is Mudhoney’s ‘Touch Me I’m Sick!’, a pre-Nevermind Nirvana track, Sleater-Kinney and some power pop from The Posies. My favorite moment on the disc though happens near the beginning of disc 2… Queenryche leads into Green River (followed by a torrent of grunge). It is almost like a baton is passed, and the music of the ‘90s takes over. The second set called ‘Funk Blast!’, and it earns my ultimate respect for starting out with not one but TWO James Brown songs. THEN it goes onto The Temptations’ ‘Papa Was A Rolling Stone’. Pretty bad-ass way to start a funk chronology. War gets a track, Funkadelic, Chic, Ohio Players, Parliament… most of what you expect. But once it starts, the two discs are playable pretty much from start to finish. This set may be one of Tamiko’s top 10 most played discs actually. Pretty solid set… especially considering the EMP sins discussed above.

The I.R.S. disc is fun as well, though definitely something meant for in-store play as a way to sell older re-issues. It did get me ‘Mexican Radio’ and ‘The Future’s So Bright’ though without needing to buy discs by Wall of Voodoo and Timbuk 3.

Tags: Compilations
Posted in Rock / Pop, Tamiko | No Comments »

Day 115. Some mix-discs.

Tuesday, June 22nd, 2010

So tonight when I took Celia downstairs to look for some CDs, out of (what I think is) nowhere, she asks ‘Daddy? Do you have a tape player?’ Now, I’m a little surprised that she would even know what a tape player is, but don’t think too much about it and say ‘yeah, but I think Popi has it…’ and I keep looking for CDs. Then she picks a tape up and says ‘then I think you should do this one tonight’ and it is a mix tape from over ten years ago from my friend Charles. Then it occurs to me… ‘Celia… how did you know that was a tape?’ and she says ‘I just know’, then she turns around and heads upstairs (and I can tell she is quite pleased with herself). Then, there in my hands, is the ONE redeeming reason for cassette tapes to exist. The mix tape. Really, what a horrible medium. The sound quality was horrible on these things (especially compared to records!), over time the sides would start to bleed together, but that was only if some tape machine didn’t eat the damn thing first. All those moving parts as well made for many points of failure, and then there were the compromises manufacturers had to make to get more time onto them (thinner film or added weight which would lead to MORE chances for the thing to get eaten). But by the early ‘90s the 90 minute tape seemed to be pretty ideal for friends to share music with each other (still well before file sharing and mp3 reached any popularity, and CD burners were still VERY expensive, as were the discs to burn onto.

So, 12 or 13 years after the fact Celia finds a mix tape from Charles. And this reminds me that it is also time for me to get my yearly mix disc going. Charles and I worked together at the Tower in Berkeley for a couple years in the mid to late ‘90s while he finished his undergrad degree in English. We became pretty good friends, and have kept in touch here and there. Actually, I really need to write to Charles and see what he is up to. I miss talking to him. But one thing both of us have done, pretty much since we have known each other, is pulled together mix-tapes (then mix-discs then mix-downloads that we know will fit onto a disc) just about every year. We share them with other friends as well, and though Charles may not know this he is one of the main reasons that I still make them. The other reasons are that for Tamiko and me it has filled the role of re-exploring our music collection about once a year, and the other is my friend Colin. So, while I know that other people do listen to some of my mix discs, Tamiko, Charles and Colin are the three people who I really feel a need to impress. This last year, I had a little making up to do in the mix disc department (Mira being born shut down the mix disc making for a year for obvious reasons… ‘Wow… I’m tired and Mira and Celia are asleep at the same time! I can start making a mix-dis… >snore<‘).

So this year I pulled together three discs, and released them as downloads over the course of three weeks. The first was an homage to the first mix-disc (post-tape compilation) that I got from Charles in 1999. Charles’ 1999 mix-disc was called ‘Wood and Smoke’ and pulled together an amazing collection of quieter acoustic tunes, with some choice cuts from The Spinanes, Smashing Pumpkins and Neil Young. ‘Wood and Smoke’ also established the ‘double-album mix-CD’ format for Charles with the sound of a needle dropping, followed by five tracks (about 20 minutes) repeated four times to give the impression of four sides to a double-album. I absolutely love that Charles includes the needle drop, and that each side is thought of as a whole… the tracks expertly arranged into their own little entities. Charles told me a couple years back that I’m his only friend that really appreciates this effort, and I was shocked. I told Charles his other friends didn’t deserve to get copies of his mixes. Anyways, my first of three mixes paid homage to ‘Wood and Smoke’ with ‘Tinder and Soot’. ‘Wood and Smoke’ is probably the most played mix-disc that I have, and I had to see if I could do something just as good with the ‘rules’ that Charles seemed to lay down. I like ‘Tinder and Soot’, but after about 10 listenings I don’t think it stands up as well as Charles’ original.

The second mix-disc of last year was really for Tamiko. She commented to me once (quite accurately) that women singers make WAY too few appearances on my discs. Looking back at my compilations over the years, she was dead on. I hate to say it, but if I was analyzing my mix discs from the outside, it would even appear that the appearance of a woman singing wasn’t exactly token, but a female voice’s appearance was rarer. It was usually a highlighter, a rare enough occurrence so that when it happened, it took on a special significance on its own. A Yo La Tengo song with Georgia singing was common, but other then that there was just an Ella Fitzgerald song or someone soulful or Nico here and there. So ‘Black Dress On’ was, as Tamiko put it, my ‘chick disc’. All female vocals, starting of with Hildegard leading into Ronnie Spector singing ‘Be My Baby’ followed by Sonic Youth (‘Kool Thing’). Unlike ‘Tinder and Soot’, the more I have listened to ‘Black Dress On’ the better it has gotten. I actually think it may be the best mix-disc I ever made, and there is little that makes me happier then throwing it on and watching my girls dance around the living room.

The last disc ‘Born To Gaze Into Night Skies’ follows my more typical mix-disc formula. Lots of genre jumping that attempts to connect what seems to be unrelated music into the musical consciousness that is my musical world. This can frustrate Charles all to hell at times, but I insist that it all works. This would be my radio station if I had one. Why not go from Iron & Wine into Sly and the Family Stone? Throw in some Kenny Burrell, Marc Ribot and The Five Stairsteps, and while the music may hop from genre to genre, it’s all good.

So, these were the discs I put on the server tonight, along with the other mix-discs of mine that I have made over the past 10 years or so. I’ll need to dig out the tape deck and get the ones that Celia wants as well sometime soon, though I wonder if it would be easier to just find the tracks and re-create it that way… but then the tape hiss would be missing, and if Celia is going to get the true experience of what a mix-tape was, that part will be needed. Better start digging around for that old tape deck…

Tags: mix discs
Posted in Celia, Rock / Pop, Tamiko | No Comments »

Day 112. Johnny Cash.

Thursday, June 17th, 2010

After Johnny Cash died (a mere few months after his wife June did), Tamiko and I were caught by Sarah Vowell on ‘This American Life’ telling ‘The Greatest Love Story of the 20th Century’. You can hear it here as Act III (about 45 minutes in… but you really should listen to the whole episode… it’s ‘This American Life’! what a great way to spend an hour). About halfway through the story (which we heard sitting in our car, waiting for the story to end before we got out) we were leaning on each other’s shoulders. By the end I think we were both getting teary. Sarah Vowell’s story is beautifully done, and I still get choked up hearing it. And of course, June and Johnny Cash’s story and the music and influence they had on country music (and rock, and punk, and folk music… etc. etc.) is not just a great love story, but a story of life, joy, grief and music. My friend Colin sent me and Tamiko a postcard some time later. June and Roseanne are on a big front porch, June holding her autoharp, Roseanne holding her guitar. Both are listening to each other, and a younger boy stands to one side. On the other is an older Johnny Cash, watching and listening to his girls. It’s a beautiful picture that I would like to believe was a chance snapshot of their life. I know that can’t be the truth, but I would like to think it is.

But what probably impresses me most about Johnny Cash and his musical life is what he did over his last decade. In 1994, he sat down in his living room with nothing more then his Martin guitar and recorded an album with rap / metal producer Rick Rubin. The sound is stripped down, yet produced with a bit of a harshness. As his age progressed and health deteriorated, he continued to make recordings for Rubin and American Recordings. The thing about these discs that amaze me is how as Johhny Cash’s voice starts to break and weaken, the music seems to zoom in closer and closer on what it means to be human, and how music is an integral part of our lives. To hear someone taking that music with them as their body begins to fail them, as they move closer and closer to death, takes bravery. A little after June died, Johnny mentioned that she urged him to keep recording as long as he could. Johnny said it was June coming down from heaven to give him the courage to keep singing. It’s hard to explain, but hearing the physical limits of Johnny Cash in his last recordings seems to me to reveal that he isn’t afraid of where he is or where he is going. There is not shame of a warbly and cracking voice in these songs, I can only imagine that there is acceptance that this is what happens to a body that has lived the life that he has. Johnny died about four months after June did, and I’d be surprised if there was any fear at that moment for Johnny, but a sincere and strong belief that he was about to see the love of his life again.

20 years ago on June 15th, Tamiko and I started dating. Unlike June and Johnny, we were lucky to find each other early in our lives. I was explaining to a friend that as far as my memory goes, I can probably think back to about when I was 5 or so. At 35 now, I have about 30 years of memories, and over 20 of those (2/3 of my life so far!) include me and Tamiko as friends, lovers, exes (briefly), husband and wife and parents. I love the story of June and Johnny Cash, and I know that Tamiko and I had the same thought go through our minds when we heard Sarah Vowell’s story… it sure is amazing to find love.

Tags: Johnny Cash
Posted in Folk / Blues / Country, Tamiko | No Comments »

Day 100. Kagel, Liszt and Aretha Franklin.

Sunday, May 30th, 2010

Today marks the 100th day (though not quite the 100th consecutive day) of working on DAC. Since nice round numbers tend to give us pause and time to reflect (10th anniversaries, the millennium, your car hitting 100k miles, etc.), I spent part of today thinking that I should rip something special today. What should be the 100th days music selections? Well – by the time Celia was getting ready for bed, I still hadn’t thought of anything in particular to grab, so we ran downstairs as usual. And now that I think about it, I’m glad that is how it worked out. One of my favorite parts of this whole project has been involving my girls with it, and seeing what they are drawn to. It keeps things unexpected for me as well.

Celia keeping with her visual magnetism to all things pink, went for the Kagel discs I have on Montaigne (nice, bright cardboard packaging) as well as a Rhino collection of Aretha Franklin (because she liked the picture of Aretha on the cover). And next to that was a Vox Box set of Liszt’s ‘Years of Pilgrimage’ with Jerome Rose, so I grabbed that too.

Over the past 100 days, I have pulled quite a few discs onto the drives downstairs, and while not every disc has found me with something to say, I knew the music on those discs pretty well. And so, with Celia grabbing the ‘Sankt-Bach-Passion’ by Kagel tonight, we do have a special first. I have never listened to this CD. I know the story behind the piece, and have been curious to hear it (curious enough to buy the disc!), but have never listened to it. So I thought – ‘well! I’ll listen to it after I throw it on!’ and I still might, but in the mean time I am streaming a Quicksliver Messenger Service disc from my friend Daniel. Daniel has access to my server of music, and thought it was so cool that tonight he set up a Subsonic server for his music, and while I was browsing around on his I saw Quicksilver (an old face from growing up… as I type, ‘Mona’ is chugging away over the speakers. Man – what a great song, and I would be really surprised if the Kagel could top it, so I’m not going to mess with it).

The Liszt though is another one of those discs that Tamiko and I used to play in her apartment in Berkeley. Haven’t listened to it in some time, but I’m looking forward to hearing it. The recording in particular is, well, pretty bad. VERY resonant and blurry. But it is an excellent example of liking the first version you hear of something. I have another excellent recording of these pieces (the Bolet recordings I believe) and they are crisp and clean, and very well played. The Jerome Rose recordings are played well also, though I think there is a lot of pedal, and a lot of reverb (probably from the space). Tamiko and I would put these discs on as background quite a bit, sometimes for when we were eating, and the sound quality of them was perfect. At times, the piano sounds almost bell-like, almost like you are hearing it from across the street. We were also able to hear the bells of the Campanile from where she lived in Berkeley, with a similar sound quality. So even though I have better recordings of these pieces now, this would still be the ones I would put on. And will put on… because the notes might be the same, but it is this music that I remember when I think about Tamiko and I cooking together in her apartment on Arch St.

This project, and this blog, was supposed to be part escapism for me. And it has served its purpose well. It was given me great distraction at times over these past few months when things have been less then great. It has also given me a new faith in nostalgia, and brought back many happy memories. What has surprised me a little is how intense some of those memories have been. The smell of the air from 20 years ago creeps into this musical moments sometimes. Goosebumps sometimes appear on my arms as I hear something the way I did the first time I heard it.

But another aspect that was important to me with this project was listening again to music that had, for some time, just sat on a shelf. It has given me a chance to remember how much music is out there on the one hand, as well as how much I have to get to know again. And to share. Mira this morning asked to hear the ‘Bunny Music’ (the Barber of Seville overture), and tonight when Celia was getting ready for story time, she asked me to put on Bach (we listened to the lute suites). And in a couple minutes, I bet I can put on the Liszt that I am ripping right now, go sit next to Tamiko, and she will pause her typing for a minute, look at me, and smile. I’m so lucky to have all this in my life, and while I started to realize this early in this project, at 100 days, it is amazing that the coincidence of a number, and the events of the day, shows me how important it is for me to get all this music playing again in my house.

Tags: Aretha Franklin, Kagel, Liszt
Posted in Celia, Classical, Mira, Rock / Pop, Tamiko | 1 Comment »

Archive for the ‘Tamiko’ Category

Day 157. Toscanini.

Day 156 … Cracker, Counting Crows, Jane’s Addiction and Shostakovich.

Day 148. Dizzy Gillespie, New Order, ‘Next Stop Wonderland’.

Day 141. Elvis Presley, Andrew Hill, Red Garland, Herbie Hancock and Stan Getz and Charlie Byrd.

Day 122. Faure and Tchaikovsky.

Day 121. Górecki, Kanchelli, Gubaidulina and the Couperins.

Day 119. Wild and Wooly, Funk Blast! and I.R.S. Records ‘On The Charts’.

Day 115. Some mix-discs.

Day 112. Johnny Cash.

Day 100. Kagel, Liszt and Aretha Franklin.

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