DIGITAL TO ANALOG CONVERSION, getting the bits to my speakers
Banner

Day 48. Yo La Tengo and The The.

Posted on Tuesday, March 9th, 2010 at 9:46 pm in Rock / Pop, Tamiko by josh

Tonight’s grabs were a couple of discs by ‘The The’ and a few from ‘Yo La Tengo’. ‘Dusk’ and ‘Hanky Panky’ were both released in the early / mid 90s. Matt Johnson (the only constant member of The The) puts a group together, makes a record and may do a tour. Dusk’s most notable contributor was, by far, major contributor Johnny Marr. And like just about anything Johnny Marr touches (The Smiths, The Pretenders, Modest Mouse) the album was golden. I still remember getting to work at the Tower on Sunrise early on morning to hear the ‘Dogs of Lust’ blasting on the stereo. The harmonica opening leading to a great heavy bass riff caught my attention pretty quickly, and I was listening to ‘Slow Emotion Replay’ on my car stereo on the way home that afternoon. While Johnny Marr wasn’t on the next album (Hanky Panky) his sound lingered a bit with the group. ‘Hanky Panky’ was an entire album of Hank Williams songs. What I liked most about the album was the sound it created. Like most good covers the songs don’t sound like Hank Williams, but like The The taking the poetry and lonesome feel and creating a The The record.

Along similar lines is the CD single Yo La Tengo released of multiple versions of Sun Ra’s ‘Nuclear War’. It was the groups first Top 10 single. The versions are all pretty much brilliant, starting with just the group singing with drums (though there is some bleed through from the second tracks tapes … if you play it that loudly you can hear it, and yes, I have played it that loudly), where version 2 features a chorus of kids singing the backing parts. Version 3 features an extended jazz jam that is simply phenomenal. To read about how this single (perhaps the most profane disc I own) became such a sensation, it really is best to just read it from Yo La Tengo themselves:

http://www.yolatengo.com/billboard.html

That same year also saw the release of ‘The Sounds of the Sounds of Silence’ which is an instrumental soundtrack based on performances by Yo La Tengo over film viewings of Painleve films. Painleve’s films are French documentaries about sea life, many filmed under water. The music is stunningly beautiful and it became even more so when I finally was able to pick up Criterion’s release of these films with Yo La Tengo playing over them (different versions of the songs even!!!). Tamiko, me and our friend Bryn watched the films a few months ago and were blown away by the marriage of film and sound. Between these two discs alone, I think 2002 may have been Yo La Tengo’s most creative year. These followed up ‘And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out’, a moody, mostly quiet album. Except for possibly my favorite Yo La Tengo song ‘Cherry Chapstick’ which can get me going whenever nothing else will. But the last track ‘Night Falls on Hoboken’ is probably my favorite tracks on the album… a 17 minute instrumental mood piece that makes me feel floaty. It reminds me of ‘Green Arrow’ (from 1997’s ‘I Can Hear The Heart Beating As One’ – the best album of the 90s in my opinion). And it definitely looks ahead to ‘The Sounds of the Sounds of Silence’.

Yo La Tengo is one of the few bands that I eagerly await new releases from, and will buy them the day they come out. Yo La Tengo is one of my favorite bands. Ever.

Day 47. Fleet Foxes.

Posted on Monday, March 8th, 2010 at 10:58 pm in Rock / Pop by josh

Today needs to be short … it was quite a busy day. In fact, I couldn’t even go down and grab any discs, so today’s post is transferred from the digital only part of the project (stuff I have bought, but never bought on CD). Getting the Fleet Foxes onto the server is a nice step though… good to make sure this music is well backed up.

I am biased when it comes to the Fleet Foxes. Casey Wescott (keyboards and vocal) was a former student and classmate of mine. I TA’s his last theory class at the UW, and we went through the intro to computer music series together (as well as a number of the advanced classes). While he was a student at UW, Casey also was tireless trying to put together and maintain bands and tours. To see him and the Fleet Foxes have such a successful couple of years is exciting. I know how hard these guys work, and while most groups probably go through similar years of hard work, hearing about it first hand from Casey just strikes me as amazing. These guys toured like crazy the past couple years, and have worked to create a sound that comes from all their different influences. And I think it sounds great. Saturated reverbs, beautiful harmony, and some great musicianship. In general, not what you see a lot of in pop groups these days.

One of my most exciting memories though was hearing the simulcast of their performance at Newport Folk in 2009 (which I downloaded and split into tracks). Pete Seeger was performing at this festival this year as folk stars from around the world paid him tribute, and the Fleet Foxes even got to perform with him at the close of the festival. Mavis Staples was performing the same day… and they got to share the same festival with these legends! It was blowing my mind. Then as the music began, I could see how well these guys were fitting into this scene. Live, the music was just as lovely as the albums. It was a thrilling hour, and I got chills more then a few times.

I saw Casey a couple weeks later (we still get together when we can to catch up and share SuperCollider stuff). He was still excited as could be about the performance. As he put it: “Here I was watching Mavis Staples and Pete Seeger and I’m thinking, what the HELL am I doing here?”. It takes some self-esteem to get on stage and tour with a rock band night after night… but the modesty I heard in his voice at the same time amazed me. The weight of historical perspective was not lost on Casey who has had a VERY successful couple years as a musician. And really I think that is what separates a lot of professionals from amateurs. Professionals  know they are just part of a lineage. They weren’t the first and they aren’t the last. In the current music business, I had forgotten how many performers today don’t necessarily get this anymore. By the sound the Fleet Foxes bring together (really a huge variety of performers spanning probably close to a 70 years of blues, folk and rock) I can tell that this significance is not lost on them.

Day 46. The British Are Coming!

Posted on Sunday, March 7th, 2010 at 6:54 pm in Tamiko by josh

The 3 CD box set ‘The British Are Coming’ is a decent compilation of mid-60s British acts. Of course, The Beatles aren’t represented (and I imagine that just about anyone who would buy a 3 CD set of British Invasion acts would probably have most of the Beatles discs anyways). The Kinks, Donovan, Peter and Gordon and The Zombies all have a few tracks (since the set would have to sell a few copies on pop recognition), but the real gems on the set are some of the more obscure acts. There is a REALLY early Bowie tack (‘I Dig Everything’) and a few tracks by The Foundations that really borrow more then most from the American R&B sound. It also collects together a number of number 1s. ‘Bus Stop’ by the Hollies is followed by ‘For Your Love’ by the Yardbirds which leads into ‘A Groovy Kind Of Love’ by The Mindbenders. Overall, a really nice set of pop hits from across the pond in the 60s.

My favorite part of this set though is how quickly Celia took to it. When she was about 2 or 2 1/2, we would put it on the CD player in her room, and she would dance like crazy to it. By the time my daughter was 3, she could ask for ‘She’s Not There’ by The Zombies, and hum along. This is a rather proud parenting moment for me. ‘Love Potion No. 9’ was get repeat playings, and Celia would jump along on her bed. And for the most part, this is all pretty kid friendly music. It’s mostly at a good tempo, repetitive and fun. And it has a good back beat. Tamiko and I have pretty much always played ‘our music’ around the girls and I think this has actually turned out for the best for all of us involved. Both of the girls dance like crazy to Kylie Minogue and ABBA, and while there is no Barney the Dinosaur in our playlists, there is T. Rex. Celia used to request ‘White Swan’ even, and there is nothing more adorable then a video Tamiko shot of Celia and Mira (in a jumper chair hanging in the kitchen) both dancing to ‘Children of the Revolution’. They have a love for music that I couldn’t have forced onto them, and I think a large part of that comes from the enjoyment they see in me and Tamiko when we play music. I’m not sure I could have faked it with Barney or Raffi. But there is no faking needed when the Kinks’ ‘Sunny Afternoon’ or The Foundations ‘Build Me Up Buttercup’ comes on… we can all dance quite happily.

Day 45. Chris Isaak and Oingo Boingo.

Posted on Saturday, March 6th, 2010 at 10:16 pm in Rock / Pop, Tamiko by josh

I had a small ’79 Honda Accord as a second car in high school (after I rear ended someone with my small little Chevy Sprint). It was an odd little 2 speed automatic but it had a tape deck and I was able to hook an adapter into it to play CDs. The night before a friend was going to head off to the Marines a few of us went out for a little goofing off around Sacramento. I actually can’t really remember what we did that night, except for a drive down a stretch of I-80 while playing Oingo Boingo really loudly. While driving down the freeway, everyone else in the car was bouncing left and right along with ‘No One Lives Forever’ testing out the shocks in the car. We wound up at a Taco Bell in Roseville, played the song even louder and danced around the car. Ah – early summer in the Sacramento area, where it was warm enough at 11pm to be outside in shorts, dancing to Oingo Boingo while waiting for a rather poor excuse for Mexican food.

Oingo Boingo has been a favorite band of mine for a long time. And one of my favorite aspects of the band was the horn section. I think horns in a rock band often makes the difference between good music and great music. During my Berkeley years, my friend Eric and I talked for a couple of years about putting together a band that would try to grab the best elements of Oingo Boingo (ska sound and horns) and start doing classical music covers at local open-mic nights. We pictured a room jumping around to arrangements of Liszt Hungarian Rhapsody #2 and Rhapsody in Blue. Eric figured his Buster Bloodvessel like proportions and my horn arrangements would be enough to start getting us gigs. The trick was finding horn players that could really rock. We lived just north of Oakland (home of Tower Of Power) and couldn’t seem to dig up 4-5 decent horn players wanting to play some rocking classical covers with a big guy in front of them screaming ‘pick it up up!’. I still think something like this would be a lot of fun to do but I also think I wouldn’t have the energy to pull it off. And without Eric, half the gimmick really would be missing.

It has been a few months since I’ve listened to Oingo Boingo though, so I look forward to seeing if Mira and Celia dance around to … hmm… not sure what I can play for them. Celia is paying close attention to words these days.

Maybe Chris Isaak will be a better choice? Not as rocking… certainly, but his Roy Orbison like style is much more family friendly. ‘Heart Shaped World’ and ‘San Francisco Days’ have some good songs, but a number of dogs as well. But ‘The Baja Sessions’ I think is a solid album that escaped the notice of most people. I remember Tamiko and I taking this album on a couple of road trips along the California coast. It was a great soundtrack for lazy days by the ocean. The stripped down feel of the ‘Baja Sessions’ also suited the ‘let’s get away from it all’ feeling that  often accompanied these trips. Tamiko and I are needing another trip like that pretty soon – it has been a very hectic few months. Maybe I need to make sure I get Chris Isaak into the glove compartment again.

And Tamiko just reminded me that on one of those trips to the coast we had breakfast a couple of tables away from Chris Isaak… he took off to surf after breakfast, we probably put his disc into the player and kept heading north up Hwy 1.

Day 44. Sly and the Family Stone and Simon and Garfunkel.

Posted on Friday, March 5th, 2010 at 10:27 pm in Folk / Blues / Country, Rock / Pop by josh

Tonight I ripped a few discs from Sly and the Family Stone (‘Fresh’, ‘There’s a Riot Going On’ and a greatest hits disc) as well as the five Simon and Garfunkel studio albums that was released as ‘Collected Works’ on Columbia in the early 90s.

I find it quite ironic that the Sly and the Family Stone Greatest Hits disc is missing some pretty major songs. I can’t seem to find a date on the disc, but I am going to have to assume that the reason ‘Family Affair’ and ‘If You Want Me To Stay’ is NOT on the Greatest Hits disc is because the Greatest Hits was released before ‘Fresh’ and ‘Riot’. Or, the compilation was put together simply based on sales. Not being alive in the early 70s, I really don’t know how much airplay those songs would have gotten (though they were both top 10 singles, so it couldn’t have been shabby)… and I’d be surprised if his excellent version of ‘Que Sera Sera’ was heard by anyone but people who bought ‘Fresh’. I imagine part of the problems was that with ‘Riot’ and ‘Fresh’ the Family Stone was already falling apart. ‘There’s a Riot Going On’ is a pretty dark album (certainly not ‘Dance To The Music’) and it is mostly Sly himself recording most of it (with a drum machine and multi-track recorder). But it has some of his best work at the same time. While ‘Everyday People’ may be his shiny happy people song that most people think of when they think of the Family Stone, ‘Family Affair’ and its tortured stories told in the verses is a masterful and powerful song, I think possibly his best.

I have all the Simon and Garfunkel albums on vinyl (which I found used over the years) but I still picked up the ‘Collected Works’ somewhere along the way, and I’m quite glad I did. I am not sure if Simon and Garfunkel sound better on vinyl in the same way that John Coltrane does, and while the pops and crackles on my jazz albums seem to lend an ambience (albeit a nostalgic one) to my jazz LPs, I like the CD recordings of Simon and Garfunkel better. The ‘Collected Works’ weren’t cleaned up much for the CD issues (mastering was done as an analog stage) but the harmonies and more gentle guitar work really works better in a clean recording.

I’m not the biggest fan of the song ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’, but I love that Celia hears ‘Cecelia’ and dances to the music. ‘The Boxer’ and its orchestral hits, while over the top are brilliant. And I can’t help but think of the Andean pan-flute players that would be on Sproul Plaza at Berkeley on weekends when I hear ‘El Condor Pasa’. While their last album is great, I am amazed at how far removed it is from ‘Wednesday Morning, 3 AM’. The original version of ‘Sounds of Silence’ has got to be one of the best songs from a first album ever made which would then be remade by the same group for a second album and horribly ruined (sorry – the orchestral background for the second version is just an abomination). The sins of the second album are made up for on the third (with the closing track ‘7 O’Clock News / Silent Night’ rounding the album out in a beautiful and politically jarring way). Bookends was another great album (following the soundtrack work they did for ‘The Graduate’, a great movie made better by the amazing music used in it). Then after ‘Bridge Over Troubled Water’ that is pretty much it except for reunions in big parks and a great skit on an episode of Saturday Night Live.

I do like most of Paul Simon’s solo work though… but it is hard for me not to think ‘poor Garfunkel… kinda pulled the short end of the straw with the breakup’. Except, they had broken up once before. ‘Wednesday Morning, 3 AM’ took quite some time to catch on… The two had split up even before it was released. When it suddenly began to sell they got back together to support the album, which led to more. So – at least Garfunkel got 5 albums (and a number of reunions) out of the deal. I get the feeling Paul Simon would have figured out a way to make music either way though.

Day 43. Beethoven (continued)

Posted on Thursday, March 4th, 2010 at 9:30 pm in Classical by josh

So tonight I am finishing up the Brendel Beethoven discs on Vox Box. I mentioned to my friend Katherine (who is an amazing pianist) that I LOVE that in this set, Vol. 1 Disc 1 starts with the ‘Hammerklavier’. On top of that, the whole of Vol. 1 (two discs) is dedicated to the late sonatas. Scoff at Vox Box all you want – this set is intended for collectors who know what they are looking for. Young Alfred Brendel, and they are throwing one of the most difficult works of Beethoven at you as disc 1 track 1.

I have the ‘Appassionata’ on right now (and I’m ripping disc 6 of 15 at the moment). And wow – I forgot how good these performances are. The accelerando in the last movement is thrilling, and played so clearly. Just amazing.

The recordings themselves though are a bit noisy. Tape hiss is audible, and this makes close editing of the movements feel choppy (end note, QUICK fade out of hiss, then onto the next movement). Other then that though I have nothing to really complain about with these recordings.

And my favorite aspect of them is that for the most part Brendel takes all the repeats.  This is really a pet-peeve of mine – it drives me crazy when a performer omits a repeat from a performance. I still remember the first time I heard Brahms’ first symphony WITH the repeat in the first movement and I couldn’t believe how big of a difference it made! It is somewhat known that Brahms actually told people that he thought the repeat could be omitted ‘once the piece is known’, but I think that is actually a huge mistake. WIth the first symphony, the repeat back to the beginning has an extremely jarring effect on the listener. It makes the c minor of the first symphony even more c minor! It is darker with the repeat, and as a result when you reach the stunning B major triad at the beginning of the development THAT moment is so much brighter. Without the repeat is smooths the piece out… with it, and it is much more dramatic.

Beethoven’s music (and most works from the classical period) need the repeats to work structurally and rhetorically. Repetition is so crucial to musical understanding, and Beethoven used repetition better then just about any composer. Beethoven used the structural patterns of the classical period on so many levels as well, and took this aspect of the classical period and manipulated it (and how listeners perceive repetition) in the most dramatic way possible. His understanding of how melodic fragments could be referenced within the music for the listener is probably the quality of Beethoven’s composing that I think makes him truly unique. The connections he creates by taking advantage of how a person builds up memory is truly masterful. At the same time – it is this aspect of Beethoven’s writing that I think Brahms misses the point on most of all. The sweeping gestures that Brahms created in much of his music are a bit too long to be remembered as a whole for most listeners (but they are often discovered by music students who study his work!). If there is any reason why Brahms’ 1st ISN’T Beethoven’s 10th, it is in this difference. However, I think this is something that Brahms did pick up on in the end of his life. His pieces that are the most Beethoven-ish are his last sets of piano works (op. 116. 117, 118 and 119). Hmm… if I get done with these Brendel recordings tonight, I think I need to grab those late Brahms pieces next…

Day 42. Leon Parker, Beethoven, Bach and more Beethoven (maybe).

Posted on Wednesday, March 3rd, 2010 at 9:55 pm in Classical, Jazz by josh

I couldn’t get the girls downstairs tonight for any picks, so I grabbed Leon Parker’s ‘Belief’, then my set of Wilhelm Kempff’s recordings of the Beethoven Piano Concertos (with Berlin and Ferdinand Leitner… one of TWO complete recordings I have with Kempff)… then I grabbed the Harmonia Mundi box set of Kenneth Gilbert’s Bach keyboard works… then Beethoven’s Diabelli Variations by Alfred Brendel (on Vox Box)… then I decided ‘well, maybe I’ll get through all the Brendel Beethoven solo piano works’. As everything sits right now I am done with Leon Parker and the Kempff recordings, and am about halfway through the Kenneth Gilbert. We’ll see how far I get tonight (the Brendel stack is 15 CDs… I’ll be surprised if I finish them).

Leon Parker’s disc is one of my favorite non-avant-garde contemporary jazz discs. That’s a lot of qualifiers, but I think most serious jazz listeners can understand (if not agree) with the need for them. ‘Belief’ is a very accessible disc but at the same time doesn’t fit into the ‘rock with words’ world of most mainstream jazz. There are elements of 20th century minimalism, some sharp, punctuated horn playing, and lots of good percussion (which is what Leon Parker plays). The album closes off with a great, sparse version of ‘In a Sentimental Mood’, but the stand out on the album is ‘Calling Out’. After buildup and crash of cymbals, a percussive ostinato starts up, followed by additional layers of vocal patterns that keep getting added to create a dense vocal / percussive heterophony that certainly owes quite a bit to West African music.

But right now I have the Beethoven concertos on. I love Wilhem Kempff’s playing. And these performances (and recordings) are beautiful. One of my fondest orchestra memories was playing the 5th concerto one summer. Steve (another bass player who also actively performed in a Black Sabbath cover band) taps my shoulder with his bow during one of the piano solo parts in the first movement during a rehearsal. I turn around, and he is pretending to tap his bass strings a la an Eddie Van Halen solo, in perfect rhythm to the soloist. Of course – Steve completely called it. This IS the Eddie Van Halen solo music of the 18th century (and I mean that in the best, most bad ass way it can be taken – early Van Halen shredding at its best). 3 seconds of pantomime summed up Beethoven’s 5th piano concerto for me better then any history book or paper on the piece I ever read.

The Brendel recordings (that I just might get to tonight) are his first recordings of the Beethoven solo repertoire. He would go on to record the sonatas two more times on Phillips (and may have even done one more set as he was preparing to retire… i heard something about that??? did he???). While he later set (from the 90s) is certainly very interesting to listen to, the set on Vox Box is probably my second favorite set (after Kempff’s set). I remember when I bought them… the classical manager at the time scoffed at me for ‘being willing to touch those dirty things’… Vox Box… the dusty budget set in its own rack that he felt didn’t deserve even to be shelved much less purchased. But, the joke is on him. There were some great older recordings that Vox Box put out, and I’m certainly glad I didn’t let his classical snobbery deter me. After he left and I was given more control over classical purchases at the store, the memory of his pricing snobbery bothered me so much that one of the first things I did was order one of every Naxos title. I though then (and still firmly believe) that it shouldn’t cost a fortune to explore classical music. Or any music for that matter… but at least with classical music, you could get to know repertoire for a reasonable price as long as the guy at the counter was willing to suggest those discs to a new customer.  Sure, they aren’t always ‘the best’, but they are often quite good and you will get to hear more when you are just starting out that way.

Day 41. Morphine.

Posted on Tuesday, March 2nd, 2010 at 10:38 pm in Rock / Pop by josh

Morphine’s ‘low-rock’ appealed to me within the first few minutes of hearing them. When Rykodisc put out ‘Cure For Pain’ it found its way into a play station at Tower, and getting those machine set-up every month was part of my job. I would often choose one of the discs to listen to while I sat at a station and stamped on sale tags. Mark Sandman’s voice with his two string bass and the baritone sax just created such a warm feeling, and I hate to sound cliche, but I was hooked quickly.

I was pretty proud to introduce a number of people to Morphine. They were a band that always seemed to pass by word of mouth more then radio airplay or shear popularity, and I felt like my role as a record store clerk was to sell as much of their music as I could. I would often play them at night in the hour before the store was closing and the sound often seemed to fit. I was working at Barnes and Noble in Seattle though when Mark Sandman died, and I remember being shocked by it. Even more shocking was the manager saying ‘well, guess we better order some Morphine’ in expectation of the opportunity to sell to the hordes of people that would come in searching for the band after the singers death. But (much to my pleasure) the hordes didn’t poor in, and we had a stack of Morphine discs on the shelves for a number of weeks. I suggested that maybe if we play them in the store we may sell some, but that didn’t fit well into B&Ns ‘Kenny G / Old Sad Bastard’ music format that often filled the air in the store. Whatever… but this was one of the many times where I felt I was no longer at the cool hip record store setting that I used to be in (and this was just one of the MANY things that told me that).

I will say though that if you know my music, there is quite a bit that has been inspired by Morphine. The orchestration of my masters thesis (low voice, three cellos and percussion) certainly owed a ton to Morphine, and the overall sound of my ‘Music For Bassoon’ (with it’s slow glissandos) came from the electric bass being played with a slide (though another part of that piece is ripped from Queen’s ‘Killer Queen’… just saying, it might be avant-garde classical, but what I listen to makes its way into whatever I am working on).

I haven’t listened to these records for a few years now… and playing them right now as I type this is reminding me how much I love them… can’t wait to hear them over the next couple days again.

Day 40. Garth Knox, Haydn and Marais.

Posted on Monday, March 1st, 2010 at 10:02 pm in Classical by josh


Most of tonight’s choices come as a result of talking to an old friend from Berkeley. We were discussing early music in particular and some of the ‘obsolete’ instruments that would be nice if they weren’t so obsolete. Viola da Gamba was one of the them (which I played for a few years at UW during grad school, and would love to get back into again) as well as the Baryton and Viola d’Amore.  These last two are string instruments (similar to cello and viola, respectively) that feature a second set of strings that are strung through the neck and below the regular strings. These are usually tuned to a specific scale and are then allowed to resonate in sympathy with whatever is being played – creating a stringy, halo-ish reverb. Haydn wrote a huge number of pieces for Baryton trio (that have been recorded a couple times). But just as rare is the Viola d’Amore (though, since I have helped out Garth Knox with a few concerts I have actually seen and heard this instrument a number of times).

Garth has been touring and gathering new works for Viola d’Amore for a number of years now, and I have also worked with him on a project to re-do the electronics for Grisey’s ‘Prelude’ for viola and resonators. Sympathetic vibration (and spectral modeling) has been a fascination of mine for a number of years now, going back to my ‘Music for Bassoon’ that has a VERY crude model of a resonating piano as its basis. But since that piece (over the past 6 years or so) I have been working on different ways to make it sound as though one instrument is playing through another. Working on the Grisey piece actually brought me close to doing what I wanted, but it wasn’t until I was working on the electronics for my viola piece ‘Theta‘ where I was able to get something to work that would take a snapshot from a performer in real-time and then let that player make it resonate. Hearing Garth play pieces on the Viola d’Amore was really the inspiration for this, and I spent a better part of a year coming up with algorithms that allowed me to do this, and I think the sonic result is quite convincing.

However – I’m not saying that I think my stuff sounds like Viola d’Amore. The sound of this instrument is beautiful and his playing on his disc ‘D’Amore’ is wonderful. There are some older pieces on the disc (a Marais piece, some traditional tunes as well as a set of variations by Garth Knox on ‘Malor Me Bat’), but there are also a couple of modern pieces that take advantage of the idiosyncrasies of the instrument. Of particular note is Klaus Huber’s ‘…Plainte…’ which is an elegy to another favorite composer of mine Luigi Nono. The microtones slide around leaving halos behind them when they come into tune with the sympathetic strings in a delicate way.

I also ripped Garth’s ‘Spectral Viola’ disc (with Grisey, Murail, Scelsi and Radulescu) and his solo debut disc on naïve (with the Berio Sequenza for solo viola and Sciarrino’s ‘Tre notturno brillante’). The Sciarrino may be one of my favorite late 20th century pieces… and I am not ashamed to say that I grabbed a number of tricks from the score for these works for ‘Theta’.

Day 39. Beethoven and the Powerpuff Girls.

Posted on Sunday, February 28th, 2010 at 9:24 pm in Celia, Classical, Rock / Pop by josh

Celia grabbed ‘Heros and Villians: Music Inspired By The Powerpuff Girls’ and the 1963 Herbert Von Karajan Beethoven symphony recordings tonight. I am quite tickled by the combination.
Over the next few hours, I will hear what I consider to be some of the greatest recordings of the greatest music of all time. But first – Devo, Shohen Knife, bis and Frank Black. Tamiko and I spent quite a bit of time watching the Powerpuff Girls early on in grad school. 10 minutes of sillyness with some pretty decent writing. ‘Meet the Beatalls’ is an episode I just referred someone to the other day (written almost completely in Beatles lyrics – pure genius). As for the music on the disc, it is rather hit or miss. But the bands above provide some pretty good tracks, especially Shohen Knife’s ode to Buttercup. I don’t think Celia or Mira are old enough for the Powerpuff Girls yet… but I am looking forward to the day when we can watch them together.
I think the Karajan discs are probably the recordings I sold more of then anything else during my record store days. Or it may be better to say, these are the discs I recommended to more people then anyone else (because I am pretty sure that even if I suggested and sold 50 of these sets, it would still pale in number to the thousands of copies of pop hits I would have actually taken cash for). These older analog recordings sound great, and the performances are stunningly beautiful. Quite possibly the height of Deutche Grammophone’s recording days matched by the height of Karajan’s conducting. I believe Karajan had recorded complete sets of the Beethoven symphonies two or three times before these DG recordings with his orchestra (Berlin). And he would go on to record the complete cylce two more times (once in the 70s and again in the 80s so they could be captured digitally), but it is the 1963 recordings that stand above and beyond the other recordings.
I tend to like my Beethoven played with smaller orchestras though. In fact I prpbably like other recordings here and there better then individual performances on these discs. But these performances really are the standard of standards for these pieces, and the quality and musicianship across the whole set really hasn’t been matched before or since. While tempos may be slower then what Beethoven may have wanted or the orchestra bigger, what these recordings seem to capture for me is a sense of what Karajan was doing as an interpreter in his time. This was HIS orchestra (he had been appointed director for life in 1955) and he had been shaping its sound for quite some time. And the Beethoven symphinies were the backbone of his repertoire. As recording technology improved he was always at the forefront, eager to explore new possibilites. I think in the 70s and 80s, this actually hurt his recorded documents however. These recordings were mostly recorded (I believe) in a church in Berlin, and the recording engineers were in a building across the street because of the lack of space. After a take was done, Karajan would run across the street to hear the recording and judge whether or not to do another take. But recording technology in these days wasn’t as advanced as they would be in the 70s… and while I am sure there is some editing in these discs, they feel more dynamic and musical to me then the performances from the 70s that seems unrealistically smooth and even (and the poor early digital technology couple with his old age make the recordings from the 80s particularly difficult to listen to). These are quite fiery at times, as well as amazingly dramatic.
The recording of the 7th on these discs is especially beautiful. It is the stand out of this set. The first movement has excitement (the transition from the opening Adagio to the Allegro almost sounds avant-garde in it’s clarity). The second movement is by far the most deeply moving version of this piece I have ever heard, and it provides stunning contrast to the third and fourth movements. Karajan is often given credit (in his live performances) for shaping a beautiful dramatic arch through an entire piece, and while his reocrdings sometimes lose this it is far from the case in this recording of the 7th.
Time to put it on actually…