Music

Amazon is giving away a whole Philip Glass album: The Orange Mountain Music Vol.I. I’m really, really enjoying it. On the other hand, I’m using it as background music for scanning and doing itsby bitsy Photoshop stuff. It goes up and down and up and down and my hand goes up and down and up and down, and etc., and we seem to be getting on together. When I was in college I hated Philip Glass. I paid a lot for a ticket to a concert, without knowing what I was in for. I was bitterly disappointed. What do you think of the man? Give the album a try, if you are a skeptic.

Mercedes Sosa died today at age 74. An amazing voice, wonderful songs, and an important symbol of resistance against the Argentinean dictatorship. She will be missed, not just by Latin-Americans.

I was kind of surprised to see that the wonderful Tom Russell has a long essay on some new blog called The Rumpus, all about Juarez, El Paso, drug wars, borderlands, corruption, et cetera. I love his music, and I like his writing too, so I’m always pleased to see some more of it. The content, though, the content is shocking.

I turned that page in section B where there was a short item about two El Pasoans slain yesterday in a Juarez bar shooting. Back page stuff. Hidden near the end of the story was the astounding body count: nearly 2900 people, including more than 160 this month alone, have been killed in Juarez since a war between drug traffickers erupted January 2008 . John Wesley Hardin wouldn’t stand a chance.

Jesus. You’re probably safer in Kandahar.

I think I sort-of knew many of the facts that Elijah Wald recounts in this piece in the Financial Times . Still, knowing and putting-together are two different things. You couldn’t listen to 78s as “background music” because even with an auto-changer, you’d have to get up every 15 minutes – hence the importance of radio if you wanted a soundtrack to other activities. Why did jazz singers such as Billie Holiday record such a wide repertoire of “standards”? They were packaging the hit songs of their day for a particular audience (with other singers styling for other market segments). Wald’s account also makes sense of other matters that seem incomprehensible to modern music fans. Wald doesn’t discuss this, but we are often surprised that great singers of the past died in poverty and obscurity and are buried in unmarked graves (Bessie Smith, for example). But Wald’s emphasis on the contemporary importance of the song rather than the singer helps to explain how this could have happened. We might prize the iconic performances of the time, but back then there were lots of jobbing singers churning out multiple versions. Interesting enough to make me order a copy of Wald’s new book, How the Beatles Destroyed Rock ’n’ Roll.

Dead at 94.

A year ago I was going through a Les Paul phase and posted a nice round-up of YouTube items. It’s fantastic stuff. I suggest you take 10 minutes to remember the father of rock and roll – well, he sort of was. There’s a whole documentary you can watch. I love the idea of idea of this guy with the future of music planted in his head, touring around as Rhubard Red. I love all that corny old stuff with Mary Ford. Corny and elegant and kinda nerd-brainy, and beloved by geniuses for what he let them do. Les Paul. Not a bad life.

Loudon Wainwright III on Paul Krugman.

I think the new Coconut Records album, Davy, is Beatlesesque (but less utterly brilliant), Elliott Smithish (but less pained), Weezerlike (but less New Wave ironic-astringent) – and several other things I can’t quite put my finger on – power pop jingle-jangly loud-soft goodness and wholesomeness and not excessive smartypantsness. It’s somewhat better than the new Bishop Allen album Grrrr (just for comparison purposes to something obscure in the general vicinity.) Coconut Records is a solo project by Jason “you saw him first in Rushmore” Schwartzman, formerly of the band Phantom Planet. I mention all this because Amazon has Davy on sale for $1.99 for the next several hours or so. [UPDATE: sale’s over. Sorry.] (Here’s the myspace page.)

Davy is assisting me in the performance of various repetitive tasks today, by letting my mind clack happy through the CD racks of memory, trying to pin down all the little influences. And it’s well produced.

I also like the new Bishop Allen album Grrr pretty well. I mention that because I feel they have been unfairly abused by Pitchfork, which has gotta hurt. Grrr definitely deserves better than a pitiful 3.5. I give it a 7. “The Ancient Commonsense Of Things” is damn catchy. (Myspace page here.)

A 60 minute interview between rockumentarian Peter Curran and the boys, here, celebrating the release of their not-yet-posthumous, Back from the Dead. Unmissable.

The South By Southwest music festival is underway. Wouldn’t it be fun to be there? I guess the rest of us will have to make-do with this free mix, courtesy of NPR’s All Songs Considered. “Furr”, by Blitzentrapper, is a great song. And Amazon has a different free mix. I like “You’ll Disappear”, by The Phenomenal Hand-Clap Band.

You could also download 6 gigs of free music (perfectly legally!) via BitTorrent.

This Andrew Sullivan link to a Hexstatic song reminded me that Hexstatic and Coldcut’s Timber is surely the best video of all time, and that I should look for it again online (the last time I looked was a couple of years ago, before YouTube really got going). Found sounds meets mid-1990s-vintage video-editing tools and it’s awesome! Fools who disagree with this claim can of course nominate their preferred alternative in comments (and should even be able to embed YouTube links, I think) …

People who liked the John Martyn song I posted, or who are just mourning his loss, might want to listen to this loving tribute to the great man on Mike Harding’s show.[1] So many great songs it seems a shame to pick one out, but listen to the end, and hear him do “Singing in the Rain”. Sorry, I only noticed this today; it’ll go offline in about 24 hours.

[1] One of the great irritations of later life, more confirming evidence in this broadcast, is the dawning realisation that Phil Collins might be a nice chap —and one with real discernment.

I like their new cover of “Comfortably Numb”. What do you think?

I guess Anthem is finally in public beta, under the guise of Microsoft SongSmith.