Tyler Cowen lists his nominations for “best all-time songs about obsession.” My vote goes to Nina Simone’s version of I Put a Spell on You. Especially the last verse.
From the category archives:
Music
Eugene Volokh opines that _The Bonobos_ would be a good name for an intellectual art-rock band. Already been done. Simon Green, one of the better artists on Ninja Tune, has been recording as Bonobo for several years. If you like the weird electronic music hits experimental jazz thang, he’s very much worth checking out. He’s also playing DJ sets in a number of North American cities this spring, together with the incomparable Amon Tobin, whose _Supermodified_, Permutations and _Bricolage_ albums are about the best and strangest drum’n’bass/experimental that I’ve heard in the last five years.
Below is my review for Yesterday Rules, the new album by blogger and MTX frontman Doctor Frank. It’s really very good. (The album, not the review.)
The second-funniest thing I’ll see today, after the Guardian article from Brian’s post below, is TMFTML’s secret memo about the dirty director’s cut of “Hey Ya!”
However, it contains swear words, so please keep it away from Michael Powell.
And now for something completely different, The Guardian on what six to eight year olds think of classic rock. Here are some sample responses, but the whole thing is very amusing.
Smells Like Teen Spirit
It’s making me think about doing bad things like putting snowballs down my sister’s back.
Anarchy in the U.K.
He sounds like the baddie in Scooby Doo at the end.
The “Centre for Research in Modern European Philosophy” is organizing a conference with the nonsense title of NOISETHEORYNOISE#1 although NONSENSETHEORYNONSENSE might be more appropriate. The “theme” of the conference is described thus:
bq. Noise is an unprecedented harbinger of aesthetic radicality: no-one yet knows what it is or what it means. This non-significance is its strength rather than its weakness. Noise is ‘non-music’ not because it negates music but because it affirms a previously unimaginable continuum of sonic intensities in which music becomes incorporated as a mere material.
And further elaborations include:
bq. Where a ‘new aestheticism’ might present itself as a resistance to pragmatic instrumentality, postmodern academicism continues to adopt theory as ballast: works are mere pretexts for ostentatious displays of theoretical chic. But in what way could noise change the conditions of theoretical possibility, not to say intelligibility or even sensibility?
In what way indeed? Explanations on a postcard please …. (or in comments).
Heard in passing on some Australian morning TV show, during a report about flooding in New South Wales, where there’s a music festival underway:
[Presenter]: So would you say the Tamworth floods have made much difference to the country music?
[EMT]: No, I wouldn’t say so.
Chris Brooke reports that BBC Radio 3 are to broadcast a performance of John Cage’s 4′ 33″ this evening. At the time of the Mike Batt copyright row I recounted on my old blog that I had attended a school performance of 4′ 33″. We all sat completely silent. No-one coughed, no-one shuffled. At the end of the 4 minutes and 33 seconds the pianist turned and berated us for giving such a poor rendition of the Cage’s work. He explained that “the point” of the work is to attend to the sounds produced by a restless and impatient audience and that, by sitting so quietly, we had sabotaged the “performance”. What he didn’t know was that a week earlier, rowdy behaviour by boys during a lecture from an explorer recently returned from the Hindu Kush had been savagely punished by the headmaster — several boys were caned — as a result, none of us had dared to make a sound for fear of further beatings.
The seven dirty words are still a no-no on US radio (unless they’re not sexual in nature, it turns out), but what about other suggestive lyrics? It doesn’t seem clear when things do and do not get censored. Take, for example, the song Semi-Charmed Life by Third Eye Blind. I haven’t heard that one on the radio, but a friend tells me that it is not bleeped out despite the line “she comes round and she goes down on me”. Recall, however, Alanis Morissette’s song You Oughta Know from a few years ago when a portion of the line “Would she go down on you in a theatre” did get bleeped out.
Out to see the Welsh National Opera’s magnificent performance of Parsifal last night in Bristol. It was brilliantly conducted by Anthony Negus who brought out the shimmering beauty of the music. There were — as there always are — problems with the production, which both accentuated the specifically Christian aspects of the libretto and included absurdities such as Kundry towering over Parsifal in an enormous red dress (about 10 feet high!) in Act 2. But that shouldn’t diminish what was a very powerful experience both musically and dramatically — I’d single out, despite the red dress — the sexual tension of Act 2 as especially well done. As for individual performances: Sara Fulgoni as Kundry and Alfred Reiter as Gurnemanz both shone. (Spotted in the audience: Bryan Magee.)
The Guardian has an obituary for Hans Hotter , the great Wagnerian singer, who has expired at the age of 94. A sad day for all of us happily infected with the Wagner virus. The obit has the following nice anecdote:
bq. When he made a first visit to London after peace had been declared, he saw a headline in the Evening Standard proclaiming “Hotter In London”, and it took him a few minutes to realise that the newspaper was referring to the weather, not to him.
For some of us, ’tis not only the season to get annoyed by some Christmas music. I’m wrapping up my 20s and planning a big 30th bday bash this coming weekend. I would like to play some fun/funny birthday songs and am looking for suggestions. I know there are some, I just can’t think of them.
BBC Radio 3 is devoting the entire day to a celebration of Hector Berlioz on his bicentenary. Some great music and much commentary on the life of a man who Ken Russell described (about an hour ago) as the most cinematic of composers.
Brian’s post has set me off reminiscing about the first album I ever bought – and one of the best. In Loughborough, the nondescript market town where I lived, Boots the Chemists was just about the only place you could buy records back in 1972. And most albums were just beyond my means (or certainly required deferring gratification through saving for longer than I could bear). But one day there appeared on the racks some samplers from Atlantic at 99p each. The one I settled on, though I’d never heard any of the artists, had a bright yellow cover with a dragster and was called _It All Started Here_ . My urge to possess overcame the irrationality of buying something I knew nothing about and so this 13-year-old came back home with the following tracks:
Matt Yglesias links to an appallingly boring list of the top 10 albums of all time, courtesy of (who else) Rolling Stone. Because I so love lists, and because I like flame wars, I decided to commemorate the occasion by pulling out my top 10 list, tinkering with it, and posting it.