Resuscitating Art Music

Resuscitating Art Music: ‘One student answered, “I like rock music because even if I’m doing something else, even if I’m in a different room, I can still get it. I can still tell where the beat is.”

Then he said something I’ve been thinking about ever since. “I like rock music because you don’t have to pay attention in order to get it.”

He really seemed to resent it that the fourteenth-century music required him to do something, to pay attention. Since that time, I have realized that, in our country, the ability to pay attention has become endangered. As a result, art forms that require the audience’s attention are endangered, too.’

Getting curmudgeonly cranky in my dotage, am I not — liking this essay quite a bit.

David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists—and Megastars

David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists — and Megastars: “What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.”

Found in Translation, on a Chinese Flight

Found in Translation, on a Chinese Flight: “When you wake up in the morning, trying to figure out whether you are in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou, you hear the harmonic voice of the Backstreet Boys on the radio. You suddenly forget where you are — because music is boundless! This is the power of Foreign POP Music.’

Alan W. Pollack’s Notes on the Beatles

Alan W. Pollack’s Notes on the Beatles: the result of some 10 years of work. For the enthusiasts among us…

Patti Smith - Live in Dublin, May 2007

Patti Smith – Live in Dublin, May 2007: and in a little more than a month, she will be here, in Copenhagen — and we will be there to see her.

Michael Brecker Dies at 57; Prolific Jazz Saxophonist

Although there was a time when one would snicker at jazz-rock and all that, it is hard not at least to acknowledge that he took Coltrane’s sound and ran with it in all kinds of directions. But now he is gone: Michael Brecker Dies at 57.

Listenings

Ay, I suppose this will show my age — or, at least, how utterly disconnected and unhip my life has become in my dotage. For it happens that while perusing one (of the many) lists of the best albums of 2006 (like this one) I, indeed, did not recognize but one of the bands in the list.

It is worse than that: I spent a good deal of my listening time in Smithville, playing a 1997 CD reissue of a 1952 LP compilation of 78s released between 1927 and 1932.  That is: the Anthology of American Folk Music. I would almost recommend reading Greil Marcus’ Invisible Republic as you listen — if you can stomach the rambling style, odd organziation and idiosyncratical writing. If not, then at least take his clue, and continue on to the Bobster himself.

Now, while I won’t pretend to be deeply enamoured by the Basement Tapes per se (preferring, for the time being, John Wesley Harding and New Morning when I get cravings for some Dylan) this tome did make me seek out two albums that were released long after I stopped really following Dylan closely, namely Good as I Been to You and World Gone Wrong. Both very satisfying finds, I might add.

Continuing into the really weird America, this was also a year where I took another stab at listeting to Trout Mask Replica. It has some interesting features: small children will cover their ears, wifes will leave the room, milk will curdle (actually, I made the last one up) — and it still stands aloof from almost everything else. But let us surmise that the good Cap’n spent some time back in Smithville, too, once.

While nobody would claim that that endeavor has made it into the mainstream, it is interesting to note that some of the jazz from the early sixties that made traditionalists wince, suddenly sounds, well, almost non-controversial. Say, for example, one album that I spun a few times: Tomorrow Is the Question! Who would not be moved by the sheer beauty of Don Cherry’s playing on the second track here, Tears Inside?

Also, remarkably enough, Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall was a bestseller at Amazon for a long while (the universal critical acclaim was only to be expected.) It is grand, and moving, and thoroughly a joy.

Otherwise, other ancient stuff like The Use of Ashes (hard not to recognize The Jeweler as one of the best “pop songs” ever written), the Carter Family collection Wildwood Flower and I am a Bird Now (ok, so that one is not even old…)

In a bow towards the more familiar tastes, I would admit that Gnarls Barkley are not half bad, and that Thom Yorke did something very interesting this past year.

Anil Dash: Goodbye, Godfather

A nice eulogy: Anil Dash: Goodbye, Godfather. Or Roy at alicublog — gets the soul of JB into his words.