Doc Searls has posted some powerful thoughts about building a truly open and voluntary marketplace for music here. RTWT.
While reading some essays by José Ortega y Gasset recently, I came across the following quote:
In Stendhal and in Baroja, philosophic conclusions descend to mere language, to a literary genre which serves as an instrument for literary outburst. They think in terms of "for" and "against" -- and this the thinker never does. In effect, they love and hate conceptually. Therefore, their theories are numerous. They swarm about like bacteria, disparate and antagonistic, each one engendered by the impression of the moment. In the manner of songs, they tell a truth, not about things, but about the singer.
As a songwriter, I think there's great wisdom in that last sentence.
Many years ago when I was living in Atlanta I happened to be in a particularly foul mood one evening so I got out my guitar and wrote a grumpy blues tune about how I missed New York City. Last month I recorded a rough version -- check it out here if you're interested. (And if you live anywhere but Manhattan, don't take it personally, OK? I tell you I was in a bad mood at the time...)
I've listened long and hard to a lot of albums by a lot of singer-songwriters, from the medieval troubadours on up through the latest CDs. Based on my listening experience, I would single out two song-collections as the best of the bunch: Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks (1975) and Joni Mitchell's Blue (1972). In particular, I've been playing Blue repeatedly of late and I must say that it's close to a perfectly integrated expression of the troubadour ethos (what I like to call the individualism of the poet-musician).
Back in May I posted some lyrics I wrote in protest against eminent domain abuse (to be sung to the tune of "This Land Is Your Land"). This evening I finally got around to recording the song -- it's available in both MP3 and Ogg formats. Enjoy!
I've been listening a lot lately to music from the late sixties -- Cream, Blind Faith, Derek & the Dominoes, and especially Fairport Convention. But that's probably no surprise, because my favorite musical period (at least for rock music) seems to be 1968 to 1974 -- encompassing for example the first seven Yes albums, Mellow Candle's Swaddling Songs, Fairport Convention's first four releases, much of Renaissance's output, early Jackson Browne and Bonnie Raitt, my favorite Joni Mitchell albums (Ladies of the Canyon and Blue), John Barleycorn and The Low Spark of High Heeled Boys by Traffic, Bob Dylan's Blood on the Tracks (recorded in '74), George Harrison's All Things Must Pass, early Van Morrison, late Beatles, Joe Cocker's first two albums, many of my favorite Bob Marley tunes (such as "High Tide or Low Tide", "I'm Hurting Inside", "Concrete Jungle", "Get Up Stand Up", and "No Woman No Cry"), the self-titled first albums by Aztec Two-Step and Jonathan Edwards, and the like. That's not to say I don't like music that wasn't recorded between '68 and '74 -- I love Hot Rize's fine bluegrass releases from the '80s, Hot Rize frontman Tim O'Brien's Traveler, Tim's sister Mollie's three solo albums, early Dylan, Mark Knopfler tunes from Dire Straits and his solo releases Golden Heart and Sailing to Philadelphia, the first album by Rickie Lee Jones, Aretha Franklin's First Twelve Sides and I Never Loved a Man the Way I Loved You, Greg Brown's Covenant, Dougie MacLean's Craigie Dhu, Breakfast in the Field by Michael Hedges, Going for the One by Yes, some middle-period Rush from the late '70s and early '80s, Eric Clapton's Me and Mr. Johnson, Girl Next Door by Fatwall Jack, Professor Longhair's Rock'n'Roll Gumbo, and more. But the sweet spot for me seems to be all that plaintive, experimental, psychedelic, and progressive music released in the late '60s and early '70s.
One of the songs I cover is an utterly obscure tune entitled "Freudian Complex Blues" by the psychedelic country band Surreal McCoys, who were semi-active when I went to college in Manhattan in the late 80s. I heard the song only twice (at the Furnald Folk Fest on campus) so I'm not sure if I've got the words right, but the song is a kind of warped blues take on the Oedipus myth and it's really fun to perform. Now it turns out that Surreal McCoys frontman Kevin Trainor happens to live in my adopted hometown of Denver, Colorado. Maybe I could look him up and check those lyrics with him....
Lately I've been doing some experimental recording on my PowerBook (a few results are here and here). Unfortunately, GarageBand frequently freezes, telling me that my disk is too slow. So I started to look around for alternatives and found Audacity, an open-source recording package. So far Audacity has worked flawlessly -- plus it natively exports to the patent-free Ogg Vorbis format rather than the patent-encumbered MP3 format. Open source rocks. :-)
Is it just me, or is there a strong family resemblance between the Prelude of Bach's fifth English Suite (BWV 810) and the Allegro of Brahms' first Sonata for Piano and Cello (Op. 38)? Either way, I really like both pieces...
On Friday night I schlepped up to Boulder and heard a great concert by Hot Rize, including a rare appearance by their alter egos Red Knuckles & the Trailblazers. In general I'm not a pure bluegrass fan (since I don't love the traditional variety), but Hot Rize are an amazing blend of that older sound with a modern edge, and on Friday night they were simply cooking. But I still miss the ever-creative playing of flatpicker Charles Sawtelle...
Speaking of playlists and such, I've been playing around with playlists in iTunes. Although I typically listen to whatever the original artist dished up -- yes, in the old days we used to call those "albums" :P -- it can be fun, even enlightening, to remix an artist's output in new ways. One of my favorite recent playlists is a collection of what I think of as some of the bright, shorter (less than 10 minutes), upbeat songs by Yes from their first ten studio albums. Here's what I came up with:
Over at Cafe Hayek (world's best tagline: "where orders emerge"), Russell Roberts is looking to find folks songs for classical liberals. Now that I've got a small recording setup at home, I really need to record some of my libertarian protest songs. :-)
On Saturday afternoon it was about 85 degrees in Denver. Then the temperature plummetted about 50 degrees in 36 hours or so. Since midnight last night it's been snowing (though without much accummulation, as you can imagine). I just started up one of my favorite recordings for snowy weather: Side by Side from Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges. It's funny how certain kinds of music go with certain kinds of weather. Plus this is a great recording. I especially love the Duke's piano solo on "Stompy Jones" and the powerful, heavily chromatic chords he ends with. Bam!
In pondering the deeper meaning of the music market, Tyler Cowen observes:
It is a mystery why fans spend almost all of their music money on product of very recent vintage. Until we untangle this puzzle, and we have not yet, we will not understand how Internet music is likely to affect consumer welfare.
Perhaps the deeper mystery is why people listen to the same music over and over. It's rare that someone reads the same novel or short story or poem more than five or ten times, yet people will happily listen to the same piece of music dozens (or, for their favorites, even hundreds) of times. Music also is full of repetition and indeed is quite repetitious: songs usually consist of multiple verses and choruses with the same melodies, and even so-called art music is rife with codas, repeated sections, theme and variations, etc. Boring! But it's not boring to the human ear.
Yet people do eventually tire of hearing the same old music, which is why (despite the presence of long-term favorites) they hunger for newness. Further, music co-evolves with society: it changes in time with human experience, the mixing of peoples, an ever faster pace of life, opportunities for travel, technological change, and so on. Fundamentally, I think music is a human expression like language or clothing or food, in which the desire for fashion and novelty riffs against certain stable basics (melody, rhythm, harmony) within a churning expressive marketplace whose order (such as it is) emerges organically through the multifarious choices and recommendations of countless individuals. To expect habits of music listening and buying to remain steady or predictable or controllable (as, perhaps, big music company executives would like) is pure folly.
Recently I received a friendly note from Padraig O'Connor, composer of a wonderful piece for small orchestra entitled "Introspect" (I mention it on my music recommendations page). His message spurred me to break out some of my older recordings of 20th century music from the British Isles, in particular some fine Gerald Finzi such as the Eclogue and both the Prelude and the Romance for string orchestra. Truly, I think Introspect compares quite favorably with the Finzi (I'm more fond of "Introspect" myself). I can still visualize the stretch of road on which I first heard the piece -- Route 523 in scenic Sergeantsville, New Jersey ... it must have been the college radio station of Princeton University that played it. Mr. O'Connor reports that he has written a fair amount of other music, such as a "Reverie" for double bass and wind orchestra (scored for double pass and piano in a performance several years ago in New York City). As you can imagine, that piece in particular piqued my interest since I'm aiming to record some works for electric bass myself. It's a shame that composers of O'Connor's calibre and sensitivity are not more widely known (the recording on which I found "Introspect" is long out of print).
Continuing the 13 theme, here are my 13 favorite Bob Dylan songs in (I think) chronological order of recording:
Last July I speculated that the combination of my new PowerBook and iPod would enable me to make a short list of music that I couldn't do without. The results surprised me a bit:
The preponderance of Bach is no big shock, but I would've expected more Yes and at least some Ellington. But the foregoing list reflects only what I've been listening to most in the last eight months or so -- I got a bit burnt out on Yes there for a while, listened to Mellow Candle's Swaddling Songs a few times a week last fall (!), went on a similar John Bayless kick, and often listen to some recordings via CD at home so they don't get counted (I'm thinking especially of Joe Pass, Ella Fitzgerald, Mollie O'Brien, Paul Desmond, and Marian McPartland). It'll be interesting to observe the long-term trends (say, over three or five years).
Last Friday night I saw Tim O'Brien in concert at Swallow Hill, and the previous Saturday I saw his sister Mollie in Evergreen (CO) at a concert sponsored by Hilltop Music. Tim, a veteran of legendary bluegrass band Hot Rize, is simply one of the best acoustic musicians on the planet, and Mollie is a singer of incredible presence who continues to impress me in a wide range of styles, from folk and blues to R&B and jazz. Memorable concerts both. If you ever get the chance to hear either Tim or Mollie live, I highly recommend you do so!
Finally, I have recorded some my own music. Most of the music I've written was composed ten or even fifteen years ago (!), and I've been promising people that I would record it for just about that long. Last summer I bought a Mac largely to make recording easier than it probably would have been on Linux, and for Christmas I got a basic Audio-Technica microphone. So I started messing around with GarageBand and quickly realized that my guitar skills have atrophied disastrously! After a few weeks of practicing, I got one tune in shape: a short and simple solo guitar piece entitled "Wordless Joy". It's really not much more than a semi-jazzy classical guitar ditty, but tonight I recorded a fairly clean rendition, so I've posted the mp3 file online. Enjoy!
I listen to some fairly obscure music -- various medieval troubadours, Palestrina, Agustín Barrios Mangoré, Aztec Two-Step, Spock's Beard, Wendy Waldman, Fatwall Jack, Judie Tzuke, Pousette-Dart Band, Dave Mallett, and the like. Lately I've been listening a lot to the sole recording by early 70s Irish progressive-folk band Mellow Candle, entitled Swaddling Songs (there's a good review here). Mellow Candle are similar in some ways to Renaissance, another of my favorite prog-folk bands. Pretty far off the beaten path and occasionally a bit on the twee side, but generally quite to my liking -- complex compositions, great harmonies, melodic bass lines, and many other good things you'd expect in a quality progressive-folk band.
I've been listening a lot lately to two CDs of music by John Bayless: Bach Meets the Beatles and Bach on Abbey Road. If you like the music of both the Beatles and J.S. Bach, you'll love these recordings, since they consist of solo piano interpretations of Beatles melodies in the style of Bach. Sometimes Bayless keeps close to the melody, but in other pieces it can be hard to discern the connection to the original tune unless you pay careful attention. Plus he quotes from the vast literature of Bach solo piano works, which adds an extra layer of complexity and enjoyment for lovers of Bach's partitas, suites, variations, inventions, and such. Supposedly Bayless is quite adept at improvisation and if I recall correctly he improvised these recordings, but I find it hard to imagine that he simply sat down at the piano and cranked out such perfectly formed arrangements. But perhaps I'm just not that musically gifted.
Bayless's work is one examplar of what I am trying to accomplish with a set of interpretations of Yes tunes that I'm working on for solo electric bass. (No, I don't even own a bass -- I'm working out these pieces on the bottom four strings of my classical guitar, and will transfer them to bass once I buy one.) I think of these works-in-progress as Squire Variations, in honor of Yes bassist Chris Squire, although I'm not strictly keeping to the bass lines and often interpret the melody or guitar parts instead of the bass parts. Thankfully, Squire is the most melodic bassist in rock music and his lines often comprise a kind of counter-melody, so there are many fun and challenging possibilities here. So far I am fully satisfied with my arrangement of "To Be Over" (from Relayer), which is about 8 minutes long and quite contrapuntal. Right now I'm working mainly on "South Side of the Sky" (from Fragile), which I feel is getting close to finished, and "The Remembering" (from Tales from Topographic Oceans), which still needs to be augmented quite a bit with themes from later in the original piece (you can't really call it a song, since it clocks in at over 20 minutes!). I'm also planning to write arrangements of "Close to the Edge" and "Heart of the Sunrise" but I haven't worked on those much yet. Perhaps after the first of the year I'll finally start to record some of this music and put it up on my website (though I probably need to get permission first, unlike posting of my own music, which is all in the public domain). So stay tuned!
It seems that composer Peter Maxwell Davies is being sponsored by Naxos Records to write a series of ten string quartets, to be entitled the Naxos String Quartets. Yet another creative approach to encouraging the creation of new art works.
Because of a special deal that Apple is running right now, my new PowerBook came with an iPod (that's a really sweet, portable music player for you non-techno-geeks). The thing has "only" 20 gigs of storage (compared to the 20 megabyte capacity of my first hard drive, at about one-twentieth of the size -- progress in storage capacity is even more amazing to me than progress in processor speed). So I figure this thing will hold about 100 CDs' worth of music. Back in January I tried but failed to come up with a list of only 10 "desert island discs", but the prospect of whittling my CD collection down to only 100 CDs is less daunting -- in fact, it's forcing me to recognize which music I like best and which is nonessential in my life. Perhaps I'll post again with my top 100 (I wonder if iTunes has an export function?).
I've keyed in a list of all the CDs I own -- 563 and counting. Let me know if you'd like to borrow something. ;-)
Last night I put all my desert island books on one shelf in my office. In fact I removed two because they didn't seem essential (Rand's Anthem and the poems of Horace). I'd have a harder time coming up with a really short list of music, though. Only ten CDs? Impossible! Certainly Bach's Goldberg Variations, Art of the Fugue, and Cello Suites would be on the list, as would Chopin's Nocturnes and Dvorak's Cypresses. Something from Duke Ellington would be essential, probably And His Mother Called Him Bill (which has a kind of elemental passion that some of his other recordings lack). I'd need some Yes -- Close to the Edge for sure and perhaps a self-made compilation of my favorite pieces from their other recordings. I find myself listening a lot to If I Could Be With You by Marcus Roberts -- it's a great compendium of jazz piano styles (from Joplin and James P. Johnson to Ellington and Monk) -- so I think I'd bring that to my desert island. Well, that's only nine. Maybe I could whittle it down to such a short list. But I'd still be missing Dylan, Aretha, Ella, and so many others...
I recently came across a fun quote from Laurie Anderson: "Talking about music is like dancing about architecture." Taken literally, that's guano -- we might as well say that talking about architecture is like painting about poetry, or that talking about poetry is like sculpting about dance. We're conceptual, linguistic beings, and it makes sense for us to talk about things. But the part of her quote that I like is that it respects the autonomy of the aesthetic realm (a point made also by Virgina Postrel in this interview). You can't simply reduce music or painting or dance to some discursive explanation, because the point of art is that it captures and communicates things that aren't easy to put into words. Or, as Mendelssohn put it: "It's not that music is too imprecise for words, but too precise."
The other day I checked George Winston's CD Plains out of the library. The two most haunting pieces on this disc come from Hawaii: a traditional tune called "No Ke Ano Ahiahi" and one entitled "Ike Ia Ladana" composed by Hawaii's Queen Liliuokalani in 1887. Winston is devoted to the tradition of Hawaiian slack key guitar, and if these two pieces are a representative sample then I think I need to check into the tradition further. His favorite interpreters are Dennis Kamakahi, Keola Beamer, and Ozzie Kotani, as well as Gabby and Cyril Pahinui. So much music to explore in this world...
(And yes, I still support the cause of Hawaiian independence.)
My musical tastes are, shall we say, eclectic. I like everything from Palestrina to the Police, and I've been known to listen in short succession to music as disparate as Bach's Art of the Fugue and Professor Longhair, Chopin and Spock's Beard, or James P. Johnson and Bob Marley. Way before the late-90s swing revival I was happily listening to Ella Fitzgerald, Billie Holiday, Fats Waller, Duke Ellington, and the like. I've been playing that kind of music for quite a while, too, so I'm thinking I might record some of my renditions of classic jazz and show tunes once I buy some recording gear. Here are some songs I've got in mind:
Probably much work to be done on arrangements for tunes like this, though...
Hi, my name is Peter and I'm a workaholic. For the last few years I've worked especially hard, since I'm blessed to play a leading part in the Jabber community. Unfortunately, working 60-80 hours a week leaves little time for other interests and pursuits, of which I have many. One of the longest-running for me is music. I started playing guitar and bass when I was 12 or 13, and I've been writing songs and instrumental pieces since I was 17 or so. I've never found the time (or money) to record my music, nor do I have that real performer's personality or a hunger to be up on stage, so my musical pursuits are not very public. But that doesn't make them any less important to me. Earlier today I had a longish talk about music with my friend Eric Nolte, who is a much more accomplished musician than I am (he is a pianist, violist, and composer when he's not flying airplanes for a living). Talking with Eric has renewed my dedication to becoming more actively involved in music. So I've just requested a number of music theory books from the Denver public library, as well as songbooks for Hoagy Carmichael, Yip Harburg, and writers of several other songs I've been meaning to learn. Eric pointed me to musictheory.net, which looks like a great resource. I'm doing some more research on home recording equipment (still leaning towards a Tascam 428 since supposedly it's Linux-compatible, and I'm still lusting after a Warwick electric bass). I need to force myself to participate in the next songwriter's open stage at Swallow Hill (on Thursday, September 11 -- not an auspicious date, I must admit), at which local songwriters can sing two or three songs of their own creation (I think I'd sing Center of the World and either Pre-Emptive Strike or She is Woman). I'm thinking I might attend the songwriting workshop being presented by Wendy Waldman on October 24 at Swallow Hill (I'll be at her concert that night, too -- she is an awesome songwriter). Since returning from vacation last week I haven't worked a single night or weekend, and I'm striving hard to keep that up so that I can give some time to my musical (and philosophical) activities. Yes, even a workaholic like me recognizes that balance is important...
Last year I started a tradition of "Jazz Fridays" at work, wherein I brought some of my favorite CDs in for a colleague to listen to. Now he's restarted the tradition by loaning me a few of his favorites. I just finished listening to "Jazz Sambas" by the Leviev-Slon Quartet, and now I'm moving on to "Starlight Cafe" by Dmitri Matheny. And speaking of good jazz, I heard some really tasty playing on Jazz Set last week, courtesy of KUVO in Denver. The music was provided by pianist Peter Martin, but it was the drumming by Greg Hutchinson that really blew me away. From the few tunes I heard, he's a creative force on the drums, and has an almost-melodic style that impressed me a lot. I'll need to find some recordings on which he's featured....
Opsound is a new music label that is bringing the principles of open source and copyleft to the world of music. Intriguing.
Yes, I've been promising for years that I would get serious about recording my music. I last wrote a song in 1995 (!) and finished my last solo guitar piece a few years a few years thereafter. The only music I've worked on recently is my 25-minute setting of Langston Hughes's poem "Freedom Plow". So I really need to get busy on recording before I forget how to play all this stuff. :-) My Jabber friend temas told me that the Tascam 448 is a good bet for Linux users like me, though I'll have to upgrade to the 2.5 kernel and monitor the ALSA and LADSPA mailing lists regarding the appropriate kernel tweaks (fun stuff like O(N) schedulers and pre-empt). So much to do, so little time...
I think that I'm finished composing my musical setting of the long poem Freedom's Plow by Harlem Renaissance poet Langston Hughes. I've been playing and singing the music for a month or so now and I don't hear a lot that I would like to change, so I'm calling it done. As befits a poem with over 200 lines, the total performance time of my arrangement is around 26 minutes, so it is an extremely long song! To put that in perspective, it is over twice as long as the longest Bob Dylan song I know ("Sad Eyed Lady of the Lowlands", which is a little under 11 minutes) and it is even a few minutes longer than the longest Yes song ("The Gates of Delirium", which is almost 22 minutes). In actuality, my setting of Freedom's Plow is more like a suite of six or seven songs than one uninterrupted song. It may even be too long to perform live (not that I would likely have the opportunity), but I like it a lot, so I hope to share it with people somehow. Don't your breath, though -- I've been promising to record some of my music for over ten years now and it hasn't happened yet...
Yesterday I was passed by some fatcat in a fancy Mercedes (in a school zone, no less!) and this song popped into my head:
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz --
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends.
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz --Oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV --
Dialing For Dollars is trying to find me.
I wait for delivery each day until three,
So oh Lord, won't you buy me a color TV --Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town --
I'm counting on you, Lord, please don't let me down.
Prove that you love me and buy the next round,
Oh Lord, won't you buy me a night on the town --Oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz --
My friends all drive Porsches, I must make amends,
Worked hard all my lifetime, no help from my friends,
So oh Lord, won't you buy me a Mercedes Benz.
Catchy.
Today's "Friday Jazz" recording is Oscar Peterson Live at the Northsea Jazz Festival. Definitely a non-standard line-up: Peterson on piano, the amazing Joe Pass on guitar, Niels-Henning Orsted-Pedersen on bass, and Toots Thielemans on harmonica. These guys were cooking! The interplay among these seasoned musicians is something to marvel at; they know when to keep out of each other's way and when some friendly competition is in order. I especially like their lengthy rendition of Duke Ellington's "Caravan". Hot stuff!
We skipped Friday Jazz last week because my main "customer" was out of the office. This week I sifted through a raft of Duke Ellinton CDs to choose yesterday's recording: Side by Side, a laid-back session co-led by Duke Ellington and Johnny Hodges. Ellington is mainly known for his big-band recordings, but I really like his piano recordings and also his small-group sessions. Side by Side is one of the latter. There's some really tasty piano playing from Ellington (I especially love his piano solo on "Stompy Jones") and Billy Strayhorn, and of course the inimitable alto saxophone playing of Johnny Hodges. A fine recording, and definitely not the last Ellington recording we'll be featuring on Friday Jazz. Yes, the Ellington Express is just getting rolling! But despite the fact that I revere the Duke, I promise not to make it all Ellington all the time. :)
In my spare moments of late, I've been revisiting a project that I've long wanted to complete: writing a setting for voice and guitar of Langston Hughes's long poem Freedom's Plow. Some years ago I wrote a tentative melody for the first three stanzas. In the last few weeks I've refined that and also written music for the next two stanzas. As befits the words, my setting starts out slowly and quietly. The first three stanzas are just a vocal line doubled by guitar, with a simple guitar accompaniment for the second two stanzas. What I've written so far clocks in at around six minutes, which means the complete piece will probably be at least 15 minutes long, perhaps even 20. In addition to the first five stanzas, I have a tenative treament of the (long) sixth stanza (beginning "Down into the earth went the plow") and some well-worked out ideas for the following section quoting Jefferson, Lincoln, and Frederick Douglass. But I need to figure out a transition from that to the part that quotes the old folk song Keep Your Hand on the Plow (the only version I own is on Bob Dylan's first album -- I think I need to hear a few others, such as that on Mahalia Jackson Live at Newport 1958). I would like the song to build up throughout, but we'll see if that is sustainable; a lull might be in order for the stanza that begins "America is a dream" (perhaps even including the previous stanza about the aftermath of the Civil War). Setting such a long poem to music requires some planning in order to pull it off. We'll see if I succeed.
It's funny how these traditions get started. First it was Words of the Week. Now it's Jazz Fridays. Last Friday I brought one of my favorite jazz recordings into the office: Cannonball Adderly's Somethin' Else. It quickly made the rounds at the office and was eventually returned on Monday morning. At least one copy was purchased over the weekend by a convert to this incredible recording. The personnel have something do with it: in addition to the ostensible bandleader, the session featured Mile Davis on trumpet, Hank Jones on piano (more on him in a minute), Sam Jones on bass, and Art Blakey on drums. And the playing is so joyous and relaxed that it's hard not to like what you hear. All in all, truly somethin' else.
This week there was a call for more, so I brought in Abbey Lincoln's 1991 release You Gotta Pay the Band -- another of my favorites, with some delectable playing by Stan Getz on saxophone (his final studio recordings) and Hank Jones on piano, not to mention fine songwriting and singing by Lincoln herself (I especially love the haunting tune "Bird Alone").
So it seems that another tradition may be forming here. Unfortunately I own fewer jazz CDs than there are words in English, so I'm not sure how long I can keep this up....
On a lark, I went to a concert by Yes last night in Denver. I've seen them several times in the last two years and have heard them play some amazing pieces of music (the highlight for me this time was "South Side of the Sky"). Although I enjoyed the show and I'm always impressed by their musicianship, I think this will be the last Yes concert I attend -- I get more out of listening to their recordings than paying way too much to hear them live. While I recognize that there can be a certain magic in the live experience, I tend to agree with Glenn Gould about the superiority of recorded music.
I was listening to the CD "Color of Space" from local prog-rock band Singularity today so I decided to check out their website. Found some clips from the new recording and discovered that the release date is August 6th, which happens to be my birthday. Here's hoping the new release lives up to CoS. Gotta support independent musicians!
While in Prague I caught the tail end of a TV show about Antonin Dvorak's time in America. Dvorak was fascinated with American folk music (Negro spirituals, etc.) and worked tirelessly to encourage his students to develop from such sources a native art music. His students are virtually unknown today, but the students of his students include Duke Ellington, James P. Johnson, George Gershwin, and Aaron Copland. You can find a bit of the story here. A topic for further reading, I think.
While I was wandering about in the wilds of Wyoming, everyone and their uncle linked to a must-read article on free music downloading by songwriter Janis Ian. Not only can Janis write great songs, but she can think clearly about some difficult issues. Her answer to the premise that "the industry (and its artists) are being harmed by free downloading"? Horsefeathers! "There is zero evidence that material available for free online downloading is financially harming anyone. In fact, most of the hard evidence is to the contrary." She points to Baen Free Library (see related article) and the SWFA as examples to emulate from the science-fiction scene. She calls on musical artists to speak out against the rapacious record industry. Better yet would be to boycott the industry entirely and do an end-run around the oligopolistic big music companies and their indentured-servitude contracts. Not that I'd ever get the opportunity, but I'd never sign such a contract, and you can be sure that most or all of my music will be available for free download when I finally get around to recording it. Whenever that is....
That said, I must say I do find it a bit disturbing the extent to which people of my acquaintance are comfortable downloading songs to their heart's content and never seeking to compensate the songwriter or performer. Maybe I'm just old-fashioned, but I believe in the musician's right to earn something from his or her hard work. There ain't no such thing as a free lunch, and to expect musicians to create and produce with no reward is deeply short-sighted. I just don't know what the answer is.
I've been listening to a lot of music by Spock's Beard lately. Never heard of 'em? Most people haven't, but they are (IMHO) the best progressive rock band of the last ten years. I do have a few nits: sometimes they stray too far over onto the metal side of the world for my taste, a few of their pieces are positively malevolent (e.g., "The Gypsy"), and they have a theatrical side that sounds a bit too much like Queen once in a while. But you can't argue with The Kindness of Strangers, Day for Night, and V -- these are three excellent recordings (Day for Night is my favorite). So check out "the Beard" if you like music from those old progressive bands like Yes, Pink Floyd, and ELP.
Composer Jeffrey Lindon has posted MP3 files of four of the piano pieces he wrote based on my urban haiku. I like them a lot -- despite their classical form they've got some nice spiky rhythms and astringent harmonies. :) You can listen to them here.
I've been listening to the music of Renaissance a lot lately. No, not the music of the Renaissance, but the music of the English progressive folk-rock band Renaissance. Funny thing is, Rob (Jabber Inc.'s CEO) stopped by my desk about an hour ago and noticed my Renaissance CDs -- it turns out he's a big Renaissance fan, too! They're pretty obscure, so that's quite a coincidence.
So what kind of music is this? Long-time readers of this weblog know that I'm a big Yes fan, so it's easiest for me to compare the two than to talk about Renaissance in isolation. First off, I know less about Renaissance because I'm not quite as a big a fan of theirs and I possess only the two volumes of their "greatest hits" (entitled Tales of 1001 Nights). Whereas Yes is perhaps the best-known progressive rock band, Renaissance's music is more like progressive folk. Their lyrics, almost all of which were written by a poet who was not a member of the band, are more openly-understandable than those of Yes. In addition, they featured a symphony orchestra on a number of their recordings, whereas Yes orchestrated their pieces with only the standard rock instruments (although some of those keyboards almost sound like a string orchestra). Supposedly Renaissance was influenced quite strongly by Russian music, and one of their songs is even entitled "Mother Russia" (it's about Solzhenitsyn). Personally I think that the music of Renaissance is a little more simple than that of Yes. Plus the fact that Renaissance has a woman vocalist (the incredible Annie Haslam) gives them a different sound. And their music is more piano-focused than that of Yes. But if you ask me, both bands are amazing! Especially this live version of Ashes are Burning that I'm listening to right now (yes, it clocks in at 23:47!).
My composer friend Jeffrey Lindon reports that the premiere performance of his solo-piano interpretations of my Urban Haiku was a smashing success! Here's an excerpt from his "report":
Urban Haiku opened last night's composition department recital, to great success. In addition to the pianist (Nicholas Ong, who did a superb job), I worked with a reader, Nimrod Weisbrod. Nimrod contributed the idea of acting the part of a different city character when reading each Haiku. For Broadway Crazy Man, he was the crazy man (walked along like normal; then stopped and acted paranoid; then cursed at himself, slapped himself, then stopped one hand from slapping himself with the other hand). For Midnight in the Park, he was a detective type person wandering and dictating notes to himself on a hand-held recorder. For A Pigeon's Death-Throes, he was a commuter who noticed a dying pigeon by the curb and left the scene. For Old Woman Crossing, he was a taxi driver, complete with Indian accent. For How Many Will Live, he was an environmentalist protester. For Fighting Traffic Noise, he was a construction worker (complete with prop hard-hat and imaginary jack-hammer). And for Orange City Glow, he was just a normal guy, and he walked off the stage and exited down the center aisle of the room as he recited the text. Between the others, he went to the small backstage area.
The audience laughed at most all of the humor, and was dead quiet during the serious moments. The applause was ample. And I received, both last night and today, high praises from many quarters, including my teacher, the department head, and several students whose opinions I value.
I wish I could've been there -- sounds fun! Jeffrey has promised to send me a CD of the evening's festivities, so I'm looking forward to that.
In other music news, I've been thinking lately about buying an electric bass. I've got my eye on a four-string Corvette model from Warwick. Those Warwick basses are simply beautiful and they play as sweet as they look. I'm also starting to research home-recording equipment in a more serious fashion so that I can finally record the music I've written. As I've been saying since at least 1995, one of these years....
Oh yeah, and I've been listening to this new Kasey Chambers CD all the time recently. Kasey who? Well, she just happens to be a great young Australian singer-songwriter whose musical styles seemingly stretch all the way from Alanis Morissette to Lucinda Williams to a bit of Sarah McLachlan. The critics call her alt-country, but as Haim Ginott used to say, "labeling is disabling" -- so stop worrying and just enjoy the music already. ;-)
I'm sitting here enjoying my favorite dessert and the music of Dave Mallett, a Maine songwriter whose music I grew up on. This morning I woke up with his song "Hard Light" playing in my head. Mallett is the kind of musician I had in mind the other day when I wrote about the impact of digital music distribution technologies on working musicians -- he isn't making tons of money as a songwriter as far as I know, he puts out a CD every three years or so, and you can still see him in concert for $7.00 on a good day. At best he's living a middle-class existence in Maine or perhaps Nashville if he's still down that way. In other words, he needs to be just as creative in making money as he is as an artist. Now, let's say there is no such thing as intellectual property, and Mr. Mallett (or a performing and recording composer such as my friend Eric Nolte) can no longer sell CDs. I guess some would say he just needs to get even more creative, set up a tipjar on his website, and start charging more at his concerts. Perhaps -- no one ever said being a musician was an easy life. And I can't disagree with Eric Snowdeal's comments on my post the other day, to the effect that the record companies (of which there are only three or four in the world, other than small independents) are bloodsucking vampires who eat musicians for breakfast. Yet I know enough musicians that I hope there is a way for them to make a little money doing what they do best, be that composing, performing, or recording.
As I mentioned the other day, I don't even try to make money from my music, and for me it's just a hobby. But music is important enough to me that I value the fact there are full-time musicians in the world. Not just performers, but more fundamentally songwriters and composers. In my own experience, it is not money that drives such creativity; but one needs money in order to live, and if one could make no money from one's creative output, one would not long be able to sustain the creative life.
Well, I don't pretend to have the answers, but it's definitely something I continue to reflect on (especially because I'm quite deeply committed to sharing information, as my websites make clear).
A while back I wrote a journal entry about a music project that Jeffrey Lindon and I were thinking of working on together. We have put that on hold for now (though we both definitely want to return to it). In the meantime, Jeffrey has written seven short pieces for piano inspired by my Urban Haiku (tangent: I didn't realize that there is a recognized genre of urban haiku). Jeffrey reports that a performance of these pieces will take place in Baltimore on April 10th or 14th. I'll post more information as I receive it.
Jeffrey mentions on his website that he's studying with Nicholas Maw, who has written a Violin Concerto that sounds intriguing. Speaking of music, as I was driving home from work last night (too cold to bike, even for me!) I heard a recording of some incidental music that Fauré wrote for Pelleas et Melisande. Gorgeous music. I like Fauré's music a lot, from what I've heard of it.
Time to play guitar. I've been practicing my solo guitar pieces quite a bit lately, in hopes of increasing my fluidity and improving my interpretation. Which reminds me that I need to print off the sheet music so that I can work through some of the hard parts, correct any errors in the scores, and add some fingering information here and there (I've got some crazy fingerings in some of my pieces, especially in my "Arctic Suite", where I put the thumb of the left hand to good use on the fretboard!).
The Mary Lou Williams CD that I got from the library is extremely good. I've heard some of her earlier big-band recordings before and they never touched me, but this CD -- a solo piano recording entitled Nite Life and made much a later in her career (1971) -- is powerful stuff. I hear influences here from James P. Johnson, Duke Ellington, Lennie Tristano, and Thelonious Monk, as well as intimations of Keith Jarrett in places. This CD is definitely going on my wish list. :-)
I was less impressed by After New Formalism, a collection of essays edited by Annie Finch on the recent poetic trend toward meter. I guess I just don't derive much value from a bunch of professors holding forth in their academic way, even on a topic that I find of interest. Yes, even in a movement so outside the poetic mainstream as "new formalism", most of the contributors are just a bunch of professors, teaching literature or creative writing alongside their postmodernist and free-verse brethren. The poet I respect most in this collection is Dana Gioia, who worked in business for a long time while pursuing his writing on the side, and who a number of years ago decided to devote himself full-time to the writing life. Gioia strikes me as someone who has maintained at least some distance from the insidious tentacles of academic thinking, and who remains tied to the reality of poems and their readers, as opposed to the false world of critics and their theories. Last night I started reading his latest volume of poems (Interrogations at Noon) and it feels like a keeper.
Perhaps it's not fair of me to be so hard on academics -- perhaps it would be more beneficial for me to see professors as people who have made a certain career choice (simply one different from mine -- although I nearly ended up going to graduate school so "there but for the grace of God go I"). In a way I feel sorry for those stuck in the university system, because all too often there's not much else they can do in life but pursue their research and teach their students. I certainly doubt they'd make it in the high-pressure world of a high-tech startup company like the one I work for. Similarly, I often feel sorry for many full-time artists -- they are so single-minded (or single-talented) in their art that they're otherwise fit only for low-value jobs like waiting tables and clerical work. Usually I'm glad that I'm more multi-talented (or just less focused) than that, because it seems that I have an aptitude for at least a few things other than music and poetry.
That said, I do resent the intellectual hubris and detachment of the academic system. Far too often, academics are concerned only about their little area of specialty and care not about life itself. I suppose one could say the same about those of us creating and documenting software (how important is it really to create an instant messaging application?), but my experience is that engineers don't usually project any greater significance onto their work, and they certainly don't reduce the meaning of human experience to software. I remember back in college I read in the New York Times a roundtable of perspectives on what's wrong with the world and how to fix it from a number of professors. The historian (Gertrude Himmelfarb, I believe it was) said that obviously people are lacking in historical perspective and if we'd just become more aware of history, all would be well; similarly the economist was convinced that an understanding of economics was the key to solving the world's problems, the biologist made a pitch for biology, the mathematician bemoaned rampant "innumeracy", and so on. Such limited horizons. And those horizons become even more limited when one realizes that any given historian (say) looks askance at those benighted generalists who seek to derive greater lessons from the vast sweep of human history, and instead focuses on some suitably publishable topic such as villas within a day's chariot ride of ancient Rome or necromancy in southern France in the period 1100 to 1300.
What I find especially galling is that those in universities fail to realize that a vast system of "crass" production (and taxation) is necessary to sustain the privileged class of scholars who because of the productivity of others are able to delve at their leisure into such arcane matters. To top it off, most scholars are proud leftists who rail against the free market and capitalist exploitation of the working class -- never thinking that perhaps it's the academics themselves who are the true exploiters of the labor of others.
Yet I mustn't personalize things too much. In fact the problem is not with individual scholar-teachers (many of whom may be quite competent and thoughtful), but with the very system of university academics itself. The same can be said for pre-collegiate education, where many dedicated teachers try their best to focus on the children in the context of a system that in most ways is positively inimical to true learning.
But rather than complain about "the system" (as most Randians and libertarians do), I have long found it more productive and emotionally satisfying to concentrate on my own life and the value I can create within my own sphere of influence. So enough ranting. I think I'll get back to work now. :-)
Now playing: more Judie Tzuke, this time her album Under the Angels (which someone in the UK was kind enough to send me once after reading on my favorite songs page about how hard it is to find Judie's music in the USA).
Now playing: Judie Tzuke's album Welcome to the Cruise. I've always loved her voice, and she wrote some gorgeous songs (my favorites on this album are "For You", "Bring the Rain", and "Stay With Me Till Dawn").
More Yes: this time, Relayer. "Soon, oh soon..." -- so gorgeous.
Now playing: Close to the Edge by Yes. Ahhhh.
Elisa and I went to a fun concert Saturday night by the Denver Mandolin Orchestra. It seems that mandolin ensembles were quite popular in the late 1800s and early 1900s -- every respectable city had an orchestra or two. They make bright, happy music. I would've preferred some mandolas and mandocellos in the mix to add some darker tones, but I suppose I can't complain.
The venue for the concert was Swallow Hill, a local venue for folk and other acoustic musics. They host meetings of a local songwriter's circle and hold a monthly open-mic night for songwriters, so I'm thinking that in January I'll stop in and participate in some musical activity.
I'm sad about the death of George Harrison. His songs with the Beatles have always impressed me -- there is a twist to them, a style of words and melody that sets them apart from those of Lennon and McCartney. It's hard to put my finger on what makes "You Like Me Too Much" different from "The Night Before", "Think For Yourself" different from "Another Girl", "Something" different from "Because" (to choose some songs at random), but to me a Harrison song has always been distinctive (even aside from a song like "While My Guitar Gently Weeps", which is sui generis). I also admire songs like "For You Blue", "Old Brown Shoe", and even his Indian-influenced songs (especially "The Inner Light" with its lyrics from Lao Tzu). And this is not to mention his guitar-playing, which as a sometime guitarist myself I've always appreciated.
Now playing: the music of Enrique Granados. Gorgeous.
The Economist has a short article on Leos Janacek as a neutral party in the musical cold war of the 20th century. I wish they'd talk about some living composers, too, such as Bright Sheng (mentioned below) and the like.