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What are you listening to?

Started by The Brain, March 10, 2009, 12:32:23 PM

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Barrister

Quote from: Savonarola on September 16, 2019, 04:11:56 PM
RIP Ric Ocasek; the first album I ever bought was "Heartbeat City."   :(

I didn't realize he was that old (75).  Paul McCartney is 77; I would have thought Ric was at least a decade younger, not two years.

I didn't buy it (my parents did), but I listened the heck out of Heartbeat City in the mid-80s on my Walkman.

Yeah, also surprised to hear he was that old.  Looks like he bummed around in music obscurity from the mid-60s to the mid-70s before finally hitting it big with The Cars.
Posts here are my own private opinions.  I do not speak for my employer.

Savonarola

Bob Dylan - John Wesley Harding (1967)

Dylan's first released album since "Blonde on Blonde" (he had recorded a number of tracks with the Band which would eventually become "The Basement Tapes") and the first released after his motorcycle accident.  This is the work of a very different artist: less angry, less cynical and less funny.  The work carries on in the "Americana" or "Roots" genre like on "The Basement Tapes" but with denser and more cryptic lyrics.  The lyrics borrow heavily from the Bible (mostly from the apocalyptic books); the song have a whole cast of characters: the joker, the thief, the wicked messenger, the priest Eli, the lonesome hobo, the poor and wicked immigrant, Saint Augustine and Thomas Paine and then it all ends with the country ballad "Be My Baby Tonight."  It's a wonderfully weird experience and, lyrically, one of Dylan's best.  The music is sparse and, except for "All Along the Watchtower" and "Be my Baby Tonight," largely forgettable.  It's not my favorite Dylan album; but it's still good, and (like all his best) improves upon repeated listening.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Josephus

Quote from: Malthus on September 16, 2019, 08:05:19 AM
Saw King Crimson live - it was great. Three drum sets, lots of improvisational jazz-like sets, plus of course the usuals like Court of the Crimson King and 21st Century ... .


I was King Crimson, and they literally did not acknowledge that they were playing for an audience at all - to a degree that was amusing. Like, they were performing sound tests for their instruments and gradually they just started playing. The music was often like a soundtrack to an action movie filmed in an insane asylum - my one complaint is that I'm not musician enough to understand what they were doing. It often seemed that they were doing some musically very clever things, playing in different time signatures and stuff, but that went straight over my head - it's like watching people playing a particularly clever game of chess when you don't know the rules.

They've always kinda been like that. in the 70s they would actually get on stage and improvize. They are a musicians' band.
Civis Romanus Sum

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world." Jack Layton 1950-2011

Admiral Yi

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YrLk4vdY28Q

I bad mouthed Leonard Cohen's songwriting before but this is a great song and a great performance.

Eddie Teach

Twice- TT, Yes or Yes, Heartshaker, What is Love?, Fancy
To sleep, perchance to dream. But in that sleep of death, what dreams may come?

Savonarola

Tito Rodriguez - Los Marcianos Cha Cha Cha

Martians have infiltrated earth!  :o  They're already among us! :o  They're here to do the cha cha cha:o :o :o

I heard about this one this morning on NPR's Alt.Latino podcast.  This has to be the most 50s concept for a song ever; with both alien invasion and Latin invasion.  Tito Rodriguez is interesting; some of his work is every bit as blistering as Tito Puente (did you have to be named Tito to lead a Latin Jazz band in those days?  The CIA should have encouraged Josip Broz Tito to give it a go,) other pieces are as MOR as Glenn Miller.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

The Minsky Moment

Quote from: Savonarola on September 23, 2019, 12:28:16 PM
did you have to be named Tito to lead a Latin Jazz band in those days? 

No.  You didn't even have to be Latin.  Cal Tjader was a Swede from the Midwest, he often used Vincent Guaraldi of Peanuts fame on piano along with some Cuban guys on congas and bongos.
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
--Joan Robinson

Savonarola

Arvo Pärt - Sieben Magnificat

Minimalist atonalism meets Gregorian Chant; the results are amazing.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

Savonarola

Leonard Cohen - Songs of Leonard Cohen (1967)

Cohen's first album (he had already been established as a poet and novelist at the time.)  This is another critic's favorite that I don't get.  The lyrics are good throughout and I like some of the songs (especially Suzanne), but most of them aren't interesting; the music is sparse and the tunes aren't memorable.  This might have worked out better as a collection of poems than an album.
In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed, but they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love, they had five hundred years of democracy and peace—and what did that produce? The cuckoo clock

garbon

"I've never been quite sure what the point of a eunuch is, if truth be told. It seems to me they're only men with the useful bits cut off."

I drank because I wanted to drown my sorrows, but now the damned things have learned to swim.

Malthus

On second thought, maybe this goes here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AdCU75EMqh4

Guilhem Desq - Cicatrices - Hurdy Gurdy

This guy is amazing.
The object of life is not to be on the side of the majority, but to escape finding oneself in the ranks of the insane—Marcus Aurelius

The Minsky Moment

John Coltrane - Blue World

This is the third significant Coltrane release since 2018, not bad considering he's been dead for 50 years.

It consist of 5 songs (8 takes) total originally recorded in June 1964 for a soundtrack to a film by Quebec filmmaker Gilles Groulx.  Groulx himself has been dead for 25 years but the release of the material was held up by conflicting copyright claims. 

Musically the release is not as significant at last years Both Directions At Once - a true "lost album" that forms a kind of missing link between his quartets' early 60s work and mid-60s masterpieces, or the extraordinary "Bootleg" release of Coltrane's last work with the Miles Davis Quintet that also came out last year.  Although the music on these tapes was recorded mere months before the Love Supreme recording sessions, there is nothing that ambitious here.  It's a few older tunes that were mostly out the band's repertoire at that point, played in a relaxed, informal style, giving the feel of a club date.  But that lack of ambition is the charm of the set. It's an opportunity to hear this small group- arguably the greatest ever assembled - at the very height of its powers, without having to listen through 20 min + tracks or more "difficult" passages.  Casual listeners can probably skip the extra tracks of "Village Blues" and the weaker "Like Sunny" leaving a very manageable 20-25 minutes of music in total, including a first track performance of "Naima" that forms a nice contrast to the original 1959 recording on Giant Steps
The purpose of studying economics is not to acquire a set of ready-made answers to economic questions, but to learn how to avoid being deceived by economists.
--Joan Robinson

mongers

RIP Ginger Baker.  :(

I'll go and find some cream to listen too.

Think I once heard him playing for Hawkwind.  :bowler:
"We have it in our power to begin the world over again"

Oexmelin

Quote from: The Minsky Moment on October 03, 2019, 01:00:43 PM
John Coltrane - Blue World

This is the third significant Coltrane release since 2018, not bad considering he's been dead for 50 years.

It consist of 5 songs (8 takes) total originally recorded in June 1964 for a soundtrack to a film by Quebec filmmaker Gilles Groulx.  Groulx himself has been dead for 25 years but the release of the material was held up by conflicting copyright claims.

Yes, I thought of signaling it here when it made the news - it slipped my mind. The movie can be found here: https://www.onf.ca/film/chat_dans_le_sac/

Que le grand cric me croque !

Josephus

Quote from: mongers on October 06, 2019, 03:50:59 PM
RIP Ginger Baker.  :(

I'll go and find some cream to listen too.

Think I once heard him playing for Hawkwind.  :bowler:

Played Blind Faith's album.
Civis Romanus Sum

"My friends, love is better than anger. Hope is better than fear. Optimism is better than despair. So let us be loving, hopeful and optimistic. And we'll change the world." Jack Layton 1950-2011