What are you listening to?

[Barrister]

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.

[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.

[Josephus]

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.

[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

[Savonarola]

Tito Rodriguez - Los Marcianos Cha Cha Cha

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

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.

[The Minsky Moment]

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.

[Savonarola]

Arvo Pärt - Sieben Magnificat

Minimalist atonalism meets Gregorian Chant; the results are amazing.

[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.

[garbon]

George Michael - Father Figure

[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 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

[mongers]

RIP Ginger Baker. 

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

Think I once heard him playing for Hawkwind. 

[Oexmelin]

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/

[Josephus]

RIP Ginger Baker. 

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

Think I once heard him playing for Hawkwind. 

Played Blind Faith's album.