Like last year, I spent (way too much?) time going through iTunes to pick some stand-outs for my year in music. Like the previous list, most of these didn’t actually come out this year, but 2009 was the first time I gave them a serious listen. I’ll go month-by-month again, and holy cow January was [...]
I haven’t talked about work much in the 3 or so years I’ve been running this site, but I thought it was time to share a side project I’ve been involved in. I’m a co-host of Stuff from the B-Side [iTunes link], wherein, twice a week, my friend John and I have a conversation about [...]
What Johnny Cash likes:
I love songs about horses, railroads, land, judgment day, family, hard times, whiskey, courtship, marriage, adultery, separation, murder, war, prison, rambling, damnation, home, salvation, death, pride, humor, piety, rebellion, patriotism, larceny, determination, tragedy, rowdiness, heartbreak, and love. And Mother. And God.
My homeboy Steve Reich won a Pulitzer. So did Atlanta author Douglas Blackmon, for his awesome book (judging by what I read when I borrowed it from Mom between holiday meals last winter), Slavery by Another Name. Need to move that one back on the list.
I love this post about measuring whether an artist is under- or over-valued. The method is pretty cool, basically comparing the Human Accomplishment ranking and the available Amazon music inventory, and making a rough P/E ratio. This post focuses on notable composers and it looks like Medieval, Renaissance, and Baroque composers get shorted, while late [...]
A collection of tweet-length opera synopses. A few favorites:
The Flying Dutchman: “Any port in a storm. Tall dark and mysterious wants my daughter. She wants to save him, but can she be faithful? Splashy splashy.”
Salome: “Out of control teen uses stepdad to get back at would-be boyfriend, learns some confusing lessons about love”
I can’t believe that people really prefer to go to the concert hall under intellectually trying, socially trying, physically trying conditions, unable to repeat something they have missed, when they can sit home under the most comfortable and stimulating circumstances and hear it as they want to hear it. I can’t imagine what would happen [...]
Igor Stravinsky (↑, one of my favorite composers) is probably best known for his collaboration with Serge Diaghilev on the The Rite of Spring ballet and its scandalous premiere. But a few years after that, with Diaghilev’s prodding, he brought out another ballet score with older, more conservative roots, Pulcinella.
What made Pulcinella different was [...]
Electric Purgatory is a cool documentary about black musicians in rock. [via joshua blankenship]
Yeasayer has a blog while they work on the new album.
I notice that the rest of the band decided to get super organized while I was back in New York. They got a Dry Erase board and started to write ideas for song titles and album titles on it. Great idea guys! Every song should [...]
About a dozen years ago, Bj??rk interviewed composer Arvo P?§rt. P?§rt has written a number of things I like… Spiegel im Spiegel; Silouans Song; Credo; F?ºr Alina, etc. [via atlanta composers]
In an otherwise unremarkable interview with its inventor, I learned that Lenin played the Theremin:
I brought my apparatus and set it up in his large office in the Kremlin. He was not yet there because he was in a meeting. I waited with Fotiva, his secretary, who was a good pianist, a graduate of the [...]
I like this idea of working up drum patterns via text editor. It’s disorienting to see the instruments listed that way (bass on top and the hats on the bottom), but looks cool.
You don’t know how to play better just because you’ve suffered. The blues don’t come from picking cotton.
I’ve never read anything quite like Miles on Miles: Interviews and Encounters with Miles Davis. The book collects about four decades’ worth of his life, broken up across a couple dozen interviews that were published in small jazz [...]
Brian Eno, Thinking about Miles Davis in an un-Miles Davis like way:
Miles was an intelligent man, by all accounts, and must have become increasingly aware of the power of his personal charisma, especially in the later years as he watched his reputation grow over his declining trumpeting skills. Perhaps he said to himself: These people [...]
Over the course of more than a decade, Alan Pollack analyzed every Beatles song. Lyrics, form, melody, harmony, arrangement, performance. Wow.
Miles Davis on drawing as therapy:
Yeah, you know, I stopped for a while. I really started to sketch again after I married Cicely. Because she takes so long. You know how actresses are. They take so long to get ready for anything, you know. Rather than scream at her, I just started sketching.
“Connolly‚Äôs Number, the largest number of songs that you can realistically maintain a meaningful relationship with: 1,000.”—from a footnote to a thoughtful essay. Thankfully I hate clutter enough that I never amassed much of a cd or vinyl collection.
I get a kick out of nerdcore rapper ytcracker’s album DCPD Bangerz:
my friend mikey pasted me a link in skype to this police department’s site -
http://www.dekalbpolice.com/
EVERY page on this website was filled with the most banging beats i had ever heard. whoever picked these beats for this website seriously needs to be an a&r for [...]
Philip Glass is coming to Atlanta, and giving a couple talks just a few miles down the road from me. Awesome.
The Joanna Newsom Transcription Project is pretty awesome. Lots of sheet music pdfs for harp and piano.
New Yorker profile of Will Oldham, whose music I’ve grown to love love love over the past year or so.
Alex Ross is coming to speak at Kennesaw State University before an eighth blackbird concert, just a short drive away. OMG. This might be the first time I get to be that guy that shows up to get his book signed.
Tonight I was thinking I’d love to hear hip hop that samples bluegrass music. I looked around and came across Gangstagrass. So far, so good. (Also reminds me of The Gourds’ cover of Snoop’s “Gin and Juice”.)
Peter Sellers gives a rendition of “Hard Day’s Night” in high Shakespearean style.
The twelve composers of Christmas. I love the Stravinsky and Beethoven bits. [via mmmusing]
I’m not limiting myself to 2008—I’m never that up-to-date, and you already know about Fleet Foxes and Bon Iver without my telling you. I spent some time sorting through my iTunes and came up with albums that I bought or first gave a serious listen to this year. I made selections month-by-month:
January
Stardust is a Willie [...]
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