Why Classical Music ?

I've been cleaning up my classical CD collection lately and donating the rejects to the library book sale (doesn't seem anyone else wants them). It got me to thinking: how do people even hear classical music these days? Movies? Sometimes. Certainly not the radio; I'm always surprised when I walk into my bank and they're playing crappy AM radio -- wouldn't some classical music be more soothing? 

Here's my nomination for "where to hear classical music": FOX-TV's "The Simpsons". Seriously. I'd bet my next paycheck that there's more classical music in "The Simpsons" than any other TV show since, I don't know...maybe some classical TV show from the 1950's? Classical music isn't listed in the closing credits of "The Simpsons", but it seems every other episode I hear snippets of something classical.

 Libraries of course are good places to find classical music, but even they've been trimming the physical collections and switching to streaming services -- and it's hard to browse that way.

I've been prowling Value Village and I only just realized that I was using VV as my 'browsing collection'. I mean, the CDs are so cheap, it's worth spending the money to educate myself. For me, classical music can be divided into 2 groups: 'active' listening, and 'background sonic wallpaper'. I'm afraid I don't listen actively as much as I used to; even listening in the car, it's hard to hear the quieter passages over the road noise.

But here are a few that for me really reward some concentration.

I remember a review I read years ago where the reviewer considered Mahler and Sibelius as music he listened to in his naive youth. Well, I've left 'youth' far behind, but I still find so much new to hear in both Mahler and Sibelius. I don't have much in my collection, but the few I have are really special.

There's a lot more classical music I listen to in the background while reading or eating dinner. More on that later (the music, not the dinner!)

Paul Horn: Real Good, For Free

I'm still going through my CDs, ramping up the culling process. Why?

The CD above ("Paul Horn in India and Kashmir") is one reason. I recently wrote of flautist Paul Horn's passing -- and completely forgot that I owned this CD!

 The 2 LP reissue that I once owned  (and the subsequent CD reissue) isn't recorded to pop standards; sounds like a field recording in mono and black & white. But every summer I pull it out because it sounds languid yet focused, a recording of a real-time event in a summery haze, even though it's a Canadian musician performing with Indian musicians. This is NOT some New Age pan-cultural World Music hybrid, but authentic Indian music arranged in part by Ravi Shankar. It sounds, to my ignorant western ears, well, honest.

Paul Horn played on the Joni Mitchell track "For Free", Joni musing about her career as a very well paid performing artist and the street-corner musician she heard who "played real good for free".  On the "India" CD, we have Paul Horn, a prominent (and well paid) studio jazz musician exploring authentic non-commercial music. Commerce versus heart -- and I have so many CDs that I freakin' forget I own a particular favorite! Irony much?

My name is David, and I have a problem. (I know, I know, point taken, but that's another discussion for another time...) I'm working on it, weeding my collection down to a manageable size.  In my defense, I worked in music retail, so I was exposed to way more music than ever before, I was getting lots of music for free, and the stuff I bought I got at cost. It's just taken me a long time to understand the difference between "cost" and "value". And this understanding has been hastened by the fact that CDs are now practically worthless in the market. (It's not like I have the option of trading them in.)  Some would argue that music, hell, ART is considered worthless by most people. So if nobody's buying, what do you do -- add more layers to the landfill?

Anyway, I'm whittling down the collection. I only have so many years of listening ahead of me, might as well focus on the great stuff rather than the okay stuff. It's funny to me how the classics rise to the surface somehow -- as much as I love the Sex Pistols, I'm listening to lots more Duke Ellington and Uncle Dave Macon these days. As the Holy Modal Rounders album said, good taste is timeless. (Mind you, this was the album that featured the song "Boobs A Lot", so...)

Emmylou Harris and Linda Thompson

Yes, there is a connection between the poster woman for New Country and British folk-rock's Ice Queen. I'm sure you know it, but I'll get to that later.

I just wanted to give a shout-out to Emmylou Harris, the woman who more than anyone introduced me to REAL country music. Hell, I even bought a "Best of George Jones and Tammy Wynette" LP because of her! "Elite Hotel" was the first Emmylou album I heard back in the late '70s when I worked at Everybody's Records in Bellevue, due to an enthusiast on staff who played the Flying Burrito Brothers and Emmylou despite a staff hopped up on the Sex Pistols and the Ramones. Emmylou gave wider exposure to singer-songwriters Gram Parsons, Rodney Crowell, Townes Van Zandt, Jesse Winchester, Guy Clark and Delbert McClinton -- and introduced greenhorns like me to Dolly Parton and the Louvin Brothers.

Later I went back and picked up "Pieces of the Sky" and "Luxury Liner", and my favorite, "Quarter Moon in a Ten Cent Town". I taped my 'Best of Emmylou Harris" (totally different from the 'official' best-of, typical!) and drove around quite happily singing along. And then...I met Emmylou Harris (well, her guitar, anyway.)

There was a time when between real jobs, I worked as a baggage handler on a commuter airline that flew out of Sea-Tac. (I still swoon at the scent of airline diesel.) One day, Emmylou took our little puddle-jumper to Orcas Island -- and I got to load her guitar! I was busy with other bags so I never actually saw her walk out of the boarding gate, but my fellow staffers (aware of my mini-crush on the Beautiful Emmylou) teased me and said right out of the gate she spit on the tarmac.

Later my future wife and I headed to Orcas because word was Emmylou was performing a free concert at the Grange. Short version: massive downpour, doors open late, everybody on the island is there so the place is fire-code-violatingly jam-packed, we sadly peel out of the parking lot because the last ferry is about to depart. A sad instance of Concertus Interruptus.

I liked many later Emmylou Harris albums well enough ("Blue Kentucky Girl", "Roses in the Snow", "The Ballad of Sally Rose", "Wrecking Ball"), but there was a period when her warble got more warbly and the vibrato got uncomfortably unlistenable, but she righted that ship and continues to amaze to this day.

So...Linda Thompson releases her first solo album following the wrenching breakup tour/divorce from folk-rock's Johnny Appleseed (what??) Richard Thompson. Fans who want The Dirt pore over the lyrics,  and Linda doesn't disappoint. I always liked the lyrics of the title track: "More an instant with the angels than a lifetime with a saint,  All I need is one clear moment, one clear moment's all it takes".  But then you get "Only A Boy"'s "long may you rot in hell". And "Talking Like A Man" is the coldest moving-on song ever: "if you get lonely, don't head back this way"..

And there's "Telling Me Lies": "I cover my ears, I close my eyes, still hear your voice and it's telling me lies" -- and that's the song that Trio (Emmylou Harris, Linda Ronstadt and Dolly Parton) covered and earned a Grammy nomination.

Even the liner notes of the CD reissue complain about the dated late '80s production, but if I was hearing it with virgin ears today, I think the songwriting would still impress (and even over-produced as they are, there are some very good tracks.) Linda and Richard somehow eventually reached some sort of detente, and Richard appears on later Linda albums (with various spawn included.) Maybe blood is thicker than water (or vinyl) after all. 

Later, I'll talk about "Dreams Fly Away: A History of Linda Thompson", Linda's 'best-of' from 1996. Stellar.

End-of-Summer Dub Suggestions

Yes, I know that we've still got 3 more weeks of summer, but psychologically I think most of us think of Labor Day as summer's last gasp. Which brings me to the end of another few months of a reggae-rich musical diet.

Sometimes it's worth it to listen to the experts, or in this case, enthusiasts that became experts. Blood and Fire is a reggae reissue label based in England, and their reissues are lovingly chosen and presented. I heard a track from Keith Hudson's "Pick a Dub" on one of B&F's sampler CDs, and gladly bought a copy. On the B&F website, there's a section for recommended releases, and their #1 choice was "Morwell Unlimited Meet King Tubby's Dub Me". Like the Keith Hudson release, it's early dub (1974 & 1975), and pretty basic -- no ringing telephones, doorbells, toilets flushing like I mentioned way back on the "African Dub" series. Both CD's are excellent and the perfect soundtrack to the end of summer.