Death of the Mixtape Reported

I've been thinking about the mixtape lately, and then this morning on NPR, they mentioned how the Sony Walkman has ceased production, signalling the end of the mixtape. For years, the mixtape has served as a personal introduction, a catalog sampler, and of course, the first step in seduction (remember how Michael from The Office was quick to offer Holly a mixtape for her commute?)

The best mixtapes weren't just about the songs chosen, but the sequencing. I still have sketches I drew of lists of songs, with arrows drawn to rearrange the order until I got it JUST RIGHT. Sometimes you'd work with grades of dynamics, sometimes you'd want to jump from one extreme to another for contrast. Truly a labor of love...
The last "mixtape" I made was a few years back (and I guess it was actually a 'mixdisc' CD compilation). It was for a much younger fellow employee whose love of ska I wanted to expand, with detours into the Beach Boys, Bjork and Judee Sill. Though the media was different, the concept and execution was pretty much the same: the handmade inlay card listing the songs, the care for getting the song order just right, the mix of popular with obscure...as long as people continue to share music, the mixtape will live on in new forms.

Another Short Rant

Watched all 3 DVDs this last week, including bonus material, and my question is: why is every perfomance almost exlusively WHITE? Yes, the screen graphics list (the late) Solomon Burke, Smokey Robinson -- the list goes on -- but do we get to see any of their acceptance speeches or performances? Sure, there are glimpses of some of the soul heroes during the jam sessions, but do they even get a mike?? (Okay, there's a bit with Tina Turner, but come on!) Finally, on the third disc, I see Ray Charles come to the mike -- about time, I'm thinking -- but he's there to induct Billy Joel ?!!?? Am I the only one who finds this terribly, terribly WRONG?
At least in the first DVD, there's a great jam on "While My Guitar Gently Weeps" with a supersonic performance by Prince -- totally blows everyone off the stage.
Okay, rant concluded.
Oh, and, um, my initial post featured the wrong set. The one at the top is correct, the one following yet to be viewed -- but from the track list, I have hope!

Very Greasy, Indeed!

David Lindley is probably most well known for being in Jackson Browne's touring band, but as talented a backing musician as he is, his real forte is world music. Now, I don't mean that bland blend where everything exciting is leached out and you're left with inoffensive mush -- David has travelled the world (Madagascar, for instance) to play with the best traditional musicians. The albums pictured here aren't in that camp, however. These are mostly oldies and originals with a reggae beat, irie. And what a hoot -- "Mercury Blues" on "El-Rayo X" charges out of the gate with pure adrenalized slide guitar, then you get the ska/Tex-Mex version of "Twist and Shout". This is music played for sheer love of music. They're all highly recommended -- "Very Greasy" has the 'hits' "Werewolves of London" and "Papa Was a Rolling Stone" but they're all great --- and try to track down the live disc. Varying quality, but some real barn burners on there.

My wife and I saw David Lindley in all his greasy polyester glory play in a bar in Bellingham many many years ago (with his band El-Rayo X) and it still stands in the Top Ten Best Concerts EVER.

"New Music" or Classical Music Less Than 100 Years Old

Like "early music" that I talked about a while back, "new music" is a broad term that refers to 'new' classical music. Composers like Philip Glass, Terry Riley and Steve Reich have been around since the late '60s, so you see that 'new' is a relative term in the classical music world. Glass and Reich got lumped in with the minimalism movement, because much of their work is characterized by simple, repeated patterns and motifs that evolve over the performance of the piece. The Glass sound is almost always readily recognizable, and I can't say I've acquired a taste. Reich's "Music for 18 Musicians" is a repeated motif that changes as notes in the pattern are dropped. I think you either love or hate this piece, and I guess I love it, because I have 2 different recordings. There isn't a whole of of difference between the two versions; the ECM premiere version is a little brighter and moves a little faster. The little vocal bits remind me of chirping birds, so the whole piece has a sunny spring feeling to me.








John Adams sounds like a patchwork quilt of a lot of contemporary composers, and "The Chairman Dances" is almost like a resume of his styles.
Best for me is the title track, an instrumental piece excerpted from the opera "Nixon in China", and "Common Tones in Simple Time" slows down as the piece progresses, ending with tinkling chimes and large floating chords, like you've drifted into space surrounded by planets and stars.








Arvo Part takes minimalism to the furthest degree; his pieces have much in common with early Church chant. He started out composing some fairly spiky dissonant works, then developed what he called "tintinnabulation", or the music of bells. His newer works seem simple, but they somehow tap into something primal. A good example is "Passio", a vocal work with biblical lyrics (in Latin) from the last moments of Christ on the Cross. The 70 minute piece is in a minor key for almost the entire time, until the last bit changes to a major key, and it's like the heavens open, a very moving emotional moment.
"Fratres" was a piece on the first ECM disc, and the Telarc disc is mostly versions of "Fratres" with a lot of variations in scoring. Probably Part's most recognizable work is "Cantus in Memory of Benjamin Britten", which Michael Moore used to such stunning effect to accompany scenes of the Twin Towers aftermath in the film "Fahrenheit 9/11".

You Know This, Even Though You Think You Don't

The Penguin Cafe Orchestra was a project of the late Simon Jeffes, a classically trained musician who created instrumental music that sounds like it was perfomed by a lost tribe, playing acoustic instruments and influenced by Philip Glass and Steve Reich. Not as weird as that sounds -- the songs are created with circular patterns and motifs, and to top it all off, there's a whiff of British whimsy. You've heard some of these pieces on TV shows, commercials, and film soundtracks (especially "Perpetuum Mobile" and "Music for a Found Harmonium"). "Preludes, Airs and Yodels" has the added bonus of featuring the Patrick Street version of "Harmonium" that turns it into a furious Irish reel.

Nick

I'm usually not a fan of using songs I like for commercials, but since Volkswagen used Nick Drake's song "Pink Moon" a few years back, it's exposed his talent to a far greater audience, and for that, I'm grateful. Nick's story is a tragic one, sensitive singer-songwriter too nervous and too depressed to function in the glare of the spotlight, his genius only building an audience after his death.
There's a pretty decent "best of" CD, but you really should own the 3 original releases, nicely reissued, spiffed up with classy slipcase sleeves (pictured are the original covers, including what has to be in the Top Ten Worst Covers Ever for "Pink Moon".) Then of course you need "Made to Love Magic", because that collects the harrowing "Black Eyed Dog", thought for years to be the last song Nick recorded until the discovery a few years ago of "Tow the Line" (also included here.)

"Bryter Layter" seems a bit over-produced to me, but Joe Boyd claims it's the one perfect album he worked on. I've gotten used to it over the years, and can even listen to "Poor Boy" without cringing anymore. If I had to pick a favorite, it'd be "Five Leaves Left" but really, they're all great. What a gift, what a loss.

Stravinsky

Stravinsky's "The Rite of Spring" has always been a favorite, despite hearing (at an impressionable age) Stokowski's version (complete with dinosaurs!) featured in Disney's "Fantasia". I listened a lot to the Pierre Boulez recording, with his surgically precise rhythms and whiplash dynamics, so much so that I internalized the recording --- Stravinsky's own version sounded anemic to me.

A few years ago, Valery Gergiev began cutting a swath through the Russian classical repertoire, and his version of "The Rite" struck me as brash to the point of rudeness, with a dynamic range Boulez and his engineers could only dream of. "That's not how it's supposed to sound!" I fumed -- then I remembered the stories of the piece's Paris premiere and how the totally unexpected cacaphony put the audience in an uproar. Ah, congrats, Valery -- you made the work exciting again after I'd carefully mummified it in my head.

Recently a DVD performance of "The Rite" and "The Firebird" conducted by Gergiev "Stravinsky and the Ballets Russes" came to my attention, and as wonderful as "The Rite" is (complete with a reconstruction of the original choreography by Nijinsky), it's "The Firebird" that I found utterly compelling, due to the dancing of Ekaterina Kondaurova as the Firebird. I know nothing about ballet (and probably wouldn't admit it if I did) but even my uncultured brain could appreciate the stunning work of Kondaurova. Don't miss it!