007

Just like James Bond, this blog WILL be back (soon)! Thanks!
David

7 Worlds Collide: The Sun Came Out

A while back (2001), Neil Finn (Crowded House) put together a temporary group of friends and associates to record an album and perform a concert for charity. In 2009, he did it again, with some artists returning (Lisa Germano, Sebastian Steinberg, Phil Selway and Ed O'Brien from Radiohead) and some new faces (Jeff Tweedy and members of Wilco, KT Tunstall).

The first project was great, one of my favorite in-concert DVDs. The new project was a little different: the artists invited were encouraged to bring some unfinished song ideas, and in 3 weeks of collaboration, create a double CD and perform the songs in concert.

The behind-the-scenes making-of DVD is fun, but I won't return to it much. It is nice to see the artists arriving with families in tow, and some of the sequences where they help each other flesh out songs is cool. But there aren't many stand-out songs for me. They're all good, but some are subtle in the extreme and it'll take time for me to hear them thoroughly, I think. But "You Never Know" by Wilco jumps out ahead of the pack. If you're tempted to spring for the package, go for the single CD for the best songs.

Classical Music for Kids? (and a cranky rant about CBC Radio)

 

I didn't hear much classical music as a little kid; what I did hear came from Bugs Bunny cartoons and the Captain Kangaroo TV show (I'd swear that's the first time I heard Smetana's "The Moldau" but I could be wrong...) So, what is a collection called "Children's Games" about?  Pieces by Bizet ("Jeux D'Enfant" -- "Children's Games"),  Dukas ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice"), Tchaikovsky ("The Nutcracker Suite") among others, but I feel they've sold children short. Kids like dark , they like dramatic, they like strange -- let's face it, they're too young to know what 'normal' is, so they like extremes. Remember when the book "Where The Wild Things Are" came out, and parents and teachers (and librarians!) were up in arms about violent, inappropriate content? (Jeez, of course you don't remember -- that was YEARS ago!) So, this is a fine collection for adults, but I wonder if small children would relate to it much.

Side note (sad note) RANT: From the same "Children's Games" CD, I did very much enjoy "The Pied Piper" by Walter Mourant, once played as the theme music for CBC radio's  "Music for a While"... and I mourned once again for the CBC Radio that was unceremoniously dumped for the new format of the last 5 or 6 years -- not only the announcers (wherefore art thou, Jurgen Gothe?) but the sweet theme songs that introduced each and every show. Kicked to the curb so we can now hear Tom Allen and Tom Power repeating their names 25 times an hour and playing third rate Canadian pop music and folk music -- and so many times, the intros (written I assume by some producer) aren't even accurate (or worse, slapped into the wrong songs). Sigh. If you're gonna change the format, is it too much to ask that it will actually be an improvement?

Tim Cheesebrow

I hadn't heard of Tim Cheesebrow until my buddy Ken passed along an advance copy of his new CD "Crooked Lines". Now, I'm so old that almost everything I hear reminds me of something else I've heard, and sure enough, one listen to Tim's voice and I immediately heard Clive Gregson (once with Any Trouble and Christine Collister). Tim's music isn't really anything like Clive Gregson's, but he does share the same clear, powerful voice, straight from the heart and hitting for the fences.

A few of the songs on the CD jump right out: "Lullabye", "You Are My Everything", "Take My Hand" and the title track, while many of the others hook you with the subtle arrangements and the variety of instrumentation. It's an extremely well-crafted album, part Americana, part country, heartfelt and worth repeated listening. (More information about Tim Cheesebrow and many other fine artists at www.newfolkrecords.com)

"I Am the Center: Private Issue New Age Music in America 1950-1990"

A few posts back, I mentioned the return of 'cassette culture', and this compilation from 2013 is drawn from new age albums that were initially released exclusively on cassette.  I remember those days fondly. You'd buy a sampler or two, and the catalogs were usually decidedly not slick. And the performers were pretty quirky; you'd have to be to attempt music in a genre that hadn't really existed before. Some stayed true to their original vision (Iasos, Laraaji, Don Slepian, Aeoliah, Larkin -- going by a single name helps, I guess) while others I won't name took the New Age banner when it emerged and ran with it. There are a few people on this compilation that I'd swear have releases numbering in the hundreds, everything from 'music to align your chakras' to 'music for a stressful day'.
But it is fun to listen to these releases from the dawn of the whole "new age movement", just before things started to coalesce. It's interesting how a movement moves into the center; young people with dog-eared copies of "The Hobbit" start eating brown rice and consider Eastern mysticism, and now soccer moms are going to yoga classes and eating organic food. What once was the fringe is now the new normal for a lot of folks. So this collection is a fond look back to some quirky little pioneers.

Saturn, the Bringer of Old Age

This piece by Gustav Holst was very comforting to me as my father was dying. You might not think so, because most of it depicts a long, slogging inexorable march to death. But at about 6:56, the atmosphere changes. To me, it portrays the moment of 'crossing over'; the soundscape opens up and there's a sense of vastness, of peacefulness, of wonder.

Charles Dutoit and the Montreal Symphony perform one of the best versions -- enjoy!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6sbnsLmwlbc

Smile, Smiley Smile, and Love and Mercy

We watched the film "Love and Mercy" last night; as veteran Brian Wilson/Beach Boys fans, there wasn't much new information for us. Brian wants to experiment and record the music he hears in his head, Mike Love wants to stick to the formula, Murry Wilson was a bully, and Dr. Eugene Landy was too. It is fascinating to see scenes based on actual recordings of studio sessions, Brian coaching the musicians, and how unlikely instrumental combinations (basses playing in different keys?) resulted in the Beach Boys classics we know and love.

Besides the Beach Boys, the soundtrack bits by Atticus Ross offer a glimpse into the melodies swirling through Brian's head. Both "Good Vibrations", and to a greater extent, "Smile" were assembled from bits and pieces of music Brian had recorded in hours of studio sessions. Over the years, parts of "Smile" were polished up and released on later Beach Boys albums (most prominently on "Smiley Smile"), but the official release of "Smile" makes clear that Brian could have assembled dozens of different variations on what was eventually released. For me, that makes listening to "Smile" difficult at times, because I realized it was still an unfinished album -- it's just the version Brian ended up with.

The agony of too many choices plagued the completion of many great albums ("Tusk", "The River", for example), and it's no wonder that the maelstrom of melody Ross portrays in the film as the contents of Brian's brain drove him batty.