Music Maestro Please

Archive: Listening

The complete RCA recordings of Tito Puente came into the shop. My attention is usually not on my ear but I sample music there anyway.

Latin pop was probably poisoned for me by Carmen Miranda and Desi Arnaz. Unfairly I envision silly American .renditions. That might be part of what turned me against 19th century European art music. Listening I see bad horror movies. Most particularly I see Billy the Kid vs. Dracula.

I did spend a few weeks listening to Tchaikovsky Beethoven symphonies during a summer in the late 1970s. No argument about quality but I thought the former was too carried away and resented all the emotion the latter seemed determined to subject me to. Dvorak was pretty but the music just seemed to be wriggling.

So much for my philistinism.

I do like Wagner but it is so carried away that it is hard to imagine anyone identifying with it all who doesn?’t need tranquillizers. During the

During the same summer I listened to Shostakovich. I like his symphonies for much the same reason I like Wagner?’s operas. But my favorite by him was (I think) a piano concerto that seemed the funniest European art music I?’d ever heard. (Funny how I have problems saying ?“classical music.?” What a silly term, particularly when talking about Romantics.)

But I?’ve liked Baroque and English Renaissance, the former with its mathematicians?’ beauty, the latter offering the same but with lots and lots of lovely voices.

But as can?’t be but obvious from my musical entries of the last couple of years I don?’t listen to it.

I guess Moby is the most popular contemporary pop musicians I listen to. So I was happy but not surprised when 18 arrived in the shop. Some of it is clearly very good. Maybe all of it. It can take me weeks or years to make up my mind. I?’m surprised it is clearly work by the author of Play since like many of the brighter electronica composers he?’s tended to shift from disc to disc. Gordon told me he?’d be on The Daily Show last week and I watched the episode. I?’d half expected someone who took himself too seriously. In his liner notes for 18 he notes how he?’s relaxed. Still a vegan, still Christian but no longer a Marxist. He?’s lost his adolescent rectitude. I a stiff dose of that myself and am glad to have long ago seen it banished to the dumpster. It is fine to be smart and {cough} sensitive but it is better to be pedestrian, humane and harmonized within. (But I must?’ve written a half-dozen entries about all that already.)

Gordon has long mentioned CDUniverse as a good place to buy CDs because there is a cap on their shipping costs. After you order five the shipping costs don?’t go up. Gordon never has a problem ordering more than five.

Foolish me, I went and took a peek. Luke Vibert, Paul Van Dyke and DJ Baby Anne all have esteemed CDs that I don?’t own. And there?’s Young Sassy, a four disc compilation of Sarah Vaughan?’s early work for $20.00. I stopped looking. (All at prices lower than Amazon?’s.)

Will I be bad or good? I haven?’t called a plumber yet (you don?’t want to know). Paul Van Dyke?’s The Politics of Dancing seems irresistible. At his best he?’s one of the joys of interesting dance music (my own variation on IDM). There isn?’t anything new from BT (Brian Transeau) or my soul would be lost.