Tag Archives: music

All Things Must Pass

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This phrase has been stuck in my head quite a bit lately.  Not so much in tandem with the recent passings of numerous famous (and infamous) people we’ve known in our lives, but more with how nothing is ever permanent.  It’s a theme that runs rampant in the Mendaihu Universe.  Things end, things begin.  Things evolve.  It’s never the end of the world; it’s just an unfortunate moment that we must process in some way.  Yes, there are horrible things in history, horrible things that cost lives, and I’m not ignoring or belittling that.  But in the evolution of humankind, it’s never remained that way forever.  We learn from our mistakes as well as from our insights.  We make things better for ourselves and for others.  There are always naysayers, but there are others who believe.  There are destroyers, but there are also makers.

And to be honest, that’s the most fascinating part of being alive for me.

Movement

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You know, it dawned on me that I don’t think I’ve gone to a nightclub venue since…well, probably since before I moved down to New Jersey in 2005, come to think of it.  I used to head to various shows in Boston all the time back when I was in Massachusetts, and didn’t think twice about driving that seventy miles, hanging out int some smoky basement dive with too-loud music, and having to leave a tad early so I could make the last Red Line train out to Alewife where I was parked.

Over the years since we’ve been here, our showgoing has pretty much remained with the San Francisco Symphony and the SF Opera.  It just sort of happened naturally, as they were well-known ensembles we were looking forward to checking out when we moved out here a decade ago.  And over those last ten years, I’ve really come to appreciate classical music a lot more than I ever have in my life.

I won’t lie, for years the extent of my classical knowledge was pretty much tied in with Warner Bros cartoons such as What’s Opera, Doc?, The Rabbit of Seville, Long Haired Hare and so on.  There’s also the 80s Hollywood movie such as Platoon (Barber’s Adagio for Strings), Apocalypse Now (Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’), and 2001: A Space Odyssey (R. Strauss’ ‘Morning’ from Also Sprach Zarathustra).

I wasn’t completely ignorant of classical music; it was just a genre that I didn’t follow as closely as I did others.  This of course has changed over the years; I used to really like Copland back in my college years but find his work kind of thin nowadays…I now find Tchaikovsky one of my biggest favorite composers.

There are certain pieces that I find absolutely stunning and will try to get to a performance if the SF Symphony is playing them.  Such as:


Samuel Barber’s ‘Adagio for Strings’ completely blows me away every time I hear it, whether it’s the orchestral version or the original string quartet version.  I love when music has a deliberate flow to it — each melodic phrase is given time to complete itself without hurry.  It’s like breathing.


Maurice Ravel’s ‘Bolero’ is so much fun!  It starts off so quietly and unassumingly, and yet by the end, every single instrument in the house is bleating, banging and barking so loudly that the entire audience whoops with cheers when it finishes.  A silly Italian movie called Allegro non Troppo (a self-professed “low-budget” homage to Disney’s Fantasia) got me hooked on this piece in college with its unique take on planetary evolution.


Tchaikovsky’s 6th Symphony (‘Pathetique’) is probably my favorite piece of all right now. I was thinking of it the other day when I was watching David Bowie’s final video, “Lazarus”…one kind of got the feeling that David knew the end was coming, and had decided to go out on a final creative note — a denouement letting us know how much he’d enjoyed his time in this world.  I feel the same whenever I hear the Pathetique because it was Tchaikovsky’s last piece in much the same manner…I think he’d finally come to terms with his life as well as his mortality.  This is also why I love the way the ‘big finish’ in this piece is actually in the 3rd movement and not the final; the final 4th movement ends up being more of an exhalation, a release.


Mason Bates’ The B-Sides is a relatively new piece — written by a composer six years younger than myself, I should add — and I can totally see the future of classical music heading in this direction, with a mix of analog, digital, and found sounds (check the ‘instrument’ used about three and a half minutes in!).  Bates is somewhat of a local hero here, as he’s both a nightclub DJ (as DJ Masonic) and a composer of a large number of wonderfully creative pieces that he often performs with the SFS.  Bates also recently released an album with the Boston Modern Orchestra Project called Mothership, which I highly recommend.  I have high hopes for this one!

Où sont tes héros aux corps d’athlètes?

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I’ve been listening to Air over the past few days…the band just popped into my head unbidden, and I’ve been searching for a good, laid-back soundtrack for my extended editing sessions lately, so it was a perfect fit.  Their debut Moon Safari was released on this day back in 1998 (which puts it right in the middle of my HMV years), but it’s so retro in its sound that you swear it came out in 1972 on some budget label and got played at K-Mart when you were a kid.  It of course ended up on heavy rotation during my writing sessions down in the basement.

In 2000 they released the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides, based on the Jeffrey Eugenides book.  That too got heavy rotation for me, with its spooky, dark passages.  [Trivia: I didn’t know this until many years later that the singer for “Playground Love” is none other than the singer for Phoenix, going under the name Gordon Tracks.]  It kind of fit the mood I was in at the time as well, considering I’d just been shuffled out of the HMV job and wasn’t exactly sure where my next step was going to be.

They may have lost me a bit on album two (three?), 10,000 Hz Legend, but I think that’s because they’d chosen to update their sound a bit, bring the melodies forward a decade or two.  It took me a few years to get used to this one, and it’s got some great tracks on it, including a cameo vocal from Beck on “The Vagabond”.

Now the next album, Talkie Walkie, is probably my favorite of theirs, even over Moon Safari.  They hit their stride here, balancing their retro-synth sound perfectly with some lovely modern melodies.  They also provided an absolutely gorgeous track called “Alone in Kyoto” for Sofia Coppola’s next film Lost in Translation:

I’m still trying to get used to the next couple of albums (2007’s Pocket Symphony and 2009’s Love 2), most likely because my mind was elsewhere at the time, adjusting to our lives here in SF.  Eventually they’ll come to me.  Their most recent album, Le Voyage Dans la Lune from 2012, is fascinating in that it’s a soundtrack for Georges Méliès’ 1902 film of the same name.  And Nicolas Godin (the fair-haired one of the duo) just released a solo album of Bach-inspired songs called Contrepoint, which I’m hoping will eventually see release stateside sometime this year.

Let’s Play This One for Laughs

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As mentioned in my year-end overview, I was particularly enamored of the recent reissue of some early titles from The Comsat Angels.  I hadn’t listened to them in ages (I used to have a few of their albums on vinyl oh so long ago) and was surprised at how well they’ve held up.  Their first album, Waiting for a Miracle, was released in 1980, and it sounds fantastic.  At this point they’re kind of a cross between 154-era Wire, a bit of Unknown Pleasures Joy Division, with a pinch of Chameleons and Abecedarians thrown in.

The above song, “Home Is the Range”, which wasn’t on the first album (it’s on the reissue) but a pre-album EP, has been stuck in my head for the past week and a half, and I can’t seem to get it to leave.  Not that I’m complaining, mind you.  It’s a hell of a great track.

Jonc’s Best of 2015 List!

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Hey Kids!  Check it out:  My favorite albums, tracks and other musical whatnot from 2015.  This year’s grouping came radio stations in multiple corners of the country, terrestrial and digital, from RadioBDC to Sirius XM to KUSP to KSCU.  And one band (Unknown Mortal Orchestra) discovered while in London!  In the process, the list is all over the place, from obscure indie to commercial alternative.   Enjoy!

2015 Songs

20: The King Khan & BBQ Show, “Alone Again”
19: Mikal Cronin, “Ready”
18: A Silent Film, “Paralysed”
17: Caspian, “Arcs of Command”
16: The Helio Sequence, “Stoic Remembrance”
15: Cayucas, “Hella”
14: Steven Wilson, “Perfect Life”
13: Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, “In the Heat of the Moment”
12: Blur, “Go Out”
11: Public Service Broadcasting, “Go!”
10: Foals, “What Went Down”
9: Young Empires, “The Gates”
8: Jamie XX, “Loud Places”
7: Wolf Alice, “Moaning Lisa Smile”
6: Editors, “No Harm”
5: Failure, “Hot Traveler”
4: The Vaccines, “Handsome”
3: Beck, “Dreams”
2: Mark Ronson, “Uptown Funk”
1: Best Coast, “California Nights

2015 Albums

20: Death Cab for Cutie, Kintsugi
19: JR Richards, Honore et Amore
18: The Helio Sequence, The Helio Sequence
17: Foals, What Went Down
16: Public Service Broadcasting, The Race for Space
15: Wire, Wire
14: New Order, Music Complete
13: Veruca Salt, Ghost Notes
12: Dog Party, Vol 4
11: Noel Gallagher’s High Flying Birds, Chasing Yesterday
10: The Decemberists, What a Terrible World, What a Beautiful World
9: Chvrches, Every Open Eye
8: Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love
7: Editors, In Dream
6: Low, Ones and Sixes
5: Best Coast, California Nights
4: Failure, The Heart Is a Monster
3: Wolf Alice, My Love Is Cool
2: Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Multi-Love
1: Blur, The Magic Whip

Favorite Earworms:  Songs most stuck in my head in 2015
The Vaccines, “Handsome”
The King Khan & BBQ Show, “Alone Again”
Jamie XX, “Loud Places”
The Arcs, “Outta My Mind”

Unexpected Delights: Albums I enjoyed a hell of a lot more than I expected to:
Alabama Shakes, Sound & Color
Mark Ronson, Uptown Special
Sleater-Kinney, No Cities to Love
Best Coast, California Nights
Courtney Barnett, Sometimes I Sit and Think, and Sometimes I Just Sit
Unknown Mortal Orchestra, Multi-Love

Many Welcome Returns: Great releases from bands we haven’t seen in quite some time
Failure, The Heart Is a Monster
Jeff Lynne’s ELO: Alone in the Universe
Swervedriver, I Wasn’t Born to Lose You
New Order, Music Complete
The Chills, Silver Bullets

Best Reissues:  I have them already, but did I go and buy them again?  Maaaaybe?
The Beatles, 1+
Garbage, Garbage (20th Anniversary Reissue)
The Specials, Specials/More Specials/In the Studio
Catatonia, Way Beyond Blue/International Velvet/Equally Cursed and Blessed/Paper Scissors Stone
The Comsat Angels, Waiting for a Miracle/Sleep No More/Fiction/Chasing Shadows/Fire On the Moon
Jellyfish, Bellybutton/Spilt Milk
Lush, Chorus

Local Color:  Favorite 2015 songs about and/or by locals
Best Coast, “California Nights”
Cayucas, “Hella”
Geographer, “Age of Consent”

Why can’t you see, you’re fighting a million and me

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God’s Favorite, “(Hurry Hurry) Sunday”
(not to be confused with God’s Favorite Band…different group entirely!)

Well, this is certainly a surprise!  This has been hiding on YouTube for almost a year and I never noticed until just this moment when I was doing a bit of Walk in Silence research.  This little gem of a track was the first song I ever taped off a college radio station (WMUA 91.1 at UMass Amherst) — the same taping session on 11 November 1986 that introduced me to The Go Betweens, Felt, and This Mortal Coil.

I listened to that tape so many times I pretty much wore it out, and it wasn’t until about a year ago that I had Jeff Shelton play it on his KSCU show The 80s Underground and finally heard it again after what seemed like decades.  I downloaded that particular podcast just so I could finally have the track in my collection again.  I was never able to find the vinyl anywhere when it was out, and as I currently do not have a turntable (yes, I am a heretic!), I can’t go on Amazon and buy it.

I remember hearing this track and thinking the vocals were a little too earnest (in that 80s indie way we’ve all come to love in retrospect), but there was that gently sweeping melody that kind of reminded me of early REM, who I was getting into at the time.  It also hinted at that pastoral walking-through-the-woods-in-autumn mood that I would get from a lot of the college rock I loved then.

Flying Bohemians Trivia:  This song is one of three that inspired me to write “Lift Your Heart Up (In Your Hands)” in 1991 (the others being Love and Rockets’ “Welcome Tomorrow” and Robyn Hitchcock & the Egyptians’ “Swirling”).

Christmas Time Is Here Again

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So.  Here we are on Black Friday.  A. has the day off today and is in the other room listening to podcasts while I’m stuck here in Spare Oom until 4pm.  Neither of us are going to be heading out for any shopping any time soon (unless that includes heading to the local corner store for a few groceries).  She’s done most of her shopping online, and I’ll be doing that later today myself.

With the many post-college jobs I’ve held over the years, I’m used to working on holidays and busy shopping times.  I dealt with the Q4 sales season at HMV for a few years which actually started mid-September but really kicked into high gear on Black Friday; that’s when we’d put out all the Christmas cds and prepare the huge amount of backstock of the big sellers.  During the Yankee Candle years my schedule got truly wonky; ten-hour days, six days a week, and quadruple the volume going out.  Between those two jobs, it’s a wonder I still found the time to write!  [Noted, I did get sick a lot more often at that time, due to exhaustion and unhealthy eating and smoking habits.]

Even when I moved away from the retail and warehouse jobs, I still had to deal with the public: the last snowy commute when I lived in New Jersey, the last-minute calls of businesses holding their banking until the absolute last minute, and so on.  I don’t think I’ve ever taken any Christmas-season weeks off in my life, at least not without chalking them up as sick days.

So yeah, I’m well-versed in holiday stress.

That said…I do my best not to let it get to me.  Sure, I completely understand the irritation of long lines, clueless shoppers, squealing kids, long work hours, and so on.  But I decided early on that these petty grievances are part and parcel of the experience, and chose not to dwell on them.  Too often, negativity spawns more negativity.  My complaining about the idiot in front of me to the guy behind me is going to make that guy think ‘you know, you’re right’, and he’ll end up in a bad mood.  Life’s too short to be irritated by everything under the sun.*

This is the time of year where I choose to embrace everything good that’s happened, on a personal level and otherwise.  Time to listen to all the great albums that came out this year.  Time to bask in the fact that I self-published a book, with three others coming out in the not-too-distant future.  Time to think about how lucky I am to have great friends and family.  Time to think about how awesome A. is.  And just enjoy the positivity that comes around.

 

* – Granted…this isn’t about me willfully ignoring truly bad things in the world.  I’m just as frustrated and saddened as most people by the events in Paris, the Syrian refugee situation, and at this very moment, the shooting in Colorado Springs, for example.  The point to this post is about dealing with petty irritations that really don’t amount to much in the grander scheme of things.

You Say You Want a Revolution

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I try not to go into politics all that much online, at least not anymore.  I used to debate and growl and soapbox like the rest of them out there, but in the words of John Lennon, I’m “no longer riding on the merry go round / I just had to let it go.”  I found that I was taking a lot of things a little too personally and emotionally, and realized that not only was that unhealthy for me, it was also pretty irritating to everyone else.  I had to back away and focus on more important things in my life, like family and writing.

I still think about it some, just not as much as I used to.  This past week has been kind of a tough one, considering all the white noise I’ve been hearing.  [I use the term ‘white noise’ here to describe the heavy volume of Tweets and FB posts on certain political subjects, most of which is usually in the form of shouting matches, name-calling and trolling.  Most of it is well-meant but often drowned out by the thousands of others saying the same exact thing and the thousands of others saying the exact opposite.  Thus, white noise.]

It’s not that I’m ignoring the injustice and the idiocy out there.  I’m still well aware of it.  I’m just not offering my opinion on a public platform nearly as much as I used to.

Sure, I may still be a rebel at heart in some respects.  If I want my voice to be heard, believe me, I can make it heard.  But I realized some years ago that the voice I was using was getting lost in the din of that white noise.  Or as I’d said on my LJ, I no longer wanted to contribute to a lot of the hot air that was already out there.  I chose to internalize my thoughts about things…think about them, figure them out.  Think about why they were bothering me, what I can do about it (if anything), and go from there.

One avenue that hasn’t escaped me when it comes to this sort of thing is music.  I’m fascinated by protest songs, especially if they’re in an unexpected format.  That is, protest songs that aren’t outright protest songs like the ones we expect from Pete Seeger, or early Dylan, or Billy Bragg.  Or even obvious outcries, such as the punk aesthetic of the Sex Pistols or Dead Kennedys.  Some of them are oblique, only describing a hectic mise en scene of a stressful time.  Others are more poetic, describing the mood or the mindset of those involved.

Still others decide to offer no filter; calling it like it is, for good or ill.  Pouring out black bile and anger and never holding back once.

In the past week or so, I’ve been trying to focus on many things in my life, both internal and external.  Trying to keep focus on my writing deadlines and near-future writing plans. Trying to avoid overindulgence of social media and social justice.  Trying to avoid reading the comments.  Trying to keep an even mind and an even heart.  It’s tough, especially when it sometimes feels like it’s expected of me to react to whatever injustice is going on. It’s tough, but I have found ways to calm myself.

Music has charms to soothe a savage breast, as Congreve says.

 

 

It’s Just a Dugout That My Dad Built

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In my recent dollar bin shopping spree at Amoeba, I finally got around to picking up Donald Fagen’s post-Steely Dan solo debut, The Nightfly.  It’s very typical Fagen — jazzy, sardonic, nerdy, and wonderfully creative all at the same time.  I remember the first single, “IGY (What a Beautiful World)” being played a bit on the radio, but the second single, “New Frontier”, was the one had the video on MTV and became the memorable hit.

I loved the use of animation in this video, multiple styles used to show multiple facets of the song itself:  the (then modern) computer graphics to show the futuristic layout of new housing developments; the early Vogue ads and the Picasso paintings come to life; Soviet propaganda hinting at the impending Cold War.  And my two favorite bits of animation:  the cowboy-hatted, pistol-packing general marching around and shooting at rogue Commie nukes (a distinct nod to the old UPA films), and the bendy, lo-fi-but-cool jazz band.

[That last one had a particular effect on me; a few years later when I went through my jazz phase in the mid-80s, I would often visualize this particular image while listening to it late at night on my headphones.]

[Also, a quick bit of interesting trivia: the directors of this video, Annabel Jenkel and Rocky Morton, also directly my other favorite animated video, Elvis Costello’s “Accidents Will Happen.”  Furthermore, they’re the co-creators of the Max Headroom franchise, and also co-directed the Super Mario Bros movie.]

I was listening to this track the other day and thinking about the sounds of the radio, pre-1989, before the end of the Cold War and the fall of the Berlin Wall.  Growing up in the 70s and 80s, we all listened to the popular sounds and were aware of the possible political threats out there.  Some of us kept it separate, some of us mixed the two Amnesty International-style.

We weren’t oblivious or ignorant of world issues out there; we just chose not to be completely frightened or doom-laden about it (Prince’s “1999” comes to mind, for instance).  We’d gotten so used to the elephant in the room that we just treated it as part of the furniture, and felt reasonably sure that in its advanced age and sedentariness, it probably wasn’t going to act up any time soon.  Our reaction to the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the USSR wasn’t so much a patriotic whoop of victory as a sigh of happy relief that it had finally gone away.

 

New Release…Friday?

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I’m still getting used to that.  I’m so used to getting my new release emails from AllMusic and elsewhere on Mondays that it seems strange getting them midweek now.

This month signaled the global change of new music release dates to Fridays.  Per Billboard, it’s been Tuesday in the US since April 1989 (coincidentally, my next-to-last month of high school life and right about the time I really started paying closer attention to album releases for my beloved college music).  Before that, Mondays were the default release day for years. It was moved in ’89 due to the fact that most retailers were not receiving their product until later in the day, thus losing most of their first-day sales. Moving the release date one day leveled the playing fields.

I’m a bit surprised that this is a global thing; it wasn’t just the US moving the standard drop date, but labels and distributors worldwide, finally aligning.  That’s pretty big news, considering the UK has always been Monday (the start of the retail week, natch) and other countries have had similar setups.

I’ll be honest, I loved working Mondays when I was at HMV.  That meant that I got to unpack all the new titles and slap security tags, price tags, and sale stickers on them, all while listening to them a day before everyone else.  I discovered way too many great albums that way, and it’s part of the reason my music collection is so ridiculously large. But back then it was also perfect for when I was on the sales floor, as I could upsell new titles to customers and back it up with actual listening.

Nowadays, (again per Billboard), in this digital age, more active fans and listeners prefer listening to new titles on Fridays and Saturdays, and would rather not have to wait that extra day or so in their own country for a title to drop.  Granted, it’s gotten a mixed reaction from some of the labels and distributors — some feel this will continue to let the majors to oversaturate the stores, leaving the indies in the lurch — and that’s frustrating yet understandable, given that that’s been pretty much the norm for decades anyway.

I imagine this would have come in handy during my years at Yankee Candle, when I’d get paid at the end of the week and would have to wait four or five days before I could do my music shopping.  Then again, I most likely would have been in much deeper financial straits in the process.  So it’s a toss-up there.  Still, I’m curious if we’ll see an uptick in sales, given that some of us still get paid just before the weekend.

How do I feel about this now, though?  Well, I’ll admit I didn’t notice the change right away, at least not until I looked at my shopping list and saw all the new stuff this week with the drop date of 7/10.  [Yes, I have a shopping list.  It’s a spreadsheet, showing prices from multiple purchase sites. I am such a sad and pathetic man.] [On the plus side, said spreadsheet comes in mighty handy because I can access it via Dropbox on my phone while I’m at Amoeba!] [ANYWAY]  I suppose this makes things a bit more exciting if I happen to be heading towards a brick and mortar shop, because it’ll be something to look forward to on the weekend, which is when we usually head over to the Haight for anything in particular.

It’s too early for me to say how I feel about it, but I’m pretty sure I’ll be totally fine with it. As a good portion of my purchases are downloads nowadays, I think it’s something I’ll have to get used to.  For a good few years there, I had a solid schedule of checking out all the new release streams on Monday so I would know what to expect the next day…now I have more time to do that.  I follow a number of music blogs on Twitter, and they’re more than happy to let us all know when something new is streaming.

I’ll just have to learn to start saving up for Fridays then.