Heard Take Me Home on satellite radio earlier today. Because I owned No Jacket Required, naturally, Sussudio is now an ear worm.
Phil Collins, y’all!
You’re welcome.
I always wanted to be a DJ, from the days I listened to my Radio Shack FM radio all day long as a boy. The people pushing out the sounds always seemed to have a finger on a pulse. They seemed to connect to something. I imagined a depth and breadth of knowledge and a currency that I’m sure was impossible to attain in reality.
In the 90s I took a job at a record store, which in some ways was a sort of dream come true. I thought I knew about music. I was an avid consumer of what radio and MTV fed me. But it was then that my education began.
When techno and electronica hit, my DJ dream shifted. I wanted to play the records that moved the people in the moment. I have played with decks and mixers a teensy bit. I played with a friend’s collection of vinyl and did my best to beat-match records during a small gathering.
I’ve made lots and lots of mix tapes, that mostly no one has ever heard, but me.
What’s happened is I’ve collected a lot of music over time. I am infected by people who are enthusiastic about a genre or a scene.
Music is so powerful.
It is a giant river, life-giving and fertile like the Amazon or the Nile. Some of it is written down or recorded, where it lives in the vast ocean.
Just like I can’t read every book, I can’t hear every record.
I have been listening to a series of playlists generated by someone close to my own age, that span years including the four that I spent at the record store.
Boy, is it resurfacing old thoughts and ideas and dreams.
The cool part is I agree with many of the selections.
The cool part is I’m hearing songs I would have never heard, otherwise.
The cool part is there is always such good music.
If you do the Apple Music thing, I’m here and I like to share.
TIL The Trashmen were from Minneapolis.
Listening to the Nineties, today.
The author of a sub-blog I follow produced a series of posts called Insanely Great Nineties Songs You Aren’t Sick Of. Start here if that speaks to you… He has a post per-year and links to YouTube videos of all of the songs he mentions.
I worked for a record store from the summer of 1990 to the summer of 1994 and these hit home for me. But fair warning, these are mostly not Top 40 song lists.
So there’s a music project called Lost Horizons—that I didn’t know about 30 minutes ago—that features former Cocteau Twin Simon Raymonde and Richard Thomas who has drummed with Dif Jus and Jesus and Mary Chain. Their In Quiet Moments album includes a track called Every Beat that Passed which is the most Cocteau-Twins-like music I have heard since… Cocteau Twins. This project is no attempt to return to that sound, but that track is spectacular. The tracks I have heard from the same album have a Saint Etienne vibe, in that the tracks recall the 60s and 70s.
Picked up the new Echodrone album Resurgence this morning. Their name describes elements I love from the shoegaze sound. Possibly a signature for them are the vocal harmonies that harken back to groups like The Byrds, or Ride, but of course nothing like either.
Blast from the past: it was fun to hear music from The 5th Dimension on CBS Sunday Morning. I was born after they were already popular, but I heard a lot of their songs before I know it was them.
Listening to a lot of Echodrone, today. Bought two albums and am excited for a new release next month.
Music saves.
The Winter Chill playlist on Apple Music has a vibe very similar to the HED Kandi Winter Chill series from the late 90s and 2000s. It’s downtempo indie and electronica. I’m a fan!
I recently relistened to Feels So Good by Chuck Mangione. I was in search of the source of a sample. I was in the right era and close to my target, but this was a miss. Except, listening to the full album track, I really enjoyed the musicianship—not only of The Man Himself, but also of the full accompanying band. Now, of course, it’s my current ear worm.
You’re welcome.
Someone at work today made a clever reference to Whole Lotta Love, comparing project status to the middle section of the song.
So naturally, I have listened to Led Zeppelin II in it’s entirety. Working through Mothership as I write this.
Listened to Ulrich Schnauss' single Asteroid 2467 and I was struck by how much it sounded like something Robin Guthrie might compose. If you agree with me or if you don’t, I’m thrilled because that is a frame of reference I’m happy to learn others share.
Listening to Wolfmother today.
They are a retro-looking blend of 70’s hard-rock, prog-rock and a little punk-rock. But with the vocal strength and musicianship to back it up. Not to mention cowbell and distorted organ.
I wish I could say I have been listening to them for a long time, but they came to me via a compilation from a friend. Today, I have been mining Apple Music for their back catalog.
Listening to Harry Styles’ Golden tonight, I hear Doobie Brothers Minute By Minute and Christopher Cross’ Ride Like the Wind
It’s because I’m old
I don’t know to which deity I owe the most thanks and praise, but I am grateful for the shoegaze genre and for Apple’s recommendation engine. I listened to a group called SPC-ECO on my commute this evening and loved it.
Do I start by genuflecting toward Grangemouth, Scotland?
Danse Macabre, Op. 40
#
My love affair with Danse Macabre began in elementary school. Mrs. Otten played Halloween songs on the piano and we sang from mimeographed lyric sheets.
I was introduced to parts of the melody via a song called the Halloween Song, which has stuck in my head ever since, because the refrain includes singing the letters that spell the holiday.
It sounded a lot like this YouTube. I’m certain my teacher played a copy of this very recording.
In music classes in later years we listened to the symphonic version while watching filmstrips of artistic conceptions of what the various parts of the music could represent.
Here’s a great article from CBC which includes some great background on the piece and some really enjoyable renditions including one for two pianos.
For me the piece is tied to Autumn and to All Hallow’s Evening, even though it wasn’t the intent of the composer.
Schools don’t track holidays the same way as they did, a long time ago. So for my daughter, I have work to do If I want this to stick.
Jónsi with Elizabeth Fraser - Cannibal
Psychedelic Furs: The Ghost in You
Still Love it. From 1984, when I was a wee 16.
808 on 8/08
I always think of 808State
Apple Music has generated a radio station based on my preferences. It is eerie to have me fed back to me, but also it’s on point.
Music is such a strange, personal journey. In my twenties I really didn’t think I could get enough fast, noisy techno. Today I’m seeking out shoegaze and dream pop at about half of the tempo. But still loud. Still has to be loud enough to feel.
#permanentwaves
I Get the News I Need from the Weather Report
#The news can keep happening. That’s just fine.
I love the counterpoint between the refrain saying “Half of the time we’re gone, but we don’t know where…” and the backup singers singing “Here I am.”
The album Bridge Over Troubled Water, featuring the title track, came out in 1970, before I was two. I started listening to it in earnest when I was a teenager about ten years later. It’s still one of my favorite albums.
I’ve always enjoyed The Only Living Boy in New York, it stands out to me even as much as the more famous tracks.