Category: music

My favourite Friday Night Christmas Music links….

…are here!

Years ago (2011, 2012) I used to post music links every Friday night (as well as other days and nights). On December, I would focus on Christmas music. These are some of my favourites.

Enjoy! And joy to the world….

Bonus track: In the Bleak Midwinter which is hauntingly beautiful.

Why Play a Music CD? Lots of reasons….


I really liked a recent article about Ben Sisario, the New York Times reporter who covers the music industry. He is talking about what he uses to listen to music, and this quote jumped out at me, especially the part I put in bold.

(I) try to keep an eye on all the major platforms out there, which means regularly poking around on about a dozen apps. My go-to sources are Spotify, SoundCloud, Bandcamp and Mixcloud, which has excellent D.J.-style mixes and to me feels more human than most.

At home I have a Sonos Play:5 speaker, which plays streaming music and podcasts, and is a piece of cake to use. I also have Google Chromecast Audio, a little plug-in device (now discontinued) that allows me to send high-fidelity streams to my stereo. It sounds better that way, but it’s not nearly as easy to use as the Sonos.

To be honest, my preferred way to listen to music is on CD, as unfashionable as that might be. You push a button, the music plays, and then it’s over — no ads, no privacy terrors, no algorithms!

Like Ben, I started to listen to music on CDs again too. For a number of reasons:

    1. I have some great old CDs from labels like Deutsche Grammphon that I am never going to download again and which I don’t even want to listen to on Spotify.
    2. I find it satisfying to put on a CD, listen to it, and then it be over. I don’t want to listen to an infinite playlist all the time.
    3. I always worry that some day services like Spotify will simply trim their catalog and I will never be able to listen to that music easily again. For music I love, I want to own it outright.
    4. I worry about how what I listen to on Spotify is constantly fed into their analytic software – what people like to call their algorithm – to determine what I want to listen to. Some times I just want to listen to music in a different direction. I don’t want Spotify to start suggesting new music based on a whim.
    5. I don’t want Spotify or others to know everything about my listening choices. I think we all need a stealth mode for any services we use online.

I still love Spotify, but I don’t want to depend on Spotify to enjoy music.

That’s my two cents. For more on Ben, see: Why Play a Music CD? ‘No Ads, No Privacy Terrors, No Algorithms’ – The New York Times

On “River”, the sad Joni Mitchell song that became a Christmas classic

A fine and detailed study on Mitchell’s great song from her masterpiece album, “Blue”: www.washingtonpost.com/arts-entertainment/2018/12/07/how-thoroughly-depressing-joni-mitchell-song-became-blue-christmas-classic/

My impression reading it was that there were no sad or melancholy Christmas songs before it, but “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and “Blue Christmas” are two that immediately come to mind. And later on songs like “Last Christmas” have shown that the holidays can be sometimes difficult.

Read the piece though. Lots of good commentary by great singers who have covered it, as well as what it really means.

Four fascinating music links

  1. “Love Will Tear Us Apart” by Iggy Pop & Bernard Sumner of New Order at Carnegie Hall: for fans of either or both, doing one of the best songs ever. (see above)
  2. A Big Choir Sings Patti Smith’s “Because the Night” | Open Culture: so good. I love this.
  3. Thinking About: Strange Fruit (& Friday Links) – Hither & Thither: a thoughtful analysis of a titanic  song.
  4. Hear the Famously Controversial Concert Where Leonard Bernstein Introduces Glenn Gould & His Idiosyncratic Performance of Brahms’ First Piano Concerto (1962) | Open Culture: this is a fascinating bit of musical history. Read the post to see why.

Slow Radio is a thing and a very good thing

I learned about Slow Radio here: I Listened To Slow Radio For A Week, And Here’s What Happened – HelloGiggles.

What is slow radio? According to that piece:

… it’s basically programming that moves at a very casual pace. It immerses you in sound to help you stay grounded in the present.

Is slow radio music, meditation, a catalog of sounds, or a podcast? The short answer: Yes. When you turn on slow radio, you won’t find any one thing in particular. One episode, you’ll get lost in ambient nature sounds. The next, you’ll hear slow-paced conversations about music. After that, you’ll take a trip through a soundscape on a bustling street in Japan.

 

Sound good? The BBC link to it is  here.

The Beatles / White Album Box Set

Likely only for hardcore Beatle fans, this box set of the White Album promises to be the White Album on steroids. Rolling Stone has plenty of detail on it, via White Album Box Set: Exclusive Preview of Unheard Beatles Archives – Rolling Stone. It even has a description of one of my favorite odd pieces by McCartney:

12. “Can You Take Me Back?”
The snippet on Side Four that serves as an eerie transition into the abstract sound-collage chaos of “Revolution 9.” Paul toys with it for a couple of minutes, trying to flesh it out into a bit of country blues—“I ain’t happy here, my honey, are you happy here?”

Like “Her Majesty”, it’s a sketch of something, but inserted in such a way as to make the whole album something more original. It’s always haunted me.

 

Here’s a fine introduction to Avro Pärt

This piece – A guide to Arvo Pärt’s music | Music | The Guardian – is a fine introduction to the music of Avro Pärt. This quote sums up his work well:

The success of Pärt’s work – the repertory of choral works he has composed over the last four decades, the instrumental works, even the new symphony he composed in 2008 – is, I think, much more than simple popular acclaim for a composer who uses some familiar chords. Pärt told me that what he wants his music to express is “love for every note”, and in turn, communicate the spiritual power that he sees as music’s essential purpose. Pärt is too modest to say that he has achieved that, but for the listeners who love his music, it’s an irrefutable truth.

There are lots of places to find his music, including YouTube. Here’s one of my favorite pieces, Spiegel im Spiegel

Enjoy that piece, and hopefully enjoy many hours listening to the music of Part.

Want to know why it is so expensive to get tickets to special events?

Then you want to read these two really good pieces on why it is brutally tough to get tickets to an event without paying a fortune:

What it comes down to is a very limited supply and a very high demand. But that’s obvious. Read the pieces to see just how it really plays out.

A short defense of Drake’s dancing in Hotline Bling

It’s well known that Drake has suffered alot of mockery for his dancing in the video for Hotline Bling. This is too bad, because for whatever criticism you can raise for Drake’s dancing, he is no worse than most major pop stars when it comes to dancing. So what’s the problem?

The problem, I see it, is in the directing. Here is the Hotline Bling video. Count the length of the average shot. When I did it, it was in the 5 to 10 second range.

Compare that to Ariana Grande’s Focus video.

Count the length of each shot. The longest is usually no more than 3 seconds: the rest are 1 to 2 seconds. Is she a good dancer? It’s hard to tell. If you go to around the 3 minute mark, you seen alot of dancing, but the shots are still short and the camera is constantly moving. Any short coming in the dancing can be made up for in the editing room. And I’d argue that the Focus video is typical of most videos: very short cuts with lots of camera movement.

Now, it’s possible the director wanted the longer shots due to the changing nature of the lighting. But there is a similar use of dramatic lighting in Justin Timberlake’s Let Me Talk To You/My Love and he comes across well with no loss to the lighting effect

And like Ariana Grande’s video, this video has the performer do well defined step in a 1-4 second shot and then cuts away. This is typical of many music videos. (Yes, JT does have an extended dance routine at the end of My Love, but most of the video is all quick cuts….also, he has been dancing since his early days as a Mouseketeer :))

Drake would have been better off with shorter cuts and simpler dance moves, the kind of thing you find in most other videos.

Serious about your music? You might want to avoid Apple Music then

If you are serious about your music and you already have alot of digital music, you must read this before getting started with Apple Music: Apple Music is a nightmare and I’m done with it. If you don’t read it and proceed, you may find your music collection in shambles.

Maybe it will be better in a year from now. Based on iTunes, though, I seriously doubt it.

Amy In The Sun: The Other (Caribbean) Side of Amy Winehouse – LargeUp

Interesting speculation on where Amy Winehouse’s musical direction would have gone if she hadn’t died so young: Amy In The Sun: The Other (Caribbean) Side of Amy Winehouse via LargeUp. That post has a lot of links to Amy’s performances on YouTube, so if you are the mood for something other than Christmas music, click on that link and enjoy.

Friday night music: Banks doing the Tiny Desk Concert for NPR

I’ve tweeted this before, but here it is again: Banks: Tiny Desk Concert : NPR.

I think the Tiny Desk Concerts are good, and Banks does a good job here of simplifying her sound without making it uninteresting.

Search around for other such concerts. Lots of musicians have done these gigs, and many of them are good if not great.

Looking to buy a technical gift for someone (or yourself) ?

Then you need to check out the Wirecutter. It has experts in every area of technology — from headphones to TVs to much more — stating what they think is thebest thing to buy right now. They explain their reasoning, offer alternatives, and best of all, the site is kept up to date. Also, they have links to sites like Amazon and others to let you take the next step and purchase the tech you want.

Some thoughts on the lost guitar solo from Here Comes The Sun

This post is fantastic:  Here Comes The Sun: The Lost Guitar Solo by George Harrison, from the blog Open Culture.

Not only do you get to hear the lost guitar solo, but you get to do so with Dhani Harrison (George’s son), George Martin and Giles Martin (the son of the great producer)

Even better, you get a sense of what George Martin was working with at the time, and you get a sense, at least I did, of how Martin thinks about what he is hearing.

A must for Beatles fan and anyone who appreciates popular music and how it is made.

Billy Bragg and David Byrne on streaming and music

David Byrne kicked off the discussion on music streaming with a long and thoughtful post. Billy Bragg picked up on that and replied with an equally long and thoughtput post, fround here (Streaming Debate: Billy Bragg’s Response To Byrne’s ‘How Will The Wolf Survive…’ — MusicTank.). I highly encourage anyone who is interested in music, the music business, or music and IT to read both of these.

If you go to the Billy Bragg link, you’ll also get to see a link to David Byrne.

 

Great new music on BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge

If you like great new music, go to YouTube and search for “BBC Radio 1 Live Lounge” and you will get everything from the Arctic Monkeys to the Jonas Brothers and everything in between. It’s rough, it’s eclectic, and it’s great. There’s too much to cover in one blog post, but here’s a sample: the superb Noisettes covering The Killers “When We Were Young”.

YouTube – bbc radio 1 live lounge

Late night music with the Plain White T’s – Hey There Delilah

I like how the director of this video uses split screen really effectively to make what could be something very static — an acoustic guitar player — something very dynamic. It also gives it a nice 1960s vibe, though it feels new. I wonder if the musician likes Paul Simon? Anyway I like this song, and I really like this video.

YouTube – Plain White T’s – Hey There Delilah

The great Roger Ridley, Playing for Change

Roger Ridley, a great performer, performs Bring It On Home, a great song,  as well as anyone. Take a listen….

There are many mediocre performers in the world who get far too much attention. And there are great performers like Roger Ridley, performers who, when you hear them, you think: man, more people ought to hear this person! That’s what I thought when I heard him. I hope you feel the same way.

Thanks to Playing for Change for bringing Roger to our attention. You should check them out, too.

Superb guitar work on Born Under Punches Live with Talking Heads and Adrien Belew

I’ve always loved this song, but I hadn’t seen ths live version before. It has superb guitar playing from many of the players on stage, but Adrien Belew (from King Crimson) does some amazing things with feedback at the beginning. Well worth a look and a listen.

YouTube – Talking Heads – Live in Rome 1980 – 10 Born Under Punches