The Renamed 'random thoughts about music' thread"?

Yes, but that's a completely subjective statement too.

 

Oh, no, what I say is always objective truth. Including this post.

 

"Two men say they're Jesus.
One of 'em must be wrong?"

(Mark Knopfler)

 

Some people just dont know when to stop. I wish Keith Emerson was still with us...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=204&v=GYLBjScgb7o

 

The Library of Congress has announced 25 new additions to the National Recording Registry.

National Recording Registry Reaches 500 - Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/programs/nation...ng-registry/registry-by-induction-years/2017/

(in chronological order)

1. Dream Melody Intermezzo: Naughty Marietta (single) Victor Herbert and His Orchestra 1911 (Pop Pre-1955)
2. Standing Rock Preservation Recordings George Herzog and Members of the Yanktoni Tribe 1928 (Field)
3. Lamento Borincano (single) Canario y Su Grupo 1930 (Latin)
4. Sitting on Top of the World (single) Mississippi Sheiks 1930 (Blues)
5. The Complete Beethoven Piano Sonatas (album) Artur Schnabel 1932-1935 (Classical/Opera)
6. If I Didn't Care (single) The Ink Spots 1939 (Pop Pre-1955)
7. Proceedings of the United Nations Conference on International Organization (4/25/45-6/26/45) 1945 (Broadcast/Spoken Word)
8. Folk Songs of the Hills (album) Merle Travis 1946 (Folk)
9. How I Got Over (single) Clara Ward and the Ward Singers 1950 (Gospel)
10. Rock Around the Clock (single) Bill Haley and His Comets 1954 (Pop Pre-1955)
11. Calypso (album) Harry Belafonte 1956 (Pop Post-1955)
12. I Left My Heart in San Francisco (single) Tony Bennett 1962 (Pop Post-1955)
13. King Biscuit Time Sonny Boy Williamson II, others 1965 (Radio)
14. My Girl (single) The Temptations 1964 (Pop Post-1955)
15. The Sound of Music (album) Julie Andrews, others 1965 (Musical/Soundtrack)
16. Alice's Restaurant Massacree (single) Arlo Guthrie 1967 (Folk)
17. New Sounds in Electronic Music (album) Steve Reich, Richard Maxfield, Pauline Oliveros 1967 (Technology)
18. An Evening with Groucho (album) Groucho Marx 1972 (Comedy)
19. Rumours (album) Fleetwood Mac 1977 (Pop Post-1955)
20. The Gambler (single) Kenny Rogers 1978 (Pop Post-1955)
21. Le Freak (single) Chic 1978 (Disco)
22. Footloose (single) Kenny Loggins 1984 (Pop Post-1955)
23. Raising Hell (album) Run-DMC 1986 (Rap)
24. Rhythm is Gonna Get You (single) Gloria Estefan and the Miami Sound Machine 1987 (Pop Post-1955)
25. Yo-Yo Ma Premieres: Concertos for Violoncello and Orchestra (album) Yo-Yo Ma and the Philadelphia Orchestra 1996 (Classical/Opera)

 

I believe this is the song that created the reason for a break between "Pop Pre-1955" and "Pop Post-1955", so it's weird that they didn't place the dividing line so it can be in the "post" side.

 

Any of you listen to BBC Radio 6?

I've been super into it for a while and enjoy what they have on offer. Gilles Peterson with his eclectic selections alone makes it worth listening to.

 

When I lived in Western PA, we could get the Morgantown station of the West Virginia Public Radio network, which was terrific. One of their programs (widely syndicated, but not available where I live now) is Mountain Stage. In spite of the title, it is extremely eclectic.

From Wikipedia

Among the luminaries who appeared on Mountain Stage before they were famous or whose first national-exposure in the US on Mountain Stage are Sarah McLachlan, Norah Jones, Crash Test Dummies, Barenaked Ladies, Ben Harper, Paula Cole, Nickel Creek, Cassandra Wilson, Counting Crows, Phish and R.E.M., which is the band that gave Mountain Stage its first national exposure.

Over the years, the show has featured such international luminaries as Phish, Barenaked Ladies, Galactic, Bruce Hornsby, the Derek Trucks Band, Chris Thile, Bell X-1, Judy Collins, They Might Be Giants, Norah Jones, Hubert Sumlin & Pinetop Perkins, Charles Brown, Martina McBride, Little Big Town, Amos Lee, Joan Baez, Jakob Dylan and Regina Spektor, as well as Kathy Mattea, Tim O'Brien and over a hundred West Virginia artists.
​

Hence it didn't surprise me that Patti Smith appeared on the show recently.

https://www.npr.org/event/music/597709855/patti-smith-on-mountain-stage

Her appearance was in honor of her late husband. Fred "Sonic" Smith, founding guitarist of the legendary MC5, being inducted into the West Virginia Music Hall of Fame. Itself an extremely eclectic musical endeavor.

http://www.wvmusichalloffame.com

 

This is for @Auriaprottu :

It's not his music, per se. Some of his melodies or chord progressions are agreeable enough. A lot of the lyrics are cringe-inducing for me; but some aren't, and anyway, that's true of a lot of artists, even some I like, and wouldn't be enough by itself to sink him to the bottom. For me, it's him.

To elaborate:

I like singer-songwriter music. I went through high school and college listening to a ton of Joni Mitchell, I like Nick Drake about as much as I like any music, and discoveries of the last decade like Gregory Alan Isakov have been great. But the success of that kind of music, for me, is dependent on some sort of emotional connection occurring between the singer/songwriter and me. Whether that's real or faked on their part, and whether I really believe in the emotional connection or there's some unconscious suspension of disbelief going on in my head, it feels real, and it has everything to do with whether what they're doing resonates with me and thus whether I like it.

That doesn't happen at all with him. Instead, the opposite happens. He feels to me like a poseur who nevertheless sometimes tries to make an emotional connection, because that's what you do as a singer/songwriter; but he fails because it's totally a pose and, unlike others for whom it's a pose, when he has to fake it he's no good at it. It's not just that I think he's a fake; lots of performers adopt roles when they perform, either for a particular song or for their whole damn career. But then they have to be good actors -- they have to be believable in those roles -- or it just seems ridiculous. His songs often feel to me like the musical analogue of Keanu Reeves' acting in Much Ado About Nothing: you watched him, and it was obvious that he couldn't act; and it was obvious that he knew he couldn't act, and that the solution he'd arrived at was to act harder, to overact, which only made it worse. That's how Billy Joel seems to me. When I hear one of his songs, usually I get this feeling of "Just stop it! Stop digging!" He tries to perform in the confessional/emotional idiom and, for me, he fails because it's not real and because he isn't any good at faking it.

 

At the risk of sounding like Oscar Wilde-- I wish I'd written that. That's really got it.

My own capsule summaries have been along the lines of, Joel's talents, such as they are, are more in the tin pan alley/showtune sphere; but that the results are more "closed after thirty shows" than "West Side Story" or "American in Paris."

And at his worst he's way way too close to "Springtime for Hitler," only not funny.

 

Don't worry, John: you will.

 

Snakker du norsk?

 

Getting old comes with age. There's no avoiding it.

And now this:

 

A Rock n Roll Life

 

The Library of Congress has announced 25 new additions to the National Recording Registry...

New National Recording Registry Class Is 'Superfly' - Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-19-018/

(in chronological order)

1. Yiddish Cylinders (songs), Standard Phonograph Company of New York and the Thomas Lambert Company (c. 1901-1905)
2. Memphis Blues (single), Victor Military Band (1914)
3. Native Americans of the American Northwest (collection), Melville Jacobs (1929-1939)
4. Minnie the Moocher (single), Cab Calloway (1931)
5. Bach Six Cello Suites (album), Pablo Casals (c. 1939)
6. They Look Like Men of War (single), Deep River Boys (1941)
7. Gunsmoke: The Cabin (radio), program episode (Dec. 27, 1952)
8. Ruth Draper: Complete monologues (albums), Ruth Draper (1954-1956)
9. La Bamba (single), Ritchie Valens (1958)
10. Long Black Veil (single), Lefty Frizzell (1959)
11. Stan Freberg Presents the United States of America, Vol. 1: The Early Years (album), Stan Freberg (1961)
12. GO (album), Dexter Gordon (1962)
13. War Requiem (album), Benjamin Britten (1963)
14. Mississippi Goddam (single), Nina Simone (1964)
15. Soul Ma (single), Sam & Dave (1967)
16. Hair (original cast), Broadway (1968)
17. Death of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. (speech), Robert F. Kennedy (April 4, 1968)
18. Sweet Caroline (single), Neil Diamond (1969)
19. Superfly (album), Curtis Mayfield (1972)
20. Ola Belle Reed (album), Ola Belle Reed (1973)
21. September (single), Earth, Wind & Fire (1978)
22. You Make Me Feel (Mighty Real) (single), Sylvester (1978)
23. She’s So Unusual (album), Cyndi Lauper (1983)
24. Schoolhouse Rock!: The Box Set (soundtrack), television (1996)
25. The Blueprint (album), Jay-Z (2001)

https://www.loc.gov/programs/nation...ng-registry/registry-by-induction-years/2018/

 

There is a God after all -- or maybe it was the purported ticket price of $450...

Woodstock Financiers Cancel 50th Anniversary Festival - Entertainment Tonight
https://www.etonline.com/woodstock-...stival-amid-health-and-safety-concerns-124273

The 1960s dream of peace, free love, harmony and great music is dead. At least when it comes to reviving the Woodstock music festival in celebration of the iconic event's 50th anniversary. Officials at the Dentsu Aegis Network, which was set to foot the bill on the hotly anticipated festival, announced on Monday that they had officially pulled the plug, according to multiple reports.

Considering the monumental PR disaster that the Fyre Fest proved to be, it's possible that the Dentsu Aegis Network was concerned about the potential nightmare that could ensue if the festival went as poorly as the Fyre Fest (or if it was half as disastrous as the original Woodstock in 1969). Headliners and expected performers at the festival included The Killers, Dead and Company, Imagine Dragons, JAY-Z, Miley Cyrus, The Lumineers, Chance the Rapper, Cage the Elephant, Halsey and Carlos Santana, among many others.

According to Billboard, the producers and promoters of Woodstock 50 recently reached out to Live Nation and AEG, seeking $20 million in financing for the festival, and both organizations declined to invest.

Good riddance!

 

Recordings by Elton John, Nirvana and Thousands More Lost in Fire - N.Y. Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/06/11/us/master-recordings-universal-fire.html

Eleven years ago this month, a fire ripped through a part of Universal Studios Hollywood. At the time, the company said that the blaze had destroyed the theme park’s “King Kong” attraction and a video vault that contained only copies of old works. But, according to an article published on Tuesday by The New York Times Magazine, the fire also tore through an archive housing treasured audio recordings, amounting to what the piece described as “the biggest disaster in the history of the music business.”

Almost all of the master recordings stored in the vault were destroyed in the fire, including those produced by some of the most famous musicians since the 1940s. In a confidential report in 2009, Universal Music Group estimated the loss at about 500,000 song titles. The lost works most likely included masters in the Decca Records collection by Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington, Al Jolson, Bing Crosby, Ella Fitzgerald and Judy Garland.

The fire probably also claimed some of Chuck Berry’s greatest recordings, produced for Chess Records, as well as the masters of some of Aretha Franklin’s first appearances on record. Almost of all of Buddy Holly’s masters were lost, as were most of John Coltrane’s masters in the Impulse Records collection. The fire also claimed numerous hit singles, likely including Bill Haley and His Comets’ “Rock Around the Clock,” Etta James’s “At Last” and the Kingsmen’s “Louie Louie.”

The list of artists affected spans decades of popular music. It includes recordings by Ray Charles, B.B. King, the Four Tops, Joan Baez, Neil Diamond, Sonny and Cher, Joni Mitchell, Cat Stevens, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Al Green, Elton John, Eric Clapton, Jimmy Buffett, the Eagles, Aerosmith, Rufus and Chaka Khan, Barry White, Patti LaBelle, Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, the Police, Sting, Steve Earle, R.E.M., Janet Jackson, Guns N’ Roses, Mary J. Blige, No Doubt, Nine Inch Nails, Snoop Dogg, Nirvana, Beck, Sheryl Crow, Tupac Shakur, Eminem, 50 Cent and the Roots.

A master recording is the one-of-a-kind original recording of a piece of music. It’s the source from which other vinyl records, CDs, MP3s and all other recordings are made. According to the article, documents show that the vault contained masters dating back decades, including multitrack recordings on which individual instruments remained isolated from one another. There were also session masters, including recordings that had never been commercially released. The recordings within the vault came from to some of the most important record labels of all time.

Jody Rosen, the writer of the article, described the successful effort to play down the scope of the loss as a “triumph of crisis management” that involved officials working for Universal Music Group on both coasts. Those efforts were undoubtedly aimed at minimizing public embarrassment, but some suggest the company was also particularly worried about a backlash from artists and artist estates whose master recordings had been destroyed.

Record companies have had a troubled history with such recordings and have been known to trash them in bulk. Decades ago, employees of CBS Records reportedly took power saws to multitrack masters to sell the reels as scrap metal. In the 1970s, RCA destroyed masters by Elvis Presley in a broader purge. Because of that history, industry professionals have long questioned how committed the major music labels are to preserving what they see as priceless artifacts.

Today, most commercial recordings from the past century and beyond are controlled by only three giant record companies: Sony Music Entertainment, Warner Music Group and, of course, Universal Music Group.

 

The Library of Congress has announced 25 new additions to the National Recording Registry...

National Recording Registry Class Produces Ultimate Stay-At-Home Playlist - Library of Congress
https://www.loc.gov/item/prn-20-023/?loclr=twloc

(in chronological order)

1. Whispering (single), Paul Whiteman and his Orchestra (1920)
2. Protesta per Sacco e Vanzetti (spoken word & song), Compagnia Columbia and Raoul Romito (1927)
3. La Chicharronera (single), Narciso Martinez and Santiago Almeida (1936)
4. Arch Oboler’s Plays: The Bathysphere (radio), program episode (Nov. 18, 1939)
5. Me and My Chauffeur Blues (single), Memphis Minnie (1941)
6. 1951 National League playoff: New York Giants vs. Brooklyn Dodgers (radio), Russ Hodges, announcer (Oct. 3, 1951)
7. Puccini’s 'Tosca' (album), La Scala Opera with Maria Callas, Giuseppe di Stefano, Tito Gobbi and maestro Victor de Sabata (1953)
8. Hello Muddah, Hello Fadduh (single), Allan Sherman (1963)
9. Boston Symphony Orchestra: conductor Erich Leinsdorf (radio), WGBH broadcast on the day of the John F. Kennedy assassination (Nov. 22, 1963)
10. Fiddler on the Roof (album), Original Broadway Cast (1964)
11. Make the World Go Away (single), Eddy Arnold (1965)
12. Afghan Traditional Music (collection), Hiromi Lorraine Sakata, ethnomusicologist (1966-67; 1971-73)
13. Wichita Lineman (single), Glen Campbell (1968)
14. Dusty in Memphis (album), Dusty Springfield (1969)
15. Mister Rogers Sings 21 Favorite Songs (album), Fred Rogers (1973)
16. Cheap Trick at Budokan (album), Cheap Trick (1978)
17. Holst: Suite No. 1 in E-Flat, Suite No. 2 in F / Handel: Music for the Royal Fireworks / Bach: Fantasia in G (album), Frederick Fennell and the Cleveland Symphonic Winds (1978)
18. Y.M.C.A. (single), Village People (1978)
19. A Feather on the Breath of God (album), Gothic Voices; Christopher Page, conductor; Hildegard von Bingen, composer (1982)
20. Private Dancer (album), Tina Turner (1984)
21. Ven Conmigo (album), Selena (1990)
22. The Chronic (album), Dr. Dre (1992)
23. I Will Always Love You (single), Whitney Houston (1992)
24. Concert in the Garden (album), Maria Schneider Orchestra (2004)
25. Percussion Concerto (album), Colin Currie (2008)