The Online Photographer

Long Live Bands! (OT) (Music Notes)

Today I woke up without an idea in my head. When I was 14 or 15 years old, my father pushed me to take a three-day analysis of aptitudes from a research foundation in Washington, D.C. founded by an interesting character named Johnson O'Connor. One of the aptitudes that was measured was called ideaphoria, which was also the title of one of O'Connor's books. Basically it means the flow of ideas. Here's a short page from the J.O'C. site with a description of what ideaphoria is and how to best cope with having either lots of it or too little of it. Me, I'm good at coping with the too much part. But don't have nearly as much practice coping with the not-enough side.

I was sick yesterday—weirdly sick. Nothing about it felt familiar. I think I might have gotten bitten by a radioactive alien spider. I hope it gives me strange superpowers.

I started feeling better at about 4 o'clock yesterday afternoon, and I feel fine again today. But this morning I was suffering from low ideaphoria for whatever reason. Usually I can sit down in the morning and think a bit and come up with something to write about. I've never done much forward planning in all my years of blogging. It's just "pick a topic." Sometimes it works, occasionally not so well.

Music videos
Lacking an idea, I thought I might pass along a few factoids from Rick Beato about the decline of the kind of music I grew up thinking was normal: blues-based rock played with electric guitars by ensembles, usually of friends, called bands. A while back, Beato posted a video claiming that, if you exclude bands and solo acts from the last century, there hasn't been a single No. 1 rock hit by anyone in the past six years that features an electric guitar solo.

I thought that video would be easy to find, but no, it's not. For one thing, you can't skim videos for the information you want. You just have to lay there like a seal on a ice floe, gazing at sludgey videos till your brain glazes over, and still can't find what you need. [Remainder of rant redacted; you're welcome.]

Then there was this video of his I watched just the other day about the demise of groups. Bands. Absolutely fascinating. He references a British talk show host, Richard Osman, who counted 140+ weeks with No. 1 hits by groups/bands in the first half of both the 1980s and '90s. He's talking about the British charts. Number of No. 1 hits by groups/bands from 2020 to now? Three. The rest are all solo acts and duos, solo artists teaming up together, that sort of thing. The group, the band, Osman claims, has "completely disappeared" as the core form of musical acts. Rick Beato then goes on to say that he put together a list of the top 400(!) acts on Spotify, ranked by number of monthly listeners, going back 10 years, again excluding bands that had formed prior to that. Only three were bands.

Well, I thought this was going to be an easy topic to research, but oh, so wrong, rock-star-breath. You think there's a lot of information out there about photography? It's dwarfed by the amount of information there is available about trends in music. David Bennett, another excellent YouTuber, says in a video called "When Did Rock Stop Being Pop?" that rock and roll had fallen out of popular favor completely by 2010. I don't want to go too far into this; you can use search engines too, and this is off-topic, so I'm going to bail at this point.

Rock is dead, bands are gone, the guitar is over
So popular music is no longer rock, bands are gone, and the electric guitar is passé. Of course, that might not be the end of the world. Bennett notes that jazz was freed by falling out of the pop mainstream, pushed out by rock. He's a jazz musician, so he's well situated to know about the energy and vitality of the jazz scene since it became a niche. He thinks the same thing might happen to rock music, now that it has decoupled from popular music and become a niche itself, pushed out of the mainstream by rap, hip-hop, and Tik-Tok solo acts and their songwriter-producers.

As one of several reasons for the demise of bands, Beato names "Band dynamics, adding, "it's hard to be in a band. Forming and maintaining a band is challenging due to the interpersonal conflicts." Sure got that right. Band members infighting and breaking up and reforming has been an integral part of the music scene for decades, and always a locus of interest to fans. (The very next video that YouTube suggested on my feed was called "The Messiest Band Breakups in History." Fleetwood Mac? Simon warring with Garfunkel? The Beatles?)

Bands might be gone, and guitars might be over, and rock, at this point, might be pretty far along toward becoming a much smaller niche based on a type of pop from the past. But consider this comment that was at the top of the pile under Rick Beato's video about there being no more bands, written by a guy called @jefftaylor5884:

Session/live musician here in Nashville. In a 35 year career in this town, I’ve seen the changes you are talking about here and elsewhere. All your reasons at the end are spot on. However, as difficult as it is to be in a band and promote one nowadays, my greatest joy in this business has come from bands that I have been a part of. There is something so wonderful about an actual community of creative people working to bring beauty into a broken world in a live surrounding. At this stage in my career, I still enjoy recording for various artists, but playing in a half dozen bands across genres in a town that loves live music is the most satisfying…. None of it will garner 100 million views or followers, but that matters little here. Watching people moved in real time does. Long live bands!

I looked him up. Jeffrey Joseph Taylor, who is almost exactly as old as I am, is a member of Time Jumpers, a group of ten elite Nashville session players who play western swing together (now there's a niche!) for their own enjoyment. (He plays the accordion in the band, which is going to make my friend Bob Burnett happy.) Vince Gill played with Time Jumpers from 2010 to 2020.

Mike

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Gary: "The man from Nashville knows whereof he speaks. My wife and I spent a few days in Nashville recently. We saw the Time Jumpers and greatly enjoyed the show. Another member of the band is Ranger Doug from the old-timey cowboy group 'Riders in the Sky.' There are innumerable places to see great live music in Nashville. (Avoid lower Broadway with the crowds and 'Nash Vegas' atmosphere.) Another fine, small venue is the Station Inn. Bluegrass at night and a gospel show every Sunday afternoon. You can get lost in the harmonies. We only scratched the surface and we plan to return."

Sean: "If ideaphoria were in the dictionary, it would say: See Richard Osman. He has produced and hosted some of the UK’s most popular entertainment shows and writes the successful crime novel series 'The Thursday Murder Club,' one of which is currently being made into a movie. Since starting the series, he has aimed to write a book a year. He also co-hosts the popular podcast 'The Rest Is Entertainment,' where I heard the stats about the decline of bands in the charts. Interestingly, Richard’s brother Mat is a member of the much-loved rock band Suede, which formed in 1989 and is still going strong."

Jeff Hohner: "The other day I was listening to one of the new solo pop acts you describe as having replaced the rock band pop hegemony of yore. YouTube kindly fed me song after song of his. All were catchy but all sounded the same. The guy is obviously talented but like most artists has only one ‘voice.’ My immediate thought was, I wish he was in a band. I wish he’d team up with other musicians to bounce off of, to push him in different directions, to help him edit, to add complementary musical elements and sonic textures…. Everyone’s loss."

Patrick Dodds: "For months now, I've been listening to lyrics I have written accompanied by music provided by Suno. I'm not exaggerating when I say it has changed my life."

Joe Kashi: "This seems to be a reflection of a larger societal change. The decline of groups of all sorts, including broadly based community organizations and religious observance generally, has been well documented by Ron Putnam, former Harvard dean, in his book Bowling Alone (2nd. Edition,2020 ) Dr. Putnam was recently interviewed in The New York Times about this trend toward solitary activity, which apparently started in earnest in the 1970s. That was earlier than portable electronics or even personal computers, which apparently gave an extra push. In the same vein, the Surgeon General has recently been warning us about the debilitating effects of increasingly prevalent loneliness. I suspect that Dr. Putnam would have been most interested in the confirming data about the decline in bands and the rise of solo 'superstars.'"

Lawrence Plummer: "Wow! Sorry, but this does not compute. Living in Seattle and being a very big supporter of KEXP, I'm exposed to an enormous amount of 'bands'! Guitars are everywhere. This weekend I attended a KEXP sponsored show featuring Cloud Cult, a 'band.' They are an experimental indie rock band from St. Cloud, Minnesota, started in 1995, with seven members. If you haven't given it a try, I would strongly urge you to tune in to KEXP (KEXP.ORG) and give them a listen."

'Nadia' (Music Notes)

Some songs just get ya. I rediscovered an old favorite last week—"Nadia," from the album the late Jeff Beck made with Imogen Heap, among others, back in 2000. I listened to that song a hundred times when I was dating my last girlfriend, and I was afraid I'd never enjoy it again for that reason, but happily that's not the case. I don't know if you'll like it, but decide for yourself. Gives me the chills every time I hear it.

It was written by the prolific and celebrated World Music composer Nitin Sawhney, who recently became a member of Pink Floyd to do some work for charity.

 

Mike

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Too Soon Alt, Too Late Schmardt (OT)

The title above was the apophthegm on a needlepoint panel on a wicker handbag I saw, from the sidewalk, in a shop window in Harbor Springs, Michigan, in the 1980s. I was young then, but now that I'm alt (the German word for "old"), I can testify.

Anyway, someone asked if I am going to be writing about audio and stereo in the future. Here's the lowdown: a couple of years ago I took a sort of mental survey of a lot of the stereo gear I bought over the years, and came (finally, at long long last) to a sensible conclusion: stop. Just stop. Never buy another piece of hi-fi gear ever again.

I love music, and I listen every day, or close enough, and it's true that I can put my finger on some standout values among all the audio gear I've spent money on over the years, and there have been a few items I've bought that I actually liked. But for the most part, audiophilia for me has been like opening a vein in my meager bank accounts and just letting it bleed and bleed. Mostly, it has served the overriding purpose of turning money into nothing (apologies to Dire Straits).

I'm quite happy with my current desktop speakers (I prefer to refer to them as "nearfield monitors"), which I got for free and had been listening to for a dozen years. That doesn't mean I didn't have to tie myself to the mast reading about the Tannoy Gold 7, but I didn't say my resolve was perfect.

I have a very bulldoggish tendency to stick with things that aren't working. I keep trying even when failure is tested and true. Persistence gets good press, but I suspect it's just as important to "cast a cold eye" and, when things are not working, move on. (Others may reach different conclusions, for themselves. To each their own fate.)

Mike

Original contents copyright 2024 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Michael: "In my 77 years, my grandmother was the only other person I have ever heard use the German phrase (auf Deutsch) that you chose to title this article. She and my grandfather were both of strong German heritage. Last name...Aufrecht. Both born in late 1800s in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, of German immigrants; moved to Chicago in the early 1900s, met, married, and the rest is family history. They definitely genetically contributed to what would become a scholastic major throughout my high school and college days. Ja, ich kann Deutsch sprechen und lesen. 'Wir werden zu fruh alt und zu spat klug.' I now use the phrase you used in the title, in English, in appropriate situations.  :-)  . Auf Wiedersehen, MK."

We Are Lucky

Screen shot of Ray Davies of the Kinks being knighted by then-Prince Charles. The man on the left in the gray suit waiting his turn is photographer Don McCullin.

I've been a mite under the weather. Mysteriously so. Finally might have figured out what's going on. I hope.

I had a spell of dizzyness, vertigo, lightheadedness, wooziness, and visual disturbances this past week that lasted about four days, the latest in a string of weird symptoms.

Of course I couldn't get in to see my doctor just for that. The way things are now, there's only a narrow band between "not serious enough to get an appointment" and "so serious you need the ER or the ambulance." Poking around on my own, I figured it might be low blood pressure. A friend told me Wal-Mart sells home blood pressure (BP) monitors, so I ventured into the wilds of Wal-Mart in Watkins Glen. Once located, I balked at the price of the home units, but there was a little kiosk right there where you could sit down and take your own BP. It was rather alarming to have my arm gripped in a giant steel contraption in a Wal-Mart. "Your blood pressure is very high," it admonished me, "Stage 2 hypertension." That sent my BP even higher, I'd guess. It's unusual for me—I've had low blood pressure all my life. I called my doctor brother and my doctor friend Steve. For counseling. Or, er, consoling.

Well, my blood pressure doesn't seem to be a problem, turns out—it was 122/70 this morning on the new home BP monitor I got from Amazon (way cheaper than Wal-Mart)—but my heart rate (HR) at Wal-Mart was 42, and my HR since then has been measuring in the 30–40 range. Which is low unless you're a marathoner, and I am not. Many calls later, with the surprise help of a friendly nurse I don't know who was looking out for me, I actually wrangled an appointment with the cardiologist on Monday morning. The main guy, no less. Mike for the win! So I hope to get to the bottom of this on Monday. Or at least get launched on that quest.

I was just about to write a post about how I was going to abandon my diet—it's just too hard to come back from a relapse. I had it, but I lost it. (That ought to be carved on my headstone someday [grimacing smiley face].) I'm not sure I'm up to the task of managing an old body. But maybe I have to keep trying. The stakes are pretty high...although just for me. The funny thing is, I like this age. I like it a lot. It's actually a nice time of life, except for the little fact that you're getting old.

The march of medical advancements
A fair number of my same-age and older friends are complaining about various medical issues, but I have to remind myself that at 66 I'm at the age where most men died in the middle of the nineteenth century. Which wasn't that long ago. When the retirement age was set at 65 in the 1930s, 65-year-old men could expect to live to 76 1/2. A lot of the procedures and treatments that my friends bitch about only came into being fifty, twenty, five, or even two years ago. My paternal grandmother died at more or less my age of a stomach cancer which is now 100% curable—it kills exactly zero people. (Well, unless they're completely untreated. It makes me mad that, historically, so many black people died of simple lack of adequate treatment. The world lost Eric Dolphy for that reason, among many other losses to humanity.) My other grandmother was blind at the end of her life, and never would have been had she entered her 80s at the turn of the millennium or later.

So it's true that medical entanglements are a PITA, but on balance we're actually quite lucky to be living when we are in terms of medical science and treatment. You can console yourself with that the next time you're dying of boredom in a waiting room.

Listen to your heart beat
There's a line in Sir(!) Ray Davies' "Morphine Song"—written about a hospital visit—that goes "Hey buddy, you know, you got a slow heartbeat." Well, me too, now. But at least it's still beating, and I'm still looking at the grass from the good side.

And now I think I'll go treat myself to a listen of Ted Curson's "Tears for Dolphy." He's long gone, but I love Sir Eric Dolphy, I gotta say. (You see what I did there.)

Mike
(Thanks to Chuck Albertson)

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Al Gardner: "Hmmm. A low heart rate put me on the floor in May of 2022. I wore a heart monitor for two weeks and the results revealed that my heart's electrical system was the culprit. Long story short I signed up for an FDA trial of then-new wireless pacemakers that are inserted into the heart via a catheter. Immediate relief and no surgical procedure to place the old style pacemaker. Only a small, one inch or less, incision to insert the catheters. Two and a half hour procedure and an overnight stay to be certain the incision was sound and not leaking. The FDA issued it's approval during the summer and that solution should be widely available now. If you need that then please look into it. Be safe."

Albert Smith: "I've been doing home BP testing for years. I get 'white coat' syndrome in the doctor's office and any single test can be scary, but a single test is not a trend. Just want to say, do the test correctly. Five minutes of quiet sitting, feet on floor, cuff at heart level. Google the protocol. In the doctor's office, they call you in and immediately throw the cuff on and say that it's high. I then present my physical calendar with daily annotations of my BP, taken at various times in the day and show that my trend is low-normal. So keep good records."

Dan Khong: "A friend of mine had giddy spells and low heart rate and ended up with a pacemaker. He's OK now."

Ben: "My father had a pacemaker put in a couple years ago for a low heart rate. Sorted him out no problem. I met Ted Curson in Paris in the late '90s. He seemed a very kind and generous man, and had all the patience in the world for some random kid."

Music Note

Are you a Led Zeppelin fan? One of the nice things about the Web is that occasionally I stumble across something that strikes me as a hidden gem. Like finding a ten-dollar bill on the ground or in the pocket of a jacket hanging in your closet, it doesn't happen very often, but it's nice when it does. This is an analysis of Robert Plant's voice as he aged, written by a person who signs theirself* "Kashmir Zoso." It's a Quora response. Originally published in 2016. Fascinating. The conclusion that the band would have fared very differently if Plant had been 24 when the band started up, instead of 20, is startling, but well supported. Also new to me is the idea that his voice hasn't just changed as he got old; it's been changing right along.

Just passing this along.

As an aside, I'll mention that I'm surprised there isn't more curation on the Web. It's very good at adjudicating questions of popularity, but not very good doing the same thing with quality. I try to pass good things along when I can.

Mike

*Themself? Theyself? I'm trying.

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Richard Tugwell: "Ahh...allow me a Led Zeppelin reminiscence. As a student at Edinburgh University in 1973, I saw them live at the Kings Theatre. This is an old classical theatre, before the time of stadium concerts. The concert started with the lights off, and then that great intro to the song "Rock and Roll" started. The lights came on as Plant launched into 'It's been a long time since I rock and rolled.' I still feel the sensation.

"During the concert, some of the antique stucco plaster ceiling fell off—something which would probably have resulted in a mass evacuation these days. But the set went on. It was however the last time the Kings Theatre hosted a rock band. Saw many great and famous bands in the early 'seventies in Edinburgh, all in small intimate venues."

Mike replies: I have a friend who saw Led Zeppelin as an opening act. Another friend has a T-shirt that says, "I might be old, but I got to see all the good bands." You might need one of those!

Andrew Lamb: "My dad was friends with John Bonham. They used to play snooker at the same club (there is movie footage of the club in The Song Remains The Same). Bonham was a major car fan and when I was 14, he took me for a 120-MPH spin in his Maserati Ghibli. I'd never been in a car so low to the ground. Given my youth, I wasn't able to ask any insightful questions about the band. I just about managed 'When's the next album coming out?' He said in a couple of weeks. That was Zeppelin IV. I have his autograph somewhere. I met him a few more times in that club. Top guy. Very friendly. Still a big fan of Robert Plant. Love his albums with Alison Krauss."

What Are the Vocal Ranges? (Music Notes)

This is a very cool little video. Basic, but everybody has things yet to learn.

Short, sweet, and to the point. Not a moment wasted. Well done, you.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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Kudos to Tracy (Music Notes)

Tracy Chapman. Photo by Hans Hillewaert.

Tracy Chapman, who is known to be of the LBGT community, has become the first Black woman ever to have sole writing credit for a No. 1 country music hit.

If you follow country music, you know the name Luke Combs, and if you don't, you might not. Luke's cover of Tracy's "Fast Car," which is dominating the country charts right now, exists in several forms. I can't disambiguate the variants.

A lot of people, understandably, don't quite know how to feel about the apparent "whitewashing" of Tracy's song, but Tracy Chapman herself is gracious: "I never expected to find myself on the country charts, but I’m honored to be there. I’m happy for Luke and his success and grateful that new fans have found and embraced 'Fast Car.'" She's quoted in a nice Washington Post article that doesn't make the issue too heavy. Luke Combs does sing the song with the original words, from a female narrator's perspective.

There's one common misconception in the WaPo article—when it's quoting how "Big Mama Thornton’s 'Hound Dog' was consumed by Elvis Presley" as an example of white artists appropriating Black songs. Not really. Big Mama was the first to have a smash hit with 'Hound Dog,' but she didn't write it. It was written by two Jewish guys. They weren't from the Delta, either—Jerry Leiber hailed from Baltimore and Mike Stoller from Queens. Leiber and Stoller, who wrote or co-wrote more than 70 chart hits and are in the Songwriter's Hall of Fame, also wrote "Jailhouse Rock" and "Yakety Yak" among many other things. They co-wrote "On Broadway" with Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil, and "Stand By Me" with Ben E. King, as well as "Young Blood" with Doc Pomus, whom I've written about before. "Young Blood" was memorably covered by Leon Russell at George Harrison's Concert for Bangladesh.

Anyway, it's not Luke Combs' fault that he's white, or that his version of "Fast Car" blew up the charts. It's a great song and it deserves to cross over to a new audience. I'll always prefer the original myself, but then, I've always had a thing for covers too.

I have a wonderful photograph, by Charles Peterson, of Louis Armstrong and a bunch of big-name Black and white musicians playing together in the kitchen of a segregated Harlem club. They had to play white with white and Black with Black onstage, but, after the club closed, they all got together and jammed with each other backstage into the wee hours. In one shot taken with a Speed Graphic press camera, that's the spirit right there.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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J. D. Ramsey: "'Fast Car' is one of those songs that—at least for me—gets under your skin, and you can listen to it over and over and not tire. The acoustic guitar riff just pulls you in and the words tell a real story of striving for a better life. Luke Combs may have a big hit, but Chapman's version will never be superseded for me. A moment of special musical genius where writer and performer come together perfectly. Thanks for the reminder of this wonderful song and how much pleasure it's brought for 35 years, still sounding fresh today."

Keep Up, Old Fella (OT)

Sunday's Beatles post was probably bad for my brand. I mean, John Lennon has been dead for 42 years. To young people, it must be like I'm writing a post about Beethoven. Or maybe Scott Joplin. Not that there's anything wrong with that. What's that line David Bowie wrote?

And my brother's back at home
With his Beatles and his Stones
We never got it off on that revolution stuff
What a drag.
Too many snags.

The way I feel is that it's gotten increasingly frustrating trying to keep up with new things in the new world order. There's so much stuff, everywhere, and it's all so hard to pin down. What's that phrase? "Everything happens all the time?" Something like that. There's much less shared culture or shared experience now.

Every now and then I will delve into the music of "now," or my conception of it, but it's shocking how quickly that ages. Another part of the problem is that I don't have the same appetites and interests I once did. Or methods of consumption, either. With records, if you were lucky enough to have one, you got to know it very intimately. Other records, unbought, not owned, were a little like foreign countries: you knew them only glancingly, from rumors and radio and friends' houses. The first 12-inch LP (for "long-playing") album I ever got was the Beatles' Something New, a U.S.-only Capitol Records collection. I got it when I was seven. I had to play it on my Dad's "suitcase" stereo record player (one speaker firing outward from each end), because mine only played 45s. But I'm not interested in the current equivalents—Ed Sheeran, say. Because I'm not, you know, seven. Or 13. Or 21. (Although I like Billie Eilish, whose real name is Billie Eilish Pirate Baird O'Connell. That "Pirate" part kills me. Who names their little girl "Pirate"?) I memorized and analyzed and internalized Something New because it was the only record I had. I heard "Komm, Gib Mir Deine Hand" a hundred times before I heard "I Want to Hold Your Hand" one time!

My friend Kim keeps my ears open, but his tastes are eclectic. (Try "Signal" if you like country, but expect some very Coen-Brothers-y twists.) Sirius XM Radio, which I have in the car, is staid and unadventurous. And way too ghettoized—a whole channel of nothing but Tom Petty, a whole channel of nothing but Grateful Dead, a whole channel of nothing but Dave Matthews Band. That's kinda the opposite of what I want. Whenever I make a concerted effort to listen to new stuff, I almost always discover something I really like. But the "finds" I've found that way are up to 35 years old now! Dating from when I was an old man of 31 trying to stay hip. Even the most recent "keep pace" find—the endearingly weird video for Twenty One Pilots' "Stressed Out," which I really like—came out just about exactly eight years ago—or, for today's 20-year-old, when they were 12! That's not recent. Well, not for them. To me, yes.

It's hard keeping up.

Snoop Dogg at TechCrunch Disrupt SF in 2015. Photo
courtesy TechCrunch via Wikimedia Commons.

The great exception is hip-hop. I'm right up to the minute...at about 1993. The rule of thumb is, in music, white people are forever 30 years behind whatever Black people are doing at any given time. So I'm right where I'm supposed to be with Wu-Tang Clan, A Tribe Called Quest, Missy Elliott (dj please, pick up your phone, I'm on the request line), Coolio, Snoop Dogg, Geto Boys, et al. (And Coolio and Bushwick Bill have already passed; RIP.) As far as what Black people are really doing now, what's cool with them now, only they know. Whatever it is, I'll be right there in 30 years lapping it up and learning from it...age 96, still hoping, no doubt, to keep up.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

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My Favorite Beatles Songs: A List (OT)

Believe it or not, photographer Iain Macmillan only took
six frames with his Hasselblad to get this shot

A little fun diversion for a Sunday. This might seem kinda ageist at this point, but not really; a lot of younger people engage with the Beatles, who belong to everybody. The band's greatest hits album Beatles 1 was one of the top-selling albums of the early 2000s, and the 50th Anniversary reissue of Abbey Road (there's a cooking version and a super deluxe version) hit number three in the U.S. and topped the charts in the U.K. in 2019.

My faves counting backwards:

17. Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown)

16. In My Life

15. Baby It's You

14. Cry Baby Cry

13. Glass Onion

12. I'm So Tired

11. I'm Only Sleeping

10. Tomorrow Never Knows

9. Don't Let Me Down

8. Old Brown Shoe

7. Hey Bulldog

6. The Ballad of John and Yoko

5. It's All Too Much

4. A Day in the Life

3. Rain

2. Being for the Benefit of Mr. Kite!

1. I Am the Walrus

Actually, you could shuffle around the top seven any old which way and I could live with it. Can't believe I left off "Rock and Roll Music" (written by Chuck Berry, and one of Lennon's great vocals), "Ticket to Ride," "Come Together," "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" and "Revolution." Gotta stop somewhere.

Number 15 isn't even a Beatles song—it was written by Burt Bacharach, with lyrics by Luther Dixon and Mack David. But I love it. Bacharach, who died not even two months ago at 94, was the guy who wrote "Raindrops Keep Falling On My Head" from that bizarre and incongruous quintessential late-'sixties interlude in the middle of the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, along with bushels of other hits for many different artists.

It would be very interesting to compare this list to my brother Charlie's list, were he to make one. Apart from "A Day in the Life," widely considered one of the very greatest songs of the entire rock era, there might not be a lot of overlap. The Beatles were interesting that way—they had something for everyone. My friend Dan's list would be interesting too. My friend Kim hates lists and the very idea of lists, so there's another party heard from.

Which Beatle
I think there are only two George songs on this list ("Old Brown Shoe" and "It's All Too Much"), and the rest (apart from "Baby It's You") are all or mostly John Lennon songs. Paul wrote the middle eight on "A Day in the Life," the part that starts, "Woke up / Fell out of bed / Dragged a comb across my head"—Paul lyrics if ever there were. Paul also played virtually every instrument other than guitar on "The Ballad of John and Yoko," including drums, and contributed those gorgeous harmonies. Kenneth Womack in The Beatles Encyclopedia reports this exchange from the session:

Lennon (on guitar): "Go a bit faster, Ringo."
McCartney (on drums): "OK, George!"

For his part, George said, "I didn't mind not being on the record, because it was none of my business," adding wryly, "if it had been 'The Ballad of John, George and Yoko,' then I would have been on it." It was the band's last number one hit in the U.K.

I almost included Paul's song "The Long and Winding Road"—the band's last number one in the U.S.—which hit me hard at age 13 when I was homesick during the first week of wilderness camp in Montana. (I recovered and had a blast for the remaining weeks.) But I hate everything about that reprehensible lizard Phil Spector, including his production of that song. Paul, famously, hated it too, naming Spector's troweled-on embellishments among his top six reasons why the Beatles should be disbanded. The version from Let It Be... Naked is better, but still too syrupy for me. I hate to say Spector was right, but it's almost like the song needs some bombast, like Neil Young's over-the-top "A Man Needs a Maid," which features backing by the London Symphony Orchestra no less. Both sound like movie music to me. Couldn't you see "The Long and Winding Road" as the theme music for, say, a movie about a rekindled later-life love affair between old friends?

The right to be wrong
I'm going to go out on a limb and assume that not everyone reading this will agree 100% with the order these are in. A few of you might even have other opinions as to which songs belong on such a list. Have a go.

I hope you have a nice, relaxing, pleasant Sunday, wherever in the world you are. A little music never hurts.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2023 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. (To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below or on the title of this post.)

Featured Comments from:

Albert Smith: "I went to London with my girlfriend and tried to get the Abbey Road crosswalk photo with me in the frame...I know, me and a million others.

"What they don't tell you is that you take your life in your hands because it is an active road with local drivers who are no doubt tired of us 'bloody tourists' blocking their pathway to their destination. Add to that the fact that the road behind the photographer's position curves a bit before coming upon the crossing, and your warning of oncoming traffic is reduced, making your time to set up, compose and shoot very rushed.

"I got several nice shots of my non-photographer girlfriend crossing, but she was not so nimble with my Leica M6, so the pictures of me have slanted angles and are horribly timed, with no separation in my footsteps. This was one time that digital would have been great, since I was gone back to the States when I got the film developed and no reshoot could be done.

"I got on a big George Harrison bend, so my favorite songs, and the ones that I play on my guitar, are George's. On the day George died in 2001, I played 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps' over and over. If I only have 10 minutes to fool around on my guitar, that is the one song that I always play."

Craig: "Your choices are interesting and thoughtful. I don't think I've ever seen anyone say that their favorite Beatles song was "I Am the Walrus", but I've always liked it. (I think I rate the whole "Magical Mystery Tour" album higher than most people do.) Your top 4 songs are definitely among the greatest Beatles tracks, and I think highly of most of the other songs on your list too. "Tomorrow Never Knows" is a masterpiece (and one of relatively few Beatles songs that was mixed better in stereo than in mono).

"I can't agree about 'It's All Too Much,' though. The new songs on Yellow Submarine are, to me, the weakest set of new songs on any Beatles record. Only 'Hey Bulldog' even rises to the level of being enjoyable, and it's not one of John's best, just a fun throwaway with a cute guitar riff."

Alan: "'Hey Bulldog.' When I was 13 I was only interested in the poppy, syrupy stuff. Now I’m pretty sure it’s the greatest tune ever. One day I’ll get around to learning that bass line…."

Joe: "I'm glad to see 'Hey Bulldog' on your list—so good. For some reason I'll never understand, my all-time favorite Beatles tune might be 'Hello Goodbye.'"

Mike replies: That one's extremely catchy. I've read that "Bulldog" is one of the most downloaded Beatles songs by young people. I might have read it 20 years ago, though.

Randall Teasley: "I remember vividly when my twelve-year-old daughter told me that she had discovered a new group called the Beatles. She's forty now and still a fan. A friend of mine says that every generation discovers the Beatles anew."

Mike replies: My son (born '93) did. He went through a phase of listening to all my CDs of the early records when he was 10 or 12. He didn't remain a fan, though.

JTK: "These are the only four Beatles songs I sing to myself occasionally. 'In My Life'—absolutely #1 to me. 'I Am the Walrus,' 'Strawberry Fields,' and 'Paperback Writer' (the one Beatles song I wish I wrote). I Saw them live at The Astoria, Finsbury Park, London, in, I think, 1963. Girls screaming non-stop meant we couldn't hear much. My buddy first clapped eyes on his future wife that night and they are still married. That has to be a 'record'—(sorry ;-) )."

Tom Burke: "I was exactly the right age to be a Beatles fan. Born in 1950, I was a young adolescent when they rose to fame. I was 13 when 'She Loves You' was released, for example, and I thought that was the most exciting thing I'd ever heard. As I proceeded through my teens and started looking for something more, they obliged.

"The white album was the one that divided me and my friends most. We all reckoned that there was a really stunning single album in there, struggling to be heard, but weighed down by all the dross that made up the double album. The interesting thing was that there was huge disagreement among us as to which were the great tracks; everybody's selection for that single album was different. But as I recall, one song that was on almost everybody's list was 'While My Guitar Gently Weeps.' I still listen to that one.

"In fact, I think you've shortchanged George in that selection. No 'Something'? No 'Taxman'?; and above all, no 'Here Comes the Sun'?? Fun fact: George's 'Something' and Eric Clapton's 'Layla' and 'Wonderful Tonight' were all written for/about Patti Boyd/Harrison/Clapton, who was married to both of them."

Dave_lumb: "Most over-hyped boy band ever."

Thomas Mc Cann: "Since the advent of Spotify I have revisited old Beatles songs only to find they have all been 'remastered' so do not coincide with my memories of the originals. Very disappointing."

Peter Jeffrey Croft: "I have too many favourites to list, but being born in 1947 I was 16 in 1963 when The Beatles exploded onto our radios. Therefore I think my favourites date from the early years, when they were so new and so harmonious.

"I especially remember, in the days before stereo and before I had access to a record player, and LP records cost AUD$5.25, more than I could afford, that every track on Beatles records was good. Not like other groups where there might be one or two tracks and the rest were fillers.

"We could only listen on the radio then, big brown leather encased multiband monsters from Singapore and Aden, when my farmer fellow school boarders' well-off parents stopped off on cruises. We had reception of about four or five stations (in a large country town), and we'd finish one Beatles song, then tune down the band and there would be another one playing, and so on, wall to wall Beatles all day and night. Especially Party Time Saturday Night when we sent messages to our sweeties on the radio. Whoo hoo.

"So I grew up with the Beatles and what a privilege it's been. What a great period I've lived through, '60s, '70s, '80s—Beatles, Stones, Pink Floyd, Bee Gees...I have to hand it to the Brits, the talent they came up with is amazing. I'm afraid I don't hear it now.

"Not to mention the first space flights, the first moon landing, my first trip to the UK in 1974. Wow, so many great memories. I'm writing it down as fast as I can before it fades. Luckily my memory is as strong as ever. I have a book in me."

Jimi Hendrix Would Not Be Famous Today (Music Notes)

Rick Beato made an interesting observation the other day…that in the '70s, many musicians were famous for being good players. That is, they were masters of an instrument, and that was a big part of the foundation of their fame and their success. He named a whole bunch of them. But he highlights an observation by Jeff Berlin, which is that being a good player is not something that's needed today. Some “stars” no longer play instruments. As David Crosby claims in his unlikely feud with Kanye West, or whatever West is calling himself now*, West is a big star who can neither sing nor play an instrument. I don’t know if he (West) actually writes his own music or not. But in the same spirit, "writing" music might be another quaint old-fashioned notion that’s really not a needed or valued skill in today’s music scene.

As a counter-argument, though, consider a beautiful video called "Tadow" (with flowing, swirling camerawork by Arsedi) that gives grayheads an idea how a groove turns into a song with modern technology. FKJ (Vincent Fenton) and Masego (Micah Davis) (that's the two of them in the picture), both know how to play the sax, even when they're just sampling it, and FKJ plays the keyboard as well as he plays the technology. Watch Masego's little riff on the drums when he sits down at the kit...that is totally beautiful.

Being a wordsmith I feel like the weakest thing about the piece is the apparently extemporized lyrics, but improvised rap is what the kids are into, so, okay—not my generation, not mine to say. They're "playing" the technology like maestros. Not for nothing they've got 406 million views**. Every generation has something new to offer, and you've got to take them on their chosen terms.

Here's more of FKJ and Masego.

Mike

*It's been entertaining to watch how badly West wants to claim he's Jesus Christ. He keeps running up on it, but he knows he shouldn't.

**Not as impressive as it sounds, since a lot of them were me. lol

Book o' the Week

The Mindful Photographer by Sophie Howarth. I only know of Sophie Howarth from her time as a curator at the Tate Modern in London, but my impression then was positive. Her brand new book (it only came out a few days ago) is about slowing down as a means of enjoying photographing more. It's said to contain a curated collection of photographs along with anecdotes and explanation.

The book link is your portal to Amazon from TOP, should you wish to support this site.

Our link to B&H Photo

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

John Lambert Gordon: "Fascinating commentary on contemporary music and I loved the linked video. My daughter [Jessie Gordon —Ed.] is a jazz singer who usually sings with her own band but sometimes does a one person show using only her voice and a looping pedal. No musicians, no backup instruments, just her voice and the small electronic device shown at the beginning of this clip. The song is a mashup of Gershwin’s 'Summertime' and 'Mango' by Earl Okin. Apologies for the quality. I made this with my iPhone 7 before I knew how to do videography with it."

Mike replies: That's terrific! I enjoyed that.

darlene: "John: Jessica is an incredible voice and musician. Best to her, and thank you for sharing!"

Wolfgang Lonien: "I still remember when I was around 20 and we went to the 'Subway,' a jazz club in Cologne, Germany, to hear Jeff Berlin together with Jean 'Toots' Thielemans. We were standing on our tables to just see these guys, and later we've had some beers and a chat with them. This today would be unthinkable, so Jeff is right about that."

Chris: "Much as I like Rick Beato, he seems to be a firm believer in idea that complexity = good. I think this is simply incorrect. There are things you can admire in complexity that add to the mix, but I think most of us care about melody, and with melody complexity is largely irrelevant. Of course in matters of taste no one can agree. I was, however astonished to hear the other day a hip-hop track with a rap going on on top of Otis Redding's 'Try a Little Tenderness.' Astonishingly awful, lazy, and an assault on the eardrums. "

Peter Barnes: "Thanks for this Mike—I had heard this song, but knew nothing of the artists or the recording process. A beautifully made video too."

Dillan: "I completely agree. People who can play instruments have faded into the background, and that's a shame. For me, the instrumental work was the fun part of music. The singers were mostly just there to accompany the music. My musical tastes range from Louis Armstrong to Soundgarden, but my interest stops cold when the instruments are no longer important. There were exceptions—Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan spring to mind—but they were rare. Today's music does absolutely nothing for me. I suppose that is normal, because I'm nearly in 'old man' territory."

Ronnie A Nilsen: "Content is King! The musicians are doing the same we photographer are doing; using computers to make the process simpler. We use plugins to automate processing. This means that anybody can easily produces something that is technically very good! Be it an image or sound. What differentiates is content. What do you have to tell the world? That is the important part, but is often forgotten when using all the tech to make a HDR image or autotune a song."

Vinyl Sales Now Higher Than at Any Time Since 1988 (OT)

[Comments have been added to the last
two posts, Tuesday 12:50 p.m.]

-

Curiouser and curiouser: Vinyl records are continuing their improbable comeback.

Twelve-inch LPs (LP stands for for long-playing)—introduced in 1948, stereophonic from 1957—were eclipsed by cassette tapes in 1982, and then by CDs in 1987. CDs went on to outsell cassette tapes in 1991, and by 2002 held a dominant 95.7% share of the market. Vinyl records, which had at least two-thirds of the market until 1980, fell to a nadir of just .02% in 2005, and to all appearances were well on the way out. 

But then vinyl started a modest resurgence. And the popularity of CDs began to plummet, first in the face of digital downloads, then because of streaming music.

Now, at the end of 2021, vinyl sales have beaten CDs for two years running, currently representing 6.6% of all music sales—the highest level since 1988. Vinyl records now account for two-thirds of revenue from physical formats. Vinyl also beats out single and album digital downloads from providers such as iTunes, which have fallen dramatically to a mere 4.2% of sales. (Did you know that iTunes is largely a thing of the past? I had not caught up to that fact until I wrote this yesterday.)

Streaming music, the latest king of all formats, set a new record at 83.8% of the market through the first half of this year.

Music sales peaked in 1999 at $24 billion, vs. $14 billion now. While consumers are getting more for less—assuming they prefer old music—most of the difference in those numbers, unfortunately, has come out of the pockets of musicians and other creators. This might be all right for the time being, but eventually it will have the effect of discouraging talented people from musical careers. But I guess that's a separate post.

The LP was nearly dead; long live the LP!

—Luddite Mike
Inset: the 30th Anniversary LP of Nirvana's Nevermind.
These are going very fast.

(Source of most info in this post: Mark J. Perry, AEI)

Products of the Week

Which one is best? Panasonic S1R (47.3 MP), Sony A7R IV (61 MP), Canon R5 (45 MP), or Nikon Z7 II (45.7 MP)? You know the answer.

The above are links to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link if you click on it:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Lisa S. Gorrell: "I still buy vinyl whenever I can. The music sounds much better than digital CDs or downloads. I'm especially happy when the vinyl comes with a code for digital download, so I've got both worlds. (I still have all the vinyl I bought since I was a teen)."

David Dyer-Bennet: "1988, however, was five years after I gave up LPs and switched to CDs."

Mike replies: I decided to buy the first CD player that broke the $300 barrier. The first $299.99 player was the Sony D-5, which came out in late 1984. I bought the first one I could find for sale. But by that time, I had already purchased more than 20 Compact Discs—not an insignificant outlay as they cost $20–30 at the time! I loved that D-5, by the way, and never again owned a CD player I liked more.

David Dyer-Bennet replies to Mike: "Interestingly, I did exactly the same thing—started buying CDs months before I bought the player, and bought the first player I found under $300, that is. And my early purchases were all classical since that and really mainstream rock/pop were all that was available, and I mostly listened to electric folk and some prog rock. Different player, different year. But I've never looked back. Don't think I've had an LP on a turntable since, though I'm now thinking about whether I want to transfer any of the LPs I haven't replaced. Some of them I can't replace, and if I still remember the music then I probably want it available again."

Stéphane Bosman: "Re 'Eventually it will have the effect of discouraging talented people from musical careers': I think it has for quite some time. I do not see in the current production anything that comes close to what the giants of the '50s to '90s did in term of innovation, diversity, and creativity. Today's production is frankly of a lower level. It is even being studied as a phenomenon. It might be due to reduced glue, weed and acid usage, but I think it more likely that there is no more money for taking risks, to waste studio time, to give oddballs a chance. Mike Oldfield's Tubular Bells started the Virgin label. I don't expect anything like that happening again. Another consequences is that concerts have become unaffordable. When recorded music was profitable, concerts served as promotion for the records. Now it is the contrary."

Mike replies: I admire Rick and I watch a lot of his videos, but you have to admit it's kind of funny that a baby-boomer rock 'n' roller is lecturing the kids about the music being too simple! I suppose the older generation has always scolded the younger generation for not being deep enough. I seem to recall reading about a contemporary of Mozart's who scolded him for breaking rules with dissonances.

The book Perfecting Sound Forever by Greg Milner, one of my favorites on this topic, contains a section about the market forces that encourage cheap, fast production, even in classical music.

Robert Pillow: "I'd say vinyl is back. After I replaced an ailing turntable this month with a recent model to keep old vinyl in play, I was surprised to find 100 or so 180-gram LPs by various artists, including Led Zeppelin and Muddy Waters, at the local Wal-mart.

"By the way, this resurgence proves vinyl is long playing."

Chuck Albertson: "The last time I checked, musicians' royalties from vinyl releases were greater than from streaming services."

Paul De Zan: "I don't get the LP revival at all. I know a few twentysomethings who are buying LPs to play on equipment that can't possible do justice to them. Then they talk about how much better they sound. I would say they are about $10k in equipment away from that. The sales numbers are too big for the trend to be a hipster scam, though. Maybe it's about album artwork, the single greatest loss in the move to other formats. Personally I stopped buying LPs as soon as I knew CDs were going to happen. Click, pop, hiss...no thanks."

K4kafka: "A dearly missed element of the 'vinyl age' is the loss of album cover art. Some very creative photography on display in a 12" square format."

Mike replies: It's one of the ways Lee Friedlander got his start. Jay Maisel shot the cover of Kind of Blue. Brian Duffy did the cover of Aladdin Sane. We could go on and on here I'm sure....

Ben: "My vinyl heyday was right around (maybe just before) its nadir. Ahead of my time? Contrarian? Or just the right time in my life, and used records were cheap.

"It’s funny that record stores are a thing again now, though I think they all tend to make a bunch of their profit on discogs, or at least a bunch of the new ones raised the capital to start their brick-and-mortar stores through online sales. When my friend who did this to open a basement shop told me a few years back that he was going to quadruple or quintuple his rent to move to a street level in the more expensive part of town, I was floored. How could he make that rent selling vinyl? But he’s doing fine, even through the pandemic. It’s too bad so many of the great little shops didn’t survive the 'aughts and early teens…I think there’s also something to be said for how record stores themselves supported so many independent musicians simply by employing them! How many of your favorite local musicians worked at one of the local record stores?"

Bryan Geyer: "Do take note that the preponderance of the 2021 vinyl volume is unlike the classic LP market that we used to know. Current sales are heavily skewed by Generation Z buyers who pay $20–40 per disc for pop market records that come in vibrant colors and are often bundled with poster art. The scope is very limited. Only the most popular recording artists can consider the cost and complexity implicit in cutting vinyl today, so it's mostly Taylor Swift, et al, that drive the volume. It's a very trendy and restricted market; not nearly so impressive as the raw stats would seem to indicate."

Mike replies: There's no accounting for taste, of course, but I'll just observe that the 180-gram record section at Acoustic Sounds lists 5,367 products.

Dan Boney: "I have often found that the 'third generation' of many products is the 'sweet spot'; by then, real refinements have been made and afterwards it shifts to 'making it cheaper'...that’s a lot of what happened with CD players. Works out well with cameras as well—think of the Nikon F3, Leica M3, Olympus OM-3/4....

"One thing that I wonder about with new vinyl—are the releases actually from analog originals, or digital recordings just translated to analog for vinyl release?"

Alt and Indie Gems from the 2000s (Music Notes) (OT)

[Comments have been added.]

-

Cat Power

Feeling old yet, fortysomethings? Get prepared, you will.

Here's a collection of songs from the vanished aughts that deserve more listens. These are just random personal faves, among many...no big claims for the list. I've linked to YouTube versions, but of course you can find them in whatever source you use for music (I use Roon and Quobuz for the sound quality). In no particular order:

The Streets [Mike Skinner] — Could Well Be In. A rap song by a white Englishman with a thick accent that constructs a narrative of a hookup in a bar that's surprisingly dimensional and moving. Don't watch the video—better to picture them in your head. The link is to the longer (4:22) uncensored version (so beware profanity).

Autolux — Great Days for the Passenger Element. I think I've mentioned this one before. At some point I got allergic to BDR ("big dumb rock") drumming and started to search out more interesting rhythm work. I guess I learned that from hip-hop. Always loved how this moves.

The Mountain Goats [John Darnielle] — Dilaudid. A "perfect little poem of hate," to borrow what Walker Evans said of Lee Friedlander's photographs. Darnielle, a mercurial and reflexively prolific songwriter, at his most quirkily brilliant. (And no drums on this one.)

Yo La Tengo — You Can Have It All. A blissful, rompy, genial little song built of sublime harmonies.

Athlete — El Salvador. Upbeat sing-a-longer from a band that came, made a splash, and went.

Beck — Ghettochip malfunction (Hell Yes). Hard to say what my favorite Beck song is, but when I listen to this, this is. I like you Ace, your beat is nice.

Beauty Pill — The Cigarette Girl From the Future. A cult classic that might be too experimental/weird for some, but check out the lyrics: the song nails the conundrum of futurism in very few words. Beauty Pill had a hit with the exquisite "Goodnight For Real" from The Unsustainable Lifestyle, which is how I found them.

Jeff Beck — Nadia. I was besotted with this beautiful track during the time I was in love with Sara and listened to it like 600 times. Had to keep away from it for a year after the breakup.

Cat Power — Lived in Bars. Gorgeously sung ballad about the loneliness of the party life. And William Eggleston has a cameo in the video.

Maximo Park — Graffiti. The line "I'll do graffiti if you sing to me in French" makes me laugh. And you have to like a song that ends with the phrase "and that's enough."

Pixies — Bam Thwok. Recorded for but not used in 2004's Shrek 2 and eventually released as a download-only single on Apple's iTunes, this "endearingly daft" song is one of the subset of Pixies songs on which Kim Deal sings lead.

Laura Veirs, Riptide. Wistfully spooky (or spookily wistful) tune from the Portland, Oregon, singer-songwriter's first Nonesuch album, Carbon Glacier. I like the way this melts into an instrumental.

Badly Drawn Boy — A Minor Incident. English singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist Damon Michael Gough has a clever stage name. Elegiac, from-the-heart folk-tinged song.

Massive Attack — Risingson. The foreboding dirge-like first single from Massive Attack's massive hit Mezzanine sampled The Velvet Undergound.

J Dilla — Workinonit. Donuts was released three days before the hip-hop producer J Dilla's death from TTP and lupus; most of the tracks were recorded in his hospital room using a 45-rpm record player and a Boss SP-303 sampler. The album, which had its moment, is a pared-down sketchpad of notes and ideas for songs that could never get made.

Modest Mouse — The World at Large. The ying to the yang of the more popular "Float On," into which it flows on the album Good News for People Who Love Bad News.

Ray Davies — Morphine Song. Underrated gem from the Kinks frontman describes his stay in an Emergency Room after being shot by muggers in New Orleans. Moral: Don't chase muggers; but if you do, you might encounter some characters in the ER.

Sondre Lerche — Two Way Monologue. No idea how this guy is viewed in his native Norway, but Lerche "is consistently experimenting with alternate chord voicings and more complex song structures" (Nick Sylvester) on this album, and this title track rollicks right along.

Blind Boys of Alabama — Way Down in the Hole. This Tom Waits cover, by the famous gospel group founded in 1939 that features a revolving cast of mostly visually impaired musicians, was used as the theme music for Season One of HBO's The Wire.

Howe Gelb — Get To Leave. A token track from one of my favorite albums of that decade, "'Sno Angel Like You." Howe Gelb (of Giant Sand...well, not "fame," but of Giant Sand!) is an acquired taste, but this album, for which he realized a longtime dream by hiring a gospel choir to sing backup, is pure gentle quirky fun.

I hafta stop. It sure was fun to go back and revisit these old songs, and a lot more besides. I haven't heard some of them in many years. By the way, if you're wondering why so few things from the last years of the decade, I was working full steam on TOP by that time and didn't have much leisure time to check out bands and music.

Hope you discover a thing or two here you like!

Mike

P.S. This kind of post is surprisingly difficult to pull together. If you happen to see any mistakes, please let me know!

[UPDATE: Andreas Sakka helpfully created a public Spotify playlist of 16 of these 20 songs...thanks Andreas!]

Book o' the Week

Our National Monuments: America's Hidden Gems by Q.T. Luong. Just out! Brand new. Publishing isn't easy. Our friend QT (Tuan) Luong tells me that his new book will have to sell 6,200 copies out of a print run of 7,500 just to break even! And that's not including the labor and time it took to make the photographs. Fortunately, the predecessor book, Treasured Lands, has done exceedingly well. It has won 12 international awards and is now in its 6th printing.

The above is a link to Amazon from TOP. Once you're at Amazon, anything you search and buy will be credited to TOP. The following logo is also a link:

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
Featured Comments from:

Tom Burke: "Re 'Feeling old yet, fortysomethings?' Never mind them, they’ve got years to get used to it. Wait till you read a 'it happened 50 years ago today!' article about a concert you went to and remember like it was last month. Stones in the Park, summer 1969, and The Guardian did a loving reminiscence about it in 2019. Well, thanks. Still comes as a shock, even three years on. I mean, it cannot possibly be 50 years since that afternoon because I haven’t changed at all. Not really; not inside. Maybe."

Tex Andrews: "I work with Drew Doucette of Beauty Pill. He's the head of AV at the Hirshhorn, handles all the editing of our main video stuff, along with working with all of the time-based media we exhibit. Lots o' troubleshooting there, lemme tell ya. He also obviously consults with the curators and exhibition designers about all of our capabilities/incapabilities, where the projectors need to go, the audio, etc. Real good guy. You'd never know he was a rock star...and Grammy winner (but not with BP)."

Peter Croft: "Huh. I've heard of Jeff Beck and Ray Davies (if it's the same Ray Davies I used to know), but none of the rest of them. I think they stopped writing good music around that time. I'm gettin' old (75)."

Nigli: "Mike, thanks for that. I opened the Spotify playlist and it made my day. It's right up my alley."

Ian Provan: "Thanks for the list Mike! A few songs there I already love, and a few I look forward to checking out. And I second Tom Burke's comment. I saw a few months ago that it's 50 years since Hunky Dory was released, which means next year will be the 50th anniversary of Ziggy Stardust! That was the album that changed me from someone who liked listening to music to someone utterly besotted with rock 'n' roll."

Carlos Quijano: "And the winner is: Howe Gelb. Great. And digging around I found his band Giant Sand: great too. Thanks Mike."

Stuart Phillips: "Thanks for sending me off down a Massive-Attack-shaped rabbit-hole. Re: Tom Burke's comment, it's only 25 years since they were the soundtrack to my undergrad and postgrad studies, from Blue Lines to Protection to Mezzanine. While it's a shock, it's not yet that big a shock!"

Mike replies: Sounds like you might be interested in this:

The 30th anniversary reissue of Nirvana's Nevermind. On vinyl, and, at the same link, also CD, and also a deluxe multi-disc vinyl set, and the same in CD.

Another landmark album recently (in July) turned 25, Sublime's self-titled third album, released three days after Brad Nowell's death, but I think they're gone now; and here's a hot tip if you happen to collect vinyl (I don't, any more, although I have earlier versions of those two): Porcupine Tree's Deadwing is just about to come out on vinyl. Those will go very fast. That's the album with the amazing 12-minute Pink-Floydesque "Arriving Somewhere But Not Here" on it.

The Wrecking Crew (OT) (Music Notes)

I spent yesterday feasting on music and movies and articles about music, following up on all your suggestions and comments from the recent post about guitarists. The big discovery for me is Sylvain Luc, who was suggested by a reader signing himself Williiam.

And I've been learning all about The Wrecking Crew, a shifting group of 15 to 35 freewheeling first-call session musicians in L.A. in the 1960s and early '70s who played on literally hundreds of hits from the era. Just a few: The Byrds' "Mr. Tambourine Man"; Barbra Streisand's "The Way We Were"; the Monkees' "Last Train to Clarksville"; the Beach Boys' "Good Vibrations"; Simon and Garfunkel's "Bridge Over Troubled Waters"; Sonny and Cher's "The Beat Goes On" (for which Wrecking Crew stalwart Carol Kaye provided the famous bass line); and Frank Sinatra's "Strangers in the Night" ("the worst f------ song I've ever heard," Sinatra said when he first heard it, but it went straight to number one and stayed there for a whopping fifteen weeks). They played on records by Nat King Cole, the Carpenters, John Denver, Neil Diamond, and Ike and Tina Turner and dozens if not hundreds of others. Frothy now-forgotten number-one hits like The Association's "Windy," and "Dizzy" by Tommy Roe? That was them. They played on dozens of TV themes, too, from "Hawaii Five-O" to "Bonanza" to "Batman," and created innumerable commercial jingles.

Their names never appeared on the records because the recording industry didn't want the public to know that the bands weren't playing on their own records—and that so many of the same musicians were playing on all the records. The facade began to crack when one of the Monkees—I think it was Peter Tork—arrived at the studio with his guitar and was shocked to learn that the songs were already all finished except for the vocals, which was the only part the band members were expected to provide. The word started to get out—I actually remember where I was when I heard the rumor about the Monkees not even playing on their own records (on the school bus passing my friend Larry Dubin's house)—and the practice of having session aces replace band members on recordings started to decline.

One of the biggest reasons for the arrangement in the first place was efficiency. Wrecking Crew players could lay down a finished track in one to four hours whereas it might take the real band a similar number of days of studio time to accomplish the same task. Ironically, the huge and growing sales of records in the '60s made it more feasible to let bands play on their own records; paying for exorbitant amounts of studio time became feasible for big acts in the later years of the '60s and in fact became a bit of a status symbol. (The vinyl box of the recent deluxe 50th Anniversary release of Crosby Stills & Nash's Déjà Vu contains three disks of demos, outtakes and alternates from the sessions.) The Beatles famously allowed themselves unlimited amounts of studio time after they stopped touring.

The group got its moniker from the 1990 memoir of drummer Hal Blaine, who said that in the early days, the more straightlaced and formal studio musicians of an earlier time thought that the new young guys (and Carol!) who were willing to play rock 'n' roll, as well as improvise from charts instead of having everything written out, were going to "wreck" music.

If you're interested in pop music and you remember that era, the 2008 documentary The Wrecking Crew is fascinating. I found it on Amazon but it's available elsewhere too.

Mike

Lens of Interest this week:

If you should happen to be looking for an all-purpose zoom for the Sony APS-C cameras I've been discussing lately, here it is. The Sony E 16–55mm ƒ/2.8 G is a high-quality, constant aperture APS-C zoom of manageable weight and appropriate size that covers the true wide-angle to short telephoto range. Its built-in stabilization makes it a perfect match for the unstabilized A6xxx models, but it's good enough to be matched with Sony's best.

The link above is a portal to Amazon. Also available from:

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Lists Are Impossible

So (as you might imagine) I've gotten interested in some of the many things people said yesterday about lists, and I've been thinking more about my little off-the-cuff "20 Greatest Male Guitarists" list from yesterday.

Grant said "perhaps you would better understand your affection for lists if you just made a list of things that you like about lists." A good joke, but actually it made me feel tempted to do just that!

I won't, though. Too much work.

False hierarchy and other headaches
Thinking about it more, if I were really making a list of notable guitarists, I think it would have to include about 50 people. Twenty is just the wrong number. Too limited.

These things suggest the scale they need...for instance, I think a list of the Greatest NBA Basketball Players of All Time should be a group of about 15. That's the point at which I start to be comfortable leaving people out. With only 20 guitarists, there are musicians not mentioned who we're simply not comfortable leaving out.

A list of 50 would naturally include female guitarists. (And then, not only could I have Bonnie Raitt and Joni Mitchell, I could at least try to finagle a place for Ana Vidović.)

In fact it would have room for representing many things that people mentioned and that need to be represented, such as: a historical figure from before the age of recording; pure virtuosos like Guthrie Govan whose playing is purely about dexterity and speed; and at least one token studio musician. You might consider "token" to be a pejorative, but in fact it's a highly useful concept to a listmaker. In a list of 50, many people could be tokens—each of them representing whole genres, periods, instruments, regions, or styles and approaches that really should be represented. Of course this is only useful if every list item is discussed.

Next, it would be much better if it wasn't titled "Greatest" or "Best." That makes it instantly about status, which opens a Pandora's box. Humans love competition, and our attention is instantly engaged when we make anything into a contest. But art isn't really a contest, cutting contests and "battles of the bands" notwithstanding. So I'd be much more comfortable with a title like "50 Fascinating Guitarists," or "50 Guitarists You Should Know." That takes away not only the Greatest/Best aspect, but also the false-hierarchy aspect, avoiding the absurdity of a list on which the person ranked at number 12, say, is implied to be "better" than the person in the 13th position, which is nothing but false precision.

This is the reason I put my list yesterday in order of birth year: it was a way to abolish ranking.

Balance imbalances
Of course then I ran into another problem...I had inadvertently highlighted the fact that many people considered "great guitarists" were born in the 1940s. Which in turn led me to include Kurt Cobain because I realized late in the process that I needed at least one person born in the 1960s.

This is the "balance" problem you run into in any such list. Balance problems open lists to criticism based on ideas of inclusiveness—as when, for example, Victor Bloomfield criticized my list for not including enough classical guitarists (my list only had one, as a token). And didn't somebody mention that I had shortchanged Spanish and Portuguese guitarists?

You might think there are only a limited number of inclusiveness factors to balance, and that therefore it should be possible to consider all of them, but actually there is an unlimited supply. It all depends on which criteria you highlight. What if a list didn't have a single Latinx guitarist? Or a single left-handed guitarist—what are you, biased toward righties? Or a single blind guitarist—don't you know that there are a number of famous blind guitarists, such as José Feliciano, Jeff Healey, and Blind Lemon Jefferson (whose first name, by the way, really was Lemon)? This "balance problem" goes on and on. No matter how the listmaker struggles for balance, there are still going to be openings for criticism to sneak in.

In this case, I highlighted year of birth, which in turn obligated me to make sure not too many of the guitarists I mentioned were people born in the '40s. Many of the musicians who were most active in the peak decades of "classic rock," the '60s and '70s, were naturally born in the '40s. But as I (and, ahem, several critics) mentioned, my attempt at balance in that regard ended up distorting my list, because I made a stab at balance by going out of my way to find a guitarist born in the '60s. You might call this "overbalancing"...bending too far over backwards to preserve an appearance of fairness.

It's related to quotas, as in, "on a list of 50, at least ten must be women, 20 must be acoustic guitarists, and at least one must have sold his soul to the Devil at the crossroads."

Impossible
Reader robert e said it nicely: "I think lists are most useful for one's own delectation and education, and possibly to fuel edifying geeky debate if they're not taken too seriously. They're also decent starting points to get into a new topic, again as long as they're not taken too seriously."

That's getting into "a list of the reasons we like lists," and it's a nice starting point. For me, listmaking is a way of engaging with a subject, a reason to get into the kind of research I enjoy doing, which in turn helps me learn. Mostly, I suppose, it's just a way of focusing on something I want to focus on. I do get a bit "obsessive" sometimes. I had fun on Saturday night listening to dozens of guitarists.

Probably the most important thing Robert said, he said twice: don't take it too seriously! That's crucial. Only if a list can stay lighthearted, flexible, and fun does it serve its real functions, which are and ought to be modest.

Finally, Zyni Moë put it succintly (she said it twice too): "lists are impossible."

As the characters in The Wire all say, "true dat."

Mike

Lens of Interest this week:

If you should happen to be looking for an all-purpose zoom for the Sony APS-C cameras I've been discussing lately, here it is. The Sony E 16–55mm ƒ/2.8 G is a high-quality, constant aperture APS-C zoom of manageable weight and appropriate size that covers the true wide-angle to short telephoto range. Good enough to be matched with Sony's best.

The link above is a portal to Amazon. Also available from:

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

(To see all the comments, click on the "Comments" link below.)
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Open Mike: G.O.A.T. Guitarists (OT)

[Ed. note: "Open Mike" is the often off-topic Editorial page of TOP, and is supposed to appear on Wednesday; "Sunday Support Group," loosely defined as posts meant to be supportive of projects and aspirations, is supposed to appear on Sundays. But we're out of sync this week.]

Arthur Rothstein, Boy musician [Weldon Drake], Weslaco, Texas, 1942.
Note that his 12-string has 11 strings. From
the Library of Congress via Shorpy.

I like lists. They're fun and a challenge to compile. They're also ultimately meaningless and pointless, so I'm not exactly sure why they appeal to me. I guess it's the process of deciding which criteria matter; it helps clarify one's values. It's also a way of celebrating what's real, or good...or of bestowing approval. Or maybe it's just a way of diving into the thing, whatever it is.

I don't know, actually.

I was whiling away some downtime last night and stumbled on a WatchMojo video called "20 Greatest Male Guitarists of All Time." The list was just so bad, so wrong, that it actually troubled me. (I can't come to bed, someone is wrong on the internet!)

So I made my own list.

Here's mine, in chronological order by date of birth:

Andres Segovia b. 1893
Django Reinhardt b. 1910
Robert Johnson b. 1911
Les Paul b. 1915
Wes Montgomery b. 1923

Chet Atkins b. 1924
Chuck Berry b. 1926
Derek Bailey b. 1930
John Fahey b. 1939
Jimi Hendrix b. 1942

Jeff Beck b. 1944
Neil Young b. 1945
Allan Holdsworth b. 1946
Paco de Lucia b. 1947
Carlos Santana b. 1947

Larry Carlton b. 1948
Stevie Ray Vaughan b. 1954
Eddie Van Halen b. 1955
Kurt Cobain b. 1969
Derek Trucks b. 1979

What do you think? I tried to look at different styles, not just flashy BDR-type* players.

But...20? It doesn't even scratch the surface. The real truth is probably that you might be able to pick 20 guitarists in the specific style you like and listen to, and then present them as a group without ranking. I saw one such list of bluegrass flat-picking guitarists. Or you could pick 20 from a particular era, or divide them by some quality or property like most influential or most popular.

My friend Kim, who posts those "C60Crew" mixes on MixCloud, knows about twenty times as much as I do about guitarists. Maybe that's giving me too much credit. But I asked him for help with some list or other a long time ago (was it my Jazz Starter Kit list? I don't remember), and he said, "I hate lists. I don't even think like that."

Ever since then, I've been sort of suspicious of my affection for listmaking.

Anyway, I'm hoping you might educate me on the topic of great guitarists. I'm sure to learn something....

Mike

*Big dumb rock. A friend used to refer to the radio station DC101 in Washington D.C. back in the '80s as "the BDR station."

Book of Interest this week:

The Education of a Photographer, Edited by Charles H. Traub, Steven Heller, and Adam B. Bell, Allworth Press, 2006, 256 pages. A small but rich gold mine of short essays and interviews by and about photographers. Also available from The Book Depository with free shipping worldwide.

Original contents copyright 2021 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site.

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Featured Comments from:

dkreithen: "OK, I'll bite: you missed all the Nashville session guys. An imperfect and partial list would include Glen Campbell, Albert Lee, James Burton, Jimmy Capps, Bryan Sutton, and, to me, the greatest living guitarist, Jerry Douglas (but he plays dobro). Those are only the ones that I know the names of. Also, the LA crowd, including Carol Kaye and Tommy Tedesco. In addition, Ry Cooder should be on or near your list. Many of the ones you have listed I would call 'stylists' rather than all-around greats, including: Kurt Cobain (really?), Stevie Ray Vaughn, Van Halen, Neil Young, Chuck Berry. Some of them are notable and individualistic, but hardly great. I would put most rock guitarists in that category. If you want great stylists, you missed folks like Bo Diddley (truly inventive), Buddy Guy, James Williamson, Robert Quine, Billy Zoom, Dave Davies, etc. Your real omission are the session guys (and gals). They don't have household names, but they tend to be the best."

Mike replies: One of my faves among the session guys is Elliott Randall. Jimmy Page's favorite guitar solo is Elliott Randall's on Steely Dan's "Reelin' in the Years." Page supposedly once said it was "a 12 out of 10."

Grant: "Mike, perhaps you would better understand your affection for lists, if you just made a list of things that you like about lists. Just sayin'."

Michael Allen: "Great topic for a Sunday, Mike. I'll weigh in from the Canadian perspective. One of the wellsprings of Canadian guitar is Bruce Cockburn. While best known as an edgy songwriter, his playing has influenced no end of Canadian artists for more than a generation. An apocryphal tale has a Rolling Stone interviewer asking Van Halen what it's like to be the best guitarist in the world, his reply being 'ask Bruce Cockburn.' Probably not true, but with enough potential substance to remain in circulation. Check out his 2005 instrumental album, 'Speechless.' Not at all splashy, but it nourishes me. Cockburn downplayed his technique, feeling that he was a pretty good player for a lyricist.

"It's a pretty straight line from Bruce to Don Ross, who cannot be described. Don won the National Fingerstyle Guitar Championship twice, and to see him play is jaw-dropping (he calls it 'heavy wood'). Keep safe. Mike Allen (Vancouver)."

Robert: "No real arguments (it's a personal list after all), but I would include at least two others that you have not: Roy Buchanan and Tommy Emmanuel (an Australian). And perhaps another Australian (I am from there, so biased): John Williams."

Tippler (partial comment): "Unless you’re cultured enough and have heard every guitarist of all times, you would not know if you missed one that should be on the list. And suppose you did happen to hear every guitarist, you may not know enough about a particular genre of guitar to be able to discern greatness."

Mike replies: Very true, very true. There are whole genres I never listen to. Metal, for one. I wouldn't know Dave Mustaine from Kirk Hammett.

CRM (partial comment): "I think that almost everyone that I would add has already been mentioned. A dozen or two in the comments that I don’t know. I will be wandering around YouTube for the next week."

Mike replies: The great discovery for me of this post so far has been Sylvain Luc. Wonderful. Suggested by Williiam.

Mike Plews (partial comment): "One of the strangest and most wonderful albums I own is a Hank Williams tribute record by Joe Pass and Roy Clark. Turns out they had been fans of each other for years and didn't know."

Ed. note: Here's the link.

Mark Roberts: "Speaking of Allan Holdsworth, here's a great video that breaks down one of his mind-blowing licks. It's beautiful to see how it's constructed and amazing to think that such a complex part could be improvised. (And be aware that Rick Beato's YouTube channel can be a serious time sink!)"

Simon: "Lots of great names here, both in Mike's list and the suggestions. Zyni Moë beat me to add a name that I didn't think I'd see—Johnny Marr of The Smiths. Very distinctive and influential. I was also pleased to see Martin Taylor and would also suggest Martin Simpson. One way of settling on a genuinely 'greatest' list is to get the choice of the players that have been nominated. You should end up with a clearer idea of who the ultimate 'guitarist's guitarists' might be. As a player, much as I admire shredders, I'd second Steve Rosenblum's suggestion of David Gilmour. I never tire of Comfortably Numb (particularly the live Pompeii recording) and Another Brick In The Wall Part II."

Dillan: "I know this is an impossible task, but you've left off some true innovators: Freddie King, who influenced everything from surf music to good old roadhouse blues, Link Wray who's innovations led the way from early countryfied rock to the harder sounds of the late '60s, and Dick Dale, who brought a Middle Eastern vibe to surf guitar.

"I humbly submit the subdued, but hugely influential sound of Steve Cropper to this list. Without him, the Stax R & B sound wouldn't exist. His sound reverberates through music today. I would also point out Jerry Garcia, who had a very unique sound. I personally can listen to the man play for hours. I would also consider J.J. Cale, who had a very unique and influential sound. Eric Clapton, Peter Green, Mick Taylor, Jimmy Page, Keith Richards, Pete Townshend, and Mark Knopfler all deserve mention. None were really innovators, but all are profoundly skilled. Speaking of profoundly skilled, Glen Campbell? He was truly awesome! One more to consider, now that I'm thinking: Ry Cooder. He seems like a true master to me. I really enjoyed this article. I know we're all forgetting artists who belong on this list, but it's just for fun anyway. Thank you very much for publishing it!"

Mike replies: A number of musicians would be on my personal favorites list, including Mick Taylor, Freddie King, J.J. Cale, Johnny Marr, and Peter Green, not to mention several jazz greats. Neil Young probably belongs on my personal favorites list and not on a GOAT list. See, this makes me happy, but isn't it silly? Like it matters. I guess it's a good way to talk about it and think about it.

John McMillin: "Pat Metheny's been around for such a long time that he tends to be taken for granted, or remembered only for his popular work in the jazz-rock crossover days of the 'eighties. Since that time, I've seen him tear it up on a beat-up Gibson jazz electric, the wailing Roland guitar sythesizer, various tender nylon-strong acoustics, and the four-necked Pikasso harp guitar that he devised. He's played with dozens of the top jazz musicians all the way back to veterans of Miles Davis's band, but also an 80-piece orchestra of robotically played instruments. Pat's latest release features his intricate compositions performed by a classical guitar quartet. What other guitarist shows that kind of broad range?

"Pat never rests on his laurels. He's well-known for practicing for hours after playing a concert. I've heard that once he practiced for two hours before a gig at his son's birthday party. He's written over 500 songs, and some have entered the jazz canon; guitarist John Pizzarelli just released an album of Metheny covers.

"Metheny's maximalist approach has included exotic instruments, world music, 'found sounds' and plenty of leading-edge technology, which leads him outside the jazz mainstream. In concert, he'll expand the musical palette from a whisper to a roar. At the core of it all is his deep melodicism, as expressed in rich chords and single notes that are as fluid and flexible as a violinist's. What he's expressing is always complex, and humane and warm...except for a couple of wild free jazz and noise albums that even this superfan can't withstand. That's the mark of a musical leader, someone who'll take you beyond where you didn't know you wanted to go."

David Aschkenas: "I might have missed it, but certainly Roy Buchanan and Danny Gatten should be on the list. I did a couple of album covers for Roy back in the '70s."

Open Mike: Readings, Movies, and Music

[My apologies! I finished this this morning and thought I published it around 11:00 a.m. But apparently I just forgot to click the "Publish Now" button. That's only happened rarely in years of blogging. Anyway..."Open Mike" is the off-again on-again Editorial Page of TOP. Today's is a grab-bag. When Yr. Hmbl. Ed. is caught up with himself, it appears on Wednesdays. Even if only barely.]

-

Strange & curious: Been feeling like a hermit lately? You've got nothing on Christopher Knight:

For decades, the residents of Maine’s Kennebec Valley believed that the North Pond hermit was a myth. According to local lore, a hermit had been living undetected in the woods since the 1980s; every so often, he would break into seasonal cabins to steal food and other resources. But no one could prove the hermit’s existence—if he was out there, he had taken great pains to guarantee his isolation.

Then, in April 2013, a man was arrested in the deep woods of Maine. His name was Christopher Thomas Knight. According to societal records, he didn’t exist. For 27 years, he had camped out in the forest, surviving on meager supplies that he’d burglarized from houses in the area. He endured winter temperatures of 20 degrees below zero. Every morning, he watched the sun rise over the foggy valley that he called home. He hadn’t had a single conversation with another person for nearly three decades.

His greatest challenge was surviving the Winters. He would deliberately fatten himself up at the end of the Summer and into the Fall. A night camping in the throes of a Maine Winter is not for the faint of heart; a week of it qualifies an outdoorsman as a tough guy. In twenty-seven years at his encampment in the woods, Knight never slept in anything but a tent. The cold was so intense it drove him close to suicide. He would wake himself at 2:30 in the morning in the dead of Winter because he knew he stood a better chance if he faced the worst of the cold awake. "It's dangerous to sleep too long in Winter," he told the reporter who visited him in jail.

But apart from finding an intellectual who loved to read (and loved Lynyrd Skynyrd!), who knew who the Kardashians were, and was so averse to human connection that he seldom made eye contact, the reporter could get little out of him about the central mystery, "why":

Anyone who reveals what he’s learned, Chris told me, is not by his definition a true hermit. Chris had come around on the idea of himself as a hermit, and eventually embraced it. When I mentioned Thoreau, who spent two years at Walden, Chris dismissed him with a single word: "dilettante."

The first quote is by Emily Buder. The second is from a long article in GQ from 2014 by Michael Finkel called "The Strange & Curious Tale of the Last True Hermit." Fascinating article; recommended if you think you're "isolating"!

Snob about fiber-base: When I was young I was a snob about fiber-base black-and-white papers. They were the traditional material, made the old way. RC paper was "plastic," and was tainted by its early reputation for self-destructing. Good for intermediate prints and prints for repro only. Don't extrapolate this any further than it goes, but I will say this: I have plenty of workprints made on Ilford RC papers from thirty and thirty-five years ago, and they look  as fresh and clean as the day I made them. I can't say if they'll last 70 years, or 200. But I like their chances.

Opinions about Bogart: I'm mildly a fan of movies made before I was born, especially the genre called "Noir," and if you like Noir you'll have opinions about Bogart. In his top three for me (the other two are The Caine Mutiny and of course Casablanca) is a little-remembered suspense thriller about a writer. To enjoy In a Lonely Place you can't focus on the murder mystery, which is nothing but a sub-plot—you have to get into its psychological portrayal of the doomed love affair. Movies that take this tack have to resonate with you in some way or they might not appeal much. But they can be deep and meaningful if they do touch you.

In a Lonely Place was directed by Nicholas Ray, who directed Rebel Without a Cause and influenced Godard and the French New Wave. It co-stars his now little-known wife, Gloria Grahame. Their marriage broke up during the filming but the two kept the breakup secret so as not to jeopardize the project. The script departed greatly from the book, and the director and actors departed greatly from the script—Ray cleared the set and crafted a new, more subtle ending with the two leads when the planned finale, which had already been shot, rang false. The movie creates characters who might now be understood as having what's called an avoidant/dismissive adult attachment style, but with sympathy for the tragedy inherent in being trapped in such a state. Glenn Erickson of DVD Savant put it beautifully:

Relationships are delicate animals—they can be killed by the wrong words, the wrong actions. Dix and Laurel are madly in love with one another, but that trust is destroyed when her terror and his rage go over the edge. It doesn't matter that he's innocent, or that they are both in intense remorse over what happened. It can't be taken back, and the romance is finished. Both will have to go back to their personal 'lonely places.'

Brilliant lines of criticism—so very much on the mark.

Of course another reason I love old Noir films is for the black-and-white. In a Lonely Place was shot by the cinematographer Burnett Guffey, who also did Bonnie and Clyde, a movie whose cinematography is naturalistic and plainspoken. Cinematographers have trouble being artists because they seldom get to pick their projects; the best they can hope for is to become the go-to of a great director. Guffey was a get-it-done pro whose life's list of accomplishments is a motley of good and bad, television and film, the trivial and the profound. But In a Lonely Place is as outstanding in 1950 B&W as Bonnie and Clyde is in 1967 color. A treat. I'd like to see more of his work.

Gloria Grahame and Humphrey Bogart in In a Lonely Place

Carrie Rickey of The Moviegoer considers the performances the best of of both Grahame's and Bogart's careers. The most disturbing thing I've read about the film? Louise "Brooksie" Brooks said that of all his roles, the role of Dixon Steele in In a Lonely Place came closest to the real-life Humphrey Bogart she knew.

As with all old Noirs there are numerous versions floating about. The print on Amazon Prime Video is great, and it's available on DVD and Blu-Ray from the Criterion Collection.  

Young Girl Blues: Like guitar? My good old friend Kim's latest is a lilting and wistful mix of guitars across genres—indie, Brit-folk, blues, alt, folk-rock. It's been raining here for a week, and it's a great hour's listen on a rainy day. I loved the Band of Horses song, which I had never heard before. And yes, the "cover" art of Young Girl Blues is in beautiful black-and-white.

Something I happened to hear on XM Radio in the car: it's a version of Led Zeppelin's "Going to California" with the vocals removed. It's one of those songs I've always loved and never tire of, but I found it fascinating how much the vocal serves as another instrument and another line, and how different the music sounds as an acoustic instrumental. Just a curiosity. Lend an ear if you're so inclined.

Aromatically yours: One final reading. Another of my old friends you've met in these pages before, Jim Schley, just published a review of a new book of poetry, Elizabeth A.I. Powell's Atomizer (Amazon).

Vermont poet Elizabeth A.I. Powell's way with words is daring, sardonic and ingenious. She enjoys mixing registers and realms—pop and literary culture, consumerism and religion, self-help and sacrament.

That just makes it sound like something I would enjoy.

The structure (or "scent and architecture," as Powell puts it) of Atomizer is fascinating. Along with its zany variety of forms, the book has a powerful through line, investigating the ancient, arcane and insidious role of perfume, tangled in seduction and deceit. The three sections of the book are named for terms used to categorize layered qualities in synthesized scents. "Top Notes" are "that which evaporates most quickly"; "Heart Notes" are "the distinctive aspects, most...charming, most intelligent"; and "Base Notes," the poet avers, "stay the longest...heavy and deep."

I liked the little tastes and teasers so much I had to order the book. Jim's reviews do that to me every so often. Here's Jim Schley's review of Atomizer, at Seven Days.

Mike

Original contents copyright 2020 by Michael C. Johnston and/or the bylined author. All Rights Reserved. Links in this post may be to our affiliates; sales through affiliate links may benefit this site. As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

Thanks to all our Patreon contributors!

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Featured Comments from:

HR: "With regards to your comment about RC papers I am reminded of this.  :-)  'We should be careful to get out of an experience only the wisdom that is in it and stop there lest we be like the cat that sits down on a hot stove lid. She will never sit down on a hot stove lid again and that is well but also she will never sit down on a cold one anymore.' —Mark Twain"

Mike replies: Thanks! Yes, that. In this case I can only personally recommend Ilford RC papers. I used several others too, decades ago, but they're gone now.

David Evans: "I'm really loving Young Girl blues. I'm not familiar with Mixcloud—is it possible to see individual track information?"

Mike replies: Only if you sign up for a Premium account, which is $8 a month. But there's another way for most cuts. Download the Shazam app from the App Store. It allows your phone to listen to music, compare it to a database, and identify it. Kim will fool it sometimes because his mixes sometimes include extremely esoteric and rare music, but most of the cuts it will identify. I'll ask Kim if he can provide a set list for Young Girl Blues.

Kim was a legendary disk jockey at WHFS in Washington DC back in the station's heyday.

Bob Curtis: "Michael Finkel expanded the article into a book, The Stranger in the Woods [Amazon]."

scott kirkpatrick: "My favorite Bogart has always been Treasure of the Sierra Madre, which captures the bottled anger in 'Nobody puts one over on Fred C. Dobbs!' But I wasn't aware of In a Lonely Place, which leaves out the humorous touches and the sentimental ending, and thus is truly terrifying."

David Comdico: "In a Lonely Place is my favorite Bogart film. It peels beneath the surface of the Bogart character. On the other hand, Johnny Guitar [Amazon Prime Video] is my favorite film by Nicholas Ray. He was a real American original."

Keith B.: "Burnett Guffey's outstanding lighting in Bonnie and Clyde may feel naturalistic, but is actually fairly romantic in style. Naturalistic cinematography (no theatrical lighting, existing light taken as found) was then, and is still, considered too ugly to be employed for commercial narrative motion picture storytelling. There are exceptions, but not many."

Andrew Bearman: "Thank you for turning me on to Mixcloud and to your friend Kim's sets. I am now willingly lost in the woods of great music! And that Bogey still captures a look that only an experienced, weary cat like he could give. A look not too far from how many of us have felt at least a few times during this pandemic. Off to watch In a Lonely Place."

johnbabineau: "Hunch re KK’s Mixcloud: Handstanding athlete on diving board is the actress Doris Day. KK’s comedic gifts endure...."

Animesh Ray: "Your post made me remember a funny experience. I used to do extensive black-and-white printing for work when I was a grad student in the late 1970s–early 1980s. This was related mostly to printing of black-and-white photomicrographs and autoradiograms, for which we were supposed to print on multigrade silver gelatin papers. After that period I did not do any darkroom work, because most of those tasks was taken over by Polaroid for B&W or Kodachrome slides for color.

"Some 30 years later, in 2003, I wanted to do B&W printing as a hobby, so I went to the local city recreations department, which had a darkroom for the photo enthusiasts. The deal was that the use of the darkroom was free if you passed a test; otherwise you would need need to take a two-week course on printing. So I thought I would take that test. As it so happened, I had never heard of RC papers until that time, as I had only used fiber papers in the past—in fact we never called it that! We just called it a printing paper of a certain grade. All the test questions had to do with how to print and process RC papers, so to my utter disbelief I ended up failing the test. In science, we often feel like hermits stuck in lonely towers."

Clay Lewis (Music Notes)

"The secret of getting ahead is getting started."

—Mark Twain

A little plug from the TOP community: regular readers know Gordon Lewis, whose picture Precipitation (AKA "the umbrella woman)" was one of our best-selling prints.

Gordon's son Clay wrote and produced the song "Stranger" by the band Mice on Mercury, just out.

I'm only an old dad, but I think the song's a beauty. Its only problem is that it ends too soon. Check it out on the streaming or download service of your choice.

Nice going, especially for a 16-year-old. Big congratulations to Clay.

Cruel luck
Over the years I've known many creative people, and one underlying generality I've come to believe in is this. If you talk to anyone with an interest in anything creative—I even think this extends to other aspirational categories too—you'll hear some account of a setback of some sort that ended up causing the dream to fizzle. It can be something gentle or minor in absolute terms—a failure to capitalize on an early toehold, gains lost, a turn of bad luck, bad treatment from another individual or institution—loss of nerve, or a closed door—something like that.

Of course, it can be major, too, like my friend Kevin, the standout athlete at my small high school, who was a top college baseball player, got drafted into the majors, and then blew his knee out playing a casual game of pickup basketball a week before he was to report for training camp. A mutual friend notes that to this day—we're in our sixties now—any random stranger is likely to hear that story within fifteen minutes of first meeting Kevin.

That couldn't be helped. It wasn't Kevin's fault. Bad luck of the bitterest kind. He went on to make a good life for himself.

And in other cases it seems like the goal was wrong or the ability ran too thin or the Force just wasn't with the person somehow. Luck was too cruel. Or they didn't have enough flexibility to adapt or change. What all these stories have in common is that the circumstances of the setback are remembered. The person might not have a clear idea of what happened or why, but they'll tell you about that early bittersweet dream and how they brushed up to it so tantalizingly. They'll tell you about what happened and assign the blame as to why their careers sidestepped in a different direction. I've heard a detectable variation of that kind of story many, many dozens of times over many years, from all sorts of people. All perfectly understandable. And common, is what I'm saying.

Here's what I've noticed, though. It's that, in the biographies of many successful people, you'll often read of the exact same sorts of early discouragement—bad luck, bad treatment, opportunities lost, breakthroughs that weren't—whatever; but the successful person managed somehow to regroup, maybe reappraise, and move forward anyway.

The OG
For example, we were just talking yesterday about David Douglas Duncan (who, by the way, was once considered to be one of the three great brand ambassadors, as they're now called, of Leica, along with Alfred Eisenstadt of LIFE and Henri Cartier-Bresson of Magnum. I forgot to mention that the other day.) Well, DDD had a early setback too. He was a college student studying archaeology in Arizona when he photographed a hotel fire in Tucson. He concentrated on one man who made repeated attempts to get back into the burning hotel to rescue a suitcase. The man turned out to be the notorious 1930s gangster John Dillinger, and the suitcase contained the cash from a recent bank robbery during which Dillinger had killed a man. Young Duncan's great lucky scoop was turned over to the Tucson Citizen newspaper. But somewhere along the way the newspaper lost or destroyed the film, and the college student's pictures never appeared in the newspaper and were never returned to him. Golden opportunity lost, through no fault of his own.

[UPDATE: More likely it was some of Dillinger's gang—see B.J.'s Featured Comment below. In any event, the identifications led to Dillinger's capture. —Ed.]

That's the sort of thing that might have become the sort of setback I'm talking about. DDD might have gone on to become an archaeology professor, say, who repeated to people the story of how he wanted to be a photojournalist when he was young (and some might need to be reminded now how much status that profession had in the broad middle swath of the 20th century). He would lovingly tell of his great encounter with Dillinger, speaking quietly and with a sad smile of the perfidy of the newspaper that betrayed him, and of his dead and buried dream, clutching his calcified resentment next to his heart like a pearl.

Of course, that's not what happened. David Douglas Duncan went on to become a major photographer of three American wars, WWII, Korea, and Vietnam, and those were only the peaks of his peripatetic accomplishment. The Dillinger story is only a footnote, albeit an entertaining one. Duncan was neither stunted nor stymied by that early bit of bad luck. He picked himself up off the ground, dusted himself off, and kept on going.

All this is just a digression, of course! Forgive me. Although I do hope that Clay Lewis eventually forgets this success. Which is to say, I hope it becomes merely the first of many for him.

Mike
(Photo by Wildhartlivie, CC by 3.0)

*It reminds me of something I heard in a lecture to the faculty at a school where I taught, given by the head of psychiatry at a children's hospital: he said, "If you want your children to succeed, let them fail early and often."

Gordon Lewis replies: Thanks for the promo, Mike. This is still all new to Clay. Fortunately, his focus is on the music, so everything else is icing on the cake.

As for your main topic, a similar example comes to mind: Bill "Superfoot" Wallace was a judo champion until an opponent fell on his right knee, causing permanent damage. He could have given up martial arts or exercise entirely. Instead, he became a kickboxer whose unique sideways stance used his right leg only for support. His left roundhouse kick was so fast and accurate that even though everyone knew he would use it, they could do little to stop it.

The way I'd express your point is, if you're looking for an excuse to quit, you can find one. The same applies if you're determined to find a pathway to success.

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Featured Comments from:

HiMY SYeD: "I simply want to say, 'Thank You' for writing this. It's important, and I needed to hear it."

Fred Tuman: "The life of a pro photographer in my case can be similar to a professional athlete. I struggled from when I came out of art school till my mid-thirties, when a fashion stylist I knew introduced me to the Head Art Director of a major beauty catalogue. Now I'm shooting soft goods in the morning and complex fashion sets in the evening and everything else in between...and making the money you're supposed to get.

"Two years into this the AD gets a stroke and passes on set. The advertising agency now gives me the cold shoulder like I never existed. I was out with no chance of returning.

"That was the 1990s. Thirty years later I've had a number of commercial hits, but nothing like that. Unlike most in that field, I didn't blow my money by sinking it into a big studio. I invested it and gave myself enough of a cushion to turn down assignments that will end up killing you. Now with COVID-19, you hope you'll get a chance again, if you can last it out and see if any work returns.

"Looking back at everything...when you are busy doing that high-end stuff, you are not enjoying it...the pressure is too great."

William Lewis: "Nice track, I've passed it on to some others I think might enjoy it. I'll have to burn it to CD and see if the local independent radio will play it."

Bryan Geyer: "DDD certainly was one of the 'great brand ambassadors,' but it was Nikon's notable lenses that he preferred to mate to his Leica rangefinder bodies when he covered the bulk of the Korean action.

He later switched to Nikon F reflex bodies (and lenses) for Vietnam.

"Reference here."

Mike replies: That's according to Nikon, and it's partly right—DDD was long revered at Nikon for bringing the company to the attention of the world by using its lenses in Korea and spreading the word—but it's still not exactly right. He writes in War Without Heroes: "I depended upon two Leicas (custom-built M3Ds) crossed bandolier-style on my chest. One Leica was fitted with a Leitz 50mm f1.4 Summilux, the other with a Nikkor 28mm f2.8 lens; both lenses with medium yellow filters. In addition—hanging down the center of my chest—I carried a Nikon F with a Nikkor 200mm f4 lens, also with a medium yellow filter."

The film was Kodak Tri-X developed in Kodak D-76.

And by the way, the "D" in M3D stood for his name in a funny way—the pun of "3D" referred to Duncan's nickname "DDD." One of DDD's customized M3's (he had four of them) sold in May 2012 for 1.68 million euros (about $2.13m) at WestLicht.

B.J.: "Mike, the DDD/Dillinger story may be apocryphal. The Hotel Congress still stands in Tucson and is a popular (pre-COVID) hangout for shows, food, and drink. Every year they have a 'Dillinger Days' celebration, so the story of Dillinger's capture is frequently retold. During the January 1934 fire at the hotel, several members of Dillinger's gang were staying there, but Dillinger was staying elsewhere. The gang members escaped from the burning hotel, but offered a cash reward if the firemen would retrieve their luggage from their room. The firemen did so, and later one said that he thought the suitcases were exceptionally heavy. Later, back at the fire station (and this I find a bit difficult to believe) a fireman was reading True Detective magazine and came upon an illustrated article about the Dillinger gang. He recognized several of the men pictured as the ones who asked him to rescue the suitcases. The police were notified, a surveillance operation was set up and, two days later, in several raids, Dillinger and his gang were captured. The heavy suitcases turned out to have been full of firearms.

"Whatever actually happened, I think it is generally accepted that Dillinger himself was not at the hotel during the fire. If so, then DDD did not get any pictures of Dillinger, although he might have gotten pictures of some of Dillinger's gang. Also, the presence of the Dillinger gang in Tucson was not generally known till their capture a few days later.

Mike replies: Thanks for the deeper dive, B.J.—I added an Update to the post. Even if that particular example is not as good as it seemed, though, the principle still holds IMO.

Open Mike Followup: Streaming Music (Off Topic Except at the End)

So as far as Tuesday's music post goes, I was overthinking things. Way overthinking things. Needed to take a step back.

I had been struggling with how to set up a good-sounding (n.b.) stereo (i.e., two-channel) music system, not connected to my computer, using a streaming service as a source. I had been looking at various cunning and involved audiophile solutions requiring things like Gustard DACs and $895 network players like the Sonore UltraRendu, a category of device I had not had an inkling existed only weeks ago. I was rather fixated on using Amazon Music HD as a source, mainly because I've tried that and I like it. To access Amazon Music HD, I was halfway home with plans to use my old Mac Mini as a source. I was going to have it converted to use DC power so I could use a linear power supply, and I was planning to get a Gustard U16 as a USB buffer, and...

...Whoa, hoss. It was all getting pretty...complicated. Not to mention expensive. I think I finally caught myself when it dawned on me that one day I was going to have to deal with reselling items like the Gustard U16. Given that I didn't even know what it was three weeks ago, and that I had never heard of Gustard (a manufacturer of Chifi allegedly owned by an otherwise mysterious "Mr. Huang"—the company doesn't even have a website) prior to that, I figured that I might be in for a pretty hard resell. (I'm a little obsessed with Gustard stuff, which you can see at Apos Audio.)

Time to take a deep breath.

All I actually need is something like a Cambridge CXN v2 streamer/preamp, and a regular ol' stereo amplifier. That's it.

You can send the Cambridge CXN v2 signal either via ethernet or WiFi (using a supplied dongle, an option they chose to avoid having that stubby little antenna sticking up from behind the thing), and you can use it as a preamp to control volume and run its outputs straight to your amplifier. Of course, it doesn't support Amazon Music HD, but it does support Qobuz, among other things. So I have resolved to be...flexible, and go with Qobuz (pronounced ko-buzz) rather than Amazon Music HD. The latter is really for computer-connected systems, which mine will not be, and lower-fi outputs like Echoes (which makes the UHD pretty pointless, but never mind).

Control freak
The CXN v2, which Cambridge calls a "network player," is Roon-ready, too. More about Roon another day.

There are three ways to control the CXN v2. You can use the buttons and knobs on the front of the unit; you can use the remote control; or you can download the free StreamMagic app and control it remotely with your smartphone or tablet. The only glitch I've heard about is that apparently the touchscreen volume control on the phone doesn't work very well. The workaround is to use the phone's (or the tablet's) up/down volume buttons for volume instead.

The ongoing costs for this, which people fret about and argue over, are laughably tiny. Roon costs ten bucks a month. Qobuz costs fifteen. Are you kidding me? I started buying CDs like a madman in 1982, and have five figures invested in iTunes tracks. $25 is the cost of two CDs or 20 iTunes songs. It's been many, many years since I've spent less than $25 a month on music. Many years. It's a line item in the budget. I listen to music half of every day. It's a consumable, like clothing or food. I'll get my money's worth out of Qobuz within days, if not hours.

Perseveration
To perseverate means "repeat or prolong an action, thought, or utterance after the stimulus that prompted it has ceased." Like, continuing to read reviews after you've already read enough reviews. Sooner or later, with anything like this, you need to dive in and get hands-on. It's that way with all manner of photography products too. There comes a time when further research is actually counterproductive. You're just confusing yourself. What do they call it? Paralysis by analysis. Yeah. You can't make a perfect decision with no actual experience. (I chose my current car by going to an auto show and sitting in a bunch of cars. The one I bought hadn't even been on my radar until I got into it and had a visceral "this will do fine" reaction.)

I've ordered a Cambridge CXN v2. There's a good review of it from John Darko, and another one from Andrew Robinson (if you increase the playback speed to 1.5X, Andrew will talk as fast as Doug Demuro). The Cambridge is on backorder at B&H Photo, so it's going to be a wait before it gets here.

But my system will be bone-simple at first: streamer/preamp > power amp > speakers. If I want to add CDs, there's even a matching CD transport** from Cambridge I could add.

So I'll just "get my hands dirty," figuratively speaking of course, and set things up and see how it works. If I like the CXN v2, I'll tell you about the experience at some future date.

Thanks for all the help and the good links the other day. Especially, but not exclusively, to those who recommended the Cambridge or who sent me to primers or what I used to call "backgrounders" on digital streaming. I also bought File Based Audio aka. [sic] Streaming Audio by Hans Beekhuyzen, another YouTube star.

And I'm feeling a little better today.

Mike

*Amazon calls CD-quality files "HD" and hi-res files "UHD," the U meaning "ultra." Normally, HD means higher-than-CD quality. Amazon Music HD, which is a great choice for your computer-connected headphone or desktop system, provides UHD files as well as HD, and everything is at least HD.

**A "transport" is the part of a CD player that has the drawer and spins the disc. The other part of a CD player is the digital to analog converter, or DAC, and the CXN v2 already has a DAC in it.

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Featured Comments from:

Patrick Dodds: "Well, I didn't understand a word of that but you seem happy which is the main thing."

Mike replies: I certainly sympathize. I was going to lampoon the "information" sites on this topic by extracting several quotes and replacing every word I don't know with "[verb]" and "[noun]" and every unfamiliar acronym with "XXX," to try to communicate how opaque and obscure most of this sounds to me...it's been a struggle, as I said earlier, getting up the steep first part of the learning curve. I'm getting there, but it's been painful. "The world of 'things,'" as Benjamin Marks's brother put it (from his comment in the Comments section), was certainly simpler to suss out.

[Ed. Note: Someone said in the comments that musicians don't get very much income from streaming. I've looked and looked for the comment but I just can't find it, and I'm giving up. However, by chance, the intensely chipper young couple at Two Cents have done a video about just that question, called "What's the Best Way to Support Musicians?" Here it is.]

[...Also, don't forget Zoe Heller's famous interview with Mick Jagger, which might be the "last word" on the topic. There's a short, easy-to-digest summary at Mises and you can link to the full article from there if you like.]

Sunday Support Group: Music at a Higher Level (Off-Topic) (Music Notes)

We look where we can for consolations in isolation: reading or looking at books, projects like organizing and printing our photographs—and of course, music.

Just wanted to register how very happy I am that Robert Pillow mentioned Amazon Music HD (AMHD) in the comments section the other day (see the Featured Comments to the "No More Vintage Audio" post). I'm sure various mentions of it had flown like darting swallows through my field of view since it came on the scene, but none had penetrated my consciousness until Robert mentioned it. Anyway, I signed up for the free trial and and have been happily listening to CD-quality and higher res files since.

I'll note that implementation matters more than format with recorded music—I'd rather listen to a well-recorded and transferred CD-quality file from a 1940s original (check out the Lester Young playlist, for example, which I had to listen to all the way through before turning in last night) than a poorly recorded, compressed modern file at 24 bits/96 kHz, the highest resolution my aging (but lovely) DAC will decode*. AMHD goes all the way to 24/192**.

If you don't know what those numbers mean, there's a very good explanation of the basics of digital audio from Mark Furneaux. He originally recorded it for a particular friend, but later published it for everyone. As you may know, I think that targeting content as though you're doing it for a friend is an effective stance for presenting information and opinion.  :-)

Note also that there are various ways to stream AMHD to an existing stereo system without it coming directly from your computer, but in all such cases I can decipher, it downrezzes the files to CD-quality 16 bits/44.1 kHz. Although Amazon calls CD-quality "HD," for high-definition, because no other streaming services have it for all their offerings, most other humans call higher-than-CD-quality files "HD," and you give up those high-res capabilities if you use Bluetooth or something like the Echo Link.

However, just replacing MP3 and MP4 with 16/44.1 in my desktop system makes a decisive upgrade—I re-sorted my system and reset the sub, and have been enjoying music even more than usual in recent days. One discovery: Rejoice, the swan song of the late South African flugelhornist Hugh Masekala and the late Nigerian drummer Tony Allen, Fela Kuti's former music director. A lovely tribute to the two friends and a superbly good-sounding recording too.

Amazon says AMHD has over 60 million cuts in CD-quality 16/44.1, and millions more in higher resolutions and bit depths. The cost is $12.99/month for Prime members or $14.99/month for Amazon customers. Existing Amazon Music Unlimited subscribers (Individual or Family Plan) can upgrade to Amazon Music HD for an additional $5/month. I can't quite suss this out, but I believe the AMHD trial period is 30 days if you're already an Amazon Music subscriber and 90 days if you're new to Amazon Music altogether. Go to this page and be sure to click "Learn More" to explicitly see the duration of the free trial period you're going to get.

My lifetime fave classic-rock musician, despite being the quintessential hippie and an old folkie, is also an outspoken champion of high-resolution audio***. Neil Young says this of Amazon Music HD: "Earth will be changed forever when Amazon introduces high quality streaming to the masses. This will be the biggest thing to happen in music since the introduction of digital audio 40 years ago."

Good by me. Highly recommended! Try it for yourself.

Mike

*There are better DACs for less nowadays. Again, I try not to recommend things I haven't actually heard, but you might want to investigate the Topping brand.

**There's a strong strain of "you can't hear a difference" people in hi-fi—all amplifiers sound the same, all wires sound the same, loudspeakers are identical as long as their response curves are flat, etc.—and not only can they not hear a difference between Redbook CD resolution and anything higher, but they say, with the conviction available to True Believers, that no human can. I say those folks are damn lucky, because they can buy any old amp and any old wires, and also, please shut up. [Edited later to: ...please have more tolerance for people who don't share your beliefs.]

***He even launched his own crowdfunded high-res streaming service, Pono, in 2015, but had to pull the plug on it in 2017.

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Covid Killed Lee Konitz (Music Notes)

Little Richard, 1932–2020: Richard Wayne Penniman, much better known as Little Richard, died yesterday of stomach cancer.

Little Richard was an inaugural inductee into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. At the ceremony he was called a "living embodiment of the music's roots in the 'fifties." Paul McCartney patterned his rock vocal style after Little Richard's. Mick Jagger said, "when we were on tour with him I would watch his moves every night and learn from him how to entertain and involve the audience, and he was always so generous with advice to me." Jimi Hendrix, who played in Little Richard's band The Upsetters when he was young, once said, "I want to do with my guitar what Little Richard does with his voice."

The photo Mick Jagger posted on his Twitter feed yesterday

Terence McArdle, writing in The Washington Post, said, "He had an incalculable influence on the frenetic attitude of rock music, long after his heyday and his extended forays into religious music. He saw his sound and its feeling of howling abandon as rock incarnate. As he often said, 'My music made your liver quiver, your bladder splatter, your knees freeze—and your big toe shoot right up in your boot!'"

Lee Konitz

Lee Konitz 1927–2020: Alto saxophonist and jazz great Lee Konitz won't see Summer. He died in the middle of April from pneumonia as a complication of COVID-19.

He was important from the 1950s on and has a huge discography, but if you'd like a taste, try the live trio records he did with the young Brad Meldau and Charlie Haden in '96 and '97, such as Another Shade of Blue and, especially, Alone Together, his first album for the famous Blue Note label, recorded live at the Jazz Bakery in Los Angeles in 1996. Stephen Thomas Erlewine at AllMusic wrote, "Alone Together, Lee Konitz's first recording for Blue Note, is a special event. The saxophonist teamed up with legendary bassist Charlie Haden and young lion pianist Brad Mehldau, and the trio's interaction on this set of relaxed bop is astonishing. On paper, the music on Alone Together—a collection of standards—should just be straightahead cool bop, but all three musicians are restless and inventive, making even the simplest numbers on the disc vibrant, lively and adventurous.

"It's a wonderful record, one that makes a convincing argument that Konitz remains a vital force even as he reached his seventieth year."

Here's the first cut from that record. R.I.P. Lee.

Mike

P.S. If you've ever wondered why jazz sounds the way it does, and why some of it might be hard for you to listen to, I recommend "The 7 Levels of Jazz Harmony" from Adam Neely. And I'll just point out that it can be hard to hear above your level. —Mike, mainly a poblano pepper dude

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James: "Whilst living in England in the '70s, I saw Little Richard at the Odeon Lewisham. He was absolutely fantastic! After the opening song ended and he started talking to the audience, guys were shouting out...'we can't hear the piano, we can't hear the piano.' He stopped the show, made all the backing musicians turn down their egos (sorry, I mean amplifiers), and played up a storm for the rest of the evening."