More music!

More filing by lying around on a relaxed Saturday morning-- -- here's what's currently lying around my stereo looking well-used from annoying the neighbours in recent days, filed here in no particular order:

• BENNY GOODMAN - Live at Carnegie Hall, 1938
• DIZZY GILLESPIE - Cognac Blues
• DUKE ELLINGTON - Jump for Joy
• LEONID KOGAN - Russian Revelation
• STOKOWSKI - Wagner Symphonic Synthesis
• WAGNER - The 'Ring' Without Words (Lorin Maazel & Berlin Philharmoniker)
• 'AMADEUS' - Soundtrack
• LIZST - Piano Works (Tzimon Barto)
• TOM WAITS - Mule Variations
• JULIAN COPE - Floored Genius
• GRAHAM PARKER - Anthology: Passion is No Ordinary Word
• BEETHOVEN - Late String Quartets (Emerson String Quartet)
• TERENCE DENNIS - Liszt & Wagner Piano Works
• JAZZ 101 - "Jazz with no prerequisites" - Introduction to Latin Jazz
• PHIL JUDD - Novelty Act
• WILLY DIXON - I Am the Blues
• AIDA - Leontyne Price/Georg Solti/Teatro dell'Opera di Roma
• TUWHARE
• ELIZABETH SCHWARZKOPF - Operetta Arias
• LOUIS ARMSTRONG - Hot Five & Hot Seven (vol. 3)
• JAZZ CLASSICS IN DIGITAL STEREO - Vol. 3: New York
• ANN MOFFO & RUDOLPH SCHOCK - Die Schonsten Melodien ...
• WAGNER - Flying Dutchman (Karajan & Berlin Philharmonik)
• BEN FOLDS FIVE -Whatever & Ever Amen
• DRESDEN DOLLS - Yes, Virginia...
• W.B. YEATS - Now & In Time to Be
• BOB DYLAN - Modern Times

What's lying around your sound equipment looking well used?  And, just as a wee quiz, any idea what the connection is between the first and last artists in that list above?

Right, off to file everything away alphabetically again ...

Current listening ...

More 'filing by lying around' -- here's what's currently lying around my stereo looking well-used from annoying the neighbours:

'Fear of Music' & 'Remain in Light' - Talking Heads. Damn, these are good!
The Valkyrie - Wagner performed by the ENO, in English!
Coleman Hawkins (Ken Burns' compilation)
'Trinity Revisited' - Cowboy Junkies (the 'twenty-years-since-the-original' show)
Samson & Delilah - Saint-Saens
Blanton-Webster Band - Duke Ellington
Bootleg Series (Rare & Unreleased, 1961-1991) - Bob Dylan (and this is the stuff he throws away!)
Oedipus Schmoedipus - Barry Adamson
Django Reinhardt compilation (just add martini)
Kreisler plays Kreisler - Fritz Kreisler
Rachmaninov Piano Concertos 2 & 3 - performed by Rach himself!
Amor ti Vieta - Enrico Caruso (that voice cleaned up and re-set over a modern orchestra. Just brilliant.)
Various Positions - Leonard Cohen (yes folks, Leonard in his 'Greek disco phase,' complete with the original version of 'Hallelujah')
Sailor Story - Hello Sailor (two CDs back out again for barbeque season)
Trout Quintet - Franz Schubert (the perfect early evening sedative)
Real Ambassadors - Dave Brubeck & Louis Armstrong
But One Day - Ute Lemper
Die Walkure - Wagner (the Nilsson, Vickers, Leinsdorf set. Brilliant.)
Beethoven String Quartets - Juillard Quartet
The Good Son - Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds
League of Crafty Guitarists - Robert Fripp
Primitive Guitars - Phil Manzanera
American Caesar - Iggy Pop
Complete Blam Blam Blam (bloody shame 'Pensioner Lover' never made it the CD. Just wrong, in my humble opinion.)
Discipline - King Crimson (can you spot the Talking Heads connection?)
La Mer - Debussy

And another big pile contains all my old John Cale records, tapes and CDs, getting warmed up for this Friday's show at the Bruce Mason Theatre in Takapuna. Top of the pile this afternoon is:

Fragments of a Rainy Season
Words for the Dying (Dylan Thomas's words set to Cale; a shame the tape's wearing out from over use ...)
Live at the End of Lonely Street - Cale & Chris Spedding, live in 1975. (includes the riff from 'Guts' that Brazier borrowed and used so well in 'Blue Lady,' I'm sure of it)

Oh, and there's also a box of Chris Knox records lying near the door ready to take out and burn now the bastard's sold his soul so cheaply and so cheesily. Bastard.

So, what's lying around near your stereo, or near your door?

Filing by stuff that's lying around

I guess most music collectors amongst you will remember the scene in High Fidelity (book and film) when the character rearranges his record collection ... alphabetically? No ... chronologically? No .... by genre ? No... perhaps ranked according to mood? No. He's filing it autobiographically, based on when he bought it. The experience of music, says the character, is the experience of a lifetime lived. Geek heaven maybe, but possible.

So if that's true, how about the CDs, tapes and vinyl that -- no matter which way you organise the collection -- just end up regularly lying around the stereo, stuff that gets played so often it just never gets re-filed? If our autobiographical filing shows us the experience of a lifetime lived, wouldn't our regular playlist tell us more about our current selves? Or does it just tell us we should dust more often.

Anyway, judge for yourself. Here's some of what's hanging regularly around my stereo at the moment, most of which never gets back onto the shelves; the detritus of too much listening. Those of you with iPods can talk amongst yourselves for a while.

1. Primitive Guitars - Phil Manzanera
2. Eine Frau fur die Liebe - La Pat
   
3. Benny Goodman Small Combos 1935-1941
   
4. Trinity Sessions - Cowboy Junkies
5. Lost in the Stars - Music of Kurt Weill
   
6. Modern Times - Bob Dylan
7. Wagner Choruses from Bayreuth - Wilhelm Pitz & the Bayreuth Festival Chorus & Orchestra
   
8. I'm Your Fan - Songs of Leonard Cohen by ...
9. The Time Has Come - Christy Mooore
10. Struck By Lightning - Graham Parker
11. Dream of Life - Patti Smith
12. No Friend Around - John Lee Hooker
    
13. Giants of Jazz: Gerry Mulligan Quartet with Chet Baker
14. Atomic Swing - Count Basie
15. Louis Armstrong (home-made CD compilation)
16. Sounds of the 20th Century: Django Reinhardt
17. Je T'Aime... Moi Non Plus (Vol. 5) - Serge Gainsbourg
18. I Am the Blues - Willy Dixon
19. Piano Sonatas 8, 14, 17, 21, 23 & 26 - Beethoven
20. Death & the Maiden - Schubert
21. And His Mother Called Him Bill - Duke Ellington
22. Thelonious Monk Plays Duke Ellington
23. Asylum Years - Tom Waits
24. Henry's Dream - Nick Cave
25. Wagner Piano Transcriptions - Cyprien Katsaris
26. Cole Porter Songbook (Vol. 1) - Ella Fitzgerald
27. Loaded - Velvet Underground
28. American Caesar - Iggy
29. Coleman Hawkins - Ken Burns 'Jazz' compilation
30. Fragments of a Rainy Season - John Cale
31. 16 Classic Tracks - Hoagy Carmichael
32. Della by Starlight - Della Reese
33. Songs of the Auvergne (Canteloube)/Bachianas Brasileiras No. 5 (Villa-Lobos)/Vocalise (Rachmaninoff) - Anna Moffo & Leopold Stokowski
34. Callas & Di Stefano at La Scala
35. Tom Verlaine - Tom Verlaine
36. Dizzy Gillespie's Big 4 - Dizzy Gillespie, Ray Brown, Joe Pass, Mickey Roker
37. Rolling Stone - Muddy Waters
38. Pink Elephants - Mick Harvey
    

Yeah, it's a busy stereo, but when you work from home ...

Anyway, what does your stereo detritus say about you?

Worst and cheesiest album covers ever

The CD revolution has been almost complete, threatened only by the iPOd revolution it helped make possible. For those of use who still collect vinyl, the digital revoution that iPods and CDs represent hasnt been all bad -- and that's not just the sheer amount of stuff available that wan't previously -- it's also meant that second-hand vinyl offloaded by the more digitally-fixated has been out there and able to be snapped up at bargain prices, filling the collections of turntable-owners with legal music that has never been so cheap.

One major advantage that LPs retain over CDs is their size -- where CD covers are too often merely utilitarian, the size of record covers meant they were all too often astonishing. And by 'astonishing' I don't mean they were always good.

Some were just horrible. And here, for those of you with Powerpoint, is a collection of the very worst. The Worst Album Covers Ever. Guaranteed. [Those without Powerpoint can seek them here, though you do miss the full effect.] For those of you who like cheese, here's some of the cheesiest.

I'd like to show you some of the best. Maybe later, eh?

LINKS: The worst album covers yet - Powerpoint file
Dana Countryman's virtual museum of unusual LP cover art - Dan Countryman

TAGS: Music, Art

Over-rated

Here is a list of the most over-rated albums in recorded music. Note that to be overrated the album must first have been rated; it can't just suck (like Dire Straits, Guns n' Roses, Hayley Westenra, rap, techno and country and western do), it must have lots of suckers who think it doesn't. Note too that by 'suckers' I don't mean people; I generally mean critics or hippies or folk who like country and western:

1. The Wall - Pink Floyd.
   This album has some really deep and impressive analysis of the systems by which we're all oppressed. If you're stoned. And a hippy.
   
2. Thriller - Michael Jackson.
   It wasn't. It still isn't.
   
3. X & Y - Coldplay.
   Yawn. File under 'vapid.'
   
4. Sergeant Peppers - Beatles.
   Not even their best.
   
5. The Marshall Mathers LP - Eminem.
   Faux outrage; faux music.
   
6. Pet Sounds - Beach Boys.
   Wouldn't it be nice? No, it wouldn't.
   
7. Exile on Main Street - Rolling Stones.
   The boys review their own album: 'Turd on the Run.'
   
8. Joshua Tree - U2.
   If Brian Eno knew then what we know now, he would have stayed home from the studio that week.
   
9. Any album - Robbie Williams.
   The supreme victory of ambition over talent.
   
10. The Queen is Dead - Smiths
    The Smiths are dead - The Queen. Thank goodness she's correct.
    

And here's the most over-rated pieces of non-pop:

1. Four Seasons - Vivaldi
2. Eine Kleine Nachtmusik - Mozart
3. Bolero - Ravel
4. Star Wars Theme - John Williams
5. Bitch's Brew - Miles Davis
6. Köln Concert - Keith Jarrett
7. Brandenburg Concert - Bach
8. Salome - Richard Strauss
9. Wozzek - Berg
10. Amazing Grace
    

Feel free to disagree -- even though you know I'm right. And see if you can make any headway on a list of the all-time ten most overrated songs. John Lennon's 'Imagine' would surely have to head the list.

TAGS: Music

Music to fill the hours with - and the home!

I've been filing again, or at least thinking about it. Filing my music collection to be precise. Have you ever noticed how when you're filing your records or CDs that those big lumps in your collection made up of people you really like tend to ruin your nicely-thought-out filing system? Or is it just me and mine.

Anyway, I've got an apartment full of music. Records, tapes, CDs - the place is swimming in 'em. Stuff of all types. I thought you might like to know what looms largest in the collection, so here they are in order of most to least, from all from all formats (incl. bootlegs and the like):

Lou Reed/Velvet Underground/John Cale (91), Richard Wagner (63), Bob Dylan (61), Duke Ellington (48), Ludwig van Beethoven (46), Mario Lanza (40), Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (34), Guiseppe Verdi (31), Tom Waits (29), Giacomo Puccini (22), Beatles/Lennon/Harrison (21), Hello Sailor/Brazier/McCartney/Lyon (20), Sergei Rachmaninov - Nick Cave - Manic Street Preachers (all 18), Graham Parker - Christy Moore (16), Iggy Pop - Stranglers - Louis Armstrong - (15), Luciano Pavarotti (14), King Crimson/Robert Fripp (13), Rush - Toy Love/Tall Dwarves/Chris Knox (12), Anna Moffo - Miles Davis - Patti Smith (11), Nirvana - Eric Clapton - Leonard Cohen (10).

Hmmm. Perhaps it's time to get some saddled up and out the door.

TAGS: Music