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Top Five Drafting Albums

Thursday 21 February 2008

My sophomore, junior, and senior years, I took drafting. I thought I wanted to be an architect. By the end of my junior year, I realized it wasn’t going to happen. It just wasn’t in my soul. But for some reason, I went ahead and finished up the whole three-year drafting, taking the two-block drafting III class.

During our senior year, the teacher — an odd fellow who, judging from his hair cut and ties, was definitely stuck in the 70’s — allowed us to listen to music while drafting.

Choices, choices.

My friend and I set out to find the perfect drafting album, to match the list of perfect albums for this or that activity.

A few albums that made it into my personal rotation with a great deal of frequency were…

  • R.E.M. Document
  • Metallica …And Justice for All
  • Sonic Youth Daydream Nation
  • Pink Floyd Momentary Lapse of Reason
  • Anything from Gabriel-era Genesis

Were I to do any drafting now, I’d more likely head to Thelonious Monk or Chick Corea, Bill Monroe or Lightening Hopkins.

Hedges

Monday 11 February 2008

Prophetic comments about ten years before his own death coming home from a concert.

And then there’s the music.

Zakopower

Tuesday 13 November 2007

ZakopowerJust before K and I moved from Poland in 2005, Zakopower, a new band, was growing popular. They performed at a few festivals and they had a hit single.

Unusual music — a combination of traditional highlander music (the original music sounds and looks something like this) with modern beats and instruments.

The first time I heard them, I liked them, but I wasn’t overwhelmed. The song was “Kiebys Ty”

Original, but it just didn’t grab me.

When K’s dad came from Poland, he brought with him some music that K’d requested. Among the CDs was Zakopower’s Musichal.

Listening to it, I realized that Zakopower had committed an frequent-enough error: they’d released the wrong song! Most of the songs, while pleasant, didn’t grab me the first listen.

One did: “Love’s Regret,” with one Boguslawa Kudasik taking lead vocals.

If you’re interested you can get it at CD Universe.

I listened to this song at least half a dozen times yesterday. The opening violin is so mournful that it can make one positively long for Podhale, the mountainous region of southern Poland from which this music comes.

Zakopower IIWhat I love so much about it is how it typifies Goralski singing without being, well, typical. That sense of hanging on with white-knuckled vocal chords (wonderfully mixed, thank you) is at the heart of Goralski music — singing as high and mightily as possible without losing control.

“That’s why all the Goralski songs are so short,” K explains. “No one can sing like that for too long.”

At YouTube

Fan Participation

Sunday 12 August 2007

I sometimes play guitar for L. She likes it, but she doesn’t sit quietly and listen, much to my dismay. It’s not that she doesn’t appreciate music — she loves music. The problem is she wants to play too:

DSC_8973

It’s not that I mind her playing. Rather, it’s somewhat dangerous: her little fingers fit between the strings and a tug can cause her sudden pain as the string digs into her.

Still, it’s an enjoyable way to pass some time.

Top Painting Music

Thursday 9 August 2007

I’ve been painting. Lots of it. A house of it. And it’s not done.

But I have determined what music works best with painting — that’s always critical.

Topping the list, without a doubt, was Bach’s Mass in B-minor. Bach just exudes linear symmetry and exactness — just what you need when painting.

Next: Grateful Dead’s classic American Beauty. It’s a great travel album, and maybe that has something to do with it — traveling from one corner of the room to another and back again, from one room to another and back again, from one end of the house and back again … there’s a lot of walking to painting.

For jazz, Coltrane’s A Love Supreme seemed like a good choice, but it was too intellectual (read: tiring) when painting. I found Ellington’s Piano in the Foreground to be about perfect: not too stimulating, but not overly mellow.

Bad choices:

  • Mahler’s second — I love it, but I swear, too manic-depressive for work.
  • Beck’s Mellow Gold — like Love Supreme it’s too busy. Odelay was better, but not much.
  • Springsteen’s Ghost of Tom Joad — holy cow! You can’t be depressed while painting!

In the end, silence was actually fairly acceptable.

I loves you, [L]

Tuesday 31 July 2007

Last night, before L went to bed, I’d put in a Nina Simone CD, figuring it was calming enough to play in the evening.

Little did I know.

A few minutes later, while trying to put the Girl to sleep, I began the CD again. She wasn’t crying, but she wasn’t settling down. I rocked her, walked her, bounced her gently, talked to her — all the tricks, but she was just not completely calming down.

When track six — “I loves you, Porgy” — began, instant calm. So I did the logical thing: hit repeat and put the Girl to sleep by playing one of the loveliest songs ever…about fifteen times.

As an aside, here’s a very sweet claymation video set to a Simone song:

From the Plantation to the Penitentiary

Wednesday 18 July 2007

From the Plantation to the Penitentiary CoverWe just got Wynton Marsalis’ latest album, From the Plantation to the Penitentiary (AMG). It features relative newcomer Jennifer Sanon on vocals, and we’re both very pleased with our choice.

I listened to it four times night before last, and probably as many last night. It simply hasn’t left our CD player since we got it Monday.

With this album, in some ways it seems to be more about the lyrics than the music. Matt Collar, for the AMG review, wrote,

Long an outspoken figure in the jazz world and a lightning rod for debate over what constitutes the so called “jazz tradition,” Marsalis is less concerned about the direction of jazz music here and more about the direction of American society.

It is true that, lyrically, this is a very political album, but the thing about Marsalis is that he’s such an accomplished musician that he doesn’t have to be concerned about much of anything for the music to come out sparkling. It might not be a musically revolutionary album, but it is an intensely listenable collection, and I will certainly be returning to it often in the near (and far) future.

Bluff Mountain Festival

Sunday 10 June 2007

I grew up in an area where bluegrass was not exactly ubiquitous, but at the same time, easily found. My friend’s grandparents were very much into bluegrass and I used to sit in while they were picking. It was a good way to learn basic guitar — there aren’t many chords, and the changes are predictable. Still, bluegrass as music was not something I really appreciated.

Twenty years later, I do. Enough to have a few bluegrass CDs in my collection and to drive festivals and such, anyway.

This weekend: the Bluff Mountain Festival, a fundraising festival for the Madison County Arts Comission.

After the festival, we drove to nearby Max Patch — a grassy mountain with views all around. (It’s also on the Appalachian Trail.)

More images at Flickr.

Who’s Bathing?

Thursday 18 January 2007

A new video, set to R.E.M.’s “We Walk.” Which is from Murmur — perhaps the most appropriately titled album in history, regarding the intelligibility of the lyrics anyway.

The song choice was inspired by the title alone. Michael Stipe has never been known for writing coherent lyrics, let alone good lyrics. This one, from R.E.M.’s debut album, is a prime example.

Sing365 has the lyrics as a repetition of the following:

Up the stairs to the landing, up the stairs into the hall, oh, oh, oh
Take oasis, Marat’s bathing
We walk through the wood, we walk

Marat? As in Jean-Paul Marat (Wikipedia)?

Bajka iskierki

Friday 29 December 2006

I’ve put together a new video. For the music, I chose one of the most widely known Polish lullabies: “Bajka iskierka” (“An Ember’s Bedtime Story”). It’s a modern-ish version by Polish pop stars Grzegorz Turnau and Magda Umer.

An Ember’s Bedtime Story
Traditional Melody, Words by Janina Porazińska

From the fire’s ashes
an ember is winking at WojtuÅ›.
“Come! I’ll tell you a bedtime story,
A long fairy tale.

“There once was a princess
who fell in love with a minstrel
The king gave them a wedding,
And that’s the end of the story.

“Long ago lived Baba Jaga.
She lived in a hut made of butter.
And in this house all was enchantment.”
Psst! The ember’s died.

From the fire’s ashes
an ember is winking at WojtuÅ›.
“Come! I’ll tell you a bedtime story,
A long fairy tale.”

Hush! WojtuÅ› won’t believe you anymore,
little ember.
You flicker but for a moment,
then you die.

And that’s the whole fairy tale.

Z popielnika na Wojtusia
iskiereczka mruga:
Chod?, opowiem ci bajeczk?,
bajka b?dzie d?uga.

By?a sobie raz kr�lewna,
pokocha?a grajka,
Kr�l wyprawi? im wesele
i sko?czona bajka.

By?a sobie Baba Jaga
mia?a chatk? z mas?a,
a w tej chatce same dziwy!
Psst� Iskierka zgas?a.

Z popielnika na Wojtusia
iskiereczka mruga:
Chod?, opowiem ci bajeczk?,
bajka b?dzie d?uga.

Ju? ci Wojtu? nie uwierzy,
iskiereczko ma?a.
Chwilk? b?y?niesz,
potem zga?niesz.

Ot i bajka ca?a.

Listening to Duncan Sheik

Thursday 26 October 2006

Listening to Duncan Sheik’s version of Radiohead’s “Fake Plastic Trees,” a slow realization.

“When was I really listening to this song a lot?” I asked myself. Answer: in late 2002, the beginning of my fifth school year in Lipnica Wielka. “Those were good times,” I said to myself, almost audibly.

There was a time when listening to music I’d associated with Lipnica could send me into spirals of depression if I weren’t careful. I’d lived an idyllic life there during the first three years, and re-adjusting to the States was tough ” tough enough that I ended up going back and staying for another four years. But before I returned, before I made the decision to return, I lived in the past a lot.

Fast-forward to today. I realized that I no longer look back to those times in the same way, and the reason is simple. I’ve got the most amazing reason ever to look forward instead of backward: I’m going to be a father.

Take Five

Monday 9 October 2006

With Take Five, the Dave Brubeck Quartet proved you could play jazz in 5/4 time | JAZZ.FM91

One of my favorite albums is Dave Brubeck’s 1959 classic Time Out, with probably his most famous piece, “Take Five.” The quintuple time signature (5/4) could give it a somewhat jerky feel, but Dave’s light touch smooths the piece and provides minimalistic base for Paul Desmond’s now-timeless melody.

Playing in 5/4, I would imagine, is all about self-awareness. It’s such an odd time signature and so rarely played that I would think it takes a conscious effort to stay in time.

It’s almost as if Brubeck and Desmond were writing a soundtrack for events forty-seven years in the future, a commentary on some of the difficulties the kids I work with have, and how they deal with it.

“Why don’t you just take five?” A question that comes from my lips almost daily. “Take five” means, in our program, getting up and walking to the front foyer and taking a break from a situation that is in some way upsetting. Staff can tell the kids to take five if the staff member feels things are getting out of control, and the kids can simply say, “I need to take five.”

I imagine that the circumstances leading up to those “take-five” moments feel a bit like the 5/4 time signature played badly: jerky, unpredictable, out of control.

From the outside, it often seems like the smallest thing has set a kid off.

  • Sometimes, I have to ask a kid to stop talking so I can finish explaining something, and boom. “Why are you always on my back?!”
  • Occasionally, a couple of kids are talking, so I stop talking and just wait for them to finish. And then wait for there to be silence so I can continue. “Man, why you just standin’ there?! I wanna get this class over with.” Usually, the one who says this is one who was talking.
  • Every now and then, insisting that a kid correct his work — providing negative feedback, in other words — upsets him to the point of distraction, even if I’m sitting there working with him. Indeed, this can make it worse.

In all these situations, and many others, I find myself thinking, “What’s going on here? Why is this simple request to be quiet or to correct a wrong answer so upsetting?”

Such moments are harsh reminders of the simple fact that I see only a small portion of their lives — almost incalculably small. These behaviors didn’t appear instantaneously, and they were reinforced by events that I’ll never know about and could do nothing about even if I did.

Bottom line, the reaction doesn’t make sense, and the reason why they’re occasionally reacting in such ways is the same reason they’re in our program and not still in school.

Evans, Ellington, et. al.

Friday 6 October 2006

We got some new music today joined BMG again, with the intention of getting out within the month and doing it again.

Visions of high school, except the selections are a little more mature. Since I organized my music by genre ten years ago, the “rock and pop” collection has remained virtually static.

Among today’s arrivals:

  • Bill Evans Conversations with Myself
  • Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus, Max Roach Money Jungle
  • Thelonius Monk Monk’s Dream
  • Chick Corea Now He Sings, Now He Sobs
  • Bach Mass in B-minor

It’s too early to pick a favorite, but I’ve listened to the Monk and Evans and find them to be everything jazz should be. Evan’s version of “Blue Monk” could make anyone smile. It’s anything but blue.

Well, okay – I do have a favorite, previously unmentioned. Dave Brubeck’s Time Out. I burned a copy of that many years ago and finally got an original. If you have only one jazz album, it should be this one.

As AMG says, “It doesn’t just sound sophisticated – it really iss ophisticated music, which lends itself to cerebral appreciation, yet never stops swinging.”

Tragedy’s Soundtrack

Tuesday 3 October 2006

One of we regular listeners’ favorite aspects of NPR’s “Morning Edition” and “All Things Considered” (other than the bookend effect it gives work day) is the musical interludes between segments.

Enough listeners apparently wrote in, asking for details, that NPR posts this information on their website.

It even spawned a new show: All Songs Considered.

Looking through ASC’s archives, I stumbled upon a link to the music NPR played on September 11, 2001.

As NPR covered the events of September 11th, it was music that gave listeners time to reflect, to digest the images and the impact. So many letters came to NPR telling us how comforted they were by the music. We’ve put together some of those songs here, in part to answer some of those letters wondering what we played (precise record keeping was impossible), and also to create an aural snapshot that in some small way tries to capture the tone of a nation shaken and changed.

It includes Philip Glass, John Williams, Pierre Bensusan, Ben Harper, Michael Hedges, Mark Isham, and Bach’s Suite No. 1 in G Major (played on a double bass). Many of the selections are from film soundtracks, and that makes sense. The music has been composed with the visual element imagined, or even projected on a large screen. It’s naturally conducive to subtly underlining the visual.

I’m not one usually to get sentimental about such things, but listening to the music, I couldn’t help but recall the footage we were shown over and over and over. At the time, it was tragedy only — no one had started using it for political gain. We didn’t know what lay in store.

The music brings back the overwhelming emptiness we all felt that day and puts some things back into perspective. It’s available at NPR.

Shindig on the Green

Sunday 13 August 2006

Yesterday evening K and I finally went to the yearly Shindig on the Green — which this year would have been more aptly named “Shindig in the Outfield,” as the “Green” it is usually held on is being renovated.

Shindig on the Green XV

So during the next two years, it will be at a baseball field.

We just have bad luck with the SotG, though. Yesterday it rained most of the day, and so the “official” SotG was called off. Those who showed up, though, simply listened to the musicians who either didn’t get word or had come too far simply not to show up.

Shindig on the Green VIII

Such was the case with this band, which had come all the way from Atlanta to play. And play they did, probably about ten times as much material as they were expecting. (Usually, each group gets a two-song set.)

Initially there were two “audiences,” but as the sky darkened, we all gathered into one group, with about twenty musicians playing.

Shindig on the Green XXI

Shindig on the Green XXIV

And some kids out on the baseball field being kids.

Shindig on the Green XXIII

More pictures at Flickr and video at YouTube. (And then there’s last year’s donkey song…)

Taking the Bait

Thursday 3 August 2006

I really don’t get it. It’s conceivable that eventually religious leaders would realize that everything Madonna does in her performances is calculated provocation. That when she is on stage, she is performing and part of her performance persona is to be provocative.

Religious leaders in Rome have united against the mock-crucifixion featured in US pop star Madonna’s latest show.

In the sequence, Madonna appears on a giant cross wearing a crown of thorns.

Father Manfredo Leone of Rome’s Santa Maria Liberatrice church told Reuters news agency it was “disrespectful, in bad taste and provocative”. BBC

“Provocative.” Yes, Father, that’s the whole point.

What is wrong with simply ignoring her? Would that rile her more than “censuring” her?

Breakfast with Audrey

Thursday 27 July 2006

We watched Breakfast at Tiffany’s last night — first time for me.

When Paul gets out of the cab in his first appearance, I could only think of one thing: Henry Mancini directing a mellow arrangement of the A-Team theme…

Recent Listening: Gender Grammar and Names

Wednesday 26 July 2006

“Who cares about grammar?” some ask. That devil-may-care attitude I suppose works for some. There are a few jobs were clarity seems critical. “Spiritual leader” seems to be just such a job.”

Yet, uneducated preachers, it seems to me, are the ones most likely to follow a line of thinking like this: “My job is to communicate. If they understand me, then that’s all I care about.” You’d think if souls are on the line and all that a little more care might be in order. Apparently not.

Other times, grammatical goofs result in little more than humorously muddled texts.

The worst source of well-advertised, over-exposed bad grammar is the lyrics of popular songs. For instance, countless singers have used the subjective “I” instead of the objective “me” to make a rhyme. I guess that’s okay — it doesn’t really change the meaning.

The he/him and she/her difference, however, can make a huge impact on the song’s meaning. Consider two examples from songs I listened to recently.

First, “Hard to Handle,” the Alvertis Isbell/Allen Jones/Otis Redding song made famous by the Black Crowes:

Action speaks louder than words
And I’m a man of great experience
I know you’ve got another man
But I can love you better than him

Wiry Chris Robinson tried so hard to be masculinely sexy in that video, and it’s just difficult to imagine him deliberating between another man and some curvy groupie. But apparently, if the lyrics are to be believed, he did…

John Lennon did no better with the Beatles’ “If I Fell.” Weighing the advantages and disadvantages of two girls he’s interested in, much like I was checking tomatoes at the farmers’ market the other day, he tells one,

If I give my heart to you
I must be sure
From the very start
That you would love me more than her

Granted, it is a fantasy of a great many men to be with two women at once, but I don’t think Lennon had that in mind in penning this line. Or maybe he was thinking something along the lines of Chasing Amy.

In both instances, of course, the “lyricist” simply didn’t understand that they were writing elliptical statements. “I can love you better than he [can love you].” “You would love me more than [she would love me].”

Johnny Cash, however, had no such problems writing one of his best, “A Boy Named Sue.” The narrator’s father, just before skipping out on his responsibilities, names his son “Sue,” prompting the grown Sue to hunt him down. Just before his son shoots him, Sue’s father says,

“Son, this world is rough
And if a man’s gonna make it, he’s gotta be tough
And I knew I wouldn’t be there to help ya along.
So I give ya that name and I said goodbye
I knew you’d have to get tough or die
And it’s the name that helped to make you strong.”

He said: “Now you just fought one hell of a fight
And I know you hate me, and you got the right
To kill me now, and I wouldn’t blame you if you do.
But ya ought to thank me, before I die,
For the gravel in ya guts and the spit in ya eye
Cause I’m the son-of-a-bitch that named you ‘Sue.'”

I want my children to have courage (though not necessarily such foolhardy courage), but I don’t think we’ll resort to naming our son Sue…