Leftbanker
Wednesday, December 16, 2009
Opera in el Mercado Central de Valencia
This is from La Traviata but I'm not too familiar with Verdi so I can't say for sure. I wish they would come to my market here in Russafa. If this doesn't bring tears of joy to your eyes then you had better have a doctor check that out for you.Labels: music, Valencia Spain
9:48 AM
(3643023424167046157)
Friday, August 28, 2009
Annie
I don't need to explain to you why I am posting a couple of songs form Annie. No one is making you watch these videos.Labels: music, Valencia Spain, video
1:46 AM
(8540178282359984815)
Friday, June 26, 2009
Michael Jackson (1958-2009)*
I have to admit that my first reaction upon learning of Jackson’s death simply begged the question, “Does his early demise surprise anyone?” What a cold and cynical response on my part, but bad behavior by our most successful citizens seems to be almost the rule in our society. After the child molestation accusations (and please don’t tell me he was innocent—there’s a court of law and then there is the truth which often don’t jibe), the plastic surgery, and all of the other just plain weirdness, it is difficult to harbor any feelings for the man than other than pity…at best. I say this with total respect for the man and his great musical legacy that we should all bow our heads, grab our groins, and let out an ear-splitting, "Eee Yeee Heeew" (sp?).
It truly is sad to think that this artist, instead of exploring the limits of his immense talent well into his 70’s, 80’s, and 90’s allowed himself to wallow in his grotesque excesses. Imagine a Michael Jackson maturing like a fine wine, which is a terrible analogy because he started out fairly perfect and then got better and better. One of my favorite writers, the Peruvian Mario Vargas Llosa, just wrote one of his most brilliant novels at the age of 72. How many more times could Michael Jackson have reinvented himself and cranked out another brilliant album? I know that it is a stupid question but it’s one I will ask over and over as I continue to hear his music being played and enjoyed all over the world.
I can’t say that I was ever a huge fan of Michael Jackson, at least not when I was an adult because I loved The Jackson Five as a kid. With that said it is impossible to deny that a lot of his music was just so damn good no matter what your own personal music tastes may be. I was in a dance club not too long ago when right in the middle of dancing with my date and another couple I stopped and remarked that the song we were dancing to at the moment, Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough, was absolutely brilliant and probably MJ’s best. We all stopped dancing and just listened to the song. Everyone agreed with me. How could anyone disagree?
I have probably listened to more of his music in the last couple of days than I ever have before. I don’t ever remember actually listening to his music at home or even buying any of his records. I didn’t need to because he provided the sound track for huge swaths of my life. It’s impossible to spend a night in a dance club without hearing at least one of his songs. After hearing Billy Jean a few hundred times I still have to admit that it kicks ass as a dance beat.
*Never have a pair of parentheses seemed more like bookend tombstones to me, as if your whole life will somehow be relegated to two dates and everything in between is somehow forgotten, as if a hyphen is all that represents a person’s life. If history is written by the victors it is remembered only by the survivors. I think the sobering thing for me when I typed in those barest essentials of Michael Jackson’s vital statistics is that one of those dates will be the same when the time comes for my life to be reduced to two numbers separated by a hyphen. I am still working furiously on everything that comes in between. I freely apologize for never having recorded a song like Don’t Stop ‘Til You Get Enough but I suppose that the world really does need ditch diggers like me.Labels: music, Valencia Spain
10:27 AM
(7241471404534252694)
Saturday, January 24, 2009
Falling Through the Cracks: Discovering Nick DrakePlace to Be
When I was young, younger than before
I never saw the truth hanging from the door
And now I'm older see it face to face
And now I'm older gotta get up clean the place.
And I was green, greener than the hill
Where the flowers grew and the sun shone still
Now I'm darker than the deepest sea
Just hand me down, give me a place to be.
And I was strong, strong in the sun
I thought I'd see when day is done
Now I'm weaker than the palest blue
Oh, so weak in this need for you.
Perhaps I'm the only person left on the planet who hasn't discovered Nick Drake. At least I hadn't up until January 23, 2009 that is. I hope I am the last person because everyone should already be a huge fan of this great music. If any of my friends listen to his stuff then they didn't tell me about it and they never played it when I was around. I have no idea how I could have possibly gone this long without hearing these songs. He just sort of fell through the cracks. What a shame but what a marvelous artist to have discovered at this point in my life. I feel lucky and blessed.
I was in my favorite new bookstore/café in Ruzafa, Ubik Café yesterday looking through the stacks of used books. There was music playing but it was pretty soft in the almost empty store. I didn't really notice the music until I moved to the back nearer to the speakers. This is why I know that I have never heard his music before, because I knew immediately that I was listening to something really, really good. I absolutely stopped what I was doing and listened. I asked the guy working there who we were listening to. I had to have him repeat the name because I had never heard of the singer before and the guy's pronunciation was a little off. I just shook my head, sort of pretending that I knew of him. How could I not know about a guy who puts out music like this.
As soon as I got home I looked up Nick Drake's name on Wikipedia (I'm such a fucking nerd! Someone please punch me really hard, or give me a wedgie.). I quickly glanced at his vital statistics and at first I thought he was born in 1974. Great, another young British kid burning up the charts, easy enough to get by me these days as I hardly listen to popular music. What first struck me with the song I heard was its stark, sort of hands-off production. It was just about as pure as singing gets and utterly timeless. When I corrected my mistake and saw that 1974 was the year he died I almost couldn't believe it. The fact that I had never heard of him before makes me ashamed, embarrassed, and angry all at the same time. I feel like someone who was never taught to read and walks into a library one day.
When I think back on all the complete shit masquerading as music that was shoved down my throat on FM radio in America back then, it makes me sad to think that this guy was completely ignored. What a crime. The good news in the tragic story of Nick Drake's life is that so many new listeners have so much catching up to do.Labels: music, Valencia Spain
9:36 AM
(4448439247387691970)
Tuesday, December 04, 2007
A Few Random Thoughts About The Beatles
I remember back when I was eleven years old and my friend Kenny Stillwell and I stole his older brother’s new copy of Abbey Road. His brother was about 18 or so and didn’t much like us kids so we were risking an ass kicking if we got caught. We went up to his attic where Kenny had a sort of clubhouse and we listened to this masterpiece on his little record player for the very first time. I don’t remember how I felt but I have always kept the memory of this moment.
Fast forward to about 1990 or so and I was living in Maryland. I was sharing a place with a former Air Force buddy. Tom and I were farting around the house one day when he put on Abbey Road. After just a few measures into the first song we were both sitting on the sofa listening intently. We listened to both sides straight through without exchanging a single word. When the record finished playing we just sort of looked at each other with an expression that said, “Damn!” No drugs were involved.
I don’t think that it is possible not to be a Beatles fan; it’s like saying that you don’t like Gershwin or Cole Porter. You may as well say that you don’t like music. If you tell me that you don’t like the Beatles I simply won’t believe you.
It’s not like I’m this huge geek of a Beatles fan; I’m just like everyone else on the planet that can recognize wonderfully crafted songs when I hear them. It’s not like I even listen to their music all that much these days. I was just lucky enough to have grown up with their albums playing in the background of my childhood. They left a fairly vast body of work in their wake so I often find myself rediscovering one of their tunes. It is often like hearing it for the first time.
Ritchie Havens did a cover of Here Comes the Sun from Abbey Road that was one of the first Beatles covers I have ever heard and still is one of the best. It has this amazing acoustic intro that lasts over one minute. When Havens finally decides that he’s ready to sing it is absolute bliss.
I read a recent interview in The New Yorker with Paul McCartney where he said that If I Fell was his all-time favorite John Lennon Song. I would have to say the same. I discovered a great cover of this song by Brazilian artist, Rita Lee. She sings it in Portuguese which may even be an improvement, if that is possible on this bit of pop perfection.
The reason I am writing this right now, and the reason for my most recent return to The Beatles was inspired by another Brazilian pop star, Caetano Veloso. He covers a lot of Beatles songs and the other day I was at someone’s apartment when I heard his version of For No One by McCartney from Revolver. I have heard the song a million times but I couldn’t recall the title. I had to sort through a bunch of empty CD cases to find the right one. I would have to say that it isn’t one of their more well-know songs. I don’t know why this is because it about as good as pop music gets. Every singer in the world has covered this tune but no one comes close to McCartney. I think this song, more than any other, demonstrates just how great a voice he has. Don’t take my word for it, watch this video.
I’m trying to learn a really good arrangement of The Long and Winding Road on the piano. I can’t find any good sheet music for this so I am watching a video on youtube that shows you how to play it. Why anyone would prefer this to reading music is a real fucking mystery to me. I think that some musicians think that reading music is some sort of rocket science. If I can read music I think that it is something that can be grasped by anyone.Labels: music, Valencia Spain
3:53 PM
(5343193237899126981)
Tuesday, June 12, 2007
The Smiths
I was living a few hundred miles south of Mat at this point in my life when we—Mat, all my friends, and I—came to the same conclusion about The Smiths. They just seemed to reach higher than the previous highs we had experienced in new wave music. It is so hard to say that they were better than The Clash or Elvis Costello but they managed to become our favorite group in a sea of great music. The Clash definitely came first but we were all hit harder by The Smiths.
It was 1985, give or take a year. I was living in Athens, Greece or more accurately, Glyfada, a beautiful beach town just south of Athens. I was serving in the United States Air Force along with all of the best friends and the greatest group of guys and gals I’ve even had the privilege of meeting. Few of us had telephones in our otherwise gorgeous apartments so we all used to meet up at my friend Bob’s apartment in the early evening to decide what we were going to do.
Bob had a great stereo and an even better patio off of his living room where we would have some happy hour cocktails and listen to new music that anyone decided to bring with them. I guess that 1984-5 makes me a late-comer to The Smiths but I was hooked the first time I listened to Hatful of Hollow. A lot of the other music at the time was also great but I think that most of us would agree that this group cut us all the deepest.
In no particular order of preference there was Johnny Marr’s great music and beautiful sound on the guitar. Of course, Morrissey was absolutely the hippest hipster of the 80’s: great haircut, super-cool clothes, and ultra-existentialist view of his own celebrity status. The best thing about The Smiths was my own observation at the time that either one of two things were true about them: either Morrissey was trying to be funny, in which case he was, or he was being serious, in which case he was fucking hilarious. How would you interpret a song lyric such as, “Why do I smile at people who I’d much rather kick in the eye?”
American culture was pretty alien to me at this stage of my life although I did read Rolling Stone magazine religiously as well as Harper’s and The Atlantic Monthly. On the other hand, we were all totally jacked into British pop music to the extent that we used to be at the hipster record store in Glyfada the day an important album was released in Greece. From the fresh purchase at the record shop it was only a matter of hours before the album was being disseminated amongst all of our friends at Bob’s apartment before over cocktails before we headed down to the tourist bars to meet up with other friends or flirt with foreign tourists.
In most of the round-table discussions we had with other Europeans in Greece in that era there was a lot of disagreement except when it came to The Smiths. French, Austrians, Germans, and even the Greek kids agreed that they were the best band going. I hated Ronald Reagan back then but I couldn’t tolerate some Austrian douche bag criticizing him for one time being an actor when their president (Kurt Waldheim) was a former SS officer. About The Smiths there was rarely an argument, no matter where you called home.
I remember going to the hipster record shop in Glyfada the day The Queen is Dead came to Greece. I’m not sure about this but we probably went straight to Bob’s place to listen to this great album, one of the best of that era in out opinion. That was probably the last time that I really anticipated a release of a rock album although I still follow popular music to this day.
There was something about The Smiths that spoke to all of us at that time when we were truly without a care in the world and right where we wanted to be. I had a magnificent apartment overlooking the Saronic Gulf islands and the best friends I’ve ever had in my life, most of whom are still my closest friends. It will probably take a dozen more essays to fully articulate exactly why this particular British pop group articulated the way we felt at the time and why no group since has had the same effect—at least for me.
Perhaps I grew up. I went on to study piano and discovered Bach and Mozart. I was even more devastated by their music but that was completely different. Being into The Smiths was, at that time, having my fingers on the pulse of everyone around me. My love of Mozart, Bach, and Chopin is a completely different appreciation of music, less personal but more profound.
I’m much more of a writer than I am a musician and literature affects me much more philosophically than music. Visual art hardly touches me at all, but back in the ere or The Smiths music was a grounding intellectual force that I haven’t know since.Labels: music
10:42 PM
(8367964501720240594)
Friday, March 17, 2006
Language Break
I am turning whatever creative energy I have these days into learning Portuguese. My current obsession with Brazilian chanteuse Ana Carolina is fueling my desire to crack this language. As I already speak Spanish, Portuguese is fairly easy. I would be happy to email an mp3 of one her songs so you can hear for yourselves the heartbreaking beauty of the language sung by a voice unlike anything I've heard in American pop music. Leave you email address in my comments box and I'll forward a song along with the lyrics.
I have been in love with Brazilian music for years but now I have decided to understand the lyrics. There is so much great Brazilian pop music that you have to think that every resource in that country goes towards building soccer players and great singer/song writers.
Ana Carolina's music is my absolute favorite right at this second. I love it when I become totally obsessed with a song. In this particular moment it is one called A Song Played at the Wrong Hour ( a cancao toccou na hora errada). Her song is my Rosetta Stone for Portuguese. I have had crushes on songs that have driven me to learn to play piano. Now I am being compelled to learn another language. When I fall in love I fall hard.
Ate logo.Labels: music
8:03 PM
(114262249280950017)
Wednesday, July 06, 2005
On Becoming More Mexican
I have been listening to a lot of music lately. I mentioned that I bought a 300g hard drive for my laptop which allows me to store tons of new music. For the past year I haven’t been listening to music much and I was beginning to worry about myself. Music has always been a fairly bright-burning passion in my life, as it should be for everyone. I just went through a phase in which music wasn’t an important part of my life. Things are swinging back the other way.
Think back upon all of the music that you have heard in your lifetime. Think about all of the song lyrics that you have memorized. I would imagine that the average person could recite the lyrics to hundreds of popular songs. These songs represent part of a cultural heritage that you share with every other American, or every other English speaking person who also knows this music.
Part of the cultural heritage that I have learned in the course of my adult life is that of Latin America. I am fairly fluent in a lot of the music of the Spanish speaking world. I’ve decided that I need to increase my Mexican cultural literacy. The best way I know to do that is to become more familiar with one of the biggest icons of Mexican popular music, Vicente Fernandez.
I have sung the praises of Vicente Fernandez many times before. He is by far the most popular singer in Mexico. Rancheras are the staple of his music for which he is best known. Rancheras are folk songs that often tell stories, most of which turn out bad for the narrator. There seems to be a sadness that overshadows many of these songs; mostly it is of love gone bad, often ending in violence. Rancheras don’t often have happy endings. I’ll give you an example.
Mi Ranchito
Allá tras de la montaña
Donde temprano se oculta el sol
Quedó mi ranchito triste
Y abandonada ya mi labor.
Allí me pasé los años
y allí encontré mi primer amor
Y fueron los desengaños los que
Mataron a mi ilusión.
Ay…corazón que te vas
Para nunca volver
No me digas adiós,
No te despidas jamás
Si no quieres sentir
De la ausencia el dolor.
He sings of his sad little ranch across the mountain where he worked and loved. Something went to shit, however, and now all he seems to have is pain and loss and this little song to show for it. Life is often hard and never fair in Mexican Rancheras. Some of them turn into outright bloodbaths.
I figure that if I am going to cram a bunch of crappy pop music lyrics into my head, they may as well be Mexican pop music lyrics. For the next few months I’m going to memorize the lyrics to as many Vicente Fernandez songs as I can. You have to set goals for yourself—I learned that at a Tony Robbins seminar.
I have always meant to write a song so while I am at it I am going to write a ranchera. Why do I have the feeling that mine will be the bloodiest ranchera ever written? Why do I suspect that I will write the Pulp Fiction of rancheras? The more I think about this the more entertaining it sounds.Labels: music
8:38 PM
(112067517165342517)
Thursday, October 07, 2004
English Anyone?
Question: How many snowboarders does it take to screw in a light bulb?
Answer: Hell’a snowboarders, dude.
Snowboarders have a reputation for being ferociously stupid and inarticulate. They aren’t any dumber than most other tribal subcultures of modern American youth but they are a good subject for humor. All of the people who are the most susceptible to the influence of pop culture jargon and slang, these victims of marketing, have one thing in common: They are--for the most part--a post-literate society
Every time I hear a new MTV catch-phrase like hell’a (a lot) or flava (fuck if I know what that means) I am reminded of Haitian Kreyol and of rapidly mutating disease viruses. Whenever I hear someone use one of those weak verbal expressions I ask them if they could please spell it for me. If you listen to the current hip hop artist du jour give an interview what you will hear is a lot of garbled words that add up to almost no content. They should have these stars write out in their own words what they are trying to communicate. Perhaps this will make them realize that their spoken words convey almost no meaning.
Haitian Kreyol has been adrift in a linguistic storm since Haiti’s independence in 1804. The Caribbean nation has an alarming 85% rate of illiteracy. The language now spoken in Haiti has not been moored securely by a written language. From French the islanders have incorporated many African dialects along with bits and pieces of English, Portuguese, and Spanish. All languages borrow from others but Haitian Kreyol has continued borrowing, evolving, mutating, and making itself all but unintelligible from the language spoken by Haitians of only a generation ago.
On the other hand, ancient Greek and Modern Greek are remarkably similar although separated by two millenniums. What helped to keep Greek on its linguistic foundation were the writings of the ancient Greeks. Once the oral traditions of Greece were committed to writing, Greek had a reference point for all literate people (There are other reasons for the lack of dynamism in the Greek language but they don’t strengthen my argument so I will not address them).
Our own language had a more rocky start. English began as the language of Germanic warriors who came to England on the heels of the Romans. Their language was slightly altered by the scant Latin they borrowed from the preceding occupiers. Christianity further accelerated the Latin influence upon English. The Norman Conquest brought thousands and thousands of French words into English. English adapted well and used the loan words to strengthen itself and introduce an increased subtlety as exampled by words that are almost—but not quite—synonymous. ‘Ask’ is not quite the same as ‘demand.’ ‘Start/ commence’ ‘answer/respond’ ‘freedom/liberty’ are just a few of these slightly synonymous pairs that have added to the precision and flexibility of our native tongue.
Eventually we got around to writing down English and through the written word we cast a mold. This mold has been the vessel that has carried the language across the centuries. The language has continued to evolve but the changes occur over centuries—not within the time a song is on the pop charts. From Chaucer we get an English that is almost entirely intelligible to modern readers:
This Absolon gan wype his mouth ful drie,
Derk was the nyght as pitch, or as the cole,
And that at the window out she putte hir hole,
and Absolon, hym fil no bet wers (fared no better or worse),
But with his mouth he kiste hir naked ers (arse)
Chaucer began work on The Canterbury Tales in 1386. From Chaucer English progresses in the written form with the Bible of John Wycliffe and later, that of William Tyndale. Two hundred years after Chaucer we find the writings of Shakespeare whose language seems quaint for our times but certainly more readable than The Canterbury Tales.
English was the language of the people and became the language of the government.
It is difficult to believe that quite a bit of effort was actually made to simplify English spelling. I’m not the greatest speller so I’d rather not even think about the state of the English language before “simplification.” What did happen over the centuries is that English became rooted in a semi-standardized written form. Increased literacy rates among citizens of English speaking countries has grounded the language and kept it fairly stable for a few hundred years.
I would say that the novel has done a great deal to codify the English language. Novels brought the language to anyone who was able to read. Narrative fiction side-stepped the issue of regional dialects and accents; American readers could read a Dickens novel and pronounce the dialogue any way they saw fit. Few writers tried to write in the actual dialect of the people. Novelists who wrote outside of Standard English were and continue to be the exception. The mold has been cast.
Slang has always been with us. English continues to evolve and is strengthened by the evolution. The deliberate attempt by the MTV/pop culture engines to create a new vocabulary for every new hip hop artist or boy band is more about marketing than language. Most of the pop slang offerings stay with us about as long as a song is on the pop charts. The influence of commerce on language has always been with us but the power and scope of commerce has grown exponentially. The English language is bigger than any industry and will continue to prosper and to thrive. There has never been a post-literate culture in the history of man so I suppose it is anyone’s guess as to where we will be taken by the armies of the inarticulate.
Just take a look at the short history of Rap and it’s anyone’s guess today what they were saying back in 1992 in this Public Enemy song, Tie Goes to the Runner.
To the blind Def and Dumb
Hard to see’em comin’
But dey come here dey come
Don’t be dumb diggity dumb
Politikin’ writin’ bad checks
Still dey gettin’ wreck
Goin’ fo’ a nigga neck
Rollin’ in a blue ‘n’ white gang
Ready to bang biggeddy bang
My spell-check had a harder time with that passage which is 12 years old than with the Chaucer lines from 618 years ago.
10:47 PM
(109717845739739998)
ON INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY AND GOING LEGIT
I downloaded my first legal song yesterday. I have downloaded a few bootleg songs via Kazaa.com in the past but I found the process unreliable, time-consuming, and the computer viruses that piggy-backed on the music made maintenance on my laptop a chore. I deleted the Kazaa program from my computer along with the few illegal songs I had downloaded. This wasn’t on some moral grounds because I felt guilty about stealing music; I just wanted to purge all of the viruses from my hard drive once and for all.
I heard a song in a coffee shop yesterday. It was an acoustic version of an old Alan Parsons Project tune. Alan Parsons was some sort of dorky art rock band from the 80’s and I always hated their music. The song is called Eye in the Sky. The original version was horrifically over-produced and utterly forgettable. It wasn’t completely forgettable because I sat up as I heard the new version on the coffee shop stereo. At first I was struck by the rawness of this woman’s voice and the stark acoustic arrangement. I had to listen up to the chorus to realize that I knew this song but I had to struggle to recognize its origin. Her rendition of Eye in the Sky was so good it made the original sound like an awful counterfeit.
This singer obviously found more in this song than I did when it was all over the radio back in 1980 something. How she found the beauty in this piece is fascinating. It's like someone finding a diamond ring at the beach with a metal detector. Now that I listen to her version I can see that some of the phrasing is pretty remarkable. The composition is simple enough but you can say the same thing about a lot of Cole Porter's music.
The song was on the Muzak system so no one working there could tell me who the singer was. I started thinking about all of the times I have heard a wonderful song on the radio and then was never able to hear again. I remember once when I was living in South America I heard a Brazilian song on the radio that immediately grabbed me. By chance I had a tape recorder next to me and was able to tape the last part of the song. The station I was listening to never gave the names of the artist so I was stuck trying to track down the singer with only a few measures of the song recorded on a crappy portable tape recorder. I kept that tape with me for years but I was never able to find the song again.
With this song I had better luck. I knew the original song so I did a Google search and I found that the name of the new artist is Jonatha Brooke. I had never heard of her but I haven’t paid much attention to pop music lately. I loaded the itunes® software and downloaded the song. The whole process cost me $1 and took a couple of minutes—time and money well spent as far as I’m concerned.
Although I certainly can afford to pay for downloaded music I don’t feel the least bit guilty about burning a borrowed CD on to my laptop. I really like The Killers CD Hot Fuss, and I’m sure they are nice guys but I’m not going to lose any sleep over the fact that I borrowed a friend’s CD to make my copy. I have spent enough money on music already for more than one lifetime. From what I read about the recording industry the artists don’t make much on sales commissions and rely on advances and concert performances for their livelihood.
This story doesn’t have a completely happy ending because I don’t think the itunes format merges with my Windows Media Player. They wonder why people bootleg songs from the free sites.
EYE IN THE SKY - Alan Parsons Project
Don't think sorry's easily said
Don't try turning tables instead
You've taken lots of chances before
But I ain't gonna give any more
Don't ask me
That's how it goes
'Cause part of me knows what you're thinking...
Don't say words you're gonna regret
Don't let the fire rush to your head
I've heard the accusations before
And I ain't gonna take any more
Believe me
The sun in your eyes
Made some of the lies worth believing
CHORUS:
I am the eye in the sky
Looking at you
I can read your mind
I am the maker of rules
Dealing with fools
I can cheat you blind
And I don't need to see any more
To know that I can read your mind, I can read your mind
Don't leave false illusions behind
Don't cry 'cause I ain't changing my mind
So find another fool like before
'Cause I ain't gonna live anymore believing
Some of the lies while all of the signs are deceiving
3:16 AM
(109711185120218999)
Wednesday, October 09, 2002
Necrophilia and Other Thoughts
Not to go on and on about two dead white guys but I really have to emphasize how brilliant Glenn Gould’s piano playing is on the prelude to Johann Sebastian Bach’s second English Suite.
To call my own piano playing ham-fisted is an insult to ham-fisted pianists everywhere. I would probably sound better if I beat on the keys with a pair of turkey drumsticks. I do know enough about the piano to recognize true genius when I hear it. What kills me about Gould is his use of contrary staccato and legato with either hand (striking the keys sharply or holding the down the key a bit longer). I try to imitate his touch, especially his staccato walking base lines. Try being the key word in that last sentence.
Have you ever listened to a piece of music, or turned the last page of a novel of towering achievement, or been witness to something of such artistic perfection that you feel that you could happily die at that moment?
I had this feeling after listening to this particular prelude. I could have committed hari kari on the spot. The only thing that kept me from this messy self-vivisection is that I still have several episodes of the Sopranos to catch up on (I have to tell you that I am a bit concerned about the power play between Ralf and Tony and although Ralf beat a hooker to death he comes across as not an entirely bad guy).
So my life has been spared by the tenuous thread of an HBO series. It is great to be alive! I have so much to live for what with the new season of the Sopranos and I still haven’t purchased Glenn Gould’s recording of Bach’s French Suites.Labels: music
12:05 AM
(85540409)
Sunday, September 15, 2002
OFF TO BAND CAMP
I never went to band camp as a kid, never played an instrument, never much cared. It never occurred to me that making music could be fun and within the range of my abilities. The idea that something could be rewarding was not a concept I readily grasped as a kid.
I started playing piano five years ago this month. I started from scratch. I was a tabula rasa. I’d say that I was an empty staff except I didn’t know what a staff was when I began. I didn’t know a half note from a treble clef. I didn’t know squat about music.
My complete ignorance of music was a shameful secret I carried with me through my life much like some people stumble through life with the horrible burden of being illiterate. The burden of my ignorance became heavier and harder to bear as I expanded my collection of classical music records.
Five years ago I decided to change my life for the better. I bought an inexpensive electric keyboard (I soon got a piano—keyboards suck!). I started to teach myself how to read music. Musical notation is an incredibly easy affair but without a teacher it was more difficult than it should have been. Now I could teach anyone how to read music in 30 minutes, guaranteed. I still have my first piano book, More Easy Classical Themes arranged by Alexander Cole. The first arrangement in the book is Bach’s choral piece Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring. I had to write on the page where C was on the staff. It has been all uphill since then.
I have decided that I will devote the next six weeks of my life to the piano. I will play every day for at least an hour. I will learn new pieces and relearn old ones that I have neglected. I am going to make the piano the biggest priority in my life.
I have practiced a lot on and off before but this will be my most heroic effort at raising my level of proficiency. Six weeks isn’t a very long time to alter the course of my life. I want to become a much better musician. I want to be able to some day master some of Bach’s fugues. Wish me luck.Labels: music
9:00 PM
(85452947)
Tuesday, September 03, 2002
MORE REALITY, LESS VIRTUAL: DOING IT YOURSELF
This weekend Seattle’s answer to Woodstock, called Bumpershoot, was held across the street from where I live next to the Seattle Center. A modest $12 admission price allowed you access to wander around the multi-acre Seattle Center complex and listen to scores of rock bands and a few assorted jazz acts. It is horrifically crowded and the only refuge from the masses can be found inside of one of the many beer gardens. On a nice day there are far worse ways you could spend your time.
I had planned to attend at least one day just to say that I actually did something over the weekend but my lack of interest in rock and my laziness conspired to keep me out. Rock is sort of like tequila: You reach a certain age and you just can’t stomach it any longer.
Instead of attending the rock festival I impersonated a shut-in. I decided to spend a few minutes cleaning my apartment and chose for musical accompaniment a CD that came with a book of sheet music of Chopin’s easier pieces for piano. I already play a couple songs from this collection of mostly dances: Waltzes, Polonaises, and mazurkas.
I have struggled with the notion of hiring someone to do housework for me. I have considered hiring a maid for quite some time. I certainly could afford to have a cleaning person and there are lots of people who need the money and are perfectly willing to do this sort of work for $25-30 and hour. My time could be better spent practicing the piano or working. Maybe my logic is flawed on this issue but I have decided that everyone should clean their own fucking toilet and wash their own dishes (unless you have kids in which case you should make those ungrateful little shits do the dirty work around the house). This tie to our mundane lives tends to keep things in perspective. Maybe you are a big, famous rock star but you are still a filthy little animal like the rest of us so clean up your own mess. A servant class doesn't sit well with my idea of democracy.
After finishing the cleaning, after listening repeatedly to the Chopin CD, I am still no closer to motivating myself to walk across the street to Woodstock. Instead I pull out the Chopin sheet music and start pecking away at his Mazurka in A minor Op. 67, No. 4. As I learn a new piece it is as if I can’t hear what it is I am playing, at least at first. The notes are too far apart to tie them together as music but as I learn the piece it gradually comes into focus. A simple piece like this will take me a few days of practice before it sounds anything like what Chopin had intended.
I love to listen to someone practice an instrument, especially if they don’t realize anyone is listening. It is like you are watching someone think. I find that since taking up the piano five years ago I spend only a fraction of the time actually listening to music that I did before I played. These days, most of my listening consists of these sorts of house-cleaning exploratory ventures into piano literature, as I seek things that I like that are also suitable to my skill level. In music, and cleaning, there is a certain satisfaction in doing things yourself.Labels: music
9:37 PM
(85409639)
Sunday, July 14, 2002
Dark Secrets of a Heterosexual Showtune Whore
Like any red-blooded American I have always wanted to shout the words, “Let’s put on a show!” I missed out on music training as a kid so that scenario never happened growing up. I’m at an age now where quoting Mickey Rooney is liable to get me beat up or at least fired. The only show I’ll be putting on any time soon will be in the privacy of my own living room with my front door dead-bolted and the blinds tightly drawn.
I went to the music store today ostensibly to seek out a transcription of Bach’s trio sonatas for organ arranged for piano and guitar. No luck finding that piece but I did pick up yet another cheese-ball collection called Lounge Music for piano. When I got home I put on my powder blue leisure suit and began pecking out everything from Copacabana to What the World Needs Now. I even put a tip jar on my piano to add more spice to my fantasy of someday playing at a Holiday Inn somewhere in Kansas. Whenever this sort of lounge lizard musicianship is mocked all I can think is, “Lucky bastard.”
When I was growing up our family had recordings of all of the great musicals. I hated rock and roll when I was a kid but I knew the lyrics to everything from Ain’t Misbehavin’ to West Side Story from Annie to Zorba. Naturally, I kept all of this a secret and applied myself dutifully to baseball and pretended to like Led Zeppelin. Maybe I fooled everyone around me but secretly I always felt that Richard Burton and Zero Mostel were a lot cooler than Mick Jagger and Robert Plant.
My first job was as a busboy in an expensive restaurant, a venerable institution that had been around forever. There was a piano bar with about the most flaming pianist you could ever imagine. The crowd was older and preferred music of the show tunes/torch song variety. The restaurant was called The Gay Nineties so I suppose they had a huge stack of resumes to choose from when it came to entertainers vying for the job.
My thug buddies working with me constantly made fun of the fruity piano player, but I thought he had the best job in the world. The first time I ever heard ragtime was when he played Maple Leaf Rag and The Entertainer for the old fogy customers at The Gay Nineties. Bunny, or whatever his name was, would always be pretty cool in my book.
To this day I can’t pass a piano bar without putting a five spot in the big brandy snifter. I am never so presumptuous as to think that this meager tip warrants a trick from the artist, but if he asks me for a song I know a few I like hearing. Just about everything by Richard Rodgers will do, songs like Bewitched and Might as Well Be Spring. These types of songs have been the staple of jazz artists for the past 75 years.
The Look of Love
from Casino Royale
words by Hal David and music by Burt Bacharach
The look of love is in your eyes,
a look your smile can’t disguise.
The look of love,
It’s saying so much more than just words could ever say,
And what my heart has heard well,
It takes my breath away.
The look of love,
is on your face,
a look that time can't erase.
Be mine tonight,
let this be just the start of so many nights like this.
Let's take a lover's vow and then seal it with a kiss.
I can’t hardly wait to hold you,
Feel my arms around you,
How long have I waited,
Waited just to love you,
Now that I have found you.
Don’t ever go.
Makes a guy wish that he could sing.Labels: music
4:09 AM
(85246642)
Friday, July 12, 2002
Mourning a Tragic Loss
Is there anything in this world as sad as the closing of a neighborhood bar? As human beings we all come with an expiration date. We all know that we have to go at some point. Bars don’t have to die and when they do it is simply from our neglect, pure and simple. Whenever a bar closes I am tortured with the thought that perhaps I could have done more for it. I see myself as sort of the Florence Nightingale of drinking establishments although I don’t wear the uniform these days because I think that it makes me look fat. I visit my patients as often as I can.
Nikko’s is this sort of Greek restaurant slash sports bar that catered to the crowds from the basketball arena across the street. It’s not like I even really liked the place but it lies directly between my apartment and the gym. It was a decent place to catch an inning or two of the Mariners while having a beer. The food was decent. When you eat out almost every night you need all of the choices you can get.
I went there last night to watch the Tour de France and get a bite to eat when I saw that they had closed. There is another option for a sports bar on the next block but I liked Nikko’s because it was rarely crowded and the light is good for reading.
There were enough TV’s at Nikko’s so that I could get one turned to the Tour de France without having some knucklehead complain about it. This may come as a surprise but there are actually people in this world who are less than obsessed with the Tour. Thank god that today’s race was a stage for the sprinters and Lance wasn’t likely to make a move up in the standings.
Nikko’s is gone now. I hope that you are happy. Perhaps if you had one less Blockbuster night, and went out and socialized instead, this tragedy could have been avoided. Did you really need to see Sister Act again? What is it with you and that movie? A perfectly good bar lies dead out in the street while you sit and watch the exploits of a woman pretending to be a nun. You really make me sick. At least you could have had the decency to attend the wake with us last night at the Mexican joint down the street.
For today’s bonus essay I am going to bore the shit out of you by talking about classical music again. If you have ten dollars to spare and wish to greatly improve your lot in this fleeting existence I would suggest that you buy Mozart, The Piano Sonatas, volume I as performed by Glenn Gould. There is really nothing that I could say about Mozart’s sonatas that hasn’t already been said by some dead guy somewhere except to say that I can never play this CD without being completely distracted by practically every note. It is never just background music.Labels: music
7:05 PM
(85243321)
Thursday, March 28, 2002
THINGS IN THIS WORLD THAT DON’T SUCK
Just so the few folks who come across this page won’t think that I wallow in sarcasm and bogus, pseudo-hip irony 24 hours a day, I thought I would mention something in my life that brings constant joy and light.
As I write this I am listening to a Real Jukebox play list of Mozart's slow movements from various piano sonatas, string quartets, and other combinations of instruments. One piece in particular continues to consume me. The adagio movement of his piano sonata K. 332 in F major was called “the summit of expression Mozart reached without departing from the formality and reticence of his epoch,” by the English critic Arthur Hutchings. This is another way of saying that Mozart was no grand innovator like Beethoven, he simply took everything he touched to the highest level. Mozart didn't invent the piano sonata, the string quartet, the symphony, or the opera but he raised them to new heights.
I am drawn to Mozart’s slow movements because those are about the only things he wrote that I can play. One of the first pieces that I was determined to play when I began on the piano was the andante movement from his first piano sonata. He wrote it in Munich, Germany in 1775 at age 18. That he had the technical ability to write this sort of music at such an early age is amazing but that he had the depth to FEEL this at 18 is even more incredible.
Before I began playing the piano four years ago I would go on a Mozart bender and listen to his music exclusively for weeks at a time. I felt like a charlatan because I knew so little about music and yet I felt tremendous passion for practically every piece he wrote. I didn’t know the first thing about music when I began. I was a clean slate, a tabula rasa. I had to learn to read music on my own and I was thoroughly overwhelmed by the piano: how in the fuck could a person make his hands do two completely opposite things? I am still trying to answer that question four years later but I have come a few notes in the right direction.
Mozart is one of the shields I use to protect myself from the mediocrity that makes up most of pop culture. Here is an interesting question: Is a person drawn to the music of Mozart to escape from the horrors of pop culture or does an understanding of classical music make it difficult to appreciate what passes for music today? The whole chicken and egg question.Labels: music
1:28 AM
(11191866)
Wednesday, March 13, 2002
ROCK AND ROLL WILL NEVER DIE
Perhaps rock and roll will never die. Perhaps medical science has reached such a pinnacle that it can keep this dying patient alive indefinitely. But can't you smell that? That! That god awful stench that permeates practically every level of our pop culture. That horrible fetid odor that is rock and roll. Perhaps rock will never die, perhaps the forces of marketing are so god-like that rock will be around forever. Keeping it alive hasn't been too pleasant this past decade, it has been like the gangreneous character in Hemingway's The Snows of Kilamanjaro who suffered and slipped into delirium. I think that many would agree that the Hemingway character, and rock and roll, are better off dead.
It was fun while it lasted. It was a good run. Now it is time to face the facts and admit to ourselves that it is over and it is now time to find a new popular music that is completely different. For the past decade most of what has been happening in rock has been remakes. Covers of everything and we have taken almost every song from the past 30 years in rock and used it for some sort of advertising jingle. It is as if our pop culture was like the Berlin Wall that we tore down and sold, bit by bit, to the highest bidder. This trend has been just as disturbing in films. It is as if there is nothing in our pop culture past that is too insipid to be remade and remarketed. Lesson to be learned here: nothing is sacred and nothing is too big of a piece of shit that it can't be resold to the youth market. OK, I got it.
Most people that I talk to don't seem to mind that rockers have sold their product to advertisers. Perhaps that's what these artists had in mind when they were starting out in some garage somewhere. Perhaps they were thinking, "I want to write a song that will make people want to buy an SUV." Maybe that's what Sting had in mind, who knows? Perhaps in these times songwriters are as concerned with product tie-ins as they are choruses. People are free to do whatever they wish. Just don't tell me that you aren't a jingle writer. Andy Warhol was being ironic when he painted soup cans--what's your excuse?Labels: music
2:44 AM
(10675472)
Wednesday, March 06, 2002
IT’S THE MUSIC THAT MATTERS
(caution: this entry is completely irony-free)
I buy sheet music compulsively. I have at least five feet of music on the shelves in my apartment. My piano is stacked with stuff I am playing or playing around with. I have much more music than my abilities and time left on this earth will afford me to play. I keep buying more because I like the way music looks. I like having the possiblities contained in these books at my beck and call.
I especially like the Schirmer’s Library of Musical Classics books. These are yellow with green garlanded trim. They are incredibly inexpensive which further fuels my fetish. The first one I purchased was titled First Lessons In Bach. I remember walking up to the cash register and feeling like an imposter. I thought the sales clerk might challenge me, make me play a few measures, but I just needed to fork over the $3.95 (I told you they were cheap).
Another great series of music books for the beginning to intermediate pianist are the Alfred Masterwork Editions. These aren’t much more expensive than the Schirmer books. They have great looking reproductions of paintings that reflect their content. On the introduction book to Beethoven’s piano works there is a detail from Joseph Mähler’s oil portrait of Beethoven doing his best Gary Oldman impersonation.
Samuel Scott’s Entrance to the Fleet River is on the cover of Clementi’s six sonatinas. The thumbnail sketch on the back cover explains this choice. “This beautiful oil painting was chosen for this cover because, not only does it represent the London that Clementi knew as a young boy, but like his sonatinas, this colorful, bright and refreshingly airy composition is a joyous celebration of the times.” I love the painting at least as much as the sonatinas, but I love that description more. I would love for something that I create to be so described.
A little later in the day, I passed by a middle school orchestra performing on the stage of the Seattle Center. I missed out on the whole band thing as a kid because where I grew up music training was seen as superfluous, or at least highly optional. I look upon young musicians with equal parts awe and envy. A person who learns a language as an adult is almost never fully able to conquer the accent, similarly, it is nearly impossible to master an instrument if you start late in life as I did. Better late, as they say.
I took a seat and listened to the concert. They band concluded with a medley of songs from Annie. Their teacher and conductor was really working them through this piece and the kids rose to the occasion. They looked like they were having a blast up there. As a spectator it would have been impossible not to be moved by the performance, even if you aren’t a big show tune whore like I am. They finished up the medley and the concert with Tomorrow and I couldn’t help thinking to myself that if these kids playing Annie isn't a joyous celebration of the times, a colorful, bright and airy composition, I don’t know what is.
I will probably get beat up for this but I'll leave you with this song which you'll be singing the rest of the day:
TOMORROW
The sun'll come out tomorrow, bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow
there'll be sun.
Jus' thinking about tomorrow clears away the cobwebs and the sorrow
till there's none.
When I'm stuck with a day that's gray and lonely, I just stick out my chin and grin and say:
Oh, the sun'll come out tomorrow, so you got to hang on till tomorrow
come what may!
Tomorrow, tomorrow, I love ya, tomorrow, you're only a day away.Labels: music
11:32 PM
(10466071)
