Mavis Staples, Bob Dylan and Barack Obama

Saturday mornings often find me listening to NPR radio while I catch up on household bookkeeping and the like. A highlight during these sessions is hearing the news quiz show, "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me". This morning I had the unexpected pleasure of hearing Mavis Staples appear in the It's Not My Job guest slot. And, yes, she recounted her years-ago romance with Bob Dylan, including how Dylan asked Pop Staples for Mavis' hand in marriage. (I guess I thought that story was just a rumor back in the 60's -- apparently, Pops was good with it, but Mavis said no.)

Anyway, to help Kim remember Mavis and her role in the Staples Singers, I found this early vid of one of her terrific classic numbers, I'll Take You There:



And here is a later, much later, version (is that Dr. John on piano?):



Geez, Mavis Staples is a Chicago institution and she wasn't invited to the Obama inauguration?

Nico Muhly and The Reader

Just noticed that Nico Muhly (see previous article posting) composed the score for The Reader, the movie with Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes that is to be released early 2009. An Apple-format download seems to be available now from iTunes:



Amazon is also taking pre-orders for January release of a CD soundtrack, but you can also download an MP3 album now.

I'm itching to hear it, but I would rather buy a high-res/high-fi version, so I will wait for awhile. Maybe I will actually see the film first! (With Kate Winslet and Ralph Fiennes, it has to be pretty much a must-see for this household, anyway.)

In the meantime, you can visit the film's Web site where you can watch a trailer (on the splash page), and better yet, hear some of the music, if you set it to Audio On. I just let the music loop for a long time while I worked ...

And don't miss the pièce de résistance: The Nico Muhly Concert, under the Video and Stills menu link.

Let The Conversion Begin

Stepping outside the house to embark on my walk to work this morning, I simultaneously confronted the single-digit-temperature air and popped on the iPod. Up came, believe it or not, the title track from Laurie Anderson's seminal 1982 (or thereabouts) Big Science album.

The first line: "It's cold outside ..."

(Then I remembered that I had pulled some Laurie Anderson CDs from the shelf last night, while I was testing and tweaking and messing with my new "project", and had checked to see if any resided on the iPod.)

And it was even colder last night, reported variously as minus seven and minus ten. A good night to stay home, as Kim was off to the Elgin Opera House with Ivi, three of her musician friends and Grandma Janet, affording me an opportunity to initiate a long-overdue project -- creating a FLAC library of my CDs.

Why FLAC? Like MP3, it is a compression format, but unlike MP3, it is "lossless" and (theoretically) does not result in degraded sound quality.

I decided to use an old favorite, Exact Audio Copy, as it has been my most successful tool over the years when I wanted to rip CDs to WAVs and/or MP3s. The version of EAC on a couple of my computers is about five years old, so I downloaded the current -- v.099prebeta4; yes, it is still in some sort of beta state. Turns out that, although I had separately downloaded the latest FLAC codec package, this latest EAC comes rigged with an option to directly install an included FLAC.

EAC/FLAC then got installed in my MacBook under its Boot Camp partition running WinXP (sorry, no Mac or Linux version for EAC, but FLAC comes in all those flavors ... and I briefly considering running EAC under WINE on one of my Linux boxes). The MacBook became the weapon of choice, mostly for its portability and convenience, but also because it is definitely the best Windows machine I own.

SIDEBAR: While I have experienced Parallels, VMware Fusion and Crossover inside a Mac partition, I definitely prefer using a separate Boot Camp partition. Why? Because having to boot into Windows separately is not really an issue for me when most of the operations I do under Windows need to be running solo -- like ripping DVDs and CDs or rendering video -- without interference from other processes, anyway. Plus I get to maximize my access to all available RAM. And, like I said, Windows on an Intel Mac is likely to be the best Windows experience you will ever have in terms of stability and robustness of drivers; it sure has been for me.

EAC is slightly perplexing to set up, as it is a power user's dream with screens and screens of configuration options but lacks any formal documentation beyond a simple FAQ! However, you can piece together some guidance with the help of your friend, Google. FLAC's own site points at some HydrogenAudio documents, among others, which seemed to cover an earlier, somewhat different version of EAC, but they helped a bit. Before I go too far into this project, I will probably try to do some empirical testing of the results with varying EAC configurations.

Anyway, I did throw some Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir CDs at EAC for an initial go.

The results so far? My FLAC file sizes are running about 50 - 60% of the ripped WAV files. It looks like I will be able to store about three CDs-worth of tracks on a single 700MB CD disk. This probably translates into a few thousand CDs on a one terabyte hard drive. And today's prices for a 1TB drive at a supplier like Newegg or at my company's store, aren't much over $100. For the time being, I am moving the FLACs to my Linux NAS box, but I will probably build a newer, bigger one to serve up these files. And, of course, a mirror backup drive will also be in order.

I can't really distinguish between the WAVs and the FLACs as to sound quality. Haven't done any real rigorous testing yet. But, so far, they sound pretty darn good using a USB-connected HeadRoom BitNet head amp with my old Sennheisers. I have some Grado phones on the way, so we shall see how those work out. This FLAC business may entirely ruin me for MP3s (although I encode most of mine at bitrates of 256 or 320). Maybe I will need to pick up a larger capacity iPod and run it with RockBox so it will handle the FLAC format ... C'mon, Apple, your lossless format isn't the center of the universe.

What player software for the computers? The piece of software in use on all of my machines -- whether Windows, Linux or Mac -- is VLC, the open-source player from VideoLan.org. It will handle almost any format, audio AND video, you throw at it. I also like and use Winamp (latest version is around 5.5.4) on some of my Windows boxes. I find iTunes to be rather unpleasant, and now use it only for some podcast/videocast subscriptions. And I find Windows Media Player even less useful. My daughter is fond of Media Monkey, as am I -- it is a great freeware player of FLAC, et.al. and is a great substitute for iTunes. Songbird has been recommended to me as a good open-source, cross-platform music player/manager, so I am starting to spend some time with it as well.

Haven't yet figured out how I want to deal with making my FLACs accessible throughout the homestead (and playable through standalone audio systems, as well as just on computer). For now, everything will go on the Linux network-attached-storage (NAS) box, which can be seen by any computer in the house. I also have had a Hauppauge MediaMVP (bolted into my main stereo system) for a few years, but it only knows MP3 and WMA, audio-wise.

In (necessarily) keeping this as a poor man's solution, I will definitely not be investing in something like the McIntosh 750 music server ($6K) or even Sonos ($1K and up) or Olive Opus (just under $2K). Maybe I will look at the (now Logitech-owned) SqueezeBox Boom $300-$400?) for a bedroom adjunct to stream music to fall asleep with, wirelessly.

This project is going to take forever, probably, as EAC -- or at least the way I have it set up now -- is no speed demon. So I will be feeding the MacBook CDs as I watch the NewsHour, read the newspaper, eat my dinner, visit the bathroom, and so on. Will report progress and observations as warranted. That is, unless global climate change or the predictions of James Howard Kunstler haven't overtaken us by then.

Vanity Fair Photographs

John w. tells me about visiting LACMA (Los Angeles County Museum of Art) recently where he saw and highly recommends the Vanity Fair Portraits: Photographs 1913–2008 exhibition. Through March 1, 2009. Look at the photographers represented: Cecil Beaton, Harry Benson, Julian Broad, Imogen Cunningham, Annie Leibovitz, Man Ray, Mary Ellen Mark, Steven Meisel, Helmut Newton, Herb Ritts, Edward Steichen, Mario Testino, and Bruce Weber. Quite a list. Stop by if you are in L.A. in the next three months.

Reza: War and Peace

Just as I awoke this morning, NPR Radio was presenting an interview with Reza Deghati, exiled Iranian photojournalist. You can hear the interview, view a gallery of his work and learn about his latest book: Reza War and Peace: A Photographer's Journey at this NPR page.

Left is a photo by Gerard Rancinan of Rez and his wife, Rachel.

Running White Deer

About the time I was getting into photography, one of its leading lights was Paul Caponigro. In 1967, he captured an image of running white deer in Ireland, an image that has gone on to be one of his signature pieces. He and his son, John Paul -- widely-known in this era as an expert digital craftsman and teacher -- have collaborated on a new digital print of Paul's timeless image. You can find out more about it here. (Yes, I would buy a print for myself if I had the budget for it; no, I have nothing to personally gain by pointing you to this thing.)

Song of the Day

J.S. Bach's Chaccone in D Minor for Solo Violin, performed by Hilary Hahn

More and more, I am randomly shuffling with my iPod as I walk to work, letting it discover pieces I had almost forgotten. This one -- Bach's Chaconne for Solo Violin -- is shaping my entire day, and here is a YouTube version:


IMHO, this is one of the most incredible pieces for solo violin ever. When I get a little more time, I must hunt down performances by Yuhudi Menuhin, Pincas Zuckerman, et.al.

And go here to learn more about the wonderful Hilary herself ... http://www.hilaryhahn.com/

(I remember when Hans -- a gifted graphics designer and fellow music lover who worked for me a few years ago -- and I thought we heard a snippet in a then-new Radiohead piece that reminded us of something we had heard in Bach, so some research ensued -- and we found Hilary.)


Here is Itzak Perlman:




And Menuhin, this said to be from around 1935:

Song of the Day

Walking to work this morning, I set the iPod to random shuffle mode and out came the late-great Otis Redding and I've Been Loving You (Too Long ...), which I hadn't heard for-almost-ever. Here is a visual version, live at Monterey, from quite a few years ago:



Otis died in a plane crash around 1967, but he remains -- in my mind -- the absolute quintessential soul singer.

Farewell, Odetta

Today I learned that legendary folk singer Odetta died Tuesday at age 77. Hers were among the first folk records I started collecting in the late 50s or early 60s, along with Peter, Paul and Mary, et. al. I first saw her live, soon after I moved to Los Angeles in the mid-sixties, at the Troubadour on Hollywood Boulevard where she nearly blew me out of the house with her huge voice. It was my first time at that venue, and I was on my own, barely knowing a soul in L.A.

Odetta was especially noteworthy as a voice of the civil rights movement and influence on people like Bob Dylan (whom she famously covered) and Joan Baez. Let's try something-- Water Boy -- roughly from that period of time:




Sometime quite a bit later; I don't have the date for this take on The Midnight Special:



And very recently:



Odetta is said to have been scheduled to sing at Barack Obama's upcoming inauguration. A shame that won't be.

UPDATE 12/4/08:
Seems that NPR has a nice page with a wealth of interviews, music and information about Odetta.

Will She Run in 2012?

Arguably the best-known photographer of our times, Annie Liebovitz has done an upcoming Vanity Fair cover starring the best-known political impersonator of our times, Tina Fey. This sneak preview is making the rounds of the Internet:

While Returning to Work After Lunch Today ...

Jazz: Expectations Exceeded

For a couple of my college years, I regularly went to bed with a jazz album playing on my trusty old portable suitcase-style stereo. Dave Brubeck, Gerry Mulligan, Stan Getz, Miles Davis, Herbie Mann, et. al. Later on, when I frequently flew to Washington, D.C. as a manager in GAO, I often went to area jazz clubs where I saw and heard the likes of Ahmad Jamal, Charlie Byrd, Cal Tjader and others. And then there was Hambone's in Hollywood that I often visited on weekends at home, where you could be fed soul food breakfast if you hung out all night.

But into the mid and later 70s, I found myself listening to more and more rock (especially punk), classical and "new music". Jazz no longer was a regular part of the diet. Now, when we are a mere one block distant from a campus venue that offers all manner of music, theatre and art, live jazz opportunities are not to be missed, even (or maybe especially) if the program and performers are not familiar.

Tonight, our neighboring university (Eastern Oregon U.) sponsored a night of jazz in a small, intimate theater that lacked only smoke-filled air and bourbon on the rocks to bring back those old memories. The event opened with some Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus and other numbers, performed very nicely by EOU's Eastern Jazz Combo.

The Eastern Jazz Combo, pictured above, is William Morris (alto sax), Erin Marinelli (piano), Neal Facciuto (guitar), Alan Arnson (electric bass), Tucker Murphey (drums and vibes), Trent Shuey (drums and vibes), and Dr. Matt Cooper (director).

And on to the main event (and a few handheld long exposures I was able to get off):

Michael Waldrop

Matt Cooper

Brian McCann

The main event was a three-man set comprised of Matt Cooper on keyboards (Dr. Cooper is an absolutely wonderful jazz and classical pianist, who as an EOU music professor, also directs the Eastern Jazz Combo). and two other gentlemen totaly new to me: Brian McCann on bass/bass guitar and Michael Waldrop on drums, vibraphone and just about anything percussive, both Visiting Artists from Eastern Washington University.

This group blew me, and most of the rest of the audience, away. I was really unprepared for how astonishing their performance was. Especially notable for me was Dr. Waldrop, whose drum work had me riveted. (No big surprise here, if you recall my drumming blog entries back in February on Cozy Cole and Buddy Rich.)

Here is a bit from the printed program on Waldrop:

Michael Waldrop is currently the professor of percussion at Eastern Washington University. He teaches jazz drum set, classical percussion, percussion ensembles and percussion methods at EWU.

He has a Bachelors degree in percussion performance from the University of North Texas, a Masters in Jazz Studies from the University of Memphis and a Doctorate in Performance fromt eh University of North Texas. He has been a professional musician for the past 25 years.

Dr. Waldrop's career has been extensive and varied, ranging from rock and jazz styles to performances with two major symphonies in the United States and abroad. He was a member of the Grammy nominated One O'Clock Lab Band and recorded two CDs with the group and has been on several tours, including a European tour of the Broadway production "42nd Street", and a tour of Turkey with Prix di Rome prize-winning composer, Kamran Ince, and his ensemble. In addition, he has performed with Maureen McGovern, Della Reese, Randy Brecker, Marvin Stamm, the Nelson Riddle Orchestra, Eliane Elias and Slide Hampton.

Dr. Waldrop's previous appointments include Director of Jazz Studios and Percussion at Mesa State College in College (1994-2004) and professor of percussion at the University of Toledo (2004-2006). He endorses Yamaha percussion instruments and Vic Firth sticks and mallets, and is a clinician for both conpanies.

Some more on Waldrop:

Monica Huggett and PBO

Tonight, public television OPB-TV broadcast a piece on Monica Huggett and her leadership of the Portland Baroque Orchestra. Click here to enjoy it for yourself! She is doing Vivaldi, but it is her Bach that I most remember.

I think I first heard Huggett and her violin when I used to spend hours and hours in my darkroom in Venice Beach with KPFK and KCRW music programs playing almost around the clock. At the time, there was great interest in interpreting 17th and 18th century music in a more "authentic" manner using period instruments, and some of the DJs at those stations were all over the stuff. The difference in sound, compared with the more usual contemporary arrangements and instrumentation, was astonishing, and very obvious even to a non-musician like myself. Ton Koopman of the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra was a leader in this movement -- as was Monica Huggett, and others whose names escape me at the moment. Huggett's personal violin, I have heard, is an Italian Amati made in the 1600s. Monica is English, absolutely world class and a tremendous gift to us to have as a neighbor in Portland.

Top 50 WTF Moments In Comics

Just stumbled across this one. A fascinating site it is. Among other things, I learn that Captain America was fighting the Nazis at least a year before the United States entered World War II.

Back in the 70s, in my SPARC days (more about that sometime), I worked with a cartoonist, Rich, who was a Hanna-Barbera refugee. In his spare time, he was creating comics and turned me on to some really obscure stuff, mostly politically-oriented. I will have to dig that out sometime. Also a note to myself to search (in my infamous basement/garage storage spaces) for my copy of the allegedly first comic book created entirely on a Macintosh. Done in the mid-80s, what was it -- Shatter or something like that? While I am at it, I also should resurrect my old photo-based comic strip, done to celebrate the birth of my son. Watch this space.

UPDATE: 11 November 2008

There is some controversy swirling about in photography circles concerning the Callie Shell work (see The Big Picture, Again post of 11/11/08). Some believe it is clearly inspired, if not a direct rip-off (particularly, Shell's Whistle-Stop Tour piece), of photographer Paul Fusco's 1968 work on the RFK Funeral Train. Judge for yourself.

Revisit Callie Shell's work in a Time photo essay (Time.com has a number of other great photo essays worth a long look) on the Obama campaign, including this great view of the Obamas watching Bruce Springsteen perform:

Tango Week

Luciana Lopez, pop music critic for The Oregonian newspaper, declares this to be "Tango Week". Visit her blog for daily postings this week of some great tango MP3s you can hear online, plus lots of tango lore. (Not a bad blog to follow anytime for tracking with pop music of any stripe, too!)

Bravo!

Many, many years have passed since I seriously tried learning to play the piano, and what I did learn never exceeded a pretty primitive level. But that was when, as a child, I first heard the music of J.S. Bach, and that fascination stuck. You may recall that I considered Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier a leading candidate for my "desert island top ten" (Top Ten?). Plus my previous remembrances of my aspiring classical-pianist-roommate Michael, whose piano (Cello and Beyond) in our front room inspired me to wander through the pages of his collection of those Preludes & Fugues (which explore every major and minor key), slowly picking out the notes (but only when I was comfortably alone in the house!).

David Stabler is the classical music critic for The Oregonian (and he is one critic I always look forward to reading). Today's Sunday edition carries an article by Stabler, describing his year-long project to learn each of the 48 preludes and fugues that make up the Well-Tempered Clavier, after his years of absence from professional piano performance. You can follow his progress on his blog, which is also a terrific source of information about all manner of Things Classical.

Stabler has a great description of a Bach fugue:

I love how fugues start with the grain of an idea and a second strand joins in and then a third, and it gets bigger and begins rolling, gaining momentum, adding density, largeness -- always largeness with Bach -- until it's unstoppable. Listening to a fugue is something else entirely, like trying to track simultaneous conversations at a cocktail party. Bits and pieces drift in and out of earshot.

While we are at it, let's listen to the ubiquitous C Major Prelude No. 1 from Book 1, this performance attributed to the ever-controversial late Glenn Gould (something that is so wonderful about the Preludes & Fugues is how strikingly varied they can sound in the hands of different interpreters):



You can download the score here, in Adobe PDF form.

Probably should be doing the associated Fugue as well, but this post could go on forever, as there is so much to hear and compare and savor. Maybe I will do more along these lines in a future post on the Preludes & Fugues. In the meantime, do check out David Stabler.

Ivi and Olivia in the 19th Century

Hiroshima: The Lost Photographs

My friend John passes on a link to an amazing post at DesignObserver. Thanks, John, for pointing this out and helping me discover the very wonderful DesignObserver.

The Moon, Restored

Forty-two year old lunar images are being restored and enhanced in a special project between NASA and a team of data recovery specialists. Here's an initial example:



Also check out:

http://www.moonviews.com

http://nasa.gov/ames

(Wall) Street Art

The Big Picture, Again

The Boston Globe's The Big Picture site keeps on delivering fabulous imagery. This time, Obama.

Also see these remarkable Callie Shell photographs. About Callie Shell, from The Digital Journalist:

Four years ago Time photographer Callie Shell met Barack Obama backstage when she was covering presidential candidate John Kerry. She sent her editor more photographs of Obama than Kerry. When asked why, she said, "I do not know. I just have a feeling about him. I think he will be important down the road." Her first photo essay on Obama was two and half years ago. She has stuck with him ever since.

UPDATE 11/19/08: There is some controversy swirling about in photography circles concerning the Callie Shell work. Some believe it is clearly inspired, if not a direct rip-off, of photographer Paul Fusco's 1968 work on the RFK Funeral Train. Judge for yourself.

Click here in case you missed Scout Tufankjian photographs from an earlier post.

Mama Africa Bows Out

Miriam Makeba passed on at age 76 yesterday. Here is a performance of the earliest piece I heard her do back in the late 60s.




I think it is time to visit my basement vinyl storage area and dust off some of her music, and maybe convert some for playback on the trusty iPod.

Song of the Day

Along the Way by DeVotchKa

DeVotchKa, still one of my favorites after all these months ...

Only x Shopping Days Until Christmas

Last night, I came upon Chika's really great looking new reusable shopping blogs ("BOTES"). Immediately made a mental note to Shop Chika for holiday gifts. Sustainability and green!

Then a few minutes later, PBS's Newshour with Jim Lehrer triggered a suggestion for yet another source, when the World of Good company and its founder, Priya Haji, were featured in a piece about how the company sells messenger bags, handicrafts and other products with the aim of employing people in impoverished parts of the world and spreading social awareness among U.S. consumers. Listen to the audio for this feature:

World of Good Segment MP3

Finally, there is one of my very favorite gifting ideas -- gift certificates to invest in a microfinanced third-world entrepreneur: http://www.kiva.org/.

Front Pages

See this story from the National Press Photographers Association.

And check out yesterday's Newseum entry: Wednesday, November 05, 2008. 719 front pages from 65 countries

Scout Tufankjian

She is a freelance photographer based in Brooklyn who has covered the Obama campaign from day one, and is said to have made over a million exposures in doing so. See more of her superb Obama images here. Tufankjian is also known for her photographs from Gaza.

Also, see this NBC News video clip.

Not That I'm An MTV Fan ...

... but I understand they are putting their entire library online. Including this most wonderful gem (brings back memories of when I took then-barely-teenager niece Gabrielle to Stop Making Sense) :

Talking Heads |MTV Music

Ivi Anna : A Collaboration of Nikolas and Lawrence

Mother's Best, 1951

One of the welcome consequences of staying in bed, trying to recuperate from illness, is the opportunity for sustained listening -- between stints of sleep -- of radio, whatever comes up. In my case, it would be OPB public radio. I fell asleep with BBC World News at about 2am and awoke at about 6am with NPR Weekend Edition. This morning the latter included Scott Simon interviewing Jett Williams, the daughter born to Hank Williams right after his death. Jett Williams was there to help kick off the recent publication of "The Unreleased Recordings of Hank Williams", consisting mostly of 1951 live performances from "Mother's Best Flour" (NPR cites this as "Mother's Best Flower", but it surely has to be mistaken) radio program from Nashville. Jett says the recordings were made directly without compression and other-artifact-inducing techniques and that sense of real presence is preserved in this release.

Read all about these recordings, hear the interview, and -- best of all -- listen to some of the songs for yourself at:

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=96085241

(You can also buy them from iTunes, and Jett said they would be available as a boxed set from Time Life, but I could find no mention at timelife.com.)

Go to Jett Williams' own site for even more information.

Here's hoping that father-in-law Doug gets to hear this stuff from his hospital bed; I will definitely make sure he does as soon as he gets home!

Playing For Change

In a 10-year effort involving 100 musicians throughout the planet, Mark Johnson launched a project called "Playing For Change: Peace Through Music", spawning documentary films, DVDs and a Web site. And he is building music schools in the Third World. Tonight, he was a guest on PBS' Bill Moyers Journal. You can see the entire 18-minute segment, including two songs performed simultaneously by several musicians in different parts of the world, here:

http://www.pbs.org/moyers/journal/10242008/watch3.html

For many more audio clips and further information, visit the Playing For Change site.

Veronica -- Who Knew?

Fellow photographers may have been wondering. Turns out that the patron saint of photography is Veronica, thanks to Saints.SQPN.com.

Song Of The Day, Again

Where They Never Say Your Name by Eilen Jewell

Hear this and more from OPBMusic in-studio performances.

Song of the Day

Can't Find the Way by Mary Gauthier ("Go-Shay")

As heard on OPBMusic.org ...

Song Of The Day (So Far)

Let's Not Pretend (To Be New Men) by Crooked Fingers

As heard on http://www.opbmusic.org's stream ...

Elliott Smith, Five Years On

Not long after moving to Oregon, I met a co-worker's boyfriend, Nathan, a musician who told me about Elliott Smith, a Portland songwriter-singer I had barely heard of. Later on -- now about ten years ago -- Smith was nominated for a Grammy. Five years ago today, he died in Los Angeles, possibly by suicide. Nathan and others have described him as a later-generation Paul Simon or John Lennon, paving the way for the modern Portland music scene and the likes of Death Cab For Cutie, The Shins, and others.

Today I stayed home in an attempt to deal with a most-miserable cold. Curling up with a cup of hot tea, I naturally turned on my bedside radio -- and discovered that Oregon Public Radio's "Think Out Loud" talk show (normally devoted to political and other current-interest topics) was today featuring a remembrance of Elliott Smith. Some of Smith's former musician collaborators, band members and friends were either in-studio or call-ins. One remarkable call was from a woman who cited Smith and his music as a force that helped her overcome her heroin addiction.

You can see some video clips, hear an audio clip new to me (Coraliza), and find more about this broadcast at http://action.publicbroadcasting.net/opb/posts/list/1736412.page. For more about Think Out Loud (there may also be a podcast of the Elliott Smith show) at http://www.opb.org/thinkoutloud/. Also, if you listen to the stream at http://www.opbmusic.org, you are likely to hear some Elliott Smith from time to time. Finally, check out OPBMusic's Elliott Smith blog entry.

Of particular note for me was a call from Autumn de Wilde, noted for her photographs of Elliott Smith, among others. See this work at http://www.autumndewilde.com/elliott.htm and in her book (and here). (I believe that Autumn is the daughter of photographer Jerry de Wilde, someone I knew about mainly due to his involvement with photographer Robert Frank, one of my strongest early inspirations/influences.)

UPDATE 11/26/08: More on Autumn de Wilde as guest DJ at KCRW

I never really dived very deeply into Elliott Smith, despite the recommendations of friends like Nathan and John W., but hearing the Think Out Loud program today reminded me of how this is stuff to be listened to and savored. For me, the lyrics are especially compelling.

Howlin' Wolf

My "Top Ten" musings of the other day set me thinking, especially about Tom Waits. So I sat at a computer for a few hours and listened to some of my old T.W. favorites, which triggered thoughts about Captain Beefheart, who surely has to be considered a forerunner or earlier influence for Waits. Somewhere, but where I know not, I have an old vinyl Captain Beefheart down in the basement. Couldn't locate it yet, but that led to thoughts of Howlin' Wolf (one of my possible Top Ten candidates) and how I swear I hear him in Tom Waits. About that time, I happened to be browsing Netflix and spotted a 2003 film, "The Howlin' Wolf Story", which I immediately sent to the top of my queue. (Watch for comments in the near future) In the meantime, I did some digging at YouTube (while watching the third presidential debate) to find something to supplement what I have in my library. Here are some of my favorites, along with some I hadn't heard ...

How Many More Years



Moanin at Midnight



Meet Me At The Bottom



Dust My Broom



Smokestack Lightnin



And here is Little Red Rooster (famously done by the Rolling Stones early in their career):



While we are at it, let's check out the fabulous rendition of Little Red Rooster by legendary Big Mama Thornton:



Another Howlin' Wolf standard, Killing Floor, was performed by the incredible Jimi Hendrix at Monterey in 1967:



Well, this has been a great way to get through the McCain-Obama thing, multi-tasking thanks to the MacBook and headphones!

But I have run out of time before I could put together some Tom Waits/Captain Beefheart/Howlin' Wolf back-to-back. Later, but soon...

Top Ten?

In the mid or late 70s, I used to listen to KCRW, Santa Monica College's public radio station (and I still hear KCRW's Internet streams). One program featured a weekly guest (usually a celebrity musician, actor, artist or the like) who would describe and play his/her selection of music that they would most want to take with them to live out their remaining time on a desert island. (Guess this assumed that electricity and some level of requisite equipment and other conveniences would also be available.) Can't recall if the exercise was limited to their top five or top ten or what, but I sometimes think about how I would form such a list. Everytime I try this, the list changes, but some pieces crop up consistently enough that I might add them to the list of stuff I might grab in the case of a house fire or impending flood. You might have fun playing this little game yourself. Today, just off the top of my head, here are some that come to mind for a Top Ten ...

To begin with, there are three immediate must-take-alongs from ye olde music collection:

1. Bob Dylan (but would it be Blood on the Tracks? Bringing It All Back Home? Greatest Hits vol 1/vol 2? Planet Waves? Blonde on Blonde?)
2. J.S. Bach (how to choose ... Goldberg Variations? Mass in B Minor? Well-Tempered Clavier?)
3. Tom Waits (again, would I choose Frank's Wild Years? Bone Machine? Rain Dogs?)

The next seven vary depending on my particular frame of mind at the time I think about these things ... so, in no particular order:

4. Max Richter - Blue Notebooks
5. Jalan Jalan - Bali
6. Jacqueline du Pre - Elgar E Minor Cello Concerto
7. Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain? Kind of Blue?
8. Dmitri Shostakovich - 24 Preludes & Fugues (Bach homage)
9. Talking Heads - Fear of Music (among others)
10. Radiohead - Kid A? Amnesiac?

And what about Arvo Part (Tabula Rasa, Spiegel im Spiegel, Frates, etc)? Gorecki Symphony #3 (Symphony of Sorrowful Songs); Rachmaninoff Vespers? Portishead (Dummy)? Schubert Impromptus? Or Movies Go To The Opera (really recommended to anyone who doesn't yet know that they like opera)? Something from Howlin' Wolf? Muddy Waters? Louis Armstrong? Ramayana Monkey Chant (Balinese)? Laurie Anderson (Big Science)? Lots of other Philip Glass I love, too. Oy vey, I forgot about all my NONESUCH South Indian albums, too.

Almost impossible ...

Thinking about what I would retrieve in the event of an emergency makes me realize that -- as a computer professional, for shame -- I really haven't adequately provided for a good off-site backup plan for my music (MP3's on the iPod Nano don't really count as most wouldn't sound like the originals, plus some of the vinyl versions have almost irreplaceable album art and liner notes). But as cheap as storage is (today I saw that we could get 500GB Seagate SATA drives from one of our suppliers for just over $60 each) I ought to be thinking about making lossless digital copies of some of my stuff.b

What Statement Are They Making With The Name?

Old college roommate Herman sends along this video link to a performance of the Weather Underground (this has nothing to do with unsavory presidential campaign attacks), an LA band that includes his son, Ryan, on bass.

Let's Shake It Up A Bit

I normally don't do commercials, but this is an especially nice one. Wonder what it took to get Google/YouTube's cooperation for this ..

Four Arguments for the Retention of Television

This week I watched five hours of PBS TV's AMERICAN MASTERS "You Must Remember This" series on the history of Warner Bros. and its films. I thought about how much my still photography has been informed by the likes of Orson Welles, Film Noir, and Sven Nykvist's work with Ingmar Bergman and others. And what I have learned by carefully watching (some) television. Following the last episode of "You Must Remember This" was a showing on my local station of "Casablanca". I hadn't seen it for a long time, so I was ready to go one more time, until Kim talked me out of it. It was getting pretty late, after all, and I can always study the camera work and individual scenes anytime by dusting if off from my DVD library.

But as I drifted off to sleep, I found myself continuing to think about TV, and remembered Jerry Mander's FOUR ARGUMENTS FOR THE ELIMINATION OF TELEVISION that was published in the late 70s. An executive summary of those arguments might be as follows, quoting from the book:

Argument One--The Mediation of Experience

"As humans have moved into totally artificial environments, our direct contact with any knowledge of the planet has been snapped. Disconnected, like astronauts floating in space, we cannot know up from down or truth from fiction. Conditions are appropriate for the implantation of arbitrary realities. Television is one recent example of this, a serious one, since it greatly accelerates the problem."

. . .

Argument Two--The Colonization of Experience

"It is no accident that television has been dominated by a handful of corporate powers. Neither is it accidental that television has been used to re-create human beings into a new form that matches the artificial, commercial environment. A conspiracy of technological and economic factors made this inevitable and continue to do so."

. . .

Argument Three--Effects of Television on the Human Being

"Television technology produces neuro-physiological responses in the people who watch it. It may create illness, it certainly produces confusion and submission to external imagery. Taken together, the effects condition for autocratic control."

. . .

Argument Four--The Inherent Biases of Television

"Along with the venality of its controllers, the technology of television predetermines the boundaries of its content. Some information can be conveyed completely, some partially, some not at all. The most effective telecommunications are the gross, simplified linear messages and programs which conveniently fit the purposes of the medium's commercial controllers. Television's highest potential is advertising. This cannot be changed. The bias is inherent in the technology."

These arguments continue to be rather compelling but very controversial to this day, of course. When I first read Mander's book, I mostly watched public television shows like "Nova" and "The MacNeil-Lehrer News Hour" -- and Star Trek. I was warned, when my kids came along, that I needed to gird against the temptation to use TV as an electronic babysitter. Right.

I still watch mostly public television, and perhaps even more so as a grow older. But I have discovered that for Sheer Entertainment, it is hard to beat these four "counter arguments", listed more or less in order of personal preference:

• Mad Men
• Battlestar Galactica
• Lost
• Pushing Daisies

The first three are sometimes characterized as soap opera in the sixties, in space, and on a desert island, respectively; the fourth is my daughter's favorite, and now one of mine, too. I believe you can watch the last two (ABC TV) completely online as well, while snippets and previews can be seen online for Mad Men and BSG.

Perhaps I will have to do some research and see whether Mander or anyone else has almost certainly extended the elimination arguments to the Internet as well ...

And finally, I must share with you a chunk of this incredible tableau that I ripped from the BSG (Battlestar Galactica) site:

Life, and Life Only (to quote Bob Dylan)

Life magazine's photo archives will go online in 2009. Visit the embryonic Web site now and signup for news and updates: http://www.life.com/Life/ I can hardly wait.

Here's the press release:

Press Release

Time Inc. and Getty Images Jointly Launch LIFE.com

New Site Offers Access to Millions of Iconic Photographs From Getty Images’ and LIFE’s Combined Photo Collections

3,000 New Contemporary Photos Uploaded Daily from Getty Images

New York, NY, September 23, 2008 – Time Inc. and Getty Images will jointly launch LIFE.com, the companies announced today at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Conference in New York City. LIFE.com will be jointly owned and operated by Time Inc. and Getty Images, and will provide access to the most comprehensive iconic and professional photography collections available anywhere online. Andy Blau, president of LIFE and SVP of Time Inc. Interactive, and Catherine Gluckstein, vice president of iStockphoto and Consumer Markets at Getty Images, will serve as CEO and CFO, respectively.

“LIFE.com brings together the two most-recognized brands in photography, making the defining images of our times even more accessible to people everywhere,” said Jonathan Klein, co-founder and CEO of Getty Images. “We are thrilled to partner with Time Inc. on the launch of this exciting new venture.”

LIFE.com will offer access to thousands of new photographs from Getty Images’ award-winning photographers, including today’s news, entertainment, sports, celebrities, travel, animals and many others. Consumers will also have access to millions of images from LIFE magazine, many of which have never been seen by the public. The collection contains the historic photos that LIFE published through the decades, in addition to many never-before-seen pictures of Hollywood stars, sports heroes, important people and events from the ‘30’s though the ‘90’s. Getty Images will be providing the majority of images at launch from its comprehensive archival and current collections. More than 3,000 new images will be uploaded daily from Getty Images.

“Image search is the fastest-growing type of online search, and LIFE.com will satisfy the public’s desire for quality and relevant imagery through a visually pleasing and easy-to-browse website,” says Blau. “Only three percent of the LIFE archive has been seen by the public,” says LIFE.com editor Bill Shapiro. “This site will put everything on display. You’ll be able to look at the biggest events of yesterday and the stories making news today with just a couple of clicks.”

The new site, which was designed with Getty Images’ industry-leading search technology, will be easy-to-use and navigate. When the site launches in early 2009, consumers will be able to interact intimately with imagery, including printing select photos, sharing photos with friends and family, playing the popular LIFE Picture Puzzle, creating collections of photos around special interests and purchasing photo albums of user-made collections. Through the site, consumers can view the photos the world is talking about by searching for recently added photos or viewing photos by topic. Searching for and viewing images on the site will be absolutely free.

About Time Inc.
Time Inc., a Time Warner company, is one of the largest content companies in the world. With more than 120 magazines, it is the largest magazine publisher in the U.S. and a leading publisher in the U.K. and Mexico. Each month, one out of every two American adults reads a Time Inc. magazine, and one out of every seven who are online, visits a company web site (more than 25 million unique visitors). Time Inc.’s popular brands and successful franchises extend to online, television, cable VOD, satellite radio, mobile devices, events and branded products.

About Life Inc.
Life Inc. publishes soft and hardcover books under the LIFE brand, distributes limited edition photography through galleries nationwide and offers fine art prints to consumers online. The LIFE Picture Collection is a working photography library dedicated to cataloging, scanning, researching, and digitizing images. Life Inc. is a subsidiary of Time Inc.

About Getty Images
Getty Images is the world’s leading creator and distributor of still imagery, footage and multi-media products, as well as a recognized provider of other forms of premium digital content, including music. Getty Images serves business customers in more than 100 countries and is the first place creative and media professionals turn to discover, purchase and manage images and other digital content. Its award-winning photographers and imagery help customers produce inspiring work which appears every day in the world’s most influential newspapers, magazines, advertising campaigns, films, television programs, books and websites. Visit Getty Images at www.gettyimages.com to learn more about how the company is advancing the unique role of digital media in communications and business, and enabling creative ideas to come to life.

Hallelujah

A friend just introduced me to Allison Crowe and her cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah. Crowe, he says, is a Canadian singer-songwriter-guitarist-pianist (classically trained, so I'm told).



So much music, so little time.

My friend knows that I like Cohen's "Hallelujah", one of the zillions of Cohen pieces that zillions of people cover.

Here is Rufus Wainwright (first heard on my daughter's Shrek CD):



k.d.lang (she was Nik's favorite singer for a while, when he was VERY young) has a pretty good one:



One of the first -- and best, imho -- Hallelujah covers I heard was the late Jeff Buckley (why do I come across so many people who think he wrote the song?):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AratTMGrHaQ

And, of course, the creator of the song himself:

Kim Sleeps

I have hundreds and hundreds of old slides and negs, never processed or printed or published, that I slowly try to review, cull and scan. I am trying to find at least one I like each weekend. Here is something taken (just barely) with one of my ancient Nikon Fs in our old downtown L.A. loft right after Nik was born, previously unviewed.

I found a couple of others that I am sending over to the family blog, also.

Seeing With A Different Eye

Provocative, and for real: http://www.theblindphotographer.com

Scalable City

A friend sends me this link to a QuickTime video of artist/programmer Sheldon Brown's Scalable City video installation.

Brown is an arts professor and Director of the Center for Research in Computing and the Arts at UCSD. In a couple of weeks, he will be in one of my favorite college-era haunts, the Nelson-Atkins Art Museum in Kansas City. You can learn more about him and his projects at these URLs:

http://va-grad.ucsd.edu/~drupal/node/170
http://visarts.ucsd.edu/node/view/491/22
http://crca.ucsd.edu/sheldon/
http://www.sheldon-brown.net/

Marian Anderson, 1939 at the Lincoln Memorial

Here it is; spinoff from my previous post. Goosebump time. Something for 9/11 ...



Now it is time to go bed. Goodnight.

Ellens Gesang III D. 839

While crawling around looking for something entirely different tonight, I stumbled upon a CD of Anne Sofie Von Otter performing, among other Schubert pieces, Ave Maria. When I was small child, one of my first musical memories was hearing my mother's favorite recording of Ave Maria. So I went scouting around on You Tube to see if I could find something I hadn't heard before, or for a long time ...

First, I found Pavarotti:




Then Barbara Hendricks in Brussels ...



Here is Renee Fleming:



Oh, yes. Marian Anderson in 193? (must remind myself to chase down her Lincoln Memorial performance!):



Marian Anderson with Leopold Stokowski conducting in 1944:



And a 1947 violin version by Yehudi Menuhin:



Now, it's really starting to get interesting. Jascha Heifetz at sixteen years, in 1917:

Steven Cantor, Rediscovered

Steven Cantor is maybe the best DJ I have ever heard. I grieved over his departure a year or so ago from OPB Radio, and have finally tracked him down at KMHD.org, where he holds forth on Sunday nights from 10pm - 2am. Don't know yet if the site archives its sessions for replay -- I didn't readily find them if they do. If you use iTunes, you can find KMHD listed under Radio | Public. The stream is pretty lo-fi, unfortunately, but how I use it is to capture the stream as one big MP3, then review it with the playlist at hand or onscreen, to note stuff worth tracking down and/or buying; then I can throw the low-bitrate file away. That way I actually get some sleep on Sunday night.

My earlier whinings on this matter: here and here

Antony and the Johnsons, So Near Yet So Far

Yes, Antony and the Johnsons -- I have mentioned them before -- were in performance this past Friday with the Oregon Symphony. And I missed it all. Here is a link to a video and a Luciana Lopez review that appeared on the front page of the How We Live section of today's The Oregonian. (Btw, that is NOT the video I would have chosen to illustrate Antony ... I will find something more appropriate, and post it when I get a chance.) And here is a rough scan of the half-page photo by Leah Nash that The Oregonian published ...



We can't stop here, though. Leah Nash is a wonderful photographer who does a lot of work for The Oregonian. Highly, highly recommended: go spend some time at her Website at leahnash.com.

Beirut

Another under-produced (to put it mildly) Vincent Moon video. At pitchfork.tv (great source of music vids, btw) Beirut can be seen/heard "one week only" (don't know if the week is just starting, or ending, or what ... but if you go today, you can experience this stuff) moving throughout Brooklyn -- from alleys to rooftops to pool halls to living rooms, etc. -- playing pieces from their Flying Club Cup album. These people use a really wide range of instruments; ukelele, various horns, cello, violon, accordian and more. I even spotted some drumming using ping-pong paddles, plus regular drumsticks on a watermelon. The music has Eastern European sounds with I'm not sure what else mixed in.

Beirut first came to my ears several months ago on opbmusic.org. Jeremy Peterson there seems big on the group and its very young leader, Zach Condon. At the time, they seemed somewhat interesting but didn't inspire me enough to pursue further. But I keep hearing them here and there, and seeing more Internet buzz, and find that they have really been growing on me. At their Website (http://www.beirutband.com) you can make an online buy of a DVD that might be the same or similar to the online stuff at pitchfork.tv. I'm tempted.

Black Cab Sessions

On my fairly frequent business trips to New York in the 70s, I often rode in Checker cabs. I have never ridden in a London taxi, but if they are as spacious as Checkers, I can imagine how Black Cab Sessions might be possible. The whole thing is about the videographers taking performers for a ride in the back of a London cab, whilst taping their performance ... "one song, one take, one cab".

At last count, they were up to over fifty such sessions. Some of the artists are well-known -- Spoon, The National, My Morning Jacket, Martha Wainwright, etc. -- others not so (to me, at least). Ivi was bemused at the sight of Man Man with a complement of saxophone, keyboards and trumpet, all fitted to theback seat of a London cab. An example or two:

Winter Family

This Israeli-French duo has something a bit different going on:





And check out these vids at La Blogotheque or DailyMotion:

Omaha
Abraham
Shooting Stars

Cello and Beyond

Gaspar Claus is a young French cello adventurer. Some good examples of his work can be found at http://www.myspace.com/gasparclaus.

Then yesterday, I discovered his series of collaborations with long-time classical flamenco guitarist, Pedro Soler, when they visited the French-Spanish border in some explorations earlier this year:












This stuff is almost perfect for me.  In college, I became hooked on flamenco.  Two or three years ago, I converted some of my precious Carlos Montoya to digital form from its 1959 - 60's era vinyl state.  And for a brief period in LA,  I had a roommate, Michael, who once aspired to be a concert pianist.  When we found that we both had a great fondness for the music of J.S. Bach, he persuaded me to drive him to a small, fourth-floor recording studio on Hollywood Boulevard where he had been offered a piano for the taking.  Michael went down on the street and convinced a nearby street person to help, and we lugged it into the elevator and onto my old '65 Ford pickup.   Listening to him night after night play his incredible live-right-there music gave rise to all sorts of musical confessions.  Among them was not only that I wished I had kept playing piano in my youth, but that the instrument that I really might have wanted to take up would be the cello, and I dug out my recordings of Pablo Casals.  Michael then told me how Casals had devoted one year of his life to exclusively studying each of the Bach Cello Suites -- an idea that stuck in my mind ever since.  So cello + flamenco guitar ... how cool is that?!