Joe Cocker, R.I.P.

5/20/44 - 12/22/14

My earliest memories of Joe Cocker would be his covers of the Beatles, "With A Little Help From My Friends", and Leonard Cohen's "Bird On A Wire".  Here's the former:



Cited by Rolling Stone as one of the all-time greatest rock vocalists, I bought -- and still possess -- this 1969 eponymous vinyl album as soon as it hit the store shelves:

Pierce Brown's Playlist

Something to give you a break from incessant holiday music.

Piece Brown, author of the sci-fi trilogy, Red Rising, says that music has always stimulated his writing, and he has put together a playlist of mood-inducing and scene-inspiring songs:

Lili Haydn

First, to get a flavor of Lili Haydn -- who played classical violin with the Los Angeles Philharmonic when she was fifteen, and has achieved much, much more since then -- consider her cover of the Led Zeppelin classic, Kashmir:



Then her remarkable story of recovery in this TEDTalk:



And another TEDTalk appearance:



Need more?



Visit Lili's website, too.

Thanks to brother Dennis for reminding me of this remarkable woman.

(This stuff reminds me that sometime I need to talk about that Funkadelic classic, Maggot Brain!)

Peaky Blinders

I have lately found myself in the grip of Peaky Blinders, a Netflix offering of a Brit TV two-season set of episodes set in post-WW1 gangster-ridden Birmingham and London.  Just finished it, and am eagerly awaiting a forthcoming season three.  Part of what makes Peaky Blinders great for me is the music, mostly from Nick Cave, but also including PJ Harvey, The White Stripes, Tom Waits, The Kill, The Arctic Monkeys, and more.  Did I mention Nick Cave?  Anyway, there are playlists to be found through the simple act of Googling, such as this YouTube playlist which includes ...



Or something like this. Or this (Spotify).

One thing DOES lead to another ...

Today I was wandering around on the Wall Street Journal's site, looking for an article I had read about in my morning's Quartz newsfeed that purportedly suggested that the Web is dying, but as I am not a subscribed WSJ user, I could only read the first paragraph or so. (But I later was able to track down the rebuttal, which bears out my experience in my professional life working in the Web industry.)  So I started looking at other WSJ stories and came upon this one about the origins of Joni Mitchell's "Carey" track on her famous Blue album.  And here it is.  Turns out that Carey [sic] was real and part of her experience in 1970.  Listen up.

Roomful of Teeth

This cutting edge choral group hits NPR's Tiny Desk Concerts recently.

Meshell at KCRW

It's no secret that I am a fervent Meshell Ndegeocello fan. Here is a recent performance at my old hometown station in Santa Monica:

Yasmine Hamdan

The songs of Lebanese singer-songer Yasmine Hamdan from her Ya Nass album, with its arresting arrangements, a recent addition to my music library, have been filling my ears for the last couple of days. Here is a performance, said to be unrehearsed, with guitarist Gabriel Gordon whom she met only a few hours earlier.

Sister O.M. Terrell

Who is Sister O.M. Terrell? Check out this NPR piece by musicologist Bruce Nemerov

Storyboard P

Kim discovered this guy from a New Yorker read and passed it along.  Here are just a couple of the many terrific video clips of Storyboard P you can find on YouTube:

Burn and Then Some

 Go here for more of the story.

Track of the Day - Phosphorescent: Ride On / Right On

Something I awoke to this morning ...

More?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AzbKYFngZM0

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S8m_Oek-Xec

Leonard at Eighty

Leonard Cohen is 80 years old.  He tells us that the time has come for him to return to an old vice and again smoke cigarettes.

Yesterday, he also released his new album, Popular Problems.  I think I like this one even better than his Old Ideas from 2012.  Here's one of the tracks, called "Almost Like The Blues":

Sia

Recently I started to update my list of best-liked TV series.  Friends and relatives always seem to be asking.  One of the most firmly-entrenched entries would have to be HBO's Six Feet Under, and I may well watch it again, perhaps when its ten-year-old anniversary occurs next year.  In contemplating this, the music of Sia came to mind.  Here, for old times' sake and for anyone who hasn't heard this before, is her "Breath Me" that was featured on the Six Feet Under soundtrack:


And here's another of my favorite performances, despite Sia's protestation about her voice:

Puddles the Clown - Puddles Pity Party

Spent a good deal of weekend time watching videos of Big Mike Greier, mostly covering pop songs in his sad-clown seven-foot-tall near-operatic-voice lonely-guy cabaret style of performance art.

 


FB Website YouTube

Low Rider

Friend Herm reminds me of this utterly terrific-ness from days past ...

Chromecast and V.J.

Just installed a Chromecast device on my TV, along with the requisite Google Cast extension for my MacBook Pro's Chrome browser.  Since my primary purpose was to play YouTube music videos, I cranked up one of my favorites for a test, Valerie June's year-old recording at the Seattle KEXP (a great public radio station, by the way) studio:

The video quality was excellent on the HDTV, even though I only used the middling quality option in the Google Cast settings.  The audio, likewise, was decent, running through an attached ZVOK.

I'm not so interested anymore in watching vids like this on tiny screens. At least use good headphones.

Lost On The River, Coming Soon

Coming in November is this album of twenty tracks with previously-unreleased Bob Dylan lyrics from 1967, the time of the original Basement Tapes. Here is an explanatory quote from the album website:

Produced by T Bone Burnett, Lost On The River: The New Basement Tapes was written and performed in creative collaboration by Elvis Costello, Rhiannon Giddens, Taylor Goldsmith, Jim James and Marcus Mumford. The artists and Burnett gathered in Capitol Studios in March to write and create music for a treasure trove of recently discovered lyrics handwritten by Bob Dylan in 1967 during the period that generated the recording of the legendary Basement Tapes.

And here is a video of one of the tracks, "Nothing To It", displaying Dylan's actual handwritten lyrics.

The Golden Age

A connection string:  Max Richter > Yoann Lemoine >\; William Gedney.  Or whatever sequence you want.

Woodkid (aka Yoann Lemoine) just released this video of his homage to William Gedney, a fascinating photographer who lived mostly in obscurity but was championed by the likes of Diane Arbus.  Gedney, whose street photography I have admired for years (and I have discussed on my photography blog), died of AIDS in 1989.  Woodkid -- whose In The Golden Age album and Iron EP -- occupy favored positions in my music library, does a remix of a track from another of my favorite composers (Max Richter's "Embers" from his Memoryhouse album).

Emmys, Oh My ...

Veering off topic here.  Not that the Emmys had all that much credibility (with me, anyway) before, but where was the nomination for Tatiana Maslany in Orphan Black? Or Aden Young in Rectify, or Allison Tolman in Fargo, for that matter?

Back to music soon, where things are pretty much as screwed up there, too.

The Magic Clap & The Coup

If you asked for the name of my favorite hip-hop band, it would likely be The Coup.  Saw the Oakland-based group on public radio's Art Beat TV program last night performing their anthem, "The Magic Clap" from the Sorry To Bother You album (catch the video at about 25:00 in at http://www.opb.org/programs/artbeat/).  I'd almost consider these people, led by Boots Riley, the spiritual successors to The Clash.  Try this:

In 2014, The Classical World Still Can't Stop Fat-Shaming Women

That's the title from this revealing article at NPR which reports that five London opera critics dissed the bodily appearance of Irish mezzo-soprano Tara Erraught.  And here's the source article on this matter.

A beautiful young woman who sings beautifully ...  visit her website here.  And check out some of her performances on YouTube, like this one:

Salut Salon: "Wettstreit zu viert"

Even more: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zz2ljLqQ4cE&list=RDBKezUd_xw20&index=0

Kelis at Apogee Studios 4/24/2014

AKA Kelis Rogers ...and ... visit her site to stream her new album

Music & Tech

Right on the heels of my earlier post on Imogen Heap's electronic gloves, I find in my inbox the current edition of Bob Lefsetz' news post decrying the state of music and tech, or even music vs. tech.  Read it here.  Well, I have to agree with Bob, but I also have to note that Imogen Heap, imho, is a real musician making real music that I want to hear and also happens to make real innovations.  Btw, you could definitely do worse than to subscribe to the Lefsetz Letter!

Mi.Mu

Imogen Heap is wearing gloves.  An English singer-songwriter who has long used electronic and ambient sound in her fascinating body of work, Heap recently launched a Kickstarter project to develop and promote her latest innovation, a set of very special electronic gloves.  Created with the help of a team of engineers and software magicians, the wearer can  produce and control music with the Mi.Mu data gloves in what is said to be a more natural way than existing glove and gesture technology has afforded.  Here is a sample:



Visit Heap's Kickstarter page for more video demonstrations and a lot more details.

P.S. Compare how Heap's gloves seem to free her from the machinations that more "traditional" electronic music controls require, such as that performed by her once-keyboard player Jon Hopkins as seen in this earlier post.

On Pono

No, I didn't drop an "r" there.  We're talking Pono, as in Pono Music and Pono Player.  Supposedly translates as "righteous" in Hawaiian.

These days the Pono discussion seems to be really heating up.  That's undoubtedly because Neil Young's Kickstarter project, targeted at $800K, has already raised some $4.8 million.  And because of NY himself and his name/fame.

I actually haven't followed the Pono thing much since a couple of years ago, maybe, when it was being tossed around in audiophile circles and Neil Young was making pronouncements about the sad state of recorded music.  (Let's not dwell on the fact that some of Neil's more recent releases seem to exhibit some dynamic range compression not exactly consistent with what one would expect to be a more optimal striving for max quality ...)

So when I first heard about Pono, I had the impression that NY had in mind a new format that would eclipse everything else out there.  Now I see that Pono seems more simply to be (1) a portable music player that will play existing high-resolution formats, primarily FLAC and (2) a music store where you can supposedly download the highest quality selections that Pono can add to its roster, but in the usual high-res formats, again, like FLAC.

Despite dissing by commentators like Bob Lefsetz who seem to be emphasizing the Marketing angle on all this and CNET writers who seem to be arguing that high-resolution music doesn't really improve the listening experience significantly in comparison to the usual MP3 thing, I have to conclude at this point that it is a good thing that Neil Young can use his celebrity to bring some awareness that there is better listening to be had. (I guess I will have elaborate on this somewhere else, later on, because not everybody may agree that MP3s aren't good enough.)

While I often find myself in agreement with Lefsetz in many things, I think he goes a bit too far here.  Yes, a look at the Pono site finds it wanting, particularly in terms of technical detail that an audiophile, say, might want to discover, and it really does seem to be marketing extravaganza.  (And it is an up-to-the-minute "responsive" design, aimed largely at handheld devices and a modern marketplace, hitting the expected frothy marketing-hip bullet points, bringing into question that style vs. substance equation.)

There have been players for some years now capable of playing hi-res music: HiFiMan, Cowon, Astell & Kern, etc.  Heck, even the lowly and inexpensive Sansa Clip can play FLACs-- and that thing, in my book (I have one), can play MP3s with better sounding output, all else equal, than an off-the-shelf iPod or iPhone. Or you can mod an old iPod to play FLACs, if you want. The Pono Player, which I have yet to experience in person, of course (I think deliveries start in late 2014), and may never, "looks" like it might be a little bigger and clunkier than I would want in a portable device, but it does seem to be keeping the interface simple, a good thing.  Will there be a Bob Dylan Signature edition? (I think the NY Signature copies are already taken.)  Maybe I could get someone to get me that for my birthday, if so.

High-res music is available all over the place, well, sort of.  HDTracks may be the best known (and controversial for its sketchy and cavalier reputation for what constitutes a proper "master", etc.), but there are many other purveyors of high-resolution/high-definition downloads, here and abroad.  I download stuff, usually as FLACs, sometimes as WAVs, maybe even AIFs, from a number of sites (HDtracks, eClassical, ClassicsOnline, Bowers&Wilkins Society of Sound, et. al.), including directly from artist sites if possible.  But perhaps none has the cachet that Neil Young's own PonoMusic might present.  We shall see if it succeeds.

So, in answer to a number of my friends and acquaintances who are asking, I'd say: go ahead and buy a Pono Player if you want it for the Nei-Youngness of it all, and if you can afford it, because you will be able to play readily-available music on it.  And I will tell you how to rip your CDs and DVDs to FLAC and other high-quality formats that will preserve the quality better than MP3 rips will do, if you don't know.

And just wait and see how PonoMusic works out.  I think it doesn't hurt at all to have another source of FLAC and such, just know that this is nothing special or new, technically or audio-wise, unless your whole world is and has always been 128 bit-rate MP3s.

By the way, I like Neil Young's music.  Mostly.  I still listen to it from time to time.  It was important to me in my younger, Wooodstock-era days. I still listen to it once in a while.

Blue Coast & All-Star Jam

Blue Coast Records does some of the best-sounding, best-engineered recordings around.  These things are available by download from their store, typically in high-resolution PCM/WAV and DSD (Direct Stream Digital) formats.  Their latest offering is called "All-Star Jam".  The featured track is a great rendition by Melissa Reese of Adele's deservedly well-known "Rolling in the Deep".  You can preview the tracks here (as well as buy & download, of course).  Personnel involved:

Melissa Reese: Voice
Keith Greeninger: Guitar and Voice
Tony Furtado: Guitar
Chris Lynch: Violin
Chris Kee: Bass
Brain: Drums and percussion

I heartily recommend this stuff.  I doubt that you will be disappointed with either the SQ or the performances, and they will just sound better, the better your equipment.

Alternate Worlds

Stream the new Son Lux EP now, featuring collaboration with Lorde:

White Rabbit in Arabic

Read the story about how Lebanese singer Mayssa Karaa sang an Arabic-language version of Grace Slick/Jefferson Airplane's 1967 classic "White Rabbit" for the Oscar-nominated American Hustle.

Thanks to friend John for bringing this wonderful interpretation to my attention!

Okay, here's 'Airplane doing the original (on the old Smothers Brothers Show, yet):



And, probably the most remembered, the Woodstock live version from 1969:

My Oscar Pick

... would have to be 20 Feet From Stardom.  Yeah, it's a documentary but, for me, it beats anything else in ANY category.  Here is where I first heard about the film, in Terry Gross' June 2013 Fresh Air interview with Merry Clayton:

http://www.npr.org/programs/fresh-air/2013/06/12/190985260/?showDate=2013-06-12

And, how about a couple of vids comparing the incredible work of two of these women backing up the Rolling Stones:

St. Vincent Meets Colbert

St. Vincent, aka Annie Clark, shows off some of her new eponymous album on The Colbert Report:

And, yes, it was the collaboration with David Byrne on the Love This Giant album (2012) where I came to first appreciate Annie Clark.

Bach in the Forest

BWV 147. Yep, it's a Japanese commercial.

Valentine's Day with Katie Herzig

Katie is a recent and pleasant discovery -- one of her tracks was featured on the "Saving Mr. Banks" movie trailer, which came to my attention as a current Oscar nominee.  Herzig has been around for a while, with several albums and tracks featured on various TV shows.  Learn more

.

Renee Fleming and the Superbowl

Bob Dylan, Car Salesman

With Bob on our side ...

 

The Kidjo Coincidence

As I was preparing to return to my workplace after having lunch at home today, I was talking to daughter Ivi and noticing that the upstairs music system, in shuffle mode, was playing an old Angelique Kidjo number. As all things Africa are on our mind these days -- since we are almost on the eve of Ivi's departure to Ghana -- I idly asked whether she happened to know which country Kidjo was from. Neither of us knew.

However, after I returned to work and some of the dust had cleared, I checked my Gmail and discovered that NPR's All Songs Considered newsletter had arrived in my inbox with the news that Angelique Kidjo's new album, Eve, was now available for streaming:

  http://www.npr.org/2014/01/19/262401474/first-listen-ang-lique-kidjo-eve

And as I read the accompanying introduction, I found the answer to our question: Benin.

Kate Tempest

Last night we saw Brit rapper/poet/spoken word artist Kate Tempest on Charlie Rose's This Week PBS program.  Watch this amazing woman now:



This immediately sent me scrambling for more:







And here's her tribute to Gil Scott-Heron:



See more video performances and much more on Tempest's web site.

Also see YouTube for the growing treasure trove of Kate Tempest work there.

The Handsome Family: True Detective

Only seconds into hearing its opening theme, I had the feeling that I would be absorbed by the new HBO drama, True Detective. And that was the case, indeed. The first episode has me hooked; I'm thinking this may be the new TV series of the season.   How much of it is down to the mood set by the music?  No way to really test that question now, but listen to the remarkable theme music done by Rennie and Brett Sparks -- the Handsome Family -- to judge for yourself the effect of their "Far From Any Road" (from the 2003 album, Singing Bones) :




The Handsome Family goes back quite a while, at least since the late 90s.  The first time they really registered with me was with their cover of "Famous Blue Raincoat" from the 2005 Leonard Cohen I'm Your Man film.  Or was it when I watched that fascinating 2003 documentary, Searching For The Wrong-Eyed Jesus?  The Sparks definitely deserve the widespread exposure that this HBO hookup could bring to their wonderfully dark and haunting and sometimes humorous (alt-country/folk/gothic?) sounds.

Jon Hopkins: Immunity

What is becoming my "favorite album of 2013" wasn't even mentioned in my previous posting of my past year's favorites.  Because I had barely heard the thing at the time of that writing, I didn't have a basis for listing the album, Immunity, by Jon Hopkins.  However, based on a couple of his earlier albums I have -- Insides and Contact Note -- and knowing that he had worked with Brian Eno, I should have known that it would be a good one.

Jon Hopkin is an English composer of electronic/ambient music, who studied classical piano in his youth, and went on to play keyboards for English singer-songwriter Imogen Heap, known for her electronic-infused rock and pop.

Hopkins has scored for films and produced a number of albums besides the ones mentioned above.  Here he is in live performance at my old "home-town" radio station, KCRW in Santa Monica, working out on the Korg Kaoss pads and other electronics.