Song of the Day

Shankill Butchers by Sarah Jarosz

From the "Song Up In My Head" album. One gifted teenager. Covering the Decemberists here.

Featured on NPR a while back, too.

Song of the Day, Four Decades On

Ghosts of American Astronauts by The Mekons (ca. 1988) from their best, IMHO, album: So Good It Hurts. Known as Brit punk rockers, here they sound more like alt-country; think Cowboy Junkies with angry politics.

Entrancing, dreamy sound and provocative lyrics with references to the moon landing conspiracy theory, Viet Nam and more ("... Nixon sucks a dry martini ...").

Yes, like some of you, I remember exactly where I was and what I was doing on July 20, 1969 ...

Whip It; Whip It Good

The other day, while prowling the dusty shelves of my basement, I happened to come across a vinyl copy from ca. 1980 of my Freedom of Choice album by Devo, featuring the notorious "Whip It" cut. For a moment, I considered ripping it toWAV/FLAC/MP3, but quickly decided that I had higher priorities for conversion ...

Then today my attention was directed to what is said to be the spiritual inspiration for that song, slightly risque that it is:

http://www.boingboing.net/2009/07/16/bb-video-the-1944-so.html

Watch at your own risk.

P.S. A Little Trivia: Did you know that Devo's first album was produced by (IMHO, the great) Brian Eno?

July: Oregon Awareness Month for Ernest Bloch

So declares our state's governor. Bloch lived his later years in Oregon, probably becoming the state's best known composer. So let's listen to one of his most popular compositions, Schelomo Rhapsody for Cello and Orchestra. Here, by Mstislav Rostropovich in an obviously old (when? Berstein died around 1990) partial (where is the rest of it?) performance with the French National Orchestra being conducted by Leonard Bernstein:



And here is an interesting, quite different performance done with double bass (Boguslaw Furtok) and piano (Ewa Warykiewicz):

Danger Mouse + Sparklehorse + David Lynch = Dark Night Of The Soul

Okay, I know this is old news. But I finally got around to streaming the tracks from "Dark Night Of The Soul" (DNOTS). In case you don't know, this is a non-album or a CD with no music, composed by Sparklehorse and Danger Mouse, originally to accompany photos by film director David Lynch. I was intrigued from first hearing about this a few weeks ago, if for no other reason than being a David Lynch fan from the time of Twin Peaks TV series to The World's Angriest Dog cartoon strip (my absolute favorite of his work) to Eraserhead and his other films. Due to a legal quagmire with EMI, you can go to the DNOTS site and order the CD and poster (the book of photos is apparently sold out now), but it comes with the notice, above left.



So tonight I am streaming the entire album from NPR (and so can you), where the back story is also presented. And don't ask me whether I am capturing the stream so I can play it on my iPod and surprise daughter Ivi with it when she returns from Europe late this month ...



Each track features a different performer, and they are an interesting lot, as you can see from the poster image above. This music is growing on me. Take a listen.

UPDATE 11 JULY 2009: This morning I awoke to the clock radio tuned to NPR's Weekend Edition and caught the last half of an interview with David Lynch about the Danger Mouse - Sparklehorse project. You can hear here and see some of the related photos now being shown at the Michael Kohn Gallery in Los Angeles.

Science and Music, No Let Up

Just minutes ago, I watched PBS' Nova Musical Minds, where neurologist Oliver Sacks explores how the brain deals with music. Turns out that Sacks' brain seems to have the same relative emotional reaction to Bach that I must have -- we both greatly prefer Bach to Beethoven, and in his case, he can measure or map the difference with an MRI, a FMRI (functional magnetic resonance image) to be more precise. Watch it online and check out the online extras!

By the way, I have my old and dear friend Ann to thank for bringing Oliver Sacks to my attention quite some time ago. His Musicophilia book is on my Amazon wish list, just waiting for me to get after it. Ann also highly recommends Sack's The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat: And Other Clinical Tales.

And in my final sidebar, you should know that Ann -- Ann Nietzke -- is a wonderful and highly acclaimed writer herself, about whom I will try to have much more to say before long.

UPDATE 13 JULY 2009: Today I was surprised to find a package on my doorstep containing a copy of Oliver Sacks' Musicophila sent to me by dear niece Gabrielle! You can guess how I will spend the evening ...

Science Talks Music and Vice Versa

One of the best things we have seen this summer on TV was PBS' special this past week, The Music Instinct: Science and Song. It paired up Bobby McFerrin (who captured Ivi's imagination at the Idaho Jazz Festival earlier this year) and scientist Daniel Levitin in an exploration of what the heck sound and music are really all about. Lots of great performances, or at least snippets thereof, by McFerrin himself as well as Daniel Barenboim, Yo Yo Ma and lots more. Watch interviews and other chunks at the site linked above.