Telegraph.UK: New photos of Beatles’ John Lennon appear after 40 years.
YouTube: 3 guitars and a tractor!
Who needs a drum machine? Via my wife’s Facebook feed.
Physically, he was a shadow of his former self.
But his creative artistry shone through, in spite of his age. Stokowski, L’apres-midi d’un faune, Parts One and Two. One of the greatest examples of the art of conducting. A reminder that youth does not own everything. [Someone else I read mentioned Debussy/Faune last week, and got me looking around, and I found this. THANKS in absentia.]
Mashable: Pandora Could Hit $100 Million in Revenue for 2010.
”The Times credits much of Pandora’s rise to its wildly successful iPhone app, which doubled signups for the service overnight.” I credit that sickly, horrible Pepto-Bismol ad that turns the entire interface Pepto Pink. That’s what got me to shell out the cash.
Motionographer: Blind’s Heart of Stone.
CBC News: Mozart the big stick for U.K. school.
“News that a school in Derby, Britain, was piping classical music into a special detention area set up to punish troublesome students has ignited a debate about the use of the pieces. The idea of using Mozart and Ravel as deterrent for the badly behaved has roused the ire of both music lovers and critics of the public education systems.” This is a terrible precedent to set.
Mother Jones: Sting’s Uzbek Dictator Problem.
”Famed rockers regularly play private gigs for people you might not enjoy meeting on a street corner. There was the New Year’s gig Beyonce played for Moammar Qaddafi’s son, Hannibal; Jimmy Buffett’s appearance at the infamous orgy of decadence thrown by ex-Tyco CEO Dennis Kozlowski for his wife; and the intimate affairs Michael Jackson and Celine Dion put on for the Sultan of Brunei (whose regime is not known for its hospitality toward women, or its appreciation of human rights).” Remember the song ’Sun City‘?
Slate Magazine: Why you’ve never really heard the “Moonlight” Sonata.
“One example is the double-octave glissando in the last movement of Beethoven’s “Waldstein” Sonata. With the light action and shallow key dip of a period Viennese piano you can plant your thumb and little finger on the octave and slide to the left, and there it is. Given the much heavier action and deeper key dip of a modern piano, if you tried that today you’d dislocate something.”
Discover Magazine: The Mother of all Rube Goldberg Machines!
Just wow.
LA Times: The Mozart effect: Studies of music’s effect on children.
“But for all its beauty, power and capacity to move, researchers have concluded that music is little more than ear candy for the brain if it is consumed only passively. If you want music to sharpen your senses, boost your ability to focus and perhaps even improve your memory, the latest word from science is you’ll need more than hype and a loaded iPod. You gotta get in there and play.” Now THAT makes sense.
Vulture: ‘You’re So Vain’ Not About David Geffen After All.
Whew. Via Sin Pantalones Twitter.
DailyMail.UK: Carly Simon finally reveals the subject of ‘You’re So Vain’.
David Geffen? Should’ve left it a mystery.
Days later: This was a screwup. See my post later in the timeline.
WSJ: In ‘Mind Movies,’ the Word Picture Continues to Appeal to Eager Ears.
“What amazes me is that audio drama just won’t go away. [snip] It’s so primal in us.” Oftentimes the fantasy landscapes of the mind, fed by audio alone, are so much more rewarding than audiovisuals.
sehsucht.DE: Skoda Superb glass harp.
NY Times: Two Guitar Idols Perform at Madison Square Garden.
“This wasn’t just technical excellence coming through: it was nerves and doubt and bragging and a little perversity. It was the sound of an uncodified relationship.” Different interpretations of axe-blues.
Horseless.com.
Old Car Horns Sound Off. Via Metafilter.
WSJ: Django Reinhardt, Omnipresent Icon.
“No genuine sound footage of Reinhardt in action was believed to exist until recently, when a four-minute clip of the Quintette playing ‘J’Attendrai’ was included in the DVD ‘Stéphane Grappelli: A Life in the Jazz Century.’ Readily viewable on YouTube, it shows us what recordings cannot: how Reinhardt was able to make this incredibly virtuosic music despite being able to use only two fingers on his right hand (the result of a fire in his caravan at age 18).”
A certain person in the studio here …
… played this song, and now I can’t get it out of my head. Thought I’d spread the meme around, share the pain. Not that it’s a bad song - just too damned catchy. My mind’s latched onto it like a Shuttle docking ring.
Gizmodo: Fatman’s Wi-Tube Valve Amplifier Streams Audio Wirelessly To The FatDock.
“The Wi-Tube valve amplifier can stream music wirelessly from a docked iPod or by the multitude of outputs the FatDock also offers.” Mmmmm. A tube amp.
NY Times: Dogma No More - Anything Goes in Classical Music.
“Increasingly in recent years adventurous ensembles and young artists have been drawing their programs from all camps of contemporary music, camps that were once engaged in fierce ideological battles. The biggest combatants were practitioners of complex, cutting-edge 12-tone composition who claimed the intellectual high ground and those who still wrote sonatas, symphonies and such, in essentially major and minor keys.” Reminds me ... the more serious rock fan is supposed to appreciate Metallica’s “Master of Puppets” because it’s in Phrygian mode.
PostChronicle: Knack Lead Singer Doug Fieger Icon Dies Of Cancer.
”The Knack’s most memorable song is ‘My Sharona’ which came out in 1979, and was an instant dance hit that, unlike many old disco songs, has survived the years to be played at millions of parties, by just as many cover bands.” If you look at the photo, as opposed to the video, The Knack was being marketed as a ‘new Beatles.’ Didn’t quite work out that way. Rest in peace, dude.
And just in case you were wondering, Sharona now sells real estate.
Washington Post: The music of Olympic figure skating isn’t what it could be.
“’… it’s back to the status quo, where “all the guys want to see the action hero,” she says, and adds, “and all the girls skate to something Spanish.’” Just because you’ve got music editing software, doesn’t make you an expert in aural aesthetics. Note they neatly sidestep all the copyright issues.
Equal time.
NY Times: “Judging from a number of overbearing, obstreperous and generally large works by male artists that command gallery space right now, it seems to be bad-boy week on the New York art scene.”
I also found this sort of depressing counterpoint:
Slate: “It was acceptable to be angry and sexy, and in pop culture there were finally a bunch of role models: Courtney Love, Liz Phair, and Kathleen Hanna, to name just a few. Sadly, that potent combination of female rage and sex appeal has slipped out of the mainstream.”
Seems we’ve been Swiftly Speared.
Mashable: Jake Shimabukuro, Hawaiian Ukelele Virtuoso.
We’re suckers for Ukelele around here ...
NME.com: A clarification about Warner and streaming.
“However, a spokesperson for Warner Music confirmed that, at present, the new plans are only likely to affect future deals, reports The Guardian. This means that streaming applications such as Spotify that already host Warner Music artists will be able to continue doing so.” Hmmm. ‘Only likely’. Difficult to take that to the bank.
