There are 103 posts tagged music (this is page 10 of 11).
Maybe everybody knew this before, but I just found this in iTunes.
If you go to a track, right click, Get Info, Options, you can tell iTunes to remember the playback position for a track. As you can see from the image above, this track is nearly two hours long, so if you’re listening to something long (like The Twelves’ on Radio 1’s Essential Mix) it’s great that you don’t have to restart the track if you’re picking up from where you left off.
As the year winds down, a little Salt Peanuts by Dizzy Gillespie is in order. The recording I have is by “The Quinent”, the collection of Dizzy Gillespie, Charlie Parker, Bud Powell, Charles Mingus, and Max Roach performing Live at Massy Hall in Toronto. The reason I’d picked this recording up in the first place was Mingus’ involvement in the performance (my obsession for Mingus’ recordings continues).
Salt Peanuts is a bit unusual in that it features Gillespie vocalizing the phrase “salt peanuts” multiple times while taking breaks from his racing trumpeting. It’s a solid bop sound, with a pretty standard bop structure. Given the luminarys that are on the recording, the song is without a doubt Gillespie’s. The crowd cheers any time he takes a break from his horn, which takes center stage. Roach holds the song together on the drums and makes Powell’s solid piano solo come alive by rimming on his snares. What I love the most of live jazz recordings is how the musicians (for lack of a better word) cheer each other on during solos. Anybody who has been to a live jazz show knows how when somebody is jamming, everybody else drops their head and cat calls in approval. This recording of Salt Peanuts captures that quite well during a few of the solos.
Recently, I shared the album with @emalasky at the office a few months ago and he repeated the phrase “salt peanuts” a few times to me afterwards (to me, a strange affirmation of how catchy the odd phrase still is). I also heard it at Shady Lady in Sacramento last weekend. It’s a bit anachronistic given that Shady Lady is suppose to be a speak easy, I’ll take it any time I hear some Gillespie at a bar.
Mingus, without a doubt, is my favorite bebop/post-bop musician. His music often has a brooding sound but this week’s pick of Ysabel’s Table Dance from Tijuana Moods is a departure from what I’d consider typical Mingus. I didn’t find this album until I had Mingus Big Band play at Yoshi’s in SF about two years ago. It’s one of his lesser known recordings.
The story goes that Mingus was inspired by a trip to Tijuana after a break up. The cover reads on the 1962 release reads “The album Charlie Mingus feels is his best work, in which he and his men re-create an exciting stay in Mexico’s wild and controversial border town.” The album as a whole probably comes in behind Mingus Mingus Mingus for me, but outside the tapestry of Ysabel’s Table Dance is a great bebop album.
It opens with high tempo castanets, then adds a layer of Mingus’ bass, then drum sticks, then a layer of vocals and piano, at which point the sound scape is set for the song. The track clocks in at 10+ minutes and it’s not until the 4 minute mark that you remember that this is not an action song written for some Brad Pitt movie but rather a bebop track from ’62. The whole thing, through and through is manic. Saxes show up, tear through a few bars of chaos then are fought back with a trumpet as the cadence gets faster and slower and at some point you’re just lost to what you’re hearing. It’s not until the last minute or so that you see how it all comes together, and then the moment you’ve understood the song ends. It’s a fantastic track, and one of my all time favorite Mingus recordings.
This week’s track of the week is Chan Chan by the Buena Vista Social Club, from their eponymous album. While released in 1997, I don’t think I found the album until 2004 or so. I’m going to try to post a few more tracks from the greater jazz genre over the next couple of weeks.
This album, as a whole, is fantastic. It’s pensive, interesting and full of great guitar sounds and ad hoc harmonizations. Chan Chan specifically has the greatest Spanish guitar riff I’ve ever heard (do you call it Cuban guitar since they’re from Havana?). The singing, with the casual harmonization, is great. I’ve wondered how the vocals were recorded, in order to give them that spacious in a room sound. They’re haunting and warm, and on top of the guitar and muted trumpet they make the song a classic.
Self described as Enya with a Bounce on their MySpace, I had never heard of these guys until their name was passed on in a music email list I belong to. This week’s track is Sunrise by Yeasayer off of All Hour Cymbals. The song (and most of the album) has long melodic undertones (synth + strings) that have this somewhat spooky sound to them. What hooks me is the rhythmic drumming on top of the backing sound that has a great layered effect. The vocals are fairly heavily processed with reverb and overdub which adds to the ambient sound. Most of the entire album is like this and recommended.
It’s worth listening to this one on different headsets/speakers. I first listened to this on my iPod through headphones, where are treble heavy, and then later in my car with tends to be bass heavy. Very different parts of the song come out in each scenario.
Today’s track of the week is from Wale’s first studio album, Attention Deficit: Contemplate, featuring Rhianna. My favorite part of the song is Rihanna’s distorted hook and how it lays on top of a simple beat. I first heard of Wale from @airlai as a rapper coming out of the DC area via his mixtapes. Probably what’s most catching about his songs is the long verse format he raps in. I’d love to see a Kid Cudi + Wale track.
I send a weekly email to a group of friends that is my pick for a “track of the week.” The list has been going on for just short of two years and and is basically me sending music that was interesting that particular week. It tends swing between house/electronica, hip-hop and rock. Going forward, I’m going to start posting the picks on my blog. I don’t think I’ll post the actual audio files, but will link to the YouTube video if one exists. As a fair warning, at best I’m a mediocre music critic and an awful music writer, so reader beware.
This week is an “oldie” from 1996, The Distance by Cake, off of Fashion Nugget. I heard the song on the radio and realized I didn’t own the album. A quick trip to Amazon MP3 fixed that problem. I love how focused the song is in its sound & lyrics, and the deadpan delivery of the vocals makes it iconic. I remember hearing this song all the time in high school.
I’ve picked up a bunch of new music in the last few months and thought I’d share some thoughts on a few albums.
I had the chance to see the Mingus Big Band, a 14-piece ensemble, play at Yoshi’s in SF Tuesday night. The show was incredible. It was my first time at the new Yoshi’s and it’s quite a bit swankier than the location in Oakland. We had a drink at the bar beforehand waiting for the doors to open to the 10pm show and the entire dining area is, well, swanky.
Hands down, Mingus is my favorite jazz musician. Crazy insane or just insane crazy, his music gets me like no other jazz style musician can. I missed the names of the first few songs, but the second half of the
set was Baby Take a Chance on Me, Ysabel’s Table Dance (which had an
incredible cadenza in the middle by the pianist), Pinkie (from Epithet,
although I couldn’t find that track on the set list from Epithet), and
finished up with Song with Orange.
I was quite impressed with all the songs they attempted. On one of the songs they performed they pulled the music out and told the audience this is the first time they’re trying to play it. Then the band leader turned around and talked off mic to the band for five minutes about the song. He turned around, sat down, counted off and they pretty much sight read the whole piece. Phenomenal. Coincidently the 22nd was Mingus’ birthday, which made the evening that much more special.
If you listen to “urban” radio at all, by now you’ve certainly heard the Crank That single by Soulja Boy, a 17-year old rapper from Atlanta. The track features Caribbean sounding beats and a fairly unique (to me) chanting style of rap. The reason I’m writing about it is not because of the song’s mundane lyrics or catchy sound, rather the way in which it got famous.
The MySpace page has the song heard over 4.8 million times, and over 12 million views on the profile. If you look at YouTube, there are tons of remixes and fan videos that have taken clips from shows like Family Guy and put the song over them. The best remix is by far Travis Barker drumming over the song. I could totally imagine this mix ending up on a rock station with the original playing on the hip-hop stations.
It’s pretty amazing how much momentum this artist has picked up by the way of the internet and community driven sites. A few of the reviews I’ve been reading of his upcoming album basically say that it was due to the huge viewership on MySpace and YouTube that drove the song to the top position on the Billboard charts. That’s just plain cool.