Uncovering Writing

I loved going to the Spectrum when I was growing up. I saw many Flyers games and once saw the Harlem Globetrotters. It was cool to see all the original stadiums down there as you got close. The Vet, JFK and the Spectrum were all next to each other.

My most favorite experiences were with the concerts they held. First, you had to get up early and camp out on the 3rd floor of one of our local department stores. I think it was John Wanamaker's. The Ticketron was often down a long corridor away from the shopping areas, back where staff offices and returns were located. Once you got to the window, you hoped that they still had good seats available. But, even if they didn't and you got a nosebleed seat, you still had two things going for you. The Spectrum had a great layout so even though you were high up, you almost always had a good view and sound quality. And second, you could get a contact high without having to worry about getting busted.

I saw my first concert there, Pat Benatar, with my best friend. I still have the ticket (see below). Can you imagine, $6 for a concert! I saw Yes's 90125 tour twice, at the beginning of their tour with my friends and again on their way back with a date. Van Halen/Hagar was a pretty good show who I also saw at Silver Stadium in Rochester.

I ran across this album via a song I heard, Make It Right, that Apple Music threw at me in a continuous mix of songs. I loved that one song and checked out the group and this release from 2016. It's a great indie album: a little punk, a little pop, a little melodic, a little lo-fi, and all around great writing and performing.

The band seems to shift responsibilities for singing and even instruments around. The drummer has an amazing voice, especially on the acoustic track below.

Of the tracks, my fav pieces are Perfume, Dumb Baby, Excuse Me?, Make It Right, Watch Your Back, I Don't Think So, and Down Down. I guess that's over ½ the album and the other songs are good too.

There's a cool live acoustic version of Make It Right that I might like even more than the album version. It's currently on YouTube.

[www.youtube.com/watch](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bOVtxLsew0o)

1. Superfly - Curtis Mayfield
2. Brick House - The Commodores
3. Superstition - Stevie Wonder
4. Kiss - Prince & the Revolution
5. Genius of Love - Tom Tom Club
6. You Dropped a Bomb on Me - The Gap Band
7. Play That Funky Music - Wild Cherry
8. Get Up I Feel Like Being a Sex Machine - James Brown
9. Soul Power 74 - Maceo & The Macks
10. Right Place Wrong Time - Dr. John
11. Love Rollercoaster - Ohio Players
12. Higher Ground - Stevie Wonder
13. Super Freak - Rick James
14. Hollywood Swinging - Kool & The Gang
15. Freak-A-Zoid - Midnight Star
16. Let It Whip - Dazz Band
17. Sir Duke - Stevie Wonder

4 of 5 stars

An exhaustive yet exciting biography of my favorite composer. This book could be used as a source for a semester-long course on Mozart, it’s that dense and that packed with information. It contains history, biography, culture, and a large amount of musicology and composing. This is a huge book and it could have been split into 3 individual ones, but as it stands, it’s a great reference book to have if you’re interested in the mechanics of one of his concertos, who was his patron when he wrote some sonatas, what his father and sister were like, etc.

I learned a great deal. Some of the cool things were the people whose lives intersected with Mozart, including Joseph & Michael Haydn, Beethoven, Hummel, Johann Christian Bach, and even Goethe. Can you imagine stopping by Mozart’s home and seeing Wolfgang, his father Leopold, and Joseph Haydn just sitting around playing violin and viola together, passing the evening away?

A great quote from the book came near the end:

In the end, much of what sets Mozart apart from Beethoven and those who followed was the amity of his music, the art of a sociable man intended for a circle of friends and for small groups of listeners. That inflected even his monumental last two symphonies, which would become central to how Beethoven conceived the genre. Lonely, deaf, and misanthropic, Beethoven came to address his music to the world at large, to concert halls, to posterity. Beethoven wrote for Humanity, Mozart for people. What we hear in Mozart, even in the last symphonies, is a gift given to us intimately as friend to friend, lover to lover" (p. 732-733)

By essential, I should say essential to me. There are so many types of jazz and so many musicians, it’s hard to say “you must listen to this and never listen to that”.  So, these are just my favorite things, and even that might change as I get even older.

• Live at the Village Vanguard (The Master Takes) – John Coltrane
  • hands down, my favorite album across all genres. I absolutely adore this album. It's energy, creativity, dissonance and sheer power. This is the album I want with me on a desert island.
• The Blues and the Abstract Truth – Oliver Nelson
• Kind of Blue – Miles Davis
• Both Directions at Once: The Lost Album – John Coltrane
• Coltrane (Impulse Records, 1962) – John Coltrane
• Out to Lunch – Eric Dolphy
• [single released already] Blue World – John Coltrane

 

I recently started listening to BBC’s Desert Island Discs podcasts.  I stumbled upon them looking for new classicist topics.  I ran across one with the amazing Mary Beard, and then started looking at others. It’s a really interesting show and made me think about what my choices would be.

The premise is that you will be stranded on a desert island and you can take 8 recordings with you, one book, and one luxury item. You will also be provided with the complete works of Shakespeare and a religious or philosophical text.  At the end of the program, the interviewer often asks which of the 8 recordings is the most important one to you, in case you can only take one disc with you.

My musical choices:

1. Mozart's Requiem (Nikolaus Harnoncourt & Concentus Musicus Wein)
2. Tchaikovsky's Manfred Symphony (Vasily Petrenko & Royal Liverpool Philharmonic)
3. Schubert's Death and the Maiden (Takács Quartet)
4. John Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard
5. The Doors by The Doors (1st album)
6. Pat Benatar's In the Heat of the Night
7. Dire Straits's Brothers in Arms
8. AC/DC's Powerage

The music disc I would chose if I could only take one would be Coltrane's Live at the Village Vanguard. It has the full range of emotions: love, despair, joy, anger, confusion, enlightenment and a form of spirituality.

My religious/philosophical text would be Lucretius’s On the Nature of Things (De Rerum Natura), translated by A. E. Stallings.

My book choice is Homer’s Iliad, the two-volume Loeb edition with facing pages of ancient Greek and contemporary English.  I relish this work and originally was going to go with Caroline Alexander’s translation of the Iliad (my favorite), but decided with my free time on the island, I could finally finish learning Greek and read it fully in the original!

My luxury item was a tough call. Many pick beds, or treats, or something along those lines. I simply want a new deck of playing cards in a protective case. With cards, I can play a multitude of solitary games or even concoct multi-player scenarios to occupy my mind and time.

I stopped running with music years ago.  I focused on thinking and also being more aware of my surroundings, especially the fast-moving cars.  Recovering from a cold that included a mild fever, I decided to ease back into my jogging with some music.  I started just walking, then power-walking, and today I tossed in a smattering of jogs in between walking.  My 90’s playlist really helped:

• Evenflow - Pearl Jam
• Supernova - Liz Phair
• Volcano Girls - Veruca Salt
• Just a Girl - No Doubt
• Unbelievable - EMF
• Chinese Burn - Curve
• Cantaloop (Flip Fantasia) - Us3
• Titanium Exposé - Sonic Youth
• Divine - Rollins Band
• All Hail Me - Veruca Salt
• Smells Like Teen Spirit - Nirvana
• Everglade - L7
• Gone Away - The Offspring
• Girl, You'll Be a Woman Soon - Urge Overkill
• Animal - Pearl Jam

• Kids in America – Kim Wilde
• Tall Cans in the Air – Transplants
• Supernova – Liz Phair
• Hollaback Girl – Gwen Stefani
• Volcano Girls – Veruca Salt
• Animal – Pearl Jam
• Smells Like Teen Spirit – Nirvana
• Head Like a Hole – Nine Inch Nails
• Terrible Lie – Nine Inch Nails
• It's a Long Way to the Top – AC/DC
• Perfect Strangers – Deep Purple

 

I’ve been sick for about a week with a stupid little cold, but it impacted my running. I finally got out today for a power walk and this was the playlist that I listed to. Random shuffle but what a mix … for me!

• Sugar Kane – Sonic Youth
• Sabotage – Beastie Boys
• Links 2 3 4 – Rammstein
• Animal – Pearl Jam
• Closer – Nine Inch Nails
• Divine – Rollins Band
• Zero – Smashing Pumpkins
• Butterfly – Crazy Town
• You Oughta Know – Alanis Morissette
• 1979 – Smashing Pumpkins
• Firestarter – The Prodigy
• Who Was In My Room Last Night? – Butthole Surfers
• Evenflow – Pearl Jam
• Sex Type Thing – Stone Temple Pilots

Queens of Noise: The Real Story of the Runaways by McDonnell Evel

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

A quick moving read that delved way past where The Runaways movie went. Evelyn McDonnell turned her Master’s program thesis on Sandy West into this tome on the history and fallout of the Runaways. In various turns, she protects the members of the band and then turns an scathing light on some of their heinous actions.

I learned quite a few new things, especially about the people who were associated with the band but that other documentaries, news stories or fictionalized films left out. I also learned about the many bassists that the Runaways burned through. As an amateur bassist myself, I was glad to finally hear a little bit besides just the singer and the guitarist(s). Drummers and their fans need not worry with the Runaways, as Sandy West was a formidable drummer, personality and founder of the band.

McDonnell tears apart the music industry for their sexism, money first, and predominantly US-focused metrics for success. Music journalists, other bands, record companies and even recording engineers are pretty damn misogynistic and narcissistic creatures! McDonnell quotes from a review of a Runaways show in Newcastle (UK) in 1977:

Sutcliffe had an interesting psychoanalytic reading of the verbal attacks. "Heavy music pulls blokes," he wrote. "When the musicians are, as usual, male, they are a macho mirror to their fans who worship them like a corporate Narcissus ogling himself. But when the musicians are female, it's no mirror, it's the real thing, the challenge of a relationship rather than a solo jerk-off–so the Runaways don't get any shadow boxing, they are in for the championship every time they go on stage."

On the down side, the author seems to be part academic and part starstruck fan. She makes an incisive point, then mocks the very next thing she talks about with an air of fan arrogance. It's hard to take the work seriously as a whole. Maybe that's why we're reading "Queens of Noise" instead of the thesis "Wild thing: how Sandy West was lost, the true story of a teenage runaway rock'n'roll outlaw". She also seems to say X is true, Y is not, and then turns around a few sections later professing the opposite. Such a strategy works in context, but yet again, on the whole, it detracts from the work.

This is a good read, especially if you’re interested in the Runaways, the music industry and some flashes of growing up in the 1970s.

Partly iTunes genius generated, partly stuff I added to the mix. Was great for PT and some late afternoon thinking…

• Stayin' Alive – Bee Gees
• Flying High Again – Ozzy Osbourne
• Candy-O – The Cars
• Pump It – Black Eyed Peas
• Breakin' Dishes – Rihanna
• Green Onions – Booker T. & the MGs
• Young'n (Holla Back) – Fabolous
• Rock Star (Jason Nevins Remix Edit) – N.E.R.D.
• SexyBack – Justin Timberlake
• Play That Funky Music – Wild Cherry
• You Dropped a Bomb On Me – Gap Band
• I Heard It Through The Grape Vine – Marvin Gaye

These are a list of my favorite albums of late. These are ones that I like to listen to the whole way through, start to finish. These don’t include all my favorite songs but it’s just the work as a whole that I really am digging right now.

• AC/DC - Powerage
• Bach (Hélène Grimaud) - Piano Pieces
• Pat Benatar - In the Heat of the Night
• John Coltrane - Live at the Village Vanguard
• Miles Davis - Kind of Blue
• The Doors - The Doors
• Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin
• Sibelius (Jascha Heifetz and Chicago Symphony) - Violin Concerto

Definitely a punky feeling and some 70s nostalgia.

• Anarchy in the U.K. - The Sex Pistols
• Blitzkrieg Bop - The Ramones
• Crimson and Clover - Joan Jett and the Blackhearts
• School's Out - Alice Cooper
• Wild Thing (live) - The Runaways
• Land - Patti Smith

Diane & I saw the Dead Weather at Rams Head Live on Monday, August 2nd in Baltimore. What an incredible, sold-out show! They are best as a live band. The raw emotion and aggressiveness of their music just rocked.

There were songs that I don’t really like off their records such as ‘60 Feet Tall’ (Horehound) and ‘I’m Mad’ (Sea of Cowards) that were superb live. Conversely, Die by the Drop is one of my favorite songs off their new album, but I didn’t care for the live version.

Harlem, from Austin, Texas, opened. They did 10 songs and I really liked three of them. A few sucked and the rest were ok. They’re a three person band, and the lead guitarist and drummer swapped about ½ through the set. To be honest, the first guitarist wasn’t that great but the drummer-cum-guitarist rocked out on both instruments.

The Dead Weather played 13 songs and then came back out for a three song encore. Here’s the setlist they played:

1. The Difference Between Us
2. I'm Mad
3. 60 Feet Tall
4. Hang You From The Heavens
5. You Just Can't Win (Them cover)
6. So Far From Your Weapon
7. No Horse
8. I Cut Like a Buffalo
9. Gasoline
10. Die by the Drop
11. Hustle and Cuss
12. New Pony (Bob Dylan cover)
13. Will There Be Enough Water?

Encore:

14. Blue Blood Blues
15. Jawbreaker
16. Treat Me Like Your Mother

 

Primarily drawing from the 1970s and 90s, but with the late 2000s coming up strong. One local band, Wye Oak, made the list. Another might join soon. The Violet Hour’s eponymous album does indeed join the list.

1. The Battle of Los Angeles (1999) - Rage Against the Machine
2. Crimes of Passion (1980) - Pat Benatar
3. Dark Side of the Moon (1973) - Pink Floyd
4. The Doors (1967) - The Doors
5. Fever To Tell (2003) - Yeah Yeah Yeahs
6. Horehound (2009) - The Dead Weather (2009)
7. I (1969) - Led Zeppelin
8. In The Heat of the Night (1979) - Pat Benatar
9. The Knot (2009) - Wye Oak
10. Midnight Boom (2008) - The Kills
11. Nevermind (1991) - Nirvana
12. Powerage (1978) - AC/DC
13. Power to the People & the Beats (1987-98) - Public Enemy
14. Pretty Hate Machine (1989) - Nine Inch Nails
15. So Tonight That I Might See (1993) - Mazzy Star
16. Ten (1991) - Pearl Jam
17. Vegas (1997) - The Crystal Method
18. The Violet Hour (2009) - The Violet Hour
19. Who’s Next (1971) - The Who
20. The Yes Album (1971) - Yes

One of my new favorite bands, and their local, from Baltimore. For a mellow band that I use to help facilitate my writing, they can rock out. Can’t wait to see them live sometime:

[youtube=www.youtube.com/watch

Had a great six mile run today and a perfect soundtrack, thanks to Apple’s Genius option. I seeded it with the first song below.

Zero [Yeah Yeah Yeahs]
Cheap and Cheerful [The Kills]
Ghost Town [Shiny Toy Guns]
In One Ear [Cage the Elephant]
Connjur [School of Sevel Bells]
Great DJ [The Ting Tings]
Bull in the Heather [Sonic Youth]
The Good Ones [The Kills]
The Beginning of the End [Nine Inch Nails]
Gold Lion [Yeah Yeah Yeahs]
Wild International [One Day as a Lion]
Push It [Garbage]
Gouge Away [Pixies]
Rock & Roll Queen [The Subways]
Hang You From the Heavens [The Dead Weather]
Five String Serenade [Mazzy Star]

My friend David’s band, Porter St. Revival, played at the Second Chance Saloon on May 1st. We had a fabulous time, staying for all three sets. Here’s a quick photo of the band playing. If you have the chance, you can see them again on June 13 and July 25. David is the guitarist, up front.