Lil' Kim

Her flow's still weaker than the L.A. river, but these songs are pretty hot:

"Lighters Up"

"Quiet"

Stage 3: Mountain Tribute

My welcome to West Virginia happened on Thanksgiving Day; starting with the Feast at Weston, WV, then back to Morgantown for the evening's business - Backyard Brawl. Here are some images from the Mountainteer Trouncing of the Pittsburgh Panthers.

Nothing like fight songs and tailgating to get ready for a night's Mountaineer football

Right O' Mack

I sense the Max Raabe longing....

Mack on

Leute !!

He Done it Again

Billy Bragg & Wilco
Joe Dimaggio Done It Again
Ingrid Bergman

Nappy Roots
Round the Globe
Kentucky Mud

Max Raabe in Philly

There just happens to be an article in the NY Times about Max Raabe. Since we've had a few posts on ANAblog about him I thought I would add some more tracks for your enjoyment.

Apparently he's coming to Zankel Hall in New York and to the Kimmel Center in Philadelphia this week, and he will be singing in English. I wish I could go. The NYT article hints at my previously mentioned insinuation that there is a connection between Raabe's music and punk. If you go to the concert this week see if you agree with me. I would like to hear your thoughts on the matter.

Also, I have a correction and apology to make. I called him a Prussian in my last post - It says in the NYT that he's a Westphalian. So sorry to make that generalization.

Du bist meine Greta Garbo

Du hast mich nie geliebt

You're the cream in my coffee

Masters of War

"To all who wear the uniform, I make you this pledge: America will not run in the face of car bombers and assassins so long as I am your commander-in-chief." -- George Bush, Today

"You fasten the triggers
For the others to fire
Then you set back and watch
When the death count gets higher
You hide in your mansion
As young people's blood
Flows out of their bodies
And is buried in the mud" - Bob Dylan, 1963

"Masters of War" (performed by Eddie Vedder, Mike McCready & GE Smith)

Passacaglia

Though it may not seem it, Webern's Passacaglia is a model of economy. In 1908, it was top of the line. By the time he'd knock off for good, he'd have moved that top of the line to one of those rare, irreproachable heights where a mode of thought reaches its apotheosis, and thereafter, renders anything else in a similar vein a pallid retread, which, to come back to the piece at hand, some would say of his Passacaglia, calling it a final embrace of German romaticism, a portrayal which dovetails nicely with the similarly false artistic trajectory that has been created for Schoenberg.

All the best of Webern is here: The timbral counterpoint; the stunning, microscopic, symmetrical transformations; dynamic schemes; even his most iconic cell structure is present at the outset. It would be a ridiculous form of organicism to suggest the work is a germ for the thirty that would follow, the type of contortionist compliment that critics rely on all too often.

The rather more genuine compliment is that, though the work could be attributed to other hands, there is no mistaking Webern's voice. Ralph Fiennes' dissection of a forged Picasso in The Good Thief, wherein he goes so far as to cite the influence of beached Etruscan vases, comes to mind, and certainly one could exhaustively catalogue the influences in this short score, but the voice of Opus 31 is unmistakably that of Opus 1, which is compliment enough, and a truly rare feat of composition, especially given what a revolutionary voice it is.

Aeromusic be damned:

Give us an Aeropictorial Dinner!

aeropictorial dinner
in the cockpit

In the roomy cockpit of a large Autostabilizing DeBernardi, surrounded by Aeropaintings by the Futurists Marasco, Tato, Benedetta, Oriani and Munari which hang from the aeropeaks and clouds on the horizon they are flying over at 1000 metres, the diners free five lobsters intact from their shells and boil them electrically in sea water. They stuff them with a pulp of egg yolk, carrots, thyme, garlic, lemon rind, the eggs and liver of the lobsters, capers. They sprinkle them with curry powder and put them back in their shells, tinted blue here and there with methylene.

Bizarrely the five lobsters are then placed in seeming disorder and at some distance from each other on a huge Tullio d'Albisola aeroceramic, mattressed by twenty different kinds of salad: these being geometrically arranged in a pattern of squares.

And so the diners, holding in their fists little ceramic bell-towers full of Barolo mixed with Asti Spumante, eat villages, farms and fields speeding by.

Formula by the Futurist Aeropoet
MARINETTI
and the Futurist Aeropainter
FILLÌA

Aeorpictorial dinners in the cockpit aren't for the faint of heart, and reconstitution may well be in order upon landing; so, we kindly suggest:

The Regenerator
(formula by the Futurist engineer Barosi)

an egg yolk.
half a glass of Asti spumante.
3 toasted nuts.
3 teaspoons of sugar.

Beat the whole together for ten minutes. Serve in a glass with a peeled banana sticking out of it.

Kill Me a Son

It's usually the first verse of "Highway 61 Revisited" (performed here by Johnny Winter) that's quoted by everyone, but to an increasingly large section of the populace, it's the last verse which rings truest these days, so much so that the White House feels obliged to combat the characterization:

Now the rovin' gambler he was very bored
He was tryin' to create a next world war
He found a promoter who nearly fell off the floor
He said I never engaged in this kind of thing before
But yes I think it can be very easily done
We'll just put some bleachers out in the sun
And have it on Highway 61.

Continuing with road trip music - here are some of the radio ditties that
stuck in my mind as Bruce and I drove west on i-64 in Kentucky.

Tanya Tucker San Antonio Stroll

Alabama Song of the South

Stanley Brothers Blue Moon of Kentucky

Nelly Country Grammar

kentucky fried chicken baby !!

This Week's ANAPoll

Okay, we've never actually done a poll, but we're pretty sure this is the only one we'll do this week:

Which version of "Walking With a Ghost" rocks more?

Tegan & Sara's   The White Stripe's

Tegan & Sara, "Walking With a Ghost"

The White Stripes - "Walking With a Ghost"

Stage 2: Canton, OH

Pro Football Hall of Fame

I'm not usually a museum person. However this particular museum, the Pro Football Hall of Fame held my attention for 3 hours. It isn't difficult to imagine that the Musem has amassed a whole host of memorabilia and information over the years. These were organized and presented in a coherent and capivating manner - so if you hold more than a passing interesting in gridiron football. Go.

"The First Family of Country Music"

June Carter & Johnny Cash - "It Ain't Me Babe" (from Bob Dylan's 30th Anniversary concert)

My Giant Robot

The Trailer!

Henry Jacobs

Here's somebody whom I just learned about from NPR. I think you'll agree it's most impressive stuff! It's the kind of thing that makes me want to get to work right away.

Dead Air
Wilder Service
Lowdown on the New Line

"During a house renovation in Mill Valley a couple of years ago, a stash of reel-to-reel tapes and 45s was discovered beneath the floorboards. Caked in grime, the collection found its way to nearby resident Jack Dangers of Meat Beat Manifesto, whose own large sound archive included several records released by the owner of the collection: Henry Jacobs. Remarkably preserved for all the exposure to the elements, the more than eighty tapes chronicle wild collaborations with close friend and theologian Alan Watts, San Francisco soundscapes, riffs with Ken Nordine, fictitious radio spots, warped tabla beats, feedback mayhem, hipster parodies, and goof conversations...
This CD/DVD collection pays homage to Jacobs’ creative play, presenting recovered and restored audio as well as rare animated films that will give you a tasteof thiss man’s special talents.

•Beginning in 1953, he hosted one of this nation’s first world music programs for KPFA in Berkeley, CA. This lead to a record deal with Moe Asch of Folkways, who released the LP, “Audio Collage,”in 1955. That release featured early uses of tape manipulation, compound loopsfeedback inbackin compositions, along with tracks comprised of mock interviews and improvised riffs.

•Appears on Lenny Bruce’s first record (on Fantasy).

•Nominated for an Oscar in 1964 for his work with John Korty on the animated short “Breaking the Habit.”

For more samples visit: MusicforManiacs

System of a Down

:Kill Rock 'n Roll:

:Tentative:

:U-Fig:

A Thanksgiving Prayer

"Thanks for the wild turkey and the passenger pigeons, destined to be shit out through wholesome, American guts."

The Harmonica Pocket

"Sathi"
"Billie Jean"
"Sprinkle It With Magic"



The dude with the afro wig is Lorne from Loop 2.4.3. In addition to being a ferocious hand drummer, he also has a swanky percussion method book:

The Annoying Idiots

Mid-jam session, two itinerate experimentalists were interrupted by a visitor who remarked that they sounded "like annoying idiots". They loved the comment so much that they kept the name:

"She Winds a Braid"


(Idiot #2 not pictured)

Come On Up to the House

Godspeed to all the intrepid travellers (if you're travelling today, you are intrepid whether you like it or not), and if you're one of those whose plane, train or automobile trip is overshadowed by dread of Uncle Cracklebum calling you by your outgrown childhood nickname or of a Wicked Step-Beast cravenly vying for your affection (which you'll never give in a million years) or any untoward holiday drama, take solace in the admonition of your old pal Tom Waits, who's here to remind you that it's all in your head:

Come down off the cross
We can use the wood
Come on up to the house

The Original Podcast, Part the Second

In this installment, our ANABlogger suffers a dream induced by a book.

1910-1919

Those ten years are the most heavily visited in the programming of top US orchestras. Here's how the rest of the decades stack up:


(Boston, Chicago, Cleveland, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco)

Harry and the Potters

Was a bit surprised to see a rock band in a Harry Potter movie, let alone one fronted by Jarvis Cocker. I guess that explains why it made so much money this weekend.



"This Is The Night"
"Magic Works"
"Do the Hippogriff"

Max Raabe follow up

Thanks to Echo for introducing us to this Prussian wonder.

Herr Raabe's tunes especially seem to me a new type of punk. Listen to the dry lyrics of "Kein Schwein Ruft Mich An" (there's a sample on his website if you missed it on the ANAblog post in July) or how about the lyrics and mood of Viagra

Here's more:

TK421, why aren't you at your post?

I was wondering where my partner Tom, from Loop 2.4.3, was, because I hadn't heard from him in a week, and it turns out he was on tour with Clogs, who were opening for Bell Orchestre, the chamber rock side project of two lads from Arcade Fire.

"Synching"

"Rajasthan"

"Tower of Bowl"

Warning: Graphic Content

Cornelius Cardew's Treatise

I II III IV V VI

The Notorious T.A.B.U.L.A.

How'd Biggie's catalogue become pop's go-to blank canvas?

"Hold Your Head Up" pairs B.I.G. with Bob Marley, two artists whose output are about as dissimilar as possible. Biggie held the microscope up to ghetto life. Bob drew a roadmap out of it.

The partnership doesn't work at all. It's like having a Whopper and a Big Mac served to you on the same plate. But even in a 'clean' version like this one, it's always compelling to listen to both of these guys.

Stage 1: Indianapolis. Columbus

for Every Road Trip - some good music

Playlist 1 (of many)

USC (Trojans) Fight On
Ramones California Sun
Juan Miguel Si Nos Dejan
Juan Gabriel con Mariachi No Vale la pena
Super Steelers Fight Song 1979
Carla Bozulich/Willie Nelson Time of the Preacher
Willie Nelson with Waylon Jenning Highwayman
Geraldine Fibbers California Tuffy

Ol' Dirty Bastard Cold Blooded , Brooklyn Zoo

The Arcade Fire Haiti
Ruff Chemistry Big Nasty - Steeler Rap

Ol' Dirty Bastard Recognize featuring Chris Rock
The Arcade Fire Rebellion (Lies) , Wake Up
Gypsy Kings Hotel California
Gerladine Fibbers Butch
Chicago Cub @ Los Angeles Dodgers
9th Inning of the Sandy Koufax Perfect Game, Vin Scully with the call

The Stand Partner From Hell

Of the apocryphal hagiographica that litter the musical landscape like a malignant weed, hoarding all the sunlight from the yeomen who toil in the ordinary daily life of the art, there's hardly a better example than Robert Shaw's anecdote about a performance of St. John's Passion he conducted with Paul Hindemith performing the viola da gamba solos. He claims:

What is astonishing is that he also sang the entire performance from his orchestra chair -- from memory -- in German -- solos and choruses -- while the rest of us limped along with scores and parts -- in English.

Granted that performance practice mid-century is not as stifling as it is now, but it is ridiculous on its face to suggest that Hindemith actually did this for an entire performance. To claim that, while some poor schlub was trying to sing "My Heart, see all the world is plunged in woe because of Jesus' anguish," Paul was sitting there singing "Mein Herz, indem die ganze Weit bei Jesu..." is an overweening gesture, understandable, perhaps, because Shaw wrote that while the composer was still alive when his reputation was far from sealed, and seeing it for the load of bollocks it is becomes far easier with the illumination of 40 years of intervening history.

Shaw wrote that in a letter to the Cleveland Orchestra Chorus as they prepared to perform Hindemith's When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd (A Requiem for Those We Love), which Shaw commissioned for $1,000 in 1945 as a eulogoy for FDR. The text is Whitman's threnody about the death of Lincoln and the tattered state of the Union, and while it's tempting to think on the parallels between the time periods (2 dead Presidents, 2 great wars and whatnot), the piece more than stands on its own merits, independent of any fleeting historical imperatives.

Prelude
I. When lilacs last in the dooryard bloom'd
II. Arioso, In the swamp
III. March, Over the breast of spring
IV. O western orb
V. Arioso, Sing on , there in the swamp
VI. Song, O how shall I warble
VII. Introduction and Fugue, Lo! body and soul
VIII. Sing on! you gray-brown bird
IX. Death Carol, Come, lovely and soothing Death
X. To the tally of my soul
XI. Finale, Passing the visions

Note: In the same letter, Shaw places Lilacs alongside Bartok's Cantata Profana, Schoenberg's Friede auf Erden and Stravinsky's Symphony of Psalms as landmark choral compositions by the four most influential composers of the first half of the 20th century. Meanwhile, on the mp3 blogosphere this week, someone mentioned that in 1999 Time had named Stravinsky's entry on Shaw's list as the most important work of the 20th century.

I'd simply suggest that the fact that people feel that they can even make such claims is evidence enough of the paucity of great works in the last century. Trying to make such a distinction for any of the previous three centuries is a fool's errand.

I Shot a Man in Reno Just To Watch Him Die

It would appear from the trailer that Mangold treats Johnny's concert at Folsom Prison the way that Mann treated the Rumble in the Jungle, as a ready-fit climax to a sprawling life story (Someone should make a multi-volume biopic someday). Whether or not it's used as the easy way out of a writing problem, the concert at Folsom is one of those recordings that belongs in a time capsule or to be shot into outer space or something. The power of Cash's authorship is so complete that someone with no frame of reference whatsoever for country music can immediately sympathize with his performance. Right from the beginning, when he introduces himself in the simplest way possible, you know you are in the hands of a master.

Upcoming Show ...

Road Trip: from LA to St Louis to West Virginia (back to St Louis back to LA)

Coming to a Town near You (November 18-28)

involving:

Johnny Chang violinist/composer/kiwi/reservist/experimentalist(conceptualist)

Bruce Sachs graphic designer/educator/events organizer/mountaineer/experimentalist

Tuning Up with Edgard

Silly that he actually wrote this, but hey, at least he had a silly side.

Edgard Varese - "Tuning Up"

Goodbye Twentieth Century

Christian Wolff: Edges (1969)

Pauline Oliveros: Six for New Time (1999)

James Tenney: Having Never Written a Note for Percussion (1971)

John Cage: Six 3rd take (1991)

Takehisa Kosugi: +- (1987)

Yoko Ono: Voice Piece for Soprano (1961)

Nicholas Slonimsky: Pìece Enfantine (1951)

Cornelius Cardew: Treatise page 183 (1967)

It is difficult for me to describe exactly how I feel about Sonic Youth's take on some of the most adventurous of experimental composers on our day (not referring to all of the above posted composers) - so I'm say something else instead. I could instead shudder to imagine a half-hearted effort in 2005 from some string quartet or symphony orchestra in projecting a contemporary music program, confusing that for the experimental.

Larry Lurex to the Rescue

Poor Gary Glitter.

However it ends up for him, he did launch a thousand imitators, most notably a guy named Freddie Mercury whose first single with Queen (minus John Deacon, which apparently is still Queen, go figure) was one of those classic tear-down-your-idol moments. Calling himself Larry Lurex and taking a stab at the Brill Building and Motown may not be up there with Valhalla in flames, but it's certainly an ironic start to such a glitter-filled career.

"I Can Hear Music"

"Going Back"

Fugue on Fire?

Reece Dano can help.

He's one of our composers and is currently hunkered down on a new opera project, which isn't the same as his old opera project: Quinault

Quinault was written and first performed at the Peabody Conservatory in 2000. At this point in time, the end of the 90's boom, I felt my perception of the world was boiling in money and hyper-edited telecommunications commercials. It made me feel a bit dizzy, giddy and disturbed -- all at the same time. So I set out to write an opera about these feelings. In this track from Quinault, Jackson, our hero, is fleeing to the thicket of an archetypal forest to quiet his mind. He expresses quintessential Expressionist feelings of angst and guilt.

At the scene's conclusion he vows to gather up the fragments of his disturbed identity and . . . just . . . just . . . "I just . . . I just want . . .

-- Reece Dano, 2005

Stones

From the Christian Wolff "Prose Collection" of 1968 - 1974

The score of "Stones" contains but just these words:

Make sounds with stones, draw sounds out of stones, using a number of sizes and kinds (and colours); for the most part discretely; sometimes in rapid sequences. For the most part striking stones with stones, but also stones on other surfaces (inside the open head of a drum, for instance) or other than struck (bowed, for instances, or amplified). Do not break anything.

Performers:
Michael Pisaro
Jürg Frey
Burkhard Schlothauer
Kunsu Shim
Thomas Stiegler

Wandelweisser Composers Ensemble

[Edition Wanderweisser records, EWR 9604]

Brazil

Of all the Sam Lowry's in the world, one of our ANABloggers is the Sam Lowriest, and since the song's come up twice in the past month, it's a good time to post a few of the versions that we've amassed over the years.

The 50 Guitars of Tommy Garrett

Andre Rieu

Antonio Carlos Jobim

Billy Vaughn

Britney Spears

Caterina Valente

Chet Atkins & Les Paul

Cornelius

Django Reinhardt

Eddy Duchin

Fausto Papetti

Ferrante & Teicher

Brazil
Frank Sinatra

Gato Barbieri

Geoff Muldaur

Jimmy Dorsey

Mantovani

Maynard Ferguson

Mel Torme & Cleo Laine

Michael Nesmith

Pink Martini

Ray Conniff

Steel Drum Version

The Three Tenors

The Ritchie Family

The Ventures

Vengaboys

Xavier Cugat

Your Father-in-law's Full of Shit

Everybody knows that it wasn't Bobby Darin who brought Kurt Weill's three-pennied prologue to the masses.

It was Mac Tonight:

the Arcade Fire

jodru posted about these guys almost a year ago. I am happy to discover from them another version of Brazil. In any case, Rebellion (lies) just hooks unto your ears and becomes something of a repeated listening ...... help...

vacation slides

First of all, as a comment to JoDru's RBVIII: Yes Virginia, There Really Is a Rawles Balls post I wanted to add that my father-in-law's claim that it was truly Bobby Darin who made Mack the Knife popular.

I wanted to make a call to my fellow ANAbloggers to see if they have a postable recording of that.

Second of all, due to unpopular demand I would like to point you to some more of Robert Ashley's work (see my previous post)

Google, Grokster & Guangzhou

Edward Rothstein's article about Google Print in yesterday's New York Times neatly summarizes the concerns over the brave new world of intellectual property rights, concerns which strike me as medieval and superstitious as the ones about cloning (or aeromusic for that matter), or to put it in agrarian terms, copywrite Chicken Littles are essentially leaving a Post-It note on the barn door asking the cows to please not leave the barn again (should they ever bother to return).

Suing individual downloaders? Shutting down Grokster?

It's a waste of time and precious money, a nearly criminal abuse of resources given the mountains of money these concerns could be making if they went with the tide rather than fighting it. In its first week, iTunes sold one million songs. At that point, mp3 technology had been in mainstream use for a decade. By the fall of 2003, online song sales were twice that of CD single sales. In a few months, Apple managed to resurrect a form of the record industry that had been eulogized for decades.

500 million songs later, Apple has topped itself with a service that Steve Jobs thought absurd. Even the guru at the helm of a visionary company is out of step with a trend that's as obvious as the nose on his face or, as Chris Anderson wrote in WIRED over a year ago, the Long Tail of a hydra. Anderson points out that the normal rules of retail are turned on their ear when you've cheap and virtually unlimited inventory space.

The normal rules would hold that no one would pay to watch an old Michael Jackson video or an episode of a network TV show on a screen that's 2.5" square, but we're way past your Grandma's retail.

In a world where Rawles can e-mail me an mp3 version of Jerry Goldsmith's gorgeous score from Patch of Blue, the vital issue for the entertainment industry can't be chasing after lost cents but creating platforms for hyper-personalization. It already tacitly sanctions the thousands of spaces like this one that disseminate music in a way that compliments their interests, but they seem to barely grasp the concept, keeping their distance as if they're unsure what type of dog we are, sussing out whether to pet us or put us down.

There's a reason that our inbox is filled up everyday with e-mails from artists and indie labels that point us to extraordinary songs like the kiwi gem "Pirouette" by the Tall Dwarfs. Hopefully, the major labels will get wise and follow suit. In a few years, when DVD releases are simultaneous with theatrical ones, the industry will have arrived at a model they should have been and could have been using for half a decade now. Pirated DVD's are a gold mine, and again, it strikes me as thunderously obtuse that the industry would see all those fistfuls of dollars being made and simply stand by and bemoan the fate of their trade. Just as people will pay to see Eva Longoria on their iPod, they will pay for a high-quality copy of a movie that they can watch at home on opening night, instead of jockeying for a seat in a crowded theater.

And copywrite will contiue to limp on. Writers will still get paid. Performers will still see their checks, and rest assured that corporations will continue to keep most of the money for themselves, provided, of course, that they come to understand that P2P networks and the Chinese bootleg market aren't the biggest threat to the health of their bottom line: They are.

Aeromusic

One of ANALOG's strongest benefactors flew in to ARTSaha! this year on a private plane, and when I asked if we could incorporate the pilot and the plane into this year's festival, I must admit I was a bit surprised at how alien the idea seemed to her. Surely, everyone knows that aerial music is a standard genre now, a decade after Stockhausen's Helikopter String Quartet.



It's downright commonplace to put musicians into aeromobiles for remote performances these days! Why just the other day, the entire New York Philharmonic squeezed into a hot air balloon to perform Bruckner 7. We're aiming for a rocket or space shuttle, but if we have to start with our sponsor's Cessna, that'll be ok. You can start helping ARTSaha! 2006 by clicking through our Google ads, but if you happen to know anyone who owns a Class III rocket (or four), shoot us an e-mail.

Just one quick note on the Stockhausen: I love the guy, warts and all. And in this case, it's that same-old issue of his inflexibility of vision. He started his own publishing company because he simply couldn't tolerate scores that didn't appear exactly as he pictured them, and here too, his concept for the piece moves quickly into the realm of masochism when he instructs that the staging include an initial introduction of the performers by a moderator who then must describe "the technical aspects of the forthcoming performance".

Putting performers into helicopters is gag enough, dude. The audience is gonna have plenty to chew on without a spec sheet.

Whistling Jack Smith

Rawles laid some more science on me:



"I Was Kaiser Bill's Batman"

RBVIII: Yes Virginia, There Really Is a Rawles Balls

Richard Tauber - "One Day When We Were Young"

3rd Bass - "The Gas Face"

Neil Sedaka - "I Go Ape", "Next Door to an Angel", "Happy Birthday Sweet Sixteen", "Breaking Up Is Hard to Do", "Calendar Girl"

Marty Robbins - "Man Walks Among Us"

Dick Hyman - "Moritat"

Al Jolson - "California Here I Come", "Swanee", "My Mammy", "Toot, Toot, Tootsie", "Rock-a-bye Your Baby With a Dixie Melody"

Tammy Wynette - "Your Good Girl's Gonna Go Bad"

Billy Swan - "Lover Please"

Nelson Riddle - "Lisbon Antigua"

Jimmy Dorsey - "So Rare"

Percy Faith - "The Song from Moulin Rouge", "Delicado"

Randy Newman - "I Love L.A."

Hollywood Flames - "Buzz Buzz Buzz"

Bette Midler - "The Rose"

Billy Vaughn - "The Shifting Whispering Sands"

John McCormack - "I Hear You Calling Me"

Lewis Lymon & the Teenchords - "Lydia"

Traversing the landscape

from a concert of music for solo instruments and field recordings (11.12.2005, CalArts)

Johnny Chang -118.51181 / 34.07505 (3) for acoustic guitar & tape 2005

topography series

Mark So 8 IX 2003/7:58pm; No. 4 for violin, piano & tape 2005

[_blind documents_ series]

performers
Adam Overton guitar
Mark So piano
Johnny Chang violin

Pete Townshend's Blog

He explains:

What is well known is that I'm a rock star. You are not worthy etc. In fact you are worthy. And so am I. We deserve each other.

He's blogging his novel, The Boy Who Heard Music. To celebrate, here's The Who's set at the Isle of Wight in 1970.

There are no bad boys

Good luck to the Boys Town Cowboys as they face the Norfolk Catholic Knights today for the chance at the first state title in Boys Town history. A few ANALOG members work there, and we're all pulling for the team. The game's at 5 pm CT, and we're doing our part by offering up some stomping music:

Led Zeppelin - Achilles Last Stand

Voodoo Child - Synthesisers
Blur - Girls and Boys
Elastica - Stutter
Iron & Wine - Sodom, South GA
Dinosaur Jr. - Freak Scene
Devendra Banhart - Happy Happy Oh
Altered Images - Happy Birthday

11.11, 11

Brian Ferneyhough

It's about time that we hear from Brian Ferneyhough - more like, Echo finally rediscovers his stash of Ferneyhough recordings.

Second String Quartet (1980)

Adagissmo for string quartet (1980)

Once Again... USC Trojans

Fight On !

Victory At Sea

Richard Rodgers and Emmy Award-winning don't tend to get partnered up much. Perhaps that's because Emmy's are the last refuge of the credential-impoverished (We're looking at you, Judy Miller).

Regardless, the old fellow did in fact win TV's top honor for his scoring of NBC's documentary about WWII, Victory at Sea. It's jingoism most pleasant, but still, it does call to mind Einstein's thoughts on the subject of pageantry and quick sentiment:

...that worst outcrop of herd life, the military system....That a man can take pleasure in marching in fours to the strains of a band is enough to make me despise him. He has only been given his big brain by mistake; unprotected spinal marrow was all he needed. This plague-spot of civilization ought to be abolished with all possible speed. Heroism on command, senseless violence, and all the loathsome nonsense that goes by the name of patriotism--how passionately I hate them! -- "The World As I See It", 1934

The Original Podcast

Back when one of our members was exiled in Frankfurt, he issued our first podcast with an insightful, albeit wayward, dissertation on phonetics.

I still like cars

The Joy of Mechanical Force
by F. T. Marinetti("The Foundation of Futurism" ["Manifesto of Futurism," 1909], translated from the French by Eugen Weber, reprinted by permission of Dodd, Mead and Company from Paths to the Present by Eugen Weber. Copyright 1960 by Dodd, Mead and Company, Inc.)
We have been up all night, my friends and I, beneath mosque lamps whose copper domes, as open-worked as our souls, yet had electric hearts. And while we trod our native sloth into opulent Persian carpets, we carried our discussion to the farthest limits of logic and covered sheets of paper with insane scrawls.
A vast pride swelled in our breasts, to feel ourselves standing alone, like lighthouses or advanced guards, facing the army of enemy stars that camp in heavenly bivouacs. Alone with the greasers in the infernal engine-rooms of great ships, alone with the dark phantoms that rummage in the red bellies of bewitched locomotives, alone with the drunks fluttering, battering their wings against the walls!
And unexpectedly, like festive villages that the Po in flood suddenly unsettles and uproots to sweep them off, over the falls and eddies of a deluge, to the sea, we were disturbed by the rumbling of enormous double-decker trams, passing in fits and starts, streaked with lights.
Then the silence got worse. As we listened to the exhausted prayer of the old canal and heard the grating bones of palaces moribund in their greenery whiskers, all of a sudden hungry cars roared beneath our windows.
"Come," I said, "my friends! Let us go! At last Mythology and the mystic Ideal have been surpassed. We shall witness the birth of the Centaur and, soon, we'll see the first Angels fly! We must shake the gates of life to test the hinges and the locks! ... Let us go! This is truly the first sun that dawns above the earth! Nothing equals the splendor of our red sword battling for the first time in the millennial gloom."
We approached the three snuffling machines to stroke their breasts. I stretched out on mine like a corpse in my coffin, but suddenly awoke beneath the steering wheel -- blade of a guillotine -- that threatened my stomach.
The great broom of folly tore us from ourselves and swept us through the streets, precipitous and profound like dry torrent beds. Here and there, unhappy lamps in windows taught us to despise our mathematical eyes. "The scent," I cried, "the scent suffices for wild beasts!"
And we pursued, alike to young lions, Death of the dark fur spotted with pale crosses that slipped ahead of us in the vast mauve sky, palpable and alive.
And yet we had no ideal Mistress high as the clouds, no cruel Queen to whom to offer our corpses twisted into Byzantine rings! Nothing to die for besides the desire to rid ourselves of our too weighty courage!
We went on, crushing the watchdogs on the thresholds of houses, leaving them flattened under our tires like a collar under the iron. Cajoling Death preceded me on every curve, offering her pretty paw and, by turns, lying flat with a jarring clamp of jaws to throw me velvety looks from the depths of puddles.
"Let us abandon Wisdom like a hideous vein-stone and enter like pride-spiced fruit into the vast maw of the wind! Let us give ourselves to the Unknown to eat, not for despair, but simply to enrich the unplumbable wells of Absurdity!"
As I spoke these words, I veered suddenly upon myself with the drunken folly of poodles chasing their own tail and there, at once, were two disapproving cyclists, reeling before me like two persuasive and yet contradictory arguments. Their inane undulations scanned over my ground.... What a bore! Phooey!... I cup off sharply and, in disgust, I pitched -- bang! -- into a ditch....
Ah! motherly ditch, half full of muddy water! Factory ditch! I tasted by mouthfuls your bracing slime that recalls the saintly black breast of my Sudanese nurse!
As I rose, a shiny, stinking gadabout, I felt the red-hot iron of joy deliciously pierce my heart.
A crowd of fishermen and gouty naturalists had gathered in terror around the prodigy. Patient and meddlesome, they raised high above great iron casting nets to fish out my car that lay like a great mired shark. It emerged slowly, leaving behind in the ditch like scales, its heavy body of common sense, and its padding of comfort.
They thought my good shark dead, but I awoke it with a single caress on its all-powerful rump and there it was, revived, running full speech ahead upon its fins.
Then, face hidden by the good factory slime, covered by metal dross, by useless sweat and heavenly soot, carrying out crushed arms in a sling, amid the plaints of prudent fishermen and distressed naturalists, we dictated our first wills to all the living men on earth:
The Futurist Manifesto

TOPOGRAPHY (1)

11.12.2005, 2pm


a concert of music for solo instruments and field recordings


Johnny Chang -118.51181 / 34.07505 (3) for acoustic guitar & tape 2005

topography series

Mark So 8 IX 2003/7:58pm; No. 4 for violin, piano & tape 2005

[_blind documents_ series]

Michael Pisaro five materials for violin and found objects 2005

performers
Adam Overton guitar
Mark So piano
Johnny Chang violin


location
ROD Hall
California Institute of the Arts

oh Bartleby

Hung Up

The best use of ABBA so far this year. OK, it's the only one, but still:



Hung Up

Hung Up (House Remix)

Lavender Diamond

Listen to the soaring voice of Becky Stark in You Broke My Heart and Rise in the Springtime.

Super Pro Bonus Times

Its never too early to fantasize about Christmas,
which means a Pro Bonus good time !

Madama Butterfly

End of Act 1 - Love duet between Pinkerton and Butterfly

Viene la sera (Evening is falling)

Vogliatemi bene (Love me)







Pinkerton - Luciano Pavarotti

Butterfly - Mirella Freni

Herbert von Karajan directs the Vienna State Opera/Philharmonic (1974)

George Brecht

performs his Solo for Violin


score

SOLO FOR VIOLIN, VIOLA, CELLO OR CONTRABASS

polishing

George Brecht, 1962

I have half a mind to incorporate numerous
Brecht Water-Yam pieces among the
music for my recital of music for violin and found objects
at a certain new zealand university

(they'll probably freak out, as i'm probably expected to show up and play some schumann. screw that)

Izabella

No, We Really Weren't

We have very few rules here. Basically, there's just one. We don't post songs to bash them. Too grad school.

But, what if there's a song so beyond good or bad that posting it is like Duchamps urinal or



With that, ANABlog is proud to present Kevin Federline's "Y'all Ain't Ready"

You Might Think

...it's insensitive to post Cars post-crash (long story, but suffice it to say that one of our ANABloggers is shaken, slightly stirred, and most importantly, okay!), but we've got to post something to get our mind off things, and Rawles Balls has hand-picked these choice classics:

"You Might Think"
"Drive"
"Magic"
"Hello Again"
"Why Can't I Have You"
"Tonight She Comes"
"You Are the Girl"

People Want to Know:

Who are Rawles Balls?



That's why Rawles, from Rawles Balls, has launched his Live Music Series. Bringing you all the Best of the Balls. Here's the first installment:

"She Want More"
"Jesse's Girl"
"Piano Man"
"The Making of Money"
"Squeeze Bach's Mass in B Minor Out"
"An Original Composition In Case We Move Some Units (We Could All End Up Making Some Serious Coin)
"You Shook Me All Night Long"
"Sultans of Swing"
"That's All"

Fear of a Black New World Order

It's easily my favorite modern conspiracy theory. The one that links Bush I's post-Cold War pabulum to the Illuminati through Yale's fraternity system. It makes for some first-rate bathroom reading, and it appears to have played some sort of factor in the naming of Public Enemy's much-needed new album. As a nation, we should force these guys to keep making records. Throw them a MacArthur grant or something. They're just too damn brilliant.

"New Whirl Odor" & "Bring That Beat Back"

RB VII: Songs for Swingin' Rawles Balls

Gerogerigegege - "Kanoko no Namaei no Irezumi Chinchin ni Aru yo ", "Satisfaction (Rolling Stones Cover)", & Sound Check



Johnny Lee - "Bet Your Heart On Me" & "Lookin' For Love"



Pat Ruthensmear - "Golden Boys"



Ken Copeland - "Where the Rio De Rosa Flows"



Esquivel - "Brazil"

Happy All-Saints Day

With over 10,000 saints and counting, the Litany of the Saints could be its own form of torture. Matter of fact, most people tend to think that even the abbreviated version is Guantanamo-esque, but I've always been fond of such ritualistic prayers.



Much as I love vapid pop, I just couldn't bring myself to post some All-Saints. Apologies to all my hardcore saccharine-loving brethren.

Out of Control

The Rolling Stones - "Out of Control"