Post #5-They Might Be Giants-They Might Be Giants

Options:

1. Libertango-Yo-Yo Ma--Soul of the Tango

2. Bitch-Rolling Stones--Sticky Fingers

3. A Moment of Unity-Changeling Season 4: The Frontier of Twilight(disc 1)

4. Get Back-The Beatles--Let It Be

5. Absolutely Bill's Mood-Eugene Chadbourne/They Might Be Giants--They Might Be Giants

Let's talk about They Might Be Giants.  I'm not going to say they are my favorite band, because I don't know that I could even say I have a favorite band.  But I will say that if I had to choose five bands and could have their entire discography and nothing else for the rest of my life, TMBG would be on that list(Radiohead, Beatles, Led Zeppelin and Dead Can Dance would probably round out the five, but overall that's a misleading statement, because there are many individual songs and albums that I like from all sorts of artists.  Wait, why am I justifying a partial answer to a rhetorical question I posed myself?).
TMBG is one of my favorite bands because I know few groups who seem to genuinely be writing music that is specifically intended to be fun.  Also, I love their clever references ("we're like the people chained up in the cave/ in the allegory of the people in the cave by the greek guy") and use of peculiar instrumentations.  Basically, they fit a peculiar niche in my mind in terms of performers that I listen to in order to feel happy.  
And the eponymous debut album has a few gems, even if it feels like they are just a couple of guys from Brooklyn trying to figure out this music thing.  A few standout tracks from this album are "Everything Right is Wrong Again", "(She Was a) Hotel Detective" and "Don't Let's Start", but there's a pair of songs that I think really highlight the everyman nature of TMBG that I find so particularly appealing. "Number Three" and "She's an Angel".  "Number Three" is a song about a peculiar premise summed up by the opening lyrics "There's only two songs in me/ and I just wrote the third"  It's about the peculiar feeling of artmaking, the way creativity and flow aren't some organized thing but something that sometimes just kind of happens to you(I don't believe Art is magic, I believe Art requires hard work, but a lot of that work is just showing up, materials at hand, so when you get in the flow state, you can put stuff on paper).
"She's an Angel" is one of my favorite love songs, mostly because it captures the absolute confusion of young love so well.  "These things happen to other people/they don't happen at all in fact"  Long before Nathan Rabin coined the term Manic Pixie Dream Girl, TMBG described the effect that falling in love with one must have.
That said, this album isn't 100 percent good.  There are some songs that are a little...wacky? No, not just wacky, wacky and not very musically inventive.  TMBG will always have some wackiness, but in later albums it gets much better.  Overall, this is an album with a few gems and many tracks you'll just skip.

Recommended Context for Listening: TMBG is good road trip music, specifically for the point when you are starting to realize how wide Ohio really is

What Playlists has this made it onto? TMBG sometimes makes it onto seasonal playlists for Spring or Summer

Who Should Buy This Album? TMBG completists.

Post #4 Stargate(Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

Options:

1. Dracula from Houston-Butthole Surfers--Scrubs(original soundtrack)

2. The Nightingale/A Maiden Fair to See-HMS Pinafore

3. Kasuf Returns-Nicholas Dodd--Stargate(Original Motion Picture Soundtrack)

4. Nothing Else Matters-Scala & Kolacny Brothers--Scala & Kolacny Brothers

5. Villemann Og Magnhild-Rita Erickson--Dublin to Dakar: A Celtic Odyssey

I own a lot of movie soundtracks.  350 discs worth, though that's slightly misleading because there are some multi-disc sets.  But still, even with the mislead, it outpaces all other genres of music in my collection.  There was once a point where I went through and divided up the genre into scores and soundtracks, but iTunes is such a horrid tool for sorting music[seriously, do I really need four genres that are Rap, Hip Hop, Rap Hip-Hop and Rap/HipHop] that I eventually gave up and sorted them all back into soundtracks.  

The reasons for my absolute glut of soundtracks are twofold.  One, I got hooked on soundtracks at an early age, blame John Williams and the Star Wars soundtracks. Two, I like to use music when I run games and I run a lot of games.  I have music for all sorts of genres and subgenres, divided into playlsts of varying degrees of specificity with names like "dark fantasy action" or "western town" or "cyberpunk club".  These tend to be sorted based on the type of game that am running and the sort of scenes that the music is appropriate for.  I sort out songs that have abrupt mood changes or distracting lyrics and then shuffle away in the background.  But I'm always glad when I come across a nice new soundtrack, because it means I have a new set of songs in my toolkit.

The Stargate Soundtrack is one of my favorites when it comes to epic music.  David Arnold, the composer of the soundtrack has put together some truly sweeping tracks that capture grand vistas and dramatic action.  While parts of it find themselves specifically suited for desert adventures(and have been so paired in previous game soundtracks with soundtracks such as Prince of Persia and Kingdom of Heaven), the music can always bring to mind swashbuckling action or a flight across sweeping vistas.  

It also brings up a very specific adage that I have.  A good movie does not equal a good soundtrack and a bad movie doesn't equal a bad soundtrack.  I know a lot of movies that I have no real interest in the overall film, but the music is great.  For every Braveheart or How to Train Your Dragon, there's a Cutthroat Island or Sucker Punch.   I don't think Stargate is a terrible movie, it has its moments and some fancy effects, but the soundtrack is truly memorable.  There's a reason that David Arnold went on to become the offical Bond movie composer between Tomorrow Never Dies and Quantum of Solace.  The man knows how to score adventures.

Recommended Context for Listening: when you want to feel like you're on an adventure

What Playlists has this made it onto? lots of adventure game playlists,

Who Should Buy This Album? Anyone who likes movie soundtracks, this is a model of the form.

Post #3 Amelia Mix

Options:

1. Anon: Missa Quem Malignus Spiritus - 5. Agnus Dei Andrew Kirkman: The Binchois Consort Music For Henry V & The House Of Lancaster

2. Marion's Theme- John Williams--Raiders of the Lost Ark

3. Disrupted Original-The Orange Box(Original Soundtrack)

4. Right in the Night-Jam&Spoon--Everybody Dance Now

5. Tres Gotas de Agua Bendita-Amelia Mix

Well, this will be the first mix I talk about even though iTunes appears to be slightly obsessed with my collection of period music.  This mix was given to me by my wifelet Amelia back when we were first dating.  It's got some great tracks with some fancy variety and still reminds me of the time when I listened to it a lot.  This is going to get a little autobiographical here, so bear with me.   

So Amelia and I met at a friend's birthday party right at the beginning of July and started dating about a month later after hanging out a few times and finding each other's company pleasant.  At the time, Amelia was planning on moving to Mexico for a while.  She had a few leads and while things were nice, it wasn't a situation where I felt I could demand she remain in Bloomington with minimal prospects just because I was a cool dude.  But she left me a mix tape. Well, a collection of mp3s, but it amounted to the same.  

So, let me talk about mix tapes, though I worry I'll morph into Rob from High Fidelity, so bear with me.  Mix Tapes are a complex art.  You have to balance a few themes, vary fast and slow songs, and often, as in the case with mixes made for romantic purposes, have to be sure to not come on too strong or too weak.  

However, presaging my wife's perceptive nature towards metanarrative, she included a song that covers this entirely.

So I had a decent sense of the meaning of the mix.

But overall, it was a pretty good mix.  She started well, "Under Pressure" and dipped into a few fun things like the Amelie soundtrack and the Beatles.  All in all, she impressed me with her selections.  Nickel Creek's cover of Pavement's "Spit on a Stranger", Tori Amos' "Sorta Fairytale"(I'm not much on her later albums, but this track is nice), and introduced me to Carbon Leaf, a nice alt-country indie group that impressed me.  When she wrapped with "Shoot the Moon" by Norah Jones I had a feeling we might make a run at things.

And that's what made it a good mix.  She wanted to say to me that she liked me.  She wanted to impress me with her taste in music.  And she wanted to tell me she was a quirky person.  And it worked.  I listened to the mix a lot while she was living and working down in Mexico.  And when she came back, we kept dating and got married.  So pardon the sappiness, but I still love this mix.

Recommended Context for Listening: When you miss Amelia because she's in Mexico

What Playlists has this made it onto? Spit on a Stranger has made it onto my all covers list

Who Should Buy This Album? nobody, it's a personal mix. Though I recommend checking out Carbon Leaf

Post #2-Toward the Within (Dead Can Dance)

Options:

1. Anon: Missa Quem Malignus Spiritus -2. Gloria-Andrew Kirkman: The Binchois Consort--Music for Henry V & The House of Lancaster

2. La Fiesta Mexicana: II Mass- H. Owen Reed--Fiesta!

3. Urban Aire-Afro Celt Sound System--Volume 2: Release

4. The Real-Tracy Bonham--Jeana's Mix 2005 Summer

5. Piece for Solo Flute-Dead Can Dance--Toward the Within[Live]

I'm very split on live albums.  On the one hand, I love the energy of a live show, but with a few exceptions, live albums never quite capture that.  Some live compilations with shows from a few places can showcase some of the fun that comes in shows.  Moxy Fruvous and Barenaked Ladies for instance often had fun crowd interaction or spontaneous jokes that show the character of the band.  For a few select groups or individual musicians, I prefer live music.  Stan Rogers for instance is much better live than in the studio.  But most of the time, I feel the live aspect doesn't capture the energy and add annoying crowd noise or inferior recording quality.  Most bands don't measure up live to what can be captured with studio magic(never underestimate the value of a good sound engineer).  

Toward the Within is one of my notable exceptions on this.  Dead Can Dance is one of the very few bands that I collect exhaustively.  And while their albums vary, this is one of their best.  One of the nice aspects of this album is the attention paid to song transitions.  Lots of live albums don't have any sense of continuity, they kind of jump from piece to piece, sometimes from city to city, but Toward the Within really captures the feeling of a single concert with the audience at rapt attention.  Part of this comes from good sound engineering.  The recordings capture significant echo, giving a great sense of space, especially on the vocals.  But the main part is the way it captures transitions from one song to the next, especially the instrumental swell between "I Can See Now" and "American Dreaming" which turns them into a wonderful medley.  I can't even listen to the songs individually, but only as a matched pair.

Another excellent aspect of this album is the inclusion of many pieces that do not appear on other DCD albums.  My favorites include "I am Stretched on Your Grave", a traditional piece that captures the plaintive nature of the song, "American Dreaming", with it's wonderful use of acoustic guitar.

But ultimately, what makes this album wonderful are Brendan Perry and Lisa Gerrard's voices.  Something about the live nature of the album brings their voices to life in a way that the studio recordings don't capture.  They truly are amazing singers and this showcases that very well.  Overall, I love this album.  It's one of my favorite live albums and one of my favorite Dead Can Dance albums.

Recommended Context for Listening: In the dark, when feeling moody.

What Playlists has this made it onto? My Moody Autumn playlist has some tracks from this.

Who Should Buy This Album? Dead Can Dance fans, which should be everyone.

Post #1 Clockwork Orange Soundtrack(Wendy Carlos)

Options:
1. Mandala in the Clouds-Battlestar Galactica: Season 3 soundtrack
2. Dermott O'Dowd-Relaxing Celtic for Reading
3. Country Lane-A Clockwork Orange
4. Imagine-Lennon Legend: The Very Best of John Lennon
5. The Gardens-Amazing Grace(Original Soundtrack)

Well, random didn't give me any easy opportunities for my first choice, but Wendy Carlos' Clockwork Orange Soundtrack seems like a good piece to start out with.  I picked this one up after working on an exhibit on the history of electronic music and learning about Wendy Carlos' overall career.  I also came to it through a love of Beethoven and Movie Soundtracks, so it was a fairly natural choice to represent early electronic music in my Super Eclectic Music Collection(SEMC).

The first track, Timesteps, is a long composition, showcasing the many different moods Carlos was able to capture using only electronic instrumentation.  But it's the second track, March from a Clockwork Orange that is where my interest really lies.  This march is an early electronic music version of the Choral finale of Beethoven's 9th.  The Choral Finale is one of my favorite pieces of music ever.  EVER.  But I also love adaptations(surprise, surprise, the folklorist loves different versions of the same thing) and Carlos's adaptation stretches the medium so well.  She uses the most amazing voice synthesis available in 1972, which isn't very advanced, but she uses it well.  It is like an instrument to itself.

Also on the album are tracks that adapt other parts of the 9th Symphony, the William Tell Overture and the Gazza Ladra, though the latter was not used in the final film and is instead inspired by the use of the original Gazza Ladra in Clockwork Orange.  There are also a few tracks that didn't make it into the film or were for parts of the film that didn't make it into the final cut.  Overall, I prefer her adaptations to her originals, but that's a matter of my own love of adaptations, not a commentary about the quality of her originals.

I would be remiss if I talked about Wendy Carlos without talking about her as a transgender icon.  This album was originally released on LP as Walter Carlos' Clockwork Orange, but Wendy transitioned around the same time(1972), a fairly prominent transgender figure for the time.  Wendy has had a hard fight to get the music world to respect her transition.  I am very glad that the CD release in the 1990's respected her transition and I have nothing but respect for her work, given that she also had to struggle against such odds.

Recommended Context for Listening: This along with some Isao Tomita could make an interesting party playlist.

What Playlists has this made it onto? This has made it onto my Cyberpunk playlist, for when I feel like walking around Chicago as postmodern dystopia

Who Should Buy This Album? Fans of early electronic music, fans of adaptations of classical music.

My New Project

I have, according to my iTunes column browser, 2065 albums.  This is a slightly misleading number.  I have 160 CDs worth of audiobooks, a large collection of randomly acquired cover songs that are counted as individual albums even though they only have one song, and an indeterminate number of random mixes from former and current friends and lovers.
This is a difficult amount of music to know well. To play it all in order would take two months(64.1 days, to quote iTunes), even skipping the audiobooks. I always say to myself that I want to get to know my music better, and so I'm embarking on this project.  And because I like to do so, I'm giving myself some rules.
1. With iTunes on shuffle, I will jump between 5 songs, not including any audiobook tracks or unidentified random tracks.
2. I will choose out of those 5 tracks one album to write about.
3. I will continue to do this until I have written about or declared null and void all albums in my daunting collection.

Some of these posts will be very specific to the album in question.  Some of them will be very general discussions of genre and musical characteristics.  Some of these will be intensely autobiographical.  But I will try and do this.

Wish me luck.