 |
Saturday, December 11, 2004 |
1976
Dave Brubeck Quartet
25th Anniversary Reunion
.... 
Dave Brubeck Quartet
25th Anniversary Reunion
A&M Records, 1976
So, you may ask who is Dave Brubeck and why is he in my record collection? I suppose the answer has to go with being a drummer. Y'see, after awhile, you get kind of tired playing the straight 4 beats and you yearn for some challenges. My teacher at the time sensed my restlessness and played "Take Five" for me --- hearing its cymbal beat - da-da-dada da-dada, I was hooked. It took me hours and hours of practice just to get my hands around the concept of 5/4.
*soapbox mode on* As an aside, I remember years later learning how to program and having the same frustrations trying to understand such concepts as structures and pointers -- I recalled my drum training, and 5/4 jazz, burrowed my head down in my programming and had a very similar breakthrough. Parents, never let them take the music instruction and arts program away from the schools - it really does matter later in life even if your kid isn't talented enough to become an artist or musician. *off soapbox*
I zoomed through Brubeck's collection, aping Morello, my new hero, at every turn - I taped most of his songs from the local library and having similar euphonious merriment in oddly-metered time. Some other favorites - "Blue Rondo Ala Turk" was in 9/8 but alternated its grouping from 1-2-3-4 1-2-3 to 1-2-3 1-2-3 1-2-3. "Three to Get Ready and Four to Go" featured here was a waltz that switched into a jazz 4/4. Oh there were plenty more but those three were my on little cassette enxt to my set for the next year or so.
"Take Five" was released in 1959 and propelled Brubeck to national recognition. He appeared on the cover of Time magazine and got a whole lot of attention to the cool jazz movement. Everyone was becoming a hipster and this was on all the cool stereoes. Alot of jazzers disdained what he was doing - either they hated modern jazz or they were modern jazzers who thought Brubeck too commercial and were jealous that he had made such a success with off-beat songs. Ironic, that the song "Take Five" was actually written by Paul Desmond his sax player, though, huh? I wondered if this engendered any bad feelings -- from all accounts Desmond was good-natured about it. And I guess it WAS the Dave Brubeck Quartet and his piano playing on that cut after all.
In 1976, his quartet got back together for a series of shows across the US - this album captured pieces from two of those shows in the Midwest - I bought it as soon as it was released in 1977 hoping to find some new secrets. Joe Morello, Brubeck's drummer, was at this point legally blind but his drumming was tighter and much more intricate than in the 50s. Eugene Wright, his African American bassist (an anomaly for 1959) and Paul Desmond had mellowed somewhat but they bring a relaxed seasoned style and tons of humor (so does Morello for that matter).
You can hear that playful nature in "Three to Get Ready" (below) and in a faster "Take Five" (too large for me to play for you here). Wright's 3-movement "African Times Suite" while nice to include drags things down a bit as does Brubeck's ponderous "Salute to Stephen Foster". I would have instead enjoyed a new version of "Blue Rondo" or "It's a Raggy Waltz". The ve [mp3blogs]
4:36:07 PM 
|
|
Mountains
Olympics.
|
It is not often that we get a good view of the Olympic mountains. It takes a
special light direction and a lack of clouds and fog to expose them. When this
happen the view is magnificent. There is no way pictures can portrait this
accurately. Or at least not the kind of pictures I take.
It is still a bit dark and wet this morning but it looks like the mountains in
the distance are radiating.
In hour or so, because of the change of light and some clouds, they will
disappear from the view. I never cared much about a view, but waking up with
this in the morning is rather special.
|
[All Things Distributed]
4:32:20 PM
|
|
E.O.G. Pop
Technorati Schmechnorati. In the past, I've relied pretty heavily on Technorati's indexing service to give me some idea of how many referrerals I'm receiving from other weblogs and to show me the chain of discovery associated with a particular link I'm planning to post.
However, their service has become increasingly unreliable over the past couple of months, and I stopped receiving pings from them altogether about 8 weeks ago. I sent off an e-mail to their "support" last month explaining the problem and the steps I've taken to attempt to verify that it's not due to a pilot error on my side, but have received nothing back other than an autoreply. I'm not impressed.
So the upshot is that I'd like to find a similar indexing service and give Technorati the boot. I want one with a decent search feature, and am considering blogsnow. I'd be happy to entertain any other suggestions.
In other webloggy news, I had my heaviest traffic week ever here thanks to a couple of nice referrals from Boing Boing and Linkfilter. Thanks go out to my fellow ukulele-ist, Mark Frauenfelder for his consistent support of little D-tier, pop-cult bloggers like Yours Truly.
Finally, I will upgrade to MoveableType 3.121 sometime today, so you may experience some technical difficulties viewing this site if all doesn't go precisely as planned. [Eye of the Goof]
9:09:03 AM
|
|
I Like the Slow Ones
Keeping Warm. Tommy James and the Shondells - "Crimson and Clover" You've probably heard it before, but it's worth another listen. Tommy James and the Shondells were mostly a schlocky bubblegum-pop band, but their one foray into the then popular world of psych proved most fruitful. Just as James and his Shondells had brought the mindlessness of pop to new levels with the meaningless "Mony Mony," in "Crimson and Clover" they leave no crevice or nook of song untouched by the wavy, multicoloured hand of psych. The incredible drama achieved by the major chord progression, click and jangle percussion, backup "ah's" and the proto-emo avowal vocals, makes this the perfect psych-pop track for the dance you're planning (save a spot on your dance card for me, please. I like the slow ones). As the song unfolds, each instrument becomes increasingly drenched by tremolo, until it becomes almost unbearably shaky (just give us one whole signal). Then, just when we think it's too much, that it can't get any heavier, when all the tremolo solos have played out over their tremolo backgrounds, at 4:22 the tremolo cuts out, leaving us a crisp two-note guitar riff and then (oh, there it is) deeply tremolo affected vocals, repeating what is perhaps one of the most inane refrains in the history of song: "Crimson and clover, over and over." The song builds itself back up around James, the two notes repeat faster and faster, a wave of tom drums propel forward. Even the notoriously picky Hubert Humphrey endorsed this song. And perhaps if he had chosen it as his 1968 presidential campaign running-mate instead of that dreadful bore, Edmund Muskie, Nixon would never have been President and we would be living in a very different world right now. A world with an America that used to have "Crimson and Clover" as its Vice President. A better world. *** Mirah - "Murphy Bed" Alternating between deep warm tremolo ascending arpeggios and shimmering treble strums, Mirah monologues to her boyfriend or girlfriend (let's call him/her The Corporal) about the merits of an open-relationship. She hopes that The Corporal's getting some action while The Corporal's out on the road. She wonders whether or not she should tell The Corporal about what she's been up to. She explains that when The Corporal comes home, The Corporal can tie her to the bed ("let's do all the things you said"). Being a man of the cloth, all this means to me is sin. However, I fully embrace this song on the basis of its brief and dense wall-of-noise crackling coda.... [mp3blogs]
9:05:18 AM
|
|
© Copyright 2009 Gary Santoro.
|
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
M E D I A B U R N
 
<
#
phoenix bloggers
?
>
Search This Website
Subscribe to the Mediaburn news feed if you have a Radio Userland Weblog
RSS Blog Syndication
|
 |
 |
 |
 |
|
How to build a Guitar. A do-it-yourself 
