Art is the music we make from the bewildered cry of being alive. ~Maria Popova
15 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
in General Posts Tags: beatles, mono, stereo
If you think the only difference between the mono and stereo recordings of the Beatles’ music is in the number of channels, these videos will be an ear-opener. Even if you’ve heard these songs hundreds of times (as many of us have) you may never have noticed that such marked differences exist between mono and stereo versions–differences in mixing, use of effects and even vocal performances.
Which do you consider to be the definitive versions?
13 Oct 2014 Leave a comment
in General Posts Tags: birdhouse in your soul, they might be giants
(via Slate)
By Philip Sandifer and S. Alexander Reed
This essay is adapted from They Might Be Giants’ Flood, published as part of the 33 1/3 series and out now from Bloomsbury.
They Might Be Giants’ 1990 song “Birdhouse in Your Soul” hardly sounds like a chart-topper—which makes sense, given that it only ever reached No. 3. (On the Modern Rock chart, thank you very much.) But what makes a bona fide classic, Billboard stats aside, is a song’s ability to communicate across decades, reconciling our past and present selves with one another. (In the case of “Birdhouse,” those selves are awkward teenage geeks trying to navigate their own identity—and thirtysomethings who live in a world rather more respectful of geekiness than our high schools were.) This is exactly what “Birdhouse in Your Soul” does, though in a way that the band’s John Linnell and John Flansburgh couldn’t have imagined when they wrote it 25 years ago.
03 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in General Posts Tags: cloud player, digital music
(via The New Yorker)
by Alex Ross
Recently, while moving my CD collection to new shelving, I struggled with feelings of obsolescence and futility. Why bother with space-devouring, planet-harming plastic objects when so much music can be had at the touch of a trackpad—on Spotify, Pandora, Beats Music, and other streaming services that rain sonic data from the virtual entity known as the Cloud? What is the point of having amassed, say, the complete symphonies of the Estonian composer Eduard Tubin (1905-82) when all eleven of them pop up on Spotify, albeit in random order? (When I searched for “Tubin” on the service, I was offered two movements of his Fourth Symphony, with the others appearing far down a list.) The tide has turned against the collector of recordings, not to mention the collector of books: what was once known as building a library is now considered hoarding. One is expected to banish all clutter and consume culture in a gleaming, empty room…
03 Sep 2014 Leave a comment
in General Posts Tags: guardians of the galaxy
(via Rolling Stone)
by Kory Grow
When Guardians of the Galaxy director James Gunn began assembling the soundtrack for his Marvel superhero flick, he wanted familiar hits but not overplayed radio staples. In the movie, now officially the biggest film of the year, these songs would connect lead character Peter “Star-Lord” Quill – who was abducted by aliens just after his mother’s death in 1988 – to his old life and the era his mother grew up in.
“The tape is really the character of Quill’s mother,” Gunn tells Rolling Stone. “The Walkman and the compilation tape inside of it is the heart of the film.”
As he worked, the director compiled a playlist of tunes, most from the Seventies, that he thought the character would have liked. David Bowie, the Runaways and the Jackson 5 all make appearances, complemented by tracks from lesser known acts like the Raspberries (“Go All the Way”) and Blue Swede (“Hooked on a Feeling”). “I think most of the songs, although slight hits, never truly had their day in the sun,” Gunn says. “That time is now. I also think people are hungry for good, old-fashioned, well-crafted pop songs that exist outside of any sort of imposed hipness or irony.”
It turns out, he was onto something. A week after its release, Guardians of the Galaxy: Awesome Mix Vol. 1 topped the album charts, becoming the first soundtrack ever to do so without having a single original song…
29 Aug 2014 Leave a comment
in General Posts Tags: music nostalgia
(via Slate)
by Mark Joseph Stern
As I plod through my 20s, I’ve noticed a strange phenomenon: The music I loved as a teenager means more to me than ever—but with each passing year, the new songs on the radio sound like noisy nonsense. On an objective level, I know this makes no sense. I cannot seriously assert that Ludacris’ “Rollout” is artistically superior to Katy Perry’s “Roar,” yet I treasure every second of the former and reject the latter as yelping pablum. If I listen to the Top 10 hits of 2013, I get a headache. If I listen to the Top 10 hits of 2003, I get happy.
Why do the songs I heard when I was teenager sound sweeter than anything I listen to as an adult? I’m happy to report that my own failures of discernment as a music critic may not be entirely to blame…
Read more:
16 Aug 2014 2 Comments
in General Posts Tags: songs used for torture
(via Brainjet)
One method of CIA torture is to play the same song nonstop for days on end. You may expect that the songs they choose to play are particularly grating or unbearable, but shockingly, a lot of them are songs that have been wildly popular in America…
Every Moment Has A Song 