The Album Du Jour - A Review of the Reviews

Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.

- Winston Churchill

 

          So I spent a good long time today at work listening to Sarah Vaughan as I planned music for the upcoming season of Lent.  The music is good, and perhaps someday soon I'll have a review of it up here.  That day, however, is not today.  For those of you who have been faithfully keeping up with this project, either from its infancy or in the brief couple of months since, I appologize, but "The Album Du Jour" is going into modified service or hiatus mode.  Not sure which yet, but I've rather quickly come to the conclusion I can't keep up with this at this rate.  Financially, time management-wise, whichever.  I've learned and grown a lot from it so far musically, and don't plan on giving up on the whole thing entirely just yet.  However, within the past few months since the project was conceived a few things have changed in my life, all for the better, but this has just been forced a couple pegs lower in terms of my personal priorities.

          When I started this endeavor, I admitted that it would equate to about the same load as three music history/lit courses (one each in jazz, classical, and popular music,) and was excited that I would be able to set my own curriculum and agenda for them all.  I underestimated the enormity of the task at hand - in two months, I've done the equivalent of 20+ pages of writing for each of those three classes.  That's a semester right there.  At any rate, I think this is just the next natural step in that progression - setting my own course pace.  I still plan on reviewing albums, and most likely starting with purchases already made, but just at a more relaxed pace.  In retrospect, pushing through many of these in a day is unfair to the albums themselves.  By rushing through them, I haven't been giving myself time to properly digest the music.  The things I'm listening to and really latching on to are likewise getting pushed aside too rapidly to make room for tomorrow's listening assignment.  And too often, that's what it's coming down to - an assignment.  Something I have to get through just to keep moving forward.  I want to go back to enjoying new music - not considering it homework.

          So with that in mind, I hope to continue this project soon, but for now, I need to step back and smell the roses.  Reprioritize a bit, and just listen to the music.  I'm sorry if this comes as a disapointment, but I need to set this down for now.  More will be coming eventually though.  I promise.

 

Shawn

J. S. Bach: The English Suites - What's particularly English about them?

3/2/11 – J. S. Bach: The English Suites

It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.

– J. S. Bach

            I think there is at least one composer or artist I associate with each piano teacher, and a different aspect of performance I gained from each of them along the way.  (Well, with the exception of the crappy grad student I got stuck with for my one semester of piano secondary in college; that’s another story.)  Bach and a certain gospel flair I attribute to Andrew Whitchger, who I studied with briefly and sporadically after the Betty van Camp era.  Past the scope and depth of the lesson series of Bastien I began learning under, Andrew put me on a solid diet of Bach’s two and three voice inventions.  As in, I was constantly working on at least one, without fail.  However it wasn’t until I started with Mike Springer that I was introduced to Bach’s other great collection of solo keyboard works – the French and English Suites.  Even then, it wasn’t until I saw a video on how to effectively and efficiently practice by Chick Corea using Bach’s “Goldberg Variations” that I really got into them.  By the way, any of you piano teachers should check out Chick’s video… if I could find it, I’d put a link up.  All I ran across is this snipet: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=na8W-rIUzQw .

Much like the Cello Suites from a few weeks ago, I feel somewhat at a loss not being familiar with the dance forms associated with the various movements of the suites presented here.  Also the lack of dynamic capabilities of the harpsichord limit the expressiveness any performer can breathe into the pieces.  That being said, the crystalline, fragile tone of the harpsichord is a beautiful medium for baroque counterpoint.  The clarity of lines is impeccable, despite the overly reverberant space in which this particular performance seems to have been recorded.  The artist’s clean and precise phrasing no doubt contributes greatly to the directness of the individual lines.

Tomorrow – The Very Best of Sarah Vaughan

Next week – Brahms: String Quartet No. 3

Highway 61 Revisited - An Epiphany... and not the one you probably think it is

3/1/11 – Highway 61 Revisited (Bob Dylan)

Just because you like my stuff doesn't mean I owe you anything.

– Bob Dylan

            I’m still trying to figure out what I think of Bob Dylan.  I’ve never been a huge fan of his, but ever since I kept running across his stuff on the infamous Rolling Stone Magazine list I’m pulling most of the mainstream stuff off, I question whether I dislike Bob Dylan or just the caricature his portrayal has become since the heyday of his popularity.  This CD’s been in the car for a few days now and I’m coming to the conclusion that I may have been right in the first place.  I don’t particularly like Dylan.  I mean, I don’t hate it, but it just doesn’t appeal to me.

The theorist can try to rationalize it, the writer can get into the text, and the composer can take apart the layers musically, but none of them make a difference sometimes.  I like what I like, and I don’t like what I don’t like.  I know this will be an unpopular statement with some of the people reading this, but I’m also coming to peace with the fact that I really don’t have to like everything.  Be it Coltrane, Rolling Stones, Wagner, early Beatles, Bruce Springsteen, or Britney Spears (whose name probably doesn’t even belong in the company of the others,) they just aren’t my tastes.  And I don’t have to keep justifying it.  I’d like to for my own sake, but if I can’t, I can live with that now too.

I’m not quite ready to write off blues rock or folk rock categorically yet, but I’m starting to lean that way.  This seems like an extension on what I wrote on the Stones’ Exile On Main Street, but musically, there’s nothing much here.  Not that I need commercialized, mainstream manufactured hits, but there’s nothing wrong with a catchy guitar hook either.  Three-chord rock doesn’t grab me.  Or one chord blues, like “It Takes a Lot to Laugh, It Takes a Train to Cry.”  Not that I dislike blues either, but someone like Stevie Ray Vaughn or B. B. King I feel take the basic blues structure and use it as a vehicle for great playing, both technically and emotionally.  I don’t get the same virtuosic connection from Dylan.

Part of me wants to appreciate this album for what it was when it was, but I can’t.  I wasn’t there in ’65.  Dylan is as much history to me as Stravinsky, and part of me objectifies him as such.  I appreciate Stravinsky’s contributions to music as a whole and I like his music.  I could take or leave Dylan.  More likely leave him.  On that note, I’m contemplating the first round of edits to my year-long schedule.  Should I go through and preemptively cut albums I think I’ll be predisposed to dislike?  (At this point, mostly Dylan and the Stones, because there’s a lot of them on the list.)  Should I push through them because they’re supposedly influential?  Or move them aside in favor of some of the many great albums I can’t fit into a single year?  Let me know what you think.  Right now, I’m pretty happy with the list until late April, but Blood on the Tracks is currently scheduled for then…

Tomorrow – J. S. Bach: English Suites

Next week –

Abbey Road

(The Beatles)