Sic Semper Tyrannis

Whatcha' Listenin' To? (Super-Size Version)

I’ve got a whole bunch of new-to-me music I’ve been listening to over the last couple of weeks. God bless the library! Here’s what’s been in my ears as of late:

Quintets for Clarinet and strings by Brahms and Weber, performed by Richard Stoltzman and the Tokyo string Quartet

I used to not like the sound of the clarinet. I used to think that it was a very plain, uninteresting timbre. Maybe it was due to my high school band days, when everyone seemingly played the “licorice stick.” But time has a way of eroding things, even our petrified beliefs and preferences, n’est pas? The sound of the classical clarinet, played by a skilled performer, can now present a sublime experience for me, thanks largely to how Mozart composed for it.

The liner notes for this album are right on: these two composers, Brahms and Weber, could not have written for this instrumentation of strings and clarinet more differently. In the Brahms piece, the clarinet melds with the other instruments to create a unique ensemble sound. The Weber piece is more like a technical show-stopper for the clarinet player, with the strings acting as accompaniment. To me, it sounded like the difference between wanting to communicate immense oceans of emotion welling up within vs. just wanting to create something pleasant and engaging to listen to. Music is great in that it can fulfill both purposes.

Alto Rhapsody, “Song of the Fates,” “Song of Lamentation,” and “Song of Destiny” by Brahms

As is probably obvious, I’m very methodical in how I approach new musical experiences. I’m very slowly working my way through all of the Brahms that is available through the library. Brahms is one of the many holes in my musical education, (as is just about everything I’m listening to these days.) None of the music on this disc really stood out to me. However, the text to a couple of the pieces was by Goethe, (translated), and I really liked it. I get the feeling that if you were a composer in the German Romantic era, the government issued you a copy of Goethe and you were obligated to set at least one of his poems to music. (Sweet T, or other German scholars out there, have you read much Goethe?) Get a load of the text to the Alto Rhapsody, describing a hermit::

But off apart there, who is that?
His path gets lost in the brush;
behind him the branches
close again,
the grass stands straight again,
the solitude swallows him up.

Ah, who can heal the pain
of one to whom balsam became poison?
Who has drunk misanthropy
from the fullness of love?
First despised, now despising,
he secretly wastes
his own worth
in unsatisfying egoism.

If there is in your Psalter,
Father of Love, a single tone
perceptible to his ear,
then revive his heart!
Open his cloud-covered sight
onto the thousand fountains
beside the thirsting soul
in the desert.

- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749-1832)

The Velvet Underground and Nico by The Velvet Underground

Then there’s this album which is pretty far removed from Brahms and Romanticism and clarinets. This is another one of those albums often mentioned in “Best Of all Time”-type lists and it’s on the Rolling Stone list. (If you’ve never heard it, you might know it by it’s banana on the cover.)

I did not go into this album expecting much, as their self-titled third album left me scratching my head, wondering what all the fuss was about. And I gotta say, I still wonder what all the fuss is/was about with this band, being hailed as THE artistic innovators of their time blah, blah, blah. But there are some catchy moments on here- “Waiting for My Man,” “Femme Fatale,” (which I first heard covered by REM on their Dead Letter Office), and “All Tomorrow’s Parties.” And I can think of few albums that start with a better dream-like vibe than that created by the song “Sunday Morning.” I found the song “Heroin” to be a one-trick pony: the slow-fast movement apparently supposed to be mimicking the rush of drugs in the veins.

But when I read all of the hype about this and other bands, I can’t help but expect something other than merely some “catchy” songs and a “dream-like” beginning. Those two specifics are really me just trying to be positive. For as much hype as surrounds The Velvet Underground, you would think that your mind instantly doubles in size when you hear this album and life is never the same from that point on. Well, unfortunately, that’s not the case, as it has been for most of my Rolling Stone experiences thus far. And that actually makes me kind of sad. Is it all really just 100% subjective? Is there no such thing as an “Objective Classic,” as these lists would have us believe?

From what I can gather, this band just happened to be coming up in the right scene at the right time.

But Andy Warhol’s seal of approval aside, I’ll take the Mothers of Invention’s Freak Out! or Pink Floyd’s The Piper at the Gates of Dawn, (previous mention of which drives a lot of traffic to this site for some reason), both released within the same year as this album, as much more countercultural, revolutionary albums in regards to their overall sound.

Hotel California by The Eagles

I wanted to hate this album. Yeah, it’s on the Rolling Stone list, but I always dismissed The Eagles’ populist music as fodder for the soft-rock Delilah-listening set. Which reveals me to be an elitist music snob. But I gotta say I can see why it’s so beloved. I don’t think it’s important music like, say, Brahms or the Velvet Underground are “important” for being all artistic and what not.

But this album is pretty much chock-full of textbook pop songcraft, the discipline of a handful of chords and a singable melody and some words, by which the end result is something pleasant to listen to. But the simplicity of this music is deceptive. This record was produced with the full height of what was possible in the studio at the time. There is an overall sheen that sounds like “LA” to me--layers of guitars, both acoustic and electric. Even string arrangements! It’s hard to really listen to the song “Hotel California” anymore just because of it’s omnipresence on the radio back in my high school days, but I have a new appreciation for the song “New Kid in Town.” This album has a lot going for it: variety, (ballads, straight-ahead rock, different singers and soloists), huge background vocal layers, Don Henley’s voice…”Victim of Love” is the weak song of the set sounding like the verse of one song that was in the works grafted onto a totally separate chorus, but I gotta say that overall, I think I “get” what they were attempting to do with this album.

Achtung Baby by U2

It’s yet another “classic.” I know a lot of people who regard this band as saviors of rock n’ roll, the band that made sliced bread irrelevant. I’m not one of those folks. I like a couple of their albums. I think The Joshua Tree and War are fantastic. But my devotion to them stops there.

This album took me back to my sophomore year in high school, when we would rush to Wendy’s for lunch in our allotted 45 minutes in Keith Cato’s car, which didn’t have a functioning stereo, but he kept a boombox in the back seat. And I remember this disc being on heavy rotation. The song I absolutely love from this collection is “Who’s Gonna Ride Your wild Horses.” You’re not likely to hear a more triumphant chorus.

One of these days I should write about the song “Tryin’ to Throw Your Arms Around the World,” and how it’s strikingly similar to REM’s “Undertow,” off their New Adventures in Hi-Fi album, from the bass groove up to the vocal phrasing. Anyway, this album was a collection of songs from an era when I stopped listening to popular music. I still don’t think I missed much in those years.

That’s more than enough for now. I’ve got one more album I want to write about, but it’s going to take some time…Until then, my friends.

posted by Mike @ 6:08 PM