I’ve been meaning to get a modified CueCat for a while, and after I got my company profit-sharing check this year, I took the plunge. It arrived early last week, and when my holiday vacation started this weekend, I transformed into man possessed.
I use a music collection database software called, appropriately enough, Music Collector. I bought a license back in 2000, and back then, the program was pretty barebones. I just needed something to track artist, title, release year and label, and the integration with the formerly open CDDB (now Gracenote) was an added bonus. The features over the years piled on to incorporate more sources, and eventually, more recent entries in my database had much more content than earlier entries. At some point, I wanted flesh out those older entries.
I thought I was going to spread that task over a few months. I ended up eating the last four days on the project. All thanks to that damn CueCat.
I have a pair of Dan Fogelberg singles. They aren’t mine. They’re my brother’s.
When I moved to Austin in 1997, I took all the 7-inch singles in the house with me. Most of them were mine anyway, but a smattering were divided unevenly between my siblings. We collected them when we were kids, but then CDs eventually replaced vinyl. So no one was using the old turntable anymore. (It was busted anyway.)
Among those singles were two big Dan Fogelberg hits — "Leader of the Band" and "Same Old Lang Syne". I thought they were all right when I was a kid, but by the time I reached high school, they struck me as overly sentimental and way, way too commercial. (Burgeoning post-punk kid and all that.)
And yet, the news of Fogelberg’s passing caught me off-guard. I hadn’t thought about Fogelberg in years — maybe the last time was when I was sifting through those 7-inch singles — so to hear that news instantly transported me to that time and place when I couldn’t avoid his music. Namely, in my brother’s car with his mixed tape of slow songs on repeat. The driver always determined the playlist. You can imagine how taxing my turn behind the wheel must have been.
It’s not the same reaction as the news of Karlheinz Stockhausen’s death. Honestly, I’ve heard of Stockhausen but not from him. And for some reason, I keep getting him confused with Edgard Varèse. I don’t have a time or a place I can associate with Stockhausen’s music, although his name conjures up the feeling of exam time during college.
Tastewise, I’ll probably seek out Stockhausen’s music and leave the Fogelberg singles in storage. Stockhausen was, to me, this nebulous idea of a person, and my reaction to his passing is essentially intellectual. Fogelberg, on the other hand, was an ubiquitous presence in my youth, and his death makes that youth feel much more distant.
I spotted something a bit interesting when browsing my news feeds today. Mukai Shuutoku is working with a new singer named Leo Imai on his forthcoming single, "Metro", so says Bounce.com. The single arrives in stores on Jan. 30, 2008.
Imai’s major label debut, Fix Neon, follows on Feb. 27, 2008. Curious, I visited his web site and listened to a few of the audio samples. Not bad. He doesn’t have the nasal vocals of many Japanese male singers, and his sound is reminiscent of the more commercial late ’80s college rock. Imai’s music has been described as the bastard love child of Black Sabbath and Kylie Minogue, according to Bounce.
Given Mukai’s penchant for Led Zeppelin and new wave as of late — still haven’t gotten the new ZAZEN BOYS single yet — I’m curious to hear how "Metro" turns out.
Holy crap! And I was thinking about skipping SXSW next year. I’m just really broke these days, and last year’s wristband was $160+. This morning, I thought to myself, "It would take an appearance by Tokyo Jihen to get me to Japan Nite this year." And now this announcement? If I wanted to catch this interview, I’d have to drop a fucking $500+ on a badge. Oh the string of expletives that should go here right about now.
No, I am not a fan of Duran Duran’s latest album, and the notion that a more organic work was shelved on the count of Andy Taylor’s departure makes me curious. But in a Pitchfork interview with bassist John Taylor, he mentions how he’s been listening to a lot of 20th Century classical music. Why? He’s reading The Rest Is Noise by Alex Ross.
OK. John Taylor has definitely scored Brownie points in my book.
At times, it seems as though [Glass] had launched Microsoft Arpeggio on a computer and gone off to have tea with, say, Richard Gere.
I would have thought Glass would use iArpeggio on a Mac, but then I realized I was mixing it up with iPulse, which I imagine Steve Reich uses. The rest of us could probably use the free versions: OpenArp and ChugChug.
It seems to happen every year — when I go to the Waterloo Records storewide sale, I can’t figure out what I want to get. So I end up wandering the aisles hoping something will grab me and leaving when nothing has. After the sale is over, I’ll remember all the things I wanted to get.
So I’m making my shopping list now. And I’m going to remember to print it out and carry it with me come Thursday night.
[UPDATE, 11/05/07 08:48] The sale is done, and I came away with most of what I was looking for. This list has been updated accordingly. Additional comments in italics.
Anytime I go to the Austin Record Convention, I end up buying something — even if I’m going just to see what’s there. Last year, I had a strange hankering to find Turn Back the Clock by Johnny Hates Jazz. Yeah, I can’t explain it either.
I have yet to listen to Nena’s second US album, which I bought on vinyl about three years back. Yes, Nena of 99 Luftballons fame. That was purely an impulse purchase.
The record convention usually happens twice a year, but the spring show was canceled because the Crockett Events Center was under going renovations. (Not sure, really, what was renovated.) I usually try to limit my attendance to one per year anyway. This time, I actually made a mental list of things I wanted to find:
I’m in the middle of reading The Rest is Noise by Alex Ross. Subtitled "Listening to the Twentieth Century", the book threads together the disparate creative movements of classical music in the last century and puts them in a political and socio-economic context. That description sounds academic, but Ross manages to make the story feel incredibly human.
It’s all too easy to abstract Igor Stravinsky, Béla Bartók, Steve Reich and Arnold Schoenberg as vessels from which great works pour forth. The last time I really thought about the lives of these composers was when I was trying to remember enough for the midterm and final exams in my music history class some 15 years ago.
The Rest is Noise has been mentioned a lot on a number of arts-themed websites I monitor. Heck, I probably wouldn’t have known about the book otherwise. (Ross also maintains a weblog of the same name.) And as I’m reading it, I think, "Wow, I really ought to let Musicwhore.org readers in on this."
Canadian musicians have some good incentives to target Japan as a growth market, indicates the Globe and Mail. But this paragraph in the article sounds like a real trainwreck (emphasis mine):
[Avril] Lavigne has made a big effort to reach her Japanese audience. In addition to several tours of Japan, she used a manga novel and several anime shorts to promote her latest album, primarily to appeal to Japanese fans. Japanese was among eight languages that she used to sing the chorus of alternative recordings of her Girlfriend hit single.