Favorite year of music: 1987 (Part the second)
Here is part two of why I consider 1987 an influential year in music, for me personally at least. (Part one, in case you missed it …)
Category: Opinions and Rants
Favorite year of music: 1987 (Part the first)
A few weeks back, a friend of mine posted a bit of trivia regarding a chart-topping song from 20 years ago. Ah, yes — 1987. I turned 16, the perfect age for music to leave an indelible impression on a young mind. I posted a reply listing a number of albums released that year. I figure I may as well expand on that list. Not surprisingly, all these titles are in my music collection.
I’m splitting this entry into multiple parts. I wrote it all in one sitting, but the scroll is a bit long.
Favorite edition 2007: Quarter first
I’m usually surprised if the first quarter of a year yields something which really gets my attention. Q1 of 2007 is not surprising.
CD sales are down 20 percent since the start of the year, and a soft release schedule has been cited as a reason for the slip. Norah Jones was probably the biggest release event in the first quarter, but I listened to her album once and nearly slipped into a coma. How the hell is this woman such a zietgiest?
I’m going to take a stab at listing some favorite first quarter releases, but I can already tell that by third quarter, many of these titles will fall off. If they don’t, this year is really going to suck.
Damn, I still miss ICE magazine
I was at Fry’s Electronics last week, getting a wireless access point and a wireless card for my desktop, when I passed by the CD section of the store. I saw the original cast recording of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street stashed in the new release portion of the very messy CD shelves.
Huh? Why would a 1979 cast recording be filed as a new release? Unless …
I stopped and looked at the cover. It was the remastered versions promised two years ago. Broadway Masterworks, the cast recording division of Sony BMG, was supposed to release remastered versions of Sweeney Todd, Into the Woods, Sunday in the Park with George and Merrily We Roll Along to coincide with Stephen Sondheim’s 75th birthday back in 2005.
The release dates kept getting pushed back further and further, until finally they dropped from the schedule entirely. With news of Sony making staff cuts in its Masterworks division, I pretty much thought the project was shelved completely.
I don’t know if ICE magazine would have been on the ball to notify when those release went back on the schedule, but I sure heard no peep of it from Pause & Play. I need a better a new release resource. And don’t point me to the Billboard new release section — that site is a clusterfuck of Flash.
As for the discs themselves, the sound is incredibly crisp, but the new liner notes are terribly written. The libretti are also missing from the packaging, so if you have an original CD pressing of these cast recordings, keep them. They’re supposed to be available online at the Broadway Masterworks web site, but I haven’t found them.
iTunes Japan music cards — worth the effort?
My friend Ryan pointed me to an article about getting iTunes Japan music cards from online retailer jbox. I’d be tempted if only I weren’t so turned off by iTunes itself.
It’s the digital rights management — iTunes-purchased music can be played only on iTunes, and I’m not fond of the iTunes interface. Winamp has spoiled me rotten by taking so little real estate on the view port of my monitor that iTunes just feels bulky by comparison. Winamp also takes up less memory. The fact iTunes files can’t play on Winamp — not without some intervening conversion — is an inconvenience I’m not willing to accommodate.
When JHymn stopped working, that pretty much killed my patronage to iTunes. Now when I fire up the application, it’s to listen to the 30-second previews.
Favorite edition 2006 final
I don’t really see anything else coming down the pipe, so I may as well call it now.
I usually draft my end-of-year list in November anyway, and if I encounter something in December, it goes toward the following year.
There isn’t much deviation from last quarter’s forecast of the year-end favorites, and honestly, this list only really goes up to nine in terms of 2006 releases. That doesn’t mean I didn’t encounter a lot of great music in the past year.
Damn, I miss ICE magazine
I experienced something weird last night — I went to the record store and discovered a band I’ve been interested in released a new album without my knowing it.
I haven’t felt that kind of surprise in a long time — perhaps more than a decade.
The album in question was Oye by Aterciopelados, and it’s the band’s first new album in six years.
If ICE magazine were still around, I probably would have been informed weeks in advance. Damn, I miss ICE.
Is that where he got it?
Just to demonstrate the holes in my knowledge of the classical repertoire …
I didn’t realize Alfred Schnittke pretty much refashioned Ludwig Van Beethoven’s Grosse Fuge for his String Quartet No. 3.
As such, I can’t listen to the Grosse Fuge without my ears filling in all the clustered notes Schnittke "added". Even as a melody in its original form, it’s pretty dissonant.
An open letter to all musicians with MySpace pages
To all musicians with a MySpace page:
Please learn how to disable auto-play when you embed video and audio on the same page.
OutKast, I’m looking at you. I attempted to stream your latest album but that damn embedded video clip started up at the same time as the MySpace player, and I was assaulted by a cacophony.
You lost an album sale that day. (Permanently after a trusted source told me Idlewild wasn’t all that great.)
Mindy Smith, I’m looking at you as well. You did not offend me as harshly as OutKast, but you must disable that embedded video on your page lest people be confused when they hear two songs at one time.
Everyone else, take heed — you too will lose the credibility of listeners if your web handler isn’t smart enough to take appropriate measures to avoid such a cacophony. Do you not want to suck? I thought not.
Looking after your best interests,
G.
Pro-choice in the digital music realm
Just because you own an iPod doesn’t mean you shop at iTunes, so the Beeb tells me. According to Jupiter Media, only an average of 20 tracks found on an iPod were bought from the iTunes music store. It makes me wonder about the poor sap who has only 20 music files on his iPod.
The whole debate about legal vs. illegal music downloading has frustrated me on all sides. On the one hand, I can’t stand the demonization by the record industry of listeners who use the tools at their disposal to become better consumers. Why are sales down so much? Because the Evil Sharing Networks let people be choosy about how they blow their cash. I mean c’mon — we’re not living in the Clintonian boom time now, are we?