Every few years, there’s some big world music hit that manages to make a blip with non-world music listeners. Usually, Ry Cooder is involved, and invetiably, it gets released on Nonesuch.
In the late ’90s, it was the Buena Vista Social Club. In the late ’80s, it was Le Mystère de Voix Bulgares.
Do a Google News search on music service, and you’ll see a bunch of stories about unlikely companies starting up music services to compete with iTunes.
(Because I know I immediately think of music when I hear the name Samsung.)
But Billboard.biz posted a story about a new music service launched by NPR. The story itself requires a subscription, but a press release is available.
Now there’s a brand that can be leveraged into a music service. I gave up on radio decades ago, but when I’m forced to tune into the airwaves — usually when I’m driving a really shitty rental car — it goes straight to public radio. I’m not sure whether I’d actually patronize an NPR music service, but if something had to tear me away from eMusic, that could be it.
Vola & the Oriental Machine is set to release a single, "Hane no Hikari", on Oct. 25, so says Bounce.com.
Kayo from Polysics makes a guest appearance on the track, which Bounce describes as "smelling good" (well, that’s what the kanji translator tells me.) The three-track single also includes "Kanu Neko", which has a bizarre but pleasing middle verse that is reportedly unforgettable.
The single continues to employ the new wave sound of the band’s debut mini-album, Waiting for My Food.
I don’t want to dub Nick Lachey’s second solo album, What’s Left of Me, with the distinction of being so bad, it’s good.
Because it is bad. In so many innumerable ways.
I know I’ve been entertained by the album, but to call it "good" because of its badness? That’s a line I can’t cross.
But the badness of What’s Left of Me is an amazing feat, something at the very least to be appreciated.
ZTT Records recently released a boxed set of early Art of Noise rare tracks titled And What Have You Done with My Body, God?
I was only recently acquainted with the charms of the band’s first full-length album, (Who’s Afraid Of …?) The Art of Noise!, but I’ve been familiar with its work since I was in the eighth grade. That was 1986, and "Legs" was a radio hit in America.
I bought In Visible Silence and proceeded the play that record to death, much to the annoyance of my siblings.
No, this isn’t a review of the Quruli best collection. Tower Records files for bankruptcy.
The news story gets into the details of this particularly filing, which follows another filing back in 2004. The usual reasons are mentioned — competition from downloading and low-balling by big-box retailers.
Perhaps even more disheartening is the fact Tower is selling its three Honolulu stores. In the same way kids in small towns depended on Wal-Mart for their music retail, Tower was the only place I could get my hands on the (relatively) weird stuff I listened to in my youth. I pretty much grew up in the Honolulu stores.
I was late to the first-run of Duran Duran’s global success. I think it was late 1983 when I jumped in, by which time, the momentum of their career was starting to show signs of slowing down.
By 1985, the skids hit, and by 1986, Janet Jackson and Madonna ruled the MTV roost. In 1987, I was starting to branch into the college rock of the day (even though I was still in high school) and eventually moved onto classical and avant-garde. But I remained a Duran Duran fan even after their star faded.
I caught Eluvium at SXSW 2005 when I showed up early for mono’s set at the Temporary Residence showcase.
Sole member Matt Cooper alternately performed on electric guitar and piano. Although the long, fuzzy pieces he created with his pedal effects screamed "post-rock", it was his piano pieces that caught my attention.
They aren’t anything complex or technically challenging, and they’re really only a few steps above Enya in terms of harmonic adventurousness.
But I still like listening to them anyway.
Dylan Rice’s 2004 debut Wandering Eyes is one of the best albums I’ve run across this year, but I think I’m saying that partly (mostly?) because I think Rice is hot.
And he’s gay, so I have a better chance at a groupie fantasy than I would with, say, Roger Taylor of Duran Duran, ca. 1983.
Now that I think about it, I haven’t given much thought to the power of sexual attraction on good musicianship. Part of my Duran Duran fandom was borne of the fact I was becoming aware of my sexual orientation around the same time I was discovering the draw of music.
Back when I worked at a record store, the news of an artist’s death made my coworkers and me speculate on how much a spike we’d get in selling that artist’s CDs.
György Ligeti passed away on June 12, 2006, and I contributed to that spike a few days afterward. I asked the classical expert at the store where I worked for some recommendations, and I ended up with a Sony disc of string quartets and duets and a disc of piano etudes.
With 20th Century classical music, it’s far too easy for living composers to wank in the guise of dissonance. I listened to a lot of modern classical music back in college, and as high-minded as that art world can be, it’s no more immune to mediocrity than rock music.
Ligeti is the real thing.