What Kind of Music Makes You?

There's a pivotal scene in Woody Allen's Manhattan where he reels off the things he couldn't live without into a tape recorder. Although you might argue with some of them, it's difficult to defend anyone who says they could live without the voice of Frank Sinatra. 

I really only have two loves, reading and music. I tried to make a quick list. I realise how useless these lists are (and the longer, the more useless, I have found). Perhaps, however, such a list might help me find a core interest.

Musicians and composers Irving Berlin Johnny Mercer George Gershwin (especially Porgy & Bess) Bessie Smith Pink Floyd (with and without Syd Barrett, but not without Roger Waters) The Beatles Joe Meek Tom Waits Bob Dylan (any period) Louis Armstrong Music hall legends (Sam Mayo, Ronald Frankau, Talbot O'Farrell) Tchaikovsky Aaron Copland Mabel Mercer Noel Coward Stephen Sondheim	Poets Philip Larkin John Keats Wallace Stevens Ted Hughes Sylvia Plath Carol Ann Duffy W.H. Auden
Novelists Martin Amis Armistead Maupin Margaret Atwood Ian McEwan Milan Kundera Saul Bellow John Updike Henry Green Flann O'Brien Albert Camus	Assorted (Critics, humorists, non-fiction writers, short story writers) V.S. Pritchett Richard Rorty St. Augustine S.J. Perelman Martin Heidegger Whitney Balliett Thomas Nagel

If you are a regular reader of this site, has a similar list of interests brought you here? Are there things I should be getting into that my Amazon recommendations have missed?

Timbre! Unusual Instrumentation Playlist - Vol. I

Timbre, as Frank Zappa says in the Real Frank Zappa Book, is everything. But it’s also confusing. To a Westerner, the sitar eternally signifies the mysterious allure of the East, while – as Talvin Singh once pointed out – ‘in Bombay, an electric guitar is exotic’. Why is this?

ABOVE: A rare and dangerous example of the urethra flute.

This playlist argues that context, rather than the instrument itself, is the key. I hope to demonstrate this by putting fifteen instruments in an unexpected context.

It’s a playlist that plunges into the world of exotic tones with a banjo in one hand and an ocarina in the other, and comes out the other side with a sore head, yodelling.

It would be doing the merely obvious
to include such gimmicky instruments
as the trapezoidal harp (ABOVE).

I have deliberately steered clear of the more familiar examples of instruments being used in an unusual context. Much as I love the sitar on the Beatles’ Norwegian Wood, or Jethro Tull’s use of rock flute, and the whole of the Tubular Bells album, I’m looking here for juxtapositions of timbre that still have the power to surprise.

I hope you find yourself marvelling at the sound of a violin screeching across a dub track, or a sousaphone powering an rock tune, as much as I did.

Jungle Flute – Don Tracy & the Voodoo Family

Flute

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(Dance to the Music of) The Ocarina – Irving Berlin

Ocarina

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The Twisted Nerve – Bernard Hermann

Harp

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Jan Pahechan ho – Mohammed Rafi

Electric guitar

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Got a Match – Frank Gallop

Harpsichord

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I Touch Myself – Rolf Harris

Wobble board

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A Day In The Life – The Koto Ensemble

Koto

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K.G.’s Half Way Tree – Augustus Pablo & The Simplicity People

Violin

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Yaman (The Colonel’s Lady) – The Indo-British Ensemble

Sitar

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Donna Lee – Tom Slavicek

Banjo

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Prodigy Medley – The Banana Sessions

Sousaphone

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Take Five – Cayman Islands Steel Pan Jazz Trio

Steel pans

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Bag’s Groove – Leon Thomas

The yodel

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Oboe Mambo – Machito And His Afro-Cuban Orchestra

Oboe

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It’s A Long Way To The Top (If You Wanna Rock ’N’ Roll) – AC/DC

Bagpipes

Timbre! Unusual Instrumentation Podcast – Vol. I

 
If you can suggest any more for the next playlist, please leave a comment or contact me.

Oh, and have a happy new year!

An Evening With Alistair Cooke (1955)

The great broadcaster made only a few vinyl recordings, but they are all fabulous. I have featured one of his spoken word records previously: Talk About America.

This LP, however, features him at the piano, whistling, singing and telling stories. I realise that to the youngsters of today, that sounds almost insane. They let him do this? Why didn’t someone sedate him, send him to a nursing home or put him on a stairlift?

There is even a wonderful moment where he demonstrates, with impish glee, the results of an experiment in multi-tracking his own voice.

The album tells a coherent narrative, so is perhaps best listened right through, but once you’ve done that you’ll keep coming back to many of these tracks for more.

Four Last Songs (1959-1980) - II - Four More Last Songs

Another quartet of beautiful songs that were the last things their composers wrote.

Irving Berlin - Vol II: “Daddy Played With All His Fingers”

This post was inspired by two things: reading A Daughter’s Memoir by Berlin’s daughter, Mary Ellin Barrett, and seeing the following clip of Berlin playing the piano, the only one extant to my knowledge:

Irving Berlin on his 75th birthday, who, despite the caption on the Pathé website, is playing “Oh, How I Hate To Get Up In The Morning!”

Four Last Songs (1937-1958) - I

It took me half of a Sunday to do it, but after I had hatched the idea of a punning collection of last songs by various composers of popular music^*, I racked my brains (and the Internet) and came up with four decent last songs.

Irving Berlin, Vol. I - Young Irving Berlin & The Brits

The most astonishing thing about the songwriting career of Irving Berlin is its consistency. You listen to the songs on Annie Get Your Gun, and it seems unbelievable that Berlin wrote them towards the end of his career as a songwriter: there's no tapering off; every melody and lyric is right on the button.

But I was to meet with even greater surprise when I decided to delve into the early songs of Berlin - perhaps there I would encounter the kind of hokey, homely, faddish nonsense typical of the time. But to find moving, satirical, memorable songs at the start of his career that would mark the summit of any other composer's? Never did I expect that.

These interpretations are all by British singers, many having that Music Hall flavour that I think brings something to the undeniable Americanness of Berlin's melodies.

A Letter to the Times: 'Coon Songs' and Hooliganism Considered (I)

Apologies for those of you with short attention spans, but what follows is a rather long post, beginning with a little required reading:

The Voice of Irving Berlin

I don't think I can improve on the critic who described Berlin's voice as

which may well be damning with faint praise, but here his throaty delivery of ‘Follow the Crowd’ really sells the song. Fitting, because, despite his incredible fame, he spent most of his life plugging songs.

Follow the Crowd


In Philip Furia’s musical biography A Life in Song, a customer of the seedy Pelham Café (known to the initiated in those days as “Nigger Mike’s”) described Berlin’s voice – how seriously I do not know – thus:

“He was a vocal blockbuster. His voice sounded like gastritis in tempo.”

Another song he really does justice to (though – and how gay does this sound – he’s no Doris Day) is It’s a Lovely Day Today.

It’s a Lovely Day Today

I find that whenever that song pops into your head, it is a lovely day. Funny, that.

If you like these samples, I suggest you buy the album Irving Sings Berlin.

There are a few other Berlin songs in my post about Coon Songs, and also a post of Early Berlin songs by English performers at Young Irving Berlin - The Brits.

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