Category Archives: General

Of Christmases past

I did not own a large number of cassette tapes as a kid listening to music, and it’s actually because I thought that the format was already dead. It was prone to a number of obvious errors, such as damaging the tape with the tape head and of course pulling out the tape when it caught funny. I was fortunate to be buying my first music in an era when CDs were beginning to fully impose their dominance on the long-dead format, so I opted for CDs in most cases. However, it didn’t stop one or two tapes from making its way into my music collection (I now have exactly thirty). One of my favorites was Boyz II Men’s Christmas Interpretations, which was a Christmas gift, if I recall correctly, from a friend of mine (ECC) who also got me a Vanessa Williams holiday CD that I no longer have. I’ve since completely lost the ability to play cassettes in any reasonable way, but I bought a couple of the songs on iTunes — my favorites by this group are “Let it Snow” and the a cappella “Silent Night.” I also grew up with Mariah Carey’s album, Merry Christmas, and like so many others, I freely admit that I like the song, “All I Want For Christmas Is You.” In its 15 years, that song has now become part of many holiday traditions in pop culture, and I’m now convinced that Mariah Carey will be remembered as much for this song as she will for her R&B pop hits in the 90s.

While these remain staples of my Christmas musical tradition, since then I’ve added a few Christmas jazz albums like Oscar Peterson, Vince Guaraldi, and Diana Krall. Most recently, since going to the Boston Pops Holiday Concerts, I’ve been looking for an album of orchestral Christmas music, which reminds me that the Boston Pops have released their very popular arrangement of Twelve Days of Christmas on mp3. Of course I’ve yet to find a full orchestral recording that reminds me of the Pops performances that I enjoyed so much, but it’s a high bar to set.

Anyway, It’s kind of a fun time of year that comes and goes so quickly, but listening to holiday music always just seems to make sense.

Cylinder Archive Online

I just learned about an archive of some of the first recorded music being digitized by the University of California Santa Barbara. It is available here. They have mp3 and WAV copies of the music, though no FLAC, for whatever reason. It includes classic jazz, orchestral stuff, and other stuff like spoken word. Appears to be a pretty exciting resource of early recorded music.

Only on stage at the AMA

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There are two primary occasions when I consciously pay attention to pop music. The first is on long road trips, when I get tired of whatever CDs I dragged along, and I flip to whatever radio station I can pick up and try to catch up on trends (this stuff comes up really often in conversation). The other time is during award shows, which I really like despite hardly ever agreeing with the outcomes. I’m far from an expert on popular trends, but I know what my temporal lobe likes, and it’s not usually what ends up winning.

Anyway, one positive thing I can say about award shows is that it provides some pretty unique musical opportunities. I happened to catch one brief part last night, the only thing I was really interested in hearing, and it was Alicia Keys (stunning as always), performing with Queen Latifah (who’s busy staging a silent comeback this year with a new album release), and soprano Kathleen Battle. They tore up the stage, and the range of talent was impressive. Whoever conceived of it is pretty brilliant in my book.

Catchy, random tune in my head

That Apple MacBook Air commercial. You know, the one with the envelope and the crippled piece of shiny aluminum. All judgments on the value of that machine aside, I do happen to find the song, New Soul by Yael Naïm, incredibly catchy. It surprises me, and I don’t even know what its genre “label” would be, but the marching melody is humoresque, and her voice is sweet. Plus there’s something fun about any song in which part of the lyrics go, “Lala La-La, Lalala La-La, Lala LaLa Lala LaLa LaLa La La Lah.”

Waltz For Debby

There’s a short list of jazz standards that I haven’t ever picked up. I’ve heard most of them, and they’re good, but none were so compelling to deter me from more important acquisitions such as nearly every Mingus and Monk released. Among those were Dave Brubeck’s Time Out, an excellent album that I picked up earlier this past summer when friends of mine who are newer to jazz discovered it in a record shop and ended up loving it. I’m fortunate enough to have seen Brubeck perform live, and while I know the album well, I’ve never owned it. Of course I’ve since remedied that situation.

More recently, I’ve finally decided to purchase a standard CD issue of the Bill Evans Trio’s Waltz For Debby. There are numerous versions of this album in an already extensive and excellent body of work from him, and though this is another album I know and enjoy, I’ve never bothered to own it for some strange reason. I encountered it on a friend’s recommendation while working in Georgia many years ago, and most recently I was reintroduced to it in the gold CD version while at a regional audio conference. And even though I pick it up every time I’m in a local shop (invariably there are used copies available), I always find other treasures that usurp its priority. But with a local coupon in hand and an unbeatable final price of around five bucks, how could I resist?