"SEE THOSE DOLLAR BILLS GO WHIRLING ROUND MY BED"

I've written a few posts about Patti Smith over the years. Here's one of them:

STILL GOOD AFTER 37 YEARS

I still listen to her music and would love to see her in concert again.

Patti Smith is coming to Auckland in April 2020 to perform in the excellent and intimate setting of the Auckland Town Hall.

Unfortunately I heard about the concert too late and when looking on-line for tickets to an extended show discovered that all of the upstairs seating was sold out and there was only standing room downstairs. I'm too old and infirm to stand in a 'mosh-pit' at a concert nowadays so that wasn't a consideration. Another thing that wasn't a consideration was the cost. $200 a ticket - to stand while being jostled by a whole lot of dickheads who probably don't know half of Smith's music.
Now that sounds arrogant and it actually is but I first started listening to Patti Smith in 1976 on the release of the first album HORSES and have bought or listened to all of her music since so I sort of feel that I have some investment here.

Further investment of $400 (The Old Girl wanted to come as well) plus the cost of her flying Wellington/Auckland return, the cost of me travelling Whangarei/Auckland return and the cost of accommodation in Auckland (we will have either sold or rented out the apartment by then) makes the whole exercise unaffordable.

Shame that. We need some: FREE MONEY

STEELY RHYTHMS AND RATTLETY-BANG

Wellington composer Chris Winter was on the news today with his soon to be released sound project based on traffic going through the Mt Victoria tunnel. It is named Carcophony.

CARCOPHANY

It is worth noting that a work named Car-cophany was made in 2013 in Sydney by Matthew Timmis

CAR-COPHANY

This got me thinking that Richard (of RBB) should get into this and create a symphony based on the car sounds from his neighbourhood in Nuova Lazio.

A possible name for it could be A RHAPSODY IN WAINUI (borrowed shamelessly from Gershwin's Rhapsody In Blue. RHAPSODY IN BLUE and he could also borrow from Gershwin's An American In Paris with the Paris taxi horns TAXI HORNS.

SECTION 1: 

• Theme 1  Sound of car braking and sliding out of control.
• Theme 2  Car crashes into other parked cars with sound of broken glass and tearing metal.
• Theme 3  Car driving off with flat tyres - screeching sound of  wheel rims on road.
• Theme 4  Upward glissando of police car siren.
• Theme 5  Fluctuating tempo as fleeing car stops - doors open and slam shut - soft sounds of hot engine ticking over.
• Theme 6  Full orchestra playing faster with sound of police cars and Eagle helicopter chasing running car thieves 
• Theme 7  Dramatically slowing tempo as car thieves are captured and pushed down on the ground. Sporadic yells, cries, grunts and oaths.

SECTION 2:

• Theme 1 Staccato and repetitive sound of car running over potholed road
• Theme 2  Fortissimo dissonant chords lead into sounds of car alarms and smashing rear windows. Cymbals crashing.
• Theme 3  Trombones start low and then increase in volume as sound track of approaching car with no muffler nears. Percussion softly and becoming louder plays the beat
• Theme 4  Full orchestra plays upward chromatic scale with intermittent strident trumpet notes as sound track reveals car doing 'do-nuts', 'burn-outs' and 'wheelies'.
• Theme 5  Piano accompanied by sforzando orchestra leads to choir chorus in rising tempo as soundtrack introduces sounds of angry neighbours yelling at car drivers.
• Theme 6  Silence then soft glockenspiel and piano accents tinkling down again to silence.

           End.

 

HIGH FIDELITY ..... FIDDLE DE DEE

There was a time when I used to think about sound quality in recordings and spent a silly amount of money on good stereo equipment with good amps, turntables and speakers.

To reproduce the best sound I used to buy vinyl recordings which had to be carefully wiped before playing and stored properly to avoid scratching.

The latest equipment (bought 15 years ago) now sits in a little pile tucked away behind the china cabinet in the lounge - one step away from being relegated to the shed.
The vinyl records are all still in boxes from the move from Auckland to Whangarei in 2009 and are stacked in the shed.

When I listen to music now it is usually through an iPod and a Bose sound dock or via YouTube through the smart TV in the lounge.


Sure the sound might not be as good as from Hi-Fi equipment but hey, my ears aren't what they used to be as my hearing is suspect. Also, the convenience of finding the desired album or track on iPod or from the YouTube menu far outweighs any sound deficiency.

When I'm cooking I like to put the TV on with YouTube and access the musician or genre I want and search using 'mix' as a suffix. I can then get a loop of music from a particular artist or a group of musicians or artists in the same or similar genre. For example - I like jazz, blues, opera and old R&B. If I search for Maria Callas and type in her name with 'mix' after it I might get a selection of her arias from great operas interspersed with recordings by other greats and, if I leave it going long enough a segue into other 'classical' music. Wonderful and as I can hear the music well enough from the lounge when I'm in the kitchen I can get on with my cooking.

The iPod is very portable and we easily take it from the lounge to the snooker room when we have a few games. The Old Girl has loaded hundreds of tracks on this which are automatically sorted by genre, album and artist so for example accessing Miles Davis can be done by individual tracks or albums or by setting a loop of all tracks. Just the thing for an hour or so of pool or snooker.

OK, I might be a Philistine but .... "Eeee I know what I like".

CALLAS

A BIT OF JONI MAGIC

The following two clips of Joni Mitchell singing her iconic song 'Woodstock' come from the excellent OPEN CULTURE website.

The two versions sung 31 years apart each have loveliness and show why she has been celebrated as one of the greatest folk/pop performers.



JONI MITCHELL - 'WOODSTOCK' 1969






JONI MITCHELL - 'WOODSTOCK' 1998

JUG JUG TO DIRTY EARS*

I see that The Rolling Stones tour in USA has been cancelled/postponed due to old Mick's health problem.


MICK JAGGER - HEART SURGERY




Well, they are getting on a bit. Mick Jagger is about 10 years older than me and there's no way that I could cavort around on stage the way he's been doing for years.

I was watching the British comedy programme 8 Out Of 10 Cats where Sean Locke compared the Rolling stones to a line up of Toby Jugs.  Funny.

Sean Locke

The Rolling Stones

Toby Jugs

The funny thing is that Toby Jugs have been made of The Beatles:

The Beatles in Toby form

And old Mick has been immortalised the same way:

Mick Jagger

* "Jug Jug to dirty ears" - from T.S. Eliot's The Waste Land



The change of Philomel, by the barbarous king

So rudely forced; yet there the nightingale

Filled all the desert with inviolable voice

And still she cried, and still the world pursues,

“Jug Jug” to dirty ears

ORTHOGRAPHY

ANNIE LENNOX - I PUT A SPELL ON YOU

I watched an Annie Lennox version of that great song I put a Spell On You  today and thought it was pretty good but not the best version I've heard.

You'd have to go far to beat Screaming Jay Hawkins'  original:

SCREAMING JAY HAWKINS - I PUT A SPELL ON YOU

But I have always liked Nina Simone's quiet and intense version:

NINA SIMONE - I PUT A SPELL ON YOU

Creedence Clearwater Revival, Bette Midler, Joe Cocker and others have done passable versions that are worth checking out but for me, the one that did it for me years ago was Arthur Brown's screaming version. His magnificent voice was just made for this song which has a lot of Hawkins' elements as well as some of the hamming up that Hawkins did in this version that got a lot of flack from the black community:

SCREAMING JAY HAWKINS (2) - I PUT A SPELL ON YOU

Here's Arthur Brown's version:

ARTHUR BROWN - I PUT A SPELL ON YOU

ARE YOU SICK OF CHRISTMAS MUSIC YET?

If not you might find this of interest:




WHAT MAKES MUSIC SOUND LIKE CHRISTMAS?