Issue 37

Henry Purcell (1659-1695) lived at an expansive time in British music history, when artistic freedom had been restored after a generation of repressive Puritan control. Somehow this allowed Purcell to tap into timeless universals of human existence. Not only is his music still performed often, but it gets reconceived for new eras more than most composers’ work does.

On the CD Purcell : Britten – Purcell Songs Realised by Britten (Champs Hill Records), six singers perform Benjamin Britten’s arrangements of one of his favorite composers – and this was a man deeply versed in the previous centuries of his nation’s music. The key to modernization here is in the piano part, which Britten originally wrote for himself to play while his companion Peter Pears sang. You can hear late Romanticism edging into modern harmonies, and the kind of rolling rhythmic textures that simply didn’t exist in accompaniment the 17^th century.

“If Music Be the Food of Love,” sung by mezzo-soprano Anna Grevelius, seems to star pianist Joseph Middleton, but that’s typical of Britten’s approach to piano-and-voice writing; you find it in his arrangements of British and French folksongs, too.

Contrast that with this exquisite recording (from a 2001 Erato release) of the original Purcell by soprano Nancy Argenta, harpsichordist Paul Nicholson, and viola da gambist Richard Boothby playing standard middle-Baroque continuo:

Pulitzer Prize-winning composer Elliot Carter also paid homage to Purcell. On the Onyx Brass’ recent album Pavans, Fantasias, Variations (Meridian Records), there is a nuanced performance of Carter’s A Fantasy about Purcell’s “Fantasy upon One Note” from 1974. As the composer once explained, “The Purcell piece has always seemed to have a dramatic meaning—that of a repeated, tolling, bell-like note sounding through musical episodes of contrasting character. So I decided to make an arrangement for brass that would draw attention to this aspect of the music.”

When comparing with the original, played here on viols by Jordi Savall’s Hespérion XX, it’s striking how delicately played brass can be a reasonable substitute for bowed strings:

Like violins, violas, and cellos, the viol family comes in all sizes, and Purcell wrote what we would call “chamber music” for them (that term is an anachronism, only coming into currency in the late 18^th century). Not surprisingly, viol music is often attempted on modern violins, etc. Two string quartets have recent recordings of Purcell Fantasias (or Fantazias, as he spelled it).

I admit to having a hard time with this concept. Unlike the change from viols to brass, the replacement of viols with the violin family always sounds wrong to me; maybe it’s because the instruments are close enough in sound that their differences stand out more. Contrary to popular belief, the viol is not a predecessor to or truly related to the violin: they have fretted and unfretted fingerboards, respectively, which affects the very concepts of fingering and intonation.

That said, the Emerson String Quartet gives a strong, musical performance on their new Music of Britten and Purcell (DeccaGold). Here’s the Fantazia No. 11 in G Major:

The recent recording of some of Purcell’s fantasias by the Apple Hill String Quartet (self-produced) does not fare as well. The overall sound is breathier, with more vibrato. The instinct is to say it’s “less authentic.” But then, once you switch to instruments that did not exist in the composer’s lifetime, who’s to say what “authentic” means? Still, I longed for first violinist Elise Kruder to make more stable contact with the string, no matter what she was playing.

The biggest sonic difference between viols and the modern violin family is the more subdued timbre in the former. Compare those Emerson and Apple Hill tracks with this recording of Purcell’s Fantazia No. 8 in D minor as played by the group Wildcat Viols, a teaser from their album-in-production, The Magnifick Four:

Presenting Purcell in modern ways is not a new idea, and the range of creativity in evidence is astonishing. Here’s a classic example: Wendy Carlos was asked by Stanley Kubrick to arrange some Purcell on the Moog synthesizer for Kubrick’s 1971 film of A Clockwork Orange. Carlos turned Funeral March for Queen Mary into one of the most frightening pieces of music ever:

The potential is limitless; Purcell works well in any guise. Once, in a Manhattan subway station, I heard a woman playing “Dido’s Lament” on a saw. After I recovered from my surprise, I found it beautiful.

Part One:  Past 50? Is your hearing still good enough to worry about your system’s sound quality?

I’ll never forget these intertwined events. It was in the early 1980s. I was recording the Alabama Symphony for the Birmingham National Public Radio affiliate.

Several leading union musicians (from the Symphony tape committee) and the conductor would visit my shop one night each month. I’d play back the master recordings that I had recently made of concerts that were to be broadcast. Their job was to pick the best performance. Then I would prepare the broadcast master from my 30 I.P.S. analog master.

I came to know and to spend some time around the conductor. I’d say he was in his late ‘60s-to-early-‘70s at that time. In our informal meetings, he’d have a problem with discrimination, which is common for older folks. In this case, discrimination is the term for being able to listen to someone and understand him while others are talking at the same time.  This was especially noticeable in a crowded restaurant.

However, before I tell you my main point, you need to know one more thing:

It’s REALLY LOUD on stage with a full orchestra when it’s playing power music. I once went out onstage while doing a test recording during a dress rehearsal for Gustav Holst’s The Planets. As luck would have it, it was during “Uranus,” one of the loudest sections.

I had measured the peak sound pressure levels in the audience. I knew they were at least 95 dB. But up on stage, standing next to the conductor, with all the brass and percussion wailing away, I was shocked at how loud it was! It felt like my hair was being blown back like that old Maxell tape ad!

Of course, someone who has been exposed to these incredible sound levels for nearly 50 years is most likely to have some significant hearing damage. Add to that the age factor, and this man should have been lucky to hear an ambulance siren!

In spite of his age, and extended exposure to loud sounds, during our listening sessions at my shop, he always picked up on problems, often before the much younger musicians (with theoretically far better hearing capability).

Once, in the middle of a Beethoven Symphony #6 rehearsal, I saw him tell a second violinist several rows back to retune. On more than one occasion in various rehearsals, he’d have to call somebody on a blown entrance when the full orchestra was wailing away!

It always amazed me that he could hear so precisely during the playback sessions and during the rehearsals (and obviously during the performances), especially when he was noticeably affected hearing-wise by noisy people who were talking nearby in a restaurant!

My point is that age, and even exposure to lifelong loud levels, seems not to be the only indicator as to whether a trained listener can still hear. For example, I often sit with younger men and women, teaching them about sound, or just kicking back listening to music. I’m past 60, but I can reliably hear things that they miss entirely.

FWIW – It’s also why I think that middle-aged & older audio reviewers do not need to publish an audiologist’s hearing exam.  What will that tell us, if they can reliably pick up on things that a less experienced younger person (with technically better hearing) cannot?

So don’t worry if you’re past 50. It just means that you’re experienced!

Part Two: The one thing that your system must have to be Musically Satisfying

If Copper had a Controversy Corner, that’s where I would place this tip. But I can’t find it, so I put it here:

In my years of experience in voicing systems to rooms, I’ve found that a system must have a flat-to-slightly-elevated response curve in the critical octave from approximately 192 Hz to 384 Hz. Yes, I said it could be slightly elevated – much preferred over a similar amplitude dip in this critical region.

Of course, if a system covers the area properly, there’s no need to be concerned. But not all do.

In fact, there is a famous loudspeaker manufacturer who routinely has a slight depression in this frequency response for most of its models.  Some audiophiles admire its ‘precision’ while others find the sound musically uninspiring.

As mentioned above, this range is from one-half octave below middle C—(when the scale is 256 Hz)—to one-half octave above it. Therefore, the area between approximately 192 Hz and 384 Hz is the musical octave in question.

When a speaker (or electronic component or cable) seems to be lean in this area, the sound will usually prove to be boring musically. Amazingly, components that are lean in this area are often admiringly described as highly resolved, precise, articulate, etc. My description? BORING…

But when this region is either flat, or perhaps even elevated by a very slight amount, the music is infinitely more involving. Strings have more body. Brass will have more “weight,” and a more “burnished” tone.

Orchestral music will have a balance (and subjective power response) more akin to live sound in a concert hall

Vocals will have much more palpable presence. That “reach out and touch it” impression.

The sound will be lusher. Guitars will ring out with a beauty that almost touches your soul. In short, you’ll find yourself affected by the music.

Aside from addressing smooth bass in the 25–300 Hz region, this octave is probably the most important frequency response area that a component or system must get right for ultimate satisfaction (a big IMO goes here, of course). For example, if a system is exceptionally detailed or has powerful bass, but it doesn’t get this octave right, it’ll be fatiguing to listen to over a period of time.

Other than checking bass performance in the “boundary dependent region,” this is the only other instance where I might recommend using a Real Time Analyzer. If you suspect a slight problem, it’s often useful to determine if perhaps there’s a subtle dip in response in this frequency range at your listening seat.

If so, I’d experiment with seating position, or maybe speaker positioning. A slight reduction in stereo separation can often add the needed touch-up to offset system problems in this area.

My ultimate—long term—recommendation would be to replace any components that fall into this category. But I’d wait until virtually everything else related to voicing the system to the room has been done. You wouldn’t want to arrive at a wrong conclusion, needlessly spending money on a new amplifier, and still find a similar problem.

I’ve observed this phenomenon for many years. I wish I could tell you why it’s so, but I don’t know. I just know it is. For me, it’s foundational for ultimate musical satisfaction.

I have often thought that if I were a designer of electronics, I might even consider introducing about a 0.25 dB–0.50 dB gentle rise in the frequency response for this octave. Especially for those precise (but thin) sounding electronics out there (you know who they are).

Seriously!

These comments are edited & excerpted from Get Better Sound, and used with the author’s permission. 🙂
You can also read Jim’s work at his website, www.getbettersound.com .

Some 30 years ago, I was involved in a debate with a younger co-worker on another magazine – let’s call him “Martin T”– about something I had posited, and with which he violently disagreed: that hi-fi sales followed directly the quality of the music of the day. Sales were beginning the decline that today has high-end audio with the entire industry enjoying a global turnover of less than what Apple does in a day. [Okay—we’re talking under $600M. I think the audio world is a tad bigger than that, Ken—Ed.] Back then, it was possible to blame the music, as I did, because mobile phones, gaming and other rivals for disposable income didn’t exist. And the music in 1988 or so was dire.

Because I had eight years on him, I was absolutely not in the same place when it came to his championing of punk, post-punk, indie or other derivative and/or atonal crap. My interest in Joy Division, Happy Mondays, U2 and the like was similar to my thoughts of …[suffice it to say, KK wasn’t wild about the genre. —Ed.] I argued that the then-current music sucked. As it was the era during which his tastes were formulated, naturally, he accused me of being an “old fart”.

My musical vantage point was the 1960s. The music he was defending in particular that day and which I was attacking included the “New Romantic” genre and synthesizer-based drivel such as Flock of Seagulls, Duran Duran, ad nauseam. At that point, I was the old fart, he was the young Turk, and, naturally, I looked like a horribly grumpy old man … in my mid-30s.

But numbers proved my point. You could overlay graphs of music sales with hi-fi sales. It was no secret that the first huge boom in hi-fi, outside of the traditional, moneyed doctors/lawyers demographic, coincided with the era of the Beatles, the Beach Boys, Motown (Stevie Wonder, the Temps, the Supremes, Marvin Gaye, etc.), Bob Dylan, the Rat Pack at its peak, “The British Invasion”, Stax/Atlantic (Aretha, Otis, Sam & Dave), the flourishing of master songwriters (Holland-Dozier-Holland, Bacharach/David, Hayes and Porter, etc.) and the final days of Broadway genius (e.g. Fiddler On The Roof), before Andrew Lloyd Webber and his ilk turned it all to trite swill.

Hi-fi’s decline, according to my theory (remember: this was long before its acceleration due to the onset of digital, downloads, iPods and the like), began with sub-cretinous, derivative, meritless genres such as disco, (UK) punk and all of that chronically soulless and insipid Eighties dreck which Martin loved. Shining lights like Tom Waits were too rare and/or too cult to matter.

Of course, this hi-fi-sales-vs-music-quality was not a scientific theory, merely the results of comparing annual sales charts from both music and consumer electronics trade magazines. But scientific or not, I have yet to be convinced otherwise. The passage of time – ever the great leveller – seems to support me. Just look at today’s charts and the state of hi-fi for a perfectly valid illustration, independent of the damage caused by downloading, streaming, smartphones and the economy.

Jay Jay French’s ode to 1967 in Copper # 36 reminded me of this old debate, concrete evidence of the superiority of my favorite decade came from one of my oldest friends in the USA. This column is, in fact, an update of one that ran in Hi-Fi News back in 2010, after a dear friend and former record shop owner named Fred Jeffery sent me a revealing e-mail.

Fred once owned Rockit Records in Saugus, Massachusetts, and attended the University of Maine with me and Rich Colburn, also of this parish. He was going through some old magazines and came up with this list. It dealt solely with the four-month period of September-December 1969 – the 1960s’ adieu.

Primarily in order of their release, record buyers (including Fred and myself) were offered for the Christmas season Fleetwood Mac’s Then Play On, Janis Joplin’s I Got Dem Ol’ Kozmic Blues Again Mama!, the Band’s eponymous second LP, the Beatles’ Abbey Road, Steve Miller Band’s Brave New World, Arthur from the Kinks, Frank Zappa’s Hot Rats, Elvis Presley’s From Memphis To Vegas, Led Zeppelin 2, Pink Floyd’s Ummagumma, Johnny Winter’s Second Winter, Pentangle’s Basket Of Light and Spirit’s Clear.

Now add to the above Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Willie and the Poor Boys, the Byrds’ Ballad Of Easy Rider, the Grateful Dead’s Live Dead, the Moody Blues’ To Our Children’s, Children’s Children, Tim Buckley’s Blue Afternoon, John Mayall’s Turning Point, Jefferson Airplane’s Volunteers, the Rolling Stones’ Let it Bleed, Blood Sweat and Tears’ and Grand Funk Railroad’s eponymous second LPs and Fairport Convention’s Liege And Lief.

Augmenting the above, and proving what an unrepeatable and rich period it was, the debut albums from Mott the Hoople, King Crimson, the Allman Brothers Band, Rod Stewart and the James Gang were also released that season. Genres ranged from country rock to psychedelic to blues to heavy metal to UK and US folk.

Those days are long gone. But why is this so? Have people dumbed down that low? How did music turn into such, well, shit? Aretha or Beyoncé? Jimi Hendrix, or ANY current hard rock guitarist? Sly Stone or Kanye West? MC5 or Rage Against the Machine? Joni Mitchell … or any one of the tedious, whining, solipsistic snowflakes that would have supplied mood music to Girls? I could go on like this for days.

How can it be that television drama – Game of Thrones, Blacklist, Orphan Black, Peaky Blinders, Breaking Bad, Ballers, Better Call Saul, Preacher, Arrow, ad infinitum – has never been better, but popular music is so mindless, samey, and/or unoriginal? Did the Beatles and their progeny and contemporaries simply do it all, leaving nothing for anyone else?

Please: don’t bother sending me e-mails “proving” I’m wrong. I stopped arguing with people who tell me Coldplay blows away the Beatles. Some things shouldn’t need explaining, and I tire of those who dismiss arguments with a quote from The Dude in The Big Lebowski and his catch-all, slacker excuse for being worthless: “Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.”

No, it isn’t: Rihanna ain’t Etta. I console myself with a touch of schadenfreude, via that comedy routine, for which I can’t quite remember the show, circa 2030, where the senior citizen says to his wife, “Honey, they’re playing our song!” And it’s “Smack My Bitch Up.”

In retrospect, I believe I’ve been proven correct: the Beatles still outsell vapid, unoriginal swill like Spandau Ballet. A decade ago, the Sex Pistols’ reunion couldn’t fill clubs; sales records were broken for tickets to gigs by Cream, Led Zeppelin and other bands punks loathed.

And as for our writing careers? I’m still writing for Hi-Fi News, while Martin’s the editor of a major national newspaper. Serves me right for having taste.

In 1966 I was 12 and the world was 9. I had no truck with those so-called rockers The Beatles from England with cute voices only partly because the girls my age were freaking nuts about those guys. Mostly I was very upset about the existential probability that a large portion of the female population in my particular age group were exhibiting disturbing mental lapses in judgement and might volunteer themselves as slaves to four guys with weird accents. Luckily, I was 12, it was the summer of 1966, and the benchmark for true success as a human being then as now was “Do you have a TV show?”

1966. Ok, I’m going to go old guy on you. Television was not just ramping up, it was taking over household bath/pajama schedules. I don’t know how parents in the 19th century, titled “You’ve got 2 hours to heat your bathwater by yer Grampa’s pipe” got their kids to bed. For us, it was the threat of missing Mr. Ed. That will get your ass moving, let me tell ya. Unless it was the summer. Reality at the time was different. TV shows did about 30 episodes, then between May and September went on hiatus so guys like Alan Young and Rod Serling could spend a few months in rehab.

But the rest of us just waited until the TV season started again. Which pretty quickly morphed into scientific activity like scraping the gunpowder out of rolls of caps on the back yard picnic table so you could explode a model you spent a week building. (There are 5.7 per 8 readers out there who have no idea what I just said). After all, there were only three stations on the box and the intellectual breadth of the medium spanned Mr. Ed to Gilligan’s Island. We could wait.

This was before air conditioning, before color TV. Before electric windows and toasted bread. OK, we had toast but it was an iffy thing depending on your mother’s mood. My mom, may she remain forever at rest for our sake, used to cook our eggs then call us to get up. By the time we got down to the breakfast table these same eggs could kill a marine.   I still can’t eat the flippin things.

Those summers before you had to start working seemed interminable. Large lakes of boredom dotted by islands like the 4^th of July, games of Stratego on the picnic table, and the daily agony of deciding between Good Humor and Mr. Softee. I remember one of the highlights of the summer was when trucks filled with DDT would show up in the neighborhood to spray the oak trees to kill the cicadas and june bugs, shooting out billowing clouds of the stuff covering the trees, the homes, the cars, the picnic tables, and kids who knew no better than to run behind it sucking in that sweet sweet steam.

Which explains the popularity and credibility of Mr. Ed. And, the Monkees.

By the time August brought Back-to-School sales, still the cruelest of annual milestones, she also brought the TV network onslaught of commercials for the upcoming season’s new shows. This year there was something more than Mr Ed. Something more than Gilligan’s Island. Even more important than My Mother The Car. The Monkees.

In 1962 a guy named Bob Rafelson tried to sell the idea of a TV series with a rock band to Revue, the television subsidiary of Universal Pictures. Bob was a little ahead of the times, about 3-4 years ahead. No one could understand what he was talking about until those Moxie Moppets came out with A Hard Day’s Night and TV honchos realized there was a new market to scam. The American Teen with the Beatles on the bean. Rafelson’s original idea was to use an actual band and chronicle the lives, and in fact tried to get the Lovin’ Spoonful but they had signed a record contract. Bob had to punt.

Rafelson teamed up with Bert Schneider, whose dad ran a TV division for Columbia. That was lucky. They realized that in order to keep this idea afloat they had to create a band. Bob and Bert hired Don Kirshner. Kirshner started casting for semi-musicians, guys who could at least fake it, and hired two music producers to create the songs and the vibe. Tommy Boyce and Bobby Hart.

Kirshner had a couple of songwriters in his stable named Neil Diamond and Carole King. They both wrote songs for the Monkees, as did Boyce and Hart. Really Boyce and Hart were responsible for their most well received songs like “Last Train to Clarksville” (first hit) and “I’m a Believer”, as well as being responsible to get the four clowns the studio hired for the show to act like musicians in front of a camera.

Davy Jones was a British actor who had done musical theater including playing the Artful Dodger in Oliver. He could sing and play drums. Micky Dolenz was a child actor who could sing, quite well in fact, but had no instrumental talent. Mike Nesmith was a musician whose main axe was bass, and Peter Tork was an accomplished guitar/keyboard player. So it was natural Boyce and Hart decided the line-up should be Dolenz on drums, Nesmith on guitar, Tork on bass, and Jones in front. As a bass player I was personally affronted because they put Tork on bass just because he was goofy. Ok, Ok, I know it makes sense, but I was insulted. But since all four had to appear they knew what they were doing on TV there was work to be done.

Truth was this was a band later and then shortly. The producers had to use studio musicians since the boys were not a band, not completely familiar with their instrumental roles, and there was that pesky TV show that had to be produced. With all the time that went into the show there was little time to develop these guys into anything more than guys who LOOKED like they were playing. This was not entirely unprecedented. Studio groups like the Funk Brothers (Motown), the Wrecking Crew (everybody in LA), and the Swampers in Muscle Shoals (all things from Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin, and Lynyrd Skynyrd) played behind 90% of the groups in the 60’s and 70’s. But, this was the first real boy band. The first of many to come, where we found out later they weren’t playing actually but were pretending to.

The show was fun, goofy, and a true period piece. The jokes weren’t funny the first time but years later when we discovered marijuana we caught the deeper nuance of what they were doing. Really. Ok I don’t remember exactly what that nuance was but I think I remember it happened. Even Frank Zappa loved these guys, and in fact appeared on one episode and did a cameo in their movie. Very weird. Frank always said he hated drugs but this lapse in judgment speaks to at least a few weeks on the pipe.

In 1967 the first Monkees album outsold the Beatles’  Sarge Pepper and Rolling Stones Their Satanic Majesties Request. Combined. I knew you wouldn’t believe me, go look it up, we’ll wait. But by ’67 the boys had begun to chafe under the yoke of boybanddom and got control of the production of their music. And that was the end of that. I know it’s hard to believe to those who lived through that time that the show and the band’s respectable output lasted only two years, but remember, even the Beatles heavy output only really lasted 6.

Last year I had a dream that I was working for a magazine, not named Copper, that bought a time machine. They had me go back in time to interview the Monkee Men on the 50h anniversary of the show’s debut. No I am not kidding. I dream like this. I met the band, and followed Jones into the studio during the recording of “A Little Bit Me, A Little Bit You” by Neil Diamond. This was somehow in Dallas and after the session Mike Nesmith invited me to take a run down to Houston to spend a day with his aunt. I repeat I am not kidding; I can describe in detail her house, family room and back yard. Later in the day we took a walk to where she had her car stored, a mint condition Rambler station wagon, and Mike drove us to get ice cream. We then went back to Dallas where I shook hands with everyone and hopped back in that time machine to write my article, which I suspect pretty much wrote itself. Coolest dream I’d had since I spent an afternoon in a flat in London with the Beatles when they wrote “Eleanor Rigby”.

I’m beginning to suspect I chose the Monkees as a subject because of that dream I had. Certainly the dream got me thinking about those times and that show. Wait. I remember. A Monkees song was the first song I played in a band in Windsor Locks. (I’m Not Your) Steppin’ Stone. We played that song so many times Barry’s parents divorced and sold the house.

Good times.

Adrian Crowley might as well be the love child of Lou Reed and Leonard Cohen. The Dublin-based songwriter has the intense introspection, cracking baritone voice, and distaste for sentimentality that both of those masters of originality were known for.

A few months ago, I heard Crowley perform live in a rare U.S. appearance, thanks to the New York Irish Art Center’s SongLives indie series. Crowley’s self-effacing presence and the powerful emotional sophistication of his poetry intrigued me, so I was eager to explore his many recordings.

He’s been at this awhile, with nine albums currently available and another on the way. Not surprisingly, the 1999 debut, A Strange Kind, doesn’t show the artist fully formed. Instead you get a talented singer and songwriter steeped in Irish and British folk traditions and channeling the likes of Martin Carthy, Dick Gaughan, and Nic Jones. Here’s “The Cage of My Ribs,” which features a hummable melody delivered in a clear, ringing voice. A general outlook of sadness is already evident, but you can’t tell yet just how deep it will go.

Jump ahead a few years, and Crowley’s style has already changed. “Tall Ships,” from the 2002 album When You Are Here You Are Family, reveals two traits that he has not let go of since: a sort of keening in the melody line and a preference for triple meter.

And another basic characteristic of Crowley’s output shows up at this early point. Despite what initially seem like grim lyrics, the poetry never gives up hope that an awful world might get better. “If the birds of truth / Should take to flight, / I’ll wait for them.” [Warning! If you’re playing this cut on your big rigs, the left channel has some nasty clipping on the drum tracks that can be heard as a bit of a transient crack. It’s not your tweeter destroying itself–not yet, anyway! —Ed.]

By “The Wishing Seat,” from the 2009 album Season of the Sparks, Crowley has become comfortable with his almost spoken declamation of the words, making the fact that it’s being done to music almost an incidental detail. This is what reminds me so much of Lou Reed. To go along with this word-focus is more imaginative imagery in the text, phrases like “heavy-bellied clouds.” It’s a surprise when the chorus turns out to be densely melodic and strictly rhymed.

A contributing factor to the development of Crowley’s sound is his increasing reliance on synthesizers. That’s in addition to, and sometimes instead of, acoustic and electric guitar. His sixth album, I See Three Birds Flying (2012), like Season of the Sparks, was produced by Dublin’s experimental composer Stephen Shannon (aka Strands), who brought in textural layers that support Crowley’s melancholic disposition.

The digital landscape blends seamlessly with the analog. Crowley and Strand give us “The Saddest Song” (clearly labeled in case you don’t think Crowley’s songs can contain more sadness than they have up to now). It starts as simple acoustic guitar with reverb, and a vocal captured so close that you can practically feel the individual microbes of sorrow. Then Strand brings in lush strings, which fall and rise under another verse of nearly tuneless lyrics.

We catch the poem mid-flight, with the first line starting, “And I turned away / from the darkened window.” What happened in the moments before? Or the decades before? Crowley engages the listener’s imagination rather than answering.

In “Red River Maples,” Crowley shows his gift for writing about nature. The recording suffers for the seasick wobble of its flute-sample accompaniment. (Why not just get some folks to play the flute?) This is also a rare instance when I wonder what the song would sound like from someone with a big, strong voice in the folk tradition. How about Joan Baez?

The 2014 album Some Blue Morning is Crowley’s most recent completed work. At his concert in New York he mentioned a new album, but as of this writing it does not yet exist. Still, there’s plenty to study and wonder at in Some Blue Morning. Produced by his long-time Glasgow label Chemikal Underground, this collection of songs is both a step forward and a homecoming.

The production features acoustic instruments like drums, bowed strings (including a contribution by the London-based ensemble called The Geese), and plucked strings (mandolin, guitar, and do I hear a bouzouki?). Interestingly, in his live show, Crowley was accompanied by producer Thomas Bartlett (AKA Doveman) using synth keyboards to stand in for all these instruments. But the acoustic resonance defines this album and brings greater focus to the way Crowley’s voice – or his attitude toward using it – is changing.

Take “The Hungry Grass,” for example. The vocals are less singing than grumbling – with each album he is less of a singer and more of a poet who feels compelled to let his thoughts leak out. The accompaniment, on the other hand, is busy with sawing fiddles that call to mind the traditional music that clearly influenced Crowley from the start.

It’s appropriate to end with “Follow If You Must,” featuring Katie Kim singing a doubled vocal line an octave above the slow, legato melody. Crowley’s voice seems to fight against it, as if he’s forgotten how to make a smooth, untroubled sound. But that doesn’t matter when the basso grumble bears haunting lines like “If you come back from the shadowlands, / I’ll be waiting with open hands / one part sorrow, two parts trust./ Follow if you must.”

See? That glimmer of hope still peeps through the gloom in Crowley’s mind.

A few years ago I spotted a bizarre trend in popular music. I’m not sure if it’s “blue car syndrome”—how if you talk about blue cars, suddenly it seems as though they’re freaking everywhere— or if it really is spreading like a virulent bug at CES.

On second thought, I think it’s spreading. And I’m a little scared.

Not to get all new-agey think-globally yadda yadda, but the modern world has issues with boundaries. Not just geographic ones: I’m talking about the respect of interpersonal boundaries. More accurately, the lack of respect of interpersonal boundaries. We all know that different cultures observe different distances between individuals when talking. That’s a given, and can be dealt with, even though it may make for some squeamish moments. That’s not what I mean.

The lack of boundaries that concern me are of the “we’re all one, all drones in the hive mind” kind of BS. The kind where twenty-something sales clerks think it’s appropriate to call sixty-something me by my first name. The kind where total strangers repeatedly touch you while talking to you. The kind where pep-rally rah-rah migrates into the workplace with trite aphorisms for every occasion.

Yes, we’re all in this together—but in spite of the Beatles’ babble, I am not he; you are not he; and you are not me. We are separate, individual, distinct.  And while there are undoubtedly multiple aspects to our personalities, most of us do not have multiple separate personalities. We don’t think of ourselves as a group of people, or present ourselves as such.

And that’s what’s happening in pop music: individual performers bill themselves with group names. It makes me crazy.

The first one I encountered was Iron & Wine. It turns out that it’s a guy named Sam Beam. As you might expect—if you were a judgmental old fart like me—Sam sports a beard that would look right at home in a tintype of Gold Rush miners in bowler hats holding pick-axes. Or on Garth Hudson, on the cover of The Band.

Then I came upon Bon Iver. —And no, it’s not “bahn EYEver”; it’s ‘bohn  ee-VAIR”, a corruption of the French “bon hiver”, “good winter”. Turns out that’s a guy named Justin Vernon, who encountered the phrase in a Northern Exposure rerun.

The confusing part is that these group/guys largely record on their own, singing/playing everything by themselves under their multiple-moniker….but when they play gigs, he/they/whatever transform into a real band. Iron & Wine often plays with 10 musicians.

So, Leebs—you’re getting bent out of shape because there are two guys who refer to themselves by tribe names?  Seriously??

If those two were the sum total, I wouldn’t even refer to this as a trend. It’d just be a couple of outlier blips on the graph of life. But consider:

Aphex Twin
Five For Fighting
Of Montreal
Nine Inch Nails
Everest
LCD Soundsystem
Tame Impala

—all those are basically names used by one person, who then assembles groups of musicians for live performances. Some of these are more clear-cut than others; some,like Nine Inch Nails, seemed to start out as a Real Band, and then morphed into a plural cover for one artist (Trent Reznor, in this case). There are dozens more of these multiple personalties running around there, or holed up in some twee artisanal cabin, recording on their iPhone, courtesy of solar power.

It’s all very confusing. Having grown up with bands with names like The Fugs and The Electric Prunes and Mother Mallard’s Portable Masterpiece Company, I have a hard time thinking of myself as a stickler for conventional nomenclature. It’s not like I’m sitting on the front porch in a wife-beater screaming, “we had Glenn Miller And His Orchestra. THAT was a GOOD NAME, damnit!”

And yet: I guess I do require some order in my musical universe. Who knew?

Net Neutrality – the Why, but mostly the Why Not

Today, July 12^th, I’ve received a dozen emails with subject lines like “Today we save the internet”, and “One Day to save the internet”.  And they’re still coming in: “The free and open internet is under attack.”

I assume we all know why a neutral internet is important — among other issues, we don’t want to be charged more if we choose to use one provider’s software over another.  That’s straightforward. Groups like the Electronic Freedom Foundation have long argued for just that. (Personally, I think it ought to be regulated as the utility it is.)

But there’s another issue, which hits me square in the bank account. As some readers may know, I’m a musician, a bassist, and used to earn my living as one — at times, quite a good one, actually. I wasn’t wealthy (for a Westerner), but made a decent, reliable, middle-class living.

As we know, very few of us do that anymore. And we’re caught dead in the middle of the forces that are engaged in this fight. On the one side: the evil corporations that bring us the internet — ISPs like your Comcast, for instance. On the other side, those plucky little internet crusaders like Facebook and Google. Where to come down? On the side of evil — or evil?

I have an engineer friend (in the modern sense of the term engineer) who works for Google. I really like this guy. And we’ve gone around and around on the issue, and reached a complete stalemate. He tells me to think of Google as a company with Asperger’s Syndrome. OK, I can try. Google isn’t literally at fault for my inability to earn a living, but as the owners of You Tube, they bear much of the responsibility. The fault is with the DMCA[1], you say? Fine. Perhaps it once was.

But You Tube makes an enormous amount of money — really enormous — off of its user base uploading music illegally to the site, and each one has to be chased down individually by the copyright holder. Could Google police it? They say no, impossible.

But this article  showed up on my telephone today. When they want to, they find a way.

And don’t get me started on streaming. Editor Leebens can tell you about Spotify. I can tell you that a little over a year-and-a-half ago, I was in a conference with Gale Anne Hurd, the producer of The Walking Dead. She said that as of that date, she had yet to see a penny from the sales via iTunes. Not one cent, from the sales of one of the biggest shows around.

“Creative Destruction”, you say? Great – enjoy the democracy of the internets.

[1] The Digital Millennium Copyright Act: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digital_Millennium_Copyright_Act

Hey there, classical fans. Let’s talk shallow pleasures!

Excuse me? Didn’t we do “fun” last month?

Look, it’s midsummer. Temperatures in the 90s. No shade anywhere. We had a Glorious Fourth: hot dogs, cold beer, kids blowing their fingers off. Who wants to read about Wagner and Brahms?

I concede your point. Nevertheless, please make your trifling remarks worth my time.

Why? You know you’re going to spend the rest of the day listening to old Fleetwood Mac records and messing with your preamp. Or wishing you could get out of the office and do that.

Tell you what, I’ll begin with some opera. That worthwhile enough?

Depends on what you’ve got.

Spoken like a true connoisseur. Exhibit A this week, a terrific new Blu-ray video from Glyndebourne. It’s not heavy, it’s Rossini! Specifically, The Barber of Seville (Il Barbiere di Siviglia; Opus Arte OA BD7218 D), possibly the most lighthearted yet skillfully wrought bit of nonsense the old boy ever came up with. When the Glyndebourne people decided to mount a new production of Barbiere on the 200th anniversary of its premiere, they knew they had to deliver.

What do you mean?

It’s an extremely popular show. Anyone with a working knowledge of old Bugs Bunny cartoons knows at least one of its big numbers.

People who love it want to see it treated with respect. How do you freshen a treasure like this without damaging its essential qualities? Here’s what Glyndebourne stage director Annabel Arden had to say:

Where I’m coming from, it’s all about playfulness, theatricality, light and movement. . . . From the first moments of the overture, the music sends you off into this region of pure delight. Rossini takes you off into this crazy world of music, this great champagne of life. There is not one bit of music in this opera that doesn’t scintillate or vibrate or move.

So she loves and understands the music. So what?

Don’t you realize how rare that is? The takeaway should be, don’t put anything onstage that sucks—excuse me, sucks away—the music’s energy. Ms. Arden does not. By letting the music tell us who they are and what they want, she lets Figaro, Rosina, Almaviva, and the others live. That’s all we need.

The costumes are a relaxed mashup of 18th-century, 21st-century, and Cirque du Soleil. They encourage your own fantasy, as does the eclectic set. The singers are ardent and young—except for Alessandro Corbelli, an absolute master of old-guy comic roles—and can they ever sing! (Rossini’s buffa singing demands a combination of flexibility and power that not everyone can deliver.) Here are Danielle de Niese, Taylor Stayton, and Corbelli showing us what they’ve got:

And here’s the trailer for the show:

You don’t really need to know more. Get it, you’ll love it.

Okay, wise guy. But why call this a “shallow pleasure”?

Everything is relative. Rossini’s characters barely possess two dimensions, let alone three. As long as they pour out that “champagne of life,” who cares? The plot is creaky. Are we really supposed to believe Count Almaviva has a better shot at Rosina if he pretends to be a lovesick, penniless poet? Turns out he does, because she’s ticked off at having to marry a rich old codger; maybe she figures every rich guy is old, odious, etc. etc. Best not overthink it—as long as this flea-bitten plot sets up a delightful series of fizzy situations, we’re good.

Got any counter-examples? Useful non-role-models?

Glad you asked. An admirable new production of La Bohème from Naxos (NBD0059; Blu-ray video) does a lot of things right. Full-voiced, youthful leads, excellent conducting from Christian Badea, fine work by the Malmö Opera Orchestra and Chorus. If you’ve always wondered what Bohème would look like if the folks from Rent got hold of it, here’s your answer. The production updates Henri Murger’s classic story of young “bohemians” making their way in Paris in the 1840s; director Orpha Phelan plops them down in the even tackier ‘hoods of 2016 Paris.

The problem is Puccini. By 1896, when he wrestled Murger’s already-nostalgic stories into a big slice-of-life opera, those stories had acquired an even deeper patina of romantic nostalgia. In Act I, Rodolfo woos Mimi with “Che gelida manina,” baring his soul bit by bit: he truly is a poet, truly is penniless. She responds with “Mi chiamano Mimi,” using everyday language to reveal her equally vulnerable, poetic soul. Puccini’s soaring music takes us into a realm where we desperately hope their love can take flight. We give ourselves over to their dream. Only by sustaining this deeply un-fizzy vision can we derive any pleasure, joy, or psychological sustenance from their story.

Phelan is enchanted, however, by Regieoper’s three r’s: realism, relevance, and relatability. The battered trash cans and soiled soccer-team jackets of the Malmö production rub our noses in it. It’s so not Puccini. (An embarrassing number of sung lines in the show no longer connect to what we’re seeing.) I’m not saying updates never work: Baz Luhrmann’s landmark productions (to which Phelan apparently pays homage with a few visual cues) kept nostalgia and romance alive by moving the setting to 1957 Paris. (Remember, the Golden Age is always forty years ago.)

Whether you’re a director or a performer, once you begin sneering at romantic nostalgia you lose the audience, and they begin to notice other things: Malmö’s Musetta doesn’t move too well, for example—no physical fizz from her, although the drama (and her music) demands it. And just when the big Act II ensemble needs to push ahead like a runaway trolley, it bogs down, offering over-isolated moments instead of momentum.

So: good shallow, bad shallow?

Uh huh. Let me squeeze in some of the former.

My Exhibit B for “good shallow” is Stravaganza d’Amore! The Birth of Opera at the Medici Court (Harmonia Mundi HMM 902286.87; 2 CDs). Director Raphaël Pichon and the singers and players of Pygmalion offer a “highlights reel” from an extremely limited repertoire: lavish one-of-a-kind court entertainments prepared for the Medici family between 1589 and 1611. Their thesis is that these glittering occasional works laid the groundwork for Monteverdi’s Orfeo and more; besides text translations, they include several learned essays and an extensive bibliography in the book bound with the CDs.

Great. A bunch of academics and SCA types doing their thing. Doesn’t sound redeemably “shallow” to me.

The thing is, you don’t need a degree in music or Renaissance history to enjoy these sounds. They’re designed to make a big splash, to impress the neighbors. Turn up the volume, then listen:

Oh auspicious day,
when Earth and Heaven
sing cheerfully together of joy and hope!

By carefully choosing and sequencing music from a range of historical materials, Pichon et cie. have prepared an ideal tasting menu for modern ears. No dead spots! Counterpoint-free! Every track a winner! Ear candy for Florentine One Percenters can now be yours!

Phoebus had not yet
brought day to the world,
when a damsel came
out of her house.
Unhappy maid, ah, no, no,
she can no longer bear such coldness. . . .
often she uttered
a heavy sigh from the heart.
Unhappy maid, ah, no, no. . . .

Stravaganza was well recorded, at (ta-da!) the Chapelle royale Versailles. Hope they make a high-res download available.

More, please.

Exhibit C: Attraction (Genuin GEN 17455), from percussionist Christoph Sietzen. Music by Emmanuel Séjourné, Iannis Xenakis, Arvo Pärt, and others. Don’t let that put you off. It’s percussion. There’s something primal about the sound of drums and other things you bang on. Even if it’s by Xenakis, your ears will rejoice.

I dunno. There’s no melody, no harmony. Doesn’t that make it harder to understand?

Au contraire, mon frére. That makes it easier. Listen to how beautifully and simply Xenakis structures his Rebonds A:

Look, you’re an audiophile. You like sound. Whether your system cost $2K or $200K, Sietzen’s virtuoso performances will–what’s the expression?–make it sing, and you’ll like that. (The Pärt transcriptions for marimba do have melodies and harmonies, incidentally.) You’ll be seduced by the transients, by the decay, by the rich mid-bass, by the soundstage. C’mon, you know you want some.

Alright, I give up. “Shallow” can be good. Maybe it’s all about what you bring to it.

I think you’re onto something, my friend.

(Bonus feature: click here for more virtuoso percussion playing. Thanks to Corinna da Fonseca-Wollheim.)