IPO opening night gala concert

Josef Bardanashvili has a lot to live up to by naming his specially commissioned piece Concerto for Orchestra, inviting inevitable comparisons with the Bartók classic. The first movement is based on the idea of perpetual motion, a perfectly apt description of the music. Written for a huge orchestral ensemble, the piece is full of startling percussion accents, with something seemingly always crashing, banging, or buzzing. After a slower middle movement, the finale returns to the manic energy of the opening.

I've always had my issues with the Sibelius Violin Concerto, which often feels more like an extended technical exercise than a true concerto. It may well be the busiest violin concerto in the repertoire, with the soloist playing almost continuously from the first note to the last, barely allowing the orchestra a moment in the spotlight. Nikolaj Szeps-Znaider plays it beautifully, however.  He doesn't bring the fire and passion that is required to make the performance truly shine, but he did bring a calm serenity to the work that is both refreshing and technically on point, particularly in the first movement., He follows it with an emotional speech to the audience, leading into a brief solo encore. By this point, we're eighty minutes into the program and haven't even reached the intermission, with an entire Mahler symphony still to come!

I attended the 2021 season-opening concert with Lahav Shani conducting, which also featured a Mahler symphony at the end of the evening. Back then, he nearly ground the proceedings to a halt with his penchant for micromanaging the orchestra and his lugubrious tempos. But that was five years ago.

Shani is still something of a micromanager, and the first movement suffered a bit from his insistence on imposing a grand symphonic sweep on everything, forcing the music to rise and fall in carefully sculpted waves. But he gradually settled in, and what followed was an excellent performance.

On the surface, Mahler's Fourth is his "happiest" and least demanding symphony -- it's his shortest (other than the 1st), uses smaller forces, requires "just" one singer, and so on.  Some conductors might mistake its apparent simplicity for a lack of interpretive challenges.  But that approach leads to dull Mahler more often than not. Shani goes well beyond that, capturing the kooky energy that so many conductors struggle to bring out. Lesser interpreters focus on the symphony's prettiness while overlooking its weirdness, but Shani finds plenty of room for both.

The performance was a bit on the slow side at 57 minutes, but it never dragged. The phrasing was clean and transparent throughout, and the music burst to life at all the right moments, particularly at the climax of the Adagio. Shani managed to balance the symphony's delicate charm with its more eccentric qualities, without sacrificing the momentum or sense of purpose.

All in all, I came away impressed. Shani has come a long way with Mahler since I last heard him, and now I'm especially looking forward to seeing him conduct the Second Symphony in a couple of months!

Music in Rochester

The hollowing out of the city’s downtown is sad to see, everything is grey, dull and under construction, and the streets are scarily empty even on weekday mornings. 

But the music scene in Rochester appears to be alive and well. Jazz in particular seems to be thriving: I saw posters for shows all over the city, at venues ranging from theatres and clubs to restaurants and music stores. Rochester also hosts an annual jazz festival each summer, while the large university population helps sustain a healthy live music scene throughout the year. And then there’s the Eastman School of Music, which undoubtedly ensures a steady supply of first-rate musicians in the live music scene.  

I also visited two music stores, both among the best I've ever been to. Each has a massive inventory of new and used vinyl and CDs, knowledgeable staff who are passionate about their jobs, and a regular schedule of live music. Both are located on the outskirts of the city, tucked into strip malls in quiet neighbourhoods where space is abundant and there's ample freedom to make noise in the evenings.

Record Archive is a massive warehouse of music, books, toys/merch, and electronics, boasting a 50-year history in Rochester.  The vibe is not unlike California's Amoeba Music, a colourful emporium of all things music-related, the kind of anything goes and everything sells store that has survived every fad and trend imaginable.  The back room looks like a great place to catch a show too, featuring more of a laid-back cozy vibe compared to the visual overload of the main store.  Vinyl records line the side of the bar, several glistening chandeliers hang from the ceiling, and a dino skeleton stalks next to the stage.  Notable purchase: my first EVER Rush purchase, the 40-th anniversary edition of "Hemispheres".  The latest reunion tour has put me in the frame of mind to finally discover Rush deep cuts, no, I can't really explain it either.   

Bop Shop has a different atmosphere entirely.  Whereas Record Archive is like a massive community bake sale and thrift shop, Bop Shop feels more like a carefully curated personal collection put up for sale by a couple of old school music junkies.  Their jazz selection appears second to none, and they regularly host jazz shows right in the centre of the store, clearing away part of their crowded inventory to do so.  I found about a dozen hard-to-find classical CD's (Philip Glass opera sets?) and would probably drop a fortune there on a regular basis if I lived in Rochester.  The inventory displayed in the store is actually a fraction of what they sell through Discogs and Amazon.  Managing those sales appears to be a full time job for the staff -- in-store sales are their side gig.      

The Pink/Ed Sheeran/Macklemore controversy

Ten years ago, getting kicked off a stadium tour in support of a star like Ed Sheeran would have been a career killer.  Voluntarily quitting such a tour would have been unthinkable.  Now it's not a career killer, it's a career maker.  The second act of Macklemore's career begins now.  With a precisely timed bit of political posturing, almost any washed up actor or musician can earn millions of dollars by cynically exploiting the suffering of the people they claim to be protecting, that's just the way things work these days.  Continued suffering equals more virtue signaling equals more money and fame for the podcasters, influencers, and wannabe activists.  It's a wonderful grift, it's easy to pull off, and it beats working for a living.

That's all I have to say about that zero talent POS Macklemore, he's a nobody and it's pathetic to see music critics who couldn't stand his music suddenly rally around him and excusing his obvious racism. 

What I really want to address is the widespread reaction to Pink's criticism of him.  The reaction to Pink's social media posts on this issue is part of a widespread problem within the music industry that never gets talked about -- the music industry is deeply, profoundly uncomfortable with the very idea of female Jewish artists.

Pink's comments boil down to just one simple thing: "I am a Jew, and this is my truth".  It shouldn't have been controversial.  People are entitled to their own truth and their own perceptions.  This has gone unquestioned by everyone on the left for years, particularly when the individual is a racial or cultural minority.  But when Pink "outed" herself as Jewish (I'm guessing that even many of her hardcore fans didn't know), the backlash was fierce.  Her stated experience, stated as part of a shared Jewish experience, was completely nullified.  This in part because the music industry (producers, A&R people, publicists, label owners, journalists...) have marginalized, downplayed, and actively covered up the Jewishness of female artists.  When Pink wrote what she did, her Jewishness was pushed into people's faces, they couldn't ignore it, and they had no idea how to handle it (in the sense that it was a "problem" that needed to be "handled" or "dealt with").  So they did the only thing they could do.  They criticized her.  Called her disgusting names.  Dismissed her feelings and experiences completely.  Pink broke the rules.  Simply existing as a proud female Jewish musician is outside the boundaries in which the industry normally operates.

This problem goes back decades.  The days of Barbra Streisand singing Jewish songs and being celebrated for her Jewishness are long past.  Whereas Jewishness for male artists is viewed as an asset -- a badge of coolness, particularly for New York based musicians for example -- such intellectual or cultural weight is never granted to female artists.  

At the height of her fame in the 80's, Susannah Hoffs' ethnicity was never discussed.  

Paula Abdul's heritage was completely obscured by the media.  Her work as a choreographer with the Laker Girls and the Jackson family led many to simply assume that she was African-American.  This assumption was never affirmed or denied.  Her ethnicity was left unspoken, and it's just as well, because no marketing executive possessed the knowledge or tact to market a Syrian Jewish singer to a largely pop/R&B American audience.  

Justine Frischmann was a key figure in 90's British music.  She was a fixture in the music press for years, both written about and photographed extensively.  I don't recall reading anything about her Jewish background in the press until she had left the music industry altogether.

Amy Winehouse might have been portrayed as a nice Jewish jazz singer at the start of her career, but by the time she became a major mainstream success, her heritage was a footnote.  The history of Jews in jazz music, her own family's musical history (her uncles were jazz musicians) and even the Jewish heritage of her long time producer and collaborator (Mick Ronson) could have made for an interesting framing device for her background and upbringing.  But instead, the narrative revolved around her substance abuses, public screw-ups, and her failed marriage. 

HAIM have never hid their Jewishness, but nearly every profile depicts them as sunny day California girls, the heirs to the FM radio cheer of Fleetwood Mac.  

And Pink?  Pigeonholed as a cookie cutter pop/R&B diva when she signed to Babyface's label, she later found her true voice on her second album "Missundaztood".  She is the most successful Jewish musician of the 21st century, with over 60 million albums sold and over a billion dollars drawn in concert.  Her 2023-4 tour is the highest grossing tour ever by a female artist not named Taylor Swift.  You'd think that with all that success, her heritage would be something to highlight, to celebrate, to inspire.  But Pink has never been portrayed that way.  Her Jewishness has been consistently ignored from the start of her career.  Until now, when it's become a cudgel to beat her over the head with.  

It doesn't matter one bit whether any of these women are religious, or secular, or Zionist, or not, or what have you.  At some point in their careers, journalists should have framed their Jewish upbringing in a context that illuminates who they are as artists.  But they didn't.  A marketing executive could have found a cute marketing angle.  They don't bother.  Female arists of other ethnicities get shown that respect.  Latin artists.  African Americans.  Dua Lipa.  But never Jewish female musicians.   

Music in Toronto

While driving in Toronto, I mostly flipped between Boom 97.3 (branded as 70's, 80's, and 90's hits) and CHFI ("Adult Hits").  Intuitively, these would seem like overlapping formats.  But "Adult Hits" includes the 00's and parts of the '10's, which forced me to conceptualize the likes of Britney Spears and Justin Bieber as "adult" hitmakers.  And in fact, the math checks out.  Britney's debut album was released 28 years ago, which is roughly the time between Bill Haley and the music I was hearing on the radio as a nine-year old.  Britney is very much part of the "oldies".  Teenage Bieber fans at the time of his debut are now college graduates in their late-20's/early-30's.  

One thing appeared to be constant across the radio dial -- repetition.  I drove around sparingly for two weeks and would somehow hear the same Bryan Adams songs over and over.  Glass Tiger (playing the CNE this year) and Gowan were also all over the format, which was a welcome refresher for me.  But still, with decades of music to draw from, how can this degree of repetition occur, Can-Con regulations or no Can-Con regulations?

Sonic Boom on Spadina feels more like a destination hangout than a music store these days.  The days of the cavernous warehouse on Bloor Street catering to hardcore crate diggers are long gone, it's hard to believe that this is still the same business under the same name.  Sonic Boom now carries vinyl (including a healthy rare and valuable vinyl section), CD's, turntables, books, music-related merch (pins, toys), and I doubt that their clientele has ever skewed so young.  It's the vibe you get when stepping into a place like Indigo, but for music instead of books.  People are there to stroll, browse, and chill, in addition to buying.  It's great to see, and I have never had this much fun shopping there.  

My biggest and most important music-related endeavor of the trip was cataloguing all my vinyl.  My discogs catalog began as a way to organize my classical music CD's.  I couldn't keep all the multiple recordings of the same works straight in my head.  Then I began to catalog all my CD's as well, partly to have an organized list, and partly because I found it to be fun and relaxing work in the evenings.  But the most valuable items in my collection are undoubtedly on vinyl.  I managed to catalog about 400 records -- nearly my entire collection.  About two-thirds of it is techno/electronic, mainly from the 90's and early 00's.  Gemini says I'm sitting on a "goldmine" -- an exaggeration, a typical AI asskiss -- but there are some valuable records in there.  Seven of them have a median price over 100 CAD in the Discogs marketplace.  My most valuable record overall is my 1991 pressing of "Loveless" that I first wrote about in a 2003 post.  All this cataloguing work is pushing me towards switching this blog to an exclusively YT format.  I still enjoy writing, but I could review rare and notable CD's and vinyl forever, and talk about what this music means to me.  There's no question that all this vinyl is far too interesting and valuable to be sitting in storage, and I'll have to come to a decision about it soon (sell, ship out, and/or show and tell).        

Boy George, "We Will Dance Again"

Let’s be real here.  This song is trash.  The fact that it was AI-generated helps explain why the backing track sounds like a parody of karaoke reggae .  The lyrics are clunky and awkward, to put it mildly.  There’s no obvious symbiotic connection between the music and lyrics – why is this a reggae song?  Couldn’t it have been house music, or acoustic pop, or any number of other genres while still broadcasting the same message?  There’s nothing about the lyrics that scream “cool reggae vibes” in the least.  The song comes across like something that was written and recorded in a day, in order to meet a deadline.  This won’t be blaring out of a car window or a club near you anytime soon.

And yet, it’s better than nothing, which is exactly what the music industry’s response to the Nova Festival massacre has been up until now.   Boy George is at least doing something.  He’s doing it for a cause he believes in, even if it costs him financially.  In the long term, he may even benefit.  Many loony left wing and right wing cranks have discovered that ditching a defensible political position and catering in Jew-hate to those who crave that sort of thing, is a financially lucrative career decision.  There’s a lot of money is Jew-hate right now.  There's also something to be gained by joining the other side.  Boy George may yet discover that after a career in the global pop sphere, he’d be better off focusing on more of a niche audience, the kind that will be receptive to the message of "We Will Dance Again". 

There’s really only one line in the song that matters: “But if you’re ever confused/I stand with the Jews”.  There’s nothing controversial about that.  His loyalty to his Jewish friends is commendable, he should be praised for it.  But the old line about being more Catholic than the Pope comes to mind.  Diaspora Jewish musicians can’t even defend their own.  Why does the responsibility fall on Boy George to do it?  This particular issue shouldn't be controversial in the least.  Hundreds were slaughtered at a music festival.  No matter your opinion on subsequent events, the event was horrific.  Kent State keeps an archive of music related to the 1970 shootings, which people still talk about decades later.  The shootings inspired dozens of recordings.  Boy George's song is the first Nova-inspired music by a major artist.  Why shouldn't there be more such songs?   

 

Brahms 1: Harnoncourt vs Toscanini

This is a study in contrasts. I could easily have picked another half-dozen conductors for this exercise and called them "polar opposites" in their approach to Brahms. Today, though, we're comparing two examples that I find particularly interesting: Toscanini with the NBC Symphony Orchestra (1951), a classic historical recording, and Harnoncourt with the Berlin Philharmonic (1997), a strikingly modern approach.

On paper, based on my usual tastes in conductors, Harnoncourt's approach shouldn't appeal to me, yet somehow it almost always does. His recordings are never my outright favourites of a particular work, but I appreciate them as an antidote to the countless same-same interpretations that dominate the catalogue. He favours relatively brisk tempos (although in this instance, his Brahms 1 runs for 47 minutes, well within the average range of performance times for the work), and he has a gift for making enormous orchestras sound like nimble chamber ensembles. Here he takes the Berlin Philharmonic—the embodiment of rich, luxuriant string tone during the Karajan era—and transforms them into a lean, hungry, almost scrappy orchestra. However, the playing is disciplined, sharp, energetic, and constantly alive.

Harnoncourt isn't the guy if you're looking for heart-on-sleeve, sweat-flying sentimentality.  But first, countless conductors aim for that sort of emotional excess and fail to get there.  Second, every now and then it's refreshing to have a change of pace and hear entirely different ideas applied to a familiar work. You can always count on Harnoncourt to try something different and to do it well.

Toscanini, by contrast, was one of the true giants of classical music, and this recording makes it immediately obvious why. It's breathless and exhilarating from start to finish. The momentum that sweeps you along for nearly the entire final movement, as the symphony reaches its triumphant conclusion, is virtually unmatched in recordings of this work.  If you want Brahms 1 as "Beethoven's Tenth", a performance that elevates it to sound like a monumental, epoch-defining symphony (which it undoubtedly is), then you can't do better than this performance. 

In rock music, there's the saying about how bands have their entire lives to write their debut album, but only a couple of years to write the follow-up. That's why debut albums by great bands are often their best work, and it also helps explain the infamous "sophomore slump." In classical music, there's no better example of this phenomenon than with Brahms.  He spent twenty years working on it in stages, and didn't finally perform it until he was in his forties.  He intended it to be a legacy-defining work, and keenly felt that it had to be a work to follow in the footsteps of Beethoven and other symphonic masters who had preceded Brahms.  Toscanini delivers the performance that makes good on that anticipation, his performance is a tour de force, and it comes across like a major event.

Def Leppard, "Live: In the Round, in Your Face"

It's no secret that AI-generated music has become one of the industry's biggest concerns—or greatest opportunities, depending on whom you ask—over the past few years.  Anecdotally, much of it is still easy to identify as artificial, and commentators such as Rick Beato have spoken about this at length. 

I think AI music presents a unique challenge because it's far sneakier than AI video. Videos are generally easier to spot: a video file contains vastly more information than an audio file, which means there are far more opportunities for the illusion to break down, far more work that needs to be done to fool the human brain.  Visual glitches and unnatural movements immediately attract attention.  AI music, on the other hand, is harder to pin down. Detecting it is often more instinctive than analytical—an "I'll know it when I hear it" feeling—whereas identifying AI video is, at least for now, based much more on specific visual evidence.

That brings me to this Def Leppard concert video, originally released in 1989, and one that I'd never seen before.  "Hysteria" was my favourite album for a solid year during the late 80's, and this video is simply breathtaking.  Watching it, I was fifteen again.  The sound is pristine, the band attacks every song with infectious energy, and there are several standout performances ("Animal" hit hard, and the semi-acoustic "Bringing On the Heartbreak" was an unexpected delight).  For anyone who loves the "Hysteria"-era, this video is a magical viewing experience.  But once the video was over, and I was done with tripping on this beautiful nostalgia, I went looking for confirmation of what I already knew.  Namely, what I had watched was not a genuine Def Leppard concert.

It isn't AI-generated, of course, or anything remotely like it. But the amount of overdubbing, post-production, and audio sweetening is impossible to ignore. It isn't merely enhancing the performance—it is the performance. What you're hearing is a beautifully choreographed and meticulously produced piece of musical theater, not Def Leppard live in any meaningful sense. The clues are everywhere. Joe Elliott's singing sounds remarkably strong throughout the songs, yet his speaking voice between some songs is noticeably hoarse.  The massed vocal harmonies are perfectly layered, clean, and undistorted in a way that only studio recordings tend to be, and bear little resemblance to the sound of a real arena concert.  The overall production is virtually indistinguishable from the album itself.   Rather than a polished soundboard recording, it feels like a studio recording synchronized to concert footage, with carefully applied arena-style reverb and crowd ambience to create the illusion of a live performance.

In this sense, the AI debate isn't entirely new. The debate is reshaped as the technology changes.  Sometimes the illusion gets in the way of a good performance, and sometimes it doesn't.  

*********************

(what follows is the response to my Gemini query regarding the production of this video)

The video you shared features Def Leppard's legendary 1988 Hysteria World Tour performance (historically captured in their concert film, Live: In the Round, in Your Face).

To answer your question directly: Yes, this recording contains a significant amount of studio post-production, overdubs, and audio enhancements.

Here is a breakdown of why it sounds so polished:

1. Extensive Studio Overdubbing

While the video footage is genuinely live from the McNichols Sports Arena in Denver and The Omni in Atlanta, the audio was heavily touched up in the studio before release. Def Leppard and their producer, Robert John "Mutt" Lange, were absolute perfectionists known for meticulous studio production. For the official release, a large portion of the lead vocals, massive backing vocal stacks, and guitar parts were re-recorded or heavily supplemented in the studio to fix mistakes and achieve that signature, wall-of-sound Hysteria texture.

2. Electronic Drums & Triggering

Following Rick Allen’s tragic accident, he returned to the band using a heavily customized, semi-electronic drum kit. On stage, his physical hits triggered pre-sampled and quantized acoustic and electronic drum sounds. While he was playing these parts live, the use of triggered samples inherently gives the live performance a highly consistent, perfect, "studio-like" precision.

3. Contrast with Raw Soundboard Bootlegs

If you listen to raw, unedited soundboard bootlegs or audience recordings from that exact same 1987–1988 tour, the difference is night and day. Live, Joe Elliott’s vocals were much more raw and strained under the grueling tour schedule, and the guitars were noticeably looser.

The official video release was intentionally engineered to sound like a flawless, high-energy extension of the studio album rather than a completely raw, documentary-style live capture.

Radio X's 25 Best Indie Albums of 1990

These days, most listicles are pseudo-spam, featuring dry, flaccid writing increasingly composed by AI-generated content farms.

But this particular list is really good!  The choices are rather narrow, covering mainly British indie rock from a single year (1990), but that happens to be the year that I spent more time listening to the radio than in any other year before or since (by far).  These bands were all over alternative radio in 1990, I was glued to Toronto's CFNY and not a day went by when I didn't hear a song by 5-10 of those bands.

I can group the albums on this list into categories:

1.  I listened to the albums religiously

Inspiral Carpets, Happy Mondays, Charlatans UK, The Cure.  Madchester was alive and well on my boombox throughout 1990.  Plus, you had the Cure discovering remix culture and becoming club staples for a year!  The Inspirals' "Life" is easily the best album in this group, and one of the most underrated albums from the late '80's-early '90's class of British indie rock pre-Britpop. The version I listened to was, naturally, the North American release that featured four tracks not on the UK/Europe edition.  Those extra tracks included the singles "Move" and "Commercial Rain" and boosted my impression of "Life" as a veritable "greatest hits" album masquerading as a debut album.    

2.  I didn't buy the album that year but these bands lived rent-free in my head because the singles were on the radio all the time.

The Beloved, Depeche Mode.  "Your Love Takes Me Higher" was a staple of Chris Sheppard's RPM nights, and I probably can't praise him enough.  More than anyone else, he was the DJ who turned me on to dance/club music.  That said, this is as good a place as any to note that Shep has been living off the grid for years, and even his close friends and family are unsure of his whereabouts.   

3.  I liked a select few singles and radio staples, but only bought the albums years later.

The La's, Ride, Cocteau Twins, Jane's Addiction, Sonic Youth, James.  

The Cocteau Twins are a major regret of mine, they were far too weird for me in 1990 but I have since elevated them to a godlike tier, at their best there was nobody better and it's a shame that I passed on seeing them live in the 90's.  By 1990, Jane's Addiction had become alternative rock royalty. You didn't have to like them, but you knew exactly who they were. Their music was impossible to escape, and whether or not you were a fan, you had to respect both their talent and at least a handful of their songs.  For me, Jane's Addiction always tried a little too hard to be provocative, their music was overly reliant on classic rock tropes, and I have never -- in almost any genre and any era -- taken much to LA bands.  And yet, I attended the first Lollapalooza and they pretty much blew me away and turned me into a fan (just in time for their breakup/extended hiatus). 

4.  I liked a select few singles and radio staples, but never did buy/hear the full album.

Breeders, Soup Dragons, Lightning Seeds, Sundays, Teenage Fanclub, PWEI.  Here I want to give a apecial mention to "Pure" by the Lightning Seeds, which was one of my favourite singles of the year, and is one of the best wistful/sad but ultimately uplifting pop songs you'll ever hear. The Soup Dragons' "I'm Free" was destined to be a one hit wonder but that one hit was wondrous during the few months that it was all over the radio. 

5.  Miscellaneous, was aware of their placement within the greater indie rock sphere but wouldn't have called myself a fan.  Going through them one by one: 

They Might Be Giants.  They annoyed me then, and they annoy me now.  

Carter USM.  Another annoying band but ultimately you had to kind of adore them because they were so committed to their style, a sort of hyper-British shouty electro punk.  By 1992 they were one of the biggest bands in Britain, but their peak was short lived and they were shunted aside once Britpop made its ascendance.  

The Mission.  Never cared much for them, or the Sisters of Mercy vs Mission feud.  The Sisters were immeasurably better, and I don't think there's any serious dispute about that these days.

The Fall.  My first memory of then-contemporary Elton John was "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues", because that was the song that was in the charts when I first started actively following the charts at age 9.  Thus, by sheer coincidence of timing, that's a signature Elton John song for me.  Similarly with The Fall, "Telephone Thing" was my first association with their music, leading to me to mistakenly believe that they were a quirky TMBG-like oddball band.  I'd learn what they were really about later on, and even see them play live twice.  To use another example, with the aforementioned Cocteau Twins, that first association was "Iceblink Luck". Every time I've heard it over the past thirty years, it has carried a special twinge of nostalgia, as though it has always been—and always will be—their signature song, even though it really isn't.  But at least that's still part of the Cocteau Twins' peak run.   

House of Love.  Great band that sounds better now than they did then.  

Nick Cave.  I didn't care much for Cave back in 1990, but as I've grown older I've come to appreciate his gruff intensity and deeply personal reflections on aging and mortality.

Pixies.  I recently wrote about my non-fandom of the Pixies.  I think I used to switch off the radio or change the channel when their music came on.  I didn't like Black Francis' voice and didn't connect to their music.  In my defense, "Velouria" was the radio hit in 1990, and I don't think it's aged well at all compared to most of their classic material. 

Eurovision 2026

The Eurovision final delivered the goods last night: strong performances, an unusually balanced jury vote that left the competition wide open heading into the televote, and a somewhat surprising but certainly deserving winner.   When all the numbers are tallied, I think the fears of disastrous viewership numbers due to this year's "controversies" will be  mostly unfounded.  Historically, Eurovision viewership peaked in 2016, when 42 countries took part. From 2023 to 2025, 37 countries competed and audience figures remained remarkably steady. This year, five countries that participated in 2025 chose to boycott, but several others returned, resulting in a net decline of just two countries, from 37 to 35.

Early reports indicate that viewership is down, but countries representing 80 million people sat out, so some drop is expected.  Among participating countries, Germany's numbers dipped slightly but remained strong.  Numbers in France and the UK took a significant hit, but both performed poorly in the final: the UK got zero points from the televote, and France were near the bottom.  I actually felt a 

bit bad for both. I have followed LOOK MUM NO COMPUTER's YT channel for years and he's an incredible talent, but is completely the wrong guy for this kind of competition.  He tried hard but the UK organizers knew they were throwing him to the wolves, and the UK public hated the song, so why should anyone else get invested in it?  I liked the French song but the public obviously didn't, and Eurovision is all about forging an instant connection with a finicky public.  To sum up, viewership appears to have declined most sharply in countries who competed with sub-standard songs.  People are less likely to watch if they don't like the song and they perceive that their broadcaster is simply phoning it in with a poor song and/or performer.  Among the countries that fielded competitive entries, I'm sure the viewership numbers will turn out just fine.  

As for the boycotting countries, in last year's Eurovision, Ireland and Slovenia failed to qualify for the final, while Spain and Iceland finished 24th and 25th. Iceland were crushed by the jury vote and earned zero points, possibly due to the plagiarism scandal regarding their blatant rip-off of an Israeli song.  The Netherlands had a respectable 12th place finish.  What can we learn from these results? It's much easier to stage a "boycott" when your songs and artists have badly underperformed, necessitating a one-year reset.  Pointing fingers at others and engaging in a largely performative "boycott" as a cover for those failures is a convenient face-saving excuse, nothing more.  

As for Israel supposedly manipulating the televoting, they finished third, so I guess they didn't manipulate hard enough.  More surprising was their 8th place finish in the jury votes (what, were those voted manipulated too??)  I have yet to see any evidence that Israel engages in campaigning that is any different than what many other countries are doing virtually every year.   And all of it pales in comparison to the palm greasing that goes on every year in the lead up to awards shows like the Oscars.  

Instead of asinine conspiracy theories, let's just focus on the more obvious and sensible explanation: a lot of people really liked "Michelle".  Heck, even the protesters in the audience were dancing during the semi-final! And the mathematics of what it takes to win hasn't changed since my post from last year.  We should be able to agree on one thing however: no amount of campaigning could possibly undermine the integrity of the competition than opening the voting for the final before the first song is performed.

Linking Philadelphia soul and the Philadelphia Orchestra

I am completely unqualified to write about this topic, let's get that out of the way now.  However, a potential connection between the Philly soul sound of the 70's and the sound of the Philadelphia Orchestra from the same era feels significant, and it's not something that I can recall reading about in any standard music history accounts.   

The Philadelphia International Records label was founded by Kenneth Gamble and Leon Huff in 1971.  It was an alternative of sorts (not sure whether it was termed as such at the time) to the Muscle Shoals brand of gritty, blues-heavy soul.  The Philly sound was lush, smooth, with complex orchestration and rich string accompaniments.  Songs by Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes, Lou Rawls, and Patti LaBelle became massive hits.  The O'Jays built an incredible discography, and for my money, stand out as one of the most underrated bands of all time.  One can draw a direct line between the Philly groups and the disco music that came to define the 70's.  

Somehow, all this great music went underappreciated by the industry at large.  Gamble and Huff won their first Grammy in the late 80's -- for Simply Red's cover of "If You Don't Know Me By Now".  Today, the Philly sound is rightly revered for the high quality of the music as well as the many innovations made by its creators.  

At the same time, the Philadelphia Orchestra had reached its peak under Eugene Ormandy, who served as its musical director from 1936-1980.  They made hundreds of recordings together during that time.  The orchestra's sound was wholly distinctive, due to its heavy, dramatic string sonority.  Ormandy was disliked by classical music critics, for reasons that look embarrassing through modern eyes.  He was a tremendous conductor in virtually all sub-fields of orchestral music.  Was the Philadelphia Orchestra's sound considered too kitschy, unworthy to be considered amongst the high art of other leading orchestras?  The likes of Karajan and Szell were steely traditionalists, proudly carrying the mantle of careful precision and skillful musicianship in the classical music world.  The industry marketed their recordings far more aggressively than they did for Ormandy's.  The whole "controversy" just feels silly now.  Many major orchestras of that era could reach a godlike tier on most nights, and Philadelphia was just as great as any of them.      

Philly soul and Philly classical were peaking in the same city at the same time, and their string heavy characteristics sounds were mirror images of each other.  This simply can't be a coincidence.  And yet I can't find any references to a specific connection between the two, or rock/soul criticism that makes the comparison.  

Thom Bell was the main orchestrator and arranger for Philadelphia international.  He gave a number of interviews throughout the years.  His RnR HOF page notes that he was influenced by Beethoven and Burt Bacharach.  He was classically trained and aspired to be a concert pianist.  By his own admission, classical music was his life growing up and he knew virtually nothing about pop music through his late teens.  Musicians from the Philadelphia Orchestra played the string arrangements on the soul records he worked on.  It is inconceivable that he wasn't seeped in the sound of the Philadelphia orchestra by the time he began working with Gamble and Huff. However, I can't find any explicit statement by Huff, Gamble, or Bell about their classical influences.  They never claimed to be influenced by Ormandy and the wholly unique Philly classical sound.  

The closest thing I could find is Bell's "cheese steak" story.  According to him, it's not just that Philly has the best cheese steak sandwiches anywhere in America.  More than that, any mom and pop sandwich shop makes a better cheese steak than any restaurant in any city in American could hope to do.  Because the cheese steaks, according to Bell, are embedded in the Philadelphia culture in a way that no other city could duplicate.  And that's the origin of the Philly sound.  It's not taken from a specific time and place, passed linearly from artist A to B.  It was sewn into the fabric of the city.  One must look at the whole to appreciate the constituent parts.  And that whole obviously includes the Philadelphia Orchestra.