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.  

Bruckner Symphony no. 6 DUEL -- Klemperer/New Philharmonia vs von Karajan/Berliner Philharmoniker

I am extremely proud of my ranking of Sibelius Fifth Symphonies, but it was an exhausting post to write.  I had planned to turn it into a semi-regular series of posts -- next up was Bruckner's Seventh Symphony -- but right now, the investment feels too daunting.   So here's a more manageable alternative: a classical DUEL between two radically different interpretations of a work. 

As artists, Klemperer and Karajan are about as far apart as you can get, beyond their status as legends of the "standard German repertoire". Klemperer: steely tempos, stoic execution, and a transparent sonority in which every line is audible. Karajan: sweeping gestures, a flowing approach, and lush string textures that tend to swamp everything else.

Klemperer’s idiosyncrasies can sometimes tread close to the edge of a precipice -- in this instance, I'm referring to his tendency to take fast movements slowly (or at least slower than usual), and slow movements relatively briskly. The first movement unfolds at something close to a funeral-march pace, threatening to collapse under its own weight, yet somehow never doing so. He sustains a gritty, unyielding tension for nearly seventeen minutes—astonishingly, about two minutes longer than his account of the Adagio. And yet, the famously unsentimental Klemperer still finds a lyrical thread running through it all.

I’ve often found Bruckner’s adagios to be overlong (sacrilege, I know), but here Klemperer threads the needle, keeping things moving at a serene, unforced pace. Then, as is his wont, apparently because he couldn't help himself, he gives in to his contrary self and he stretches the scherzo past nine minutes, stripping it of the explosive urgency most conductors bring to Bruckner’s dance movements. It feels like a misfire—though not one that derails the symphony as a whole. After all, Bruckner did mark it “nicht schnell—langsam.” Perhaps Klemperer knew something that we (amateur listeners and professional conductors both) don't.

In the finale, he draws out the symphony’s more pastoral qualities, bringing the woodwinds to the fore. By the end, you could be forgiven for forgetting that you’re listening to Bruckner—until the final coda snaps you back into full, bracing Brucknerian reality.

Karajan, by contrast, launches the symphony full of FIRE, charging headlong into the opening, raging into the blinding light. This was, I believe, his only recording of the Sixth (and one he apparently never performed live), and in 1979 he had the Berlin Philharmonic under absolute control. The playing is disciplined, the strings are locked in to producing the sweeping, cascading sonorities he favored.

The adagio is slow indeed -- nineteen minutes, four slower than Klemperer -- but is beautifully paced.  In Karajan’s hands, it becomes perhaps Bruckner’s most “romantic” slow movement in the modern definition of the word: the love theme to an 80's movie about doomed, starcrossed lovers. The scherzo is nothing short of triumphant, easily surpassing Klemperer in terms of sheer excitement and drive.

But then, in the finale, Karajan does something unexpected: he slows things down, almost channeling Klemperer. Presumably he’s aiming for heightened drama, but without Klemperer’s transparency, all we hear are broad waves of sound, simply the volume rising and falling repeatedly.  Each time the orchestra fades out all too often, some of the piece's momentum vanishes, and it never really returns.  At first, I found the final coda to be needlessly overwhelming, with the brass too dominant, though I’ve now come to appreciate its impact.

Both interpretations are well worth hearing. But for me, Klemperer remains a kind of supergenius, operating on a wavelength the rest of us can only dimly perceive. Even when he’s not at his absolute best, I’ll take a mostly “on” Klemperer over just about anyone else in this repertoire.

90's nostalgia

I had a yen to hear Sonic Youth’s "Total Trash", which quickly spiraled into a YouTube-assembled playlist of late ’80s/early ’90s indie rock—Pixies, Blur, PJ Harvey, Galaxie 500, and more. What can you say, the algorithm knows what it’s doing. It starts with my search (Sonic Youth), pulls in the obvious contemporaries (Pixies), and then folds in the British acts it knows I like. It’s a formula that’s pretty much guaranteed to keep me listening.

It’s 2026, and I still haven’t heard a Pixies album, back to front, in my life. ’80s and ’90s American indie rock is a real blind spot in my listening—I grew up hearing about it, reading about it, but never really listened to it beyond the tracks that made it onto alternative radio. There are plenty of gaps in anyone’s musical life, of course, but this one stands out given my other listening habits.

So the algorithms keep assuming this was my thing, even though it never was. As a result, I’ve probably heard more Pixies songs in their post-reunion lifespan than I did during their original run. Still, I’ve heard enough to say what everyone already knows: this band was at least five years ahead of their time. Good thing they eventually put their differences aside and cash in, finally getting the chance to make the money their imitators enjoyed."

The mythology of the ’90s is now every bit as strong as the mythology of the ’60s once was. Bands get defined by that era, and it sticks with them no matter what they do afterward. Jefferson Airplane and The Kinks, for example, are forever labeled as ’60s bands, even though both were actually more commercially successful in the ’80s.

As for Kim Deal, the Pixies will always be her ultimate legacy, even though she had more commercial success outside of the Pixies, and was a bigger individual star when she led her own band.   This remains true even though she has spent much of her adult life trying to move beyond the Pixies. After falling out with Black Francis over creative and personal differences, she formed the Breeders and released Last Splash, which sold over a million copies and far outperformed anything the Pixies did commercially. She released music only sporadically after that, eventually rejoining the Pixies for their to tour the world many times over, before stepping away again when new recordings began.  Good for her for cashing in when the opportunity was there—she earned it. But the Pixies will always define her legacy, even if the "Cannonball" single remains her true commercial (MTV, sales) and creative peak.

Similarly, Gorillaz have somehow recorded as many albums as Blur (nine) and have sold at least ten times as many copies.  But Damon Albarn will always be the frontman of Blur first and foremost.  

Sonic Youth’s trajectory is wild, and becomes more fascinating and debatable with the passing years. "Daydream Nation": every track is a revelation, each one is an anthem for a generation. It’s even in the National Recording Registry at the Library of Congress. Then "Goo": much in the spirit of "Daydream Nation", but filtered through major-label oversight. The "Kool Thing" single threw in everything but the kitchen sink in a bid for something resembling a commercial breakthrough. That track has everything -- wild noise freakouts, the Chuck D cameo, a singable chorus, an eye-catching video with Kim Gordon in leather, cats galore, and metric tons of sparkle and tinfoil. In some alternate, freakier universe, this is the album that breaks bigger than "Nevermind".

And then, just two years later, they’re putting out "100%" and "Sugar Kane", and they're sounding like an ordinary grunge-esque band—albeit one with stranger guitar tunings.

Various, "Tresor 4 -- Solid"

As I alluded to a few weeks ago, I could keep this blog going indefinitely by revisiting and reevaluating CD's from the 90's.

For instance, take the series of compilations released by Tresor.  I own numbers 2 through 8, with the exception of number 6.  It's safe to say that Tresor II and 3 are the most well-regarded, most influential, and probably were the biggest sellers of the series. They were released at the height of the Berlin-Detroit alliance (hence the name of II), where all roads in techno seemed to lead to those two cities.  The Berlin wall had come down just a few years earlier.  The club scene in Berlin was taking off, synergy between European and American techno artists was never higher.  

At the time, I listened to Tresor 3 more than any of the others.  I would have put Tresor II slightly below it, although any argument claiming it as the best of the series would be difficult to refute.  But each compilation went into heavy rotation on my stereo when they were released.  With the exception of Tresor 4.  I have no idea why.  In fact, I can't even remember where and when I bought it.  It was possibly years after the Tresor 2000 compilation, many years after it was originally released.  And I never particularly took to it.  Tresor 5, on the other hand?  At the time, I felt it symbolized muscular, slamming mid-90's techno at its best.  Tresor 2000?  Pounding, cavernous minimal techno long before it became synonymous with Berlin culture. 

But now?  Those compilations are a bit bland.  As part of a DJ set they would probably still slam, but as individual tracks on a 70-minute disc?  Too monotone, lacking in hooks (Tresor 2000 in particular).  What about Tresor 4, the one I would have designated as the runt of the litter.  Hearing it now, it's simply outstanding.  It's packed with classics ("Relish", "Der Klang der Familie", "Think Quick"), with more variations in mood and tempo than the average Tresor comp, which makes for more engaging home listening.  And the second disc!  I'd nearly forgotten that there was one.  The second disc is an excellent mix CD featuring many of the artists on the first disc.  It's sloppy in places, but the vision and momentum is there, it's safe to say that this disc never "loses the floor".  

Why did I ignore this compilation for so many years?  I really have no idea.  Maybe I felt it was unnecessary because I already had so many other records and discs by some of the artists (e.g. Maurizio, Vainqueur)?