Atlantic Rock and Roll Series

This box set collects six albums by six giants of 50's rock and roll and R&B.  Don't be misled by commenters arguing about the genre categorization of this music.  The line between R&B and R'n'R in those was mostly nonexistent.  The distinction mainly came down to marketing, which in turn was largely due to race.  When Atlantic released a Ray Charles album and promoted it as rock and roll, they were actively trying to reach a white audience.  The music was the music regardless.  

When these albums were first released, they didn't contain entirely new music.  They were, and are, compilations of the artists' biggest hits recorded throughout the decade to that point.  Ray Charles' album comes closest to sounding like a modern album, with varying styles and tempos sequenced into a coherent multi-track journey, rather than a random assortment of unrelated tracks.  Joe Turner's is entirely homogeneous in tempo, feel, and lyrical cadence, it's almost like a reggae compilation with repeated toasting over the same riddim.  It's quite obviously a collection of singles that was never meant to be heard in one sitting.  And yet, it's by far the most breathlessly exciting material in the box.  Turner's album is packed with classics ("Shake, Rattle and Roll", "Honey Hush", "Chains of Love") that transcend time,  they simply never fail to set your heart racing.  

Clyde McPhatter's voice is sublime but his album is the most restrained in the set.  Ruth Brown was a blueprint for rock and rock years before it was named as such.  She could be gritty and intense, or sweet and soothing depending on what the song demanded.  For black audiences, she was the queen of R&B but with more polish in her voice could be relatable to whites as well.  This album shows her talent and versatility exceptionally well.

La Vern Baker's voice could cut through a block of stone, when she meant business she really meant it -- check out "Jim Daddy"or "How Can You Leave a Man Like This".  The lyrics of the latter are rather uncomfortable to listen to these days, but you can't fault her blistery, impassioned delivery.  The songs aren't always the strongest, but that's no fault of hers.  Finally, according to the notes on the original back cover of the album, Ivory Joe Hunter didn't like being tagged as a blues singer.  That's marketing speak for "he's a blues singer that we're targeting for crossover appeal".  It's not surprising that he never did cross over into the mainstream, despite his prolific output and multi-genre talents (blues, country, R&B) he was just too esoteric for a large national audience.

I would recommend this set for the great music and the even better history lesson.       

Sinopoli's Bruckner 7 (Deutsche Grammophon 1993)

Before listening to this recording with the Staatskapelle Dresden, I was aware of the criticism surrounding Giuseppe Sinopoli's conducting style. I knew about his obsession for micromanaging his the sound of his recordings, his penchant for subjecting everything he touched under a mountain of oppressive strings.  I didn't care.  For me, these descriptions seemed simply wonderful.  Sure enough, I found this recording of Bruckner's 7th to be immensely powerful, if you take it for what it is.      

It amounts to nothing less than a shoegaze version of the symphony, nearly every great moment of note is choked to the gills by an immense wall of  sound dominated by strings.  Make no mistake, this is the sound brought forth by the conductor, not a characteristic style of the orchestra.  Jochum's recordings of the Bruckner symphonies with the same Dresden orchestra sound nothing like this.  I say that even while admitting, in all honesty, that Jochum's versions are most likely the best overall, the apex of all Bruckner recordings.  

In Sinopoli's take, you can't hear all of the instruments.  I know that transparency and clarity of the different parts of the orchestra is integral to the performance ... most of the time.  It simply doesn't matter here.  Much like with MBV's "Loveless" (to name the most obvious example from shoegaze), it makes no sense to complain about not being able to understand the lyrics, or to gripe about the imbalance between guitars and drums.  Likewise, I don't see the point of complaining about the brass section getting drowned out during the climaxes, or the relatively colourless woodwind sonority.  It's all about the rich, zen-like droning strings.  Everything they say about Sinopoli is true, his fans and his critics have both got it right. It's simply a matter of deciding whether you, the listener, like hearing the music performed in this way.

The return of Depeche Mode

I wrote a post last year in memory of the late Andy Fletcher, but it might as well have been a eulogy for the entire band.  Little did I know that a new album had largely been written, albeit not recorded, and a world tour was in the works.  

Veteran superstar touring acts like The Rolling Stones and Bruce Springsteen have always ensured that the show goes on, defying any concepts of age and personal tragedy.  Charlie Watts dies and the Stones keep chugging along.  Clarence Clemons passes away, and his son joins the E-Street Band in his place.  I never expected Depeche Mode to be one of those bands, even though their every four years album and tour schedule has been entrenched for decades.  

I haven't heard "Memento Mori" yet, but "Ghosts Again" is probably their best single in over a decade.  Watch the video and the familiar sights and sounds are all there -- Anton Corbijn's dystopian black and white urban landscapes, all-black wardrobes and dark sunglasses, standoffish rock star cool, growling synth melodies and lamentations on death in yet another pseudo-revival of the "Black Celebration" narrative.  It's nothing new but it's wonderful to see.

Speaking of wonderful to see, I watched a fan video of the encore from their first concert of the tour and it's almost enough to erase the bad memories of the pandemic.  In the darkest days of 2020 I feared that stadium and arena concerts might never return, but despite years of delays and the death of a founding member, here they were again, Depeche Mode performing their hits on a huge stage, a triumphant return to the new normal.  Performing a duet of "Waiting For the Night", Dave Gahan and Martin Gore looked thin and fit, their voices are as pure and as powerful as any time over the past thirty years.  They surveyed the crowd and couldn't have looked more happy to be there, and to be standing shoulder to shoulder with each other.  The rest of the encore -- "Just Can't Get Enough", "Never Let Me Down Again", and "Personal Jesus", a combined 113 years old between the three -- continue to sound timeless.     

John Gay, "The Beggar's Opera", realized by Benjamin Britten

Fourteen months after the last post in the series, finally, it's the ninth in a series of albums that I haven't heard in over twenty years, since the start of this blog in January 2020.  

I had read the text of the play but I knew that the phenomenon that was "The Beggar's Opera" is somewhat lost without the music to accompany the words, so I bought these discs to experience it in full.  I had the slightest clue about who Britten was, his importance to post-WWII British music, or his reputation as an opera composer.  I bought the only version of the piece that I could find.  

To tell the truth, I hadn't cared much for the play.  Compared to the Restoration comedies that I loved from the previous generation of British writers, the text is lacking in wit, the characters are simplistic, the plot is drearily straightforward and bereft of true twists and surprises, with a clumsy deus ex machina ending that confuses and frustrates rather than providing a cause for celebration. If I had heard a musical arrangement that was close in spirit to the light, baroque airs that the original text stipulates, perhaps I could have gained more of an appreciation for the work.  Britten's realization is none of those things.  I was looking to flip my opinion of "The Beggar's Opera", and Britten was just about the worst possible composer to help me along.  

The music is characteristically Britten.  The orchestra is rather small (just fourteen players credited) but rich with unusual sonorities, and upfront and jarring percussion.  The overall effect is one of a much larger ensemble, as such, the musical arrangements take on more of a starring role than in the more "literal" adaptations.  A key element of "The Beggar's Opera" was its satirical interpretation of early 18th century Italian opera.  With larger than life divas supplanted by lowly thieves and miscreants, and the high drama of opera composition replaced by innocent English ballads that Gay's audience would have been completely familiar with, the irony in the presentation would have been impossible to ignore.   Britten's re-interpretation removes those chaste, innocent qualities from the music and presents something far more sinister.  One cannot forget for a moment that these are low-lifes singing along to a soundtrack meant for thieves.   Many musical phrases have uncomfortable resolutions, and unflinchingly displeasing conclusions.  

The pacing of the opera is still not much to my taste.  The vacillation between text and brief musical airs is dizzying.  What passes for action in the text is given little room to develop or breath through such short snippets of dialogue, and the same can be said for the short ballad airs (fifty five of them in all).  But Britten is a composer whose work rewards repeat listens, the music is dense and fascinating.   

Professor of Rock: Top Ten from February 7, 1984

If you were a music fan in the 80's, there's something for you on Professor of Rock's (Adam Reader) channel.   His  unapologetic championing of the era's music is admirable, albeit repetitive.  If never watched another music related channel, you'd think that no good music was made after 1987 or so.  You have to admire someone so devoted to his craft, even though his concept of "classic" music is so narrow in time and scope.     

One of the recurring segments on his channel is a countdown of the top ten songs in the US on that date in music history.  He also "re-ranks" the top ten in terms of total streams/views since they were released, to come up with a revised chart that reflects those song's long term impact. I'm not certain of his methods (streams and views on which platform?   During which years?  And if the goal is to gauge impact why don't sales count for anything?) but it makes for interesting debate material.  

Recently, he covered the top ten from 39 years ago, the week of February 7, 1984.  This is right up my alley.  He claims that 1984 was the best ever year for music, and he may well be right.  This was the first year that I followed the pop charts religiously, each week, for an entire calendar year.  Looking over Billboard's list of the Top 100 Singles of 1984, I know nearly every one of those one hundred songs with the possible exception of two or three, and can sing or hum excerpts from each of them from memory from the place I'm sitting in now.  It was a formative time in my beginnings as a music fan, so of course my memories will be hopelessly subjective, but that's OK.  Some people claim that the best music ever made is the music you listened to when you were sixteen.  That age might vary by a few years depending on who is making the claim, but I can't recall the number going as young as ten.  The rational, I believe, is that high schoolers rely on music to shape their identity and personality, but once you hit your 20's and have matured into your (mostly) fully formed adult self, music as a consequence starts losing its ability to make a lasting impression.   

There's a good argument to be made there, but my experiences fall well outside those parameters.  In 1984, I followed the charts like they were sports.  I clipped the CHUM charts from the newspaper each week as if they were the boxscores of games, I made a point of studying them and memorizing them, knowing the stats behind the songs (how many weeks at #1, in the top ten, etc.).  I wrote about this at some length in a post from over twenty years ago.  I had no money to buy records or tapes, the nearest music shop was a twenty minute walk from our house (too far for me to venture on my own).  We didn't get MTV in Canada, and in February 1984, Much Music was about six months away from its initial launch.  I learned the music by listening to the radio constantly, devouring nightly broadcasts and especially the countdown shows.  I knew the top 40 each week but that's all I knew at the time.  There was no "alternative", no niche genres to discover, but it was nevertheless my first attempt at a musical identity that was independent of the music my parents owned and listened to.  And that's how a ten year old became more deeply versed in the minutiae of the pop charts than at any point in my life since.   

Here is that top ten from thirty nine years ago: 

10.  Elton John, "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues"  

9.  Christopher Cross, "Think of Laura"

8.  John Cougar Mellencamp, "Pink Houses"

7.  Lionel Richie, "Running With the Night"

6.  Genesis, "That's All"

5.  Van Halen, "Jump"

4.  Yes, "Owner of a Lonely Heart"

3.  The Romantics, "Talking In Your Sleep"

2.  Kool and the Gang, "Joanna"

1.  Culture Club, "Karma Chameleon"

It's the fifth year of the decade, and the top ten is dominated by ... notable acts of the 70's, in various stages of adjusting to the challenges of being pop stars at the dawn of the music video era.  We have prog rock bands figuring out how to write four minute manifestos for mainstream radio (Yes, Genesis), and 70's megastars reinventing themselves for a newer, younger audience that might not have known their earlier hits (Elton John, Kool and the Gang, Van Halen, Lionel Richie).  Regarding that latter point, "I Guess That's Why They Call It the Blues" was my first memory of Elton John as a contemporary pop star, "I'm Still Standing" was my favourite song of his (mainly thanks to its memorable video), and I didn't become familiar with his 70's megastardom hits until years later.  Similarly, "Jump", "Joanna", and "Owner of a Lonely Heart" were my introduction to each of those acts.

These days, I think The Romantics are remembered for the sound of their debut album, but "Talking In Your Sleep" was their most successful song by far. Christopher Cross debuted in 79 and was a force at the top of the charts in the early 80's, but his music was a holdover from the mellower FM soft rock of the 70's.  John Cougar Mellencamp also began his career in the 70's and found considerable success in the 80's, but his brand of heartland rock isn't characteristic of that decade.  More than any other song on this list, "Pink Houses" could have been released as-is and found a willing audience in just about any decade since the 70's. That leaves us with just one absolutely no doubt quintessential unmistakably 80's act -- Culture Club.  It should come as no surprise that they are #1 on the revised chart too unsurprisingly the retroactive #1 too (from least to most streams/views: Lionel Richie, Christopher Cross, Kool and the Gang, Mellencamp, Genesis, Romantics, Elton John, Yes, Van Halen, Culture Club).   

Where were all the 80's giants?  Michael Jackson was between "Thriller" singles.  Hits from albums by Duran Duran and Cyndi Lauper were several weeks away from peaking.  Tina Turner's triumphant comeback was a few months away.  Madonna, Bruce Springsteen, and Prince would release decade defining albums only later in the year.  With these unusual set of circumstances, the odds and sods 70's continuation acts were able to sneak in and take over the top of the pop charts.    

"Suede: The Insatiable Ones", dir. Mike Christie

This was a bit of a letdown after reading/enduring the raw outpouring of emotion in Brett Anderson's two books.  However, it does communicate the notions of fun and contentment that Brett's writing mostly lacks.  As a lighter look at Suede and their many accomplishments, one could certainly do worse.  And the documentary ends on a high note, with their 2010 reunion show at the RAH and subsequent return to recording and touring.  

Simon Gilbert's handheld camera archive is the drawing card of the documentary, but most of what we see are fast cut camera edits, with no sense of time and place and action.  They're really just a collection of random band photos spanning the first decade or so of Suede's existence.  If you're hoping for a fly on the wall, "Don't Look Back" type of capture of the times, it's not here.

I enjoyed the scenes where Brett tours around the neighbourhoods where he grew up and where he lived in London as an adult.  This provides air and colour to the sepia scenes that he describes in his books.  Justine Frischmann appears on camera and has nothing but good things to say about her time in Suede, she comes across as the wise insider turned outside, the voice of truth in nearly all her scenes.  Neil Codling speaks poignantly about his illness in the late 90's and early 00's, and the pain in his eyes is nearly unbearable as he describes the permanent changes in his personality even after "recovering", clearly the trauma of those years has never really gone away.       

Brett Anderson, "Afternoons With the Blinds Drawn"

This is the follow-up autobiography to Anderson's "Coal Black Mornings", which I read over three years ago.  Anderson is upfront about his intentions with the book from the opening pages.  He doesn't want to recount the post-1992 Suede narrative that fans already lived through and know quite well.  Instead, the book functions as an extended therapy session/confessional episode for Anderson, an opportunity to examine the past by applying the knowledge and self-awareness he has gained since those heady days.  As a result, "Afternoons" is a bleak, almost depressing read compared with with "Coal Black Mornings".  The first volume was full of dense, flowery writing about unusual minutiae, but by the end there was a palpable sense of excitement and anticipation for what was to come.  Reading the book made me appreciate the unconventional journey that led to Suede's well-earned success.  But there is very little joy in "Afternoons".  Being in Suede comes across as a grueling ordeal (albeit a rewarding one that produced some of the finest music of the 90's), full of near-disastrous mistakes and countless regrets.  

I think it's important for Suede fans to read this, because there's a certain brand of honesty that is rare in music bios.  For instance, he's extremely frank about criticizing his own music, and isn't shy about flat out staying that certain songs (and even albums) were horrible and should have never been released.  Anderson owns up to his poor treatment of friends and bandmates, and goes into thoroughly unglamorous detail about his years of drug addiction.  There's virtually nothing along the lines of amusing road stories, name-dropping, or interactions with other bands or music industry types beyond that of his inner circle.  His bandmates of over thirty years, Mat Osman and Simon Gilbert, are nearly invisible in his story.  I found myself agreeing with his perspectives on the 90's more often than not.  "Coming Up" is presented as his proudest achievement because the hype machine had already chewed up Suede and left them in the trashbin.  "Coming Up" was their most commercially successful album, but if you weren't there at the time, you might view it as an inevitability considering the still ongoing quality of music being made by the post-1996 lineup of the band.  Make no mistake, many people thought Suede were done as a creative force once Bernard Butler left.  Brett gets it exactly right in his retelling.  

One surprise in the book is his repeated laments about Suede's choice of b-sides, in many instances he claims that they erred in relegating great songs to the b-sides of singles instead of saving them for inclusion on an album.  But every fan I knew considered those b-sides to be a profound superpower that was unique to Suede.  I still believe that "Sci-Fi Lullabies" is the best Suede album.  In North America, the b-side was a complete afterthought, particularly since singles released six months or year in advance of an album was rare.  Why care about the b-side if there is an entire album of great music there to enjoy and process?  In Britain, many bands would build anticipation for an eventual album release via a succession of singles.  With fans being hungry for new material, the b-sides were expected to be stronger and worthy of repeated listening.  Suede were the masters of this, you couldn't possibly retell the band's history without including those songs, and as such, every true fan was intimately familiar with them.  

This is a good place to clarify some comments I made about Suede when they first reunited in 2010.  These lines in particular stand out: "Suede were a number of things, but risk-takers they were not.  They never strayed too far from a safe, signature sound".  That was unreasonably harsh on my part.  At the time, I had my doubts about their reunion, but after four albums of solid and far better than anyone could have expected material, their "signature sound" has proved to be more resilient than that of any rock band of their era.  Second, Suede weren't risk-takers in the sense that their key influences were fairly obvious -- Bowie, the glitz and androgyny of 70's glam, the windswept glamour of Echo and the Bunnymen.  But they were risk-takers by being profoundly unique compared to anything else happening in British indie music at the time.  The indie bands of the early 90's were a collection of sad sack C86 hangers on, Smiths wannabes, and Madchester dropouts, most of whom have been completely forgotten about today.  Shoegaze was underappreciated but was (and still isn't) the type of music to light a fire under the charts.  American grunge bands were the rage, and countless twee British acts were blown away into irrelevance as a result.  Suede cut through the boredom like a lightning bolt, there was nobody even remotely like them, the music seemed to get better with each classic single release and their potential seemed limitless.  

As a companion to this review, I plan to watch the band documentary "The Insatiable Ones" as soon as I can.                

Music Men: The Playboy Interview (50 Years of the Playboy Interview)

For several years in the 90's, I bought a couple of dozen music magazines per year, both weeklies and monthlies.  The NME/Melody Maker/Select style was a fly on the wall approach.  The journalist would join the artist or band in their natural environment (in the studio, on tour, their favourite pub, whatever the case may be), soak up the atmosphere, and grab as many juicy quotes as they could.  The Canadian free weeklies and monthlies (NOW, eye, Exclaim!) used a more measured style, it was rare to see a circus-type presentation, the interviews were more straightforward reporting.  This isn't necessarily a negative, but the British style was more consistently entertaining.  But of course, the free magazines didn't do long form highly in depth articles, their format limited the space they could afford for any one story compared with the paid publications.  

This is all to say that the style of the Playboy interview -- a long form, deep one-on-one conversation without any of the scenic bells and whistles -- is rather new to me.  The list of names (all of them men) is stellar, but when it misses, it really misses, and the conversation bogs down in dreadful minutiae and elongated tedium.  It's like reading the transcript between a reluctant host and hangers on at a party who simply refuse to leave.  The Bob Dylan interview (March 1978) is an unfortunate example of that.  David Bowie (September 1976) says very little of substance, and Elton John (January 1976) dances around nearly every serious question aimed at providing genuine insight into his thoughts, in particular, his thoughts on homosexuality and bisexuality (understandably so, considering the time, but it doesn't make for entertaining reading).  Luciano Pavarotti (November 1982) is a unique look at a personality that was never featured in "rock" mags, but the conversation is just too damned long, stitched together from multiple conversations.  

I want to lump together three interviews from the 90's, which carry similar goals but produce wildly varying results.  The idea is to interview a living legend, reflect on his career, celebrate his accomplishments, and speculate on their continued relevance into the 90's.   Berry Gordy (August 1995) comes across like a complete asshole, defending his policy of indentured servitude for his artists in the 60's and generally showing himself to be out of touch with most music and artist relations post-early career Michael Jackson.  Frank Zappa (April 1993) is as unfiltered as you'd expect.  His fans (I was never one) would probably enjoy his wild musings on politics and parenthood, he was undoubtedly one of a kind but if you never acquired a taste for his music, the interview probably won't be to your liking either.  He also speaks openly about his health, and would sadly pass away less than a year following the interview.  Pete Townshend (February 1994) owns up to all his problems past and present, he's a real person prone to temper tantrums, bad decisions, and frequent vacillations in opinion.  Compared to the David Bowie and Elton John interviews from the 70's, where they were ultra-careful in protecting their image and not harming their marketability, Townshend is firmly in give no fucks mode.  

The most recent interviews with Jay-Z (April 2003) and Kanye West (March 2006) encapsulate the rapid decline of the print mag industry.  In the 21st century, the 24/7 news cycle was an essential service, the internet was in every household, and the rapid rise of social media was just around the corner.  Fans no longer needed these types of interviews to gain rare insight into musical giants.  Jay-Z is entertaining and larger than life, but the interview is nothing special, he's punching the clock and not revealing anything about his true self.  On the other hand, Kanye gives clear glimpses of what he eventually became fifteen years later, speaking openly about his pr0n addiction and attraction to conspiracy theories.  

The highlights are the first three interviews in the collection.  They're like a time capsule into a long ago era of life in America.  Frank Sinatra (February 1963) is politically incorrect, boorish, and arrogant, but you can't say he didn't show up ready to play ball.  He gives his unfiltered opinion on politics and foreign affairs, providing views that were far from mainstream.  He's determined to advertise himself as as a thinking man's performer who wouldn't stand for any politician's bullshit, and couldn't care less if he comes across as a "difficult" interviewee.  The Beatles (February 1965) are immature kids captured at the height of their teenybopper fame.  Before they retired to the studio, took drug-fueled trips to India, and became peace crusaders, there was this, just four young men riding a pop star wave the world had never seen.  Some of their comments have not aged well, but it's refreshing to read something of this length about the Beatles that was published before the legend was complete.  Best of all is the interview with Ray Charles (March 1970) who comes off as the most intelligent man in the country, a musical prophet who speaks candidly and impactfully about US race relations and his niche as a performer.

2022 Recap (according to Youtube)

Once again, there will be no list of the best albums of the past year, because I haven't heard any of them (eventually I will get around to a megapost on the 2022 releases by "former #1's", i.e. albums by Yeah Yeah Yeahs, Moderat, Spiritualized, and Beach House.  Maybe if it's taken this long then I'll just hold off until the newest Orbital record is released sometime next year).

However, Youtube has helpfully assembled a year in review list so that I didn't have to.  I think it's a revealing and quite accurate representation of how I consume music-related content on Youtube.   In past years, when I listened mainly to contemporary releases, it was almost always through physical purchases or downloads, and not via streaming.  In that sense, this list is a uniquely modern look at my new normal, and highlights how much my listening habits have changed in the past three years.  

1.  Mahler Symphony #2 (live 1989, cond. Klaus Tennstedt)

It's no secret that Tennstedt could be hit and miss in the studio.  I joined the consensus after reviewing his LPO Mahler cycle, but every Tennstedt fan knows that his true strengths were live in concert.  Live, he was an incendiary Mahler conductor whose unbridled intensity and total commitment to the work has likely never been matched.  This 1989 recording is a prime example of this.  I have been meaning to review his live LPO Mahler box for months, but the task often feels too daunting, one that demands hours of uninterrupted listening.  These concerts were events, and I can never find a block of time to approach them as such.  

2.  Harry Styles, "As It Was"

I wrote a couple of posts about Harry Styles this year, I remain awed by his spectacular success and "As It Was" is a fantastic single.

3.  Shirley Bassey, "The Girl From Tiger Bay" (2009 Live at Electric Proms)

This song pops up on the radio from time to time, but until I sought it out on Youtube I had no clue that it was written by James Dean Bradfield of the Manic Street Preachers.  Once you know this you can't unhear all the clues, such as the guitar part that leads into the chorus.  The song itself is wonderful, and works both as Bradfield's love letter to Bassey, and as Bassey's very own "My Way".  

   

4.  Oasis, "Don't Look Back In Anger"

What better than Rick Beato's "What makes this song great?" breakdown to make me revisit (over and over again) Oasis' best ever song? 

5.  Daft Punk ft. Pharrell Williams and Stevie Wonder, "Get Lucky" (2014 Grammys)

One of my all time favourite clips, endlessly rewatchable for the indelible joy it radiates for each second of this legendary performance.  The broadcast captures six decades of music royalty partying in the audience without any pretense, united for a few brief moments by their love of one of the most format-smashing hits of recent times.  The performance takes in elements of Chic's "Le Freak" (oh yes, Nile Rodgers plays guitar here too!), Daft Punk's "Harder Better Faster Stronger", and Stevie Wonder's "Another Star", a veritable all-star mixtape condensed into five short minutes.   

6.  Moby, "Why Does My Heart Feel So Bad?"

Another song that fits a wide range of moods and situations, including the kids' bath time (works for me as downtempo spa music at least).  It's always interesting to ponder why exactly Moby got big when he did.  Grunge had long since expired as a force, and nu-metal had risen to fill the vacuum.  Unless you were into alternative-lite fare like Matchbox 20 or Cake, or ate up the horrible swing revival, it was a rough time to be a mainstream rock fan.  So people took to other genres with rock elements to get their fix (electronica, e.g. Chemical Brothers, Prodigy) or were drawn into lounge/exotic music/downtempo house (e.g. St. Germain -- you would not believe how ubiquitous "Tourist" was in coffee shops and dorm rooms unless you were there, a million other Cafe Del Mar and the like compilations).  Moby successfully bridged the gap between the two.  He was an outsider as far as the mainstream went, he'd reinvented himself (always makes for a good story), he had some cred as a rocker and as a former king of the underground, he seemed non-threatening, in short, he was a new type of popstar in an era when the mainstream was experiencing a great deal of turnover (rock and rock-related genres were phasing out, Britney Spears and boy band pop exploding, etc.)   

7.  Haydn Symphony #88, Vienna Philharmonic (cond. Leonard Bernstein)

I don't watch classical music concerts online (I'm usually listening while puttering around doing various things) but this clip demands your attention.  Where else can you see one of the all-time greats conducting a major orchestra with his face?  Meanwhile, I discovered the greatness of this, and many other Haydn symphonies this year.  

8.  Fleetwood Mac, "Gypsy"

It's been a rough few years for the Mac, first the departure/firing of Lindsay Buckingham, and then the deaths of Peter Green, Danny Kirwan, and Christine McVie.  My go-to video for FM-related solace is "Gypsy".  This video has entranced me since the age of nine, I was simply spellbound by the opening panned shot of the lace-covered room and Stevie Nicks performing the splits while gazing wistfully into a giant mirror, it's a goddess moment that makes me lose all sense of time and place even forty years later.  The song's metronomic pulse enhances the notion that the memories expressed in the lyrics exist in some kind of continuum, much like Zeppelin's "Kashmir", "Gypsy" seems to have no beginning and no end, it exists for infinite time before and after, we time-limited mortals merely tune into a brief stretch in the middle.  

   

9.  Don Henley, "The Boys of Summer"

As I noted in my September post about "As It Was", I would not have expected the ongoing 80's revival/pillorying to borrow heavily from Don Henley in 2022, and yet here we are.  

10.  Joni Mitchell, "Both Sides Now" (live at Newport Folk Festival)

I hope this performance isn't fading from collective memories, because it really was something incredibly special.  

11.  Nicole Pesce, "How To Play Happy Birthday like Beethoven, Chopin, Brahms, Bach, and Mozart"

Listen to enough classical music and you too will have Google recommending Victor Borge-inspired musical comedy videos.  

 

12.  Depeche Mode, "Insight"

I was certain that DM were finished after Fletch's sudden passing, but they'll be back next year with yet another album and world tour, continuing one of the most remarkable 40-year (and counting) success stories in music history.  I haven't listened to "Ultra" all the way through in years, on one hand it's their most homogeneous album, but on the other hand it features the relentless brutalism of "Barrel of a Gun", the unstoppably heartfelt "Home" (I have come around on this song over the years, I now rank it among DM's best ballads) and two of their strongest ever album tracks ("The Bottom Line" and "Insight").  

 

13.  Eddie Money, "Take Me Home Tonight"

Unfortunately my posting frequency has decreased in recent years, as I struggle to find the time to complete various projects (20 albums/20 years, the Eurovision winners) and post about other topics in general.  My timely posts are RIP posts far more often than not.  Ronnie Spector passed away in January and I missed the news, finding out about it a few weeks later.  Go read her memoir (published long before MeToo and Phil Spector's murder conviction, this didn't get the attention it deserved) and enjoy her mini-comeback in the 80's with Eddie Money.

   

14.  Brahms, "Variations on a Theme By Joseph Haydn", dir. Gustavo Dudamel

Yes, I love the piece (my favourite Brahms orchestral work) but clearly the algorithm has misconstrued my feelings about Dudamel.   This is hardly a great performance of the Haydn variations, notwithstanding the setting (Vienna's Musikverein) and the presence of  the Vienna Philharmonic.  Go listen to, I don't know, one of Furtwaengler's performances instead.      

Christine McVie RIP

This is a crushing loss for music, and so sudden -- even Stevie Nicks, in a handwritten note posted to her Twitter account, said that it was only last weekend that she found out that McVie was sick.  

It goes without saying that Fleetwood Mac are one of the only bands in history that can boast three genius songwriters.  What's more, none of them played the George Harrison role, taking a back seat to their more famous bandmates.  The partnership between McVie, Nicks, and Buckingham couldn't have been more equal.  Considering the colossal sales and fame of the band, and the egos involved with sustaining that game, it's remarkable that this arrangement held steadfast as long as it did before people started storming out.  "Rumours" featured four songs by McVie, and three each by Nicks and Buckingham ("The Chain" is credited to the entire group).  Fleetwood Mac's 1988 Greatest Hits album featured three songs by Buckingham, five songs by Nicks, and eight by McVie.  That breakdown speaks to her strengths as a pop songwriter and her impact on the creative direction of the band.  

Once McVie left in the 90's, Fleetwood Mac toured the world many times over but they only made one additional album of all new material and came within an eyelash of imploding while recording it.  They always seemed like a happier band when McVie was involved.  Everyone liked her, everyone loved being around her.    

McVie's songs bear repeat listening (that is, listening to the same song or songs on repeat) more than either Buckingham or Nicks.  Buckingham is the perfectionist and the experimenter, frequently evolving, often hitting, but sometimes missing.  Nicks' songs carry an emotional heft that the others can't match, but they're always full of heavy shit that I'm not always in the mood for.  McVie's songs flow effortlessly, they exude an almost childlike wonder for the most beautiful things in the world.  The lyrics to "You Make Loving Fun" summarize her songwriting M.O. In popular song, love takes on many personas but pure, miraculous fun is hardly ever one of them.  McVie perfected it.  

"Hold Me" and "Everywhere" are my favourite McVie-penned singles, and it was nice the latter get its due in the recent Chevrolet ads.  The world might be full of problems, but for a scant thirty seconds, "Everywhere" comes across like the car karaoke anthem that people of many different ages and races can agree on.