Category: Music

The first Jethro Tull album doesn’t sound like the others. That was due to guitarist Mick Abrahams, who had a very different musical vision than Ian Anderson. Abrahams quit/was fired after This Was and formed Blodwyn Pig. The sax player is Jack Lancaster, who would subsequently work with Robin Lumley, Brand X and others.

Continue reading “Tune of the day #60”

Some pioneering psychedelic music from Alexander Scriabin, composed not long before he was consumed by flame died of an infected pimple.

I heard a number of legendary musicians at the first bluegrass festival I ever attended out in the wilds of northern Virginia, including John Hartford, Earl Scuggs and The New Grass Revival, not to mention the Lost City Cats from the far side of the Pacific. The one who most impressed me was Norman Blake, particularly his rendition of “Old Grey Mare.”

Proto-fusion, featuring the Brecker Brothers, Billy Cobham and John Abercrombie, back when few knew who they were. Jazz purists, go away.

Everybody likes Gershwin — except maybe Duke Ellington.

R.D. Laing set to music. From the video’s comments: “I asked my girlfriend a long time ago if this could be ‘our song.’ She said she would leave me. I haven’t seen her in over 40 years.”

A good production of Coppelia is an excellent introduction to ballet for youngsters. There’s a silly romance for girls, a mad scientist for boys, lots of spirited dancing, colorful costumes, a bit of slapstick, and a particularly good score.

The company that released the American edition fifty-some years ago got the sides reversed so all the titles are wrong, an error that was repeated in the CD releases. This tune is called “Jive Grind” here, but the correct title is “Vienna Breakdown.”

Bass: Colin Hodgkinson; Sax: Ron Aspery; Drums: Tony Hicks.

I spent one summer of my childhood back east visiting the Martian side of my family. While I was there, I listened to my Aunt Margaret’s records, including this one. Years later at a Steven King concert (not that King; the other one (another Winfield winner)), King would play a bit of an old tune and give the first person to identify it a set of guitar strings. This was one of the tunes, and I was able to give a guitarist friend a new set of strings.

Happy the Man, featuring Kit Watkins on keyboards, was active in the later 1970’s, when radio had become hopelessly stupid.¹ I didn’t learn that they had existed until I finally got online around the turn of the century and discovered websites devoted to prog rock.

The masks are not part of the original score.

Written by Al Kooper to give Andy Kulberg an opportunity to show off.

Stephane Grappelli plays Prokofiev in the otherwise disappointing rock version of Peter and the Wolf masterminded by Jack Lancaster and Robin Lumley.

Something a bit different for Halloween. Joe McDonald knew some really weird chicks.

Continue reading “Tune of the day #47”

Michael Chapdelaine was the only guitarist to win both the fingerpicking championship at Winfield and the the Guitar Foundation of America International Classical Guitar Competition.

Caution: this tune is a dangerously tenacious earworm. Think before you click.

A classical disc jockey once commented that, no matter what one’s taste in music is, everyone likes Dvořák. So far I haven’t come across anyone who doesn’t.

What happens when you turn an avant-garde composer with an engineering degree loose on a player piano? There’s a discussion of the piece here (advisory: math). The sonorities are interesting, but can this really be called music?

Back in ancient times the local freak radio station often played this along with The Velvet Underground and Harry Partch. Years later I heard bits and pieces of it behind Peter Jones’ narration in the original radio version of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, so it was a natural choice for tune #42.