Category: Tune of the day

A comprehensive introduction to the music of Frank Zappa. It’s also very silly, which is a good thing with Frankie.

While eccentric musicians can be found everywhere, Finland must have the highest concentration on the planet — Laika and the Cosmonauts, Steve ‘n’ Seagulls, Ensemble Ambrosius, etc. And Värttinä.

Most recordings I’ve heard of the complete L’ Histoire Du Soldat suffer from stunt casting, e.g., Rudolph Nureyev as the soldier.¹ The suite fortunately is entirely instrumental.

I haven’t posted any Celtic music yet, and I need to remedy that. We’ll start with a medley of Carolan tunes by The Chieftains.

Another anime march, but of a very different character then yesterday’s. It’s from the eccentric series Tsuritama, the most approachable show directed by the idiosyncratic Kenji Nakamura. The soundtrack is by the Kuricorder Quartet, who, with a few extra musicians, earlier recorded the music for Azumanga Daioh.

The premise of the anime Girls und Panzer is absurd — few people realize that tank warfare is one of the feminine arts — but it was amazingly popular a decade or so back.

John Renbourn, a Renaissance dance tune, and (modified) Heath Robinson art.

Another medieval/modern hybrid.

GG, MM and BB venture into Eric Johnson territory.

Piccio Dal Pozzo is probably the outstanding Italian example of the Canterbury school of prog rock. This is from their 1976 debut.

I’ve mentioned Kapustin before. Here’s some more of his music.

This color-coded visual aid might make it a little easier to follow the counterpoint in Nancarrow’s “12-voice canon in which the 12 tempos are proportional to the pitches of the notes of a chromatic scale.”

A song about a drummer, without drums. This was the first tune I heard by Steeleye Span, and it is still one of my favorites.

Homage to Stravinsky, transcribed for baroque and folk instruments by yet another bunch of crazy Finns.

Your daily dystopia, courtesy of the band named for drops of nail polish on a piano.

Griffes was potentially a Great American Composer, but he died far too young.

The band once known as “Happy Cancer” never had much commercial potential. So what?

Italian prog rock from 1976, with flutes and mellotrons.

If you don’t hear Steve Cropper’s guitar, it’s because he’s playing a keyboard on this one.

Something I would not have expected from Richard Thompson.