http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/ 1,000 Recordings To Hear Before You Die en Moontom@aol.com Copyright 2012 2012-12-12T15:18:40+00:00 http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/ravi-shankar-1920-2012/ http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/ravi-shankar-1920-2012/#When:14:18:40Z This wonderful performance from Monterey Pop 1967 captures the unsurpassed technique and profound spirit of one of the most inspiring musicians of modern times.....   2012-12-12T14:18:40+00:00 http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/gift-ideas-for-the-music-obsessed/ http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/gift-ideas-for-the-music-obsessed/#When:14:20:07Z This is the season when people in the record business give thanks for the old stuff. Catalog. Music of lasting value, often collected in glossy boxed sets that are easy to give (and easy to wrap). Below, a few suggestions for the music obsessed….Tito Puente: Quatro: The Definitive Collection. Four crucial titles and rarities from the discography of pioneering Latin jazz percussionist Tito Puente. Includes Dance Mania. Jerry Garcia/Merl Saunders: Keystone Companions: The Complete 1973 Fantasy Recordings. Official release of a live recording that’s been bootlegged endlessly – because it’s a gem. Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling, Ireland 1965. Tour documentary with frighteningly good previously unreleased live performances. Various Artists/Orchestras: Mercury Living Presence Collector’s Edition. 50-CD anthology filled with painstakingly detailed recordings of the classical repertoire. Govt Mule: The Georgia Bootleg Box. Three discs of live performance from 1996, when the Mule was ornery and hungry. Roxy Music: Complete Studio Recordings 1972-1982. Covers the early, high-concept Eno masterworks as well as the atmospheric later studio creations. Peter Gabriel: So (25th Anniversary Deluxe Edition). One of many “Anniversary” editions of classic rock albums; like most of them, this has been expanded to include demos, studio outtakes, and live performances. Charles Mingus: The Complete Columbia and RCA Studio Collection. 10-CD box showcasing the roaring, endlessly restless ensemble of jazz bassist Charles Mingus at peak. Includes Mingus Ah Um, Tijuana Moods, and the posthumous Epitaph. Various Artists: Surf Age Nuggets: Trash and Twang Instrumentals. Because there may be no better mood enhancer than surf guitar.   2012-12-05T14:20:07+00:00 http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/on-seeing-neil-young-and-crazy-horse/ http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/on-seeing-neil-young-and-crazy-horse/#When:15:48:53Z (Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, Thursday Nov. 29.)During the second or third guitar excursion of “Walk Like a Giant” Thursday at the Wells Fargo Center, Neil Young veered into one of his favorite zones – that place where the crude sound of an overdriven and distorted guitar is transformed into something unexpectedly elegant, a rich array of tone and texture. Under the watchful eyes of busy labcoated technicians (including one seated at an onstage desk), Young and Crazy Horse ventured into the first of several unapologetically arty extended explorations. It's part of the deal when Young performs with Crazy Horse: Everything, the new tunes and the big hits, is fair game for a complete overhaul. Young often accomplishes this with long forays in which the guitar signal is modified slowly over time: He’ll seize a single tone from the tangled spectrum of a chord, and manipulate it using distortion boxes and other pedals until new sonic dimensions emerge from the thick shadows. Thursday, he started with the typical “crunch” of rhythm guitar, then gave it a nasty serrated edge that terrorized the ear like sandpaper on a pillow. He held that as a drone, and if you listened closely, you could hear an orchestra vying for attention inside it – upper string harmonics that resembled shrieking violins in nosebleed range, brutal helicoptering low tones that punctuated the air with tympani-drum thunder, and plenty shades (and shards) of errant rumbling in between. Some in the crowd grew restless during that journey and a few other marathons (including an equally blown-open version of “Like a Hurricane”). For me, these wailing, formidable planks of instrumental texture were highlights, in part because they stood in powerful contrast to Young’s easygoing melodies and tender-hearted lyrics. Singing to be not simply understood but felt, he’d drop some profound notion – like the verse in “Walk Like a Giant” that expresses regret over his generation’s inability to fully change society – and then, capitalizing on his listener’s openness, slam the point home with a furious primal fire that is unlike any other in rock. It was the kind of yin/yang head/heart assault that rearranges your innards on a molecular level, shakes you up, leaves you somehow changed. If it’s been awhile since you had that experience at an arena rock show, go see Neil Young and Crazy Horse. While you can. 2012-11-30T15:48:53+00:00 http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/why-record-stores-and-record-store-day-matters/ http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/why-record-stores-and-record-store-day-matters/#When:14:13:17Z This year’s Record Store Day coincides with Black Friday, the mostly incomprehensible superstorm of shopping that follows Thanksgiving.It’s the right time of year for the event, which is marked by limited-edition releases and live performances. Because there’s nothing like walking into a record store to trigger feelings of deep gratitude for the musical bounty that we have at our fingertips (and, alas, can sometimes take for granted) every day. The event prompts an annual ritual of hand-writing and opinion-slinging about the importance of record stores. Here's my two centavos: Record stores matter for the same reason great radio matters: Because regardless of how well informed you are or how many coolhunters you follow on the Internet, there’s nothing like the experience of encountering unfamiliar music that you didn’t seek out or ask for. In public. Amongst people with big ears and crazy tastes who are, like you, in search of the next obsession. In a makeshift shrine that holds sounds you know by heart and sounds from faraway galaxies. Go there not just to buy your wifty aunt the new James Taylor, but to come face to face with the astonishing and the innocent. Go there to be yanked away from the acts that have been pre-approved by the members of your tribe. Go to be challenged. And uplifted. 2012-11-22T14:13:17+00:00 http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/new-obsession-ensemble-instrumental-national-du-mali/ http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/new-obsession-ensemble-instrumental-national-du-mali/#When:14:42:03Z The Ensemble Instrumental National du Mali is not just concerned with instrumental music -- and it's not your typical mild-mannered folkloric group, either.Rather, since its formation in 1961, the Ensemble has worked to preserve and further world understanding of traditional Malian music. Its albums capture expansive (and extemporaneous) vocal exchanges between an improvising lead singer (here, Djelimadi Sissoko) and the large responding choir. All of the albums available here are transfixing, and though the sound quality of this live video isn't great, it nonetheless offers a nice introduction to this group -- and a sound that clearly inspired such powerful Malian singers as Salif Kieta and Oumou Sangere.  Having trouble embedding the video, so here's the link. 2012-11-19T14:42:03+00:00 http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/unexpected-iran-israel-story/ http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/unexpected-iran-israel-story/#When:13:45:54Z Here's more proof, if any were needed, that music transcends geopolitical conflict..... NPR's story yesterday about the Israeli singer Rita Jahanforuz's new album. 2012-11-13T13:45:54+00:00 http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/more-next-stop-after-that/ http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/more-next-stop-after-that/#When:14:22:22Z Since the publication of 1000 Recordings, there have been thousands of truly great new releases – and possibly an equal number of reissues of music that was pretty much unavailable during the research. Some of these I’ve noted in the blog, and more will come. Today I’m posting something a bit different – additional Next Stop listening suggestions for a few entries. Happy exploring….ENTRY: Sly and the Family Stone: Stand! (1000 Recordings, pg. 713). ALTERNATE NEXT STOP: Tim Maia: The Existential Soul of Tim Maia (Luaka Bop, 2012). WHY: Singer and bandleader Tim Maia was among a handful of Brazilian artists who became entranced by American funk and R&B in the early ‘70s. Maia melded the utopian vision of Sly and the Family Stone with the deep percussion and chanting of his homeland’s ritual music. The fusion took on many dimensions, sometimes suggesting an urban samba; this new compilation focuses a bit too much on the backbeat funk that’ll be accessible to U.S. listeners. If you like the big, hurtling Maia groove on display here, also check out his eponymous debut, issued in 1970, and Racional Vols. 1 & 2. ENTRY: My Morning Jacket: It Still Moves (1000 Recordings, pg. 537). ALTERNATE NEXT STOP: Grizzly Bear: Shields (Warp, 2012). WHY: The success of My Morning Jacket opened doors for a bunch of rock bands with ears for sonic textures and grooves that are well outside of the indie-rock soundset. On the rousing Shields, the Brooklyn collective tumbles headfirst into unexpectedly gorgeous reverb-drenched portraiture – and at times sounds like it’s trying to emulate the hard-charging fury of Charles Mingus circa Blues & Roots. ENTRY: Jan Garbarek & Ralph Towner: Dis (1000 Recordings, pg. 299). ALTERNATE CATALOG CHOICE: Magico: Carta de Amor (ECM, 2012). WHY: The early 1980s collaboration between saxophonist Jan Garbarek, guitarist (and pianist) Egberto Gismonti and bassist Charlie Haden was known as Magico – a truth-in-labeling description of a wonderfully fluid, evanescent approach to music. The group toured some during its run, and fortunately some of its performances were recorded. Carta de Amor, captured in Munich in April 1981 and released for the first time this fall, shows what can happen when three sensitive souls share a journey toward lyricism. Stunning. ENTRY: Frank Zappa: The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life (1000 Recordings, pg. 886). ALTERNATE NEXT STOP: Animal Collective: Merriweather Post Pavilion (Domino, 2009). WHY: Though it doesn’t immediately resemble Zappa, Merriweather Post Pavilion bubbles with the guitarist and composer’s delightfully unhinged experimental spirit. Animal Collective is the rare ensemble capable of extreme guitar-rock fury as well as elaborate sample-mangling mashups – at times, these awe-inspiring super-dense orchestrations seem plotted note for note. But, as with Zappa’s work, they could just as easily have been impromptu accidents. ENTRY: Dr. John: Gris Gris (1000 Recordings, pg. 237). ALTERNATE CATALOG CHOICE: Locked Down (Nonesuch, 2012). WHY: As Louis Armstrong once said, “If you have to ask, you’ll never know…..”   2012-11-12T14:22:22+00:00 http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/on-the-unexpected-psychedelic-pill/ http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/on-the-unexpected-psychedelic-pill/#When:14:29:44Z This week I did a short review of Neil Young's Psychedelic Pill on NPR's All Things Considered. To check it out, click here. When you look at Neil Young’s entire discography, a record like the just released Psychedelic Pill registers as decidedly second-tier. A two-disc studio foray with Crazy Horse, it’s destined to be compared with a raft of sharper, more rousing albums from the Young heyday, whichever heyday you like. There are flashes of brilliance in the songwriting and the playing, along with moments that are the musical equivalent of muscle-flexing. One of them is the marathon “Walk Like A Giant,” which can seem like a parody of the feedback-surfing detours of ‘90s Crazy Horse – or the too-earnest effort of old guys determined to show they can still “do it.” Whatever “it” is. Putting together the short excerpts for the radio, I was struck by Young’s unusual situation: All he has to do is whip up a familiar verse/chorus structure, decked out with the chord progressions that he’s used since Buffalo Springfield days, and his faithful will be able to tap into what he’s saying. The sound acts as a kind of bridge -- even when he's ranting, his listeners, whose ears have been tuned by years of exposure to Rust Never Sleeps and Sleeps With Angels and all the rest, will be able to relate. That’s not a negative – somehow Young, like Dylan and very few others, has found a bandwidth that allows him to communicate effectively in the present moment, while gently tickling the memory lobes of his audience. His approach to working the myth is completely different from that of, say, Rod Stewart: It’s possible to be entirely aware of all the elements Young is rehashing and still be in awe of where he goes and how he and his crew get there. With Young and Crazy Horse, you happily take the journey even if you already know where they're going and the general route they'll follow. 2012-10-31T14:29:44+00:00 http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/do-you-have-100-seconds/ http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/do-you-have-100-seconds/#When:14:25:27Z This encounter with the sublime only takes 100 seconds.....It's Nara Leao singing the great Brazilian composer Dorival Caymmi's "Morena do Mar." The song itself is a gem tightly compacted into AAB form, and here it's made eternal by the great (and endlessly under-appreciated) Nara Leao. 2012-10-25T14:25:27+00:00 http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/new-obsession-elina-duni-quartet1/ http://www.1000recordings.com/blog/new-obsession-elina-duni-quartet1/#When:13:31:41Z Recently, NPR's All Things Considered ran my review of Matane Malit, by the Elina Duni Quartet. If the concept -- Albanian folk songs reworked by a jazz group -- seems a bit random, give it time: Duni and her crew create entrancingly vivid mountain-gazing vistas in sound.   2012-10-22T13:31:41+00:00