Spitball Army

Happy New Year!
Happy New Dear!
Happy New Tear!
Happy New Bear!
Happy New Bead!
Happy New Beat!
Happy New Beet!
Happy New Feet!
Happy New Feel!
Happy New Reel!
Happy New Reed!
Happy New Seed!
Happy New Deed!
Happy New Deer!
Happy New Beer!
Happy New Br’er!
Happy New Brew!
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Happy New Crop!
Happy New Drop!
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Happy New Trip!
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Happy New Gray!
Happy New Gram!
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Happy New Tram!
Happy New Team!
Happy New Term!
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Happy New Barn!
Happy New Born!
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Happy New Word!
Happy New Ford!
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Happy New Cold!
Happy New Colt!
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Happy New Yelp!
Happy New Help!
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Happy New Hear!
Happy New Year!

St. Vincent’s Bruno Cancer Center billboard
downtown Birmingham, Alabama, west of I-31

This billboard is an example of brilliant subliminal advertising.  Anybody out there willing to put yourself on the line and lay out what you think is at work here?  I have my ideas…but I’ll wait to see if anyone is game to play first.

Talk to you soon.

In Rainbows, the new Radiohead album, made the “big news” this year, and to recount all of the reasons why would bore me, so here.  As expected, the record made a multitude of Best of 2007 lists, which are tough to avoid this time of year.  Not that I make an effort to avoid them – I have a perverse fascination with lists, anyway, and to deride them would make me a hypocrite when I post mine in a couple of days.

This morning’s New York Times – which I have barely cracked past the Arts & Leisure section – had some more juicy bits of Radiohead info.

• In Rainbows is to be released this coming Tuesday, January 1st, in U.S. stores.  [That’s old news already, from where I stand: my store received its shipment of the CD early and has already sold through its supply.  Breaking street date?  In the current retail environment, you have got to be kidding me!  What are you going to do about it, close down my store?]
• Last week, Nonesuch Records [a record label that can do no wrong, in my opinion] released the Jonny Greenwood-penned soundtrack to the new P.T. Anderson film There Will Be Blood.  Nate Chinen in the Times calls the music “appropriately unsettling.”  The film itself is given a similar assessment by Manohla Dargis, who considers it “a savage moral reckoning of the contemporary American soul.”  [Such a thoughtful and provocative film will most likely not get booked in Birmingham, Alabama.]
• More on Mr. Greenwood: the Radiohead lead guitarist, who also composes music for the classical stage, will have an orchestral piece premiered at the Church of St. Paul the Apostle in New York City on January 16th and 17th.  Relatedly, the Alabama Symphony Orchestra – right here in Birmingham – has Greenwood’s Popcorn Superhet Receiver on its program for April 10th.  [Such a programming accomplishment would have been unheard of in this town prior to the 2006 arrival of the ASO’s current music director, Justin Brown, who doesn’t shrink from adding contemporary music to the schedule, and has – in a very short period of time – inspired the orchestra players to an ecstatic level of performance in practically everything that we haven’t seen here in many years.]
• Oakland-based DJ and producer Amplive has remixed In Rainbows, and is releasing it under the title Rainydayz Remixes. It is scheduled to be unveiled on January 10th as a digital-only release, according to Amplive’s myspace page.  There is a catch, however: it will be available only to those who can either prove that they paid for the download of In Rainbows, or that they have contributed to a Thom Yorke-endorsed charity (I didn’t see any reference to the charity on Amplive’s myspace page). 

And that’s all of the Radiohead news for this hour!

…that are crossing my radar these days:

1)  “Anyone Else But You,” a song by The Moldy Peaches
I was intrigued to see the new film Juno at the top of Roger Ebert’s year-end list, so I went and viewed the trailer online.  Besides the cleverness of the dialogue and the simplicity of the setting, what struck me was the song playing in the background, which turned out to be this song.  Strictly by coincidence, the day after I saw the trailer, I received a promotional copy of the soundtrack CD in the mail, but just got around to listening to it today – now, I can’t get this little tune out of my head.  It is charming, quirky, sung not entirely in tune, and contains the phrase “shook a little turd out of the bottom of your pants.”  How many songs can claim that?  (None that I am aware of.)  This video features the song over cleverly-edited footage from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

2)  Books about music and the brain
This morning I had the pleasure of guesting on a radio show with two friends who toil in professions of the mind: one is a psychiatrist, the other a Jungian analyst.  They had asked me to join them on their monthly Doc Talk program to discuss music as it relates to emotion, health, state of mind…it was actually a pretty open-ended discussion, which was a well-suited approach for their call-in show, and we had a good time.  But an interesting thing that came up in our conversation before the show was that all three of us had recently purchased the same two books: Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks, and This Is Your Brain On Music by Daniel J. Levitin.  This crazy coincidence knocked me sideways, until I realized later that it was our interests in these very topics that had brought us together in the first place.  I have not been particularly diligent in tackling either of these books yet, opting instead to occasionally pick one of them up (usually it is This Is Your Brain…) and reading two to three pages for an idea.  I found this passage recently (from page 219):

Identification memory – the ability that most of us have to identify pieces of music that we’ve heard before – is similar to memory for faces, photos, even tastes and smells, and there is individual variability, with some people simply being better than others; it is also domain specific, with some people…being especially good at music, while others excel in other sensory domains.  Being able to rapidly retrieve a familiar piece of music from memory is one skill, but being able to then quickly and effortlessly attach a label to it, such as the song title, artist, and year of recording…involves a separate cortical network, which we now believe involves the planum temporale (a structure associated with absolute pitch) and regions of the prefrontal cortex that are known to be required for attaching verbal labels to sensory impressions.  Why some people are better at this than others is still unknown, but it may result from an innate or hard-wired predisposition in the way their brains are formed, and this in turn may have a partial genetic basis.

In other words, I can blame my music geekiness on my genetic heritage.  Maybe.  Though I can’t play a musical instrument other than the stereo, and don’t have perfect pitch, I am pretty good at the song title and artist naming game (not much better than approximate on the year of recording, however).  I have a customer who could tell you the b-side of a 45 rpm single from the ’60s, what the record label was, who wrote the single (which he could probably identify after three notes), five other songs by both the writer and the artist, and probably the writer’s preferred grocery store.  He cannot play an instrument or carry a tune to save his life, however.  I find this all extremely interesting.

3)  Root Beer
The little gourmet market behind my shop must carry fifteen different kinds of root beer, and I may have tried half of them in the year and few months since they have been open.  They have all been terrific, especially the one that comes in a porcelain-corked brown glass bottle (like a Grolsch beer bottle).  I haven’t been in the aforementioned Tria Market much recently, but maybe Monday I will try a new root beer from them to toast out 2007, which I will be glad in many ways to be done with.  Honorable mention for a soda this year goes to the fountain Mr. Pibb with a squeezed lemon wedge from Zoe’s Kitchen – I had that today, and it was mighty fine.  And I’ve become more of a water guy than a soda guy in the last few years, but I can still tell a good one when it’s in front of me.

4) Quiet
I can’t get enough of this.  If it could be bought, I’d possibly spend a lot of my money on it.

5)  A very special gift
To commemorate the closing of my business (or perhaps to simply commemorate the business), my friend Ben – an innovative graphic and photographic artist – obviously spent a great deal of his valuable time creating a present for me to which my attempts at description won’t do justice.  It is a thing of wonder.  I have worked with Ben on several projects – favorites being my store’s annual CD samplers – and he has become telepathically tuned in to my concepts practically before I even tell them to him.  He creates work for my company as if he were an extension of the company, and that kind of relationship is rare today.  If I can scan this special creation of Ben’s, or get a jpeg of it from him, I will talk about it in more detail.  Suffice it to say that it has immediately become one of my favorite things.  Ever.  Period.  And it has to do with The Beatles (one of my many soft spots).

Avonwood Cleaners building, Birmingham, Alabama
(photo: spitballarmy.com)

Positive feedback comment observed on eBay after the completed purchase of “Gold (Expanded Edition) – Steely Dan (CD 1991) (#290191032338)” for $3.98:

Wonderful! Very fast shipping as disgusted for a small increase in price.

/

Every year I look forward to watching the broadcast of this annual event, then do a Homer Simpson DOH! when I hear about it the day after it aired.  Not that it should be difficult to catch – the show traditionally airs during the week between Christmas Day and New Year’s Day.  But my brain gets wiped clean after the Christmas retail season, and the week after is spent stumbling along, trying to remember my name and where I put the car keys.

This year, however, I ain’t gonna miss it!  The show promises to be a fun one, what with all five of the honorees being in some way related to things musical:

– Diana Ross: she of The Supremes, and all that other bad music that came afterward.  But, still, she was a Supreme, and it doesn’t get much better than that.  Furthermore, I bonded with “Stop! In The Name Of Love” in college, which provided me with my morning entertainment at the beginning of each semester as I walked by the Harvard Lampoon castle on my way to classes, watching the ‘Poonie wannabes – in a humiliating but hilarious hazing ritual – dancing on the sidewalk like a preppy drag queen line to an endless loop of the song.
[audio:Diana_Ross_and_the_Supremes___Stop_in_the_Name_of_Love.mp3]
(Can’t you just picture it?);

– Leon Fleisher: this man is amazing, and his true life story reads like a fantasy melodrama.  A brilliant classical piano pedagogue (at The Curtis Institute of Music, and Peabody Conservatory), I first knew of this man when I purchased a cassette tape of his recording of the Grieg and Schumann piano concertos, then proceeded to wear it out – I actually had to buy another one TO SURVIVE! – while I was writing my senior thesis in college.  Fleisher lost the use of his right hand in the mid-sixties due to a rare neurological disease, forcing his focus from playing to teaching until, in recent years, a miraculous recovery (due to Botox treatments, of all things) has brought him back to the performing and recording world.  This man’s story is easily as inspirational as his pianistic talent;

– Brian Wilson: he is THE Beach Boy and, even though he today seems really, really wacky, there is no denying his talent and the impact he has had on pop music (including the acknowledged fact that without the creation of Pet Sounds, The Beatles would not have been inspired to create Sgt. Pepper in an attempt to better it).  The music of The Beach Boys is the soundtrack to most of our childhoods, certainly mine;

– Martin Scorsese: yes, he’s a filmmaker – not a musician, technically.  But, anyone who has ever seen a Scorsese film knows that the music score and selection of songs that make up the soundtrack are as essential to his work as the script, the restless cinematography, or the acting.  Goodfellas, Raging Bull, Casino, The Departed would be vastly different films without the character inserted by their soundtracks.  Scorsese himself oversees the musical choices for his films, as one might expect, and his collaborators have included Peter Gabriel, Philip Glass and Bernard Herrmann.

This famous tracking shot from Goodfellas is music to my eyes.  Oh, I almost forgot to mention that Scorsese has directed some of the best rock music documentary films ever, including The Band’s The Last Waltz, and Bob Dylan: No Direction Home, with a concert film of The Rolling Stones wrapped and set for release in 2008;

– Steve Martin: well, he used to play the banjo during his stand-up routine.
[audio:Steve_Martin___Ramblin_Guy.mp3]

I wonder who chooses the recipients.  Whoever it is, this year they have chosen a very interesting bunch.

an addendum, from kennedy-center.org:

Members of the Kennedy Center’s national artists committee, as well as past Honorees, made recommendations of possible Honorees. Among the artists making recommendations were: Emanuel Ax, Dan Aykroyd, Jon Robin Baitz, Dave Brubeck, Kenny Chesney, Francis Ford Coppola, Melissa Etheridge, Laurence Fishburne, Renee Fleming, Anjelica Huston, India.Arie, Evgeny Kissin, Rob Marshall, Peter Martins, Terrence McNally, Helen Mirren, Anna Netrebko, Christopher Plummer, Nadja Salerno-Sonnenberg, Catherine Zeta-Jones. Previous Kennedy Center Honorees Edward Albee, Julie Andrews, Carol Burnett, Sean Connery, Bill Cosby, Kirk Douglas, Elton John, Mike Nichols, Smokey Robinson and Steven Spielberg also made nominations.

Certainly, no musical artist has re-imagined his career in so many different and creative ways as has David Byrne.  Group member (Talking Heads), solo artist, composer for stage and film (with an Academy Award to his credit), record label owner, graphic artist – what has always set Byrne apart from the pack is his unique perspective and open mind.

So it was no surprise to see his recent article in Wired magazine, entitled “David Byrne’s Survival Strategies for Emerging Artists – and Megastars,” in which he attempts to simplify the ridiculously complicated new world of music production and dissemination.  It is a clearly written essay, and Byrne’s advice directed at artists is solid.

Note: the version of Byrne’s article on the Wired website contains multiple interactive features that can not be utilized in the print version.

This just about sums it up.
[audio:Daniel_Tashian___Christmas_Time_At_Last.mp3]
Daniel Tashian, a musician I admire, posted this new Christmas song on his website yesterday. Please visit him and give him the props he deserves.

Then buy his music as a gift to yourself and all of your friends.

Merry Christmas!

Philip Glass performing at Change Your Mind Day in Central Park in NYC (1999).

I ran across this video on the Glass Notes website, while looking for more information about Book of Longing, Glass’ collaboration with Leonard Cohen.  The performance here is wonderful and seems to fit the calm of the day.  It reminds me of afternoons spent at my family’s piano – with the sun flooding through the living room window – playing the same random sequence of notes over and over, until I either lost interest, generated a new sequence of notes that I liked, or got a screaming-at by someone else in the house with a low tolerance for drone.  Mad Rush is, of course, not child’s work.

I understand why so many people dislike Glass’ music, but it always catches my attention and I love the emphasis on slow development, as in the music of Steve Reich.  Mad Rush is a particular favorite of mine that I know from the Philip Glass: Solo Piano CD.  I did not realize that it was tied to the Dalai Lama in any way – I imagine that gives it more of a personal connection to Glass, who I’ve read has been following the Buddhist path for 30 or more years.

Change Your Mind Day was launched in 1994, when hundreds gathered for a day of meditation practice in New York City’s Central Park.  It was organized by Tricycle, a national journal for practitioners of meditation as taught by the Buddha.  Their aim was to unite dharma groups while creating an offering to the wider community. [ref. Sentient Times]

Notice how few people seem to be in attendance – had they already changed their minds, or were they just being stubborn?