Category: Music

As I'm sure I've written here before, I've been a huge fan of Philip Glass since discovering his music via Koyaanisqatsi in 1986.

To this day there are parts of Akhnaten and Satyagraha that still send chills down my spine.

But in 1989 he released 1000 Airplanes On The Roof, a work that by all accounts I should've devoured, laying his music over a theme of UFOs and alien abduction (something I was way too much into at the time).

And yet, I hated it. I don't know if I was expecting to be blown away like I was with Akhnaten or if I perceived that his style had changed too much since Koyaanisqatsi, but I was not impressed.

When the CD was stolen from my collection in 1991, I didn't bother replacing it.

In the years since Airplanes, Glass' music has evolved and changed—as we all have—and I've loved pretty much everything I've heard of his in the interim.

So when I was looking over my recently found "List of Stolen CDs" and noticed that Airplanes was on it, I thought, what the hell—give it another listen.

And upon hearing it again, I don't understand why I hated it so. It doesn't give me chills, but it is quintessential Glass.

And so another journey down the back alleys of the internet has turned up something quite unexpected—and quite forgotten.

In the mid 1980s, right after I'd gotten my first CD player and replaced my mediocre Sony stereo equipment with some good gear (Yamaha, baby), I stumbled upon the Private Music record label. While their wares were eventually sold everywhere, it was at the audio salon (the venerable Jerry's Audio for my Arizona readers) where I purchased the aforementioned equipment that I initially discovered them, and many of the discs became the soundtrack of my life after my relocation to San Francisco.

I don't remember how I landed on that Wikipedia Page, but even before I'd read through the whole list of their releases, a name popped into my head—along with a song title: Eddie Jobson, Theme of Secrets.

I remembered the name and title, and was surprised when I did a search through my iTunes and came up empty. WTF? Why didn't I have this album in my collection? Was it one of the CDs that was stolen from my apartment in 1990 and never replaced? Did I get rid of it during my purge in 2013 without ripping a copy first? It turns out Secrets wasn't the only Private Music album curiously absent from my collection, but it was the one that proved the most difficult to find again.

When I did finally track it down and heard those notes playing, a tear came to my eye. Rediscovering once-loved-and-forgotten music really is like running into an old friend whom you haven't seen in years.

I know I've posted this video previously, but damn…after going through my News and Twitter feeds today, I need something fun to counteract all the stupid. And this never fails to put a smile on my face.

My only question is why is there no official extended dance mix? Four minutes just isn't long enough!

And since we're on the subject…

"Unsure where this came from, if not the palsied hands of the good Lord himself."

That's how the original author of a post described it over on that there Tumblr thingie, and I immediately recognized its source: The Blacklist soundtrack, a underrated and—as near as I can tell—basically unknown gem I found at the library a couple months ago.

Simple premise: Dolly Parton's "Jolene" slowed from 45 to 33 rpm. Nothing more; no studio trickery, no trip hop drum breaks. The guitar loops back in and around itself. The bass becomes elastic, hot rubber. The violin stabs become sustained cello lines. The backing choir's split harmony rattles around, slinking ghostly into the corner.  And most importantly, Parton's once-frantic vocal is transformed from bubblegum country scrawl into something approximating field holler reverence.

"An already perfect song made transcendental…"

The rest of the album is just as good—and even available on vinyl for those of you so inclined. (Yes, I ordered a copy.)

My entire collection consists of only 10 of those individual cubes and I have a hard time knowing what's in that. As for this, I can't even begin to imagine what it's like. But it's beautiful, nevertheless.

Reminds me a bit of Barry Walters' (another story for another time) collection.

Even when you're not looking for it. And this should touch a soft spot in many a boomer's heart…

I didn't even know there was a soundtrack…

When I first heard this, I thought it was Giorgio!

One of my all-time favorites. Drift away with me for 20 minutes…

This is my favorite cut off the album.

While Captain Fantastic and the Brown Dirt Cowboy is my most beloved Elton John album ever and is amazing as a whole, Better Off Dead is without a doubt my favorite cut from the whole set.

…you BRADE RUNNAH!

Six months ago I didn't even know this record existed (even though I'd had the CD version since its release in 1994), but once I did of course I had to have it.

I'd forgotten how hauntingly beautiful this score was. My friend Barry wrote an excellent review for the SF Chronicle back in the day that I was hoping to quote from, but while attempting to locate it just now I realized that it—along with so many other things—has gone missing, no doubt tossed out in a fevered purge at some point.

Damn you, Discogs. You're allowing me to find records that I never thought I'd see, much less own.

I've had THP Orchestra's 1977 LP, Two Hot For Love, in my collection from the start, and it was one of the first I found when I was piecing that collection back together after selling it all in the 80s. Almost from the day it came out I'd heard rumors of it being available on white vinyl, but I'd never seen it anywhere, and  I frustratingly learned back in the day that you only got colored vinyl from Butterfly Records if you were in the right store at the right time, were a DJ, or knew one.

I was listening to the record a couple weeks ago and thought, "Why not Google THP Orchestra Two Hot for Love white vinyl?" and see what comes up.

BOOM! There it was. And the seller wasn't asking a hundred dollars for it either; only ten.

Seriously cool and kinda really creepy at the same time.

Yma Sumac (or as some insist, Amy Camus): Legend of the Sun Virgin

So I'm playing around with my iTunes playlists today and I made the surprising/disturbing discovery that of the 16,191 items in my library, 9461—NINE THOUSAND FOUR HUNDRED SIXTY ONE—supposedly have never been played.

How is this even possible?

Oh yeah…several years ago I inadvertently reset the play counts. But still, that's a lot of music I haven't listened to since then (if ever); 28.2 days worth to be exact.

"Disco never died, it just went underground. If this doesn't get you tapping your feet or moving yo ass, you're dead inside."

And down the rabbit hole I go. Thanks, YouTube…

One of my favorites. I want this mix.

I'd forgotten what an awesome track this was…

As a reminder, Orwell's 1984 was written as a cautionary tale…not a How-To Manual.

And since we're on the subject of Eurythmics and that awesome soundtrack…

While it may seem from my recent posts about rediscovering vinyl that I am obsessed with music from the 70s and 80s, that is only partly correct. As unthinkable as it might have been to my 20-year old self, one does not live by Disco alone. When considering music composed in this century, I admit a great fondness for electronica and ambient.

I discovered Loscil via Apple Radio a couple years ago, and for better or worse Scott Morgan's music became the soundtrack of my life at—and for many a snowy commute to and from—DISH. But even with that horrible baggage, it does nothing to diminish my innate love of his music, and to this day I still use it when I need to chill—something I needed to do a lot while working at that Toxic Vat of Feculent Hellstew—or simply ease back into sleep (as I did this morning at 4 am).

If you click on any of the album covers above it will take you to the respective iTunes pages where you can sample it yourself.

I wasn't really intending to buy anything. I still need to flesh out a few dozen missing titles from my old collection that have eluded me, but the spreadsheet where I keep all that data is a mess and needs to be properly sorted before it will be of any on-the-go use to me.

First off, I was shocked—shocked, I tell you—at the price of new vinyl: $19.99~49.99. Seriously? I realize it's making a comeback and there are still precious few pressing plants in operation, but still. $39.99 for Madonna's latest?

Thankfully, the bins were overflowing with even more used vinyl at a very reasonable price point of  $2.99~5.99. Buying used is always a crap shoot because of the nature of the medium, however. You can visually inspect the records, but you can never tell how much actual gunk is hiding in the grooves until you play them.

While browsing, I ran across the above gem, Isao Tomita's 1978 Bermuda Triangle on coral vinyl. It had no inner liner so I knew it was probably going to be a very noisy disk, but there was no way I was going to let this slip through my hands—especially when it was on that fabulous colored vinyl!

I owned this new (also on coral) back in 1978. You've got to remember that at that time electronic music in general was still something very new and the sound very modern. I was a huge Tomita fan, having fallen in love his application of electronic instruments to classical masterpieces. This particular disk, however, was strictly of his own composition, and while it brings back a lot of good memories of that period in my life, parts of it sound very dated. A little STAR WARS here, a little E.T. The Extraterrestrial there, and some Prokofiev and Sibelius thrown in for good measure.

And as I feared, the record is very noisy, ironically sending me off on a search for a digital copy…

Or maybe you'd prefer a Body Contact Contract?