Category: Music

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?

Because after this past week, I think we need some FUN.

This will be fascinating.

Those of us who are of a certain age will undoubtedly remember many a smoky night spent on a flashing dance floor gyrating our once pert-and-perky asses to Cerrone’s 1978 classic Supernature.

The reason I bring this up is that this morning while scrolling through iTunes I ran across Cerrone’s 2010 Cerrone Symphony Variations of Supernature, essentially a symphonic 44-minute remix/augmentation/updating of the original 1978 source material that I orgasmed over when I first heard it years ago.

I’m pretty sure I’d written a review back then, but like all the rest of my posts prior to moving to Denver, it was consigned to the depths of internet hell.

Anyway, I had forgotten how good it really was.

It’s also kind of funny in that CBS’s Zoo (yeah, I watch it as ridiculous as it is because James Wolk is pretty) seems to be loosely based on the premise Cerrone explored in his music nearly 40 years ago (I can not be that old!)—that the animals will one day rise up and rebel against mankind.

While it’s not available on iTunes (WTF?), you can can still pick it up on physical media from Amazon.

…long after we’re gone.

Don’t know why I liked this so much. Maybe it’s because it’s such an off-the-wall rendition of such a well-known composition.

I couldn’t embed the video (bastards!) but if you click on the image you’ll be taken to the YouTube source.

OMG…this.

After not hearing it for many, many years, Akhnaten has been my commute soundtrack for the past few days and has reminded me that even though all the negative aspects of who I was prior to my cancer battle ideed sloughed off and died, some of the things that still send my soul quivering are very much alive and well.

Even after all this time (I first heard Akhnaten in 1988 and I doubt I’ve listened to it in full since we moved to Denver), it still gives me goosebumps.

But then I am an admitted Philip Glass fanboy. I first became acquainted with his work by way of the Koyaanisqatsi soundtrack back in the mid 1980s, and was immediately hooked on his minimalism. In my journeys I have known only two other souls who shared that Glass love; one was a neighbor in San Francisco who turned me on to Satyagraha—a piece of music which was later to become my muse—and another a dear friend who is sadly no longer with us.

While the entire opera is a slice of heaven that easily transports me away from my daily life, three cuts especially stand out. The first is the final scene of Act I, The Window of Appearances:

The Window of Appearances will forever be burned in my memory as playing while driving back to Phoenix one night after an evening of astrophotography an hour north of town.

The other two are Scenes 1 and 2 from Act II, The Temple and Akhnaten and Nefertiti:

I especially like the love poem recited in Akhnaten and Nefertiti…

(Recited by the Scribe and then sung in Egyptian by Akhnaten and Nefertiti, it is a love poem found in a royal mummy of the Armarna period, from Journal of Egyptian Archæology, translated by Sir Alan Gardiner):

I breathe the sweet breath
Which comes forth from thy mouth.
I behold thy beauty every day.
It is my desire
That I may be rejuvenated
With life through love
Of thee.

Sesenet neftu nedjem
Per em rek
Peteri nefruk em menet
Ta-i nehet sedj emi
Kheruk nedjem en mehit
Renpu ha-i em ankh
en mertuk.

Give me thy hands, holding thy spirit.
that I may receive it and may live by it.
Call thou upon my name unto eternity
And it shall never fail.

Di-ek eni awik kher ka-ek
Shesepi su ankhi yemef
I ashek reni er heh
Ben hehif em rek

A gift from a friend. It’s really growing on me.

My first exposure to Bette was (as to be expected) shortly after I came out. I was hanging around with the guy who had been my “first time” (another story for another time) a few weeks afterward in his dorm room one afternoon, and he pulled out Live at Last.

I’d never even heard of Bette Midler (remember, this was 1976 and she wasn’t the household name she is now), and admittedly I wasn’t wowed by what I’d heard (other than the Sophie Tucker jokes), but he let me borrow the album—along with his copy of Bette Midler.  I gave them both an extended listen but still wasn’t impressed. It wasn’t until many years later that I finally got Bette.

In the intervening years, I’ve followed Miss M through her highs and lows, her various albums, movies, incarnations and reinventions and have loved every minute.  With It’s the Girls, it seems she’s gotten back to her roots and it sounds good.

…whenever I hear this

I am transported back to 1977 and a warm, sun-dappled autumn afternoon in my dorm room in Kaibab-Huachuca Hall at the University of Arizona.

The 12″ 45 rpm single was pressed on red vinyl and when it was new, smelled of strawberries.

And from there the trip down memory lane invariably leads to these:

“And you thought it was over…no, no, no…”

This one wasn’t pressed on colored vinyl (at least not the copy I had), but to this day I swear it smelled of poppers when it was first opened.

The cut Violation was the soundtrack for the first time I slow danced with another guy. I was so disappointed that I could never find a translucent pink vinyl copy of the record all the DJs seemed to have—until nearly 30 years later. And it was only a few short years ago that my friend Kevin (of The Lisp fame) provided me with a definitive translation of all the lesbian making out that was going on in the song.

It was the summer of “I Feel Love,” but eventually all my favorite cuts from the album were on the A-Side.

Still one of my all-time favorite records. Rumor at the time was the costumes cost thousands. I find that very hard to believe now.

…with Donna Summer’s MacArthur Park Suite blasting in the headphones and I realized that the recruiter I met with earlier today wasn’t even alive when I was dancing to this in the clubs.

And then I realized that Ben wasn’t either.

I feel so old sometimes…

I stumbled across this a few months ago while searching for the soundtrack from the film of the same name. Imagine my surprise when I discovered this is so good it could actually be soundtrack music. It’s not; it’s from a genre—epica—that I’d never heard of, but one I have immediately taken a liking to.

I don’t remember ever hearing this back in the day, but Ben introduced me to it a few weeks ago and I now love it. Unfortunately, last night I had one of those fitful nights of sleep, and every time I woke up it was blaring at angelic volume in my head.

Enjoy.

For those of a certain age, this set will bring tears of joy to your eyes.

(Via)