Comment of the Fortnight
31 December 1997
The Obligatory End-Of-Year Review
Another year shot to hell. <grin>
-o-
Now that that's out of the way, let's proceed to:
Music Review
I knew I was going to be home all day Christmas, and I didn't want to
spend the entire day listening to Christmas music.
I did, however, listen to radio station KFOG's
"Crazy-ass Christmas" which did
a lot of Chanukah and Christmas parody songs. They played a song called "New Year's
Resolution" by
Spike Jones and his
City Slickers. It was quite wonderful indeed.
I bought a few CDs, and recommend them to you:
- Jumpin' Night in The Garden of Eden
The Klezmer Conservatory Band
Rounder Records CD 3105
-
Klezmer music
is the dance music for the Yiddish-speaking populations of the
US. It originates from the folk and dance music of Eastern Europe, and it is
wonderfully moving.
I especially liked tracks 6 and 7 ("Pearl from Warsaw" and "Freylekhe Kneydlekh").
I also recommend the band's first album, Yiddishe Renaissance, Vanguard
VCD 79450.
- Scott Joplin - Greatest Hits
Dick Hyman and James Levine, Piano
RCA 60842-2-RG
-
Excellent collection of ragtime pieces played on piano. I've been a fan of Dick
Hyman's work ever since his synthesizer work ("The Electric Electics of Moog" if I
recall the title correctly) and he did a terrific job with the score of Woody
Allen's movie, "Zelig."
- The Complete Ballets of Erike Satie
Maurice Abravanel, Utah Symphony Orchestra
Vanguard Classics OVC 4030
-
I was re-reading Edward Bryant and Harlan Ellison's novel Phoenix Without Ashes
© 1975, Fawcett.
At one point, the protagonist is overwhelmed by hearing
Erik Satie's Mercure, Poses plastiques en
trois tableaux and I decided to hear it for myself. I found Abravanel's disc,
which includes Mercure and the other ballet music of Satie. Bryant and
Ellison were right. It is magnificent.
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