Congratulations, Dr. Brian May

Brian May, who took 35 years off during grad school as a rock star, has been named chancellor of Liverpool John Moores University.

(via Annals of Improbable Research)

Friday music mix: Summer

I'll be on vacation next week, so (finally) I can do my summer theme list.

Peter Gabriel -- The Rhythm Of The Heat
Kings of Convenience -- Summer On The Westhill
Journey -- Stone In Love
Modest Mussorgsky -- Tuileries (from Pictures at an Exhibition)
ABBA -- Summer Night City
The Beatles -- Sun King
Michelle Shocked -- V.F.D.
Enya -- Caribbean Blue
Don Henley -- The Boys Of Summer
Cat Stevens -- Silent Sunlight

Friday music mix: Proposal crunch time

NASA's Geospace proposals are due in a week, and I'm trying to write one. So this week's theme is about money.

Dire Straits -- Money For Nothing
The Beatles -- You Never Give Me Your Money
John Dowland -- Fine Knacks For Ladies
Alan Parsons Project -- May Be A Price To Pay
Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young -- Find The Cost Of Freedom
Pink Floyd -- Money
ABBA -- The Winner Takes It All
Paul Simon -- Diamonds On The Soles Of Her Shoes
Modest Mussorgsky -- Samuel Goldenberg and Schmuyle (from Pictures at an Exhibition)
Midnight Oil -- Blue Sky Mine

Friday music mix: Happy Birthday, USA

Ten songs about the promise and dream (and reality) of America:

The Star Spangled Banner
Bruce Springsteen -- Born To Run
Aaron Copland -- Lincoln Portrait
Simon and Garfunkel -- America
Harry Chapin -- W.O.L.D.
America -- A Horse With No Name
Supertramp -- Breakfast In America
Sting -- Englishman In New York
Bob Seger -- Hollywood Nights
Paul Simon -- American Tune

Friday music mix: Meeting old friends

Since I have been at a conference for the last week, the theme of the week suggests itself.

Gustav Holst -- Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity (from The Planets)
The Beatles -- With A Little Help From My Friends
Peter Gabriel -- Don't Give Up
Billy Joel -- She's Right On Time
Enya -- Anywhere Is
Harry Chapin -- Taxi
Limpopo -- Those Were The Days
Simon and Garfunkel -- Old Friends
Queen -- You're My Best Friend
Alan Parsons Project -- Old And Wise

Friday music mix: Ten for the road

Since I'll be on travel next week, here are some songs about going places.

Cat Stevens -- On The Road To Find Out
Pink Floyd -- Learning To Fly
Alan Parsons Project -- One More River
The Beatles -- She's Leaving Home
Chicago -- Wishing You Were Here
The Guo Brothers -- Soldiers Of The Long March
Talking Heads -- Road To Nowhere
Elton John -- Rocket Man
Arlo Guthrie -- Coming Into Los Angeles
Paul Simon -- Another Galaxy

Friday music mix: It was 40 years ago today (or sometime this month)

Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band is one of two Beatles albums I own (the other is Abbey Road). The goal was to explore the limits of what was then possible in a new phenomenon, the concept album. It is widely, and reasonably, considered one of the greatest albums ever recorded. My thoughts (and ratings) about the songs on this album:

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (4*): The album starts with a rousing tune introducing the fictional band portrayed in the album. The song establishes the mood of the album, then segues into...


2. With A Little Help From My Friends (4*): Ringo (as "Billy Shears") takes the lead, with the rest of the band backing him up, as befits the title. A fitting song about friendship.


3. Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds (5*): Despite the psychedelic nature of the song and the initials LSD, John Lennon always insisted that his son came up with the title. The song is about alternate realities--highly relevant in the time of G. W. Bush.


4. Getting Better (3*): Paul sings about self-improvement ("Man I was mean/But I'm changing my scene").


5. Fixing A Hole (3*): This song doesn't quite work for me.


6. She's Leaving Home (5*): One of the highlights of the album, a song about escaping the confines of one's parents, who are in denial about the situation. The string arrangement is just right for the song.


7. Being For The Benefit Of Mr. Kite (4*): Apparently taken from a circus poster, and with an arrangement to match. Listen for the tape effects near the end.


8. Within You Without You (4*): George Harrison's attempt at writing Indian classical music. A reminder that we are all interconnected parts of the world, as much as some would like to forget the fact.


9. When I'm Sixty-Four (4*): Paul sings about getting old. The 1920's-style jazz arrangement is the perfect match.


10. Lovely Rita (3*): Love can come in the unlikeliest places--like the meter maid.


11. Good Morning, Good Morning (3*): I'm not really sure what this song is supposed to be about. At the end fox hunt sound effects lead into...


12. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (Reprise) (3*): The second time is just not as good as the opening number. The Beatles were right not to end with this one.


13. A Day In The Life (5*): A musing on some of the little oddities of life ("Four thousand holes in Blackburn, Lancashire"). Life goes on, somehow.

The CD reproduces the repeating phrase that was on the run-out groove at the end of Side 2 of the record. The tape snippets make for an interesting effect.

Friday music mix: Songs I love to hate

I just read the introduction of a paper that should not be set aside lightly--it should be thrown across the room with great force. Since my inner curmudgeon is out today, here are some songs that I consider among the worst I've ever heard. I don't have a plausible explanation for how they ever got any radio play, but I've heard them all on the radio at one time or another. I'm excluding Christmas songs here--I could do another such post with just Christmas music.

1. Toni Basil, "Hey Mickey": The most annoying 80s song ever, with ridiculous video to match. (Hint to the ladies: If you're old enough to legally buy alcohol in this country, and you want people to take you seriously, do not put on a cheerleader's uniform.) A repetitive song with nothing even vaguely resembling a hook. If you really must hear what this song sounds like, look for Weird Al Yankovic's parody "Hey Ricky," which is actually halfway decent.

2. Norman Greenbaum, "Spirit In The Sky": This guy must be in league with Satan, because few things will turn you off of Jesus faster than this song allegedly in praise of Jesus. Repetitive bad lyrics. Bad theology, too, in the line "I've never been a sinner."

3. Alice Cooper, "Eighteen": You're not 18 anymore, Alice, so stop taking up airtime singing about it already.

4. Elton John/Kiki Dee, "Don't Go Breaking My Heart": There are lots of Elton haters out there, and this song is a strong argument in favor of that position. There are a few good Elton John songs out there, but not the ones that get significant airplay.

5. Guns 'n' Roses, "Knocking On Heaven's Door": A brilliant idea--let's have a Bob Dylan tune covered by just about the only famous singer (Axl Rose) with a worse singing voice than Bob Dylan! There are other ways in which this song is a bad stylistic match.

6. Black Sabbath, "Iron Man": Bad physics and bad chemistry ("He was turned to steel/In a great magnetic field") to go along with the annoyingly repetitive musical phrase (with the lead guitar doubling the singer, no less).

7. Led Zeppelin, "Whole Lotta Love": OK, Led Zeppelin fans, explain this one. The song is much too long, with a long stretch of moaning, and another annoying singing voice--Robert Plant in falsetto range. This is one of my arguments that Led Zeppelin was highly overrated.

8. Rolling Stones, "Under My Thumb": Another overrated classic rock band. Proof that misogynistic lyrics did not start in the rap era.

9. Gang Green, "Voices Carry": The original version by 'Til Tuesday isn't so bad, but screaming the refrain, as is done in this version, completely contradicts the meaning of the song.

10. Huey Lewis and the News, "Hip To Be Square": Huey Lewis rates as the biggest disappointment among the prominent musical stars of my teen years. He had the talent. He could have been somebody. Instead he became a pop sellout with songs like this one.

Friday music mix: Star Wars

Thirty years ago today, the original Star Wars (now known as Episode IV: A New Hope) was released. Among the many innovations was a soundtrack consisting largely of epic concert hall music written specifically for the movie. There had been other examples of classical music used in film (the most famous being Rossini's William Tell Overture for The Lone Ranger and Richard Strauss's Also sprach Zarathustra for 2001: A Space Odyssey). There had been original scores of orchestral pops music (e.g., Rocky). But the score by John Williams introduced what many would consider serious original classical music to films. So this week's selections are taken from the soundtracks to five of the six movies (I do not own the soundtrack to Episode II: Attack of the Clones).

Episode I: The Phantom Menace: Duel of the Fates; Qui-Gon's Noble End; The High Council Meeting and Qui-Gon's Funeral
Episode III: Revenge of the Sith: Anakin's Dark Deeds
Episode IV: A New Hope: Imperial Attack; Cantina Band; The Trash Compactor; The Throne Room/End Title
Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back: The Imperial March (Darth Vader's Theme)
Episode VI: Return of the Jedi: Emperor's Throne Room

Friday music mix: Celebration!

It's Commencement Weekend here, so let the celebrating begin!

E. Power Biggs -- Triumphal March (Karg-Elert)
The Guo Brothers -- Dancing and Singing in the Village
Gustav Holst -- Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity (from The Planets)
Wayne and Shuster -- Happy Birthday to Us (Canadian Centennial Song)
Andrew Kazdin -- Prelude and Happy Dance
Cat Stevens -- If You Want to Sing Out, Sing Out
Alexander Borodin -- Polovtsian Dances
Fleetwood Mac -- Don't Stop
Chicago -- Beginnings
John Williams -- The Throne Room/End Title (from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope soundtrack)

Friday music mix: Games and luck

Today is Friday the 13th, a date many in the West associate with bad luck. So here is a list of songs about games and luck:

Warren Zevon -- Lawyers, Guns and Money
Little River Band -- Lonesome Loser
Bob Seger -- Fire Lake
Genesis -- Invisible Touch
Jethro Tull -- Only Solitaire
Alan Parsons Project -- Games People Play
Suzanne Vega -- Knight Moves
ABBA -- Take A Chance On Me
Pink Floyd -- On The Run
Queen -- Play The Game

Friday music mix: Twelve bar blues and twelve tone rows

I like quite a few different kinds of classical music, from the Renaissance to modern stuff, as well as quite a variety of popular music. There are some exceptions. In two of those cases, the fundamental reason why I dislike the genre is the same, but the details of why are quite different. They are twelve bar blues and twelve tone rows, and the fundamental reason is that in both cases the artificial restrictions imposed are too severe.

Twelve bar blues has a rigidly defined chord progression: I-I-I-I-IV-IV-I-I-V-IV-I-I. Repeat ad nauseam. The result is that all such songs have a tendency to sound alike. Note that it doesn't take much deviation from the formula to make a song enjoyable: the Pink Floyd songs "Money" (from Dark Side of the Moon) and "Dogs of War" (from A Momentary Lapse of Reason) are based on that same chord progression but have deviations as simple as changes in meter that are enough to make both songs enjoyable.

In principle, it is quite simple to write a twelve-tone piece. Start with the twelve notes of the Western chromatic scale arranged in some initially arbitrary order. Once that order is fixed, the following transformations are allowed:

1. Inversion. Where the original sequence goes up (down) by n semitones, the new sequence goes down (up) by the same number of semitones.


2. Retrogression. Play it backwards. (The people who were looking for hidden messages by playing songs backwards were looking in completely the wrong place.)


3. Inverted retrogression. Do both of the above transformations.


4. Transposition. Take the original sequence, or the result of any of the above transformations, and shift every note by the same number of semitones.

In most cases, these transformations will give you a total of 48 sequences. Your mission, should you choose to accept it, is to use all 48 sequences in something that actually sounds like music and not just mind games. I don't know of anyone who has succeeded; there has not been the equivalent of the Well-Tempered Klavier for twelve-tone rows. Again, it's not that I dislike 20th century concert hall music; on the contrary, I count Aaron Copland, Gustav Holst, and Percy Grainger. The difference is that these composers connect with the listener, in ways that practitioners of twelve-tone music like Arnold Schoenberg do not.

Friday music mix: Spring

What a difference a week makes. The snow is melting, and soon I'll actually be able to take advantage of Daylight Savings Time.

Pink Floyd -- Signs Of Life
The Beatles -- Here Comes The Sun
Aaron Copland -- Appalachian Spring
Cat Stevens -- Silent Sunlight
Elton John -- Your Song
Enya -- Aldebaran
The Guo Brothers and Shung Tian -- Springtime on Parmir Mountains
John Dowland -- Clear or Cloudy
Henry VIII -- As it bare out one morn in May
Nikolai Rimski-Korsakov -- Russian Easter Overture

"As it bare out one morn in May" tells of the meeting of Robin Hood and Maid Marian (but does not mention Robin's difficulties with the Sheriff of Nottingham).

Friday music mix: Winter

Snowstorm tonight, 6-10 inches forecast. So this week's theme is songs about winter or snow.

Soundtrack to Star Wars Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back -- Main Title/The Ice Planet Hoth
Midnight Oil -- Antarctica
Alan Parsons Project -- The Cask of Amontillado
Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians -- Air of December
Fleetwood Mac -- Landslide
Simon and Garfunkel -- Hazy Shade of Winter
Jethro Tull -- Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Day
Pink Floyd -- Terminal Frost
Mannheim Steamroller -- Wolfgang Amadeus Penguin
Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky -- Waltz of the Snowflakes (from The Nutcracker)

Friday music mix: The so-called "Definitive 200"

Via Salon's Audiofile, I see that the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame and the National Association of Recording Merchandisers has released a list of the definitive 200 albums.

Naturally, "definitive n", where n is arbitrary, is purely a matter of taste (or lack thereof), so I'll offer my comments on where their list overlaps my personal CD collection and some of the CDs I own that I think should have been on their list.

1. The Beatles, Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967)

2. Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon (1973)

It's hard to argue with these two choices. Personally, I would have put Dark Side of the Moon in the number 1 slot, but I can understand the argument for Sgt. Pepper.

12. The Beatles, Abbey Road (1969)

22. The Who, Who's Next (1971)

25. Pink Floyd, The Wall (1979)

Again, no complaints here. All of these deserve their top 25 ratings.

35. The Eagles, Hotel California (1976)

Their best known. It should definitely be somewhere on the list, although not necessarily that high.

70. Billy Joel, The Stranger (1977)

We're getting into guilty pleasures territory here, but most of the songs on this one hold up well.

74. Phil Collins, No Jacket Required (1985)

This one is definitely in the guilty pleasures category. "Take Me Home" holds up pretty well, but the rest of this album is just so 1985.

83. Paul Simon, Graceland (1986)

One of the groundbreaking albums in terms of incorporating world folk music into Western popular music. Should be much higher on the list.

89. Dire Straits, Brothers in Arms (1985)

Also should be much higher on the list.

112. Simon and Garfunkel, Bridge Over Troubled Water (1970)

Although this one deserves a place on the list, Bridge Over Troubled Water is only the fourth best of Simon and Garfunkel's five studio albums. Their best is Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme (1966), while Bookends (1968) and Sounds of Silence (1966) are also better choices.

119. The Police, Synchronicity (1983)

There are several good songs on this album along with a couple of real clunkers. A case can be made for including it, but it should be lower on the list.

126. Journey, Escape (1981)

This one is extraordinarily uneven. Half of the songs would make a great album side; the other half are mediocre to atrocious. Frontiers (1983) would have been a better choice.

132. Enya, A Day Without Rain (2000)

It's hard to argue with putting this one somewhere on the list, but Watermark (1988) should be included also.

Now for some of the conspicuously absent albums, in addition to the few I mentioned above:

• Wendy Carlos, Switched-On Bach (1968)
  
  An exploration of the possibilities of the then-new Moog synthesizer. If you've never heard Bach before, this is a good place to start.



• Soundtrack from Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope (1977)
  
  The first installment of the Star Wars saga was truly groundbreaking in its use of original classical music as a soundtrack. This one should have been in the top 50.



• Suzanne Vega, Suzanne Vega (1985) and Solitude Standing (1987)
  
  Suzanne Vega was the first of the 1980s urban folk singers to hit it big. At least one of these albums should have been on the list.



• Peter Gabriel, Security (1982) and Us (1992)
  
  Peter Gabriel knows how to create soundscapes. At least one of these should have made the list.

I mean, this list includes Christina Aguilera at number 127, the Footloose soundtrack at number 134, and Avril Lavigne at number 162. Surely they could have done better.

Friday music mix

In honor (?) of today's mixed slop storm, some rainy day music.

Suzanne Vega -- Tom's Diner
ABBA -- The Day Before You Came
The Police -- King Of Pain
America -- Rainy Day
Peter Gabriel -- Red Rain
Carly Simon -- Do The Walls Come Down
Enya -- Storms In Africa
Maynard Ferguson -- Swamp
Simon and Garfunkel -- Kathy's Song
The Who -- Reign O'er Me