This one from Pitchfork's review of the latest (?!) William Shatner album caught my eye:

"While this humble music publication is hardly the platform to debate the merits and impact of irony in modern art, I will say that I'm glad that Shatner decided to make this music now. It's so confusing, enthralling, sincere, profound, and trite that it's nothing short of a mirror to society's own incongruities. Which, really, is quite an achievement."

Of course it is.

I don't really want to pick up the Brian Wilson thread all over again but Kyle asked for it so here it is. This from the Village Voice in its review of the "Smile" album:

"Whatever it was supposed to achieve originally, right now SMiLE sounds like a beautifully modulated, funny, sometimes unintentional meditation on a failed United States and counterculture, and the lost paradise, real or imagined, of Southern California, and the collapse and reinvention of the male ego."

I kid you not.

Nothing wrong with a little bit of romantic la di da every now and then, in my opinion. Stu, you have my ticket order.

Thought I'd end the week with what is probably the most ridiculous passage from a music review I've come across in a long time. This comes courtesy of the prats at Pitchfork.com who opine, "where Interpol were once synonymous with emotive desolation, they here opt for an atmosphere of poignant resignation." Don't you just hate when bands do that?

Perhaps we should come up with the 'most ridiculous review I've read this week' item for the blog. Anyone think they can top this?

Thanks Stu - I guess I'll pass on the $12 DH opera tix. The ones I'm most interested in are Siegfried (which I'll pay full price for) and Al "The Fish" Herring, which you can't help me with. All the other stuff is just overly romantic la di da (pardon my Italian).

Re operas,
I mentioned to some of you about $12.00 opera tickets for the full dress rehersals. I think I have access to all remaining operas except the Brittan one. Those who have not responded, please do so as I wont have time to contact you prior to getting the tickets. Just let me know what ones you are interested in. If you dont respond Ill assume your not interested.
s

whoops its that damn spelling again,...Honegger not Honniger, honeyger.....

Thanks for the links to the Honniger Derek , the naxos website is great. Ill have to check other labels (classical) to see if this is the norm. The Honniger sounds pretty cool (lame adjective I know) . Good selection I think. Count me in , when is that cd club Marc?
s

Marc - welcome!

You guys haven't made me feel like I missed a hell of a lot at the Wilco show.

Re classical listening experiment, Derek, savvy negotiator that he is, appears to be playing the "silence" card as a means of ensuring his suggestion is selected. A clever and reliable tactic (used by women through the ages) which I will cave on. Let's go with the Honegger - his third symphony (subtitled "Liturgical"). Re versions, in addition to the two Derek cited, I own an excellent Von Karajan version on Deutsche Grammophone which contains Symphonies II and III plus a Stravinsky Concerto.

Hey Marc...when's that meeting?

No Kyle, it was not Levon Holmes, but rather Levon Helm...no matter, i was wrong. I thought it was the renowned keyboardist for The Band who was accompanying Wilco in the second encore...well i was right on that account, but wrong about who the keyboardist for the band actually was...Garth Hudson. So i think i deserve 1/2 a point for recognizing the distinctive sound of The Band's keyboardist but loose at least 1 full point for not knowing that Levon Helm was actually the drummer of The Band.

Enjoyed Wilco very much, but after the show i could not help think back to a conversation that came up earlier in the evening concerning the price of opera tickets and i came to a conclusion that it was not that bad a deal when you compare it to the cost of a Wilco show.

Let's see...in an opera we get a full orchestra, maybe a couple dozen singers/actors who continually learn new works, a couple of really good singers (the superstars), a bunch of set decorators, designers choreographers, a printed program with lyrics etc. etc. etc.

...at a Wilco show we get a bunch of guys basically regurgitating songs from a couple of their last albums, who are to lazy to show up for a sound check! That for almost $50 bucks...damn right i'm going to stick around and squeeze them for every encore their good for! Definitely think they should have stopped at two. I think they employed a very clever tactic in playing one of the very worst songs every written as their last song in the third encore..."you won't hear this song on the radio"...(taken from the end of their last album)...no shit you won't, 'cause it's crap! Absolute crap!...there was no chance in hell of the crowd calling for yet another encore after that.

...but really...no really, i enjoyed the show!

As for expanding my horizons and challenging myself to think critically about some hard to wrap my head around music..i'm all for it. If it is deemed worth listening to (not necessarily liking) i will gladly go out and buy it do my homework.

m.

metaBeats

I'm glad to be back in the office, where the internet connection is fast and stable, and where I can actually sit down and gather my thoughts for a few minutes.

I'm also glad that the 'Smile' experiment was kiboshed. As much as I like ‘Good Vibrations’, ‘God Only Knows’ and ‘When I grow up to be a man’, I’m not what you’d call a big Beach Boys fan. Some 40 years later, I can’t imagine the songs stand up very well. Plus I've purchased a few interesting discs from bands who are neither Wilco or Radiohead which i'm interested in sharing with the group. The date of that meeting is......?

I really enjoyed the Wilco show and thought their set was very tight. Jeff Tweedy also seemed to be in a pretty upbeat mood and a few early feedback issues aside, they sounded great. I liked his witty rejoinder to the fan who enigmatically shouted ‘St. Louis Cardinals’: ‘Um, thanks. That was very…cryptic’. While some of the distortion bits were a little long for my liking, I was impressed with the way they would rein in the chaotic noise and churn out a straight on pop song.

Marc, not sure if the guy on keyboards/guitar was Levon Holmes as I’m not sure I know who Levon Holmes is. I do know that it wasn’t Livan Hernandez, who was pitched for the New York Yankees the previous night.

Agree with you Derek about the ovation thing. It was good but did I really feel like leaping to my feet and cheering? Not really and so I didn’t, until the end of the regular set, when I needed to stretch my legs (Massey Hall—great acoustics, not so great when it comes to comfortable seating). I also find the whole ‘clap for an encore’ part of the show so incredibly tedious and inauthetic. What, if I don’t cheer, they’re not going to come out again? Unless I clap solidly for ten minutes, they’re heading back to the tour bus? Or is it like a performance of Peter Pan, where I have to clap to save Tinkerbell’s life? Did my lacklustre applause on Saturday night unknowingly put the band in mortal danger? No. They're going to come out anyway and we all know it so enough with the song and dance and bring on the, um, song and dance as it were.

And tell me, because I don’t understand, why do fans feel the need to shout affirmations during any pause in the vocal performance? Its as if the absence of a ‘whoooooo’ during the bridge were a slap in the face to the band.

Since the encores weren’t particularly impressive in terms of song selection and Sarah and I were meeting up with friends later for a birthday-drinks event, we decided to jet midway through the second encore. Just how many encores were there?

Anyhoo, I when I was in Seattle last week I discovered a radio station that I really liked and they have a pretty neat website so check it out here.

Way out of my depth on the classical music suggestions but am more than willing to dive in and purchase the disc that you think will be interesting. ‘Atonal’ is not a big selling point for me but I’m willing to keep an open-mind.

Tell me what to buy. And tell me when to show up to Marc's place. And then put me in a taxi home. And shouldn't we consider adding a bottle of scotch to the mix?

I'm fine with the Honegger, Derek. I actually own it but haven't spend too much time on it as of yet (plus I'm going through a Poulenc stage) so that works great for me. The Holliger looks interesting but I'm a little worried that the non-20th C classical fans in the group might find it a little screechy and strange. Honneger had a reasonably melodic idiom, though it ain't Mozart.

I had narrowed mine down to two suggestions, so may as well throw them out to see if either sounds good to y'all. I was thinking of:

(1) Szymanowski's 2nd symphony - from 1910 or so, an interesting mix of modern and romantic style, very dramatic and listenable. Many recordings available, including a Naxos cheapy. I own it but am just begininng to listen to it.

(2) Zemlinsky's Lyric Symphony - From the early 20's - 7 songs without a break, featuring some beautiful orchestral/choral work, again in a transitional modern/romantic idiom.

I also though of Sibelius' 5th, which is generally considered his most important.

Wow, them's fighting words Stuart.

May I be the first to make a suggestion seeing as how I nixed the Brian Wilson experiment.

Two suggestions with respect to 20th century composers. Try and keep them straight as the names are fairly smilar.

The first is Arthur Honegger, a member of the French group of composers known as "Les Six".

Check out the following links:

http://music.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/0003_satie/lessix.shtml

http://www.naxos.com/mainsite/default.asp?pn=SContentQuery&itemcode=&disctitle=&works=&Composer=honegger&Artist=

On the Naxos link click on the first link on the page and then on to the link labelled "about this recording".

I would suggest listening to his 3rd Symphony available as you can see on Naxos or a more inviting double EMI CD for $18.99 which contains all 5 of his symphonies plus his most famous piece "Pacific 231". I have listened to this work and his first symphony but none of the rest of his work.

The other individual, who has only just come to my attention from various recent reviews, is the contemporary composer Heinz Holliger. The violinist Thomas Zehetmair has a new CD out on ECM of his violin concerto which you can check out here:

http://www.ecmrecords.com/Catalogue/New_Series/1800/1890.php?cat=%2FArtists%2FZehetmair+Thomas%23%23Thomas+Zehetmair&we_start=0&lvredir=712

This disc is also available for $18.99 and not hard to track down.

Do we have a date for this thing yet?

ok , and Ill defer to you Brian as you already own all the atonal experimental dreck out there anyway.....
s

Sure you are Stu, sometimes. Re 20th C, I was thinking of something that we (me, you, Dahruk, Marc, anyone else who listens to classical) don't already know, or don't know well, just to make it equally novel for all.

Research pending.

apologies, apologies apologies, Derek, I do, in fact, know how to spell your name, I thought I had finished with this last year, but my drink addled brain seems to have had a relapse .
Im with Brian- and a 2oth c classic that is important in terms not just about music but art in general would be "The Rite of Spring" by Stravinsky - . Im open to other suggestions too,
(Damn im a likable guy sometimes)
s

Darik....It's officially off? What the hell? Why?? Well there's $13 I'll never get back.

OK, I didn't buy it, but still. I think it's a good choice, 'cause critics loved it and we likely won't, so we can listen to it and try to understand their reference points etc. I think the key will be to find something that we won't all naturally love, but that is being hailed as "important". No Wilco or Radiohead allowed.

I'll suggest a 20th C classical for a similar (more challenging?) exercise if everyone's into it.

Hey first off, the name is Derek. How many different ways can you guys find to spell it?

Secondly Wilco was a good, solid rock show. Nothing more, nothing less. They played pretty much all the songs one would want to hear them play and while they certainly were not played in a perfunctory manner neither were they captivating in a way that would make you think that the live show was giving you so much more than you could get from listening at home to the CDs.

I found myself at several times during the show thinking, how would Radiohead compare? The reason for the comparison being that Wilco and Radiohead are probably the only two bands of their stature that, up until Saturday night, I had never seen live. Purely conjecture on my part but I think Radiohead at Massey would be a much better "show". Judging by the rapturous applause and numerous (how many Stuart?) encores the Toronto crowd obviously thought otherwise.

Which brings me to another point. What the hell is going on with Toronto audiences. Is every single performance these days ovation-worthy? Its getting to the stage where I'm sitting down just to make a point. It's enough to make you cringe.

Note to Bloggers: the Brian Wilson experiment is officially off as unofficially agreed on Saturday night. Still like the idea, just want no part of "Smile". Any other suggestions?

Well Wilco....
I thought the main show was pretty great, the lead song off the new disc had an even better lead solo then on the disc, and generally I thought he pulled all the best songs from the last couple of records. If not the greatest experience of my life, I still thought it worth the investment. The encores, on the other hand (Garth Hudsons help notwithstanding) I thought to be not great selections , except for a few cuts of mermaid ave. Derrick and Kyle & Sarah ... as you lot left early, I take it , you didnt like it as much. Im curious to hear your comments.
CD club, I am avail whenever, What is your final date Marc, are you shifting it again?
s

Yeah, frankly, and despite the critical hoopla, the idea of re-recording Smile 37 years after its non-release seems to me to be somewhere between ill advised and idiotic. I've heard a bunch of the outtakes over the years and they were reasonably cool, but i's sure as hell not 1967 anymore, so I'll need to be convinced as to the relevance of its ideas, sounds, and innovations. Keeping an open mind though (?!).

I, like the rest of you, don't see Pet Sounds as one of the great all time records...way too many banal (or puerile) and middle of the road numbers. Three or four great songs mind you - "God Only Knows" probably being my favourite.

Having said that, this is the sort of navel-gazing, mentally masturbatory exercise that I find quite fun, so I will of course shell out the $13 and participate.

And Stu, to counter your little prod, I think doing the same thing for a classical CD would be a great idea.

When's that CD Club again?

Sorry , I was looking for the metabeats blog site not the new hockey news & views blog. You know.... beats... as in music.....ah.....yes....
well Mr Mercer, I will spend my $13.00 if all agree, however I was not a great fan of Beach Boys -pet sounds , which receives even more superfluous rapturous applause, so Im not likely to like my investment, but hey it sure beats being forced to buy something like...say.... Mahlers 1st....Sorry Brian, couldnt resist.
You lovers of magnetic fields should check out a new disc ,which I have heards bits of, called "when I said I wanted to be your dog" by Jens Lekman. It sounded pretty terrific in the -humouous lyrics meets killer melody - sort of way.
s