OCD Greatest Hits

And you thought I was crazy. This is what crazy looks like. I admit I find it interesting though.

Swedish Pop Music Break

For those of you who despair of the void in current rock music of political messages (where have you gone Joe Strummer, the world turn its lonely eyes to you), here's some Swedish Marxist rock. (Watching the video at work is recommended.)

Swedish Pop Music Break

Who's up for Swedish pop music in the toilet? Me, too.

The "Musical Chill"

Interesting article touching on Mahler in the current issue of the New Yorker. Money quote:

His appeal is at once visceral and intellectual. On one level, he is the supreme magician of orchestral spectacle, the master of the oh-my-God moment. Neuroscientists have analyzed the phenomenon of the “musical chill”—the ambiguous tremor of otherness that runs through the body when, for whatever reason, a particular sound overwhelms the reasoning mind. Mahler generated chills by the dozen: the pianissimo, misterioso entry of the chorus in the “Resurrection”; the huge orchestral chord that blazes forth in the spacious slow movement of the Fourth; the “hammer-blow” percussion in the finale of the Sixth, which crushes hopes for a major-key resolution. Mahler’s chills often arise from collisions between music and noise, music and silence. They imitate the sublimity of nature—eruptions, thunderclaps, the roar of waterfalls—and thereby trigger an instinctive shiver of awe and fear.

Remembrance of Things Past

Last weekend, I dropped by to see Dean, who owns and operates a small, used record store in the antique district of a nearby town. We chatted for a while about the usual stuff--taxes, the weather, and record de-warping machines. I went through his store and selected four albums to buy. When I placed them on the counter, he looked at each of them and told me who he bought them from. It kind of amazed me that with the thousands of records that pass through his store, he remembered such details. Then again, I wasn’t so amazed. I probably have over a thousand records and I’m pretty sure I can remember where I got most of them. This is a trivial kind of memory associated with records. There's also a more powerful way records retrieve the past. For example, when I pull out my copy of Astral Weeks, I can remember exactly where I first listened to the album; I can picture vividly my father's turntable on which it played; and most profoundly the sensation of that first listen, though the magic of the initial experience can't be duplicated. Even if I don't have the same feeling listening to the album now, I remember having had such a feeling. Not only does it conjure my emotional response to the specific experience of listening to the album, I think it also revives my general emotional state at the time. Listening to Astral Weeks for the first time, my reaction was from the perspective of a teen-aged boy who had internal contradictions--arrogant but full of doubts about himself, humanity and the world in general--who possessed enough sensitivity to be touched by the soulfulness of Van Morrison without really knowing it. A ghost of that teen-aged self arises with each listen, sometimes more alive than at other times.

I've read that the sense of smell for a lot of people has that kind of power to return a person to a past moment with such vividness that that person has the experience of almost re-living that moment wholly. The sense of smell doesn't do it for me. But records do.

Swedish Pop Music Break

Are you craving more cowbell in your songs? Just listen to more Swedish pop music.

Album Cover Gallery: The Mod Squad

This cover make you wonder whether "A Dedicated Follower of Fashion" is really a satiric song.

What could be more mod than playing a sitar while riding a moped and chatting up a chick in a bucket hat? Nothing, that's what.

This cover makes you appreciate the restraint of the costume designers for the Austin Powers flicks.

The Tremeloes dressed to do battle with Sgt. Pepper's band. May the grooviest uniforms win.

The late sixties was the only time in modern history when it was socially acceptable to wear a vest sans shirt. This album cover almost makes it seem all right.