Listening Session: Donovan, Fairy Tale

This morning I needed to listen to a Donovan album. It's been a rough week for the forces of peace, love and understanding, with the terrorist attack on the Holocaust Museum by a Neo-Nazi and the fraudulent re-election of Ahmedinejad in Iran. The von Brunn story reminded me that there are people in this world who's very existence is defined by who or what they are against. Von Brunn, with his hatred of Jews and blacks that consumed his life, is an extreme example, but this psychology also defines American neo-conservatives and Republicans. For the neo-cons, after the Cold War, it's a war with Islamic extremists, who tragically share the same psychological affliction, that keeps their blood flowing. The same existential psychology also pervades Republican rhetoric as they need to demonize Democrats as anti-American and Obama as a Muslim-sympathizer in order to define themselves.  I think Obama has been trying to move the general public away from this way of thinking, as he constantly beseeches us to look for common ground instead of emphasizing our differences.

The Donovan album I pulled from the shelf is Fairy Tale, an early album from 1965. It opens with a cover of the Buffy St. Marie's anti-war song "Universal Soldier". The song could describe American neo-cons, Islamist extremists and other groups who perpetuate conflict. The rest of the album consists of simple, pretty ruminations on life, with titles like "To Try for the Sun", "Colours", "Ballad of Geraldine", and "Reflections on a Sunny Day". The last song describes the pattern of light on a cat sleeping in the sun. The music and lyrics are innocent and beautiful. It's not profound, but it's still poetry. That's the elixir I needed this morning after feeling overwhelmed by the cynicism and the ugliness of world events. Is Donovan peddling a "fairy tale" vision of the world? Perhaps, if you believe his hippie world view to the exclusion of other views. But this is what I believe: Donovan's vision is just as real as that of the universal soldiers. Today, I'm living in Donovan's reality. It's nice, but I'm not sure how long I can stay.

Recent Acquisitions: 6-10-09

New 45 rpm jazz reissues, all remastered by Steve Hoffman and Kevin Gray:

The Tony Bennett-Bill Evans Album (Fantasy/Analogue Productions).  Chills down the spine? No, it's more like the music bypasses the usual cognitive filters and hits you straight in the gut. This is why I spend my money on the best pressings and play them on a quality stereo. Listening to Bennett sing on this album is like watching a master paint an emotional landscape, each nuance in phrasing filling in a detail, breathing life into the music. A touch of grittiness in his voice grounds the songs in reality, unlike the impeccably smooth voice of Sinatra.

Sonny Rollins and the Contemporary Leaders (Contemporary/Analogue Productions)

Sonny Clark, Cool Struttin' (Blue Note/Music Matters).  My favorite album of probably the most underrated pianist on the Blue Note roster.

Tina Brooks, True Blue (Blue Note/Music Matters).  My second favorite Tina Brooks album on Blue Note. Well, he only recorded two albums for Blue Note. 

Freddie Hubbard, Here to Stay (Blue Note/Music Matters).  There are a number of great Blue Note albums that were shelved and released decades after the initial recording. This is one of them.

Horace Silver, Cape Verdean Blues (Blue Note/Music Matters)

The rest:

John Coltrane, Meditations (Impulse!, orange and black label, original pressing, Van Gelder in deadwax, $12).  I don't know how anyone can meditate while Coltrane's making that racket. Actually this is one of his better albums from his late period.  

Bill Evan, A Simple Matter of Conviction (Verve, original pressing, gatefold cover, $3). A fine trio date with Eddie Gomez and Shelley Manne.

Al Green, Gets Next to You (Hi Records, original stereo pressing, $9).  rocky gets close to Al Green or at least completing his Hi Records catalog.  

Spirit, Spirit (Ode, yellow label, original pressing, $3).  The band's first album. It's got a few good moments, but nowhere near the quality of their masterpiece, Twelve Dreams of Dr. Sardonicus.

Orchestral Manoeuvers in the Dark, Crush (Sire, $3). I've been waiting for an OMD and Echo and the Bunnymen revival for years. So has my friend, Estragon.

The Cult, Electric (Sire, Masterdisk DMM in deadwax, $5). rocky's guilty pleasures, Exhibit #2. This is like a Saturday morning cartoon of rock. I like to listen to it while eating my Life cereal or my pop rocks with Coca-Cola.

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.