http://earreverends.com/notes/ the blog of ear reverence, by the Ear Reverends en Copyright 2008 2008-09-23T01:04:00-08:00 http://earreverends.com/notes/r-stevie-moore-youtube/ http://earreverends.com/notes/r-stevie-moore-youtube/#When:01:04:00Z R. Stevie Moore is a great music artist that more people should know about. He's commonly called the "Unsung Father of Lo-Fi" and a "DIY Pioneer and Musical Genius." And, he's also infamous for being "criminally neglected by the American recording industry for the last 30 years" and for living "in near-poverty, still creating his very original music and selling it directly through his website." I often reference R. Stevie as a litmus test that shows how "taste makers" (e.g., the old record label ideals) fail—basically, it's so much easier for so-called "taste makers" to focus on good music that has fast popular appeal, that they fail to tell people enough about other great music (i.e., music that doesn't rise to rapid popularity, and so is left to fall by the wayside). Anyway, I am a total R. Stevie fan, but I have to admit that I've just scratched the surface of his catalog of recordings—there are a lot of them. So, I am very excited to find that YouTube user autosam (maybe R. Stevie himself?) has posted more than 120 R. Stevie Moore music videos. This is just an awesome way to explore his music. Partially unrelated, there's a new online playlist service called MixTube that works based on YouTube videos. To get a sense for how it works, I made a playlist of 120+ R. Stevie Moore songs. I am listening to this right now—it's a lot more natural for me to listen to music then to watch videos (though I want to watch them too, as they are cool videos!). I am definitely going to buy a bunch more R. Stevie Moore CDs, and I hope you'll do the same—they're all available for sale on the great R. Stevie Moore website. regular 2008-09-23T01:04:00-08:00 http://earreverends.com/notes/site-update-almost-ready/ http://earreverends.com/notes/site-update-almost-ready/#When:00:52:02Z The past couple weeks, I've been posting less because I am working on a pretty big upgrade to the site. The new music player is the big new feature. It's been hard to make it do what I want, but I am getting pretty close. So, maybe within the week. The first new music up will definitely be tracks from Err or Man. I know this is especially important for the few of my slacker friends who are excited to hear the music, but can't seem to ever remember to just go and buy the CD / Book version (buy it now at CD Baby!). Of course, getting new people turned-on to the music is the intent, so whatever it takes. If you're here now, and the music isn't up on the site yet, I hope you'll come back and check it out—soon! regular 2008-09-23T00:52:02-08:00 http://earreverends.com/notes/richard-wright-rip-pink-floyd-pompeii/ http://earreverends.com/notes/richard-wright-rip-pink-floyd-pompeii/#When:19:03:02Z I haven't thought about Richard Wright in a long time. He died today, and it reminded me that I used to listen to Pink Floyd a lot as a kid—around the time I was first becoming a keyboardist. Wright is someone whose playing I really listened to when I first was learning how to listen. RIP Rick Wright. That's Pink Floyd's Careful with That Axe, Eugene, performed live at Pompeii. regular 2008-09-15T19:03:02-08:00 http://earreverends.com/notes/play-it-by-ear/ http://earreverends.com/notes/play-it-by-ear/#When:22:56:00Z Being distracted by words right now. I periodically find myself deeply distracted in the enjoyment of Michael Quinion's World Wide Words website. So, I thought I'd pick a good, music-related entry to highlight. And, I found this one: play it by ear — which I like to do, personally. I think that entry is quite copacetic, but you may find some others are even funner. regular 2008-09-09T22:56:00-08:00 http://earreverends.com/notes/art-videos-coltrane-dolphy-dylan/ http://earreverends.com/notes/art-videos-coltrane-dolphy-dylan/#When:22:51:00Z From a list of 50 great art videos on YouTube, a couple highlights. I've started working my way through this list posted on the Guardian, The 50 greatest arts videos on YouTube. It's a hard list in three respects: 1) many of the videos are so great that you'll waste your whole day watching them, 2) some of these great videos then cross-reference other great videos (thus, even more of your day gone), and 3) some of the videos are pretty boring (it may be great that they exist, but they're not that great to actually watch). The list includes the classic 1961 film of John Coltrane playing "My Favorite Things" on German TV. I remember seeing this in some larger film about Coltrane. The whole German TV concert / broadcast is also notable because Eric Dolphy is part of the group. It's a great version of "My Favorite Things," and Dolphy's got a flute solo. But I really love this other clip of "Impressions," from the same concert, with the amazing concentration of both Coltrane (tenor) and Dolphy (alto) on saxophone: (Both "My Favorite Things" and "Impressions" were posted by YouTube user Astrotype, who's posted what looks like a lot of other great jazz concert films.) The Guardian list also has this 1963 video of Bob Dylan and Joan Baez rehearsing(?) "With God on Our Side" that, in the middle, then cuts to their famous Newport performance. Today felt like a good day to highlight this: regular 2008-09-05T22:51:00-08:00 http://earreverends.com/notes/sasquatch-crowd-panda-girl/ http://earreverends.com/notes/sasquatch-crowd-panda-girl/#When:03:21:01Z Sasquatch Crowd Panda Girl (May 26, 2008). photo 2008-09-03T03:21:01-08:00 http://earreverends.com/notes/wrong-note-photos/ http://earreverends.com/notes/wrong-note-photos/#When:03:14:00Z I'm about to start posting photos, as another step in the evolution of Wrong Notes. Since 2003, I've been working on a series of photos titled Crowd Culture, that have always been associated with the Ear Reverends' music. So, images from Crowd Culture will definitely appear here. Besides my own photos, we also can look forward to seeing photos from others when Wrong Notes transitions to being a group blog! (Be sure to click the images to see the full-sized version.) regular 2008-09-03T03:14:00-08:00 http://earreverends.com/notes/weng-weng-regularly-scheduled-program/ http://earreverends.com/notes/weng-weng-regularly-scheduled-program/#When:22:30:00Z Coming back, after my recent day job time-warp, we return to our regularly scheduled program: I am a pretty big fan of the razor-blade-hat tricks, naturally. (Wikipedia explains Weng Weng, too.) regular 2008-08-27T22:30:00-08:00 http://earreverends.com/notes/blue-monday/ http://earreverends.com/notes/blue-monday/#When:00:50:00Z I was thinking about needing to hear / see this myself, but realized it's even more for a friend: . . . because Monday is a mess . . . regular 2008-08-19T00:50:00-08:00 http://earreverends.com/notes/1000-recordings/ http://earreverends.com/notes/1000-recordings/#When:00:58:00Z I've had a hectic past few weeks of work in the day job, but a lot of it actually has been music-related. Some might not know, so I'll note that I make websites by day. It's a traditional life really—by, day I sit by the anvil and bang work-song-rhythms as I forge the web for merchants and artists alike. And, at the end of the day, in recognition of the quality of my craft, I'm paid—not a king's ransom, mind you, but enough to keep me in guitar strings and working patch cables. With some frugality and patience—and when good fortune smiles upon me, I find I can even afford the occasional indulgence, like another microphone. And, so then, by night, I sing and play. Anyway, over the past few weeks, I've finalized work on, and launched, two huge (or, soon to be huge) music-related websites. I'll describe the first one in a second post, and the second one here (ha!): 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die is a soon to be released book, by NPR music critic Tom Moon. We've designed, built and now launched the first part of the 1,000 Recordings website, which is mostly just Tom's blog. There's a lot more to the website that will be online in a few weeks—at the very least, as you can imagine, there will be a page for each of the 1,000 Recordings. I've had the pleasure of reading some of the book, and I am really excited about it—about what it's about. As I think you'll feel when you read Tom's blog posts, Tom writes interesting things about interesting music. So you can imagine this book that has 1,000 interesting reviews / essays about music—it's a cool thing. One of the things touched on in the book, obviously, is how Tom selected the 1,000 recordings—why he chose certain things, given the challenge of selecting exactly 1,000 recordings. I think this provides an interesting reality-check on the so-called "taste maker" ideal that gets applied to mainstream media outlets, record labels and popular critics. There's really a lot more too it; and the "taste" are really many "tastes" that no one source can "make." I'll save a bigger critique of the "taste maker" ideal for another time. But, my favorite quote currently on the 1,000 Recordings website is this one from Tom Waits: Your collection could be filled with nothing but music from Ray Charles and you'd have a completely balanced diet. We never really understand what we need to hear until we really hear it. We often need others to help us really hear it. But, that's totally different than who we need, or don't need, to tell us about what to listen to, or why some recording is popular or supposedly important. I'm excited about this book because I think it recognizes this distinction. regular 2008-08-08T00:58:00-08:00