What are you listening to at the moment?

In the car this evening with my daughter, Walter Gieseking playing Mendelssohn Songs Without Words (Lieder ohne Worte) an EMI Classics disc in their Reference Series. The second disc is Grieg Lyric Pieces, a fine pairing. Tried to get the front cover image but they’re all low res. The disc is for sale on the auction site for $1067! Mental note to add instructions to my wife and children that the CDs should be kept and priced before disposal, along with the Zeiss ZM lens boxes, and Leica lens boxes and my M2 box, for a better price on all their former contents.

CDs are like books. You see them there, possibly never having listened to some of them. One of these, Casals‘ Bach Cello Suites, I picked up and turned over several years ago and asked myself, did you really need to get another rendition of this, from the 1930s?? Well, yes. The D minor 2nd suite in Casals hands was a revelation, as was the recording itself, flatter, so immediate, 70 years later. What a musician. What a story of his discovery of this music.

Gieseking took the trouble to record these smaller pieces. The Duetto is nice and slow, unlike so many modern pianists take it. His rubato is perfect. Such sensitivity.
 
Lots of Sharon Jones and The Dap Kings and soul currently, nobody expects it from me whenever they get in my car considering my overall personality and fondness for heavy metal
 
i'd describe this 1993 song w one word, Outstanding!

Linda Perry wrote and performed the song; 'What's Up', the group; '4 Non Blondes'....
..just outstanding! ( good old MV style )

 
When I was in high school (late '60s ~ early '70s) my father had a Zenith Trans-Oceanic multi band radio. I was fascinated with that radio. I used to take it to bed with me at night and listen to it in the dark. It was my gate-way to FM radio. In those days an FM station would play an entire album (non-stop) late at night. This was an introduction to music that my parent's didn't want me to listen to. In those day's, I had no money to buy LPs, hell, I had no money period. So, in the dark of night that Zenith radio gave me for free what I couldn't afford to buy. It sounds stupid now but in my youth listening to a band like Grand Funk singing about ice cold water running through their veins was like getting high for free.

What am I listening to now? Nothing that gives me the same thrill as when I was young listening to the late night FM radio stations of up-state New York. These days nothing compares to that.

At the moment I'm listening to Grand Funk "Inside Looking Out".

All the best,
Mike
 
Late night with a transistor radio introduced me to some great music. I first heard Dylan on a New Orleans radio station around 1965 and it blew me away. Many years later I heard Dave Alvin's "Plastic Silver 9-volt Heart" and I was reminded of how important the radio was in those days for an isolated country kid. He was singing my childhood, more or less. So I looked Dave up online and found him and that song here:

 


On Thursday night I saw Kristin Hersh. She became famous in the 1980s and 90s in a band Throwing Muses with her step sister Tanya Donelly. Since Throwing Muses broke up she has released a dozen or so amazing solo albums. Her songs have this gorgeous textural element and fluid timings.
 
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