This is one of my favourite albums from the glam rock era of the ear­ly sev­en­ties. Mott the Hoople was an ill-starred band from Here­ford­shire that was saved from obscu­ri­ty by the time­ly gift of a song, “All the Young Dudes” by David Bowie, who also pro­duced the album. It’s a sol­id play, through and through. As well as the fine title song, it has one of the three best ver­sions of “Sweet Jane,” the band’s own “One of the Boys,” “Sea Dri­ver,” and “Ready for Love,” all sat­is­fy­ing songs. At heart, the band was a low-key R&B com­bo that did not fit com­fort­ably into the heav­i­ly arranged glam style. I don’t know if this album has any sta­tus as an offi­cial rock “clas­sic”, but it has always remained in my plea­sure play­ing reper­toire. I’ve just acquired the 2006 remas­tered reis­sue, with sev­en bonus tracks.

I only feel the urge to lis­ten to dub­step occa­sion­al­ly. A lot of the stuff out there seems to be assem­bled from instruc­tions, like Ikea fur­ni­ture ― “lock­step” some­time seems a more appro­pri­ate genre name. Nobody can say that about the two albums by Bur­ial (aka William Bevin): Bur­ial (2006) and Untrue (2007). The rythms don’t feel math­e­mat­i­cal­ly locked in. They have a lit­tle bit of wig­gle room. While I pre­fer Untrue, of the two, either one would be suit­able to demon­strate to a doubter that dub­step can be emo­tion­al­ly satisfying.

Howard Han­son’s sym­phonies lan­guished in rel­a­tive obscu­ri­ty until, short­ly before he died, a move­ment of his sec­ond sym­pho­ny was used by Rid­ley Scott for the clos­ing cred­its of the film Alien. Since then, his music has been in demand. This shows just how acci­den­tal the rise and fall of musi­cal rep­u­ta­tions can be. A Swedish-Amer­i­can from Nebras­ka, Han­son com­posed in a rel­a­tive­ly tra­di­tion­al style, lit­tle influ­enced by the aca­d­e­m­ic trends of the 20th cen­tu­ry. Musi­cal sophis­ti­cates wrote him off as an anachro­nism. A recent book by Wal­ter Sim­mons that dis­cuss­es his work, as well as that of oth­er “Neo-Roman­tic” Amer­i­cans like Ernst Bloch, Samuel Bar­ber, and Paul Cre­ston, is apt­ly enti­tled Voice in the Wilder­ness. Read more »

22348. (Dave Brubeck Quar­tet) Jazz at Oberlin
22349. (Voodoo Glow Skulls) Firme
22350. Sri Lan­ka — Musiques Rit­uelles Et Religieuses Read more »

22259. (Bade Ghu­lam Ali Khan) The Greatest
22260. (Built to Spill) Keep it Like a Secret
22261. (Dodos) Time to Die Read more »

This mas­ter of both the saran­gi and vocals died in 1968. His voice had enor­mous range and sweet­ness, with which he inter­pret­ed the roman­tic thum­ri in a style fus­ing many dif­fer­ent region­al tra­di­tions. The album I own offers two long ragas and four short thum­ri, of which I pre­ferred the lat­ter, espe­cial­ly “Yaad Piya Ki Aaye”.

22160. (Jacques Lu Cont [aka Stu­art Price] ) FabricLive.09, April 2003 
22161. (Killers) Hot Fuss
22162. (Dutchess & the Duke) Sun­set / Sun­rise Read more »

It’s pret­ty obvi­ous that the Amer­i­can musi­cal come­dies, on stage and film, owed a lot to the Aus­tro-Hun­gar­i­an operettas. But the influ­ence also moved in the oth­er direc­tion. I have an old vinyl with high­lights of two operettas by Paul Abra­ham, Vik­to­ria und ihr Husar (1930) and Die Blume von Hawaii (1931), and they dis­play a strong influ­ence from Jazz and Broad­way. They were very pop­u­lar in their day, but are now rather obscure. The sec­ond even has an Amer­i­can set­ting (Hawaii) and fea­tures songs sung in Ger­man with a com­i­cal­ly intend­ed Amer­i­can accent, and has Eng­lish phras­es scat­tered about in the lyrics. Abra­ham, a Jew, fled Europe short­ly after these suc­cess­es, only to wind up in a New York men­tal hos­pi­tal in 1946. He recov­ered, and lived until 1960. Both are pleas­ant lis­ten­ing, with the added inter­est of demon­strat­ing the cross-fer­til­iza­tion of pop­u­lar music between Europe and Amer­i­ca between the two wars.

22083. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Can­ta­ta #20 “O Ewigkeit, du Don­ner­wort (I)”, bwv.20
22084. (Johann Sebas­t­ian Bach) Can­ta­ta #21 “Ich hat­te viel Beküm­mer­nis”, bwv.21
22085. (A Sun­ny Day In Glas­gow) Ash­es Gram­mar Read more »