18199. The Music of the Uygur Eth­nic Group [We Wu Er Zu: Zhong Guo Shao Shu Min Yin
. . . . . Yue Ji Cheng]
18200. (Fran­cis Poulenc) Sinfonietta
18201. (Cao Yurong) Ting Er Hu, Ting Di Zi: Er Hu Liu Xing Pian [erh hu works]
18202. (Ben­jamin Brit­ten) Suite for Vio­lin & Piano, Op. 6
18203. (Ben­jamin Brit­ten) Ele­gy for Solo Viola,1930
18204. (Ben­jamin Brit­ten) Sonata for Cel­lo & Piano in C, Op. 65
18205. (Bena­jmin Brit­ten) Six Meta­mor­phoses after Ovid, for Oboe Solo, Op. 49
18206. Chun Jiang Hua Yue Ye: Min Ye Guo Cui [The Moon Night Of Spring Riv­er And
. . . . . Flow­ers and Oth­er Fujianese Classics]
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Not to be con­fused with the Salt Lake City band of the same name, this Cana­dian band put out two albums of fair­ly decent alt-rock before they broke up. I have vague mem­o­ries of an enjoy­able evening at some club (in Mon­treal?) which is con­firmed by the fact that my tape of their first album, Whee­dle, is signed by all the band mem­bers. I must have bought it from them.

Alan Tam [谭咏麟] was, along with Leslie Che­ung, a big name in Hong Kong can­topop dur­ing the 1980s. All I have is a cas­sette made in HK, with no Eng­lish on it. The songs are all “laid-back” bal­lads that would sat­isfy any Per­ry Como or Bar­ry White fan. The ones I like best on the tape are “水中花” and “擁抱”, strict­ly on the basis of the smooth­ness of the singing. Not for any­one who has a low thresh­old for mush.

Lis­ten­ing to A Taste of Throb­bing John­son, an ama­teur­ishly pro­duced indie tape that I some­how acquired in 1999 or 2000. Just the bare tape in a blank case, so no names to go on. It has a mild­ly amus­ing audio skit at the end. A total mys­tery… some­one must have giv­en me the cas­sette, per­haps a street busker or some­one I met in a club, but I can’t remem­ber who or under what cir­cum­stances. I accu­mu­late a lot of music that way, which tells you some­thing about my life. No trace of the band any­where on the web. It’s not bad music, tho.

This line­up of Daniel Ash, Kevin Hask­ins and Glenn Cam­pling was an ephemer­al inter­me­di­ate stage between Bauhaus and Love And Rock­ets. The Album Pop (1984), which I have only in a poor qual­ity copy, was one of two cas­sette-only con­fig­u­ra­tions of songs tak­en from sev­en and twelve inch vinyl sin­gles. The songs are moody and sur­re­al­is­tic, quite inter­est­ing, and very sim­i­lar to the fine work that sub­se­quently appeared on Love and Rock­ets’ Sev­enth Dream of Teenage Heav­en. I have no idea where you could find this par­tic­u­lar item, but the 1998 CD com­pi­la­tion Every­thing! must con­tain the same tracks.

This is an inter­est­ing British tech­no group from the 1990’s. Dub­nobass­with­my­head­man (first album, 1994) makes me want to step into my time machine and vis­it the Lon­don clubs around that time. Most of the club stuff from that era hasn’t worn well ― lis­ten­ing to the aver­age Chris Shep­pard com­pi­la­tion can be pret­ty painful. But Karl Hyde (vocals), Rick Smith and Dar­ren Emer­son made a cre­ative mélange of tech­no-house-dub-funk that can still be played with­out embar­rass­ment. The vocals actu­ally fit in to the mix, rather than sim­ply being a kind of hal­lelu­jah cho­rus thrown in so you can remem­ber which set you’re lis­ten­ing to. But the strongest ele­ment is its pro­gres­sion, the nec­es­sary build-up of emo­tion, in this case start­ing with harsh cyn­i­cism (“Dark and Long”) through con­tem­pla­tive (“Mmmm Sky­scraper I Love You”), recharg­ing (“Spoon­man”) and cli­max (“Cow­girl”). This must have made for one of those deliri­ously sat­is­fy­ing dance floor expe­ri­ences that the club scene was all about. I have a dif­fer­ent mix of “Dark and Long” labeled “Dark Train Mix” on the enter­tain­ing com­pi­la­tion UK Trib­al Gath­er­ing ’95.

The sec­ond album, Sec­ond Tough­est In the Infants (1996) shifts to what came to be called “Pro­gres­sive House”, influ­enced by the mul­ti-lay­ered art-rock of the sev­en­ties, but retain­ing the dance­able tech­no beat. There are audi­ble hints of Yes and Gen­e­sis. As in the first album, many of the songs are dark and moody. The re-release of this album includes a bonus track of “Born Slip­py .NUXX”, which had wide­spread expo­sure through the film Trainspot­ting. I also have “2 Months Off [King Unique Sunspots Vocal Mix]” and “King Of Snake [Fat­boy Slim Remix]” on two dif­fer­ent Shep­pard col­lec­tions. These songs appear on lat­er albums, which I’ve nev­er heard.

18062. (Oscar Peter­son) A Trib­ute to Oscar Peter­son Live at Town Hall [with Neils-Henning
. . . . . Ørst­ed Ped­er­son, Ray Brown, Herb Ellis, Ben­ny Green, Roy Har­grove, Shirley Horn, 
. . . . . Milt Jack­son, Lewis Nash, Clark Ter­ry, Stan­ley Tur­ren­tine, Man­hat­tan Transfer]
18063. (Oscar Peter­son & Ben Web­ster) Ben Web­ster Meets Oscar Peter­son [with Ray Brown
. . . . . and Ed Thigpen]
18064. (Oscar Peter­son) A 75th Birth­day Cel­e­bra­tion [Cana­di­an exclu­sive release]
18065. (John Blow) Ode on the Death of Mr. Hen­ry Purcell
18066. (Hen­ry Pur­cell) “Why should men quarrel?”
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Christ­mas in Cana­da was sad­dened by the death of Oscar Peter­son, who is acknowl­edged by many as one of the great­est of our coun­try­men. Dur­ing his immense­ly pro­duc­tive life­time, Oscar exem­pli­fied every­thing that Cana­di­ans tend to admire: calm, equi­lib­rium, gen­tle good humour, an inate and effort­less democ­racy, a com­plete lack of pom­pos­ity and chest-beat­ing, com­bined with a delight in life and plea­sure, and an exact pre­ci­sion in exe­cu­tion. Every flash of fin­gers on the key­board was like a Gret­sky goal. In oth­er words, he was the com­plete oppo­site of what mod­ern con­sumer cul­ture ele­vates as virtues. As long as we had him with us, per­haps, we could not be entire­ly corrupted.

The son of a Cana­dian Pacif­ic Rail­way porter, Peter­son grew up in the Lit­tle Bur­gundy neigh­bour­hood of Mon­treal. It was a pre­dom­i­nantly black neigh­bour­hood that was filled with music, both clas­si­cal and jazz. His musi­cal fam­ily encour­aged him in a clas­si­cal train­ing, and he stud­ied with Paul de Marky, a stu­dent of Franz Liszt. He was psy­cho­log­i­cally a per­fec­tion­ist, and prac­ticed four to six hours a day, even in ear­ly child­hood. By the age of four­teen, his aston­ish­ing vir­tu­os­ity had led him to win a nation­al radio com­pe­ti­tion. His strongest influ­ences includ­ed Art Tatum, Bach, Rach­mani­nov, Nat “King” Cole, Ted­dy Wil­son, and, most notably, his own sis­ter, a music teacher who nur­tured sev­eral Cana­dian jazz stars. He was at his great­est strength in trios, an art­form which he per­fected with the Ray Brown and Herb Ellis, with Ray Brown and Char­lie Smith, and with vir­tu­oso gui­tarist Joe Pass and Niels-Hen­ning Ørst­ed Ped­er­sen on bass.

Peterson’s mod­est deco­rum, always part of his par­tic­u­lar charm, was exem­pli­fied when he was offered the posi­tion of Lieu­tenant Gov­er­nor of Ontario (in Cana­da, this posi­tion, not the Pre­mier­ship, is the polit­i­cal Head of State). Prime Min­is­ter Jean Chré­tien, a life­long friend, was the insti­ga­tor of this trib­ute, but Peter­son turned it down. But Chré­tien did man­age to orches­trate a high­ly emo­tional meet­ing between Peter­son and Nel­son Man­dela. His last years, despite ill-health, were con­cen­trated on teach­ing. He always insist­ed that jazz pianists should mas­ter Bach as part of their basic training.