Living near Italy I never liked the sphagetti disco music, but Georgio is an exception, because he had a great and unique sound (which already was very "techno" and the video also has many images later seen in many rave clips).
Still … very Italian .. but he later made it big time in Hollywood.
Some nostalgic summer music - I think only Germans can make a depressing reggae summer song with loads of Weltschmerz.
Ideal was part of the so called Neue Deutsche Welle (New German Wave) - but was never as popular like Nena or Trio (remember Da Da Da?).
This is slowly becoming a seasonal thing: a new year a new iPod. Here is my excuse for buying a new one: four gigabyte was too tiny for my favorite tunes. Plus it helped to satisfy my technolust and stopped me from buying anything more expensive.
Overall the new iPod interface sucks. I still would prefer the simple old black and white screen with a super simple menu. I don’t need all that extra smart and shiny coverflow and graphic gimmickry. The inside of my pants have no eyes and I just need to see a list of what’s on the playlist. No more, no less.
Apple is currently diminishing the iPod’s greatest appeal: simplicity. Every new version tries to add some unnecessary bells & whistles.
Crap.
There not much a simple soul and music lover like me can write about such a genius.
I remember when I was 16 and a coworker introduced and educated me about classical music. Since I loved symphonic soundtracks like Star Wars or Star Trek II that was easily done - and I was hooked. Loved Beethoven and his wild emotions and free spirit. Mozart - nah - that was shallow. My coworker told me to be patient - and the taste for Mozart would come with maturity. Now that I am an old fart myself I have to say he was right. Now I am very much into Mozart and much more can hear and appreciate all his subtleties and nuances.
The challenge with Mozart - for any new acolyte of classical music - is his huge volume of work. It ranges from entertaining little melodies to to breath taking requiems. There is music for almost any occasion and mood in his huge repertoire.
Click to play “The Marriage of Figaro - Overture”:
Click to play “Klaviersonate Nr. 15 C-dur KV 495″:
Click to play “Symphonie Nr. 31 D-dur KV 297 ‘Pariser’”:
So if you like what you just heard and want to dig deeper buy one of the many “Best of Mozart” CD or MP3 collections. Check the pieces and maybe pick one piece that you enjoyed in particular.
His operas range from easy to monumental, so if you want to see one go to YouTube and dig a bit deeper. The Magic Flute is always a safe choice and charming, Don Giovanni is more like Heavy Metal. 
More? Mozart @ Wikipedia
Philip Glass is one of the few soundtrack composers that is famous for his movie and classical work as well.
His style is hypnotic, often a bit weird and unusual compared to music from great soundtrack composers like John Williams or classical ones like Beethoven. But he certainly is unique - and therefore not for everybody.
I personally love his hypnotic violin waves and delicate themes. It’s an almost surreal music - I guess that is why it was chosen for Koyaanisqatsi (1983) and later for Mishima (1985).
The Mishima soundtrack is a permanent item on my play lists for now over twenty year - and I am still loving it.
Click to play “November 25: The Last Day” (which is very similar to the Main Title):
Click to play “1937: Saint Sebastian”:
Click to play “Kyoko’s House (”Stage Blood Is Not Enough”)”:
Once again this music is not “easy listening”, but it’s well worth exploring. If you only want to buy one Philip Glass CD ever - than I recommend “Mishima”.
More? Philip Glass @ Wikipedia and Philip Glass @ Amazon.com
I love soundtracks. It when it comes to composers the late Jerry Goldsmith is a God amongst the Giants of classic soundtrack makers.
He has created many memorable themes and great orchestral scores for many famous and not so famous movies. This Maestro produced soundtracks like mortal men like you and me breathe.
His “Planet of the Apes” soundtrack is one of the most unusual tracks you can find. Strangely harmonic, yet disturbingly creepy. I still think that the movie itself would only be half as good without the soundtrack.
Click to play “Main Title”
Click to play “The Revelation”
It certainly isn’t “easy listening” - it’s actually very demanding music. But if you listen to it with your headphones on in the dark you suddenly will find yourself in an amazing vision of your own. This music inspires wild and bizarre images in your mind … or maybe nightmares …
More? “Planet of the Apes” @ Wikipedia
Still one of the quintessential 80’s pop songs in style and content. Although it seems neither the Russians nor the Americans have learned any lessons from this?
Karlheinz Stockhausen died last year. Even 50 years after his career started in Germany his music is as provoking as ever. Stockhausen hardly is Easy Listening - and many of his ideas will remind you rather of crazy performance art instead of ’serious’ classical music.
But we should never underestimate the impact of Stockhausen - many fellow artists have been inspired by him: Herbie Hancock, Miles Davis, Frank Zappa, Pink Floyd, Kraftwerk (obviously), Björk and the Beatles.
Stockhausen is one of these people who expand the boundaries of of culture further ahead. They add a new noise or new variation to the mix. As with all cultural experiments “they don’t make any sense” - because we often create the “sense” afterwards or it takes other artists to “smooth” the rough edges of the “new idea” and make it more acceptable to the masses.
So here are some of Stockhausen’s innovations and compositions - don’t expect them to be easy on you …
Another piece from Maestro Cagnacci.
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1. Click player below to start the music. 2. Click the image above to dive into the art. 3. Study for four minutes this piece of art. |
I like the style of the painting, but compared to his other masterpiece ‘Lucretia’ this is pretty lame. The composition is weak, the drama rather pathetic and not worth the death of the great Cleopatra. And the snake is rather puny. The Lady looking at the snake looks more like eating or cuddling it any moment …
Overall this image is way to European and not very Egyptian. I can only suspect that the original buyer wanted to have something with many half-naked ladies?
“Joy is not in things; it is in us.”
“I hate this fast growing tendency to chain men to machines in big factories and deprive them of all joy in their efforts - the plan will lead to cheap men and cheap products.”
“One supreme fact which I have discovered is that it is not willpower, but fantasy-imagination that creates. Imagination is the creative force. Imagination creates reality.”
Homemade video, talking … or rather singing to youself and the world. Perfect! Geo’s song "The Assumption" from the album Interrobang.
Thanks Edosan.
I’ll play it first and tell you what it is later. - Miles Davis
(Big audio geek rant ahead - just ignore it if you are not a sound nut like me )
To say that I am a audiophile person would be a bit of an understatement. I hardly leave the house without my iPod and even while working I love to listen to music via headphones. My brain simply loves to be close to the sound of music.
There are three things in my life were I am constantly looking for a better gadget: keyboards (because I type a lot), mouse (for smooth clicking) and headphones (I only have that set of ears). Sure I also love to shop for good monitors (because I want to be nice to my eyes as well) and a kickass computer - but usually both items don’t need changing only every two years.
When it comes to my ears I am VERY picky. As a kid I had several serious infection and some operations on my ears - so I am extra sensitive when it comes to my eardrums. Plus I still can hear grass growing although I had these operations and tortured my ears with techno music in the early 90’s. Yes, I will donate my amazing ears to science when I die …
In the age of the every shrinking music players buying the right and good headphones is important as well as a joke. Why? Because of sound compression and bad sound chips.
Compression: Many MP3s sound like shit, because they have been ripped with a low compression setting (like 128 or 192 kps) and therefore ‘hiss’ or ‘jitter’. So with good headphones you can hear all these ‘damages’ done to good music. I try to get the highest quality rips for my music collection - it should be at least 256 kps or more.
Sound Chips: This little bugger transforms your digital MP3 files back into proper music. Most PCs have terrible sound chips, their quality makes most sound engineers weep and kill themselves. If you combine a bad sound chip with a low quality MP3 than you get the sound quality of a 1930’s radio transmission.
iPod’s are supposed to have good sound chips, but are still vulnerable to bad MP3s (shit in - shit out). That is one of the reasons why Apple pushed it’s AAC sound format when it introduced the iPod and iTunes - they wanted to make sure people got ‘well ripped’ music onto their new gadgets.
My serious headphones (Sennheiser HD 555): amazing sound quality and size. I feel like an Easter bunny wearing these. But with these good music is a revelation - they really make you LISTEN. Most excellent sensation my friends …
My machine actually comes with an acceptable SoundMax HD chip and some software based SRS sound. It is actually amazing how well this machine sounds WITHOUT external speakers. This little machine is enough to keep my small room filled with a decent sound - although not too much bass.
I use the small earplugs and earphones only with my iPod for portability reasons. The big Sennheiser is made for more serious audio - the pricetag of over €100 makes that painfully clear. The Sennheiser also mercilessly kicks the digital setup in the butt: every little hiss or frequency distortion is played back in it’s lousy inadequacy. Thank you so very much you overpriced set of ear muffs!
High Quality MP3s make a big difference here. Never mind the extra space they eat on my hard drive - it’s worth every minute of smooth sound.
With cheaper headphones you will hardly notice the differences, because they blur the sound anyway.
Small is beautiful! A note to Apple - please don’t sell me an overpriced MP3 player with such shitty earplugs. Everyone I know has thrown them away after unpacking …
The big Sennheiser sure sound great with the iPod as well, but is unpractical for the road. Plus the plug is made for big hifi equipment and therefore needs a ‘bridge’ for the smaller plug. The whole thing as actually big and clunky - and almost the same size as the iPod. Not something you want in your pocket.
My earplugs (Sony MDR-ED 31) - small, easy to carry around and quickly stuff into my pockets if needed. Good sounds, lacks a bit bass. Feels a bit like someone sticking fingers into your ears.
All iPods have a built in ’sound barrier’ - which especially annoys kiddies, since you can’t crank up the volume. You can ‘improve’ the sound a bit with the different equalizer settings, but once again low quality MP3 will hiss at you like a bunch of mad snakes. So once again it pays off to rip your music at a higher setting.
The Sony earplugs are nice to wear and don’t seal up your ears like so many other similar products. They sound good and very convenient for traveling.
My travel setup (AKG Acoustics K 412 P): for some good sounds and keeping the public noise out of my ears. Excellent sound quality - and they can be folded together, so they use less space in my messenger bag.
The AKG headphones are the best compromise between transportability and sound quality. You can actually fold them together, so they get even smaller. The audio quality is very good and they even have a warm and pleasant bass.
As a good consumer I have bought all the right products for each audiophile situation. Perfect - until we finally get some decent and usable Bluetooth headphones and iPods with built in Bluetooth as well. Then I can FINALLY get rid of all the cables and go wireless … and buy new headphones!
What a great gift! Queen gives you a free song - and wants you to donate some money to fight AIDS. Now that’s what I call a great deal!
From the official website:
It has not been that closely a guarded secret that Queen and Paul Rodgers have been in the recording studio for their first sessions together following their successful world tour of 2005/2006. Indeed, both Paul and Brian have been quoted on their websites as being "quietly excited" about the music that has been produced from this creative union.
Spurred on by their commitments as Ambassadors to Nelson Mandela’s 46664 HIV AIDS global campaign, on which the spotlight will fall December 1 with a World Aids Day awareness and fundraising concert in Johannesburg, South Africa, Brian, Roger and Paul have announced they have rushed to finish a track specially written for 46664 by Roger and have it available as a free download in time for this coming Saturday’s benefit concert.
The track, Roger’s "Say It’s Not True", originally came to light for the launch of the 46664 campaign back in November 2003. Roger wrote the song as a gift to Nelson Mandela (or ‘Madiba’, as he is fondly known), and performed it live for him for the first time with Brian and Dave Stewart at the inaugural 46664 concert in Cape Town that month. The song carries the message that HIV AIDS is something that can affect any one of us.
I like the song. But I also like the whole idea.
Thanks to Zichi for sending me this link.
I still remember trying to see Walkman for the first at a local department store (Karstadt). They were on display - but all chained to the counter. Bastards. Compared to today’s iPods or discmans they were pretty bulky and heavy. Most of all VERY expensive.
A few weeks later some privileged kids and youngsters had one of these. You could simply spot them by those glowing orange ‘rubber ears’ and their almost absent style of walking. These days it was VERY unusual for anyone to run around with headphones on.
I also liked the Walkman speech phenomena - people who talked while listening to their precious music always screamed - just like some people do today with their cell phones. Oh, what joy - made them always behave like idiots.
Similar the Walkman gaze - some people seemed to dream or stare at distant realms while listening to their music. Somewhere, some other sound planet …
With the Walkman also arrived the tape mixing frenzy. It was not enough to record any old record and just listen to it. You needed special remixes for special moments: one cool mix for jogging (another 80’s craze), one for video gaming (rush tapes) and of course for waking up in the morning on your way to work or school. Some of these tapes are burned so deeply into my memories that I still expect certain song combinations - just the way I banned them once on tape and listened to them a thousand times.
And the shitloads of batteries we consumed to keep those little buggers running. Plus the never ending quest how to transport it. The early ones were to big and heavy for your jacket - so you needed a special belt case, which was uncool. If you put your Walkman in your rucksack you might entangle yourself somewhere. Today we are used to have cables and electronic devices all around us - but in the 80’s hardly anyone carried anything ‘cable’ with them.
Also the world was a much quieter place then. The music anywhere revolution was just about to begin: MTV had to be invented yet and most stores didn’t feature roaring TV sets with ads or fast music videos. Hey, even McDonalds was a quiet place to crunch your burgers!
One thing I very much enjoyed was tape swapping with friends. You listen to mine and I check out yours dude. A few models had two headphone plugins - wow - that was cool to listen to great music together. Especially for couples …
Another rather uncool thing was reliability. I literally glued and taped some of these machines until they fell apart. And there was no way of fixing these broken jukeboxes. It was always cheaper to buy a new and smaller one.
Walkmans really made the phrase ‘My life is a Soundtrack’ possible and I still can remember certain moments in my life plus the tracks that I played that very instant. Crazy?!
What are your Walkman memories … drop a comment please …
I hardly can remember my first (cheap) stereo system which was all the rage back then. You simply had to had a decent HiFi system at home - just a simply tape and record player was not enough to grantee your social status. Every since the 80’s audio freaks have gone overboard with special preamps, super CD-Player and all that expensive boy toys.
In that context I find it cynical that most people are now hooked to cheap ass speaker system on their computers to listen to badly ripped MP3 files. So the new digital revolution actually was a downgrade in sound quality compared to audio CDs and a good stereo system.
But never mind. It’s small and portable or big and clunky on your desktop - but most of all it’s bloody convenient! So we see once again new high tech gimmickry to give is better sound. JBL, Apple and many others offer a gazillion highly evolved speaker system to play your hissing and badly compressed MP3 files in your living room.
Ah, the irony of high tech. But at least it looks cool when it sounds like shit.
What a guy! He had magic! He had power! He had an incredible voice! He rocked the audience! Queen’s performance for Live Aid shows you all you need to know about the power that was known as Freddy Mercury:
[Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]
Aids killed Freddy way too soon. Why do we also loose the good people first?
More? his last last appearance and a tribute to Freddy Mercury. Plus his detailed Wikipedia entry.
I still remember my utter surprise when I listened to this album for the very first time. It was pure avantgarde at that time: minimalist electronic sounds and voice arrangements, intellectual lyrics and themes. A harsh contrast to the candy pop of the 80’s.
Also her performances (like in this song ‘O, Superman‘) were most amazing and unusual: video performance art, using computers on stage, special instruments and projections. Laurie Anderson certainly greatly influenced pop and was one of the rare creature ahead of her time.
More? Wikipedia and her official website
Since the mid-nineties Asian movies are conquering the global market. Tales from China and India are big hits with western audiences. India - or better Bollywood has always outproduced it’s American rival, but it took a long time until their products were universally accepted.
From a few ’serious’ movies, most Bollywood productions seem to have only singing, dancing and a lot of Kitsch romance in mind. So it’s not really my kind of stuff. But SOMETIMES I like the music, because it’s obscure at best - or has some excellent classical Indian bits in it. And I love classical Indian music.
So here is a typical pop music style Bollywood song with some typical weird English lyric fragments in it (from the movie "Bombay Talkie" (a short and very weird video excerpt here)):
More "traditional" Bollywood soundtrack (the title music for the flick "Teen Kanya"):
More? YouTube is FULL with that stuff. Here an ‘old school’ scene (Jimmy Hendrix meets Bollywood - I nearly pissed myself) and here a modern scene with the Goddess Aishwarya Rai herself.
Today movies have to start with a bang - otherwise the crowd won’t know when to stop munching and pay attention to the big screen.
In the good old days proper movies started with an overture - and if they were longer then 90 minutes they had an Intermission (vulgo pee break).
Overtures are borrowed from classical music, mostly Opera. They were played before the curtain went up - often already introducing themes and Leitmotivs of the upcoming performance.
Three movies come to mind: 2001, Khartoum and Spartacus has all an Overture. Anyone else can remember a classic with an Overture (or peek at the Wikipedia list for such movies)?
As a big movie and soundtrack fan I love Overtures!
The Walkmen Generation had one big advantage over the iPoddies: their gadgets didn’t have an imposed sound barrier. The iPod has a clear loudness limit - which can be annoying while traveling in a loud environment.
But since everybody seems to be born with an iPod in their arse and earplugs instead of ears it’s a good thing. The Generation iPod will be mostly deaf by the age of 30. So less power to your headphones and earplugs might be a good thing.
And it might be nice to actually be able to get through to you - even when you have those super expensive Sennheiser plugs in your head. Total immersion in your own sound bubble is so unsocial you iPod zombie …
Artist: Christophe Gilbert
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