What are you listening to? Part III

[mobilehaathi]

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Some old stuff......but still wonderful.. Ageless, actually.

Mike Oldfield and the excellent (and underrated) "Hergest Ridge".

 

[RootBeerMan]

Some old stuff......but still wonderful.. Ageless, actually.

Mike Oldfield and the excellent (and underrated) "Hergest Ridge".

One of my favourite Oldfield albums. An underrated album, but one of his best works.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

One of my favourite Oldfield albums. An underrated album, but one of his best works.

Agreed; it is one of his best works - an excellent album - one which easily stands the test of time, and, for some reason one that is strangely underrated.

 

[AngerDanger]

"One Weird Tip," an unreleased song by Lemon Demon. It's all polyrhythmic and seems to poke fun at the "one weird trick" genre of advertisements.

My name is Juanita, I'm young and I'm lonely,
For one hundred dollars of USD only,
Get discount Levitra and discount Cialis
I'm here in Nigeria alone in my palace
I need you to save me,
I have to much money
The government hates me,
but I know you love me.
I'm desperate and wealthy,
I'm single and Christian.
It's simple, it's safe, it's a bulletproof system.

 

[pachyderm]

that is the creepiest thing i've ever heard...

and i've heard yoko ono...

 

[mobilehaathi]

 

[bradl]

Because of this:

http://www.npr.org/2017/03/20/520443744/u2-on-the-joshua-tree-a-lasting-ode-to-a-divided-america

U2 On 'The Joshua Tree,' A Lasting Ode To A Divided America
March 20, 20174:59 AM ET
Heard on Morning Edition
by Steve Inskeep and Vince Pearson

The members of U2 are preparing a new tour to play some old songs — 30 years old, to be exact. Paul Hewson and David Evans, known to the world as Bono and The Edge, will be the first to tell you their band isn't normally fond of looking back.

"Usually Edge, when we have a greatest hits collection coming out, has to struggle to get me to listen to it, because it feels dead to me," Bono says. "Plus, I don't like the sound of the singer very much, especially the one with the mullet in the 80's."

The hairstyles of that era of U2 may be dated; the music, they feel, is not. The Joshua Tree appeared in stores in 1987 and sold more than 20 million copies, making it one of the major pop culture events of that decade. On it, these Irish musicians were writing about the America of the moment: A time of social change at home and the climax of the Cold War abroad.

"Ronald Reagan was in power, and Maggie Thatcher in Britain. The miner's strike was a big issue in Britain, a lot of unrest," The Edge says. "I think we all realized that things had almost come full circle — like the environment in which that album was written is more similar to the political environment we are in today than it has been since."

Bono and The Edge spoke with NPR's Steve Inskeep, who asked the singer and guitarist to explain the mood The Joshua Tree was made to capture. Hear the radio version at the audio link, and read more of their conversation below.

Steve Inskeep: Is it true that this album was going to be called The Two Americas at one point?

Bono: Yeah, it was. There's two Americas: There's the mythic America and the real America. We were obsessed by America at the time. America's a sort of promised land for Irish people — and then, a sort of potentially broken promised land.

If the Declaration of Independence is like the liner notes of America, we're like annoying fans that follow politicians into the bathroom and say, "But it says here, 'We pledge our sacred honor.' What's that about?" And people suffer us talking about America because we love it so much. Rather arrogantly, we don't think you own it. We think America is an idea that belongs to people who need it most.

Inskeep: One song that really sticks in my head from hearing it years ago is "Bullet the Blue Sky." What is happening in that song? Is there a real event back behind it somewhere?

Bono: As well as Live Aid and a trip to Ethiopia, to try to figure out how poverty can exist in a world of plenty ... I went to El Salvador, trying to understand the conflict there.

Inkseep: There was a conflict there, and in Nicaragua as well. This is during the Cold War, where the US supported wars to push back against what was seen as the communist threat to Central America.

Bono: And I witnessed some things in Salvador which were really unspeakable. We witnessed a firebombing in rebel-backed territory, watching people's livelihoods get exploded and feeling the ground shake, even though we were safe enough ourselves. It was something that made, as you can imagine, a bit of an impression: Seeing bodies thrown out of cars on the side of the road, terrible stuff that was going on. Watching foreign policy work itself out in a small country. That's where "Bullet the Blue Sky" came from.

Edge: It's actually a great example of U2 working as a band. I had a guitar part, and Adam and Larry started playing along — and they played against this guitar part in half-time. I remember being quite frustrated and a little annoyed at them: "Why are you playing half-time?" The engineer and Bono were in the control room going, "Wow, that was amazing!" And I was like, "No, you don't understand — that was wrong. That was not what it was supposed to be." [But] it was a great lesson for me: We rewound, hit play, and heard this bass part that Adam had come up with that was so wild, so brilliant, and not what I would have ever put on that guitar part.

Bono: It was in a different key!

Edge: From that, we built the rest of the music. And as Bono's describing, he had some words that he'd started working on based on these experiences that — and it was clear that the mood of this music suited the experience that he'd had.

Inskeep: I'm looking at the lyrics to "Bullet the Blue Sky," and there's a spoken word-verse that feels, to me, like a dream sequence. It begins, "I can see those fighter planes," and at the end you're in a room listening to a saxophone. It feels like you're moving from one scene to another. Do you know what's happening there?

Bono: "This guy comes up to me, his face red like a rose on a thorn bush, like all the colors of a royal flush. And he's peeling off those dollar bills, slapping them down — one hundred, two hundred — and I can see those fighter planes."

At the time that was Ronald Reagan in my head, and the reason was that I'd [seen a mural in El Salvador with Reagan in it]. I was standing in this church going, "Wow, what's Ronald Reagan doing there on the chariot?" And they said, "It's Ronald Reagan as the Pharaoh, and we are the children of Israel running away." Really, the image in that dream sequence is the stuff that happens behind oak doors, down marbled corridors, that works its way into the everyday lives of good people who get caught up in a conflict.

Inskeep: Now that you're revisiting these songs, and you'll be playing them on tour, do you feel an urge to revise or rewrite any of them?

Bono: I change the lyrics all the time. Not just because I don't remember the original ones [laughs], but because I felt the first ones were just sketches a lot of the time. I'm proud of the thoughts behind the material, but sometimes not the expression of the language. So I do change all the time.

Inskeep: I'm curious now, have you ever been like Ella Fitzgerald in that famous "Mack The Knife" rendition where she just has no idea what the words are anymore, and she's just kind of making up things?

Bono: That's how we write songs! I've been making s*** up on the microphone since we were 17 years old. Sometimes it turns into words, sometimes it's just like sound paintings. I've only got semi-literate recently. But then, there's an age old tradition, isn't it: "A-womp bop a-looma, a-womp bam boom." I mean, it's just ... sound is everything.

Producer Gabriela Saldivia and web editor Daoud Tyler-Ameen contributed to this story.

I am listening to this:

BTW: tomorrow (3/21/17) is 30 years to the day that With or Without You was released, and 2 weeks ago was when the album was originally released. And going back through that interview, it isn't just so easily scary that the album is still relevant based on the times back then and now relative to what is going on in the world, but that it's also how amazing the album still holds up on its own merits.

Funnily enough, I am writing this from the Fremont Street Experience, where the video for I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For was filmed.

BL.

 

[kirasmart]

Lady in red dancing with me..

 

[JamesMike]

Enjoy.

A classic - and a post which reminds me to pay a fresh visit to Eric Clapton - I have several of his albums on one of my iPods (they don't all have identical libraries - space limitations on an iPod Touch bought in 2009 - and a destroyed MBP hard-drive - that old HDD - account for this discrepancy).
[doublepost=1489622138][/doublepost]And - now - for some Dire Straits, elegant, cool, classy listening from another age: The terrific "Sultans of Swing", quite lovely "Do You Think You're Going", and the simply sublime "Private Investigations"....

Dire Straits is a good idea, just put on "Sultans of Swing".

 

[RootBeerMan]

Posted up some HoneyDrippers, as part of my post of the day. I was really impressed with the album when it came out and it has held up well over the years.

 

[kazmac]

Bolt Thrower lovin' me has been spinning their final album non-stop at work:

I remember having serious mixed feelings about this when it was first released but a few months later I wound up digging it. Now I love it (11+ years after release.) I love the mix of catchy groove and full on death metal. Yes, there's melody but I never thought of this bunch as melodic death metal, they just wrote catchy songs from the get go. Gosh I miss them!

 

[notmach67]

Been burning this one for a few days now -
Classic!

 

[v0lume4]

One of my favorite finds all year is this track by ZHU. What a BRILLIANT vocalist and producer. I roll down the windows of the car and have this song on blast

 

[jaduff46]

Beethoven's 9th - Sir George Solti & Chicago Symphony Orchestra

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Beethoven's 9th - Sir George Solti & Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Fantastic piece of music and terrific choice. Enjoy.

 

[arkitect]

Beethoven's 9th - Sir George Solti & Chicago Symphony Orchestra

Good choice.
Though, Beethoven lover that I am, I have to admit I never warmed to Georg's way with it.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Good choice.
Though, Beethoven lover that I am, I have to admit I never warmed to Georg's way with it.

Whose "way with it" would meet with your greater approval?

My father had the Deutsche Grammophon double LP (Herbert von Karajan) of the ninth - that was the one that formed my preferences and influenced my sensibility as I had listened to it so often as a teenager.

 

[arkitect]

Whose "way with it" would meet with your greater approval?

My father had the Deutsche Grammophon double LP (Herbert von Karajan) of the ninth - that was the one that formed my preferences and influenced my sensibility as I had listened to it so often as a teenager.

Hold on to your hat!

No. 1
Wilhelm Furtwängler, March 1942. (Terrible sound quality, not the only one to have, but…)
Astonishing "live" recording. Height of WWII in Berlin. There is so much anger, uncontrollable mayhem in that one performance. Actually, you have to hear it to believe it. You can try it here on Youtube. It will leave you feeling… conflicted.

No. 2
Herbert von Karajan, 1962 No one has ever floated that high B in the finale like Gundula Janowitz did.
(Though if you can ever get a hold of HvK's live performance in Japan 1979, you're in for a treat.)

No. 3
Paavo Järvi, 2009 (Not Neeme Järvi)
My favourite contemporary conductor. I enjoy listening to as he finds something new each time. (His Pastoral is sublime). And not as hyped up as the pretty boys like Duduamel, Jurowski, Nézet-Séguin et al.

Then, in no special order,
Celibidache, Harnoncourt, Norrington…

OK. I'll stop now.

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Hold on to your hat!

No. 1
Wilhelm Furtwängler, March 1942. (Terrible sound quality, not the only one to have, but…)
Astonishing "live" recording. Height of WWII in Berlin. There is so much anger, uncontrollable mayhem in that one performance. Actually, you have to hear it to believe it. You can try it here on Youtube. It will leave you feeling… conflicted.

No. 2
Herbert von Karajan, 1962 No one has ever floated that high B in the finale like Gundula Janowitz did.
(Though if you can ever get a hold of HvK's live performance in Japan 1979, you're in for a treat.)

No. 3
Paavo Järvi, 2009 (Not Neeme Järvi)
My favourite contemporary conductor. I enjoy listening to as he finds something new each time. (His Pastoral is sublime). And not as hyped up as the pretty boys like Duduamel, Jurowski, Nézet-Séguin et al.

Then, in no special order,
Celibidache, Harnoncourt, Norrington…

OK. I'll stop now.

Brilliant reply, and thank you for it - I am not sure whether my father's double album was that 1962 recording - certainly, the albums were all there (I still have them) in my childhood - must check that out.

Re Furtwängler, I assume that you saw the (excellent) 1981 movie (motion picture, film) "Mefisto" directed by István Szabó which was supposedly based on the life (loves and compromises) of Furtwängler himself.

 

[arkitect]

Always welcome.

Brilliant reply, and thank you for it - I am not sure whether my father's double album was that 1962 recording - certainly, the albums were all there (I still have them) in my childhood - must check that out.

Perhaps this one?

Re Furtwängler, I assume that you saw the (excellent) 1981 movie (motion picture, film) "Mefisto" directed by István Szabó which was supposedly based on the life (loves and compromises) of Furtwängler himself.

Yes! And that is what you feel in this performance. This is Furtwängler's Guernica

 

[Scepticalscribe]

Always welcome.

Perhaps this one?

View attachment 693022

Yes! And that is what you feel in this performance. This is Furtwängler's Guernica

Yes, as I recall, the eighth symphony took up one side of one LP, whereas the ninth took a full three sides; I think that is the recording - but the album sleeve we had looked different - if memory serves, it featured the Master conducting in black and white photography. I must try to dig it out.

 

[mobilehaathi]

 

[rhett7660]

Bolt Thrower lovin' me has been spinning their final album non-stop at work:

I remember having serious mixed feelings about this when it was first released but a few months later I wound up digging it. Now I love it (11+ years after release.) I love the mix of catchy groove and full on death metal. Yes, there's melody but I never thought of this bunch as melodic death metal, they just wrote catchy songs from the get go. Gosh I miss them!

Oh man, talk about bringing back some memories. I love these guys. One of the first Death Metal bands I was introduced to on my local radio station. KNAC used to have Manic Mondays and they would play death metal for about an hour at midnight and man, these guys were one of the first I heard.

Sticking to the death metal theme...

Morbid Angel: Covenant

 

[JamesMike]

Posted up some HoneyDrippers, as part of my post of the day. I was really impressed with the album when it came out and it has held up well over the years.

I have put that on my list, thanks.