Molto Morricone

Everyone knows the oft-heard themes for the various Sergio Leone spaghetti westerns that Morricone scored, like The Good The Bad and The Ugly. But he also did a whole pile of great scores for other Italian films — gangster movies and westerns by other directors — around that time, before those themes drew worldwide attention to his dark moody soundscapes. Ennio could get sappy, cute and over-the-top corny at times; I've tried to edit those cues out, leaving many hours of spacious noir scores for your holiday family dramas.

I once read that Sergio Leone had Morricone write the themes for his well-known "horse operas" prior to shooting. This was highly unusual, as the practice had been all but abandoned after the silent era, when directors would play music during shooting to inspire the actors and imbue the camera movement with consistent rhythm. Since many Italian films of the 60s and 70s were dubbed — even for Italian audiences — there was no need to get pristine dialogue takes during shooting. So Leone would, it was rumored, play the Morricone scores for specific scenes to pace and guide both the action and the camera. It's no accident that these films are referred to as operas. Their sometimes stately pace, heavy drama, and many portent-filled shots of squinting eyes are musical even though there is no singing.

Needless to say I remain jealous of Morricone's work and of his luck in being able to work that way. It's a composer's dream that the music be as integrated as this was — though it can be made to appear that way even if it's written after the fact.

— DB

Unusual Contemporary Pop Songs

Unusual Contemporary Pop Songs is this month's theme. Not much of a category, I guess, and some of what I consider contemporary isn't new at all. Mostly it's a grab bag of stuff I've recently picked up and been listening to, and although that includes some great and outrageous hip-hop and RnB tunes, these will have to wait until I get a few more in that vein. It's all Safe-For-Work.

— DB

Road Trip

My daughter and I just drove cross-country from NYC to LA last month — the southern route. As we passed though various cities and states, various songs that mentioned those places sprung to mind. Chuck Berry wrote about driving on the "New Jersey Turnpike", MFSB had a disco hit called "TSOP" (The Sound Of Philadelphia) and Eminem said "Goodbye To Hollywood". So, here they are, in order.

— DB

Pop (Back To School)

Here is a mixture of recent (and some not so recent) pop songs. Some are big radio hits, and some of you will hate them for that. Some are borderline (or full blown) arty, so some people won't like that. It's an eclectic mix but I don't know what else to call it as they're all pop songs in my book.

— DB

Opryland

Here's an area I know very little about: Classic Opera. I am familiar with some of the well-known tunes — incredibly moving, over-the-top tunes many of us have heard without knowing their sources — so that's pretty much what I've assembled here. They may not be the definitive performances, or in some cases they may be, but they're all pretty grand. In many cases these are old recordings, so the quality of the recording will vary, but the emotion is more or less consistently pedal-to-the-metal.

I've been to a few classic operas, though not very many. And while the form is fascinating in theory, in fact there is a lot of tedium between the theatrical wow moments and the catchy tunes. Wagner, of course, pushes his audience to extremes with super long productions that last for days. That's pretty cool too, in theory anyway. I hear R Kelly is doing a 5-hour version of "Trapped In The Closet". The idea of high melodrama — that tragedies drive the characters to despair and suicides and that they should all be expressed in corny-ass over-the-top songs — is natural, no? And it works.

Opera has become an adjective. Westerns are called Horse Operas, though the livestock is mostly quiet. Daytime dramas are called Soap Operas, and The Godfather was called a Gangsta Opera. Scorcese even scored some of the highpoints with opera tunes to drive the point home. Ever seen the Bugs Bunny cartoon "What's Opera, Doc?" I have to confess that when I hear some of these tunes I picture Bugs.

I remember when Bob Wilson and Phil Glass referred to Einstein On The Beach as an opera (in the late 70s or early 80s) a lot of traditional opera folks were incensed — how dare they! But it was music and singing throughout, so technically at least it qualified. There is also Peking Opera, Indonesian shadow puppets, Porgy and Bess, Hedwig, Rent, Tommy and many other theatrical forms that are "sung" that have to be counted as opera as well. On this playlist though, I've stuck to the most obvious catchy tunes from the Western Canon.

To me, the Italians and French excelled at incorporating elements of regional music into their productions. I believe I hear elements of Neapolitan song in Verdi. They were the popular music of the day and the audiences were rowdy and noisy — you could eat, drink and probably fornicate in the theaters at that time. Farmers and fishermen sang these tunes in fields and bars — and so can we.

— DB

Iceland — Beyond Björk

Just got back from a one-week visit to Iceland — so here is an all-Icelandic set. (Well, Kate Havnevik is Norwegian, but some of her record was recorded in Iceland, and it sounds very "Icelandic".) Yes, the tourist souvenirs at the airport and elsewhere prominently include Björk and Sigur Rós CDs, which says something about something. Not all Icelandic music is as wildly innovative as those two; there's plenty of standard pop music, as there is elsewhere, but a surprising percentage of the musical output is worth checking out. Here are some acts that are sort of known and some others that are emerging or didn't get covered in the international press as much. I didn't see evidence of a lot of live shows around Reykjavík — but then I was off in the interior much of the time...which is pretty spectacular. Here I am looking like a spaceman landed in a Caspar David Friedrich painting:

Photo credit: C. Sherman

— DB

I Still Buy CDs!

Here is a sampling of more or less pop tunes — loosely defined — from CDs I've purchased over the last few months. But although I buy lots of CDs I wonder how much longer the big 4 or 5 will still be around.

There was another piece in the Times today about yet another 20 percent drop in CD sales. (Are they running the same news piece every 4 months?) Jeez guys, the writing's on the wall. How long do the record execs think they'll have those offices and nice parking spaces? (Well, more than half of all record A&R and other execs are gone already, so there should be plenty of parking space). They, the big 4 or 5, should give the catalogues back to the artists or their heirs as a gesture before they close the office doors, as they sure don't know how to sell music anymore. (I have Talking Heads stuff on the shelf that I can't get Warner to release.) The "industry" had a nice 50-year ride, but it's time to move on. Luckily, music remains more or less unaffected — there is a lot of great music out there. A new model will emerge that includes rather than sues its own customers, that realizes that music is not a product in the sense of being a thing — it's closer to fashion, in that for music fans it tells them and their friends who they are, what they feel passionately about and to some extent what makes life fun and interesting. It's about a sense of community — a song ties a whole invisible disparate community together. It's not about selling the (often) shattered plastic case CDs used to come in.

— DB

Nino Rota

Nino Rota was a composer most famous for the soundtracks he did for a group of Fellini movies. Here they are on a sound stage:

His scores for them are melancholy, tuneful and combine elements of lounge music, small town brass bands, circus music, opera arias and traditional Neapolitan songs. The instrumentation ranges from electronic organ and guitar to celesta (a keyboard that plays a set of chimes) and glass harmonica (an instrument like singing wineglasses grouped to facilitate playing). Of course there are orchestrations too, and famous themes — how many car horns have we heard playing the Godfather theme he wrote? Would that I could write a short passage that memorable.

What was always interesting to me about his music was the unexpected way it evoked the mood in the Fellini films. Unlike a lot of scoring that emphasizes mood but intentionally stays out of the way (by not having memorable melodies, for example) Rota's music almost claimed equality with the images. They really worked together to evoke a world view — or a view of Italy at least — that was like nothing else. A little sentimental, evocative of childhood memories of town squares and shabby circuses, and a little surreal. The way these melodies — sweet, chromatic, hummable — sat alongside Fellini's cast of archetypes and art-directed artifice was not what one might have expected or prescribed for such imagery. If one were asked what kind of music should go with those pictures one might say "weird, experimental, spooky" and that's what there often is in lesser movies. Here's a still from 8 ½:

Rota made you look at the film differently — he made you empathize with the weird characters populating the Fellini movies and made you realize that the Godfather saga was an tragic opera and not a gangster movie.

— DB

Welcome to Dreamland

Full disclosure: many of these artists will be together in a concert that I am presenting at Carnegie Hall in February, so this playlist is a blatant plug.

I think one might trace the roots of these contemporary singers and songwriters back to John Jacob Niles, a singer who recorded in the 40s and 50s who interpreted traditional songs accompanied by a dulcimer. His interpretations were so unique — he changed the melody of a songs if he didn't like it — that in his case one could say interpretation is a form of creation. He sang in a high tenor voice, which sent some listeners round the bend, as do some of these artists.

"Over coffee and liqueurs we would sometimes listen to John Jacob Niles' recordings. Our favorite was 'I Wonder As I Wander,' sung in a clear, high-pitched voice with a quaver and a modality all his own. The metallic clang of his dulcimer never failed to produce ecstasy. He had a voice which summoned memories of Arthur, Merlin, Guinevere. There was something of the Druid in him. Like a psalmist, he intoned his verses in an ethereal chant which the angels carried aloft to the Glory seat. When he sang of Jesus, Mary and Joseph they became living presences. A sweep of the hand and the dulcimer gave forth magical sounds which caused the stars to gleam more brightly, which peopled the hills and meadows with silvery figures and made the brooks to babble like infants. We would sit there long after his voice had faded out, talking of Kentucky where he was born, talking of the Blue Ridge mountains and the folk from Arkansas..."
— Henry Miller, Plexus pp. 366-367.

I would then suggest that this musical line moved through the 60s via the Incredible String Band, Vashti Bunyan and many others who added sitars, flutes, harpsichords, cellos and anything else at hand to the musical mix. And they wrote songs about ducks, blades of grass, stars and cosmic bliss in a way that I have never been able to. Their choice of subjects echoes that of William Blake, the visionary poet:

To see a World in a Grain of Sand
And a Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Hold Infinity in the palm of your hand
And Eternity in an hour.

The poem (Auguries of Innocence) then continues for many many stanzas along these lines:

A Robin Red breast in a Cage
Puts all Heaven in a Rage.
A dove house fill'd with doves & Pigeons
Shudders Hell thro' all its regions.
A dog starv'd at his Master's Gate
Predicts the ruin of the State.

Allen Ginsburg recorded the Songs of Innocence and Experience by Blake on a record that while not that well known may have had its influence, too. I found Allen's passionate wobbly singing voice very moving and inspiring on that record…and of course Blake's visionary spiritual and political messages struck a chord as well. When one sees the world going to hell in a handbasket, manipulated by cynical old men, one senses that seeing the world more clearly, through child-like eyes, might be one way out. The wisdom of babes, as they say…it's also a form of brutal honesty. There's anger in this innocence as well.

So, a few years ago there appeared an efflorescence of singers and songwriters, in a variety of styles and shapes, who shared a little of this attitude, or so I would suggest. Many, though not all of them, chose to make recordings that were somewhat rough, and slightly unpolished technically, thereby showing obvious disdain for the commercial indie pre-thought planned and considered careerist path. By being willfully uncommercial they attracted an audience tired of being marketed to and tired of the slick and beautiful but empty packages being offered by the music business. Their occasional eccentricity is unforced, honest.

Although I remember Talking Heads being lumped in with the punk bands to our repeated annoyance and continual protests, it didn't really hurt that much in the end. We did share a DIY attitude, though our musical expression of it may have been very different than that of other bands. I'd suggest that such an attitude exists here too — as it did in early hip hop — it has a resurgence every few years and produces a wave of innovators. Many of these musicians not only perform together, but they collaborate, play and sing in each other's concerts and recordings and generally create a floating and changeable sense of identity. Time passes, and some are exploring what their next musical steps will be — orchestral arrangements (Joanna Newsom) Indian tablas and chants (Coco Rosie) or larger bands and electronics (Animal Collective).

— DB