Fear and Trembling: Music

Wanna go back to my place and listen to some records?

Sat, 10 Feb 2007 16:47:59 GMT

The same man who gave me the gargantuan MCS receiver (that I still need to do some work on) also gave me the matching MCS turntable. It did not have a stylus but through the miracle of the internet I found one for a good price on LP Gear, website with all kinds of great phonograph resources. Records are making a comeback recently and I have been trying for several years to pick up a good table for a decent price. Every table that I have found has been defective for some reason and in a fit of desperation I sold most of my LPs at a garage sale (fool). I now have to replace them, but I think that a goodly amount of them were bought by Kyle Wisher, a young man in my Sunday School class for young adults. He is going into the Marines soon, so I am sure that Dark Side of the Moon will do him no good in the Deserts of the Middle East and I will offer to buy them back from him.

I do have a few albums left and you see Sting's Dream of the Blue Turtles cued up on the table in the picture. When I started the record, I forgot how good albums actually sound. I don't think that I have heard a record played since my Gerrard turntable was stolen in the fall of 1995. My ears have become accustomed to MP3s played my home computer system. The MP3s are fine for what they are, but an album played on 1970's vintage equipment (even my speakers are Bang and Olfusen circa 1973 or so) has such incredible sonic presence. I am currently listening to the only Pink Floyd album that I have left, Ummagumma. This album was loaned to me from my Uncle John along with Dark Side of the Moon and they were my first introduction to Floyd. I eventually got copies of my own and wore out a needle listening to them (in 1985 you could still pop down to the radio shack to buy a stylus).

I brought the kids up to the office to see my new record player and they seemed pretty amazed at the contraption. My oldest, however, was not too impressed and asked "How do you know what track is being played?" Well, sweetie, in the old days we used to just listen to the music and know what was playing then you counted the blank spaces on the record until you found the track you wanted to hear. In fact, we used to listen to entire albums and music was composed, for the most part, as part of a larger album. I can't remember ever trying to find one particular track on Dark Side of the Moon. You would put on Side 1, lie down on your Star Wars sheeted twin bed and drift off into the music. I guess that is another change in music these days. Music today is always just background for doing something else and not an activity in and of itself.

"So what do you think of my record player Danielle?"

"I think I will just stick with my IPod…"

The return of a missed possession

Sun, 14 Jan 2007 21:06:11 GMT

When I was 9 my father gave to me his stereo and record player. It was a classic high power amp from the seventies and Dad made a cabinet for the stereo and affixed speakers to the side of the cabinet. He also started me off with records from the Beach Boys, the Doors and the Animals and I listened to those records over and over again. I also listened to countless hours of WLS from Chicago back when it was a Rock an Roll station. Later, I found Pink Floyd and would spend many warm summer afternoons lying in my bed listening to Dark Side of the Moon while the breeze came through the room and into the whole house fan. Later still I paired a portable compact disc player to the stereo and Joined the Columbia House record club. Bob Dylan started to play on a regular basis through that stereo. When I graduated high school and went to college, the stereo came with me along with some huge Optimus speakers that I had bought at the Radio Shack in the mall. The stereo sat on Kevin's desk and we used his CD player and we used a Nine Inch Nails song "Down in it" combined with my 100 watts per channel and 15 inch woofers to drive the upstairs guys crazy (we did so just because they were the upstairs guys, all the cool kids lived on the 1st floor. Kevin wore out his Billy Joel CD's those 2 years and developed a taste for They Might Be Giants. I started to listen to things like Poi Dog Pondering and Edie Brickell and the New Bohemians. Still later I moved out to my own apartment and bought a CD from a little known band called Nirvana and Metallica finally made its way into my collection along with Live. My roommate Curt had a new amplifier from Sony (all black) and some Bose Speakers, but it just could not reproduce music like this 70's amp and big ole speakers. I finally moved out on my own and the stereo was my constant companion as I began to live alone in a trailer park south of town. I met Faith, we got engaged and moved in together and when that tragically ended it was Blood on the Tracks from Bob Dylan that was played over and over again. "You're an Idiot baby, its a wonder that you still know how to breathe..." and ' If You See her Say Hello." That album more than any other has just the right mix of anger, sorrow and regret to be the best break up album in the world. After she left I bought my own trailer and the stereo came with me. Now I was listening to Pavement and John Spencer's Blues Explosion. I met Tracy at the Corner Diner around then and before we got married I was robbed. In 1995 someone broke in to my trailer (follow this link for the story) and stole the CD collection, the Optimus speakers, they broke the record player and the MCS 3213 receiver that had been with me for so long.

That is not the end of the story however. last week on EBay I found a MCS 3213 receiver for a mere $40 dollars from a guy in Michigan. I quickly bid and was actually the only bidder, but I won the auction and now this receiver sits on my desk hooked up to some Bang and Olefson speakers and instead of a CD player, my MP3's now play through this stereo as it gives off its pale green light and looks at me with that 1 red LED indicator that tells me that the FM reception is coming over loud and clear. Everything that I listen to before is still played (almost) and now bands like Wilco and Midlake have joined my other albums. Hopefully my wife will now understand why I was so giddy when it arrived by UPS. It was like I found an old friend.

Best Albums of 2006

Wed, 13 Dec 2006 23:16:43 GMT

This first album, in no particular order, is an album that I came across on accident. I was sitting at the Aroma Coffeehouse in Champaign and the first track, Roscoe, came over the speakers and I was instantly hooked. I asked Ryan Groff, a great local musician and the Barrista on duty, about the group and he told me that it was Midlake's The Trials of Van Occupanther. I was fixated on the 4 part harmonies and the instrumentation that served to set the context and drive the song forward instead of carrying the brunt of the musical work. Many net reviewers have commented that this is a "70's style" band but I do not want to pigeonhole this band just because they use 4 part harmonies. Seals and Croft they are not. Instead, I would say that they are one of the few bands that transcend genre and could have an wide appeal if enough people were to hear them. Even the lyrical content has a time defying quality without becoming an anachronistic contrivance like many bands that have an ax to grind or a message to give. Finally, this is an album that I can listen to in the car with my kids present. This may not be a criteria for some, but an album of this quality is going to get a lot of play around my house and in my car, so I need to be careful what young ears will hear. K Elizabeth already has the lyrics and harmonies down.

The second album is Bob Dylan's Modern Times. There is a lot written about Bob Dylan's conversion to Christianity in the late 1970's and even more written about where his current faith stands, but I would say that this album demonstrates a man that has matured into his faith. On albums like Saved and Slow Train Coming (both fantastic albums), Dylan's Christianity seems like a shiny new toy. On Modern Times you hear a man that has walked with the Lord "fer a peace." The best way to explain this is: Dylan is not invoking religious imagery to describe the world around him, instead, he sees the world through religious eyes and the Divine is now the reality that the world is trying to describe. The lyrics are almost painfully introspective and filled with the kind of resolve that a man cannot reach until he has been down as many roads as Bob Dylan has.

There is sort of an irony with the title of this album and its musical stylings. This should be no surprise coming from Dylan. Much in the same way as the Midlake album, the music serves the song instead of the other way around. This is also a uniquely American album that is like a digital Smithsonian of American music. I don't know if this will be Bob Dylan's last album, but it is so good that it could be. The entire record feels like the capstone to a brilliant career.

Franz Schubert's Schwanengesang (Swan Song)

Mon, 11 Dec 2006 15:12:49 GMT

This is not one of Schubert's song cycles per se, it is just his last 14 songs with an additional 4 lieds on this album including my favorite: Der Erlkönig. This particular clip that was played is Der Atlas and I have been playing it over and over the past week. With snappy lyrics like what you find below, it is sure to become sure hit after the exposure that it receives on Fear and Trembling.

Ich unglücksel'ger Atlas! Eine Welt,
Die ganze Welt der Schmerzen muß ich tragen,
Ich trage Unerträgliches, und brechen
Will mir das Herz im Leibe.

Du stolzes Herz, du hast es ja gewollt!
Du wolltest glücklich sein, unendlich glücklich,
Oder unendlich elend, stolzes Herz,
Und jetzo bist du elend.

I, unblessed Atlas!
I carry a world, the entire world of pain,
I bear the unbearable,
And the heart within me wants to break.

Proud heart, you have wanted it thus!
You wanted to be happy, eternally happy,
Or eternally miserable, you proud heart,
And now you are miserable.

If you would like to purchase a fine version of

Schwanengesang by Franz Schubert

Click on the blue link above and you can purchase it from Amazon.

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