In my previous post I wrote about Frank Zappa and I added a video from YouTube with a live performance of Peaches en Regalia which was shot at the comedy programme Saturday Night Live.
I also wrote that I liked the live version better than the album version. I wanted to add also a video with the album version, so that people could compare for themselves, but I couldn't find a suitable one. There was an original video, but the sound- and videoquality was not very good. So I made a video myself with a slideshow (so not a real video) of pictures of Frank Zappa that I found around the net combined with the music from Peaches en Regalia from the album "Hot Rats".
So now people can compare for themselves. I wonder which version other Zappa fans prefer.
I didn't post for a bit longer than I expected. It's about time to create a new post. I haven't done any new musical discoveries recently, so I'll post something about an artist who, despite the fact that I don't appreciate all of his music/recordings, I admire very much: Frank Zappa, the late multi talented artist who unfortunately died in 1993 of prostate cancer.
One of the reasons why I find him an interesting artist is the fact that he was an original and independent artist who considered artistic freedom as a supreme good. He was also a strong advocate for the freedom of speech and strongly opposed any form of censorship. (See for example Frank Zappa's appearence in 1986 on the discussion programme Crossfire and fore some more examples look here, here and here).
He also had a nose for excellent musicians. When a musician could put on their resume that they played with Frank Zappa most of the time it was a 100% guarantee for an interesting and often succesful career with other bands or as solo artists or session musician. It's a huge list, so I'm not going to mention all the musicians, but I'm going to mention a few. Drummers like Aynsley Dunbar (David Bowie, Lou Reed, Jeff Beck, Jefferson Starship...), Chester Thompson (Weather Report, Genesis, Phil Collins...), Terry Bozzio (Missing Persons, UK, KoRn...), Vinnie Colaiuta (Joni Mitchell, Barbara Streisand, Chaka Khan, Quincy Jones...), Chad Wackerman (Allan Holdsworth, Dweezil Zappa, Steve Vai, Andy Summers...), guitarists like Steve Vai (Alcatrazz, David Lee Roth, Whitesnake), Adrian Belew (King Crimson, Talking Heads, Nine Inch Nails...), Warren Cuccurullo (Missing Persons, Duran Duran), Lowell George (Little Feat), keyboard/violin player Eddie Jobson (Roxy Music, UK, Jethro Tull), keyboardplayer/pianist George Duke (Stanley Clarke, Billy Cobham, George Clinton, Steps Ahead...) and the list goes on and on.
But I was busy on a posting about Frank Zappa. The main reason for creating a post about Zappa was this video I ran into on YouTube. It was a performance of the instrumental piece "Peaches en Regalia" shot in 1976 at Saturday Night Live, the famous since October 1975 running tv-show. The music piece comes from the album Hot Rats, which came out in 1969. It was one of the first 16 track so-called multitrack recordings, a way of soundrecording wich give the possibility to make seperate recording of multiple sound sources to create. a coherent total sound. About the technique behind it you can check the URL.
What I like about "Peaches en Regalia" (the live version more than the album-version) is that it's a good mixture of musical elements from classical music, big band, jazz and rock. The hornsection is great and I also like the unisono guitar and violin solo by Frank Zappa and Eddie Jobson at 01:04 of the video. The music piece has strong melodylines, which, although maybe complex, easily stuck in your mind. Some might disagree about the melody easily stucking in your mind, but that's what this performance did with me. But what more can I say. Just check the video and enjoy. If you're not familiair with Zappa's work it hopefully might interest you to check some other work of him. He was and is an interesting, extremely talented self-willed artist.
Just a quick post.
Didn´t have much time the past weeks to post. Tuesday we´re leaving for a trip to South/Germany for 10 days.
I´m working on a more extended post about Frank Zappa, but for now you have to do it with a video from YouTube from a live performance from the music piece "Peaches en Regalia" shot in 1976 at the famous since October 1975 running (and still running) tv/show Saturday Night Live.
I'll get back to you on Frank Zappa when I get back from our trip.
See ya!
About two months ago I made a post about Pat Metheny. I also embedded a video from YouTube with Pat Metheny playing a special Pikasso harp guitar. I used the video to support my post about Pat Metheny, how I got in touch with his music etc..
I was unpleasantly surprised to find out that the video I attached at this post is no longer available, due to a copyright claim by Pat Metheny. I checked YouTube but there s not a real alternative video from Pat Metheny playing his Pikasso Guitar, only a short 37 second video, but I can't consider that as a real alternative. It's a bit strange, because there are still loads of other Pat Metheny videos out there on YouTube and I'm pretty sure that the copyright with these videos haven't been settled properly either.
Although maybe an interesting issue, this post is not meant to be to start a discussion about copyrightproblems with videomaterial on YouTube, I just wanted to notify my visitors. The only thing that I would like to say about posting videomaterial from artists is that as long as it's done by a fan to show his or her admiration for an artist or group without any commercial purposes then I don't see much trouble with it. The artist or group in question also can see it as free publicity. But sharklawyers might see this a bit different.
Too bad that the original video is removed. Right now I'm not in the mood to rewrite my first Pat Metheny-post, but I guess I will do that some other time after I find another proper video to go with the post.
Last Night N., two friends and also former roommates and yours truly went to a concert of the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, a ten men formation from Tokyo (what a surprise), Japan. For those who are not familiair with their music you can describe their music as Madness meets The Pogues with a bit of punk-, jazz-, soul-, funk-, bigband- and even sometimes klezmerinfluences added to the overall mixture, creating a live performance that turns every musicevent into a partying, jumping and dancing whole.
N. and I saw the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra for the first time two years ago in 2005 at the Parkpop Festival, a free music festival at The Hague, which is always held at the last Sunday of June every year. Although they were playing early in the afternoon at the Parkpop Festival, they got the whole crowd jumping and dancing, including me and that's quite an achievement if you know that I'm not a big dancinglover. They have a great and very energetic live performance and they also proved that last night.
We had a wonderful and fun time last night N. and I manage to made a few pictures and I shot two videos that I uploaded at YouTube. I have embedded the videos in this posting. You'll find them together with some pictures below. The videos were shot with a compact digital photocamera, so the video- and sound quality is not extremely high, but good enough to get an impression of the live performance and the atmosphere. Because there was not enough light and because of the jumping and dancing crowd it was difficult to get sharp pictures, so some of the pics are a bit moved sometimes.
TSPO is touring through Europe now. You can check their schedule on their website (see below). If they are coming near you and you are in the mood for a great night with fun- and partymusic then don't hesitate and go. You won't regret it.
I also made a posting about the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra at my photoblog at BrownNoisePhotos.
Enjoy the videos!
They also do a great version of the thememusic from "The Godfather". They also played it last night, but this video was shot (not by me) in August 2006 at another concert of the TSPO in Barcelona.
Official website of Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra
The advantage of a CD over a live performance is that you can listen to the music anytime you want in the privacy of your own home and can take a break and repeat it whenever you fancy. But despite this advantage a CD will never get close to the experience of a live performance. First of all you miss the visual aspects, because you can't see the orchestra, the conductor, the solist and the interaction between those three and the interaction between the audience, but a CD at home also can't get close to the atmosphere and acoustics of a (good) concerthall. Of course when you watch a DVD with a live performance then you also get the visual aspects, but then you have to do it with what the director and the cameramen show you. And you don't know if the music or parts of the music on a CD/DVD have been edited/brushed up afterwards.
I realised this again a little more than two weeks ago when N. and I went to a clasical concert in The Hague. We went to a concert of the Residentie Orchestra, abroad also known as The Hague Philharmonic, conducted by Neeme Järvi. A Japanese friend of N. is a member of this orchestra and she invited us to come to listen to one of their concerts. She plays first violin at the orchestra and she also played beautifully at our weddingceremony six weeks ago.
On the programme of the concert were The violin concerto from Jean Sibelius and the First Symphony of Gustav Mahler, one of my favorite composers. The performer at the violin concerto of Sibelius was Nikolaj Znaider, a violinist from Denmark born in 1975 to Polish-Israeli parents, so still a quite young (compare to me everybody younger than 41 is young) , but very virtuoso performer. In 1997 Znaider won the prestigious Queen Elisabeth Music Competition, considered as one of the most difficult and toughest music competitions in the world.
Nikolaj Znaider gave an excellent performance. I don't know if it was the case, but the virtuoso performance that Znaider gave, made it look to me as if it didn't gave him no trouble at all. Maybe that's the characteristic of a true virtuoso if they can make it look like it doesn't give any trouble at all.
I was not the only one who appreciated his performance. The enthusiast response from the audience made Nikolaj Znaider gave us an encore.
Then there was a coffeebreak and after the break the orchestra came back with the First Symphony of Gustav Mahler. I already knew the First Symphony, but this was the first time to hear it live. The orchestra gave a very good performance and it was enjoyable to watch and listen to the orchestra.
After the concert we met up with N.'s friend from the orchestra. We spoke out our appreciation for the nice concert and performance. We decided to have dinner together, so we went to a nearby Japanese restaurant with N.'s friend from the orchestra, her partner, her partner's mother and another colleague from the orchestra. We had a lovely and tasty dinner. It was an excellent way to finish off a nice and very enjoyable afternoon and evening out. N's friend also said that if there were other future concerts that would interest us, she cold get us cheap tickets (only 5 Euro). We checked the orchestra's seasonprogramme and we know for sure that we will go to a few more concerts this season.
I couldn't find any video footage of Nikolaj Znaider, so I've add some videos from the three movements of the violin concerto of Sibelius played by another violin meastro Maxim Vengerov. Enoy it!
Friday May 25th N. and I went to a concert from Venice at Tivoli in our hometown Utrecht. For those who are not familiair with the music of Venice, the band makes music in the best West Coast traditions with strong influences from Crosby, Stills and Nash (& Young), The Eagles, James Taylor, Jackson Browne and Beach Boys and also a bit from the bands where Crosby, Stills and Nash came from before starting CSN, namely The Byrds, Buffallo Springfield (also with Neil Young) and The Hollies. With all these influences it's not so strange that their music is very vocal oriented with melodic close harmony.
The band is very popular over here in the Netherlands. I guess one of the reasons was their first excellent performance in the Netherlands in 1998 in the programme TweeMeterSessies (Two Metre Sessions) from host Jan Douwe Kroeske, who is two metres tall, so that's where the name of the programme came from. A programme that originally started as a radioprogramme, but later also was broadcasted on TV. The radioprogramme started accidentally 20 years ago in 1987 with an unplanned more or less spontaneous acoustic session of the Austalian/New Zealand band Crowded House, who performed their well known hit "Don't dream it's over", which was the start of the Two Metre Sessions. This whole concept was more or less copied later by MTV when they start their Unplugged programmes in the 1989/1990 season with artist like Eric Clapton, Nirvana, Neil Young and many other artists/bands. The difference with the Two Metre Sessions was that most of the MTV-unplugged sessions were recorded with an audience and the Two Metre Sessions were mostly recorded in a radio- or sometimes sound studio.
But let's go back to the concert. I've been to a Venice concert two times before and everytime I went there was a nice and friendly atmosphere with a very mixed audience from old to young and also families with children. So besides a different setlist there was not so much different from the previous two concerts. But that's probably also the reason why people coming back to their concerts, the pleasant atmosphere and the constant music quality, which has always been a guarantee everytime I went to one of their concerts. We had a great night out and also my wife N. who didn't know anything of Venice enjoyed it. She only knew the two covers they played at the end: Van Morrison's "Brown Eyed Girl" and Stealers Wheel "Stuck in the Middle With You".
Thanks to the camcorderfunction of the mobile phone I'm able to show you some videos I found on YouTube from the Utrecht concert of Venice we went to. The quality is quite good. Good enough to get a good impression. Enjoy it! We certainly did.
The first video is "Everybody's opium", the second "Back to the Well" and the last one was their final encore "Stuck in the Middle With You".
More videos of their Holland-tour you can find at the Venice-website.
Maybe it was a coincidence, because I don't listen much to the radio, but two or three days after I published my posting about Rachmaninoff I had some internet-radio on at some golden-oldies station. A few minutes after I turned on this station there was this song "All by myself" by Eric Carmen. Not completely my cup of tea musically speaking, but not as bad as that horrible version by over the top power balladeer Celine Dion.
While the Eric Carmen-version was playing in the background it reminded me about the fact that the song contains almost a literal copy of the theme from the second movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. It's not my own discovery because I never paid that much attention to the Eric Carmen-song. I heard about the copying of the Rachmaninoff-theme some time ago from a Dutch radio-DJ who had an item about classical music themes in pop-music on a music programme on TV.
You can check it for yourself. I've added both the Eric Carmen-song "All by myself" and the second movement of Rachmaninoff's Piano Concerto No. 2. Listen to the few bars before the chorus starts. It's a literal copy, but also the melody of the stanza leans heavily on Rachmaninoff's original.
Funny fact: In a 2006 poll for the Channel 5 program Britain's Favourite Break-up Songs, Eric Carmen's "All by myself" was voted seventeenth.
If you ask people with a little to an average interest in classical music about their favorite composer(s) most of the time they come up with people like Bach, Mozart, Beethoven and some might mention Chopin, Schubert or Brahms. Of course there is nothing wrong with these composers. I consider Bach myself as one of the greatest composers of all times and there are also compositions from the composers I just mentioned that certainly would be in my personal top 100 of favorite classical compositions. But it's a pity if you only would stick to this list of composers. There are so much more good, interesting composers who wrote beautiful, gorgeous, touching music.
I have a few favorite composers. One of them is Gustav Mahler, but in this post I want to write a little bit about one of my other favorite composers, Sergei Rachmaninoff. For more information about his life you can check the wikipedia-URL. Although his name is often spelled as Rachmaninov I use the spelling that he used himself living in the West after leaving Russia short after the 1917 Russian Revolution.
The first time I got in touch with Rachmaninoff's music was around the age of 11 or 12 when I heard a recording of his second Piano Concerto. This recording was part of a box from my parents with 15 records with all kinds of classical music, mainly concertos for piano, violin, cello and some windinstruments. I can't remember which orchestra it was, but I remember the name of the pianoplayer, Werner Haas. I'm not sure but it could be that this was the same recording as the one I listened to on the original record. I was impressed very much by this music. It was powerful but also very melodic at the same time. I've listened to this record many, many times. Because I couldn't afford to buy records too often I joined the recordlibrary and borrowed records every month and when I liked them I taped them on an audiocassette. This way I got in touch with lots of different music (not only classical music). Through the library I also got in touch with other music from Rachmaninoff.
The first version you hear of a classical musicpiece you often find the best, but when it comes to classical music you should keep an open mind to other versions and different interpretations of the same musicpiece. About 7 or 8 years later when I bought my first CD-player one of my first classical music-CD's I bought was a double-CD with the four piano concertos from Rachmaninoff played by the Concertgebouw Orchestra conducted by Bernard Haitink and Vlademir Ashkenazy on the piano. Although there are a few more outstanding recordings this recording is my personal favorite. As far as I know there are no other performing artists that have recorded all four piano concertos of Rachmaninoff. And Ashkenazy did an excellent job, proving that he is a great interpreter, and in my humble opinion one of the greatest, of the complex and demanding piano concertos of Rachmaninoff. The first and fourth piano concerto are good, but of course the second and third are the most famous piano concertos. The third piano concerto plays an important role in the movie Shine about the life of the Australian pianoplayer David Helfgott. The second and third concerto are considered as the top in the romantic piano repertoire and the third is also considered as one of the most difficult pianoconcertos ever.
Well enough writing about Rachmaninoff. Let's go to some of his music. I have embedded some material that I found on YouTube. First it starts with the prelude in C-sharp minor played by Rachmaninoff himself. It has everything that a good piano piece in my opinion requires: strong melody, drama, technical demanding for the pianoplayer.
The second, third and fourth videos are the first, second and third movement from the third Piano Concerto played by Vladimir Horowitz. I looked if I could find one played by Vladimir Ashkenazy, but unfortunately I couldn't find. Although considered as one of the greatest piano players this is not one of Horowitz' best performances at older age, but still more than worthwhile listening and looking to. I wish I had just 1% of the man's pianoskills.
The fifth video is "Daisies, Opus 38, No. 3", originally written for piano and voice, but here played by the great violin player Jascha Heifetz.
And finally "Vocalise" a gorgeously beautiful melody sung by Renee Fleming, but there are also other transcriptions of this piece played by different kinds of instruments. I also know a beautiful version on violin played by Itzhak Perlman.
There is much more beautiful music to be found on YouTube and elsewhere. Start some search yourself and allow yourself to be surprised during these musical wanderings on the internet. These unplanned searches might lead you to some new musical discoveries.
This time a video from Pat Metheny where he plays an unusual and original instrument, the Pikasso harp guitar, a 42-string guitar.
I got in touch with Pat Metheny for the first time about 24 years ago when I was about 17 years old. I got interested through a review in a musiciansmagazine from his live album Travels. I saw the record (for the younger people among us, the gramophone record was the analogue sound recording medium before the compact disc) in the music store, listened a few songs, bought it and got hooked. I saw him live once in the late 80's or early 90's and that concert is still in my top-10 all time favorite liveconcerts. A few years ago I've replaced my vinyl version of Travels by a CD-version.
I've always liked and still like Pat Metheny for his lyrical and melodic style of guitarplaying. Although considered as a jazz guitarist, he also uses elements from folk-, pop- and rockmusic. He collaborated with many great musicians from both the jazz- as the pop world, like bass player Jaco Pastorius, David Bowie, the late saxophoneplayer Michael Brecker, Joni Mitchell, Gary Burton, piano player Chick Corea, drummer Jack Dejohnette and many, many more.
I especially want to mention the Pat-Metheny album Bright Size Life on which he plays with Jaco Pastorius. The album was released in 1976 and was made in a trio-setting of guitar, bass and drums. Metheny's guitarplaying matches perfectly with Pastorius' virtuoso bass playing. I like this album a lot and still play it every now and then.
Here is the URL to Pat Metheny's official website.
There is a lot of nice and interesting material you can find on YouTube.
Anyway, enjoy this video!
Well this is the kick-off of my new weblog BrownNoiseMusic. I'm already running a photoblog called BrownNoisePhotos and this is my second weblog about music. As you can read in the header you'll find here reviews about new musical discoveries I did (old and new stuff), reviews about new CD's I've listened to, music-DVD's I've watched, interesting or fascinating musicvideos I found on the net. I don't want to limit myself to a certain style or genre, so you can find here things about classical music, jazz, pop, rock, indie, singer-songwritermusic, world music etc...
Later I also might start a blog about my other two hobbies/interests: movies and books/literature, but let's do one thing at the time.
I was thinking about starting a new weblog already for some time, but I didn't know where to start and with what. A blog about music with only reviews of CD's or recommended music would be pretty boring, I think. The idea started to take root a little more after I found interesting and fascinating videos on YouTube about some marvelous acoustic guitarplayers. YouTube is a huge treasury for interesting and beautiful music. After I found out two weeks ago on my BrownNoisePhotos-weblog how easy it is to embed a YouTube-video I thought it was about time to start launching a new weblog about music. And here it is.
This is just the opening post of my musicweblog I'll post some real music stuff later today. Be welcome and enjoy.
The Police
Pat Metheny
Ska
Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra
Mahler
Sibelius
Maxim Vengerov
Nikolaj Znaider
Rachmaninov
Eric Carmen