More on Desert Island biases

[rlm@ms_aspen.hac.com (R. L. McMillin)]

First of all, thanks to Ryan McGuire for clearing up the mystery of how to
make seedcake...

Jeff Abbott writes more about his DIDS:

> 4. Miles Davis - Sketches of Spain
>         (Miles' interpretation of Spanish classical and folk music.
>          Just melts in your ear. Makes you want to go fight a Moor,
>          conduct an Inquisition, and get your tickets to the Barcelona
>          games :-) ).

I take it that Hemingway would have approved, then...

> 5. REM - Murmur
> 	(I hear this and I'm back in college, singing along with the
> 	often-undecipherable lyrics. Their first and their best
> 	album).

Interesting that you would have picked this one.  Had REM made my top ten,
I would have more likely chosen "Fables of the Resconstruction" (or is it
"Reconstruction of the Fables"?) , or "Reckoning".  A few other people have
mentioned Cocteau Twins, and I think it's something similar that's appealing
in this group, too.

> 7. Orff - Carmina Burana
>         (Powerful choral music; the Fortuna movement is best known as
>          the music from _The Omen_. The rest of the movements are poems
>          taken from Dark Ages Bavarian monks--love poems, drinking poems,
>          and reflections on the fickle nature of fate. The Cleveland
>          Symphony's CD with Michael Tilson is a good recording).

At least one other person recommended this, so I'll have to convince my
girlfriend to twist one of her distributors' arms and get a copy.

> 8. Paul Simon - Graceland
>         (Much as been said about the African influence of this album,
>          but my favorite track is "That Was Your Mother", with Rockin'
>          Dopsie and his fellow Cajuns. Just great stuff.)

Hmm... mine was "Diamonds on the Soles of Her Shoes", but never mind that.
Yes, this is one of Simon's greatest albums ever.  And to think I forgot it!

Dan Welch wonders out loud:

> Looking at the list, the surprising thing is the dates.  The dates are
> (from memory, so don't yell), 1989, 1985, 1990, 1973, 1971, 1980, 1984,
> 1972, 1990. and 1988.  There's a significant gap in there; from 1973 to
> 1988, only three albums, two from KaTe and one from SRV, my two favorite
> artists (and all three timeless albums anyway).  I didn't even realize
> it before, but what happened to music during that span?

I don't know about you, but here in Los Angeles media properties got so
expensive that owners started playing safe with them -- and playlists
got stale.  Since most people find new music through radio (Kate
probably being a BIG exception), this has lead nearly a generation of
people to distrust commercial FM radio as a reliable source of new
music.  Instead, we get "soft hits", "easy listening", "your favorite
oldies", "HARD ROCK", "Dance Now!", "Turn Up The Bass!" and the
fringies out near the ends of the dial -- National Public Radio likes
to hide near 88/89/90 MHz here.  What we get musically is largely what
the Radio Police will let us hear.  (Remember Elvis Costello's "Radio,
Radio"?  Unfortunately, it's more true now than it was then.)

Jim Ladd, a local DeeJay who has been on the erst-named "Album-
Oriented Rock" stations ever since the phrase was coined, has released
what appears to be a perfectly dismissable book that nonetheless tells
the story of the two major AOR radio stations in this market, and how
one of them -- KMET -- collapsed from a case of fatal overexpectation.
Unfortunately, he squanders a good bit of his credibility by refusing
to name names, which shows just how happy he is to still have a job.

If you don't like commercial radio (and almost nobody in L.A. does, so
I'm assuming the situation in Austin is similarly bad), try NPR's
"Morning Turns Eclectic".  Despite that title's use of "eclectic", a
word now forbidden because of its association with Yuppies, it has some
fairly wonderful stuff on it.  Unfortunately, they don't let radios in
where I work, and the show's on at a time I am usually in the office.
Dierdra O'Donahue's "Snap" is, I think, sadly off the air, as the local
NPR affiliate, KCRW, no longer carries it.

Continuing, in reverse order of the digest, is Jenn Turney, who praises
my selection of some honest-to-God classical music.  Thank you, Jenn.
(By the way -- is that a male name or a female name?  And which are you?
Just for the record, of course... :-))

Jeffrey C. Burkha on the prosaically named machine lewhoosh writes about
Dire Straits:

> 7.  I love the sort of mid-period Dire Straits (_Making Movies_ and
> _Love Over Gold_) and this album not only compiles the best of both of
> these albums but does so with Knopfler at his live, scorching best.
> The 10+ minute version of "Sultans of Swing" is guaranteed to put
> anyone in a good mood.

Not to mention that they are one of the consistently best recorded
bands around.  Don't forget _Brothers In Arms_, one of my favorite
"Albums I've Gotta Get If I Could Only Remember When I'm In The Music
Store." That brought to mind the fact that I'd overlooked Steely Dan's
_Pretzel Logic_, _Katy Lied_, _Aja_, and the rest.  They sound, even
today, as if they were all recorded DDD!

Gene Lege, Jr., replies to my likening of Beethoven to Newton:

> Speaking as a student of physics and philosophy, Newton/Maxwell/
> Einstein/ Feynman/Bhuda all rolled into one might come
> close... (just kidding, far be it for me to make such judgments.)

Actually, I thought I was making a fairly obvious reference to Alexander
Pope's (unused) epitaph for Sir Isaac Newton:

	"Nature and Nature's laws lay hid in night;
	God said, Let Newton be! and all was light."

At least, so far as composition goes, Beethoven fits that description
pretty neatly. (Well, on rereading my initial post, perhaps it wasn't
such an obvious reference.)

If you're still with me, thanks for reading.