7/4

In my town, whenever there's construction, there's a cop there but if he's not sitting in his car, he's not even watching or even directing traffic. Bah!

that book looks interesting, it could get me rolling in the direction of Messiaen more often. * Olivier Messiaen – Livre du Saint Sacrement (1984) Herz-Jesu-Kirche, Munich (Germany) June 15, 2008 Elisabeth Zawadke – Woehl-Organ (III,61) Right now I'm listening to this radio broadcast I downloaded off the net, new to me - I've never heard any *modern* music on the king of instruments. I think Woehl is the name of an organ builder. edit: I'm really enjoying this recording.

Yes, be afraid, be very afraid ... I was just careful, very careful. It was pretty obvious what was going on....the changing speed limits and the cops sitting around all over the place. I knew something was up.

I drove a rental car from Jacksonville to Gainsville a few years ago and it was the same situation, the entire ride. I still think it's amazing I didn't get a ticket, those rental plates should have been like waving a red flag to a bull.

No link, no author...probably copyrighted too. .

I have some of this music on Montaigne, this is exciting stuff!

August 17, 2008 Music A Taste for the Natural, and Celestial By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER OLIVIER MESSIAEN, the visionary French composer who died in 1992, experienced a form of synesthesia, sensing colors when he heard certain sounds or harmonies. Much of his music can certainly have a synesthetic effect on the listener, who during the third movement of “Des Canyons aux Étoiles” (“From the Canyons to the Stars,” 1971-74) might imagine multicolored paintballs exploding against a white canvas in a Jackson Pollock-like frenzy. This glittering 12-movement orchestral suite was inspired by Messiaen’s 1972 visit to southern Utah and commissioned by the patron Alice Tully in honor of the American bicentennial. It is included in a six-CD boxed set of recordings of works from different periods of his life, originally released on Montaigne and now reissued on the Naïve label in honor of the Messiaen centenary. Messiaen, a practicing Roman Catholic, described “Des Canyons” as “an act of praise and contemplation” that “contains all the colors of the rainbow.” A composer with a distaste for cities, he was deeply interested in the cosmic, the religious and the natural worlds. Nature, he said, “never displays anything in bad taste.” He had a particular fascination with birds, which he called “the earth’s first musicians,” and this ornithological obsession manifested itself in the transcriptions of bird songs that feature prominently in many of his works. In “Des Canyons,” he represents varieties of orioles with piano, xylorimba and woodwinds. Reinbert de Leeuw and the Schoenberg Ensemble evoke the striking canyon panoramas with energy and finesse. Marja Bon, a pianist, makes impressive contributions, as does Hans Dullaert in a haunting horn solo. The musicians bring the requisite awe to the finale, “Zion Park and the Celestial City,” which intersperses an ecstatic brass chorale with bird song and conjures a blinding sunrise with a triumphant A major chord of shimmering strings. A peak in Utah was later named Mount Messiaen. The other major work here is the luminous “Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ” (1965-69), a majestic piece for large choir and orchestra and seven instrumental soloists. Mr. de Leeuw leads the Netherlands Radio Symphony Orchestra and Choir and the Brussels BRTN Choir. Based on texts from Thomas Aquinas, the Gospels and the Latin liturgy, the composition reflects Messiaen’s many musical influences (among them, Debussy, Indonesian gamelan and Greek and Indian rhythms) and his stylistic trademarks (frenzied, rhythmically complex outbursts, kaleidoscopic and exotic percussion, modal harmonies, lyrical interludes and dramatic chord clusters). The fiendishly virtuosic piano writing is played excitingly here by Yvonne Loriod, Messiaen’s second wife. There is plenty of bird song intertwined with the transcendent music of “Transfiguration,” from calm melodies to the almost cacophonous “Candor Est Lucis Aeternae,” in which it sounds as if rival bird gangs were battling it out with one another and the singers. The ensembles sound luminous in movements like “Choral de la Sainte Montagne” and “Choral de la Lumière de Gloire.” The choruses sing their plainsong-inspired music with passionate solemnity, and the soloists and vast orchestral forces illuminate the complex score’s myriad colors with fervent devotion. The almost dizzying palette of “Sept Haïkaï” (1962), inspired by a visit to Japan, is brilliantly illuminated by Pierre Boulez (a student of Messiaen, whose pupils also included Karlheinz Stockhausen and the English composer George Benjamin), the Ensemble Intercontemporain and Ms. Loriod. Messiaen’s sensation of colors was integral to “Sept Haïkaï,” in which he described particular sonorities representing varying hues, like the “green of the Japanese pines, the white and gold of the Shinto temple.” It also inspired “Couleurs de la Cité Céleste” (1963), a work for piano and small orchestra in which Messiaen musically expresses his vision that “the light of the city was like crystalline jasper.” The musical brushstrokes are conveyed by Ms. Loriod and the ensemble, who also vividly explore the intricacies of “Oiseaux Exotiques” (1955-56) and “Un Vitrail et des Oiseaux” (1986). These performances were recorded live at a 1988 concert celebrating Messiaen’s 80th birthday at the Théâtre des Champs-Élysées in Paris. The boxed set also includes “Visions de l’Amen” (1943), a piano duo that hints of the marvels to come in “Vingt Regards sur l’Enfant-Jésus,” the mammoth solo work Messiaen wrote the next year for Ms. Loriod. “Visions” is performed here with sensitivity and startling muscularity by Maarten Bon and Mr. de Leeuw. The final movement sounds as though hundreds of bells were pealing simultaneously over the playing of a jubilant organist. Messiaen, whose prose was as colorful as his music, described those moments as evoking “the entire rainbow of the precious stones of the Apocalypse ringing, clinking, dancing, coloring and perfuming the light of life.”

same here. .

David Lynch: interview In an exclusive interview to coincide with the re-release of ‘The Elephant Man’ on DVD, iconic film director David Lynch tells Tom Huddleston about his experiences as a little-known American making a story steeped in the grime and savagery of Victorian London. In the pantheon of great London films, there are many that attempt to capture the capital’s harsh realities. There are others that strive for something more ambiguous – a sense of London, a mood, a dream of the city. Among these, David Lynch’s exquisite, emotionally shattering ‘The Elephant Man’, shot in London at the end of the 1970s, is one of the finest. As the film is reissued on DVD, Lynch gave Time Out a rare interview on the phone from California and revealed his thoughts on the much-loved classic. Despite its historical roots, Lynch’s take on the life of John Merrick – tortured carnival freak turned society darling – never tries to examine the facts of the man’s life, or the society in which he lived. Instead, Lynch refracts the story through the warped lens of his own obsessions: deformity and social exclusion, dreams and childhood fears, the magic of existence and the mystery of death. In doing so, he creates a unique cinematic landscape, a place in which the establishment – in the form of actors such as John Gielgud and Anthony Hopkins – rubs shoulders with the avant-garde. Lynch looks back on the film, his first studio picture, as a labour of love. But he says the actual production was something of a nightmare. ‘It was a very, very difficult film for me, because I was in a place where a lot of people thought I didn’t belong. I had made one feature no one had heard about, and here I am, born in Missoula, Montana, making a Victorian drama. I think a lot of people thought: Who is this nutcake? Who was I to be doing this?’ It’s extraordinary that ‘The Elephant Man’ got made at all, at least in its finished form. Having completed the oblique, deeply personal ‘Eraserhead’ in 1977, the director was fishing around for new ideas. ‘I wrote a script called “Ronnie Rocket”, but I couldn’t get anything going. I met a man named Stuart Cornfeld, who worked for Mel Brooks and had loved “Eraserhead”. One day, just on a feeling, I said, “We’re not getting anywhere with ‘Ronnie Rocket’; are there any other scripts that I might direct?” And he said, “There are four scripts. Come to Nibblers and have lunch, and I’ll tell you.” The first thing he said was “The Elephant Man”. And an explosion went off in my brain. Very strange. I said immediately, “That’s it. That’s what I want to do.” ’ Was producer Mel Brooks not taking a huge risk, hiring this virtual unknown to direct such a big, prestige picture? ‘You know, enormous or huge aren’t big enough words. And yet, zero risk in some ways. Mel somehow related to “Eraserhead”. He saw something there that made him think: This is the guy. So I don’t know how much of a risk Mel felt he was taking.’ There are parallels between ‘The Elephant Man’ and ‘Eraserhead’, not least the sense of a thunderous industrial underworld barely buried beneath everyday existence. For Lynch, the period element was one of the screenplay’s most appealing aspects. ‘I always loved smokestack industry, and I love towns or cities that have grown up around factories. So here is Victorian England, and I don’t know this land, but I know factories, I know this is the beginning of the Industrial Revolution, so that side of it resonated with me. Then one day I’m standing in East London Hospital. A derelict hospital, but it still had beds in the wards. Thousands of pigeons, broken windows, but long, glorious hallways, fireplaces, all the details. I’m there in the hall looking into a ward and a wind entered me, and I was back in time. I knew it: 100 per cent. Victorian England. And I said: “Now I know it. No one can take it away from me.” It just came in.’ Lynch personally scouted out many of the locations used in the film, shooting key scenes in Liverpool Street Station and Butler’s Wharf in Southwark. ‘But if we’d tried to do “The Elephant Man” even a year later, we couldn’t have. They were redoing the wharf area and just tearing out all the old places we’d found, that had been there for who knows how many hundreds of years. We were so lucky to get certain places. The feel of Victorian England was still there. You could go down the street and see people coming towards you from the 1800s. It was a different London.’ This apple-cheeked Eagle Scout had a hard time proving himself to a seasoned British crew. ‘You know they say forest fires are around 2,000F? This was a baptism by fire far hotter than that. I thought I would be fired off the film. But I had total support from Mel, and it all came right in the end. Mel gave me so much freedom and support.’ One of Lynch’s greatest pleasures was working with the distinguished cast, particularly John Hurt, whose portrayal of Merrick is the raw, bleeding heart of the film. ‘Those actors were beyond great. I cannot say enough good things about John Hurt. What he did is just glorious. His character is so fantastic. It’s a human-being thing; your heart just goes out to him for what he went through.’ Even the more troublesome cast members eventually came around to Lynch’s way of thinking. Screen legend Wendy Hiller was drafted in to play the matronly Mrs Mothershead. ‘I saw her in “Sons and Lovers” and I loved her. And I meet her, I think I’m going to like her, but she comes in and grabs me around the neck. And she’s shorter than I am, for sure, but she lifted me up off the ground almost, and marched me around the room. And she said, “I don’t know you, I will be watching you.” But she turned out to be another one who supported me beyond the beyond. I love Dame Wendy Hiller.’ Lynch’s love of transcendental meditation is well known. Last year he went on a speaking tour with the singer Donovan, advocating TM to audiences across Europe. While making ‘The Elephant Man’, meditation helped to keep the young director on track. ‘When you transcend, negativity recedes, tension and anxiety get less and less. If I didn’t meditate, some of the things I’ve gone through in this business could’ve killed me. I’m not kidding. A lot of artists think they want anger. But a real, strong, bitter anger occupies the mind, leaving no room for creativity. Negativity is the enemy of creativity. Somehow, the French got this idea of the starving artist. Very romantic, except it’s not so romantic for the starving artist.’ Since the release of ‘Inland Empire’ in 2006, many Lynch devotees have voiced concern that his newfound obsession with digital video might spell the end for Lynch the master storyteller. Thankfully, the director has no desire to limit himself. ‘I’m as surprised as anybody when the idea pops in. If I fall in love with it, I go. It could be a straight-ahead film, it could be… who knows?’ But despite working as executive producer on new features by kindred souls Werner Herzog and Alejandro Jodorowsky, Lynch says he has no movies of his own in the pipeline. ‘I’m painting away, I’m working on photographs and music, and somewhere the idea’s going to swim out, and I’ll know what to do next.’ ‘The Elephant Man: Special Edition’ is out now on DVD. ‘David Lynch: The Collection’ is out Aug 25. Author: Tom Huddeston

August 16, 2008 Donald Erb, Composer of Early Electronic Music, Dies at 81 By VIVIEN SCHWEITZER Donald Erb, a composer with a strong interest in electronic music who was prominent on the avant-garde scene of the 1960s and ’70s, died Tuesday at his home in Cleveland Heights, Ohio. He was 81. His death followed a long illness, said his wife, Lucille Erb. Mr. Erb, who was distinguished professor emeritus of composition at the Cleveland Institute of Music, composed “Reconnaissance,” one of the first chamber works for live synthesizer and acoustic instruments. It had its premiere in New York in 1967 with Robert Moog, a pioneer of the synthesizer, playing that instrument. Mr. Erb wrote many works for brass, including the Concerto for Brass and Orchestra (1986) and “Three Pieces for Brass Quintet and Piano.” Mr. Erb’s catalog also includes “The Seventh Trumpet,” which was given its premiere in 1987 by Leonard Slatkin and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, which commissioned it. That work reflects Mr. Erb’s affinity for incorporating objects into his scores, in this case water-filled jugs and wine glasses, as well as harmonicas and synthesizer. Mr. Erb also wrote many other solo, symphonic and chamber works, some with improvisatory and aleatoric elements that reflected his experience as a jazz musician. He wrote 10 concertos, including one for the cellist Lynn Harrell; others were given their premieres by prominent musicians like the clarinetist Richard Stoltzman. Born in Youngstown, Ohio, in 1927, Mr. Erb played trumpet with a dance band in high school and performed professionally as a jazz trumpeter after serving in the Navy during World War II. He studied composition with Marcel Dick at the Cleveland Institute of Music, from which he received his Master of Music degree in 1952, and Bernhard Heiden at Indiana University in Bloomington, receiving a doctorate of music in 1964. He briefly studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris in the early 1950s. He was appointed to the Cleveland Institute of Music faculty in 1952 and was appointed distinguished professor of composition in 1987. He retired in 1996. He left Cleveland for several years to teach composition at other institutes, including Indiana University and Southern Methodist University in Dallas. He was composer in residence with various ensembles, including the Dallas Symphony Orchestra in 1968 and 1969. He was president of the American Music Center (which awarded him their Letter of Distinction in 2001) in the early 1980s. Mr. Erb suffered cardiac arrest in 1996 and had not been active as a composer since. Besides his wife of 58 years, Lucille, he is survived by his daughters Christine Hoell of Columbus, Ohio, the actress Stephanie Erb of Los Angeles and Janet Carroll of Rockaway, N.J.; a son, Matthew, of Columbus; and nine grandchildren.

Not who is this guy, but...yawn...more of the same old shit from ChaunceyMorehouse. .

Remembering Donald Erb By Margaret Brouwer Published: August 15, 2008 .

Are there any C7#9 chords? .

Wow - good for you, congratulations! .

August 16, 2008 Jerry Wexler, R&B Impresario, Is Dead at 91 By BRUCE WEBER Jerry Wexler, who as a reporter for Billboard magazine in the late 1940s christened black popular music with the name rhythm and blues, and who as a record producer helped lead the genre to mainstream popularity, propelling the careers of Ray Charles, Wilson Pickett, Aretha Franklin and other performers, died on Friday at his home in Sarasota, Fla. He was 91. The cause was congestive heart failure, said his son, Paul. Mr. Wexler was already in his 30s when he entered the music business, but his impact was immediate and enduring. In 1987, the Rock and Hall of Fame recognized his contributions to American music by inducting him in only its second year of conferring such honors. Mr. Wexler actually didn’t care for rock ’n’ roll, at least as it evolved in the 1960s and ’70s. Though he signed a British band called Led Zeppelin and eventually produced records by the likes of Bob Dylan, Carlos Santana, Dire Straits and George Michael, his main influence came in the 1950s and ’60s as a vice president of Atlantic Records, working largely with black artists who were forging a new musical style, which came to be called soul music, from elements of gospel, swing and blues. “He played a major role in bringing black music to the masses, and in the evolution of rhythm and blues to soul music,” Jim Henke, vice president and chief curator for the Hall of Fame, said in an interview. “Beyond that, he really developed the role of the record producer. Jerry did a lot more than just turn on a tape recorder. He left his stamp on a lot of great music. He had a commercial ear as well as a critical ear.” Mr. Wexler was something of a paradox. A businessman with tireless energy, a ruthless streak and a volatile temper, he was also a hopeless music fan. A New York Jew and a vehement atheist, he found his musical home in the Deep South, in studios in Memphis and Muscle Shoals, Ala., among Baptists and Methodists, blacks and good old boys. “He was a bundle of contradictions,” said Tom Thurman, who produced and directed a documentary about Mr. Wexler in 2000. “He was incredibly abrasive and incredibly generous, very abrupt and very, very patient, seemingly a pure, sharklike businessman and also a cerebral and creative genius.” The title of Mr. Thurman’s documentary, “Immaculate Funk,” was Mr. Wexler’s phrase for the Atlantic sound, characterized by a heavy backbeat and a gospel influence. “It’s funky, it’s deep, it’s very emotional, but it’s clean,” Mr. Wexler once said. Though not a musician himself, Mr. Wexler had a natural rapport with musicians, who seemed to recognize his instinct for how best to employ their gifts. In 1950, while he was still at Billboard, he encountered the young singer Patti Page and hummed for her a 1947 song he liked, “The Tennessee Waltz.” Her subsequent recording of it sold three million copies in eight months. A few years later he was a partner at Atlantic, presiding over the 1954 recording session of Ray Charles’s breakout hit, “I’ve Got a Woman.” He said later that the best thing he had done for Charles was to let him do as he pleased. “He had an extraordinary insight into talent,” Charles, who died in 2004, said in “Immaculate Funk.” Mr. Wexler wasn’t always a mere listener. In the mid-1960s, at a recording session with Wilson Pickett, Mr. Wexler wanted more of a backbeat in the song “In the Midnight Hour” but couldn’t explain in words what he wanted, so he illustrated it by doing a new dance, the jerk. In the late 1960s and ’70s, he made 14 Atlantic albums with Ms. Franklin, whose musical instincts had been less than fully exploited at her previous label, Columbia. Mr. Wexler gave her more control over her songs and her sound, a blend of churchlike spirituality and raw sexuality, which can be heard in hits like “Respect,” “Dr. Feelgood” and “Chain of Fools.” “How could he understand what was inside of black people like that?” Pickett asked in the documentary. “But Jerry Wexler did.” Gerald Wexler was born in New York City on Jan. 10, 1917, and grew up in the Washington Heights section of Manhattan at a time before the building of the George Washington Bridge, when swimming in the Hudson River was a summer pastime. His parents were mismatched. His father, Harry, was a Polish immigrant who spent his entire working life as a window washer. His headstrong mother, Elsa, had higher aspirations for herself and especially for Jerry, the older of her two sons: she wanted him to be writer. Young Jerry didn’t care for school much, however; he frequented pool halls and record stores instead, and he went to Harlem jazz clubs at night. In 1936, as something of a last-ditch effort to straighten out her wayward son, Elsa Wexler enrolled him at Kansas State College of Agriculture and Applied Science (known today as Kansas State University) in Manhattan, Kan. There he first encountered a rural musical sensibility, and 100 or so miles away, in the lively musical scene of Kansas City, Mo., he could immerse himself in the blues. Mr. Wexler left college after two years, joined the Army, served stateside during World War II, then returned to Kansas State and finished his degree. By 1949 he was back in New York, married and working as a cub reporter for Billboard. At the time the black popular-music charts in the magazine were gathered under the rubric Race Records. “We used to close the book on a Friday and come back to work on a Tuesday,” Mr. Wexler recalled in an interview last fall with the Web site PopEntertainment.com. “One Friday the editor got us together and said, ‘Listen, let’s change this from Race Records.’ A lot of people were beginning to find it inappropriate. ‘Come back with some ideas on Tuesday.’ “There were four guys on the staff,” he continued. “One guy said this and one guy said that, and I said, ‘Rhythm and blues,’ and they said: ‘Oh, that sounds pretty good. Let’s do that.’ In the next issue, that section came out as Rhythm and Blues instead of Race.” His work at Billboard attracted the attention of Ahmet Ertegun of Atlantic Records, then a small independent label focusing on black music. When his partner, Herb Abramson, went into the Army, Mr. Ertegun asked Mr. Wexler to join the company in 1953. Over the next decade Mr. Wexler’s drive, his sales and promotion skills, and, according to the business practices of the day, his indulging in payola — the bribery of disc jockeys to play a company’s records — helped make Atlantic a leader in the recording industry. In the 1950s the company produced records by the Drifters, the Clovers, Joe Turner, Ruth Brown and, in partnership with the songwriters Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, the Coasters. In the 1960s, however, Mr. Wexler and Mr. Ertegun began to take different paths. Mr. Ertegun gravitated toward rock ’n’ roll, while Mr. Wexler — though he signed Led Zeppelin to Atlantic — was drawn to the niche sounds he found in places like Memphis, where a small label, Stax Records, had gathered a mix of black and white musicians and produced a sound based on spontaneity and improvisation. Mr. Wexler brought Otis Redding and Dusty Springfield, among others, to record at Stax’s studio, which was in an old movie palace. Later, after hearing a recording Percy Sledge had made at Fame Studios in Muscle Shoals, he began producing records there as well, bringing singers like Pickett and Ms. Franklin to work with local musicians. In his autobiography, “Rhythm and the Blues” (Knopf, 1993), written with David Ritz, Mr. Wexler wrote candidly and self-critically about a personal life that he acknowledged had been intemperate, replete with adulterous liaisons and profligate drug use. Mr. Wexler’s first two marriages ended in divorce. In addition to his son, who lives in High Bridge, N.J., he is survived by his wife, Jean Arnold, and a daughter, Lisa Wexler of Kingston, N.Y. Another daughter, Anita, died of AIDS in 1989. In the early 1970s Mr. Wexler helped resurrect the career of Willie Nelson with two albums for Atlantic, but he left the label in 1975. (It had been bought by Warner Brothers in 1967.) After the split he worked on his own, and in 1978 he produced Bob Dylan’s album “Saved,” a celebration of the singer’s embrace of Christianity, for Columbia. When Mr. Dylan accepted his first Grammy Award for best male rock vocal performance, for the song “Gotta Serve Somebody,” he first thanked God and then Jerry Wexler. In the 1980s Mr. Wexler helped Linda Ronstadt with her career-changing album of Sinatraesque standards, “What’s New,” a project begun when she spent an afternoon with Mr. Wexler listening to records and for the first time heard the 1930s singer Mildred Bailey. “When I said I wanted to sing like that, Jerry said the best way was to get a pianist and learn how those songs are done,” Ms. Ronstadt told The New York Times in 1983. She added, “One thing Jerry Wexler taught me was that if you’ve got a sexy or torchy song, you mustn’t attitudinize on top of it, because it sounds redundant.” Given the chance, Mr. Wexler would have produced to the end and beyond. “I asked him once,” said Mr. Thurman, the filmmaker, “ ‘What do you want written on your tombstone, Jerry?’ He said, ‘Two words: More bass.’ ” Jerry Wexler, center, with Ahmet Ertegun and Big Joe Turner.

Except for the times where someone leads from the start and wins. What's up with that? Do you ever wonder if they pay someone who doesn't even watch sports to write that shit?

19 years on a local station and I've never heard them. .

Ha! When I did it, I never got stuck.

I added a few more tracks, if anyone is interested.

Weehauken - that's how I sneak up on the Lincoln Tunnel. .

It's good to hear that MG is still with us! .

...Happy Birthday!

Hell...sitting around here practicing Bach and scales I only use one effect box, a Boss RV3 Reverb. It's a shame, I have a ton of boxes and rarely use them.

Be sure to let him know we said hi. .