Music Phenomena

The late Sun Ra said his jazz came from outer space, with albums like Visits Planet Earth, We Travel the Space Ways, and the classic ESP disk The Heliocentric Worlds of Sun Ra, with him on the cover, a cosmological sphere depicting him next to Tycho Brahe, Johannes Kepler, and Galileo. I interviewed Sun Ra back in the 1980s and he told me about …

RCA Living Stereo, along with Mercury Living Presence and the Decca classical catalogue, have been and will always be some of the best vinyl ever produced.  Vinyl is special: you never quite hear the sizzle of the drum cymbals and other frequencies the same way on most digital, especially the horrendous sound of early digital, which Neil Young once compared to nails being driven …

Argentinian composer Gustavo Santaollala is best known for his soundtracks (Brokeback Mountain, Babel, Motorcycle Diaries), but his side project, Bajofondo Tango Club, now called just Bajofondo goes back to before he became a big soundtrack composer.   I first heard his music with on Ronroco, on which he plays solo charango, the Argentine folkloric instrument made from an armadillo shell.  It is a gorgeous album, …

I’ve never been a fan of Iggy Pop (b. James Newell Osterberg, Muskegon, Michigan, April 21, 1947), though like most 66 year olds I feel envy and awe at his utter lack of body fat:  he’s all muscle and sinew (is he a gym rat in secret?)  I did feature his song “I Wanna Be Your Dog” from his very first album with the …

Celluloid Records, along with Chris Blackwell’s larger company Island and Mango Records, was one of the most interesting and adventurous of all labels in the 1980s.  It had one of the boldest visions of all indie labels and put out fearless and crazy music, way too advanced for its own good.  Fusing world music with electronica, jazz with urban beats and early hip hop …

First there was the late great Cuban pianist Bebo Valdes with flamenco great Diego El Cigala with their great album Lagrimas Negras (Black Tears).  That record sold over a million copies, a huge amount for a tropical record, and got Bebo and El Cigala a grammy.  Because of it Bebo, like the septuagenarian characters in the Buena Vista Social Club, got a new lease …

This week I attended a very unusual show that showed once again how music transcends all boundaries:  music as universal language.   The two artists on stage at the Skirball Cultural Center—thanks to Yatrika Shah-Rais for programming this show–were Vincent Segal and Ballake Sissoko.  They played two instruments that developed concurrently in West Africa and Europe centuries ago.  The kora is the traditional 21 …

The April issue of Stereophile, an audiophile magazine, features an interview with a man named Yves Beauvais.     Like other Frenchmen, Beauvais appreciated America and American culture and so moved to New York City, to be closer to their heart.   He worked as top A&R man/staff producer at Atlantic Records for almost two decades, reporting directly to its legendary founder, Ahmet Ertegun,  successively …

Paul Tanner just passed away at the ripe old age of 95.  Although he made a name for himself at a young age by being chosen by Glenn Miller to be in the trombone section of the famous WWII band, playing such classics as “In the Mood” and “String of Pearls”.  Any WWII veteran still with us knows those songs well.
For me, however, Paul …

I’ve never been a top 40 kind of guy.  I like music much more obscure that than what you’d find in Billboard  magazine or the checkout line at Starbucks.
And so I am continually amazed by how much music Shazam–the smartphone app– can identify.  I’ve already written on how Shazam—available as a free app on iPhones and probably on Samsung and other platforms–can help failing …