What are you listening to right now?

[tmazz]

Arthur Fielder/Boston Pops: Gershwin - Concerto in F

Beautiful sound from this 1961 RCA Living Stereo recording.

I have had a CD copy of this for years and pretty much ignored it in favor of the Boston Pops/Rhapsody in Blue album. But I am really liking this vinyl copy(and it is a later Red Seal pressing, not even an original Shaded Dog.) Amazing what the black stuff will do for you.

[tmazz]

I never worked in a record store, but in my college days I did work in a commercial radio station. Even though it was a Black Gospel station (complete with Reverend Ike and live remotes of tent revivals), we were on the distribution lists of most of the major record labels for new pop releases. I can remember sitting in the control room with the program director after we went off the air the day that Aja was released (the station with clear channel rights to our frequency was in Buffalo so we were only allowed to operate during daylight hours). We played the album non stop from end to end just sitting there in awe and saying "oh  boy, this is going to be big."   

Good music, good memories. 

Funny how we can mark time with musical events.



I have the MoFi pressing of this album. Does anybody out there have any knowlege of how this compares quality wise to the recent 180 re-issue?

[richidoo]

A little far out, but it's my first Shoenberg record. I read that Shoenberg was Glenn Gould's fav composer, besides Bach, of course. When he also said Bartok was BS my interest in Shoenberg was piqued.

Another beautiful Naxos recording, and the music is wholesome, and harmonically and rhythmically linear, if not melodically so. It is going somewhere fun and strange, like a new corner of the galaxy. Very tight playing.  Lots of sinus resonance, and metallic string tone. 

[tmazz]

Apocalyptica: Worlds Collide



A Metal band from Finland consisting of three cellists and a drummer. Interesting twist on regular metal. I thought I read about it here, but I now can't seem to find the post. Whoever put it up, thanks for the recommendation.

[tmazz]

Dusty Springfield: Dusty in London

[tmazz]

Linda Ronstadt: We Ran

[tmazz]

Kenny Burrell: The Concord Jazz Heritage Series

[richidoo]

Tom, try the Kenny Burrell station on Pandora, it seems to suit all moods and fits into every situation. I listen to it all the time.

This is a good example of why Pandora is great. I never really listened to or cared much about jazz guitarists. Thoe that i played with and had records of never really did much for me. The instrument always sounded awkward to me, just to hard to make it sound smooth playing bop. Then I heard some soulful grooves by Burrell and created a new station from it, for cool party music, not for serious jazz listening. But the more I listened to the station, the more technically accomplished I learned Burrell really is. I finally heard his record with Trane last week, now he is one of my most interesting artists. If you use Pandora as intended, by creating new stations when you hear a new artist you like, and rating the tracks as much as you can, it really pays off in discovering new music.

[Black Sand Cable]

Hellfueled - Emission of Sins

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypxFQMmHu24

[tmazz]

Busy day on the music front. It was customer appreciation day at the Crack House and I ended up grabbing 1/2 dozen 52 cent LPs. And then I had to stop at the library on the way home and they had just put out a bunch of new release, so i pick up a bunch of them as well. Will post them here as I get a chance to listen to them.

Heart: Red Velvet Car



The newest from Ann & Nancy. New music, but still with that classic Heart flavor.

[tmazz]

Eric Clapton: Clapton



Hot off the presses

[tmazz]

Santana: Guitar Heaven




OK, so much for the press release, now for my impression. While musically, this is a good album, there was something about the sound that bothered me. It sounded kind of restricted. I turned on my cassette deck to check the output levels of the DAC. Sure as heck the dynamic range was virtually nil. The needles on the VU meters never fell outside of the range of -3 to +3 db. A 6db total dynamic range makes for a pretty poor souding recording. Looks like we have another victim of the ipod age.......

Samples:
http://www.amazon.com/Guitar-Heaven-Greatest-Classics-Time/dp/B003TML0VO/ref=sr_1_1?s=music&ie=UTF8&qid=1288316053&sr=1-1

[tmazz]

The Essential Lena Horne

[Black Sand Cable]

I turned on my cassette deck

Whats a cassette deck?  

[tmazz]

I turned on my cassette deck

Whats a cassette deck?  

Isn't that scary? It wasn't too long ago that the cassette deck (a Tandberg TD-420A) was running like the hammers of hell cranking out tapes to play in the car. But now that all of my car audio systems are CD based I don't think I had even turned it on for 2 or 3 years. The only reason it is still around is that I have a few dozen tapes of live recordings made of friends bands that I still want to have access to. (And not only do I still keep the cassette player, but I also have the outboard dbx unit used to make those field recordings.) One of these days I will get up the energy and ambition to rip all of those recordings to digital files and then I will be able to retire the tape system. Hopefully the deck will not have dried up and/or seized up before then.