Soundtrack for my life.

It started with Eve Tushnet, then spread to Don (at my goading), so it is only fair for me to get around to posting this. It is more of a musical autobiography, mostly because if I were to list recordings, I would feel obliged to list all the catalog information, and that would be too much work (sorry, but it is that paying writing taking priority over the blog).

Starting with my early years, you must understand that I was raised almost strictly on classical music, with a smattering of folk and some jazz and even less rock. We listened to a lot of Bach. Now, my parents have always gone for lively performances over historically informed performances, so we had a lot of Academy of St. Martin in the Fields and that sort of thing, which I still enjoy, although I much prefer the Academy of Ancient Music nowadays.

When the McClatchy family got out of radio broadcasting classical music programming in Sacramento was left to KXPR, a public station. When my family joined they put the membership in my name. For a premium I got a gift certificate for any Nonesuch title. That was the first record that I ever picked, a collection of Telemann. I still have that record and still listen to it.

So, for my first years, you can basically pick any Bach, any Saint-Saens, any Beethoven, or just about any classical recording except opera.

My views changed regarding opera when we went to the Vienna State Opera and had Standing Room tickets for The Marriage of Figaro. I was 10 years old and hooked. From then on, I listened to the opera broadcasts just about every week. La Boheme and Aida were big favorites for many years (I still like both, but now tend towards Puccini).

That same year I heard yodelling and have been a yodelling fanatic, an affliction that I still carry to this day. If you give me one too many martinis, I might just give you a demonstration of my own yodelling. It ain't pretty. Back then I was more of a purist, only really into Alpenjodl (if anyone knows the Tirolean dialect they can correct my spelling, but I think that is how they spell it down there), tolerating cowboy yodelling only as a rare diversion. Now I go for any and all yodelling, much to the chagrin of the neighbor's hounds.

Two years later I was turned on to Flamenco and Fado. So add that to the list.

About the same time I was listening to the music my peers listened to as well: standard-issue pop music of the 1980's. Of that stuff, the only ones that I can listen to at all anymore are Prince and maybe Duran Duran, but only because I love the synthesizer that they used.

Then we get to highschool.

I was into the 1960's rock and roll, folk, blues, soul, and folk rock, with particular interest in Bob Dylan, the Grateful Dead (a band I still admire tremendously), the Beatles, CSNY, the Velvet Underground, Hendrix, Credence Clearwater Revival, Steeley Span, Arlo Guthrie, Woody Guthrie (OK, not 60's, but influenced the lot of them), Ramblin Jack Elliot, Leo Kottke, Pink Floyd, Aretha Franklin, James Brown, etc. I also started to listen to reggae, ska and rocksteady, particularly the old Studio One recordings. I still listen to that stuff, but not that often (with the exception of the Dead and Leo Kottke).

The Grateful Dead, via Workingman's Dead, got me into country music, first the Bakersfield sound (they played a Merl Haggard tune on one of their live albums, and I had to check this guy out), then all the rest. Later on Jerry Garcia's acoustic work got me into bluegrass, so I owe a huge musical debt to the Dead.

At the same time, I was starting to listen to jazz. Charlie Parker, Gerry Mulligan, Thelonious Monk, Dizzy Gillespie, Stan Getz, Modern Jazz Quartet. Of all the music that I listened to in highschool, jazz is still my favorite (well, second to Baroque).

It was in highschool that I started becoming a record collector, and Thelonious Monk who was the first artist whose titles I bought every chance I could get. I loved his harmonies, his unique rhythmic sense, his incredible compositions. The first Monk record I had was Underground. It was also the first record that I wore out (it was on cassette, a horrid format that is mercifully all but dead).

The first jazz record that I bought, though, was Stan Getz with the Oscar Peterson Trio, a record that still is a favorite. The first major name that I saw live was the Modern Jazz Quartet, and the first major jazz performer I shook hands with was Dizzy Gillespie, at a free concert in McClatchy Park that I rode my bicycle to.

I had a cassette of Columbia jazz recordings that had Dave Brubeck's Take Five on it. I liked the whole thing, but what particularly got to me was the elegant horn work of Paul Desmond. The guy thought in phrases that were worthy of Bach! He would take an idea and spin it and respin it, all the while maintaining his relaxed tone. One time I found a rare Italian issue of Desmond with Mulligan, and was so excited that I did not even want to play it, for fear that I would wear it out and not be able to replace it (my friend's father gave me the good advice of making a cassette of it - for personal use, no piracy here, thank you - and listening to that, which I did and subsequently wore out. The record is still in good shape, though).

Other musicians that I started to get into in highschool were Mel Torme, Erroll Garner, Chet Baker, Benny Goodman (the Carnegie Hall recording of Sing Sing Sing was on that Columbia collection), Miles Davis, Lionel Hampton, Zoot Simms, Al Cohn, Bill Evans, John Coltrane, Sandy Bull, Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Ella Fitzgerald, in short, just about all of the various strands of jazz.

In exploring jazz, I gradually lost interest in the pop music of the day. It just was boring, with dull, repetitive harmonies, banal lyrics, and inspipid rhythms (and it has only gotten worse since then - once in awhile I will listen to one of the pop radio stations and am amazed at how even the craftsmanship, which used to be good, has declined). I think the last pop band that I paid attention to was Portishead. I am told that I would like Radiohead, but I have yet to hear them. I admit that I am somewhat intrigued by Trip Hop and even some of the electronica out there, but am very picky.

Thanks to the great world music programming at KXJZ, I got interested in Middle Eastern music, African music, Bulgarian music, and a whole host of others. Thanks to my friend Ann, who played Taiko, I got interested in Japanese music as well (which later on probably led to my interest in other Asian music: Peking opera, gamelan, etc.).

I also got into Irish music around the same time: Planxty and the Pogues being two bands that I really liked (and still like).

I was just starting to get interested in Avant-garde music as a senior in highschool, but only knew a little bit about it. Shoenberg's Pierrot Lunaire comes to mind, as does Laurie Anderson. In college I studied the history of electronic music with Gordon Mumma, and really got interested in the avant-garde, Karlheinz Stockhausen in particular (if you only can hear one of his recordings, Hymnen is the one to listen to). I found that I really liked where the world of avant-garde classical music and jazz met and started to collect Sun Ra, Ornette Coleman, and late Coltrane. I also discovered Kraftwerk, first through their magnificent Autobahn, then Radioactivity and the rest.

Getting excited about Stockhausen is probably what turned my into a music major. Naturally all that German electronic music led to an interest in 12-tone music, and I was particularly excited by Alban Berg, although Webern was a close second. Then came hyper-rationalism and Xenakis.

Now, don't think that all my early college listening was Teutonic 12-tone (as a music major, I obviously was listening to all of the Western Canon). I was also playing saxaphone in a ska band, and listening to both 2-Tone ska as well as the early recordings (not to mention a lot of Latin jazz at the time, as I found that I got better melodic ideas from that than I did simply trying to sound like Roland Alfonso). I was also listening to a lot of Tango, both traditional as well as the Nuevo Tango of Piazzolla and Dino Saluzzi (if Saluzzi's Mojotoro were not on CD, I think I would have worn it out).

It was also about this time that I started listening to a lot of Lou Harrison, which was perfect for what was to be a major turning point for me as a musician. My piano teacher had been railroaded by a couple of loudmouth no-talents who insisted that he was mean to them and a sexist to boot, completely unfair allegations. The teacher who replaced him was fresh out of grad school, was a heavy-handed pianist, and did not strike me as a great mind either. So I asked the harpsichord teacher if she would accept me as a student, which she did.

Here I was, in a full circle return to my baroque roots, and eager to tackle Scarlatti, who I had become increasingly fond of. I also was interested in playing the sonatas that Lou Harrison had written for the instrument (one of which he dedicated to my teacher). I was listening to a lot of early music, especially Monteverdi, Scarlatti, the ars nova composers, and Bach.

Around the same time I was studying percussion, playing Harrison's percussion music, so Harrison definitely needs to be on the soundtrack of my life. Naturally one cannot listen to Harrison without delving into Ives, so add him. I also was into George Crumb quite a bit.

In all of the switching of instruments I developed a loathing for the sound of the piano (except in jazz, where I continued to listen to it, and also a few works, like Berg's Piano Sonata, Debussy's piano music, and Chopin). However, late one night I was driving back from campus to the house where I lived with a string quartet (that is a whole other set of stories, including part of the reason that Brahms still sets my skin crawling), and some incredible music came on the radio. It sounded otherworldly, and it was played on the piano. I was so moved that I had to pull the car over and just listen. It turned out to be Franz Liszt, a composer I thought of as a bunch of bluff and bluster. But this was a late work, when he had become a tertiary in a religious order, and was paring his work down to the bare essentials.

So, I started to listen to the piano again, first these late Liszt pieces, then Morton Feldman's String Quartet with Piano, then eventually finding myself listening to Shubert and Beethoven, and all the other great 19th century composers.

My last couple of years in college I was listening to a lot of Tony Bennett, as well as Frank Sinatra, Louis Prima, Johnny Cash, and Hank Williams.

After college I continued to listen to jazz, avant-garde, world music, early music, but started to get more and more into country music and fado. Moving to the Bay Area put me in the same region as KCSM, a 24 hour jazz station, so I was able to keep up with the jazz world much better.

About four years ago I started listening to more and more Italian folk music, both traditional as well as modern. Daniele Sepe, Banda Ionica, I Tre Martelli, BEV, Allesandra Belloni, La Ciapa Rusa, and Riccardo Tesi have all had some pretty heavy turns in the rotation, as well as the Lomax field recordings and lots of Tralalleri (amateur all-male a capella choirs, traditionally made up of Genovese longshoremen). About the same time I started to collect recordings of bagpipes, particularly Bulgarian and Italian bagpipes (and one cannot be into bagpipes without getting into hurdy-gurdies, so drones have been important for the last four years).

I also got into Portuguese and Portuguese-influenced music more and more. Morna from Cape Verde, Samba from Brasil, Fado from Lisbon and Coimbra, noisy string ensembles from the Azores, even a recording of Portuguese creole cowboy yodelling from Malacca and a recording by Maria Ana Bobone of fado with harpsichord (and 12-tone pieces on the Portuguese guitar).

I ended up working at Arhoolie Records, where I was constantly immersed in the world of folk music, particularly blues, cajun, zydeco, norteno, and bluegrass.

I still listen to just about everything on the list above, although I have been finding myself in an early music kick again, particularly the pre-classical composers who were associated with Scarlatti in Spain. I have also been listening to Respighi a lot (I never paid much attention to him before, but have found him really quite good).

So that is that. If anyone wants any details on a particular composer or a recommendation on something or a catalog number, I will be happy to provide specifics on request. I am just too busy to go digging around for all of the music that I have been into.

Posted by erik at December 9, 2003 1:09 AM | TrackBack