Friday Miscellanea

I would like you to introduce you to perhaps the most important background figure in popular music today. His work underlies virtually every song you hear. He is indispensable and, indeed, after the singer and the video, probably the most important element in commercial popular music today. He comes in many versions, but for the locus classicus I give you the Roland TR-808 Rhythm Composer, sometimes known as the infamous "drum machine":

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Some have accused rock musicians of being, well, less than intellectual giants. This is obviously false as this photo of Mr. Keith Richards, esq., relaxing in his library, shows:

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What is it with Prager University? They keep putting out these videos that contradict the Narrative! This one starts out by explaining how the best musicians are always conservative.

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Well, this left me flabbergasted: "Is It Harmful to Use Music as a Coping Mechanism?" As a what? This is one of the weirdest things I've ever read about music:

Listening to music is a form of emotional self-care that many of us turn to every day, without much conscious thought. The streaming service Spotify, well aware of this, offers a collection of “Mood” playlists, from “Anthems of Angst” to “Running Thru a Field of Smiles,” to my personal favorite, “The Happy Hipster.”

"Emotional self-care?" Where do you people get this stuff? Guys, it's a fine art, not a drug or a puppy. Geez...

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I once wrote a post on the "Layla" riff from the song by Eric Clapton. Here is a pretty good article about the circumstances surrounding the writing of the song: "Boomer Ballads: Layla" And here's the tune:

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CBC was an important venue for me as a young artist. As I developed, more opportunities opened up. When I proposed a whole series of concerts as a homage to the recently-deceased Andrés Segovia they responded by recording them all on location for national broadcast. But I'm afraid that the CBC these days has lost its way and instead of working to support real musicians, it is pandering to the reality show audience by announcing a contest that consists merely of videos of music classes covering pop songs. Bramwell Tovey, conductor of the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra is not amused: "CBC Music dishonest in promoting ‘Canada’s Greatest Music Class’ contest."

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Well, all that was depressing... Time for something both a) classical and b) really, really funny! Which pretty much brings us to Ray Chen, the Victor Borge of the violin:

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There is a new deluxe issue of "1" coming out! You have to know this album, the biggest-selling of the first decade of the 21st century? By a group whose name rhymes with skittles? Ok, it doesn't quite. I'm talking about a digitally remastered reissue of the CD of all the Beatles' number one singles, plus a DVD of all the videos all cleaned up and redone as well. Allan Kozinn reviews it in the Wall Street Journal.

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Here's a new thing: "Walls" from a new album by Rival Consoles (the nom de musica of Ryan Lee West). It is less boring than most EDM-derived music.

But still rather creepy and dreary, don't you think? I put that up as a foil for our musical envoi of the day, coming up next.

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In a world where so much music seems to be the result of industrial mass-production, dull, repetitive and, because of that, promoted with the most garish video productions imaginable, the humanity of classical music shines out stronger than ever, does it not?