I need to get caught up here.
Reading:
Dream Boogie: The Triumph of Sam Cooke. No one does a music biography as well as Peter Guralnick, and this is a wonderful follow-up to the acclaimed two-volume Elvis biography. So far Sam’s still with the Soul Stirrers, but he’s watching Little Richard burn up the charts with “Tutti Frutti” and wondering if he should put different words to his own gospel songs as well. Fascinating and compulsively readable.
Just before sleep last night, I read and fell in love with David Denby’s piece in the latest New Yorker on James Agee. Two immediate thoughts here. One is that I would love to write like James Agee (I hear my toy-piano version of his Steinway in my head as I write), and I must get the new Library of America collection of his writing right away. The other is that Denby writes the essay like a man possessed, and I wish he wrote more like that in his movie reviewing. The reviews often strike me as tepid, superficial, and overly moralizing, but this essay on Agee, like Denby’s writing about Columbia U. in his piece on Edward Tayler many years ago, is something else altogether.
Viewing: Last night I finished Richard Linklater’s Waking Life. My Donne students, and my colleague Eric, had been after me for weeks to watch this movie. I certainly understand why. I had trouble falling asleep because it thronged my head with thoughts. I was hoping for a lucid dream last night as the perfect complement to the movie, but it didn’t happen. Come to think of it, I haven’t had a lucid dream for years, though they were quite common when I was a kid.
Listening:
Morten Lauridsen‘s setting of “O Magnum Mysterium” leaves me breathless, rapt.
I treated myself to “Astronomy Domine” and “Comfortably Numb” before bedtime. It occurs to me I’ve probably undervalued The Wall and should finally break down and buy a copy. At the time of its release, it was very hard to hear beyond the notoriety and celebrity. Now that “Jessie’s Girl” and Hi Infidelity aren’t echoing in my head, I can hear the Floyd’s work more clearly.
I wish I could find something else with Ferdinand Povel besides MF Horn 4 & 5: Maynard Ferguson Live at Jimmy’s. FP’s work on “I’m Getting Sentimental Over You” (one of my very favorite jazz standards) is spine-tingling. I see from this page where he went from there, but tracking it down will be another order, and a tall one. Maybe it’s time to learn Dutch. Thankfully, the fan page very generously shares a lovely “These Foolish Things” mp3 with us.
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (3.0MB)
“comfortably numb” is indeed a treat, but if you expect to hear the floyd’s work more clearly on “the wall”, listen elsewhere. all you’ll hear through “the wall” is roger waters spleening his misery amidst very few real songs. trust me- i revisited this 80’s monument (on lp) just last week, and if you simply must hear it again, save time and spin it at 78.
Well, that’s pretty much what I always thought, but two recent events have made me rethink. One is learning what “brick” means in “another brick in the wall”: Baden-Powell’s advice to the young Boy Scout was to be a “brick,” meaning an uncomplaining and always-compliant good stand-up citizen. No dissent, no grumbling, no second thoughts. That helped contextualize some of Waters for me and made *The Wall* seem less melodramatic and splenetic. The other is the performance of “Comfortably Numb” at Live8, which I found absolutely breathtaking, and which made me re-examine the relevance of the larger work to 2005.
If I can find it on lp and the first bits make me sorry I tried, I’ll move the belt and play it at 45. My TT won’t do 78, alas!
Thanks for stopping by, Mr. Goodfellow!:)
If you like “Astronomy Domine,” I think you’ll love Obscured by Clouds , a 1972 soundtrack to the French film La Valle . It’s a fascinating bridge piece between early and late Floyd. Unfortunately, too few people know about it.
I know the title but I’ve never heard the music. Your description is most enticing; I feel an Amazon order coming on. Thanks for the recommendation.
I’ve always enjoyed the PF classics, but I find my interest and respect growing all of a sudden, triggered by that very emotional performance at Live8. To see how moved the audience was by “Comfortably Numb,” some of them in tears, and to think of that song in relation to our world today, touched my soul.