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This is for everyone that’s been watching Ken Burns’ ongoing 12-hour documentary “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” this week on PBS. Included in this MP3 are the following excerpts from a 1967 Pops Festival performance by Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops:
-Painted Desert
-On The Trail
Alfred Kfrips, Violin Solo
Leo Litwin, Celsta Solo
-Sunset
-Cloudburst
The record was converted into 320 kbps MP3 and has a run time of 25:59.
Download Grand Canyon Suite here!
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Kraftwerk: The real granddaddy of all electronic music. Their synthesizers produce oodles of Germanic musical order and discipline on their 1977 classic, Trans-Europe Express. This only makes sense given it was produced in Germany while the country was split in two by heavy-handed superpowers with nothing but control in mind.
I sort of imagine the four Dapper Dan’s from the album art in a monstrous and dreary factory manipulating huge steam engines, gears and pulleys galore. Through a fantastic ballet of these machines arise the sounds of Trans-Euro Express. Suddenly a huge funnel drops from the ceiling to capture the sound waves swirling through the air. Once collected they drain into a locomotive-sized hydraulic press and are smooshed out onto black vinyl discs. All of this, of course, is metered by the tick of a 10-meter Tag Heuer clock keeping watch from the front of the beat factory. Phew!
Anyway, from the suppressed, mechanical order of 1977 West Germany emerged chaotic sampling, tweaking, spanking, and milking from any number of groups that still continues to this day. Keen listeners are bound to still find bits and pieces of these tracks all over the acoustic realm. It all started full steam with Afrika Bambaataa’s utterly bodacious track “Planet Rock” that rips the heart out of Kraftwerk’s title track “Trans-Europe Express”. It used a blatant and undeniable copy of the chorus melody, which was a big no-no back in 1982 and led to an out of court settlement between the groups’ representatives. However, I’m sure glad it occurred because without that eletro-pickpocketing “Planet Rock” wouldn’t exist and that’d be a damn shame.
Turn off annotations for the first video (click the little box in the right corner)
There are probably hundreds, if not thousands, of samples from this album in other songs. I’d love to hear from you on which songs you know that sample Kraftwerk’s gem. Or you can send me a copy of a song you’ve made using bits and pieces of Trans-Europe Express. Either way I’d love to hear from you on the comment section.
Download Kraftwerk – Trans-Europe Express here
As a side note, Kraftwerk supplies the music for the title screen on the old SNL skit Sprockets (for anyone who still remembers this bit). Ist Max Dancishkaner, ja.
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Listen to this album and picture Nelson Mandela sitting in his family room, maybe chillin with a box of Mike and Ikes (but more likely with an obscene bag of Sno Caps) with The Air Up There, starring the ever-youthful Kevin Bacon, rollin on the TV. He’s not rockin the DVD but a Blu Ray disc because Nelson is a stickler for quality and needs to see the minute detail of every sweat bead glistening from Kev’s furrowed brow. Understand that Nelson has his doubts about Kevin Bacon–he’s always questioning his motives. It’s an internal conflict that rocks him to the core at each of his daily 8 o’clock viewings. Was it a mistake to unleash the Shake and Bac on an unsuspecting people? Nelson will never come to terms with the ramifications of introducing such raw, untamed power to the continent.
Download Paul Simon – Graceland vinyl to MP3
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I want to believe that this album has some sort of hidden magical power that makes everyone come together, forget their differences, and live harmoniously in a 1000 year reign of peace and understanding. I’d like to think that if I hooked up a sound system consisting of speaker horn loaded conch shells to the roof of my house in Over-the-Rhine and blared What’s Going On throughout the neighborhood that everyone would put down their serial number-tampered handguns and my neighbor would stop selling heroine to creepy assholes from Northern Kentucky in ratty Saturns. Maybe pregnant ladies wouldn’t get shot, loonies would stop throwing rocks through car windows, and Glenn Beck would fall into a volcano. The sweet sounds of Marvin’s voice, carried by his anointed orchestral wings, could shower over us like Manna from heaven and our iniquities would be atoned, trespasses forgotten.
This is really what I think of when I hear this album. I just seems so idealistic from a time when things were very much like they are now: cities in decay, basic necessities like healthcare being denied, and people just not understanding one another. How did we come to this again? It’s only been a wink under 40 years since this album was released.
I’d like to think that we here in Cincinnati are in for what happened to New York City after the 70s. When this album was released in 1971 Times Square was overrun by strip clubs, peep shows, pimps, prosititutes, gangs, drugs, mountains of garbage and general discontent. However, the people of the city realized that Times Square was worth saving and turned their environment around. It wasn’t easy and it took time along with money but it was worth saving. I’d like to think that there are still people left in Cincinnati that feel the same way about Downtown and the surrounding areas. There is too much rich history here to just let it recede into the twilight.
But maybe this album can be our shortcut. Maybe a good PA system will work like a magic wand and dissolve the bad mojo coursing through this city. Maybe Marvin is our savior.
Nah, Marvin wasn’t no saint. In the midst of a coke binge he was shot to death during an argument by his pastor daddy. There aren’t going to be any miracles.
We’re gonna have to put this city back together ourselves by working together, one way or another.
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I don’t play guitar. I don’t know the technial aspects of what makes a guitarist great. However, what I can recognize is when a dude is, how you say, shredding. And man can Jeff Beck shred. If anyone checked out my Masayoshi Takanaka post you should definitely check out Wired. I’m pretty sure Beck is Takanaka’s American half brother.
An undated photograph of Jeff Back at one of his infamous afterparties.
Download Jeff Beck – Wired Here
Tracklist
1. Led Boots
2. Come Dancing
3. Goodbye Pork Pie Hats
4. Head For Backstage Pass
5. Blue Wind
6. Sophie
7. Play With Me
8. Love Is Green
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It’s nearly impossible to comprehend the perfect symbiosis between Back to the Future and “The Power of Love” . I mean can you seriously imagine watching M.J. Fox skitch on the back of that Wrangler through downtown Hill Valley without the bitchin’ soundtrack? I refuse to accept even the notion of a reality where anyone, let alone the deviously charming Michael J., could make it through a scene thrashing along to this song:
Okay, so maybe I can picture that if it was Alec Baldwin (if he took a modded DMC-12 back 5 years to the set of Miami Blues)on that skateboard. However, Dr. Emmitt Brown would never have accepted Alec Baldwin as a scrappy protege with a heart of gold so that scenario goes right out the window. No, “The Power of Love” was this flash of brilliance, something that won’t be rivaled for the next century at the absolute minimum.
But…there is one thing that is better than The Power of Love. That single thing, so monumental it’s said to be inscribed in the footnotes of the Rosetta Stone, is The Power of Love EXTENDED DANCE MIX. Yes, your eyes have not deceived you. It does exist and is hermetically sealed within the .zip file encased at the bottom of this entry. Just don’t look directly into it. Only the good Lord knows what will happen.
***As a side note it should be mentioned that The Power of Love has legitimate therapeutic value. When I was just over 2 years old I, like many children that age, had a mild speech impediment. I assure you it was entirely adorable and not annoying in the slightest sense. My L’s and R’s, perhaps from too many Freeze Pops, were transformed cruelly into W’s without any warning so that Power of Love became Powew of Wuv.
I can remember the exact moment whenI realized my mouth was betraying me. I was sitting in the back of my parent’s station wagon in Salt Lake while we were pulling into our apartment complex. The Power of Love was playing on the radio and I was singing along because it’s physically impossible not to. I was just having a gay old time when I think it was my cousin pointed out how I was gnarling the consonants beyond recognition. “It’s PoweRR of LLLove, not PoweWWWW of WWWuvvv.” Suddenly it was like a switch went off in my little skull and BAM! I was no longer baby but not yet big boy and unable to cope with the heartbreak associated with joining the little boy crew. I knew things were changing. I was ready for action. I was ready for LOVE.
THE POWER OF LOVE ORIGINAL, INSTRUMENTAL, AND EXTENDED DANCE MIX
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super boss ambient/instrumental/spacefloat/musical slip slide. great for sleepy times, thinky times, or nakey times. ride the snake.
Track List
A1 – Version 1 (6:08)
A2 – A.W. Sonic (11:06)
B1 – Sputnik (2:55)
B2 – Down The Elements (16:52)
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Ok, so I’ve never actually never seen Pretty In Pink. I only have the most basic grasp of what the movie is about. I know there is a guy named Ducky and he wears all sorts of awesome clothes and he’s really funny. I know that Molly Ringwald is in this and she’s really good at expressing sad faces and general disappointment. And there’s this other dude Andrew McCarthy that kind of looks like a serial rapist in the same vein as Ted Bundy. I’m not sure what Andrew McCarthy does but I think Molly Ringwald really digs him despite the fact that Ducky is obviously cooler, with his sick threads and pompadour hairdo.
And to tell you truth it’s not that I haven’t had the chance to watch the movie. Molly has the DVD and by judging her movie habits I’d estimate she’s seen it somewhere in the ballpark of 200 times. That’s a conservative estimate. No, I’ve been waiting to see it because I’ve been afraid that it will ruin the soundtrack for me.
Until I picked this album up yesterday from a guy selling records out of a horse barn in Covington I’d only heard the soundtrack at one other location: Christy’s Rathskeller in Clifton. For those who haven’t been there I’ll give a brief description. The rathskeller is positioned beneath Lenhardt’s German/Hungarian restaurant which inhabits a 19th century mansion built by a Cincinnati Beer Baron from the Moerlein family. As you’d expect from a Germanic demi-castle the basement is dark, dank and smothered in fine wood appointments. Strewn across the walls are pictures from the early 90s of the bar’s patrons donning large metal-rimmed glasses, new jean shorts, and ill-fitting BUM equipment sweatshirts. For some reason, along with their barfly exposé, Christy’s never got around to updating their jukebox since the first Gulf War.
The rathskeller’s jukebox has a copy of the Pretty In Pink Soundtrack. I am a hopeless jukebox hero. Can’t get enough of it. I’m also a sucker for 80s prom songs. So of course I would play something from this disc almost every time I slipped a $5 into the slot. After a few drinks of Wild Turkey and Ginger ale I’d fade away into my past where I had my first encounter with cool in the 80s…..
I was 5 years old in the first half of 1988. In my neighborhood there was a teenage girl who thought it would be a good idea to ask her crush to prom by putting together a jar full of candy with a note attached that stated “Will you go to the prom with me because omg your butt is, like, SO rotund” as an invitation. Of course she was too nervous to deliver said invitation personally so I was chosen for the task. I don’t really know why it seemed like a good idea to send a 5-year-old boy into a classroom before first bell with a memorized poem and a jar full of jellybeans to talk to a high school boy but it was the 80s and things were different back then. Everyone was living the satin dream. Anyway, I forgot the poem as soon as I stepped in the room and just handed this jar of jellybeans to a dude who looked twice as confused as I was. I don’t know if they went to the dance, it doesn’t really matter.
What does matter is that my impression of cool was formed from what I saw when I walked through the halls of that high school in Sandy City, Utah. Big hair, big shoulder pads, tight pants, baggy shirts, maybe some hip kid was rocking the first run of LA Gears. Neon fabric as far as the eye can see. Basically, everyone wanted to look like the cover of this album. Frump on top, party on the bottom.
I’m deathly afraid that when I watch Pretty In Pink my memory of what cool was will be washed away and replaced by Andrew McCarthy’s unsettling upper lip. It will just sit there on my lobes, twitching, eyeing me with imaginary mustache eyes. I just hope the soundtrack and I can still be friends after her best friend Andrew forces his sweaty paw down my pants after I pass out from too much sparkling wine while attending the Fancy Town Ball. My tears will be infinite.
Track List
1. Orchestral Maneouvres In The Dark – If You Leave
2. Suzanne Vega w/ Joe Jackson – Left Of Center
3. Jesse Johnson – Get To Know Ya
4. INXS – Do Wot You Do
5. The Psychedelic Furs – Pretty In Pink
6. New Order – Shellshock
7. Bolouis Some – Round, Round
8. Danny Hutton Hitters – Would It Be Good
9. Echo & The Bunnymen – Bring On The Dancing Horses
10. The Smiths – Please Please Please Let Me Get What I Want
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Download Pretty In Pink Soundtrack HERE
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Quite contrary to the title this is U2′s most forgotten early work, despite having some of the band’s best songs. The Unforgettable Fire marked the first time U2 worked with Brian Eno and Daniel Lanois as producers. With these two maestros on board the album took a more ethereal direction than their previous album War. The Edge’s Guitar and Bono’s vocals that seem to roll, float and dive with the wind across the winding Irish countryside. This sound was further explored in their follow up album The Joshua Tree, which will be forever associated with my memories of growing up surrounded by the vastness of the arid Utah mountains. Check this out along with their other early works and I guarantee that you will not be disappointed. Unless you’re deaf.
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Download U2 – The Unforgettable Fire here
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I’ve found myself trying to write the beginning of this entry several times. Each time taking a different approach to conveying these simple truths:
1. There was a time when it was believed music could change the course of history and in fact some positive changes were obtained.
Woody Gurthrie and his Machine
2. The change those musicians made have mostly dissolved with time.Limp Bizkit, bleh, at Woodstock ’99
Limp Bizkit, bleh, making an ass of themselves at Woodstock '99
3. Our generation wants to change the world, perhaps with music, but doesn’t respect legitimate politically active artists.
Cure AIDS? Pfft...yeah right, Dr. Shades
4. However, it’s ok to feign political activism maybe once or twice and still keep your cred.
5. We’re fucked.
Hey Barack HUSSEIN O-Bama, aka BARRY SOETORO, go back to Indochina. You ain't pushin socialist Chinese healthcare on me and my Baby! 'Merica!
So, while you wait for humanity to implode relax a spell and listen to these tunes from a more naive time; when the monster we know as the internet was just a twinkle in your grandmammy’s eye.
Don’t forget to check out Disc 1 Disc 2 and Disc 3
Side G: Of War, Love, and Hope
1. Ed McCurdy – John Brown’s Body
2. Frank Warner – Virginia’s Bloody Soil
3. Theodore Bikel – Two Brothers
4. Judy Collins – Masters of War
5. Theodore Bikel – Blow the Candles Out
6. Jean Redpath – Love Is Teasing
7. Clarence Ashley and Doc Watson – Sally Ann
8. Jean Ritchie – Little Devils
9. Limeliters – The Hammer Song
10. Woody Guthrie – This Land Is Your Land
Side H: Broadside, Topical Songs, Protest Songs
1. Pete Seeger, Almanac Singers, with audience
2. New Lost City Ramblers – No Depression In Heaven
3. Woody Guthrie – Talking Dusty Bowl
4. Big Bill Broonzy – Black, Brown and White
5. Oscar Brand – Talking Atomic Blues
6. Hamilton Camp – Girl From The North Country
7. Judy Collins – The Dove
8. Tom Paxton – High Sheriff of Hazard
9. Phil Ochs – The Thresher
10. Pete Seeger- We Shall Overcome
