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From the Stacks: Sam Phillips

January 24, 2009 in from the stacks, music by George | 1 comment

I haven’t done one of the From the Stacks posts in a while; haven’t been that inspired by much. Happily, I pulled the amazing Martinis & Bikinis record from an old hard drive into my excellent AppleTV streaming set up (basically, the AppleTV acting as a server).

It’s such an extraordinary record, and Ms. Phillips is truly a great artist: wonderful voice, inventive (but not overly “clever”) arrangements, evocative lyrics.

She has a wealth of fine records in her catalog, but Martinis & Bikinis is the one I always recommend to people who are wondering where to start.

If forced, I suppose, I’d pick the elegiac “Strawberry Road” as the song to listen to first. Here ya go:

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From the Stacks: Good Earth by the Feelies

October 11, 2007 in from the stacks by George | No comments

feelies image

It finally feels a bit like fall down here in New Orleans. There are few better soundtracks to the fall than this unbelievable record by the Feelies (Automatic for the People is certainly another contender – the nexus, of course being that Pete Buck from REM produced “The Good Earth”).

I can’t overstate how important this record is and was to me. In college there was probably not a week that went by where we didn’t bang out impromptu versions of their songs. Greg Jacobs, the drummer for the band I was in in college actually recently admitted to me that he was pretty much channeling the Feelies when we played; check out his most excellent current band, Verona Downs.

This is not simply a walk down a leaf-strewn memory lane, however. As with prior “From the Stacks” selections, The Good Earth holds up extraordinarily well. I urge you to check it out.

Here’s a sample:

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the Feelies “Let’s Go”

Also, and I’m sad to say i just found out about this, but Feelies founder, Glenn Mercer, has a fairly recent solo album out called Wheels In Motion.

I shall be checking this out post-haste.

From the Stacks: Anatomy of a Murder

October 6, 2007 in design, from the stacks by George | 2 comments

anatomy of a murder poster

Everything, everything about Duke Ellington’s Soundtrack to the Otto Preminger film Anatomy of a Murder is perfect.

The movie was one of the first to feature an all-jazz soundtrack, and what a soundtrack it is. While Billy Strayhorn composed the music, it’s Ellington’s touch that provides the noir-ish nuance.

It’s a record I come back to at least once a month. A true masterpiece.

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“Flirtbird” from Anatomy of a Murder

The movie is darn good, too. As is the poster art (which hangs in my office), designed by the incomparable Saul Bass, who also did the poster/credits for films like North by Northwest, West Side Story, Vertigo (also in my office), and many others.

Amazing when it all comes together. Sort of explains why certain things stand the test of time.

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from the stacks: Glenn Gould

January 12, 2007 in from the stacks, music by George | 1 comment

glenn gould photo

I’m going to occasionally write about older records that I routinely go back to for one reason or another. Uniformly, these records all have great replay value — if often for different reasons.

To inaguarate this category, I’ll start with a recording that I’ve been going back to for many years now: Glenn Gould’s performance of The Goldberg Variations.

A couple of years ago the always impecable Sony Legacy released the definitive version of this recording entitled A State of Wonder: The Complete Goldberg Variations 1955 & 1981. This re-issue contains both the initial (some would say, definitive) 1955 version of the piece as well as Gould’s (very different) take on the same piece in 1981, just prior to his death.

While it’s very hard to sum up the genius that is Glenn Gould, I suppose he, like most geniuses, was able to access something that most of us just can’t. Of course, when you have one genius interperting the work of another genius, as we do on these recording, you get some sort of exponential genius thing going on. I suppose this is why these recordings seem to pretty much cover the spectrum of…well…everything. And I suppose that’s why I keep going back to them.

While I believe that this work is best heard as a piece, in the interest of compelling some to seek out said piece, here is a sample:

Glenn Gould performing Variation XXVIii A 2 Clavier.

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