An Other Show
If you want great music on your television, and only pay up-front for an adapter box, get a Roku Channel wifi adapter (if you lack an HDMI port, check the RadioShack adapter for HDMI and your older TV’s RCA — red, white, and yellow — input jacks).
Then install Spotify and Pandora on Roku, and get music with limited commercial interruptions; or install the MyTuner app, and get music without commercials. Search for stations such as Smooth 70s, or 70s, commercial-free. For your mobile device, all three music services can also be found in the App Store, or Google Play.
Spotify.com, and Pandora.com have interesting selections (ad-free after pay-gate). Create an account, then enter search terms. In Spotify, try “yacht rock,” or “This is Taylor Swift.” Spotify has a lyrics button that allows you to see the lyrics of most of the songs in their collection. Pandora has excellent genre selections like 80s classics.
Here’s the legend, Joni Mitchell... And here’s the rest of the show...
Say that you have a limited budget (or even if you don’t), and you want to buy the best of different bands, and singer-songwriters. This should help. This isn’t too subjective, check the All Music website for verification.
Jimmy Page, the lead guitarist of Led Zeppelin, said their most creative period was during 1969, the year they recorded Led Zeppelin II.
The Who’s best may very well be their compilation: The Very Best of the Who. Also high up the list is: Who’s Next, and Quadrophenia. Pete Townsend lamented that The Who did not have the success that Led Zeppelin did, “in their chosen field.” Nudge, nudge, wink, wink. Zeppelin was known for rock-star, party excess, and eardrum-damaging speaker volume, even more than The Who were. Of the two, The Who were the better band in the estimation of many musicians.
David Crosby of Crosby, Stills, Nash, and Young (Déjà Vu and So Far are their best), said the greatest singer-songwriters were Joni Mitchell, and the two Pauls (Simon and McCartney). Of the three, he liked Joni the most. Some say Blue from Joni, I say Court and Spark. (By the way, Joni Mitchell is also a well-regarded painter. She painted the cover to So Far.)
The best of Neil Young (see prior paragraph) is generally thought to be After the Gold Rush.
The most well-regarded of Billy Joel albums are The Stranger, then 52nd Street, and Glass Houses.
Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon, indisputably.
I am not so deep in Paul McCartney, but I would say Ram, or Band on the Run, then Abbey Road for the Beatles (or The White Album, as well as Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band).
Depending on taste (all hard rock), The Rolling Stones best would be Let it Bleed, Sticky Fingers, Exile on Main Street, followed by either Beggars Banquet, or Made in the Shade. Do The Stones serve as Beatles counterpoint?
The classic ones from the Grateful Dead are American Beauty, and Mars Hotel, then maybe Terrapin Station. By the way, Touch of Gray was their one, top-forty hit for their entire career.
Here is my key to unlocking why many really love classical music, to the exclusion of most other music. Hearing or “picking out” the phrasing of the grand master composers, is quite enjoyable. It is.
Classical music has an endless variety of melodic patterns — musical forms, often with the piano — against a sonic backdrop of woodwinds, brass, and string instruments. Given the ingredients of melody, harmony, syncopation, along with pitch, tempo, and volume, it is still surprising how much unique, interesting variations can be composed.
And there are some who say this is the only, real music, meaning Beethoven, Mozart, and Bach; the rest is ephemera, froth. I doubt that I’ll ever be in that camp (the musical canon is so diverse), but at times I find myself inching my way in that direction. Plus, I’m trying to avoid a coronary, and deafness.
Whichever way you decide — and you can only choose classical or pop/rock — here’s Youtubes I selected over several years. (You can choose both classical music and rock music, I kid a little about listening to only one type of music.)
Verses and Chorus
This is classic lyric-writing, I mean top-notch, nonpareil, double-meanings. Next time you listen to the Eagles, Hotel California listen for these lines: “Some dance to remember, some dance to forget.” Is “dance” a noun as in a cotillion, or is this “dance” as in the verb, like dancing the salsa?
Then another very unusual play on words in their ode to life out of control: “He said [the captain at the hotel’s restaurant], ‘We haven't had that spirit here since nineteen sixty nine.’ ” Is 1969 the spirit of the times, the zeitgeist, or is it the vintage of the liquor being served?
There is also: “Her mind is Tiffany-twisted, she got the Mercedes bends.” Is this “bends” as in asphyxiated by materialism, or “bends” as in car-maker Benz?
This is truly inspired songwriting via composers, Don Henley and Glenn Frey.
My alma mater, Stony Brook University, has a very unusual history as a concert venue. Before The Who, The Doors, and the Grateful Dead filled arenas, they filled the theater at the Stony Brook Union (a short walk from anywhere on campus). Yes, that’s right, every major act played The Brook: Jackson Browne, Linda Ronstadt, Jefferson Airplane, Yes, Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Chicago, Beach Boys, Allman Brothers, as well as Simon and Garfunkel. Every act played The Brook. They all did.
Both my mom and I attended Stony Brook. I kinda missed out on this venue’s halcyon days, I was a decade too late. My mom was an upwardly-mobile housewife, who also got an SBU degree (in the early 70s), but who was not attending college to go to Dead shows after class. Just saying...
While Long Island had Malibu, Chevys, Hammerheads, My Father’s Place, and the Stony Brook Union; America had The Troubadour. Originally a coffee house, many, many, music legends began their careers there. The Eagles, Joni Mitchell, Linda Ronstadt, Elton John, James Taylor, Carole King, and Bonnie Raitt, et al, all began their careers at The Troubadour, in West Hollywood, the town next door to Beverly Hills.
One may notice that classical music is often variations on a melodic theme, across the entire symphony. Yet listening to phrasing, there are more smaller scope, variations on a theme. There might be a short bar of notes, repeated, then varied, with harmony for emphasis: Say brass instruments, such as trumpets, and French horns; or woodwinds, like oboes, or clarinets; backing strings, such as violins, and cellos.
Is there a cover of The Who’s Bargain sung by a woman, or all-female group? That’d be an instant classic (or is that a tough sell?)
“I don't know if you're still into the Grateful Dead, but I have a good-sized collection that I digitized into MP3s. My entire vinyl/cassette/CD collection is on a server that I can access with my smart TV, iPhone/iPod, and stereos. This is my biggest accomplishment of recent vintage.4:53 PM You sent
“I have American Beauty, Europe ’72, and Mars Hotel. Then there's Skeletons in the Closet, Bear's Choice, Terrapin Station, Steal your Face, and concerts from Archive.org. You sent
“Rolling Stones, I have the Let it Bleed, that you gave me. Then I have Beggar's Banquet, Made in the Shade, Sticky Fingers, Hot Rocks, Then there's Classic Hits, Some Girls, and Bigger Bang. You sent
“You can probably tell I don't have much to do today. Recently, I've been listening to classical music: Mozart, Beethoven, Tchaikovsky, and a pianist named Khatia Buniatishvili.”
Joni Mitchell is so on the money in her songwriting, so incisive, and enjoyable, one wonders why there aren’t any more Joni Mitchells out there, why no one can further advance her jazz-rock styles, melodic phrasing, themes, and lyrical brilliance.
In several ways, Taylor Swift is significantly different from Ms. Mitchell. Of late, Taylor has been defining herself on stage, as a performer, instead of simply as a musician. Ms. Swift is the queen of country-pop, while Joni is know for jazz and/or folk rock. The only difficulty that one might find of Ms. Mitchell is that her lyrics can skew indecipherable, but with further listening, one might have a greater appreciation of what she’s really saying.
Taylor is more country charm, to Joni’s urbane sophistication. I’ve never seen either of them in concert, so maybe I’m not qualified to offer an opinion about either of them, yet I have listened to much of each of their musical catalogs.
(Is Taylor now in a country glitz-blitz phase, still courting the rest of her demographic, males?)
There’s a joke about that Eric Clapton song, I shot the sheriff, but I did not shot the deputy. It doesn’t matter that you didn’t shoot the deputy. You already took out the sheriff. You played your last hand. Your life is over.
All hail rock and roll! Or is it: Long live rock and roll! Either way, get out the seltzer (or drink what you got) and have a listen...
Taylor Swift dodged a bullet, almost literally. Her Austria shows were canceled when a plot was discovered to cause great harm to her and her fans. It’s very disgraceful, that in today’s world, some are so sick, twisted, and violent, that they want to commit terrorism against a popular musician (the most popular today, really) at her concert.
I know Taylor has been stalked to her home, there was a mass-murderer near her concert two weeks ago, and now, terrorists are out to do grave damage to her. Despite Ms. Swift’s hundreds of millions of dollars, and doing what she loves, this songstress does not have an easy life. 8/08/24.
There should be a RIAA, Recording Instustry Association of America, fund to benefit all the musicians that suffered greatly with the introduction of streaming — first, Napster, and then much more legal services such as Spotify, and Pandora. I would pay my obligation, say a dollar per song, that I shared on Napster. I’ll chip in my five-dollars, how about you?
David Crosby of super-group, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young (CSNY), was asked who were his favorite singer-songwriters. He said that the two Pauls, and Joni, were. That’s Paul Simon, Paul McCartney, and former busker, Joni Mitchell. Of those three, his favorite is Joni Mitchell.
“Play some Dead... Which Dead? Friend of the Devil...”
Led Zeppelin is perhaps the band played most often on radio in America. Admittedly, Led Zeppelin has a deep catalog, but so does The Who, The Grateful Dead, Pink Floyd, and so on and on. Has payola, pay to play, been eliminated in US radio?
Great Britain never had a payola scandal. Is this because there, music like cream, rises to the top, without adulteration, without payouts from record execs? And Britain does have a bigger music scene than America. Every major act from the Beatles to the aforementioned Zeppelin and The Who, to Traffic and The Kinks, Yes and ELP, U2, the Pretenders, Elton John, and Cream, were founded in the UK, in the British Isles.
To quote Mick Jagger of the Rolling Stones: “What can a poor boy do, ’cept to sing in a rock n roll band?” Not to cast dispersions on the English economy, but America tends to be wealthier, and more into wealth, leaving poor boys like Jagger with little to do, except sing (and write) for the Rolling Stones.
Jerry Garcia, the main creative force behind The Grateful Dead, had this to say about his band’s success: “Not everyone likes licorice, but the people who like licorice, really like licorice.”
While mostly potheads,† the Grateful Dead had the worst reputation in Seventies music, worse than even the Rolling Stones, and Led Zeppelin. Mr. Garcia received a death threat, likely in response to his band’s reputation for bacchanalian decadence.
I don’t know, everyone seemed fairly polite to me. I went three times to see the Dead, but I knew two guys from the third grade, who saw them over eighty times apiece.
†Searching for the Sound, My Life with the Grateful Dead, by Phil Lesh, the bassist of the Grateful Dead. He eventually settled in Twelve Step for alcoholism. Near stage, was “the Phil Zone,” near his monitors, where you could really pick out the bass.
(I don’t get any kickback for appreciating this band, or any other band, but did you ever wonder if payola is gone for good, no more Alan Freeds?)