Recently in Tunes Category

… then it’s not going to get any better than this.

(via David Weinberger and Ethan Zuckerman)

While the worlds of opera and rock may seem miles apart, it seems to me that they have this much in common: the words in both are kind of ancillary.

Or: if they're paying attention to the lyrics, you're doing it wrong.

The starting fullback for the Harvard Crimson wants to sing opera when his football career is over.

Why not? (so long as he doesn’t injure himself…)

Well, the long-awaited (well, at least by me) new Hooverphonic album has finally been released, with a new video (see below) and a somewhat new sound.

Yes, the band that started off as a trip-hop quartet, then mutated into an orchestral pop trio, then released an acoustic album, then went electronic again… has turned itself into a psychedelic rock band.

At this rate I figure the next album will be country…

Luciano Pavarotti has died. It was, in the end, cancer that did him in, ironically.

• The Guardian has reaction from Italy, where he was not just a celebrity, but the living embodiment of the national art form; the paper also has a short list of some of his greatest performances.
• Reuters has Pavarotti’s obituary in Italian.
• The news.google.it page about the great tenor shows what the man meant to the country.
• The New York Times has a slideshow, Bernie Holland provides a thoughtful and thorough obituary, and Anthony Tommasini shares his own memories. The Times also thoughtfully provides a selected discography (though one grumbles that perhaps they could have provided links to purchase—or at least hear samples—of said recordings).
• The blog Opera Chic links to some of his greatest hits on YouTube and is also rounding up international reaction to the great tenor’s passing.

I was lucky enough to hear him live once; it is a memory I’ll carry with me forever.

Stewart Copeland reviews the Police’s gig in Vancouver:

“Crack!” on the snare and I’m in, so Sting starts singing. Problem is, he heard my crack as two in the bar, but it was actually four – so we are half a bar out of sync with each other. Andy is in Idaho. …

We changed the keys of EVERY LITTLE THING and DON’T STAND SO CLOSE so needless to say Andy and Sting are now on-stage in front of twenty thousand fans playing avant-garde twelve-tone hodgepodges of both tunes. …

It usually takes about four or five shows in a tour before you get to the disaster gig. But we’re The Police so we are a little ahead of schedule.

It took me a whole lot longer than I was expecting, but as of 8:45 p.m. ET, I have finally finished playing every single song in my music library. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, I’ve been listening to every single song in my iTunes library in alphabetical order (more or less) since January 1. It looks like I originally thought that I might get done in mid-March. Heheh.

Let’s run the numbers:

• 7,598 tracks
• 24 days, 19 hours, 57 minutes, 14 seconds of total playing time
• Average track length was 4 minutes, 42 seconds
• 149 days of calendar time
• 51 tracks per day (on average)
• 3 hours, 59 minutes, and 59 seconds listening per day (on average)
• First song played: “?Y Tu Que Has Hecho?”, The Buena Vista Social Club
• Last song played: “Zyphormius”, Marumari

I’m never doing this again.

So I was in Munich last week on Good Friday, and we’re wandering along, and what should we run across but some Mongolian throat singers (particularly check out the throat singing that starts about 10 seconds from the end):

The admittedly crappy video was captured on my digital camera. My question is: does anyone know what instrument they’re playing? It has a very cello-like tonality, but it’s something that I’ve never seen before (and note the western-style f-holes in the sounding box).

EMI’s digital music catalog, free of DRM restrictions, will now be available on iTunes for $1.29 a pop. The Beatles catalog, however, is not part of this deal. But what a marketing campaign that will be, whenever it happens.

So what do you think, PF.org readers? Is it worth paying a little more for song downloads that don’t come with such restrictions?

As I’ve been going through my music library, I’ve recently become re-aquatinted with Schnittke’s Penitential Psalms. Based on anonymous 16th-century Russian texts, these works for unaccompanied chorus are astonishing, both medieval and modern at once. It’s very much like Ligeti, in many ways, but also profoundly depressing. Depressing? Well, look at some of the titles:

• Adam Sat Weeping At The Gates Of Paradise
• That Is Why I Live In Poverty
• My Soul, Why Are You In A State Of Sin?
• O Man, Doomed, And Wretched
• If You Wish To Overcame Unending Sorrow
• I Entered This Life Of Tears A Naked Infant

BTW, I’m up to “If Things Were Perfect” now.