Music « Tikkunista!

6. No One Beats the Reaper

Apr-20-2012 | Comments (2)

Bird’s Eye: Levon Helm died yesterday, Earl Scruggs a few weeks ago, and Peter Bergman last month. Our world is diminished without them, but these recordings help us remember and share why they mattered.

* Peter Bergman, The Firesign Theatre- “Beat The Reaper”

* Levon Helm, Ramble At The Ryman “Ophelia”

On September 17, 2008, the legendary Levon Helm took his beloved Midnight Ramble on the road to one of America’s treasured venues, Nashville’s historic Ryman Auditorium. Accompanied by such luminaries as Buddy Miller, John Hiatt, Sheryl Crow, George Receli, Sam Bush and Billy Bob Thornton, the Levon Helm Band created an unforgettable night of stage magic.

*Flatt and Scruggs & Foggy Mountain Boys “Foggy Mountain Breakdown”

8. Installations

Apr-07-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Installations are three-dimensional works that are designed to transform the perception of a space. I’ve been a long-time fan of Sandy Skogland’s work, and the “Room for London” installation is magnificently used by David Byrne. The last two might be classified as sculpture, but they’re worth seeing.

* Incredibly Elaborate Scenes Sandy Skogland My Modern Metropolis (Thanks Gord)

* What is A Room for London?

High up on the roof of Queen Elizabeth Hall, a riverboat appears to have come to rest… A Room for London is a one-bedroom installation, available to rent by the public for night-long stays throughout 2012. During the year it will also transmit a programme of writing, performance and music

* A Room for London: Hearts of Darkness David Byrne

“I brought along some field recording gear to use while I was staying in the lovely pod/room/boat. I went out during the day and recorded sounds that I thought might be useful and evocative. It turned out that most of the sounds—even the church organ in Southwark Cathedral—seemed to converge around a common rhythm. It’s a bit too good to be true—that every large city should have its own rhythm, but here it is. I let the sounds dictate the groove, the tempo, and then I simply played along.”

* 4th Dimensional Jogger

* Paper Waves daniele papuli

6. Media Roundup

Mar-30-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Analysis of movie trailers, satire of movies, examples of bad writing, a factlet on emerging tech, and a hilarious film on piracy and its costs: there probably is a more catchy title for all that than “media roundup”, and if you think of it pass it on and we’ll use it next time. The movie trailers, all 13 of them, are a fascinating and insightful example of the sort of writing that wouldn’t have been possible a decade ago.

* The Movie Trailer Revolution Michael Barthel Salon

It can be hard to notice how much has changed since 1997 just by watching a contemporary blockbuster like “Transformers” or “Twilight.” But the shifts have been massive, and significant. The emergence of digital technology has given audiences more entertainment options than ever, while simultaneously opening up new ways for fans to find each other and discuss pieces of pop culture. As the Web provides ever-more information at an ever-quicker pace, new tools for making movies have allowed filmmakers to cut up and recombine images and sound at the furious pace our entertainment consumption now seems to require. And all of these changes are visible in a single piece of film marketing: the movie trailer.

* Modern Hunger Games Tom the Dancing Bug Toon BoingBoing

* The 2011 Lyttle Lytton Contest

The red hot sun rose in the cold blue sky.(Judy Dean)

To me this was the top of the heap… Intentionally writing a sentence that seems unintentionally bad is hard; writing one that suggests an author going for hyperbole and accidentally winding up with woeful understatement is masterful. Thus, we have our winner.

Runners-up: ‘Pfft’ — he knew the silent but deadly whisper of a silenced SIG SG 550 rifle with a 650mm barrel and a 254mm rifling twisting rate. (Chloe W.)

* What’s the Fastest-Adopted Gadget of the Last 50 Years? The Atlantic

When we think about the great consumer electronics technologies of our time, the cellular phone probably springs to mind. If we go farther back, perhaps we’d pick the color television or the digital camera. But none of those products were adopted as fast by the American people as the boom box. (<=select text to see the gadget–after you’ve thought about it!)

* Copyright Math TED talk via Boing Boing

Rob Reid examines the math behind the claims made by the copyright lobby and explains the mindbending awesomeness of the sums used to justify SOPA, PIPA, ACTA and the like.

7. Kahn and Cohen

Mar-16-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Two superb Jewish musicians have new albums out, and you’re urged to take a listen. Daniel Kahn (and the Painted Bird) is the only musician I know of who has rabbis writing about his lyrics, but “Inner Emigration”, (a term originally used for Germans who opposed Hitler, but stayed in Germany), has the most interesting lyrics of any song I’ve heard this millennium. The Guardian interviews Leonard Cohen about his new album, “Old Ideas”, while in “Old Friends, Old Ideas”, I contrast Cohen’s new work to Paul Simon’s “Afterlife” and recent Bob Dylan.

* March of The Jobless Corps Daniel Kahn and The Painted Bird YouTube

From Daniel Kahn & The Painted Bird’s album “Lost Causes”. Original Yiddish song by Mordechai Gebirtig, written ca. 1930 in Krakow.

* (Read Lyrics to) Daniel Kahn On “Inner Emigration” Rabbi Brant Rosen Shalom Rav

I’ve sung the praises of Daniel Kahn and the Painted Bird before; my favorite “Punk Cabaret, Radical Yiddish, Gothic, American Folk, Klezmer Danse Macabre” band. Been listening a lot to their latest album, “Lost Causes” – particularly a brilliant ditty called “Inner Emigration.” This song is simultaneously a meditation on identity politics, a treatise on the absurd reality of national borders, but ultimately, I think, a blistering diatribe against the way we all assent to our own inner/outer oppression. It’s also catchy as hell.

* (Hear song halfway down page) Daniel Kahn and the Relevance of Yiddish Protest Songs – The Arty Semite – The Jewish Daily Forward

The sentiments of these Yiddish songs and the intimations of their contemporary relevance come to a crescendo in the album’s centerpiece, “Inner Emigration.” It is Kahn’s own song that tells a tale of withdrawal from surrounding society, tuning out its problems and suppressing their effect on one’s spirit. One verse is about a German Jewish woman who chose to stay in late 1930s Germany because of her cabaret career; another verse is about a Ukrainian Jew who let go of his aspirations in the face of danger: “What’s the bother finding a new nation? A border isn’t art, it’s just a frame / Just make a secret inner emigration. / The holy land and exile are the same.” Yet another verse is about an Israeli woman married to a Palestinian refugee: “She and he comprise a kind of nation, the kind we build inside when we’re alone. / But if they just make Inner Emigrations, / then they’ll only have a home when they’re at home.”

* Leonard Cohen: ‘All I’ve got to put in a song is my own experience’ The Guardian

Leonard Cohen: ‘All I’ve got to put in a song is my own experience’ Sombre prophet, mordant wisecracker, repentant cad: On Leonard Cohen’s gruelling 1972 world tour, captured in Tony Palmer’s documentary Bird on a Wire, an interviewer asked the singer to define success. Cohen, who at 37 knew a bit about failure and the kind of acclaim that doesn’t pay the bills, frowned at the question and replied: “Success is survival.” By that reckoning, Cohen has been far more of a success than he could have predicted….

These days, Cohen rations his one-on-one interviews with the utmost austerity, hence this press conference to promote his 12th album, Old Ideas, a characteristically intimate reflection on love, death, suffering and forgiveness. After the playback he answers questions. He was always funnier than he was given credit for; now he has honed his deadpan to such perfection that every questioner becomes the straight man in a double act. Claudia from Portugal wants him to explain the humour behind his image as a lady’s man. “Well, for me to be a lady’s man at this point requires a great deal of humour,” he replies.

* Old Ideas, and Old Friends Peter Marmorek

And what of Cohen? He starts with “Going Home” a song from the point of view of God, who is musing about Leonard Cohen. (You can hear it here). God says, “I love to speak with Leonard/ He’s a sportsman and a shepherd/ He’s a lazy bastard/ Living in a suit.” I sympathize with God; I’ve often felt that way about Leonard Cohen. I’ve enjoyed, and sometimes loved, much of his work since discovering his first poetry in the mid sixties. But I’ve been painfully aware of the extent to which almost all his work follows the same structural pattern: an assertion of the magnificence of love or passion of a transcendent nature, followed by an elegant apology for the impossibility of maintaining that stance. It has felt like watching a great actor whose career has been built upon variations of a single character. As opposed to say, Randy Newman, (a sixty-eight year old Jewish singer and songwriter) whose characters are anyone but himself, one always feels that Cohen is singing about being Leonard Cohen, or of wearing the mask of Leonard Cohen.

Perhaps that is what makes “Going Home” so powerful. The chorus, sung by an ethereal choir (Sharon Robinson and the Webb Sisters) anticipates a time when he can lay that style aside and go home (“Going home/ Without my burden/ Going home / Behind the curtain/ Going home/ Without the costume/ That I wore”). After God saying how much He loves to speak with Cohen, the second song, “Amen” offers us Cohen begging God to speak to him, to tell him he is wanted. It’s a powerful and dramatic confrontation of two songs. (Listen to “Amen” here.) In the song, Cohen itemizes the horrors of the world, begging to hear God’s voice “when I’m clean and I’m sober” to reassure him he is loved.

Jan. 27th, 2012 :: Year 9, Issue 4

Jan-27-2012 | Comments (0)

1. Followups

Bird’s Eye: A fine quartet of pieces that arrived too late for last week. We start with a superb War Tard column on just why the US wants to attack Iran, and it’s not about nuclear bombs, but oil. The first piece in a long while that’s made sense of the oncoming war. As always, War Tard does a fine job of looking at strategies. A quick and powerful graph shows the congressional support for PIPA/SOPA the day before and the day after the Internet blackout. Meet the Preppers! A subculture with the slogan, “Armegeddon ready: are you?” And music! The Vienna Vegetable Orchestra, and the Thai Elephant Orchestra produce sounds the like of which you’ve never heard. Click on.

* Why The Us Wants To Attack Iran War Tard

Iran is sitting on the fourth largest oil deposit on the planet and has huge reserves of natural gas and that’s a sweet energy prize by any account. It’s kind of like Inca gold and the Spanish Main in the 16th century… everybody wants a piece of the action. …

The interesting player here in all this is China. Though a long way from being a military superpower, its economic power is rising fast, so fast that the US and Europe fear the loss of traditional Western dominance of the global economy. The gaping weakness of the Chinese rise is energy supply. And without a credible naval fleet to protect the flow of spice, the weakness of China gets exposed… Chinese dependence on sea borne oil delivery and their susceptibility to a blockade sometime in our proxy resource war future. What the West really fears here in the global energy game of Risk, is Iran having unfettered control of its own huge energy reserves, selling those reserves outside the dollar to geopolitical rivals (China) and facilitating the rise of a pan Pacific hegemon that could contest Western dominance at some point later this century.

That’s why Iran is in the cross hairs. Their whole nuke program is symbolic of their determination not to play nice in the petro dollar chess game and the question remains, will they get Tomahawked this year because of it?

* How The Internet Blackout Affected Congressional Support For Pipa/Sopa Boing Boing

* Subculture of Americans prepares for civilization’s collapse Reuters

When Patty Tegeler looks out the window of her home overlooking the Appalachian Mountains in southwestern Virginia, she sees trouble on the horizon. “In an instant, anything can happen,” she told Reuters. “And I firmly believe that you have to be prepared.” Tegeler is among a growing subculture of Americans who refer to themselves informally as “preppers.” Some are driven by a fear of imminent societal collapse, others are worried about terrorism, and many have a vague concern that an escalating series of natural disasters is leading to some type of environmental cataclysm.

…Tegeler, 57, has turned her home in rural Virginia into a “survival center,” complete with a large generator, portable heaters, water tanks, and a two-year supply of freeze-dried food that her sister recently gave her as a birthday present. She says that in case of emergency, she could survive indefinitely in her home. And she thinks that emergency could come soon. “I think this economy is about to fall apart,” she said.

* New Music Futility Closet

The 10-member Vienna Vegetable Orchestra plays instruments created entirely from fresh vegetables, including the carrot recorder, the pumpkin tympanum, the zucchini trumpet, and the bean maraca. These must be fashioned anew before each concert, because the old instruments are made into soup.

The Thai Elephant Orchestra, created by American expatriate Richard Lair and Columbia neurologist David Sulzer, improvise on drums, gongs, harmonicas, and sawmill blades. To date they’ve released three CDs.

9. Current Music (Old Musicians)

Jan-20-2012 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: The New Yorker has both a recording and the lyrics to “Going Home” a song from the next Leonard Cohen album (out this coming week). Paul Simon has a lovely video of “You Can Call Me Al”, with Chevy Chase. Youtube commentators suggest the video is a heavily veiled comment on Garfunkle’s role; we aren’t convinced. And Randy Bachman reproduces that famous chord that opens “A Hard Day’s Night”.

* Leonard Cohen’s “Going Home” The New Yorker

There’s a link on the site to the lyrics

* Paul Simon – You Can Call Me Al YouTube

w/ Chevy Chase as Paul Simon, (or maybe Art Garfunkle?)

* The Beatles -Randy Bachman deconstructs The REAL First Chord of “A Hard Day’s Night” YouTube

Dec.23rd, 2011 :: Year 8, Issue 39

Dec-23-2011 | Comments (0)

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No Tikkunista published next week, but we’ll be back in 2012!

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1. Joy to the World, (or at Least to You)

Bird’s Eye: As a gift to all readers, we’ll start with fun this week: a marvellous neo-Victorian card from the erstwhile Python, a gloriously performed neo-acapella song (accompanied by margarine containers), a wonderfully powerful story about looking for art in post-Taliban Afghanistan, and a music maker for you, because creativity has to be participatory. Enjoy!

* The Christmas Card Terry Gilliam YouTube

* Call Your Girlfriend Erato YouTube

* A Time of Hope Andrew Solomon15 minute audio

A writer travels to Afghanistan in search of art.

* Play: Hours Of Music Making

Click, then click again. etc.

8. Music Resources

Dec-02-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Record companies are complaining that music is generating as much money for them as it once did. Musicians, who traditionally found very little of that money coming to them, are unsympathetic. Elvis Costello advises listeners to not but his new box set (priced at a hilarious $220) but to buy Louis Armstrong instead and download his own box set “by more unconventional means”. We have two amazing online music resources, and a Japanese video that is pretty stunning.

* steal this record Elvis Costello Yellow Press

6th December 2011 sees the issue of “The Return Of The Spectacular Spinning Songbook” by Elvis Costello and the Imposters…. Unfortunately, we at www.elviscostello.com find ourselves unable to recommend this lovely item to you as the price appears to be either a misprint or a satire.

All our attempts to have this number revised have been fruitless but rather than detain you with tedious arguments about morality, panache and book-keeping – when there are really bigger fish to filet these days – we are taking the following unusual step. If you should really want to buy something special for your loved one at this time of seasonal giving, we can whole-heartedly recommend, “Ambassador Of Jazz” – a cute little imitation suitcase, covered in travel stickers and embossed with the name “Satchmo” but more importantly containing TEN re-mastered albums by one of the most beautiful and loving revolutionaries who ever lived – Louis Armstrong.

The box should be available for under one hundred and fifty American dollars and includes a number of other tricks and treats. Frankly, the music is vastly superior.

* AccuRadio online radio free Internet radio

AccuRadio is comprised of hundreds of channels of music, spanning over 60 genres, that are programmed by people who love music (not by soulless computer algorithms). But our hundreds of channels are not like broadcast radio — you can personalize them! How? 1) Skip songs you don’t like. 2) Delete artists from the upcoming playlists. 3) Mix various genres together in a single channel.

* Toronto Rave Mixtape Archive

In the past many top rated DJs have passed through the GTA and the surrounding areas bringing with them their unique styles and sounds. Always considered a top location for North American tours ravers were treated to not only the best of international stars but Toronto also boasted a wealth of local talent.

The point of this site is to bring together the great sets of the past and help to keep the vibes that make our city the place to be alive. From Trance to Rotterdam we have been working hard to bring you a bit of everything that the Toronto rave scene was about.

* Genki Sudo and World Order: “Machine Civilization” – Boing Boing

Genki Sudo and World Order, “MACHINE CIVILIZATION.” An amazing piece of choreography, link sent to us by David Byrne, via Brian Eno.

Nov. 25th, 2011 :: Year 8, Issue 35

Nov-25-2011 | Comments (1)

1. Followups: Seymour Hersh on Iran, Mind the GOP, New Leonard Cohen

Bird’s Eye: Seymour Hersh, the New Yorker’s foreign policy star, examines in detail the I.A.E.A. report on Iran, and how people distort it. David Frum, who coined the phrase “Axis of Evil” for George Bush, is repulsed by today’s Republicans. And you can hear a song from the new Leonard Cohen album, “Old Ideas”, due out in three months.

* Comment: Iran and the I.A.E.A. Seymour HershThe New Yorker

Greg Thielmann, a former State Department and Senate Intelligence Committee analyst who was one of the authors of the A.C.A. assessment, told me, “There is troubling evidence suggesting that studies are still going on, but there is nothing that indicates that Iran is really building a bomb.” He added, “Those who want to drum up support for a bombing attack on Iran sort of aggressively misrepresented the report.”….

The new report, therefore, leaves us where we’ve been since 2002, when George Bush declared Iran to be a member of the Axis of Evil—with lots of belligerent talk but no definitive evidence of a nuclear-weapons program.

* When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?David Frum NY Mag

It’s a very strange experience to have your friends think you’ve gone crazy. I’ve been a Republican all my adult life… But as I contemplate my party and my movement in 2011, I see things I simply cannot support.

America desperately needs a responsible and compassionate alternative to the Obama administration’s path of bigger government at higher cost. And yet: This past summer, the GOP nearly forced America to the verge of default just to score a point in a budget debate. In the throes of the worst economic crisis since the Depression, Republican politicians demand massive budget cuts and shrug off the concerns of the unemployed. In the face of evidence of dwindling upward mobility and long-stagnating middle-class wages, my party’s economic ideas sometimes seem to have shrunk to just one: more tax cuts for the very highest earners. When I entered Republican politics, during an earlier period of malaise, in the late seventies and early eighties, the movement got most of the big questions—crime, inflation, the Cold War—right. This time, the party is getting the big questions disastrously wrong.

* Leonard Cohen’s new song Show Me The Place Vancouver Sun

Master poet and songwriter Leonard Cohen has revealed the first single from his new album Old Ideas, to be released in early 2012.

The song, entitled Show Me The Place, is a mournful yarn few others could deliver the way Cohen does. You can listen to the shiver-inducing track below.

8. Great Music Videos

Nov-18-2011 | Comments (1)

Bird’s Eye: Thanks to friends, I keep discovering more great music. Three new videos seem particular worth watching, and we offer a historical set of 30 for those who want serious mixture of ear and eyecandy,

* Tom Waits – “Satisfied” YouTube

From his new album ‘Bad As Me,’which was number one two weeks in a row on Billboard, as mind-melting as science-fiction gets. The song is (in part) an answer to the Rolling Stones’ “Satisfaction” and features Keith Richards (and Marc Ribot) on guitar, Les Claypool (from Primus) bass, Charlie Musselwhite: harmonica. Directed, stylishly, by Jesse Dylan (yup. Bobby’s boy.)

* Elbow- “Grounds For Divorce” Youtube (Thanks, Gord!)

“Best Contemporary song” Novello Awards, performed with BBC Symphony Orchestra

* Pentatonix – “Video Killed The Radio Star” Youtube (Thanks, Wilder!)

Apparently there is another universe out there, in which musical groups compete as though music were a sport with the winner going onto the next round! Commentators and judges pontificate about how groups need to prepare for the next round… a quite hilarious science fiction premise. For those who want to skip that, the song starts at 1:34. Superb acapella performance, in any case.

* The 30 Most Stylish Music Videos of All Time GQ

They do say “stylish”, not “best”. Scan and pick is my advice….

4. Looking at the 1%

Nov-04-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Why does it matter if a few people are rich? Isn’t this 1% thing just bitching by people who weren’t good enough to make it to the top? Uh, no. We start with a wonderful TED talk that looks at the demonstrable effects on countries of increasing income inequality. This is a must see video. Der Spiegel speculates on whether the US is an oligarchy, and the New York Times exposes just how low Citigroup was willing to go in search of profits. And we lighten it up with the opening cut from the new Ry Cooder album, a fine political sing along.

* How Economic Inequality Harms Societies Richard Wilkinson TED Talks

We feel instinctively that societies with huge income gaps are somehow going wrong. Richard Wilkinson charts the hard data on economic inequality, and shows what gets worse when rich and poor are too far apart: real effects on health, lifespan, even such basic values as trust.

Editor’s note: A wonderful 15 minute talk. Too long for you? Look then at this one chart which is the nutgraf

* The Second Gilded Age: Has America Become an Oligarchy?Thomas Schulz Der Spiegel

“We are the 99 percent,” is the continuing chant of the protestors, who are now in their seventh week of marching through the streets of Manhattan. And, surprisingly, they have hit upon the crux of America’s problems with precisely this sentence. …Inequality in America is greater than it has been in almost a century. Those fortunate enough to belong to the 1 percent, made up of the super-rich, stand on one side of the divide; the remaining 99 percent on the other. Even for a country that has always accepted opposite extremes as part of its identity, the chasm has simply grown too vast.

Those who succeed in the US are congratulated rather than berated. Resenting other people’s wealth is viewed as supporting class struggle, which is something very frowned upon.

Still, statistics indicate that the growing disparity is genuinely overwhelming. In fact, the 400 wealthiest Americans now own more than the “lower” 150 million Americans put together. Nearly two-thirds of net private assets are concentrated in the hands of 5 percent of Americans.

Writer Mark Twain coined the phrase “the Gilded Age” to describe that period of rapid growth, a time when the dazzling exterior of American life actually concealed mass unemployment, poverty and a society ripped in two. Economists and political scientists believe the US has entered a new Gilded Age, a period of systematic inequality dominated by a new class of super-rich. The only difference is that, this time around, the super-rich are hedge fund managers and financial magnates instead of oil and rail barons.

* Did You Hear the One About the Bankers? Thomas Friedman New York Times

Citigroup had to pay a $285 million fine to settle a case in which, with one hand, Citibank sold a package of toxic mortgage-backed securities to unsuspecting customers — securities that it knew were likely to go bust — and, with the other hand, shorted the same securities — that is, bet millions of dollars that they would go bust.

It doesn’t get any more immoral than this. As the Securities and Exchange Commission civil complaint noted, in 2007, Citigroup exercised “significant influence” over choosing $500 million of the $1 billion worth of assets in the deal, and the global bank deliberately chose collateralized debt obligations, or C.D.O.’s, built from mortgage loans almost sure to fail. According to The Wall Street Journal, the S.E.C. complaint quoted one unnamed C.D.O. trader outside Citigroup as describing the portfolio as resembling something your dog leaves on your neighbor’s lawn. “The deal became largely worthless within months of its creation,” The Journal added. “As a result, about 15 hedge funds, investment managers and other firms that invested in the deal lost hundreds of millions of dollars, while Citigroup made $160 million in fees and trading profits.”

* No Banker Left Behind Ry Cooder

An ode to those who were spared from the financial crisis, and the opening song from a powerfully political album from one of America’s greatest musicians. You’ll be singing along by the second chorus….while watching a clever video collage scroll by

9. Surreal

Oct-28-2011 | Comments (0)

Bird’s Eye: Tikkunista’s computer has a built-in dictionary which helpfully defines “surreal” as “having the qualities of surrealism”. It has no definition for surrealism. In a strange meta-way, that makes sense, doesn’t it? And speaking of flaming giraffes, here is a strange and wonderful movie, some photographs, and a conspiracy theory that passes belief, without even slowing down.

* Page 23 The Presurfer

At first sight it might look like an IKEA commercial. Instead, Page 23 is a beautiful 4 minutes short movie that describes a surreal yet real world many of us might live in. The language spoken is Dutch but it’s with English subtitles.

* Photography : marc alain

* Early Morning, Pyongyang The Guardian, Eyewitness

* The Beatles Never Existed

There were multiples of each character performing as “John”, “Paul”, “George” and “Ringo”. Each part of the world appears to have had its own Beatles group, And even then, there were sometimes multiple characters within….There is an ever-increasing amount of evidence and information that this “superstar” rock group was produced by recurring techniques known as Human Simulacra as well as Clones, Organic Robotoids and Synthetic Humans. Take the journey at our forum and decide for yourself. You be the judge.

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