My Soundtrack — And Yours?

Nick Drake, 1969. Image via Wikipedia

I rarely go through a day without listening to music.

As I write this, I’m listening to one of my favorite radio shows, Soundcheck with John Schaefer, now in its 30th (!) year on-air from WNYC, 93. 9, in New York. John always has something fun to offer — today’s show included a version of Queen’s “We Will Rock You”, sung in (of course!) Klingon.

Follow that link and you’ll find some of his shows, whether featuring Gaetano Veloso or Courtney Love.

My taste in music is pretty eclectic, from Baroque faves like Couperin to Japanese shakuhachi, a haunting bamboo flute you might have heard in tunes by Tangerine Dream, Dave Brubeck, Peter Gabriel and Sade.

My classical favorites include Erik Satie, Aaron Copland, Bach, Handel, Tchaikovsky, Smetana, Rodrigo; I never tire of Concierto de Aranjuez or the Brandenburg Concertos.

I don’t listen to rap, hip-hop, country or Top 40 stuff.

Here are some of my favorites, some of which you’ll know and maybe some of which will be a discovery:

Bruce Cockburn is a Canadian whose music I’ve loved since the 1970s. Try to find some of his earliest albums: great guitar, haunting lyrics.

Leonard Cohen, Joni Mitchell and Jane Siberry are all Canadians whose music I enjoy.

Acoustic guitar music is a favorite: Leo Kottke, John Renbourn, Richard Thompson, Kaki King, David Bromberg.

Singer/songwriters: Canadian female singer Feist, the late super-talented Englishman Nick Drake, American Duncan Sheik, Katell Keinig, Joan Osborne, Ricky Lee Jones, and Irishman Luka Bloom, among many others.

Nina Simone!

Instrumental music, like this amazing CD I keep playing over and over, La Valse Des Monstres. I have some odd affection for accordion music.

Genesis — 1970s British prog-rock. Check out The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway, a double album, and set aside a few hours to disappear into it.

A local New York band, whose vocalist and washboard player is a friend of mine, The Hot Sardines — who play music from the 1920s and 30s. Great fun!

The Waterboys. I was bouncing on my seat at The Beacon in NYC when I heard this terrific Irish band.

What songs, bands, musicians or composers do you love best?

Do you have a great radio station we can listen to on-line?

I’m desperate for some new-to-me tunes!

The Technophobe's Confession: New Christmas Radio On, The Ipod Untouched

Image via Wikipedia

Several years ago — yes, I am a terrible ingrate! — my sweetie gave me an Ipod. I haven’t touched it since. He’s forgiving and knows I’ll get there eventually.

This Christmas, he gave me a new shortwave/AM/FM radio, and it hasn’t been turned off since I opened it. It’s coming to the deserts of New Mexico with us on vacation this month and I’ve been reading the SW guide — Radio Havana, here we come! One is free the minute you use it; not the other. One is a link to a wider world, literally and linguistically, while the other safely shuts me deeper into Myworld, where the only things I’ll listen to are those which I like and choose for myself.

Yes, some of this is generational. I get that.

But some of the reasons I so resist some forms of technology isn’t the cute, curvy forms it comes in, waggling its little finger at me, but the values its 24/7 usage endorses:

isolation versus face to face connection

tuning out voices and ideas that you don’t agree with instead of hearing someone who totally pisses you off but might make you think differently

attaching oneself to a piece of plastic instead of sitting in the sunshine and soaking up some solitary silence

listening to choices chosen, edited or curated by others — who might thereby challenge my idols, entertain me, teach me something new or just free me from the gilded cage of My Ego

staying “in touch” all the time, using these sexy little tools like a five-year-old drags his tattered, stinky blankie everywhere, to reassure ourselves how deeply important and well-loved we all are

Clearly, I like and enjoy some forms of technology since I work every day at a computer (a Mac) and love the many programs we use on it. I do like the Itouch, but not enough to want to own one. As much as I need one professionally, I try to lose my cellphone whenever possible as I really hate being “in touch” all the time. I’ve never liked TV very much because it’s so time-sucking, although it’s valuable because it forces me to sit still for lengthy periods of time thanks to TCM.

I simply can’t think straight if all I do is interact. Can you?

In a world where everyone is now attached to a Blackberry, phone or PDA all the time — so that the rest of us unplugged knuckle-draggers are left actually looking at and speaking directly to one another, most often as we dodge the narcissistic hordes who walk, even drive, with their heads down interacting with someone much more important — it’s easy to feel out of step.

Is there any form of tech you have chosen to avoid or skip? Why?

Appointment Radio, On Today — Studio 360

Cover of Creative Mind

Have you heard of — or heard — Studio 360? It’s broadcast on 145 local stations, (listed on their website), and is hosted by Kurt Andersen, a former magazine editor and author, whose voracious notion of culture informs the material. I live near New York City so I’ll listen to it today on WNYC, 93.9, where my dial is always tuned anyway, at 11:00 a.m.

I know, I know, the whole idea of “appointment” media is so old-school. Podcasts are it. Not for me. I love the idea of hunkering down for an uninterrupted hour, at a set time, to focus completely on an intelligently-chosen and interestingly-presented set of ideas and arguments. Today, at 1:00 pm., for example, you can hear the show at WGCU in Fort Myers, FL and at 3:00 p.m. on WKCC in Kankakee, IL and KAJX in Aspen or KPUB in Flagstaff.

For years, it was broadcast here at 10:00 a.m. Saturdays and my weekend began with it. I grew up in a family of people who earned their living from their creativity: my father made documentary films and television series; my mother was a broadcaster and journalist and my stepmother wrote and edited television scripts. So I grew up knowing — unlike the common fantasy that you wake up divinely inspired all the time — that being creative is sometimes sloggingly hard work, and earning a decent living from it, is even more challenging in a larger culture that worships at the shrine of Wall Street.

The show’s motto is “Inside the Creative Mind”, and every week — from cartoonists to film-makers to musicians to playwrights — it delves into every aspect of culture. Not, thank God, pop culture, although that also gets the occasional nod. Studio 360 instead heads into deeper, sometimes darker territory, thanks to Andersen and his producers, who come from Kansas, Chicago and Copenhagen, among other places.

It’s ironic how little attention we pay — in a “knowledge economy” — to where ideas come from, how they develop and what we do with them. I love this show for reminding us of the centrality of creativity.