If Music Be The Food Of Love, Play On: The Music Thread: What Are You Listening To?

Chew Toy McCoy said:
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Billy Idol is who kept me awake on my wee hours commutes upstate when I still worked in the city. I'm not especially partial to Rebel Yell but I love me some tracks off the 1988 Vital Idol! albums - White Wedding (Shotgun Mix), Mony Mony (Downtown mix) and Hot in the City (Exterminator mix).

And no it never occurred to me to wonder about the guy's politics. I can compartmentalize like crazy when it comes to music I happen to like. Certainly the politics (never mind assorted other attributes) of some composers of the waaaaay pre-rock'n'roll era were not all that palatable either. So the purists among liberal lefties can come and pry my Billy Idol CDs outta my cold dead rack system some day.

Trump campaign shoulda grabbed some crowd scenes off that video you posted... clips from that would have looked even better than the Cavs' victory parade that some of his fans tried to pass off to Breitbart as the crowd that had turned up to his Jacksonville rally back in the day.

EDIT: got tangled up in my grammar, was missing a "not" back there....
 
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lizkat said:
Billy Idol is who kept me awake on my wee hours commutes upstate when I still worked in the city. I'm not especially partial to Rebel Yell but I love me some tracks off the 1988 Vital Idol! albums - White Wedding (Shotgun Mix), Mony Mony (Downtown mix) and Hot in the City (Exterminator mix).

And no it never occurred to me to wonder about the guy's politics. I can compartmentalize like crazy when it comes to music I happen to like. Certainly the politics (never mind assorted other attributes) of some composers of the waaaaay pre-rock'n'roll era were not all that palatable either. So the purists among liberal lefties can come and pry my Billy Idol CDs outta my cold dead rack system some day.

Trump campaign shoulda grabbed some crowd scenes off that video you posted... clips from that would have looked even better than the Cavs' victory parade that some of his fans tried to pass off to Breitbart as the crowd that had turned up to his Jacksonville rally back in the day.
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Yep.

And here, I must confess that this particular dilemma (it brings to mind the old Yeats line - how can we separate the dancer from the dance?) is not unknown to me.
 
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Scepticalscribe said:
Yep.

And here, I must confess that this particular dilemma (it brings to mind the old Yeats line - how can we separate the dancer from the dance?) is not unknown to me.
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I fixed a missing "not" in my post that you quoted... must time for more java...

Yah I have been having my moments learning to separate the James Levine who was fired by the Metropolitan Opera back in 2018 from the one who conducts music I love in some of my music library.
 
The "not" has since been added in your quoted post.

I don't think that I had noticed its absence, as I understood (and sympathised with) what you were saying, and similar dilemmas have occurred in my life, earlier.

Could one ever admit (as an ardent anti-Nazi) to a (guilty pleasure) taken from listening to Wagner's "The Ride Of The Valkyries?"

Once, no, not at all.

However, as you age, I think you become more comfortable with, and accepting of, - and perhaps, also may become somewhat indifferent to - internal contradictions - thus, now, I'll reach for Walt Whitman - "Do I contradict myself? Very well, then, I contradict myself. (I am large; I contain multitudes)".

Only the young can lay claim to such certainty - and consistency - in every area of their lives.

Anyway, George Orwell had also helped me navigate that intricate, almost moral, maze, and reconcile the irreconcilable, when he argued that it was perfectly possible to admire the art of Salvador Dali (which I did, as a teenager), while simultaneously accepting that he was a rotten human being (which was something that had bothered me, as a teenager), giving rise to the age-old conundrum: "Can a bad man (or woman) make good (or great) art?"

Yes, as it happens, they can.
 
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lizkat said:
I fixed a missing "not" in my post that you quoted... must time for more java...

Yah I have been having my moments learning to separate the James Levine who was fired by the Metropolitan Opera back in 2018 from the one who conducts music I love in some of my music library.
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Mapping and navigating that moral maze brought about by such compromises (for the artist) was brilliantly covered in István Szabó's stunning movie "Mefisto", which I recall watching spell-bound, in my student days, and then discussing (earnestly and excitedly) with friends subsequently.
 
Scepticalscribe said:
Mapping and navigating that moral maze brought about by such compromises (for the artist) was brilliantly covered in István Szabó's stunning movie "Mefisto", which I recall watching spell-bound, in my student days, and then discussing (earnestly and excitedly) with friends subsequently.
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It can be, and sometimes should be, very difficult to sort through. For myself a lot of time has to pass before I can reconcile myself to some of the "me too" situations involving unwanted sexual contact by celebrities who had managed to skate for a long time because of their power differentials. Since the revelations, entertainment of various sorts - music, movies, interviews etc. have gone into hibernation in my libraries.

No one is perfect. That doesn't quite cut it for me when it comes to repeated offenses by self-serving abusers of power.
 
lizkat said:
It can be, and sometimes should be, very difficult to sort through. For myself a lot of time has to pass before I can reconcile myself to some of the "me too" situations involving unwanted sexual contact by celebrities who had managed to skate for a long time because of their power differentials. Since the revelations, entertainment of various sorts - music, movies, interviews etc. have gone into hibernation in my libraries.

No one is perfect. That doesn't quite cut it for me when it comes to repeated offenses by self-serving abusers of power.
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Agree completely.
 
Catching up on some reading this afternoon. Bach's French Suites as an accompaniment. I have recordings of these by several artists, today it's Murray Perahia. I sometimes think I slight these very fine works, thinking I only half-listen to them when "mulitasking" -- but have discovered I might be paying more attention than I think, since often will put a book or piece of sewing down and think something like "wow I didn't think he / she would take that one at that tempo" etc. Anyway a nice ambience for reading on a cozy-inside snowy-outside afternoon.


album art JSBach French Suites - Perahia.jpg
 
A selection of Brahms intermezzi, performed by French composer and pianist Christophe Sirodeau. Fourteen tracks in all, these are taken from collections in Op.76 and 116-119.

album art Sirodeau Brahms Intermezzi.jpg
 
Still on a roll today with German romantics, now a couple of Schubert piano sonatas from a recording of late works by Brahms and Schubert, performed by Mexican pianist and composer Jorge Federico Osorio. He lives and teaches in Chicago and has been lauded for performances of works by these two composers, having been mentored by the late pianist Wilhelm Kempff.


album art Osorio late works of Schubert and Brahms.jpg
 
More Fauré for me this afternoon: some impromptus performed by Katya Apekisheva. I have mostly known of her work as the duo partner of British pianist Charles Owen, but these are on a solo album that includes also some impromptus of Chopin and Scriabin. Whole album goes well with sun glittering on a snowy landscape outside my windows today.

album art Katya Apekisheva Impromptus Chopin Fauré Scriabin.jpg
 
Earlier this afternoon, Haydn's Andante Con Variazione in F minor, Hob.17,6



Performance by the late Alfred Brendel. This is audio of a live performance. Album is a compilation of recitals in Salzburg in 1981, 1984 and 1985.

Sublime. No one else gets to where Haydn was going with this little collection of variations. Close your eyes. Brendel is said to have been too austere sometimes, but he surely connected to Haydn's understanding of how music makes a cathedral out of sound, space and time.
 


A nice contrast to Bartók: some Ghetto rap about hope.

...Hallowed be Thy name in the beginning there was no sin
We in the ninth inning, and I'm God body trying to win
Flying against the wind
But now my shell is weightless and fireproof
But the truth is I'm proof of living fire
I'm not made of organics, not even wires
Just felt my body light up and heard the choir
See, to the common fowl the phoenix is sire
Most high of all things to ever have wings
Existence is struggle, resistance is futile
Meanwhile we now possess the power of ten suns
To transcend and elevate into one
Famine, the disease and senseless dying is done
Pigeon bird got a breath left
Heart beat no more
Phoenix bird morph and we live off the G-force...
 

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