h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Okay, paulh, nice choice of tunes. What mental pictures did you conjure up while listening to the songs? Just curious...

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In Loving Memory by Alterbridge, always brings a tear thinking of my late mum..

"What mental pictures did you conjure up while listening to the songs?"

"Shuffle off to Buffalo": A young couple standing on the back of a train while friends throw rice and a cynical older woman predicts divorce within a year.

"We're in the money": two people singing and dancing in a vault filled with cash.

"42nd Street": Ruby Keeler doing a little dance number while behind her, on a screen, flash pictures of great scenes from Busby Berkley numbers and Ziegfeld Follies routines.

"You're getting to be a habit with me" makes me think of Allen Sherman's "You're getting to be a rabbit with me," in which the singer's girlfriend motphs into a rabbit

Oh, my! How far down the rabbit hole have we gone...?

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I was just listening to the greatest hits of Sarah Vaughan. I liked her rendition of "Misty." Kittens climbing trees, people holding clouds in their hands....

Before that I was listening to Richard Strauss's incidental music for "Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme," which evoked the world of Moliere. I imagined a 17th-century dining room where the liveried servants are bringing platters of food. As they do so, they do a mock-heroic minuet.

Yesterday evening while at work, T--- and I were taking a truck out of the fenced area to go collect some materials for other maintenance craft and vendors to use for some electrical bank repairs. T--- turned on the radio and the Guns'n'Roses song, "Paradise City," began to play. I was immediately assailed with visual imagery from the opening sequence of the video game, Burnout Paradise. I've played the game for about four years now, and any time I hear this song my body wants to reach for a Sixaxis controller and start driving a virtual vehicle.

Pavlov was right...

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I'm listening to "Turn it on again" by Genesis. It's entertaining. Not much goes through my mind when I listen to it, though.

The next CD will be some piano and cello concertos by Camille Saint-Saens, and after that a greatest hits CD of Johnny Mathis.

Alan Parsons: I'm running through most of there albums on Shuffle. I've always enjoyed the instrumental titles for their tendency to evoke soundscapes in keeping with the album titles.

Or maybe that's just me conjuring stuff out of nothing...

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More renditions of "Misty." Not just Sarah Vaughan, but Johnny Mathis as well. But my favorite Mathis song is "Chances Are," which always makes me think of a darkened ballroom and a hush that falls over the hall as I arrive and spot my true love. Quite a magic spell. I always liked Mathis' voice and the elegant instrumental arrangements that supported his singing. I hear that he is mostly retired, but will still make occasional appearances.

Last night, I listened to music by Lawrence Welk, Mozart, and Madonna.

I played a CD of standards by Lawrence Welk, who was my mother's favorite entertainer. She never missed his weekly TV shows. Ever. Last year, when she was home-bound and not interested in much of anything, she still relished Lawrence Welk. I brought her a Lawrence Welk CD and a portable CD player. The one I played last night wasn't the same one, but I will always think of my mother when I hear Lawrence Welk.

The Mozart was a set of three piano trios. According to Haydn, the best thing about Mozart -- apart from his genius -- was that he had "taste." Well, Haydn probably didn't know about the potty-mouth songs Mozart wrote for some of his friends -- "Bona nox," for instance, has the line " Soak your head, and get your to bed,"
set to ravishing music as usual, of course. Mozart's contemporaries thought he was a silly man who consorted with low-life friends and ran up big gambling debts. They thought Haydn was just as silly, but at least Haydn had better morals [the torrid affair with Luigia Polzelli notwithstanding; at least Mozart was faithful to his wife].

Madonna ranks fourth on the list of all-time record sales [Elvis, the Beatles, and Michael Jackson are first, second, and third]. You would think every one of her songs would be graced with masterful melodies and polished lyrics to merit such popularity. Well, no, not exactly. They're good enough, but they aren't anything special. "Material girl" seems to be the best of her well-known ones. They're all right for dancing to, or as background music. Getting back to Mozart for a minute, providing background music was what he hated. His father told him firmly that he needed to earn a living, and if background music was what people would pay him for writing, then he could jolly well write it. I wonder if that was what happened to Madonna. Just curious.....

This morning, when I was loading laundry into the washer at the laundromat, I could hear music coming from a car parked out front. At first, I thought it was a CD or radio broadcast of songs by Johnny Mathis, but when the singer began "Unforgettable," I realized that he was Nat "King" Cole. His daughter Natalie went to the same college I went to. She was in some of the same singing groups as I. We were even in a musical together. I did not know her well, but she seemed nice and very serious about her work. My heart went out to her a year or two ago when she went into surgery for a kidney transplant, and while she was under her sister died. That must have been terrible! She has a new album out,. and I keep reminding myself that I must get some of her recordings for my collection!

Tonight, as I was driving back to Boston from a visit with my father, I was listening to a radio program of choral works. One piece was a gorgeous arrangement of "Clear Blue Morning" for soloist and chorus. The original song was written by Dolly Parton. I hope that the best of Dolly's songs will be kept alive in some form. She has a lot of skill as a songwriter. How many Oscars has she won? How many Grammies. A lot of people notice her exterior and hear her twangy voice, but there's some real talent there, I think.

Right now I'm listening to "Flowers on the Wall." It's just one of many gems on a "Columbia Country Classics" disc. "Ballad of Davy Crockett," "El Paso," "Big Bad John," "Battle of New Orleans," "Waterloo" [not the ABBA version], "Ballad of Jed Clampett" and many others.

I'm a country boy at heart.

Okay, now Johnny Cash is singing "A Boy named Sue." The good times keep rolling.

The Police - Greatest Hits (1998) on shuffle.

The gritty side of the city comes through in Roxanne, as she prepares to step out.
More grit and sand while taking Tea in the Sahara with the ladies who are deluded.
Then surrounded by salt water, as I throw a Message in a Bottle out into the surf.
Then something crawls from the water of a dark Scottish loch in Synchronicity II.
My strides are long and bounding as I'm Walking on the Moon in an EVA suit.
Every Breath You Take and Wrapped Around Your Finger are chill-inducing because of the power-plays between the characters, their struggle for dominance.
I feel the flush of embarrassment, as if I'd the one who told the young girl Don't Stand So Close to Me.

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Good choice.

I've just been listening to "The Very Best of the Manhattan Transfer." Confession: many years ago my sister gave me a CD of Manhattan Transfer's first album. It was great, but somewhere along the line I lost it. Not to worry, the one I just listened to has most of my favorites plus some new ones. I have versions of "Candy" by other performers, but I love the four-part harmony that Manhattan Transfer bring to that song. "A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square" may just be the finest four-part rendition ever, except for "Sound of San Francisco," which was the theme song of a San Francisco radio station. Sometimes great music makes me feel that life is worth living. "Java Jive" and "Route 66" are also great. "Trickle, Trickle" has a great engertic swing to it.

Kate Bush

I didn't find her myself; a friend who'd gone off to college came back and said, "There's this British gal that the campus radio station has been playing. You should check her out."

When I had a break from duty, I jetted from Eglin AFB to the local mall and browsed the selections to see if I could find her. Looky-thar! I picked up the album (The Kick Inside) and was drawn in by the cover photo, to the point I asked a clerk if I could look at the lyric sheet of an open copy. [It was one of the selling points for any album I invested in back then.] I was hooked by the character of the stories she told on the page and I knew I had to hear her sing those words.

After ensuring I had another anti-static sleeve available, cleaning the album with the DiskBrush, and using the ZeroStat gun on it, I let the direct-drive turntable set its needle into the groove. What was the first thing I heard? Whale sounds building in volume, then fading into the music and vocals. And what was that for a voice? Such a high register it took me by surprise. I was taken aback and didn't know if I liked it, but I gave the lyrics and her performance a chance. It took several listenings, but then I was ~hooked~ and I've not looked back since. Hers is the voice of all that sets apart singers from innovators.

[On the Air]
Aerial: This is one of my favorite albums of all she's done.

"How to Be Invisible" takes me down twisting corridors where a sporadic wind makes me unsure of what--if anything--I see. The short incantation she recites is almost a plausible token for slipping sideways into that parallel unseen realm.

"Pi" is, to me, a love song from the viewpoint of the wife who doesn't understand her man, yet cares deeply for him anyway. The numbers slip through the air, through his grasp, and keep attaching themselves to one another in a long train that spirals away into the distance.

"A Coral Room" is the stage that portrays time passing in a home set close to the shore of a fishing village. The singer witnesses the bittersweet changes wrought upon her mother's life, and finally must learn to part with her.

"An Architect’s Dream / The Painter’s Link” is painted with chalk on a cement canvas, while the character of the sunlight and the light rain changes it; not destroying it completely, but rearranging it into something completely unexpected. Check the lyrics. If you have an easy-going spirit, you’ll find affinity. It has been my personal mantra in certain trying situations.

“Nocturn” is a lovers’ tryst along a moonlit beach. They shed their clothes, their inhibitions, and the stars in the heavens are reflected upon the water and along their bodies. The mood is magical and languorous; their embrace lasts for what seems an eternity.

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Do you mostly play vinyl, CD, or online streaming audio?

paulh,
I have a confession: I am no longer a Purist. I gave up vinyl back in the 80s, opting for the more compact and portable style of CDs. I've even gone so far as to RIP music and download it to my HTC Fuze smartphone.

At work and on my laptop, I download CDs I've purchased onto the hard drive (or external HDD) and set up my Windows MediaPlayer with Playlists. I also have a Sony 3-cartridge / 18-disk player attached to our home entertainment system, and on occasion, swap out our selection of musical fare. Many continuous hours of listening there, and we can program or shuffle the order of tunes.

Do I lament the loss of my vinyl albums? Yes. Like a beautifully bound book, having an album with large cover art and readable liner notes was always a hightlight of my musical experience. Having a linear track turntable and all the tools to store and clean the LPs properly was a bit of a status symbol, showing appreciation for the work that went into bringing the songs to my hands, to my ears, to my heart. Sad to say, but music is no longer as large a part of my daily life as it used to be; but when I do indulge, I try to ensure the experience is good. (Surround on, or headphones on, or at least in a peaceful setting.)

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I'm not a purist either, but I've gotten pretty aggravated by the rampages of changing technology over the decades. I abandoned the LPs that I had spent decades collecting, and bought many of the same recordings when they were reissued on CD. It's been expensive, and there seems to be no end in sight as far as the industry's continuing planned obsolescence is concerned. Vinyl had some drawbacks, not the least of them the gradual erosion of sound the more a record was played. Early CDs sometimes suffered from laser rot, but mostly the sound was same on each playing -- unless a defective player damaged some of the tracks.

But if you have a format that delivers a pristine sound every time you play it, then why accept technology changes that seem headed for a time when the playback equipment will be discontinued so you can't play it at all?

I know that many people [including my brother] put all or most of their recordings into their hard drives, which is fine until files become corrupted. A computer technician who helps me occasionally told me that it's wise to keep hard copies of your recordings.

Oh, that's pretty much what I do. Buy the CD, RIP it to the hard drive, transfer to other devices (i.e., thumb drive / smartphone / iPone), then take it portable. The CDs stay shelved and ready, just in case there's a major data corruption, at which point I'd have the joy of transferring them all over again.

My wife and have an agreed upon escape plan if the house ever catches fire: make sure everyone knows to get out, grab the external HDD and the bibles, and RUN!

In such an instance, the CDs obviously fall by the wayside, but all the "important" music we've committed to storage will at least be salvaged. As well as all our personal files and historical stuff. Photos and the like.

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