List Item: Listen to half of the 1001 Classical Works You Must Hear Before You Die
Progress: 9/501Title:Ballatas and Songs Composer: Francesco Landini Nationality: Italian
Year: 1300s
I have to say that apart from the consistent adverts for Squarespace and alcohol I have grown rather fond of Spotify because of my following the Acclaimed Albums and 1001 Classical Recordings lists.
It’s surprising how many of the recommended recordings for the classical list can be found on Spotify – great for me as I can listen to it at work and have my Last.fm profile update automatically. At the moment, it really doesn’t take a lot to satisfy that organised/list loving part of myself.
So as I cross off another classical piece from the list I am left with one question: where were the individual tracks?
When you listen to something like Holst’s Planets Suite or an album by Philip Glass there are definite different tracks. With this music by Francesco Landini… well a lot of things felt similar.
So whilst I find it hard to actually nail down different tracks let’s look at some of the things that make it different to the three entries that came before it.
This is the first Italian composer that we have come across, and we are going to need to wait until 1567 until we get the next one (i.e. 12 entries and over 200 years later). He is one of those pioneering composers who managed to work almost exclusively in secular music. True most of these were love songs, but to this day most songs are still about love in some way or another.
Musically, everything here is pure voice-work. It isn’t chanting though, it’s something more mellifluous than just that. Compared to the Guillaume de Machaut Ballades this feels far more soothing and I think it’s because of the different voices in the performance.
This piece of music comes from the Trecento period (literally three hundred in Italian) which was greatly influenced by polyphonic church music. This is why the album sounds like it should be religious. Since I don’t understand a word of Italian outside of the basics and food I am very grateful to the 1001 book to explain the secular nature of this work.
Going chronologically this the next classical work will jump us into the 1400s. The book makes this big leaps for a while and starts to stabilise around the middle of the 17th century and then we start swimming in a sea of Bach. Good stuff a-coming.
List Item: Watch half of the 1001 TV Series You Must Watch Before You Die Progress:180/501 Title:Roseanne Episodes Aired: 222 Episodes Watched: 20 Year(s): 1988-1997 Country: USA
I don’t know how I managed to do this, but before this blog I had never seen an episode of Roseanne. I guess that it must have been on in the UK during its first run (probably on Channel 4 or something) since it was such a massive show.
There aren’t many shows that can claim the title of being the #1 best rated show of the season in the US – and yet Roseanne was able to grab this title. True it shared this lofty mantle with The Cosby Show (which I am not looking to watching because of the sheer rape factor).
I have to say that I was surprised at just how much I loved Roseanne. It’s not like Cheers where, due to the insanely positive write-ups it gets, my liking it was a sure thing. I had expected this to have aged (maybe poorly) and just feel obvious. But no, it went straight for the heart.
In order to hit up the 20 necessary episodes I jumped between the first 7-8 seasons (just not the 9th season as that sounded awful) and it’s so amazing to see how the characters develop across the series (you hear that Modern Family – you can develop of your characters).
Obviously there is the Becky problem where they suddenly start swapping around actresses late in the series, but that is dealt with using such a wink that it’s hard to be too annoyed. Also it is just nice to see a young Sarah Chalke before she appeared in Scrubs and failed CBS sitcom Mad Love.
Now I’m going to say something that might be unpopular, but I didn’t think Roseanne Barr was that good in the first season episodes that I saw. Timing wise she was good and the chemistry she had with John Goodman was amazing, but her acting just wasn’t great. She got really good later on though, but it was pretty jarring to begin with.
If I had to highlight the best performances in this show it would be a tie between John Goodman as husband Dan and Laurie Metcalf as Roseanne’s sister Jackie.
I think it is criminal that John Goodman managed to snag 7 Emmy nominations for Lead Actor in a Comedy yet won none of them. You look at who beat him and apart from Empty Nest and Evening Shade he was beaten by some big people. Still – he was robbed.
Laurie Metcalf managed to win three Emmys. In a row. That’s fantastic. I haven’t seen all the shows to say that she deserved it the most, but I’m okay with this decision made by the Emmys.
This was a truly pleasant surprise and I can see where shows like The Middle got some of their inspiration from. It’s hard to make a successful show out of a failing family and yet Roseanne was able to do just that.
Anyway, enough from me. If you want to hear more (including a debate over the identity over the real Becky Connor) please listen to the Just Watch It podcast!
1964 may be the last year for a while that I attempt in one sitting. At 15 songs it’s stretching it a bit, but let’s do this!
List Item: Listen to the 1001 Songs You Must Hear Before You Die
Leader of the Pack – The Shangri-Las
We start out with a tragedy song. These were so in vogue at the time. I guess it was something to do with the rise of the teenager and the need to rebel. You could see them as either warnings or aspirations depending on your age.
‘Leader of the Pack’ is arguably the most famous of these teenage tragedy songs and even reached number 1. The screeching of the tyres at the end just highlight this tragedy element. This is a girl group song in the same way that ‘Sally, Go Round The Roses’ was.
For some reason this song reminds me of Ruby Wax. I don’t know why.
Les copains d’abord – Georges Brassens
Meanwhile in France we are still in the world of chanson. This one is very peppy and yet it is about someone dying on a fishing trip with friends.
What is it with the French chanson music and using a peppy melody to hide a darker message! Granted this is no ‘La Gorille’, as that was moderately upsetting, but this is still someone drowning. It’s like how you have lovely happy music in the French film Partie de la Campagne and it’s actually quite upsetting.
Then again he could be singing about having dysentary and it would still sound lovely. Language *jazz hands*
Samba Malato – Nicomedes Santa Cruz
Another different song here. A samba by Peruvian singer Nicomedes Santa Cruz.
It’s an interesting pick for the 1001 list. This is on here in order to highlight a different kind of music – this being an Afro-Peruvian movement.
The song itself appears to be a song about back home, in this instance areas such as Angola and the wider Congo area. So basically this another instance of happy music hiding a darker message.
Walk On By – Dionne Warwick
This marks the first appearance of Burt Bacharach on the list. By this time he had already written songs like ‘Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa’ and ‘Anyone Who Had A Heart’, but those are probably more well known because of their Dusty Springfield covers.
Dionne Warwick was the perfect voice for the combination of Bacharach and lyricist Hal David. Most of her early songs came from this pairing (and this is back when two albums a year was the norm). Amazing how as a three they were able to churn out a song of this quality.
Don’t Gimme No Lip Child – Dave Berry
Interesting pick as this was actually a B-side (people younger than me will have no idea what this is) to his song ‘The Crying Game’.
It makes the list because of how it influenced punk bands, like the Sex Pistols who used it in rehearsals, who would not be releasing music for about a decade. Talk about reach.
E se domani – Mina
Mina is one of those big singers from the European continent that didn’t make waves in the UK. ‘E se domani’ is one of her biggest selling singles and, despite being a failed attempt to enter Eurovision. Italy won that year anyway so no harm no foul.
It’s a sweet song, but very much a slow Eurovision song. Enjoyable, but not memorable.
The Girl from Ipanema – Stan Getz & Joao Gilberto
One of the most famous songs of all time as well as being one of the most recorded of all time.
Astrud Gilberto, singing the English lyrics, managed to get the gig because she was the only one of them who knew English. It also helped that she was the wife of Joao Gilberto. Still, her rough and relaxed vocals worked perfectly for this archetypal bossa nova track.
Perfectly relaxing for a summer’s day like today… even if this is going up in February.
A Change Is Gonna Come – Sam Cooke
One of those big songs of the American Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. It’s an incredibly stirring track that is ultimately made all the more tragic after his death a year later having been shot by a motel manager.
You listen to this and you can hear exactly where singers like Marvin Gaye got their inspiration from. Especially when you listen something pretty seminal like What’s Going On.
Just… moving.
Dancing in the Street – Martha & The Vandellas
Now for a complete change in tact and yet Marvin Gaye is still a useful reference as he was one of the writers on this song.
Where ‘A Change Is Gonna Come’ was specifically written to be part of the movement ‘Dancing In The Street’ found itself associated despite being a regular party song.
It’s one of those songs that just makes you want to get up and dance. Not protest though. I can’t dance when I’m angry.
I Just Don’t Know What to Do with Myself – Dusty Springfield
Most people will know this song because of the White Stripes cover.
It’s another Bacharach/David song, but this had to go through a few hands before reaching Dionne Warwick. Interestingly this was originally sung by a man and yet this song is remarkably feminine when it comes to the lyrics.
You also have songs like this and the next one being the start of blue-eyed soul aka white people singing rhythym and blues and soul (seen then as black music). When you think about it… it’s a bit of a racist idea for a genre.
You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling – The Righteous Brothers
Now this is possibly the song that caused the term ‘blue eyed soul’ to be coined.
Listen to that production. We are back in the world of Phil Spector and doesn’t that just feel like being wrapped up in a blanket made up of meticulous music. Also, there’s Cher in the background.
You Really Got Me – The Kinks
If ‘Don’t Gimme No Lip Child’ was an influence on punk music then this has got to be the first chapter of the punk rock cookbook.
It’s one of the few pure rock songs that has been encountered so far and has really gotten me to thinking about how many famous songs we are starting to get in this list.
For the first time it feels like rock, as we know it, has arrived and dropped the ‘and roll’ part of its title.
The House of the Rising Sun – The Animals
‘The House of the Rising Sun’ is actually a traditional folk song (I didn’t know that either) that had been sung by many people, including Bob Dylan, for years and years.
It takes a lot to make a song like this feel as if it belongs to you as the cover singer, but this re-arrangement by The Animals found a way to do this.
Every now and then there is a ‘keystone’ song in this list. Something that is so different from what preceeded it and managed to influence music afterwards. ‘You Really Got Me’ was pretty close to this when I think about it.
Because of my Acclaimed Albums list I have been spending a lot of time listening to psychadlelic rock and with this I think I finally found THE song that managed to bring them into prominance. It’s haunting, it’s fantastic and shows you how to arrange a folk song.
Go ‘Way from My window – John Jacob Niles
Well… this probably shouldn’t be one of the closing songs in what has been a bumper year. Then again, singing this at 72 years old and being a massive influence on the American folk revival movement does get you a place here.
Similar to how I can hear some notes of Joni Mitchell’s ‘My Old Man’ in the delivery here.
72 years old and still able to hit the high notes. Wow.
Amsterdam – Jacques Brel
I adore this song. When I saw that I would finally be listening to this as part of the 1001 songs list… well that’s why all 15 have been done in one post rather than being split and I’d get to this whenever.
I love a big song and a big bit of production and this song just will not stop building. It’s a mini epic at 3 minutes plus applause that brings tears to my eyes and goosebumps to my body every single time that I hear it.
It’s the perfect song to finish a year off to. Just magnificent.
List Item: Watch all of the “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die” Progress: 580/1007 Title: Five Easy Pieces Director: Bob Rafelson Year: 1970 Country: USA
I am usually not one of Jack Nicholson’s big defenders. Usually I find that he plays shades of one angry dickish character and that can bum me out. I mean, he is one of the most nominated actors in Academy Award history after all and I can’t see his performance in Terms of Endearmentbeing too different that from As Good As It Gets or Chinatown apart from his age.
Having said all that – I think Bobby Dupea in Five Easy Pieces might actually be the best role I have seen Jack Nicholson play. Yes, even better than in One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, which I know will be sacrilegious to some people.
Now Five Easy Pieces would come more under the umbrella of character study than a regularly plotted film. It very much belongs to that American New Wave movement that includes the likes of Easy Riderand Harold and Maude in both look and in feeling.
At the centre is former piano prodigy Bobby Dupea and his return home to visit his family after his father has suffered a few strokes. In the preceding years he has been living as an oil worker with no mention being made of his past or his music playing family.
In fact, it is a traffic jam that spurs the entire thing off. In this memorable scene he clambers onto the back of a truck and starts to play the tinny piano he finds there. It’s like this part of him his reawakened as, after a long absence, he seeks out his sister and, in turn, the rest of his family.
Bobby is a deeply unhappy and insecure man. He is also, however, charming. This is the first time that I have actually found a Jack Nicholson character charming. It was a real shock moment for me. I think it is best demonstrated in a scene where he is thrown out of a diner for wanting to order off menu (as in he wants toast, and they won’t give him toast). Look it up if you can as I actually laughed out loud to it.
It is worth point out Karen Black’s performance as Bobby’s Tammy Wynette loving girlfriend Raynette. She manages to be endearingly ditzy without wandering too far into annoying. I mean it’s easy to see why Bobby would get annoyed with her, but she means well enough.
This might not have been the film to watch on a day off after working 11 straight days, but I still enjoyed it. Now to play No Man’s Sky for hours and hours and hours.
List Item: Listen tohalf of the 1001 Classical Works You Must Hear Before You Die
Progress: 8/501Title:Ballades Composer: Guillaume de Machaut Nationality: French
Year: 1300s
I think it was a good thing to break up the church music with a little bit of Mozart death music. I mean between the Antiphons and the chanting it was getting a little bit repetitive. Good, yes, but repetitive.
As part of my job (at time of writing this – I hope that by the time this goes up I will be doing something else) I have had to spend a weekend vetting resources for a training day. Kinda annoying as it means I am losing a weekend before having to work in Wales for a week.
Why am I mentioning my work woes? Well Ballades was my background music for a large section of this vetting. Like with Mozart’s Requiem I felt that the work was possibly grander and more important than it actually was.
Being two centuries younger I could not help but feel that this music was a lot more complex than those that had proceeded it whilst still feeling religious.
I’m starting to yearn, once again for more modern classic pieces. Maybe something more Philip Glass? Probably not.
List item: Listen to the 250 greatest albums Progress: 120/250Title: The Doors Artist: The Doors Year: 1967 Position: #27
I’ve made an internal decision that I should start to go through the remaining list and look for recurring artists. As you can imagine, there are a fair few of them and as I approach the halfway mark on this list. I have already completely crossed off all the albums from some major hitters like The Beatles, Bjork and PJ Harvey yet have not touched the entries from Joy Division, Metallica or The Stooges.
So I ended up going for debut album by The Doors as a way to whittle down this list of artists with multiple entries. I guess it was something about the way Jim Morrison is smouldering on the album cover that made me pick this over the ridiculously named swordfishtrombones.
The moment you start the The Doors you know you are in the sixties. It’s that organ. The sound is lighter and thinner than the Hammond organ you find on Booker T’s ‘Green Onions’, but just a few notes of that organ make this unmistakably sixties.
On Wikipedia this album is listed as being psychedelic rock. Now whilst there are areas where I would agree in this (such as the getting high references that litter this album, but more explicitly in opening track ‘Break On Through’ ) this album feels far more eclectic than just a blanket label.
It doesn’t quite fit in the same slot as other psychedelic albums that I have heard. It’s rougher around the edges thanForever Changes, not at all twee like ThePipers At The Gates of Dawnand is not borderline insane like Trout Mask Replica. This is a rock album that just happened to absorb some psychedelic trends because of their drug use. Take their cover of ‘Back Door Man’ or the dark tones of ‘End of The Night’ – this isn’t your typical psychedelic album.
Whilst I would not go out of my way to listen to The Doors this is definitely one of those albums that makes me think of summer. As in, sitting outside and having this on in the background. I know that this means I am probably missing some gigantic point, and I don’t to reduce this album as it’s definitely a really good album, but this is not something I normally listen to.
List Item: Read half of the 1001 Comics You Must Read Before You Die
Progress: 26/501Title:Promethea Creators: Alan Moore, J. H. Williams III and Mick Gray Year: 1999-2005 Country: USA
I never realised how interesting the teachings of Kabbalah were. Not a sentence I expected to write when I started going through these comics. Then again Buddha taught me a lot about Buddhism – so I guess that I shouldn’t be surprised to encounter religion… even if it not something you would expect when starting the comic.
Promethea looks like a superhero comic. In many ways it is a superhero comic. There are heroes, villains and, of course, a central figure in Promethea herself. Yet, for two of the five collated books they decide to teach the Kabbalah Tree of Life. Very interesting and it allows for a huge variation in art styles in order to explain the different levels of consciousness. However, you would have thought that this would play into how Promethea brings about the apocalypse… it doesn’t.
Essentially the character of Promethea is a superhero whose mantle has been assumed by numerous women over the centuries. How do you summon her? Through creativity e.g. poems, novels, artwork etc. Interesting idea since she is meant to reside in the collective subconscious (known in this as the Immateria).
The present incarnation is Sophie Bangs, a college student who is studying Promethea in the role of a oddly recurring fictional character. Her role as this incarnation of Promethea is bring about the apocalypse. Of course being don’t want this to happen because, you know, people aren’t stupid.
So in the first two collections she is battling demons and a secret society known as the Temple. We also have the crazed super-villain the Painted Doll and a recurring comic known as the Weeping Gorilla who spouts maudlin phrases like ‘Why do good things happen to bad people?’
This is not a comic for someone who wants to read something easy. It goes pretty deep into Moore’s own philosophical leanings and, hell, it’s able to educate. There is so much in this on the occult and it’s links to sects of Judaism that it can be easy to crinkle your nose up at it. Well I didn’t, but hub did.
The thing that keeps it all going is the artwork. This is a stunning series of comics and some of the panels would be worthy of framing. Promethea is an oddball in it’s medium because, compared to others I have read, we are moving towards something truly intellectual.
Therefore this is not a comic for everyone. I, however, really enjoyed it.
Title: Ballatas and Songs
Before I Kick 