Music

[Handruin]

After a considerable amount of thought, I believe the appealing thing about the music I heard was its resemblance to the light but complex jazzy stuff I remember hearing in a couple really nice department stores my mother used to frequent when I was really little.
Which is probably not what they intend.

Anyway, I got my copy of The Two Towers: The Complete Score. Again, it is too awesome for words. There's a spifftacular book included and the single disc with three hours of DVD-Audio is worth the $60 bucks I spent, easy.

I'm listening to the The Fellowship of the Ring - The Complete Recordings in Dolby Digital 5.1 (AC3) and they sound great even in stereo.

Is there a specific audio player I should be using for this? Windows media player actually works, but doesn't seem to like the ac3 extension association. In any case, I like it.

 

[Mercutio]

I have .AC3 files associated with PowerDVD. I'm guessing anything that can play a DVD can probably handle the files.

 

[Stereodude]

Hans Zimmer has some AWESOME film music to his credit.
My personal favorite is the piece called "Journey to the Line" from The Thin Red Line, but he's also responsible for Crimson Tide, Backdraft and The DaVinci Code (which is nice but rather more repetitive than I expected).

<snip>

Wanna know a great movie score? Last of the Mohicans. It's usually ranked as one of the all-time top selling CDs on Amazon.com (Amazon sales rank 1221 as of this writing).

I'm listening to The DaVinci Code Score right now. It's pretty good, but a lot of it is a dead ringer for The Last of the Mohicans Score.

 

[Drakantus]

Lately I have been really into Therion, now my favorite music group. Symphonic metal, vaguely similar to Nightwish but I find Therion to have a lot more variety between songs. They seem to be largely unknown in the US, but bigger over in Europe.

Anyone else like them?

If you have no idea what the sound like and are curious, I have a couple songs at http://www.sharpclaws.net/files/audio/ just please don't repost the link elsewhere or my bandwidth will die

 

[Mercutio]

Metal?

 

[ddrueding]

I have had one song in my head for the last week and a half. I didn't say "stuck in my head" because I really, really like it. It's not special in any way, really, but something about it really strikes a chord with me.

Dido - Who Makes You Feel

Vocals: Dido
Production: Dr. Dre

I would make it available, but I don't have anything set up at the moment.

 

[Explorer]

Metal?

 

[CityK]

More accolades to Hans Zimmer:

Just listened to "A Small Measure Of Peace (The Last Samurai Soundtrack)" ... very nice....still haven't seen that (adaptation of the) movie yet.

 

[Buck]

I've been listening to the Buena Vista Social Club, Omara Portuondo, and Ibrahim Ferrer -- beautiful Cuban music.

 

[Handruin]

I just bought the Linkin Park Reanimation DVD-Audio disc for $4.99 (used) at newbury comics yesterday and I love how they mixed the audio. Not to mention I think they did a nice job with all the tracks in remixing the songs up. If you're a linkin park fan, I recommend checking it out in CD or DVD format.

I also decided to try The best of R.E.M in DVD-Audio. I haven't spent enough time with that disc yet to give any feedback, but the few I listened to were of good quality.

 

[ddrueding]

What are your favorite songs from the 80's?

Just looking through my list, the bands of choice seem to be:

Beastie Boys
Metallica
Aerosmith
Guns n' Roses

and of course:

Escape Club - Wild, Wild West!

 

[LiamC]

Hmmm, the ones that spring to mind

Talk Talk -talk talk and It's my life (sorry Gwen, but you just don't cut it)
REM - Radio Free Europe, End of the world, oh sh!t, a lot of their earlier stuff
Joy Division/New Order - Love will tear us apart, True Faith
Sisters of Mercy - Floodland (the album) Oh Patricia...
in an Aussie vein...
The Models, The Machinations, Pseudo Echo (early) The Venetians, Midnight Oil, Noiseworks

Elsewhere... Tears for Fears, Duran Duran, Madonna for clubbing

 

[Mercutio]

I was very unimpressed with the 300 soundtrack. Was expecting awesomeness. Received tired, recycled crap that was cribbed from Poledouris's Conan the Barbarian soundtrack and from the more bombastic Hans Zimmer stuff.

Bleh.

Lately I have been switching between piano music by Debussy and by Bill Evans. It's a nice contrast, really.

 

[paugie]

ahh, music. I used to sit back and listen. Taught my children to appreciate classical and jazz. Still, the youngest (he's almost 25) didn't take to my tastes. He likes metal and hard rock, of which I can only listen for short periods.

My Nakamichi tape deck died, and so did my relaxing times with music. Small PC speakers, (I bought an Altec Lansing ADA 800 second hand late last year) seem to be tiring to listen to. Not like large stereo speakers.

Maybe when I turn 60, I'll be able to sit back again and enjoy music like I used to.

 

[Mercutio]

Children of Men has TWO soundtracks. There's a sucky one (labeled "Soundtrack") with a bunch of no-talent loser morons like John Lennon who are famous for causing crap out to spew from speakers.

I saw that one in the store and had murderous involving record producers and a garlic press.

Fortunately, I have also found the good one, labeled "Original Motion Picture Soundtrack."

The one with all the minimalist threnodies. All the awesome bits of mournful choirs that made you despair for the human condition as you watched the movie. The John Tavener bits.

It is well worth a listen.

 

[timwhit]

I really didn't like Children of Men. The whole plot just didn't seem plausible whatsoever. Idiocracy was a much better dystopian future movie.

 

[timwhit]

I really didn't like Children of Men. The whole plot just didn't seem plausible whatsoever. Idiocracy was a much better dystopian future movie.

Whoops, I guess I thought this was the movie thread. Oh well.

 

[Mercutio]

I was pretty "meh" about Children of Men as well. Several people told me it was as good as Blade Runner. Those people need to have their taste recalibrated. The score was the best part of the movie, but it wasn't a particularly deep film. I guess the big deal of the whole thing was the very long, seemingly unbroken steady-cam shot in the last quarter of the movie.

Also, a world without children closely approximates my idea of paradise, so the fact that I was rooting against the protagonist probably didn't help me to appreciate the whole thing.

 

[Mercutio]

I found the soundtrack to "The Incredibles" at a used CD store today. I'm really digging on the jazz-classical James Bond-action-movie scoring. Perfect for City of Heroes and it really wants me to break out No One Lives Forever, too.

 

[Mercutio]

Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Complete Score will be released November 7th.

I just got my copy of the Return of the King complete score. Three hours, thirty three minutes and forty two seconds of music. I've listened to the whole thing twice, and tomorrow it is my goal to make an uninterrupted listen of the whole set (Fellowship, Towers, King). The whole thing is truly, staggeringly awesome.

 

[ddrueding]

That would be about 9 hours worth? Taking the day off?

 

[Mercutio]

It's closer to 12, and no I'm not. Just a good day to hang out in my office.

 

[ddrueding]

Sweet. What kind of stereo do you have at work?

 

[Mercutio]

An Onkyo TXDS-494 and a set of Yamaha speakers. My sub is a JBL something or other, but I don't usually run that while there are people in my office, and I'm using an Auzentech X-Plosion on the PC side of things.

Nothing fancy.

 

[Mercutio]

So, I'm stuck deploying and customizing Vista a hundred billion times. I brought up the sample musics that it comes with on a PC with a decent set of speakers, and I quite enjoyed most of the tracks that it comes with - the Vibraphone jazz and the African tracks particularly.

So I torrented a bunch of Afropop and AfroCuban stuff (search piratebay for Putumayo), and that's been the WAY more upbeat than anything I'd normally listen to, and it's what is keeping me moving at the moment.

No idea where to get vibraphone jazz though.

 

[ddrueding]

Putumayo is great. Lots of the albums feature tango-able songs that I use in my classes. Can't help you much on the vibraphone jazz, except to point you towards the "Verve Jazz Masters" collection. Particularly Volumes 9 (Astrud Gilberto) and 39 (Cal Tjader). I have ~40 of them, and they are all great.

 

[sechs]

Cal Tjader played the vibraphone. Probably a good name to start with....

 

[ddrueding]

Finally got the last of my old CDs copied into my system. For grins I put on Green Day - Platypus (I Hate You) from their Nimrod album, and suddenly, my stereo isn't loud enough.*


*Alright...headphones. It's late and I live in an apartment.

 

[time]

Recent events cast David Bowie's just-released album in a whole new light. He appears to have created a work of art based around his death.

I recommend Lazarus. Now, the whole thing makes sense. Awesome and tragic at the same time.

 

[Mercutio]

The thing that I know about David Bowie:
He was the guy in Labyrinth!
In the late 90s, he sold commoditized securities valued on his future earnings.
He set up his own global ISP. This was covered kind of a lot in late-90s tech outlets like Wired Magazine.
Philip Glass's 1st Symphony takes its themes from a David Bowie album, for some reason.

I couldn't tell you what any of his non-Philip Glass/Muppet-related music sounds like, but that's some seriously weird stuff, especially for a musician.

 

[ddrueding]

The thing that I know about David Bowie:
He was the guy in Labyrinth!
In the late 90s, he sold commoditized securities valued on his future earnings.
He set up his own global ISP. This was covered kind of a lot in late-90s tech outlets like Wired Magazine.
Philip Glass's 1st Symphony takes its themes from a David Bowie album, for some reason.

I couldn't tell you what any of his non-Philip Glass/Muppet-related music sounds like, but that's some seriously weird stuff, especially for a musician.

Point for point, this is exactly what I know as well. Of course, the last one I only know from this post and I've never seen Labyrinth, but yeah.

 

[Buck]

I can only recall his song Space Oddity (1969) and that he played Nikola Tesla in the movie The Prestige (2006). One of his songs (I don't remember which) is used in the movie A Knight's Tale. Oh, and that at times his stage presence was eccentric.

 

[Mercutio]

Point for point, this is exactly what I know as well. Of course, the last one I only know from this post and I've never seen Labyrinth, but yeah.

You remember Philip Glass's first symphony? o.0

 

[ddrueding]

You remember Philip Glass's first symphony? o.0

Point for point, this is exactly what I know as well. Of course, the last one I only know from this post and I've never seen Labyrinth, but yeah.

Didn't, but now I do. I heard about the securities this morning on a financial program.

 

[time]

Sorry, I've been speechless.

Very bluntly, the collective responses here are what I would have expected from my parents. You guys really need to get out more, or something.

David Bowie was very probably the 20th century's most influential figure in music, period. Mercutio, of all the orchestral musicians creating the works that you only have ears for, there's almost no chance that any would be as unaware of David Bowie.

If anyone's interested, some of his hits include: Space Oddity (Major Tom), Changes, Starman, The Jean Genie, Life On Mars (TV series named after it), Sorrow, Rebel Rebel, Young Americans, Fame (US #1), Golden Years, Suffragette City, Heroes, Boys Keep Swinging, Fashion, Under Pressure (with Queen), Cat People (Putting Out Fire), The Little Drummer Boy / Peace On Earth (duet with Bing Crosby - no, really), Let's Dance (US #1), China Girl, Modern Love, Dancing in the Street (duet with Mick Jagger). There are too many collaborations with other musicians to be countable.

An old favorite from 1970 is All the Madmen, about his schizophrenic brother who was an asylum inmate until his suicide in 1985.

 

[Mercutio]

Sorry, I've been speechless.

Very bluntly, the collective responses here are what I would have expected from my parents. You guys really need to get out more, or something.

David Bowie was very probably the 20th century's most influential figure in music, period.

Setting aside classical music (i.e. the music that will actually be known and enjoyed in 100 years. Go look at a greatest hits list from 1916 and see what I mean) entirely, the 20th century saw the rise of recorded music, the birth of Jazz and Rock and Roll, America's preeminent contributions to Western culture. We were given electronic instruments, portable musical devices that formerly had to have buildings built AROUND them, digital recording and mass media.

I'm not prepared to float the name of a single most influential figure in music for the 20th century, but I don't even think Mr. Bowie would make the cut for the 1970s. You've got James Russell inventing the CD, early punk rock, heavy metal, dance music (disco) and electronica all coming out of that time frame.

Clearly the guy was important for a certain type of rock and roll fan but his great work was 40 years ago. There's plenty of time for tastes to have changed or been shaped in a different fashion in the time since.

It might be interesting to see whom each of us considers iconic in music from the last 50 or 100 years. For me an acid test of a pop musician's fame is whether or not I can match more than one song or album to their name, given how fantastically uninvolved I am in popular music.

 

[Buck]

It might be interesting to see whom each of us considers iconic in music from the last 50 or 100 years.

That would be an interesting poll.

To some extent, David Bowie was influential to the genres that his music supported, such as: art rock, glam rock, art pop, electronic, and experimental (it just happens to be music that does not interest me). Nonetheless, it seems to be more typical that a musician we feel to be most influential to the music industry is really mostly influential to our personal history. I think I know who I would select to be the most iconic in music from the past 100 years. But I will most certainly be wrong, because they are really the most iconic to me.

 

[Handruin]

I realize this doesn't speak well for me but I wouldn't be able to name a single David Bowie tune or album without Googling it. I know his name and roughly what he looks like but his music never spoke enough to me to continue listening to him or remember him. I am sure I'd recognize some of his tunes if I heard them but that's about it. That being said I'm sorry to hear of his loss.

 

[ddrueding]

time, I really wanted to relate, so I queued up all the songs you listed. Unfortunately I couldn't finish any of them. I suppose in order to connect so directly with a group of listeners one might need to abandon the rest? Of course, my tastes include practically nothing from the late 70s to early 90s. Probably to do with my age.

 

[LunarMist]

Of course, my tastes include practically nothing from the late 70s to early 90s. Probably to do with my age.

Probably. I liked the 60s and 70s
but have practically no interest in anything after the early 90s.