The rematch:

(Via John C. Wright.)

A bit of Copland:

(Via dm00.)

And a little dance:

(Via Mark Sullivan.)

The last one reminds me of this classic.

One of the books I tested my new glasses with is Alex Ross’ The Rest Is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century, recommended by Steven. Here’s a trivia quiz based on it.

Identify the speaker:

1. “I have actually outlived myself.”

2. “Defend me, Spaniards, from the Germans, who do not understand and have never understood music.”

3. “All the doctors who wanted to forbid me to smoke and to drink are dead.”

4. “Beauty of sound is beside the point.”

5. “Thank God! Finally a Reich Chancellor who is interested in art!”

6. “There is, thank God, a large segment of our population that never heard of J.S. Bach.”

7. “Beethoven was wrong!”

8. True or false: Debussy served as the thirty-third grand master of the Prieuré de Sion.

9. Who told a tenor saxophone player to play a descending major seventh with “sex appeal”?

10. Who was known to wear “a peach-colored shirt, a green tie with white polka-dots, a knit belt of the most vivid purple with a large and ostentatious gold buckle, and an unbelievably loud gray suit with lots of black and brown stripes”?

11. Who, according to Pierre Boulez, “… had displayed ‘the most ostentatious and obsolete romanticism’”?

12. Who, according to Pierre Boulez, was “… a ‘performing monkey” whose methods betrayed ‘fascist tendencies’”?

13. Who was apparently born near Cologne in 1928, but actually was of extraterrestrial origin and had lived many past lives?

14. What is 8′37″ better-known as?

15. Who was “the best drug connection in New York”?

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Here’s a curiosity I recently came across: “Uta ni Katachi ha Nai Keredo,” by Doriko, featuring Hatsune Miku on vocals:

Yes, it’s just another instantly-forgettable ballad featuring one of the many nasal sopranos that infest Japanese popular music, but there is something remarkable about this recording.

(Via Martin.)

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The Maximum Leader says he doesn’t know who all the Steves are in the current poll. Let’s see if we can do something about that. Here are several of the Steves in action.

Stephen Bennett: “C.E.O. (Comanche Executive Officer)”

Steven King: “Medley: Puttin on the Ritz/42nd Street/It Don’t Mean a Thing”¹

Steve Lukather: “Naima”

Steve Morse: “Cruise Missile”²

Steve Stevens:”Melt”³

Steve Vai: “The Attitude Song”⁴

For Steves Hackett and Howe, dig out your old Genesis and Yes albums.

I regret that I don’t have any Steve Kaufman handy (what I have is on cassette, but my tape deck died several years ago). He is the only person to place first three times in the National Flatpick Competition at Winfield (Mark O’Connor only did it twice). If flatpicking is what you like, he’s your guy.

If you don’t know who Stevie Ray Vaughn is, you have some remedial listening to do.

Update: In celebration of April 15, here’s Stevie Ray:

1. The bass you hear is actually the sound of the two lowest strings on King’s guitar run through a separate pickup and electronically transposed an octave down.↩
2. Jerry Peek, bass, and Rod Morgenstein, drums↩
3. Tony Levin, bass, and Terry Bozzio, drums↩
4. Stuart Hamm, bass, and Chris Frazier, drums↩

If you want your child to be a great guitarist, what should you name him? See the new poll for a hint.

Regarding the old poll: Only twelve votes since August — doesn’t anybody read anymore?

Play a Tesla coil instead:

(Via Hell in a Handbasket.)

… operatically:

(Via Avatar.)

Barry has a new t-shirt.

If the regional Renaissance Faires would bring in bands like Corvus Corax, I might start attending them again. CC’s “best of” album arrived today, and I’ve been listening to it continuously since I got home.

Some more of that good old traditional Japanese rock ‘n’ roll:

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(Via Wonderduck)

Update: Here’s a higher-quality version, via J. Greely, who also has romanized the lyrics so you can sing along and translated them (they’re not what Ian Gillan sang).

*****

I’m going to be away from the computer for a few days. Things will be even quieter here than usual.

Here are the answers for the album cover quiz. Click on the thumbnails to see the entire cover.

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After looking through this album cover quiz, I knew I had to put together my own. Here are portions of 51 covers from the age of vinyl. See how many you can identify. Most are progressive rock and British folk, but there are classics from other genres as well. Many were fairly well-known in their day; others may be challenges to identify. I’ll be astonished if anyone¹ gets them all. I’ll post the answers in a day or two.

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1. other than Steven↩

Can you see the mp3 player?

How about this one?

If you don’t see either player, click on the title of this post to open it in its own page, and see if that makes a difference.

Here’s the challenge:

If you wanted to expose someone to classical music for the first time, and plant in them the same love and enjoyment you have for it – what music would you choose for their listening pleasure?

Let’s make it more difficult and limit it to…say five selections all told, whether they are complete symphonies, single canons, what have you. Pick from your favorite period, or go across the board.

What to recommend depends on your victim. If it’s your own small child, what you choose is less important than the example you set. Listen to a variety of good music and let osmosis do its work.

For older listeners, my instinct would be to favor shorter pieces over longer, suites over symphonies, accessibility over complexity, and to emphasize variety and liveliness. Robert covered the period from Vivaldi to Beethoven with his suggestions. You can regard the following as a supplement to his list.

Chopin: the ballades. Or the polonaises, or the preludes, or the etudes — Chopin’s output mostly fits neatly into CD-sized sets, and they’re all good introductions to 19th-century piano music.

Mendelssohn: the overture to A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Sure, it’s over-familiar, but it’s still wonderful, and it might be new to your listener.

Dvorak: the Slavonic Dances. Lively, melodious and not too long. Here’s Op. 46, #7 in C minor.

Prokofiev: Toccata, Op. 11. Bartok and Prokofiev make Metallica seem like wimps. (If your listener emphatically does not care for heavy music, substitute Debussy’s La cathedrale engloutie.)

Stravinsky, Octet for Wind Instruments. This may be a stretch for beginning listeners, but I find this bit of neoclassicism more immediately likeable than the big ballets.

There is plenty of other music that comes to mind, of course, but these will do for now.

A final suggestion: be wary of budget releases and older recordings. I’m tempted to recommend Lipatti’s performances of the Chopin watzes, which are playing as I write this, but those were recorded nearly sixty years ago and sound like it. For neophytes, you want not only recordings of good performances but also recordings that sound good to untrained ears.

*****

One of my commenters notes that she sometimes can’t see the mp3 players. Has anyone else had trouble with them?

Update: here are links to the music: Dvorak, Prokofiev.