PolyArchive

South Dakota’s may plausibly be considered the most genuinely innovative, most inspirationally forward-looking professional orchestra in the United States. It is also the happiest professional orchestra I know, and the most engaged. Fulfilling Theodore Thomas’s credo, it “shows the culture of the community.” Link: The American Scholar | Shostakovich in South Dakota A manifesto for […]

About 18 months ago (in the summer of 1996) I went to see Four Weddings and a Funeral at a North London cineplex. Very soon I was filled with a yearning to be doing something else (for example, standing at a bus stop in the rain); and under normal circumstances I would have walked out […]

Music A Subversive History by Ted Gioia Perseus Books, Basic Books 528 pages, published 2019. From the publisher: “A dauntingly ambitious, obsessively researched” (Los Angeles Times) global history of music that reveals how songs have shifted societies and sparked revolutions. Histories of music overwhelmingly suppress stories of the outsiders and rebels who created musical revolutions […]

Allegro Tomas Tranströmer Translated by Robin Fulton I play Haydn after a black day and feel a simple warmth in my hands. The keys are willing. Soft hammers strike. The resonance green, lively and calm. The music says freedom exists and someone doesn’t pay the emperor tax. I push down my hands in my Haydnpockets […]

Discordants Conrad Aiken I. (Bread and Music) MUSIC I heard with you was more than music, And bread I broke with you was more than bread; Now that I am without you, all is desolate; All that was once so beautiful is dead. Your hands once touched this table and this silver, And I have […]

“And, of course, that is what all of this is – all of this: the one song, ever changing, ever reincarnated, that speaks somehow from and to and for that which is ineffable within us and without us, that is both prayer and deliverance, folly and wisdom, that inspires us to dance or smile or […]

29 Some rides don’t have much of a finish That’s the ride I took Through good and bad and straight through indifference Without a second look There’s no intentions worthy of mention If we never try So hang your hopes on rusted-out hinges Take ’em for a ride Only time will tell if wishing wells […]

They Might Be Hipsters.  

A quote of the day on my email header today: “Dreams are today’s answers to tomorrow’s questions.”–Edgar Cayce. I have to disagree. I think dreams are tonight’s questions to yesterday’s (or last year’s, or 10 years ago’s) answers. And we must always question the answers, my darlings. Even if we are not mighty mighty or […]

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Elliott Smith – The Complete Live Covers | The Rawking Refuses To Stop!.

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So I made you all a little mixtape. Mix file? That sounds lame. Anyway. Here are some good, bad, and interesting cover songs. Why cover songs?

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Gorbachev Records Album, World Survives – Russia.