Editor’s note:Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
If you know me, you know I listen almost exclusively to music from the 70’s and 80’s (see my posts about Steely Dan and A Chorus Line, the musical). That’s not to say that I don’t love music being produced today—I do–but my heart lies in my parents’ music. And a band my parents absolutely loved is America.
America has been making music for decades — really. They have 16 albums, not including special anniversary editions, re-releases, or any other specialty disc. They published their first album, America, in 1971, and their most recent album, Back Pages, is from 2011. That might sound like a lot of music, and it is, but we luckily have a Greatest Hits CD, which encompasses almost all of my favorite songs. “Daisy Jane” is one of the sweetest love songs I know (and it’s not just because 7 year-old me liked that my name was in the title).
By Source, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=19104741
If you’re a beginner at guitar, start with their arguably most famous song — “A Horse With No Name”. It’s literally two chords going back and forth throughout the entire song. When recently asked, I said that “Ventura Highway” is the song that best represents me. “Tin Man” (based on The Wizard of Oz), “Sister Golden Hair”, “You Can Do Magic”, and “I Need You” are some of my other favorites.
America’s music feels home-y. You can tell they’re really playing their instruments, and it’s so clear through their music that they simply love what they do. Their songs fall under the genre of folk rock, and a lot of them are about the experiences they’ve had in California, which I love listening to if I’m ever feeling homesick about being away from LA.
I actually watched America in concert a few years ago. My mom, my sister and I went together, and we couldn’t believe that after 40 years, they still sounded like their records from the 70s. If you’re looking for good, laid-back, driving with the windows down kind of music, I’d check them out.
(And just a hint: if you like this kind of music, go to the library search website, click on the “Subjects” tab, and type in “Rock music—1971-1980.” You can thank me later)
Editor’s note:Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
You’re watching a film. It’s a sports movie about a chippy group of underdogs defying all odds and barreling towards impossible success. Or it’s a coming-of-age story about teenagers coping with the incredible, ineffable weight of being. Or it’s a true story of human struggle in the face of calamity–a military operation gone wrong; an oil rig exploding. What music is playing? If the film was made in the past two decades, there’s a very good chance it’s post-rock.
The term ‘post-rock’ was coined by music journalist Simon Reynolds in 1994. It is used, broadly, in reference to any music that uses rock instrumentation but doesn’t adhere to rock song convention. Post-rock songs are most often long instrumental pieces that focus on musical texture and build to all-out climaxes, a subgenre affectionately dubbed ‘crescendocore.’
In 2003, Texas-based post-rock band Explosions in the Sky released their third studio album, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. This album is widely regarded as their greatest work, and is considered one of the essential works of the genre. Explosions’ brand of post-rock — layers of reverb and delay-laden guitars punctuated by the ever-marching cadence of a snare drum — came to define the genre in the early 21st century, due in no small part to the 2004 film Friday Night Lights.
After Explosions released The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place, they were approached by Brian Reitzell, a Hollywood composer, producer, and film music supervisor, about soundtracking the upcoming big-budget sports film Friday Night Lights. At this point, having a relatively unknown post-rock outfit soundtrack a major Hollywood release, let alone a sports movie, was unheard of. Rocky III’s “Eye of the Tiger“, this was not.
After Reitzell demoed the group’s music to studio executives, permission was granted to bring the band on board. Musically, the soundtrack to Friday Night Lights retains much of the aesthetic of The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. The band even adapted the song “Your Hand in Mine” from the album for the film.
Friday Night Lights went on to be both a critical and commercial success, though its greatest influence on the film industry was arguably its Explosions-crafted soundtrack. The film ushered post-rock into the mainstream, and the band’s music quickly found use as ‘temp-music’ — music used by directors when editing their films to give an idea to their composer of how they want a piece to sound (for an in-depth account of what temp music is and how it affects a film’s production, check out this video from Every Frame a Painting). James Rettig of Stereogum even went as far as to call the band’s signature sound to “a cheat code for music supervisors seeking to convey emotional turmoil and the triumph of the human spirit.”
If the Friday Night Lights soundtrack is the sound that launched a thousand imitators, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place is the band’s full-length expression of that sound, uncompromised by the necessities of scoring a film. Though their music has inescapable cinematographic connotation, Explosions in the Sky’s albums remain an intensely intimate listening experience. The lack of lyrics in fact enhances the music’s narrative potential: It invites you to construct a mental movie theater for one. You sit down in your seat and gaze up at the silver screen as your own memories are projected in front of you. Scenes from your life play out like a film, a melodramatic filter laid over it all. You conjure some memories that aren’t your own — games never played, starry night skies above fields never lain in, chances never taken — but the feelings are yours. When you open this album, you are greeted by the explanation to its title: “The Earth is not a cold dead place because you are breathing, because you are listening.”
Editor’s note:Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy (MBDTF) is my favorite Kanye album. Many fans, reviewers and artists in the industry also agree with me that the albumis both technically amazing and culturally significant, with many music publications reporting back in December that MBDTF is their top album of the entire 2010s, such as Rolling Stone and Billboard. Why I believe this album is worthy of this praise is two-fold: first, the album continues the musical genius and masterful production that were present in The College Dropout, Late Registration and Graduation; and second, this album marked Kanye’s public apology for his previous wrong-doings and public controversy, while apologizing in the most ‘Kanye’ way possible; self-reflection upon fame and ego.
I would be remiss in writing about MBDTF if I did not first acknowledge the character and artist behind the production of the album. Kanye has had his fair share of headlines throughout the past ten years or so, between his support of Donald Trump and the idea that Democrats have “brainwashed” black Americans, to his laptop being “stolen” by his cousin who leaked private videos of him, to his famous Twitter tirades in which he has attacked figures such as Wiz Khalifa and the company Nike, to his ongoing bouts with Taylor Swift. The list is long and could have been expanded upon further. Kanye is rarely in the news for positivity, but I argue that his albums should be judged separately from the creator. It is actually the last headline, his history with Taylor Swift, which started the production of MBDTF. In 2009 at MTV’s Video Music Awards, Kanye infamously took to the stage to interrupt Swift’s acceptance speech for Best Female Video, proclaiming that Beyoncé should have won the honor. This prompted nationwide outrage against Kanye, which prompted an apology tour soon afterwards. He then took off to Hawaii that same year in the form of a retreat, in which he began working on MBDTF in Honolulu’s Avex Recording Studio.
Kanye West Performing at SWU Music Arts Festival 2011 by Renan Facciolo – Kanye West – SWU Music & Arts, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18137550
MBDTF is a journey. First, many elements of his previous albums can be identified on tracks throughout this album, indicating a feeling that the work in its entirety could be considered Kanye’s magnum opus. It borrows on the soul and experimental hip-hop aspects found in The College Dropout and Late Registration, mixed with the unrestricted emotional and innovative gleam evident in Graduation and 808s & Heartbreak. Second, the album explores themes such as wealth, prominence, decadence, excess, escapism, self-aggrandizement and self-doubt. An interesting understanding I found in my research is from Andrew Martin of Prefix Magazine, in which he notes in his review that this work “derives its intrigue from the shortcomings of its creator” and “it’s a meditation on fame.” Topics from previous, and even future Kanye albums, explore social issues that plague the world, such as abuse of drugs or the ongoing mistreatment of people of color. However, the “apology album” that MBDTF was expected to be allowed Kanye to reflect on the personal characteristics of his life, and to recognize that he is not perfect.
Focusing on specific tracks, the album opens with the aptly titled “Dark Fantasy.” Nicki Minaj introduces the first track through spoken-word, which then transitions into Kanye rapping about his images of grandeur as a child, and how the population perceives the fame, he has experienced incorrectly. Continuing through the album, “All of the Lights” is my personal favorite track. Between the masterful uses of synthesized sound bites to the lyrical story of a convicted man due to physical assault charges, the song is amazing in my eyes and by the public, receiving many accolades such as Best Rap Song at the 54th Grammy Awards. Another noteworthy track is “Runaway,” which appropriately premiered as a live performance at the 2010 MTV Video Music Awards, a year after Kanye’s public condemnation for his action against Swift, which prompted the creation of this album. Many reviewers laud “Runaway” as Kanye’s best song, placing emphasis on the ego of himself in a statement of lyrical apology for his public figure, but referring to the flaw of human nature of self-absorption that caused his problems. Some other album highlights include “Monster,” “Devil in a New Dress,” and “Lost in the World.”
Music is a strange dichotomy in which it is explicitly linked with the creators of itself and its performers, while also taking on its own personality completely separate from association with a person. I believe that My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy should be viewed through a similar lens. Personally, I have friends who refuse to listen to Kanye West’s music simply because of the nature of himself as a person and the way he has publicized himself throughout the world. However, I believe it to be a great tragedy to close oneself off to the music that he creates as a separate entity of himself, only to experience the idea of the music and what it is trying to portray to us as an audience. No recommendation could ring more true than his album, which should be experienced and loved by all listeners.
Editor’s note:Arachnophonia is a regular feature on our blog where members of the UR community can share their thoughts about resources from the Parsons Music Library‘s collection.
The item spotlighted in today’s edition of Arachnophonia is titled, Vocal Selections from Next to Normal. This musical score of the 2008 smash hit musical Next to Normal featuring Aaron Tveit and Alice Ripley is a simply stunning piece that has been lucky enough to be purchased and brought into the Parsons Music Library Collection for years to come. Despite only lasting a few years on the big stage, this musical score has warmed the hearts of many even 12 years after its Broadway debut. Its popularity and relevance has garnered enough support as to open a revival at the Kennedy Center in Washington D.C earlier this year. However, it was through a friend back home that I had found out about this musical. Sharing her Broadway playlist with me on Spotify, filled with over 1,000 Broadway hits (this number sounds big and yes. It is very big. The run time of the playlist is a few days long), I had come across the song “How Could I Ever Forget,” sung by the character Diana, as she reminisces the day that doctors informed her that her infant son had passed.
Although the lyrics, written by Brian Yorkey and composed by Tom Kitt, were full of raw and intense emotion that could turn you to tears in an instant, I fell in love with the song and the emotion put behind it. So, as any normal human being would do, I heard the entirety of the musical’s score. It moved me to tears, which I admit is hard to do for the most part. The songs were just full of raw emotion and the harmonies between all the characters made the songs super catchy. I played it on repeat for days.
Alice Ripley, Aaron Tveit, and J. Robert Spencer in Broadway production of Next to Normal – Joan Marcus
One day I just decided that maybe it would be cool if I find the score of some of the songs, play it, and possibly sing along to it. By no means am I a singer (I am so bad), but the ingenuity and the emotion felt behind the song compelled me so much, that I decided to take a stab at it. So, as a normal human being would do, I went to the Boatwright Memorial Library website and searched for my score. Sure enough, the coveted musical score that I so sought was there waiting for me, available under the illustrious call number: M1508.K5 N49 2009. I quickly checked out the score and began to play.
Even to this day, 12 years after its debut, there is something to the pieces that never get old. Although I did not have much time to play the songs since this spring semester has started, I am urging and scratching to find time just to hear myself play the amazing songs brought to us by Yorkey and Kitt. I urge that even if you are not interested in Broadway musicals, to check out the Vocal Selections from Next to Normalbook for a couple weeks, or at least have a listen. Tears will be shed, but it would be the best cry you’ve had in years.
