What Are You Listening To? July 2025

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Dana Suesse - Keyboard Wizards Of The Gershwin Era, Vol. II (rec. 1940-56, Pearl comp. 1996)

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Dana Suesse (1909-1987) with George Gershwin and Paul Whiteman

 
The Byrds - Live At Royal Albert Hall 1971 (Sundazed 2008)

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When The Byrds went country, I flew right along with them unlike most of my La La friends. Untitled came out while I was in college and got an awful lot of spins while I was busy conjugating verbs and declining nouns in Latin. The Clarence White-Skip Battin-Gene Parsons trifecta at last gave Roger McGuinn a road band worthy of his considerable stage talents.

This professionally recorded live set derived from a tape that sat in McGuinn's garage for decades. Coming a year after the live portion of Untitled was recorded in New York City, the band was much tighter at Royal Albert Hall. The reworks of Byrds material are more twang than jangle, with McGuinn's signature vocals riding comfortably on White's country licks. An unplugged bluegrassy segment and an 18 minute drum-bass workout on "Eight Miles High" (which the liner notes reveal was designed to allow Roger and Clarence a cigarette break) show just how much farther along the band had developed after the departure of Crosby, Hillman and Gram Parsons.

:5.0: on the Sam-O-Meter. Rock 'n' Roll Stars for sure.
 
Guy Lombardo & His Royal Canadians - Play The Song Hits From Broadway (Decca 10" LP, 1949)

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Vinyl Spin of the Day.

Guy Lombardo had a real affinity for material from The Great White Way. This early album features both sides of a rare single that Mary Martin waxed with Guy.

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London Philharmonic Orchestra (Wilhelm Furtwangler, cond.) - Brahms: Symphony No. 2 (1948)

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Despite his traumatic experiences during the war years, Furtwangler showed in this March 1948 recording at London's Kingsway Hall that he had lost none of his ability to meld an orchestra into a single organism. Concerts & Archives tells us:

Between February 29 and March 25 1948, Furtwängler gave a series of ten concerts with the LPO, six in London and four on tour, with among others Brahms’ four symphonies on the program (the Second was played in London on March 11), and the last concert, on March 25, was devoted to Beethoven’s Ninth. Four days of recording were devoted to this Second symphony (March 20, 22, 24 and 25), and on March 26, Furtwängler recorded for EMI Brünnhilde’s Immolation with Kirsten Flagstad and the Philharmonia, before leaving for a series of concerts in Buenos Aires.
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Alice Faye - Volume 2: Outtakes and Alternates (rec. 1939-41, AliceFaye.com comp. 1988)

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Vinyl Spin of the Day.

Super fan George Ulrich put together a series of albums for Alice Faye's official website to make available her recordings. This volume collects rare soundtrack material from seven :oops: musicals she made for 20th Century-Fox between 1939 and 1941. Alice richly deserved her nickname "The Queen Of Fox."

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I've listened to Pulp's new release "More" a few times now over the past few days. I am a die hard Pulp fan and was so happy to read a few months back that they were finally coming out with a new release.
Unfortunately, I can't really laud this new one. Why? Because it sounds JUST like the old Pulp of 20 years ago. So, yes....I like the sound because I liked the sound. But, couldn't Jarvis Cocker have tried something new? Evolved? Twisted things up?
I think he should have. Instead, I am listening to a sequel to 1998's "This is Hardcore". A fantastic album (often overlooked in their catalogue), but... haven't you grown in the intervening 20 plus years?

Meh. I will listen to it again. But not often.
 
Exene Cervenka / Wanda Coleman - Twin Sisters (1985)

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Vinyl Spin of the Day.

Come back with me to Friday, February 1, 1985. The always eclectic McCabe's Guitar Shop in Santa Monica hosted a night of poetry readings. On stage are Exene Cervenka (1956- ) of X and Wanda Coleman (1946-2013), known as the unofficial poet laureate of Los Angeles. In two separate sets, each showcases her unique artistic vision of life in Southern California. Exene works in a stream of consciousness observational style while Wanda uses meter and rhyme in a semi-rap style to take aim at institutional racism. The biggest surprise to me was how much friendly if somewhat uncomfortable laughter Coleman produced in what had to be a very white audience.

Like the best standup comedy recordings of guys like Bob Newhart and Bill Cosby, this album will benefit from repeated listening to catch the many nuances as they fly by.

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Abdolvahab Shahidi ~ Dar Madhi e Ali (1993)

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The CD artwork is printed in Farsi. [I don't read Farsi, as I am nearsighted, apparently.]

Fortunately, the outer side panel is printed in English. From there, I could look up the artist and album information.
 
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