Thoughts about listening to music

Greetings Ivar, This is just a quick note to say that Galaxie 500's track called "Melt Away" from "This is Our Music" is one of the most devastating songs I have on my iTunes. They were really incredible and put out a couple of albums, but they broke up and their leading songwriter and singer went on to forms Luna, a group I know little about. ---------- Another comment I want to make is that my favorite Miles Davis CD these days is "Miles Davis In Person Live at the Blackhawk (Complete)" - this is a 2-CD set that was issued only a few years ago. I think it's his most satisfying live recording. It used to be for me "THE COMPLETE CARENEGIE HALL CONCERT 1964" which is now sold as two separate CDs, "My Funny Valentine" and "Four + More" but I have 'internalized' it and I can no longer hear it with fresh ears, hence the Blackhawk set gets priority in my opinion. You should acquire either the Carnegie Hall concert and/or the Blackhawk show. ---------- And something that's been on my mind lately that I want to tell you is that my favorite Grateful Dead live CD is "Dead Set." I had this as a double-album in middle school but I hadn't heard it between when I got rid of my albums in the early 1990s until 2008, when my mother bought this for me as a 2-CD set at Newbury Comics in Kingston, Mass. It contains twice as much music as it did previously, both discs are 75 minutes in length and I checked it out on iTunes and it mentions that this was the album where most Generation-Xers first got a chance to hear the Dead in a live setting. The more I hear DEAD SET and RECKONING (which I own as "For the Faithful"), the more I think of the Grateful Dead as the greatest American band of all-time. You ought to acquire both Dead Set and Reckoning and a good-time woman who likes to party all night! ---------- My experiences listening to Bob Dylan's "World Gone Wrong" CD were really surprising. If he had actually WRITTEN all of those songs, it would be his best CD. But they are covers, and it is one of his best acoustic albums. I still prefer Good as I've been to you for sentimental reasons.... ---------- Now that I am listening to music via iTunes for up to four house a day (from 8 PM to midnight), I am discovering that some Grateful Dead CDs - of which I have many -- and I just acquired several more last month and I have made plans to purchase others -- anyhow, some CDs that I thought were just OK and I put away, when I hear them on iTunes I think they are fantastic ! Take Dicks Picks #33 (Oakland, Calif.): I listened to this four CD-set all during 2014 and while I liked it, I did not LOVE it. However, now I am head over heels about it -- I can't get enough of it. I guess I am the number one Dead Head, compact disc-wise. ---------- I also listen to John Coltrane quite a bit. More than you might think. Blue Train is my favorite, followed by Giant Steps. ---------- After listening to Bob Dylan's Live at Budokan for a week straight earlier this summer, I have decided that it is my all-time favorite Dylan album, as I feel it's his most commercially successful music. Maybe it wasn't his most commercially successful record, but it should have been. ---------- This week I got three Neil Young CDs from the late 1980s, two of which I bought when they initially came out but I dumped them as I found they were of an equal artistic weight when compared with Dylan's genius: Freedom and Ragged Glory are two albums that I find to be very enjoyable and have certain sonic touches that Dylan's music cannot claim. The two men are both similar artists, but in short Neil Young fails in a way that Dylan won't allow himself. I once coveted Ragged Glory and I know you did too, but I grew tired of it after listening to it several times. Now I think a song like Neil's ten-minute "Love and Only Love" sounds really daring, and maybe even challenged Dylan to write (for 1990's Under the Red Sky) and perform (at Woodstock 2 in 1994) the song "God Knows" the way his did ! As Dylan says on Time Out of Mind, which won the Grammy for Album of the Year in 1997, I'm listening to Neil Young / I got to turn up the sounds / Someone's always yelling / Turn it Down ! My last revelatory musical experience was had when I listened or viewed CAN's song "Bel-Air" from their Future Days album using the iTunes visualizer. A wonderful experience I would urge you to try to reproduce, "music television" was never better! ---------- FYI, I purchased several compact discs this month, several of which were by Neil Young. But I'm playing "old" music and such CDs all this summer and beyond, I'm not going to start playing new music until October, where I will play, in succession, sets of 5-CDs by The Doobie Brothers, Hot Tuna, KISS and The Butthole Surfers. ---------- I know you stopped reading my weekly "the week ahead" messages b/c you did not know I was studying John Locke, but I ask you to please read them. It would mean a lot to me if you could send me a short reply to this email as I would like to hear from you, just for old time's sake..... ---------- Your friend, Andrew B. Noselli

Personal musical history

The very first songs I can recall hearing are the following, when I must have been five years old: 1) Let 'Em In - Paul McCartney 2) Benny and the Jets - Elton John 3) Saturday in the Park - Chicago 4) Everyday People - Sly & the Family Stone When I was six I heard Chucky Berry's music at my Uncle Leroy's house in New York and it pleased me. When I was seven I can recall hearing Queen's "Another One Bites the Dust", which was released in 1980. I was in my father's truck listening on the AM radio. Also the Beatles' "Rocky Raccoon" which delighted me and I yearned to find out more about. At eight years old my sister played David Bowie's "Space Oddity" for me which made me tear up with emotion. The 8-track was called CHANGESONEBOWIE. When I was nine I got the Police's "Ghost in the Machine" on 8-track and listened to it thru my QXL robot. I heard it had something to do with a man named 'Jung' and I swore to myself that someday I would study Jung, much as William S. Burroughs said to himself that he would smoke opium after reading Thomas de Quincey's "Confessions of an English Opium-Eater" in high school. (I did not read that book until Junior year at Bard College in 1994.) When I was ten I got a tape player and I got Rush's "Signals" when it came out. I also got Asia's first self-titled album on tape. Curiously enough, I got those last two albums on CD earlier this year. I bought cassette tapes up until age 15, some important ones were Steve Martin's "Comedy is Not Pretty", "Fragile/Close to the Edge" (combined together on one tape!), the Grateful Dead's "Skull & Roses" tape. When I was 15 my mother took me to Crazy Eddie in Nanuet NY and we purchased a stereo with a turntable. Soon after that my sister's boyfriend, Frank DeCarlo, the man I wish she had married, bought me Rubber Soul and Revolver, plus the White Album and Wings Wild Life. Why he chose that last one I still do not understand ? One of the first two records I ever purchased when I got a turntable from Crazy Eddy at 15 years of age were Kansas' Leftoverture and Jethro Tull's Thick as a Brick. Progressive rock was my first love !