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