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Five O’Clock Shadow

Heard it on the radio

I love the radio when I’m driving. Lisa prefers her own playlist on her iPod, but I love the randomness and diversity of spinning the dial. At home my music selection is mostly limited to folk and rock and jazz, but in the car I happily add in hip hop and country and Latin and the frequently uncategorizable local college station shows. And sports radio, and talk radio, and hate radio, and NPR, and almost anything that’s not Diane Rehm. But I only recall being really stunned by music on the radio twice.

On July 21, 1990, I was driving in a small town in Pennsylvania and heard a cover of a song from Pink Floyd’s The Wall. And then I heard another. In my memory, it was Joni Mitchell doing “Goodbye Blue Sky.” And then I found out that this was a live broadcast from Berlin. I hadn’t heard this concert was happening, and here I was listening to a concert in Berlin while it was happening from my car in Pennsylvania. My 5 minute drive across town lasted over an hour.

About 250,000 miles later, on January 10, 2011, I was leaving Pennsylvania and had just started picking up radio stations in upstate New York. It was 11 a.m., at the time of the national moment of silence for the Arizona murders. The most prominent victim, Representative Gabrielle Giffords, was lying in a hospital, somehow alive after having been shot in the head. I had wondered what music stations would do for the moment of silence, and the station I was listening to chose to play “Grenade” by Bruno Mars. With the repeated lyrics “I would go through all this pain, Take a bullet straight through my brain, Yes, I would die for ya baby, But you won't do the same.”

It’s almost enough to make me get an iPod too.

Far away

I’m off to the Bay in a few days—a new shoreline, and another life for a week. Maybe that’s why this Ingrid Michaelson tune has such a hold on me right now.

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Buying a piano, part 2

The previous post really just talked about my journey in piano shopping, without giving any advice based on what I’ve learned. Here’s some actual advice:

1. Consider a digital piano or keyboard. If you’re happy with a digital, there are tremendous advantages: no expensive tunings every 6 months, no specialized movers, volume control, and many computerized bells and whistles. Literally. You can make it sound like bells and whistles.

2. Try lots of different pianos, both expensive and cheap, both new and old. Figure out what you care about and how picky you are. You may decide you strongly prefer certain types of pianos, or you may find that any piano is fine as long as it works and the case is attractive.

3. Get a copy of The Piano Book by Larry Fine. He includes lots of great explanations and advice, as well as descriptions of many current piano manufacturers.

4. Avoid large piano sales events you see advertised—they’re rip-offs. Realize that most piano stores run like car dealerships, except the pricing is far more variable and you’ll never see the dealer invoice. All the usual cautions about buying a car apply.

5. You can save a lot of money by buying a used piano, and even more by buying from a person rather than a store. Some people have an inflated sense of how much their piano is worth, but spending a bit of time poking around craigslist should give you a good sense of the market. It’s hard to evaluate a used piano’s condition yourself, and if you’re spending a significant amount of money you may want to ask your piano tuner (or piano technician) to take a look at the piano before you buy it. You have a piano tuner, right? No? Ask friends or neighbors for recommendations for a piano tuner. They can also be a good source for finding a used piano. [Edit: I meant the piano tuner can be a good source, but so can friends and neighbors.]

6. The way a piano was cared for and the conditions it was kept in matter far more than its age. Avoid a piano that has spent any significant length of time in a storage facility, or in a church basement, or in a daycare.

7. You do not get what you pay for. Prices, particularly at the low end of the used market, are highly variable. From free to $1000, the prices are essentially random. And no piano is free unless you want to move a 500-pound instrument yourself and learn to tune it yourself.

Buying a piano

In July 1995, my friends bought me a piano. It was an incredible gift, a lovely huge old Hallet & Davis with a light touch and a resonant soundboard. Made right here in Boston about 80 years earlier. It needed various repairs over the years, and those repairs gradually got more serious. Eventually the bass bridge gave up the ghost, and an extensive rebuild didn’t seem like the right choice. The Hallet & Davis took a crane ride two years ago to a friend’s home where numerous children now enjoy it.

I looked at pianos at 9 or 10 different piano stores from Maine to Rhode Island a few years ago, and just never found the right piano. I did learn a fair bit about what I do and don’t like in an upright piano. Yamahas are very popular, but I don’t personally like the way their very stiff action has a noticeable shift partway through a key press. Steinways can be wonderful, but they’re a significant investment. I definitely like a mellow tone, which is more common in European soundboards, and the Schimmel pianos that Boston Organ and Piano had a few years back had a fabulous touch and resonance. Boston Organ and Piano had a few Kemble pianos as well which I liked a lot as well, though the brand is less well known. Several stores had pleasant Petrof pianos, which seem to be the best of the pianos coming out of Eastern Europe. I even found one Kawai that I liked down in Providence, but overall I strongly preferred the European pianos. The headache of dealing with a high-pressure sales pitch was frustrating, though, and I finally decided to just check craigslist periodically, hoping that a used Schimmel would come up. (I nearly bought a Sohmer that way a couple of years ago, until the piano technician who had supposedly tuned it every six months told me that the owners actually hadn’t had it tuned for 10 years.)

Time passed, and last week a used Schimmel appeared on craigslist. I made an appointment to go try it out, and figured in the meantime I should check in with Boston Organ and Piano to see what they were selling for these days, and see if the used one was holding up to how new ones sounded. I didn’t realize that Boston Organ and Piano had collapsed from 5 or 6 stores down to 1 and was no longer a Schimmel dealer (after 4 years of being the biggest Schimmel dealer in the world). I went to a couple of other piano stores, both overpriced and under-prepped. The saleswoman at one seemed to understand instantly what I liked and didn’t like in a piano, but the store’s selection was extremely weak. The other store had a huge selection, but the sales pitch was painful. I found one piano there that I probably would have bought for $8000, but it took an hour to get the price down from an inflated $16,000 to an inflated $15,000. On the other hand, the craigslist Schimmel turned out to be shockingly bright-sounding to my ear. After 7 hours over 2 days looking at pianos, I gave up. No more piano stores. I hate the unpredictably awful salespeople, the guessing game on the prices, the bad lighting and bad acoustics and frequently untuned pianos. And I wasn’t learning anything any longer by going to the stores. One more look through craigslist out of habit, and, wait, there was a lightly-used Kemble purchased new in 2005, built around 2001, in perfect condition and at a reasonable price. A couple of phone calls and a trip to try it out the next afternoon, and I bought a piano!

Kemble has made Yamaha pianos for the European market for quite a while, and they shifted over to using Yamaha parts for their own pianos. Recently Yamaha finished buying Kemble, and people say there is no real difference now in the Yamaha and Kemble piano lines except for the cases and perhaps the voicing. Since I’ve never personally liked Yamahas, I’m surprised that I like Kembles. But I consistently have liked the Kembles I’ve tried, and this one was no exception. (Actually, I may well have tried it out back when it was still in the showroom at Boston Organ and Piano.) And I’m very excited that I’ll have a piano in the house again. We’re moving furniture around to make space for it before it arrives on Saturday morning.

In an amusing coda, I received an e-mail today offering to sell me the $16,000 piano for $8000. Apparently the key to receiving a good price is to say that you’ve bought a different piano, and it’s good to know that my sense that the store’s prices were absurdly high was correct. I’m very happy with the Kemble, though, and I really don’t need two pianos.

Put another nickel in

What’s your favorite venue for seeing live music?

That would have to be Circle of Friends Coffeehouse in Franklin, MA. The sound there has always been excellent, and that, to me, is the most important criterion. The crowd is always friendly, plenty of people who know each other but never unwelcoming to new people, and they don’t talk during the music but do respond to the performers. The space is comfortable enough, sightlines are generally acceptable, tickets are reasonable, there’s plenty of parking, restrooms are clean, so there’s no particular drawbacks to the venue if you don’t mind general admission. There’s an amazing selection of affordable desserts available before shows and during intermission, but not enough beverage selection (mostly coffee, water, or tea).

A close second would be the Sunday brunch at Tryst in Arlington, MA, only because they have a jazz trio that I absolutely love paired with a phenomenally good chef and pastry chef and a comfortable space. Normally I’d really prefer to separate live music from food service, but the combination works there.

I’ve seen live music at venues ranging from my living room (Ken Batts) to Madison Square Garden (Paul Simon). I almost always prefer smaller venues, as long as there is enough of a crowd to generate some energy for the performers. (I did discover once that the Wang Center (Tori Amos) could feel just like a small venue if you have second row center seats.) I want to hear the music, and sound systems designed to fill a large space are rarely crisp. Symphony Hall in Boston (k.d. lang) does have great acoustics, and if I had to choose a venue for seeing a show from the last row of the balcony, that would probably be it.

And for a festival atmosphere, buskers around Harvard Square or Faneuil Hall on a summer night can be a treat.

KT Tunstall

For only having a couple of albums out, KT Tunstall has an incredible number of distinctive and wonderful songs. And she was having a blast last night at the Orpheum, performing with high energy for close to 2 hours. Not many songs were given new interpretations aside from being entirely acoustic instruments (except the keyboard), but the live performance did give fresh echoes at various points of early Cowboy Junkies and Natalie Merchant. I’d really love to see her in a venue with good acoustics some day. Can’t complain about our seats, though—directly on the center aisle 13 rows from the stage, with the two seats in front of us empty until the encores.

Paddy Casey from Ireland (in Boston to find his roots, as he put it) did a good opening set, though I did wonder how much of the DSM he was going to cover in a single set. Depression, fear, and loss were recurrent themes. As someone who happily listens to Pink Floyd and 4AD artists like This Mortal Coil and Dead Can Dance, I can go along with that. But for me, the real star of his set was Fiona Melady, who accompanied him on keyboard and took the lead for one beautiful song of her own. I love hearing new music this way.

Finding new music: comments

This is a comments thread for the current poll. How do you find new music? Do you still find new music, or are you content with the music you already know?

Aural knowledge

Siddur Audio (in their own words): “Here is a convenient online resource for learning to chant the Hebrew liturgy of the Siddur (Jewish prayer book), whether you just want to brush up on your davening skills, learn to chant the Shabbat services or prepare for your Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah!”

Many of their melodies are the familiar ones to me from the Conservative movement. You can buy individual tracks or audio CDs, but the streaming MP3 files are also free on their site. Some people may be uncomfortable hearing Adonai instead of HaShem in a teaching context, but I think this is a marvelous approach to preserving and passing on melodies. It’s certainly less work to create than the transcriptions I’ve done for the Friday night service and the Passover haggadah, and you don’t need to be able to read music to make use of the resource.

Joe Jackson

Joe Jackson is an incredible performer. When Rob and I saw his Blaze of Glory tour in August 1989, he played all of the music from that sequential album without a pause between songs, piano and vocals, and then continued with a full concert set of other music. I’ve seen him several times since then, most recently this evening, and he’s never disappointed. For me, there is something magical about a musician singing while playing a real grand piano, and it puts Joe Jackson, Billy Joel, and Tori Amos in a common category despite their different styles. Tonight Joe was backed by Graham Maby and Dave Houghton from the original Joe Jackson Band, and the three of them did a wonderful hopscotch of new and old songs covering a span of more than 25 years. Joe happily uses both Latin and pop rhythms and adds occasional jazz riffs in performance, but the band has a consistent sound that makes it all work together. And as much fun as it’s always been to see Joe Jackson in concert with various friends over the years, when they wrapped up the encores tonight with A Slow Song as they often do, this time I was standing right in front of the stage with the woman I love. And that made this his best concert by far.

To and fro and to and fro

Drove to Davis Square yesterday to meet Lisa, and arrived a few minutes early. So I ordered spring rolls at Taipei Tokyo, asked at the Somerville Theater if they had any tickets to the long-sold-out Joe Jackson concert on Monday, found out they were just about to release a few tickets, ran around to find a working ATM to pull cash out of, back to the theater to buy tickets to the concert, back to Taipei Tokyo to pick up my spring rolls, and back to the car with time to spare before Lisa arrived on the T.

In CS terms, a LIFO stack (car, restaurant, theater, ATM, theater, restaurant, car) and the world’s worst traveling salesman solution. In business terms, productive use of unexpected downtime. In personal terms, we’ve got front row tickets to see Joe Jackson!

Homeland

“Welcome to the American night.” A hypnotic voice issuing a wake-up call, with soothing melodic strings and synthesizer to raise the alarm. Laurie Anderson’s performance of Homeland at the Boston Opera House tonight lightly chided the audience for failing to respond to their times while offering too few opportunities to even respond to her. A piece late in the show laments the loss of the art of conversation, but she never engages the audience and uses instrumental bridges between independent pieces to suppress applause. While she said much that needs to be said—condemning the suspension of freedom in the name of freedom—she seems unlikely to rouse anyone to action. She cites Thomas Paine’s Common Sense, and one of her most resonant lines is when she echoes Paine’s question of whether it makes sense for an island to rule a continent and asks whether it makes sense now for a country to rule the world. However, her repeating lyrics do not inspire deeper reflection; there are no startling images to follow her beautiful opening story about the endlessly soaring birds from before the world was created.

I was thrilled to see her in concert, and this show was the one I have wanted to see for many years: a return to many of the forms from her United States work that I’ve loved since I first heard the recordings 20 years ago, a live performance by an artist whose magical voice truly captivates me both in story and in song, and a thought-out political statement that extended beyond a quick protest song or short rant. She succeeded in all of those, and I would be delighted to see her perform Homeland again tomorrow or next month or next year. I’m sure that I’m asking too much for her to also encourage change, when her style is more ironic comment. But when those endlessly soaring birds first encountered land, surely that opened up possibilities beyond flight?

Short attention span music

The geek rock concert last night at the Somerville Theater by They Might Be Giants was insanely loud. And the noise level (from the speakers on 11, from the audience) was unfortunately at odds with being able to hear any lyrics. My confusion about why any band would ask a thrash band like Apollo Sunshine (note to self: avoid like plague) to open and blow out the audience’s eardrums ended when TMBG took the stage and tried to be even noisier. I would have liked to hear music rather than noise that evokes music, and I haven’t usually run into that problem except at arenas. Still, fun to be surrounded by hundreds of screaming fans—the energy level was definitely high.

We also saw two shows at Scullers Jazz Club recently: Jane Monheit in February and Grace Kelly in March. Both ended their shows with striking renditions of Over the Rainbow, making me wonder if Scullers specifically asks performers to include the song. Seeing Tuck and Patti at Scullers back in October 1999 was our first unofficial date, but we hadn’t been back there until 2008. The space is still crowded and dark and jazz-clubby (though smoke-free), and the seating is haphazard, but the acoustics are fine.

All I ask

I claim no special insight into what makes a concert great. But attempting to define a great concert is a fun challenge, because it recalls to mind some potent memories.

A great concert makes people dance. The music is melodic, the percussion syncs to a fast heart rate with a dollop of syncopation, and the volume of reverberating air is a partner held close. At Paul Simon's Graceland concert with Ladysmith Black Mambazo in Madison Square Garden in July 1987, people were dancing in the aisles even 500 feet from the stage.

A great concert includes a phenomenal band. When Jane Siberry performed her Child holiday tour in December 1996, she brought together a dozen top musicians including Tim Ray, Rebecca Campbell, Phillip Brown, and others who can all stand on their own as soloists or lead performers. Musicians who have nothing to prove, and everything to share.

A great concert showcases a performer's repertoire. You hear old favorites brought to new life, new work that surpasses your old favorites, and you come to new understandings of why you love this musician. You learn about the performer through anecdotes and introductions that bridge the songs, a process that makes lyrics shine. And over and over, you lose yourself in the music as much as you imagine the musicians do.

A great concert has layers of standing ovations and encores because neither the audience nor the performers want to let the evening end. A great concert wears your feet out from tapping, wears your hands out from clapping, and simultaneously energizes your soul. Suzanne Vega's last lyric tonight was "All I ask is you remember me." When she puts on a great concert like she did tonight, that won't be a problem.