I have literally no idea what to do with this.
Category: 1997
Glee (1997) by Bran Van 3000
I love genre-bending. A number of my most favourite bands are bands that can play a wide variety of genres well, and make these genres sound like their own – or, alternatively, convince you they are an entirely different band. So I should like this. I should like this even though it is based in …
Full Circle (1997) by Pennywise
I don’t love ’90s punk, I generally find it too polished and too formulaic for my tastes. I’m not sure what it adds to the legacy of hardcore and frankly it’s all too one-note. You can get away with one-note when you’re doing something brand new, but when you are doing a slightly more polished …
Either-Or (1997) by Elliott Smith
The problem with hype is that it makes you have expectations that can never be met. And, for some reason, the the death of someone just makes this so much worse, but in retrospect. Once a beloved musician dies, everything they ever made becomes a masterpiece and must be held up as proof as the …
The MatchMaker (1997, Mark Joffe)
This is a fairly amusing Romantic Comedy with a ridiculous premise. (But then, aren’t most romantic comedies driven by ridiculous premises?)
Psycho (1997) by Bernard Herrmann, performed by the Royal Scottish Orchestra conducted by Joel McNeely
The score to Psycho is one of the most iconic film scores ever and, at the film’s release, probably was the most iconic film score for a Hollywood or even English language-film. (Searching my memory, I can only think of The Third Man as an earlier English language-film that got this much attention for its …
The Partner (1997) by John Grisham
I only know Grisham from the old days when his novels were constantly turned into “event movies” – or the closest thing we had to those back in the ’90s. I watched many of them, though not every one, and, at least as a teenager, thoroughly enjoyed a couple of them, particularly A Time to …
The Complete Quartets with Sonny Clark (1997) by Grant Green
This set compiles the first three albums Grant recorded with pianist Sonny Clark before the band was expanded to a quintet later in 1962. Interestingly, none of these albums were released until 1980 (in Japan) which, given the quality of the music, it’s really hard to understand.
String Quartet; So You Want to Write a Fugue; Shostakovitch; Poulenc (1997 Compilation)
I really like Gould’s quartet. I know it’s not the most forward-thinking piece for the time, but I think it’s among the second tier of its era and I really don’t mind listening to it. The fugue-song thing is a different story: I like it but it’s almost too clever. I like that it seems …
Elgar – Violin Concerto; Vaughan Williams – The Lark Ascending (1997) by Nigel Kennedy et al.
This is the kind of selection that feels tailor made for someone like Kennedy. Lots of pyrotechnics. And he shows off. And that’s great. But I feel much the way about this set that I feel about so much of Elgar and Vaughan Williams; I just feel like there is better contemporary music from the …
The Best of Tommy Dorsey and His Clambake Seven (1997 Retrieval)
Dorsey – along with his brother – was often accused of not playing “jazz”, something of a hurtful accusation to someone who felt he was a jazz musician. This was actually a fairly common thing in the ’30s when jazz and popular dance music were pretty tough to distinguish. (To this day, many people will …
His Best (1997, MCA) by Bo Diddley
Along time ago R&B was actually something called rhythm and blues. This CD, which collects many of Diddley’s singles and b-sides from 1955 to 1966. His earliest music of 1955 – now his most iconic – lacks the country of Elvis and Carl Perkins, the gospel of Elvis and Little Richard, the manic intensity of …
The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings (1997) by John Coltrane
When Coltrane and his “quartet” recorded these performances, he was just releasing Ole Coltrane, so I think it’s safe to say that much of what was heard here came as a shock to anyone in the audience who wasn’t constantly seeing him live. And even when the LP version came out the next year, much …
Percussion Music: Works by Varese, Colgrass, Saperstein, Cowell, Wuorinen (1974, 1997, Nonesuch) by the New Jersey Percussion Ensemble
This is a fine selection of modern “art music” attempts to break out of western traditions by making percussive music. Not really knowing a ton about any of the composers, save Varese, that’s tough for me to say, but it seems a fair sample.
Transmission by the Tea Party (1997 EMI)
It’s easy to rip on bands who rip off others. But when they rip off stuff you like, it’s significantly harder. I guess this sort of explains how the blogosphere etc can over-hype revivalist bands all the time when it might make no sense to the rest of us. If you like a genre enough, …
Lie to Me by Jonny Lang (1997 A&M)
I have no issues with Lang’s playing. He manages to sound like multiple players at different times, which is generally a good thing, since he doesn’t remind me of any one guitarist too much to seem derivative. He is a pretty good blues guitarist, and very good for his then age.