The Standing Room

Overheard in San Francisco: Record Store Revisit

Brian Shields at KRON-4's new blog, The Bay Area Is Talking, was kind enough to link to my post about Joseph Zitt's adventures working in one of San Francisco's major record stores. Joseph and I also traded a couple anecdotes about Asian tourists (how could he possibly know that "Ariribee" meant Avril Lavigne?), but my favorite is:

Your story [about Japanese girls screaming Shanneru! Shanneru!] reminds me of a customer that I had a few weeks ago who was looking for "Ammery." As it happens, there was a new hit release by an R&B artist, Amerie, which I quickly got for her.

The customer handed the CD back to me, and said, "This no Ammery. Ammery, she white and she old."

At that point, the light dawned, and I got her the Anne Murray album she wanted.

In Rotation: June 2005

Click here to see what the In Rotation list is all about.

Allow me to draw your attention to a special disc in this batch: Peter Garland's Love Songs, which was presented to me by a certain Mlle H- (whom some of you may already know). All three of the works on this album feature the estimable percussionist William Winant, whom I once got to observe up close at a most curious gig involving Koreans singing Bach (long story). The first movement of Coyote's Bones is even titled "for william winant," a nod toward his and Garland's >3 decade-long friendship. Coyote's Bones, the first piece on the album, has some wonderful unison writing for piano and bass marimba, and the combination is striking: I'm a sucker for bass marimbas anyway, with their smoky resonances topped off with wacky overtones, and in this pairing the mallets on the marimba really bring out the percussive nature of the piano. The second movement is a tender, internal tribute to William Colvig, and the performance is touchingly personal. I admit that I was not acquainted with Garland's music before, but now his name has been added to The Amoeba Shopping List. So thanks, Mlle H-. Let me know if you go see the penguins.

David Lang: The Passing Measures	Gardiner: Das Paradies und die Peri (Schumann)	Arto Lindsay: Salt	Arto Lindsay: Mundo Civilizado	Dave Holland Quintet: Points of View

Steve Reich: Tehillim	Yes: Music from the Film by Sally Potter	Peter Garland: Love Songs	Philip Glass: Koyaanisqatsi	Adam Guettel: The Light in the Piazza

Adam Guettel: Myths and Hymns	Brad Mehldau: Live in Tokyo	Radiohead: OK Computer	Larin, Prokina: Scenes from Queen of Spades (Tchaikovsky)	Steber, Thebom, Tucker, Guarrera: Women Are Like That (Mozart)

Kaye, Sharp: Arias & Barcarolles (Bernstein)

[CONTENT DELETED]TSR Wears 2 Dork Hats Simultaneously

See comments below for background on why Boosey & Hawkes asked me to take down this post.

The sad part is, it seems to have escaped their attention that I genuinely enjoyed the ringtones after I started looking at the site. Ah well.

TSR on Boing Boing

Check it:

More interesting condom ad graphics

Boing Boing reader M. C- adds,

You may also be interested in my favorite brand of Taiwanese condom, O'Mr. Skin Chapeau, with a charming illustration of a coupla swingin' 8 yr olds on the package.

Previously on Boing Boing: Japanese condom packaging art.

Note: Not "Mr. Skin O'Chapeau," or even "Mr. O'Skin-Chapeau," but "O'Mister Skin Chapeau." Chapeau! A French-Irish tickler... How fashionable.

Overheard in San Francisco: Record Store Edition

A couple months back, Joseph Zitt, who blogs at The Year of Living Musically, wrote the following to me in response to the douchebag post:

I'm the Classical CD Guy at [a major record store] in San Francisco, and lemme tell you, we get all sorts of odd pronunciations and howlers.

My favorite was when a customer came in trying to find something he'd heard on the radio. He had written down what the announcer had said as "Colony: Dry By a Brook." He knew little about it, other than that it was classical.

I managed to narrow down by questioning that it was for a solo instrument (he couldn't remember if it was accompanied), probably stringed, kind of low. He didn't have a vocabulary to say much else about it, except that he said it was, "um... kinda... Jewish?"

The light went on, and I led him to a fortunately loaded and working listening station, where he confirmed by listening that it was, as I had guessed, Kol Nidrei by Bruch.

July Amoeba Run (or, TSR Holds It In for 2 Months)

The car's washed and waxed. The top's down, revealing a bright sun and a clear sky. The hairs have been freshly cut.* And for the first time in over two months I am able to carve out 90 minutes to visit Amoeba.  I tell you, a more rejuvenating Sunday morning in SF can hardly be imagined.

Today's inviolable ground rule is that I am not allowed to get anything new. There's just too much that I would buy otherwise, and I'd end up spending five times as much money. The results of today's treasure hunt:

Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross, The Hottest New Group in Jazz: OK, if you've listened to Manhattan Transfer but haven't heard Lambert, Hendricks, & Ross, get thee to a record store right now, because these folks are The Absolute Swingingest, way more than ManTran ever was. They were the "hottest new group in jazz" back in the late '50s, and this 2 CD set combines three LPs that were released on Columbia. Also got The Hi-Lo's, And All That Jazz; have I mentioned my thing about jazz vocal groups? And inspired by Heather, I picked up Sun Ra Sextet at the Village Vanguard.

Everything Comes & Goes: Matmos, Four Tet, and others take turns reinterpreting Black Sabbath. (Remember when the Cardigans did the same a decade ago with Sabbath Bloody Sabbath and Iron Man? Maybe I'll put those on tonight.)

Prefuse 73, vocal studies + uprock narratives; Herbert, secondhand sounds; and Paolo Conte, Tournee: They didn't have Surrounded by Silence, Plat du Jour, or Elegia, so I got these as consolation prizes.

Autechre, LP5: I have to admit that I have been intimidated by Autechre for as long as I have been terrorised by The WIRE. Ae has always represented the most effete, complex and indecipherable of electronic music to me, and so I would flip through the bin, see those scary minimal covers with no type, and quickly move on to, say, Air. But today I found courage! The only type on the outer packaging of this album is "autechre" imprinted on the front and "ae" on the back; there isn't even a title. One must confront one's fears head on, that's what I say.

1 Giant Leap: This, however, is pure crap. So not recommended. I got it for Robbie Williams and Asha Bhosle and a few other folks, but the result is a whole lot of World Beat badness with exoticized non-Western vocals a la In Your Eyes. Plus Michael Stipe whining. "One Global Pulse"? One Steaming Turd. Ugh.

And to cap off this excursion, Meredith Monk's Volcano Songs, Beck's Guero, M.I.A.'s Arular, and Kanye West's The College Dropout—proof once again that TSR is hip-hop's equivalent of the New York Times Style section. If you're hearing about it here for the first time, you can be certain that the train left without you long ago.

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* I've been going to the same guy for my haircuts for some time now, and every visit he puts out some magazines for me to skim through: Details, GQ, EW, US Weekly. Today, he chose to give me Road & Track and Maxim. To reiterate, my hair stylist gave me a copy of Maxim. (Whom does one call to have one's gaydar recalibrated?)

Rouleau Update

The permanent blogroll, which features everyone who has been kind enough to link to TSR, has been updated. It can also be accessed via the link under Blagues du Jour in the sidebar*. Anyone I've unintentionally neglected, please let me know.

Especially noteworthy are the welcome return of opera maven southern gal in the north, who has started an opera blog ring; the eclectic mp3 blog Sonicage; and BLOGregular, which will be a boon for those of you who are more proficient in Italian than I.

Thanks to everyone who has continued to come by TSR despite the reduction in posting frequency and intensity over the past few months. I'm looking forward to getting back in the game soon.

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* In case you've been wondering, TypePad "upgraded" their services recently and made everything ugly in the process. I'm still trying to figure out how to undo what they've done.

Feline Foto Friday: Pure-bred Burmese

I was just thinking, it's been a long time since we've had a good ol' fashioned round of Friday cat posts! And then I wake up and find Sarah's Cecilia curled up with Don Giovanni. Herein lies my offering for the day, with no musical content whatever:

JUMPING CATS!

These magnificent cats live in the aptly named Jumping Cat Monastery (Nga Phe Kyaung) on Inle Lake in Burma. Is it a tourist trap? Unquestionably. But I don't care, because they're delightful!

You show up in a rowboat, and wait for other tourists to arrive. When a minyan has gathered, one of the monks gets up, indicates to everyone to get the cameras ready, grabs a hoop, scoops up a cat, sets him on the ground, raises the hoop, and...

ALLEY-OOP!

This is repeated a few times with a couple other cats, many flashes go off simultaneously, the monk scatters some peanuts on the ground, the cats have a little snack, the tourists leave, and everyone settles back down to rest.

Top photo courtesty of M. R-

In Rotation: May 2005

Click here to see what the In Rotation list is all about.

Weser- Renaissance: Kleine geistliche Konzerte (Schütz)	The Hi-Lo's: The Columbia Years	Señor Coconut y Su Conjunto: El Baile Aleman	Johnny Hartman: The Voice That Is!	Ramiro Musotto: Sudaka

Bjork: Vespertine	The Sixteen: Barber Agnus Dei	New Stockholm CO: Bridge Var., Illuminations, Lachrymae (Britten)	Rolando Villazon: Gounod & Massenet Arias	Fennesz: Venice

Bjorling, de los Angeles: La bohème (Puccini)	Parnassus: Dream Sequence - Chamber Music of Imbrie	Dusty Springfield: Dusty in London	Bjork: Army of Me remixes and covers	Ry Cooder: Chavez Ravine

Keren Ann: Nolita	SFJAZZ Collective	David Daniels: Serenade	Ens. Vocal Europeen/ Herreweghe: Missa in illo tempore (Monteverdi)	Kyle Gann: Long Night

Oh, nooooo!!!: Act II

DISASTER! This Playbill article comes via Iron Tongue:

Kristine Jepsen Replaces Lorraine Hunt Lieberson in Doctor Atomic
By Ben Mattison
July 19, 2005

Mezzo-soprano Lorraine Hunt Lieberson will miss the world-premiere performances of John Adams' Doctor Atomic at San Francisco Opera, SFO announced. Lieberson has canceled a series of performances because of a back injury sustained earlier this year. According to San Francisco Opera, "Ms. Lieberson's doctors have advised her that she must withdraw from the production in order to allow more time for the healing process." Kristine Jepsen will replace Lieberson in the role of Kitty Openheimer.

News of other cancellations here, here, and here. Best wishes to Lorraine for a speedy recovery—we will miss your presence sorely come October.

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Oh, nooooo!!!: Act I here.