Studio outtake from Glenn Gould’s 1955 recording of The Goldberg Variations, in which he describes and performs a mashup of “God Save the King”1 and “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
I’ve tweaked the levels to make Gould’s voice more audible, but otherwise this is just Gould dicking around between takes.
If you’re as simple and musically unsophisticated as I am, it’ll help to listen a couple (or 50) times in order to really get what he’s doing here,2 but the payoff is wild.
This man’s work alternately hurts and blows my mind.
Our friend Rand Lines, performing as part of the Carlton Owens Trio, fills the patio of the Square One Fish Co. with some terrific piano jazz during Sunday brunch.
I had a dream that Alex Ross was walking to an awards ceremony and I spotted him and asked him to autograph me a copy of his book, The Rest is Noise. He was really nice about it and pulled out a book from his backpack (huh?), which he autographed and then gave to me. In my Dream he looked more like Bob Ross than Alex Ross, which was weird. But today I found out via machine text that he had won a MacArthur Genius Grant. So…I’m going to start a new blog. www.whosgoingtowinamacarthurganttoday.org
He totally deserves the award and it’s a pretty sweet deal. via the NYtimes:
“The recipients, who must be citizens or residents of the United States, join 756 who have been named fellows since 1981. Each gets $100,000 a year for five years, with no strings attached. Calling the recipients is “the best hour of the year,” Mr. Fanton said.
Most of the winners, who are singled out for their creativity and their potential for making important future contributions, are familiar primarily to experts in their own fields, although a few in the arts have reached larger audiences: for example, Alex Ross, 40, a music critic for The New Yorker and the author of a cultural history of 20th-century music, “The Rest Is Noise””
This is a really good idea. You can stream David Byrne and Brain Eno’s new album Everything that Happens Will Happen Today on the official website via a flash music player. But the genius of it is that they give you a link to embed the new album wherever you like just like a youtube video. Incredible way to get the album everywhere. And so it works:
Tonight are the Grammys. To Celebrate I’m linking to one of my fellow bloggers in the blogoshpere…her name is Grammy Sammy and she’s not afraid to blog. Notice the weight loss counter (every blog should have one, or at least current weight) and the most recent post about three muskateers. I wish my grandma had a blog, so I could tell people how much better her blog was than theirs. Grammy Sammy, the blog
