Scott Stilson


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Just listened to: The State Of The Tenor: Live At The Village Vanguard, Vol. 2 (1985) by Joe Henderson. Heavy saxophone improvisation served over a delicious bed of bass and drums. Are there key signatures? Who cares! Free your mind. Come for the improv sax tremolos, growls, and melodic flights. Stay for the bassist.

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Just listened to: Puts: The Hours (2024) by Kevin Puts, Yannick Nézet-Séguin, The Metropolitan Opera, Renee Fleming, Joyce DiDonato, Kelli O’Hara, and the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra. I don’t know opera, so I don’t know what to say. But as a cap for all the emotional and musical color and drama that comes before, that final trio is remarkable.

Won-won-won-wonderful, even.

As a lighter aside, it is hilarious to hear Renee Fleming sing, “Maybe I should join a choir.” Yeah.

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Just listened to: Alive in the Wilderness (2020) by Endless Field. New-age, occasionally jazzish, occasionally groovy acoustic guitar-and-bass record made outdoors in Utah using a solar-powered recording rig. Ambient if you want it to be. A fascinating, short write-up on the making of the album is available on the Bandcamp page.

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Just listened to: False Lankum (2023) by Lankum. Irish folksters whelming their traditional ballads with walls of dark sound. They start off most tracks playing, singing, and often harmonizing rawly and beautifully. (The color of the harmonies sometimes gives gives a clue of what’s to come.) Then they keep singing while they bury the songs in mountains of dark, wrenching sonic peat harvested from the banks of the five rivers of Hades. They do it often and consistently enough to call it a schtick, but to call it that is to undersell its power. I can’t recommend the whole without reservation because there’s sometimes too much noise for my taste. However, the album deserves the raves it has received, as well as a good single listen from you and a place on your Halloween playlists. As for me, I’m sure as hell going to dig into their back catalog.

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🎧 🎵 The Monkees (1966) by The Monkees: Sunshine, melodies, Micky Dolenz’ voice, energetic session musicians, contemporary Beatles imitation, and a heap of goofballism. One of several album-length reasons I count 1966 as my one favorite years in pop.

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🎧 🎵 The Band (1969) by The Band: If rock music had emerged in the 19th century instead of the 20th. Rootsy dad-rock of the first order, always loose yet somehow always tight, featuring three different lead vocalists—always a plus in my book—as part of a rock quintet who is also on the record playing fiddle, mandolin, accordion, trombone, tuba, various saxophones, melodica, and slide trumpet.

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🎧 🎵 slutte og byne (2020) by Valkyrien Allstars: Generously arranged Norwegian prog folk rock fronted by a winsomely simple-toned, frequently double-tracked alto named Tuva. Winner of a Norwegian Grammy Award in 2020. My favorite musical find during our family time in Norway. Also my most recent CD acquisition.

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🎧 🎵 The Score (1996) by Fugees: The beats, the rhymes, the flow, and her singing (sometimes in harmony with herself). A hip-hop feast.

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🎧 🎵 Ram (1971) by Paul and Linda McCartney.

An oddball, trifling McCartney album I enjoy front to back. (One of only two.) Proof that music need not be deep to be good. The most Beatlesy of all their solo albums, full of fun melodies, interesting chord progressions, charmingly goofy singing, and production that’s generous without ever falling into schmaltz. It’s fun to picture Paul enjoying cutting records with his wife! (And I’ll listen to Linda over Yoko any day.) The album is not the headwaters of indie pop, as has been claimed; that’s the Beach Boys’ two 1967 albums. But it is a very good early exemplar. The only criticism I’ll brook is that it may come across at times a tinch too self-consciously mannered.

As I age, I find I’m less of a Lennon guy and more of a McCartney guy. Is that progress? Is that common?

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🎧 🎵 I’m glad I kept my CD copy of Superchic[k]’s Karaoke Superstars. Cute, catchy, honest, lightly theistic punk-pop whose lead vocalist was clearly in her early twenties when she wrote it but was nevertheless equipped with the kind of wisdom that twenty-somethings need.

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🎧 🎵 I happened across a CD copy of local bluegrass stalwarts Tussey Mountain Moonshiners’ 2016 album SHINE last year at the AAUW used book sale. It cost me a dollar. It’s (more than) good enough to make me feel as if I have stolen from them.

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On having “enough” time to write songs:

One of the main ways we cheat ourselves out of creating is the widely held belief that we need the right amount of time to make something of value—to make something worthwhile. We often resist a moment of inspiration because we’re aware of a limited time window that might interrupt the flow and therefore think, “It’s not even worth it to get started because I know I won’t be able to finish it.”

— Jeff Tweedy • How to Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back (2020)

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On just creating, damnit:

But all the time spent creating, if I’m in the right frame of mind, is not really so much about “Is this good or bad?” There’s just a lot of joy in it, in having created something at all. I don’t feel as bad about other things. I don’t necessarily feel high, or overly joyed. I just feel like, “Oh, I’m not wasting my time.”

— Jeff Tweedy • How to Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back (2020)

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On writing without thinking about what you’re writing about:

Creating something out of nothing is the important part. And maybe, like me, you’ll discover that you’re often better off learning how to write without much concern for what you’re writing about. And through that process, you’ll discover what is on your mind. “Jesus, Etc.” was never about anything specific to me until I sang it live for the first time and learned how sincerely it conveyed my wish for a better sense of unity with my extremely devout Christian neighbors. So do some free writing. Write without thinking. I’m sure there will be some things that will surprise you, along with some nonsense.

— Jeff Tweedy • How to Write One Song: Loving the Things We Create and How They Love Us Back (2020)

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Just listened to: The Goat Rodeo Sessions (2011) by Stuart Duncan, Yo-Yo Ma, Edgar Meyer & Chris Thile. A chamber-grass masterclass. 🎧 🎵

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If Spotify “DJ” interrupts my listening one more time, I will switch to Apple Music.

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“Orange Crush” (1988) sounds like R.E.M. had been listening to a lot of U2.

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I do confess my having daydreamed today about fronting a U2 and Britpop cover band with college friends Aaron G., Jason, Aaron R., and Adam R., with Josh A. joining for acoustic numbers.

Ironically, and with apologies to Josh, it was late U2 (“Red Flag Day”) that first inspired the daydream. Also, friend of friend Chris F. was there, too, but I wasn’t sure how to fit in so many guitarists.

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Scott: What needs to happen for a bill to become law?
Éa: Oh, I know! The bill needs to sing a song! 🎵

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Man, that piccolo really makes your biceps pop!

— Sullivan

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Oh, that? That’s just smooth jazz. Nothing to worry about.

— Sullivan, replying to an inquiry over his headset while playing Minecraft one night

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Even though my feet ache, I’m still gonna rock and shake!

— Éa, in the middle of a marathon of energetic dancing at Megan’s wedding

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I feel better dancing when I’m on a precarious rock wall.

— Sullivan, explaining why he was dancing all by himself on a rock wall outside the tent at Megan’s wedding

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My favorite thing is to make that piano reveberate [sic] like an explosive bāss violin.

— Sullivan, pronouncing “bass” like the fish, explaining what he loves about playing his new instrument

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Finding Christian music I like is harder than finding non-Christian music I like because the lyrics matter more: You not only have to find music you like, you also have to find a theological bent you agree with. And you’re working with a smaller subset of the populations, so the pickings are slimmer.