I recently recieved Monday Night Live at the Village Vanguard, the newest recording from the Vanguard Jazz Orchestra. I’ve been listening to it a lot.

I’ve become increasingly interested in this band since the beginning of college, and even more so now that I’ve seen them live. I saw the band this past St. Patrick’s day, only a week after the passing of their longtime bassist and UNT Alum Dennis Irwin.

I’d like to make another trip to New York next year, and seeing the Vanguard Orchestra again will need to happen.

I went to Ben Folds’s Myspace page and heard some pretty awful songs that were supposed to be on the new record. I later found out that he recorded nine joke versions of songs to leak on the internet intentionally.

“Hiroshima” apparently isn’t a joke song though, and I am still crossing my fingers that the album won’t be disappointing. Ben Folds hasn’t let me down before. I don’t know why I’m so skeptical now. The clips on the Rolling Stone article give a decent idea of how the record is. It seems pretty produced/electronic, so far. I guess we’ll just see.

I heard this band a few weeks ago on 89.3 The Current in Minnesota, and just picked up their self titled album, Fleet Foxes. This was the song I heard. The album is fantastic and the freshest thing I’ve heard since I can remember.

“White Winter Hymnal” by Fleet Foxes.

I am the biggest Ben Folds fan I know. He has an album coming out at the end of September. The first song that I’ve heard off of it is called “Hiroshima.” I can see the catchiness, I can see the hook, but the song just seems boring to me, like I wouldn’t care to listen to it more than a few times.  Maybe I’ll change my mind about that, maybe not. I can see myself being disappointed if the whole album sounds like this one song. My experience with Ben Folds is to immediately love almost everything he does. I guess we’ll just see.

So after my previous post, I used UNT’s Naxos streaming music hookup to listen to Mozart’s Symphony No. 40 in G Minor. I enjoyed it. Maybe what I’ll try to do is listen to one new piece of classical music a week. That seems very doable.

So, I ran across this site, kickassclassical.com. It’s a listing of the most recognizable pieces of “classical” music in pop culture and where you probably heard them. The fact that they’re so recognizable doesn’t diminish their awesomeness. Looking through this page makes me want to be more well versed in classical music (and not just the well known stuff on this page). Like, could I sing you a line of a Beethoven string quartet? At this point, my answer is no, which is terrible. I haven’t been feeling particularly inspired to write lately, and it wouldn’t hurt to get some new (old) sounds in my ears.

P.S. Monsterpiece theater

So the Freddie Hubbard show I was supposed to see at the Scat Jazz Lounge tonight has been “postponed due to illness.” This is disappointing, but probably not as disappointing as seeing sick Freddie Hubbard play.

Oso Closo, a band filled mostly with friends of mine, is scheduled to be the rock band for several productions of the Who’s Tommy this September.

Lately, I’ve been listening to a lot of the first Pat Metheny Group album. In response to this, I just purchased the album Fictionary, by Lyle Mays, Marc Johnson and Jack DeJohnette.

Also, I’m still listening to tons of Steely Dan, in anticipation of their Grand Prairie show next month.

Every so often, I come across a song that I can listen to over and over again. The smart playlists on my iTunes tell me the most played songs on in my library. Here are the 10 most played songs right now:

1. Halloween, Alaska - Drowned

2. Jackson Browne - These Days

3. Wilco - Nothing’severgonnastandinmyway(again)

4. Amy Winehouse - Tears Dry On Their Own

5. Halloween, Alaska - The Four Corners

6. The Hold Steady - Citrus

7. Ozma - Immigration Song

8. Guster - Come Downstairs and Say Hello

9. Halloween, Alaska - Call It Clear

10. Wilco - Jesus, etc.

Halloween, Alaska is one of my newfound favorite bands. They are a Minnesota group and they very much remind me of the Postal Service, but with less formulaic melodies and structures. Dave King of The Bad Plus drums for Halloween, Alaska.

Today marks the first time I have listened to Prince’s eponymous album. I’m really enjoying it. I had heard Prince’s original version of “I Feel For You,” but hadn’t heard anything else from this record.

A brief Wikipedia expedition has revealed that Prince was recorded and released at nearly the same time as Michael Jackson’s Off The Wall. The bassline in “I Wanna Be Your Lover” by Prince reminded me of that of “Off The Wall” and I subsequently checked on those facts.

Prince played most of the instruments on this album. The production is very tight, subsequently. Every so often, there is a musical curveball, which I like. The early syncopation of the main riff of “Bambi” (1, &2, 3) caught me off guard. The track as a whole is more rock than the funk/disco inspired first half of the album, which is a good change of pace.

There is a strong presence of the IV-iii-ii progression, which I am fond of and have used sometimes in my own pop music.

I will certainly be giving this album repeated listens. Minnesota music is something that I have been increasingly interested in in recent years.