Month: August 2006

Italian Cinema Lounge: A tunequest within a tunequest

I knew this day would eventually come, since the tunequest made it into the "i"s many months ago.

Back in 2001, I ran across a posting on the usenets called Italian Cinema Lounge. It was 225 songs taking up 700 MB and spanning eleven and a half hours of music culled from various Italian film composers from the 60s and 70s ranging from Alberto Baldan Bembo to Walter Rizzati. Fascinated by the concept, I snagged it, naturally. And let me tell you it is some very smooth music, the kind of stuff that’s been an inspiration to modern downtempo artists and urban hipsters, but more raw, orchestral and just plain jazzy.

(think Lalo Schifrin’s Enter the Dragon score)

Despite the well-earned reverence, however, listening to all of it proved to be a daunting task, and I could never quite bring myself to dive in and tackle it. About half the selection remains unheard to this day. (the flip-side is that the songs that have been played received 4 and 5 star ratings and, thus have been played numerous repeats).

Thus a new tunequest is born: to listen to all these Italian cinema masterpieces. off i go!

The Breeders – Fortunately Gone: A Short Case of Sublime Perfection

the breeders - pod

One minute and 44 seconds worth to be precise.

And the subject of this perfection is The Breeders’ Fortunately Gone from their 1990 debut record, Pod. The song is a paragon of simplicity, with a gentle, upbeat, bobbing rhythm and seductively playful singing that doesn’t hesitate to draw you in.

My only complaint is its length. It is so perfect, yet so tantalizingly short, that I can’t help but want to hear more. So, for the one time since the tunequest began this year, I made an exception and listened to a song twice. In fact, I think I blew out a car speaker on the drive home doing just that.

It won’t help though; this song will be stuck in my head for days.

It would be impolite of me to not share such a wonderful song, so here it is in all its glory:

[audio:060815FortunatelyGone.mp3]

pod at amazon

Stravinsky’s Petrushka: Discovering Ballet

The classical bug is biting me again, so today i picked up my old habit, treating myself to an excellent ballet: Stravinsky‘s Petrushka. to be honest, I never realized how exceptional this piece of music truly is until this morning. In fact, until about a year ago, I had tended to avoid ballets all together, in favor of more abstract symphonies. But lately, I’ve discovered that ballets, specifically early-to-mid-20th century ones, seem to blend the stylistic appeal of romantic-era symphonies with the narrative function of late-20th century film scores. Though I’m sure modern film composers have been greatly inspired by their predecessor’s ballet works.

Oh, and visit The Making of a Love Triangle for more than you’d ever want to know about Petrushka.

New(ish) Velocity Girl! It’s Alright by Me

Well, not that new.

It’s from 2002/2003. but it is new to me and that is exciting. I was comfortable with the notion that the band was gone and its member had moved on to other projects and lives. Sarah has her solo project; Archie’s doing the producer thing; etc. but when researching for my previous velocity girl post, I discovered the wonderful news and it rocks my world.

There is an honest-to-goodness NEW song from the band entitled It’s Alright by Me. and it’s a free download. GO. Enjoy it!

This coincides with a report that Vgirl had reunited in 2002 to play a couple shows and were working on material for a new release. the song above very well could be the end result of those sessions, though some comments from Kelly the bassist in on this thread from april 2005 seem to suggest that there are more tracks tucked away somewhere. Unfortunately, he also suggests that any sort of new release is highly unlikely.

Still, after 10 years i’ve got some new Velocity Girl and that makes me very very happy.

Radiohead, pre-released

The opportunity was once afforded to me to acquire a copy of the infamous pre-released version of Radiohead’s Hail to the Thief. I had already become familiar with the released version of the album, so I was curious to hear the evolution from the unfinished form.

Expecting a lo-fi rough-cut, I was surprised to find that this alleged early version was rather polished. There’s only a handful of spots where I could tell the difference between the two, the most notable being Sit Down. Stand Up. Frankly, I prefer the early version of that song over the final rendition.

Velocity Girl: Anatomy of a Gutless Wonder

velocity girl anatomy of a gutless wonder

Free Listen: Anatomy of a Gutless Wonder
[audio:http://www.tunequest.org/download/VelocityGirl-AnatomyofaGutlessWonder.mp3]

Anatomy of a Gutless Wonder was one of the last songs released by Velocity Girl before the group’s break up in late 1996. It’s only available as the b-side to the 7" single Nothing from the group’s final album gilded stars and zealous hearts. I picked it up (along with the Your Smiling Face single) directly from subpop.com in my early college days (summer of ’97), when I was flush with dispensable cash. Surprisingly, a quick visit to the site reveals that the record is still available.

Despite owning a turntable and several LPs, I’ve never really been set up for vinyl–not quite portable enough. Thus, the song made its way from vinyl to cassette (and later mp3) in short order and in the 9 years since, it’s never been out of favor. I’d love to be able to make a fresh rip, but my equipment is scattered across three states. It is a crisp, dreamy gem of a ballad featuring haunting melodies and Sarah Shannon’s sweet sweet vocals.

It is among my favorite tracks in the band’s catalog and, if this is indicative of the direction Velocity Girl were moving, it disappoints me further that the group broke up because the results surely would have been fantastic.

::

For the latter part of high school, Velocity Girl was easily my favorite band. I was introduced to them back in the good ol’ days of late night MTV by either Alternative Nation or the venerable 120 minutes sometime in the spring of 1995. ¡Simpatico! must have been newly released because Sorry Again was the lead video on a night I happened to be watching in my darkened den.

I was quickly hooked, by both the song’s jangly pop flavors and, every 90s indie boy’s crush, chanteuse Sarah Shannon, making a mental note that night to remember to further investigate the band. Then, just as quickly as I was hooked, mister follow-through here forgot all about the song, video and band.

And so my love affair would have ended there, had I not been drifting through Cordova Mall some three months later. Friends and I wandered into a now-defunct record chain and did the usual bin-sifting and note comparing, since we had varied tastes in music. Finding nothing of interest after about 20 minutes, we prepared to exit the store.

simpatico

As we walked toward the front register, I noticed the colorful cover of the now playing disc. I dredged up the months-old memory of the video and began paying attention to the in-store music. I think the song that was playing was ‘labrador’ and in an instant I made the second-rashest record purchase of my life.

And it was all downhill from there. I absolutely fell in love with the record and the band, going so far as to join an email list dedicated to them, which is a really uncommon thing from me to do, and set out to acquire their previous releases. For christmas of ’95 in Pittsburgh I received Copacetic as a gift and the next day found the Sorry Again single at a local record store, something that would never happen in my hometown. The b-side to that, Marzipan remains one of my favorite songs of all time.

I kept up with the band via a small network of fan sites, including the Cyberpad (archive.org version), which stayed up, nearly unchanged for 8 and a half years after the band’s demise. So devoted I was, that I also engaged in a little bootleg tape trading of some live shows, some of my first instances of doing so

In January of ’96, I even exchanged a couple emails with Jim Spellman, Vgirl’s drummer, imploring the group to play a show in Pensacola, to which he humorously replied:

We played in florida for the first time last year and really liked it. I am afraid we had a bad prejudice against Fl before that trip. We thought it was going to
be rednecks and death metal but the showa were great. A very pleasant
surprise. W e will definitly be back. You can check our web site in
march when our new album comes ou for specific dates. [sic]

Alas, it was not to be. The Gilded Stars Tour came nowhere near Florida and the group disbanded shortly thereafter.

Even though the group parted company those many years ago, their music lives on. And as long as I have it, I will keep listening.