Shostakovich Prelude and Fugue no. 17 in A-flat Major

I am gobsmacked and beyond delighted to find one of my favorite YouTube channels, the utterly delightful smalin, has a new video out—its first to feature not only the greatest of Soviet composers, Dmitri Shostakovich, but a piece from my absolute favorite work of his, 24 Preludes and Fugues, op 87, performed by the greatest of Soviet pianists, the brilliant Sviatoslav Richter.

Junk

I've always had something of an aversion to jazz covers of rock, since so often it (to my ears) bowdlerizes the source into EZ-listening mush, but Brad Mehldau clearly has not a lounge player's approach but one much closer to that of John Coltrane, and the results are always engaging and often extraordinary. And I'm always pleased when my tastes line up with an artist's I like, since I think this is maybe the single most gorgeous song, melodically, that Paul McCartney ever wrote. Which, you know, isn't sayin' nothin', all things considered.

In fact, if I have any quibbles with this version, it's that I'd have liked it to go on about another half hour.

Bittersweet Symphony/Waterloo Sunset

This freakin' guy.

There are some who think the secret to Brad Mehldau's greatness is that he went to high school about half a mile from where DT and I went to school, and at the same time, no less. These people are (mainly) wrong.

What they're not wrong about is that he's great. 'cuz he is great.

Racing in the Street

Bruce Springsteen's New Year's Eve show from 1980 has been legendary among his fans since...well, pretty much since he was performing it at the time. 38 songs and nearly 4 hours long, he and the E Street Band sang and performed like it was their first and last show, in terms of energy, and like James Brown was standing off-stage with a taser, in terms of quality. Although professionally recorded, the entire show's only been officially released recently, although various tracks have shown up in various places over the years—the live boxset, some compilations, charity records and such.

Picking out highlights from a show this great is easy and difficult—there are plenty to choose from, but so many, it's tempting to just say "listen to the whole damn thing." But even so, some things stand out at you. Such as the great Professor Roy Bittan's closing solo on "Racing in the Street." His piano has a curiously tinny timbre, almost like a tack piano. But that doesn't obscure—if anything, it might make it easier to hear—the brilliance of his playing here.

Bittan casually invents melody after melody in his closing solo that, any one of which could have graced a hit single in the 1970s. Seriously, listen to his phrases, almost any of them. Now imagine a singer from the late 1970s, like Jay Ferguson or Michael Martin Murphey or Andrew Gold or Dan Hill or someone like that. Can't you just hear one of them basing a song around some of those phrases? They sound like the third and fourth lines of a five line stanza, something that follows the main melody and sets up its return. And he's doing it more or less on the fly in front of nearly 18,000 people.

My Love and I

In case you were sitting there wondering, "say, what's the most gorgeous song ever?"

And now you know.

Pictures 6

You know what's uncool? To be able to play drums like this:

and then also be able to play piano like this:



C'mon, Jack. Pick a lane, man. It's not fair to everyone else.