Listen to Arts & Entertainment writer Rajesh Srinivasan talk about Serge Gainsbourg’s Histoire de Melody Nelson on Houndbite.

Lucien Ginzburg, later and more commonly known as Serge Gainsbourg in households all around Europe, possessed an array of odd characteristics. He was a witty man who enjoyed satire and poetry. At the same time, Gainsbourg was also slovenly and perverted cad who, despite his unattractive appearance, would become France’s greatest playboy and marry one of the era’s most inarguably beautiful women, Jane Birkin. But above all this contradiction, he was a musical genius who would take Europe by storm with his deep, smoky voice, unique arrangements and controversial themes. Read the rest of this entry »

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Simon Jones, bassist for the band the Verve, revealed today in an interview that he expects the new album to be released sometime around August. He said that there is currently no name for the album but said he believes it to be the best Verve album yet. The article about the interview can be found here.

- Raj Srinivasan

Image Source: Seattle Weekly

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Some people choose to spend concerts lip-syncing, staring dreamily into the lead singer’s eyes or head-banging. However, we at the Daily Cal prefer to sit back and observe the lip-syncers, daydreamers, head-bangers, and the bands they worship. Here are those entertaining and embarrassing moments that never made it to print. Read the rest of this entry »

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We don’t consider it often, but music is really scientific. Although Paul McCartney often composed in his sleep, music is made up of many complicated elements—melody, rhythm, texture, and timbre among other things. It’s just as much about numbers as it is notes. This truth is expressed in the final scene of Amadeus when Mozart is dictating “Requiem” on his deathbed for Antonio Salieri. As you watch Mozart volley his ideas to Salieri and reach a mutual understanding of the piece with him, you acquire a good sense of how music follows certain rules and principles that allow musicians to open the doors to the rooms where their colleagues create music.

But the aspect that makes music special is the human element (yes, that’s from the DOW chemicals commercial). All art is a product of human thought, experiences, and, most importantly, feelings. And without emotion, music is just a computer program that has no function or a math equation that solves no problem. For all the utility of polyphony and poetry, music is nothing if it doesn’t move people.

It is in this realm that Neutral Milk Hotel’s In the Aeroplane Over the Sea succeeds like only the best records do. Read the rest of this entry »

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What contradicts Christmas spirit more than tomorrow’s release of the movie production of Stephen Sondheim’s musical Sweeney Todd? Unless you count Yoko Ono’s vocal performance on “Happy Christmas (War is Over),” nothing dampens the holiday mirth more than the twisted story of a homicidal barber. Nonetheless, the morbidity of Sweeney Todd has not prevented it from receiving generally positive reviews and multiple Golden Globe nominations. And now it seems that Sondheim’s relationship with film will extend beyond Sweeney Todd: the marital woes of Company and the love dilemmas of Follies may also grace movie theaters someday.
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