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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Friday, Feb. 22, 2008

8 pm, 155 Dwinelle

$5 student, $10 general

A cappella is great. Knowing that you’re supporting a cause while listening to harmonized melodies? Even better.

Some highlights from the show:

Perfect Fifth
-Although normally specializing in medieval and Renaissance music, they sang a fun bit of gospel for us.

The UC Men’s and Women’s Chorale
-They joined together to make a massive interpretation of “Can’t Take My Eyes Off of You.” The meter for the verses felt a little strange and rushed, but the chorus paid off with so many singers.

Cal Jazz Choir
-sucked the audience in with a super-catchy, energetic “Don’t Mean a Thing if it Ain’t Got That Swing”

DeCadence
-Wow, Muse’s “Starlight” is actually a pretty song… when not performed with buzzing guitars and a super-nasal voice. Props to them for making it sound so lovely—who knew it was possible?

UC Men’s Octet
-As always, it was impossible to watch them without grinning and falling in love with their energetic, silly antics, especially that night’s version of “Help!”

In general, red, black and white seemed to be popular with the performers. Same with air guitar-ing and Beatles songs. But hey, a little extra “Hey Jude” or “When I’m 64” never hurt anyone.

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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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Today, the Village Voice announced the results for Pazz & Jop, the 35th rendition of their annual poll tabulated from ballots filled out by 576 music critics. If it seems too late to run a 2007 best-of list, it’s really not. Although we’re nearly at the end of the first month of the new year, I still haven’t finished mining through all of 2007’s polished gems and diamonds in the rough (not to mention the endless amounts of worthless debris that gets passed off as music).

I used to be obsessed with classifying my musical tastes in list form, my personal desert-island-top-n. Even so, I won’t be indexing my Top 10 of 2007, and not just because it’d take me until April to figure it out. Pazz & Jop, as well as Idolator’s spin-off Jackin’ Pop (right, the name’s been changed, much thanks to the commenter—Ed.), ostensibly aims to reach the critical consensus through a roll call of hundreds of established writers—the creation of the official pop canon. But at what point does the institution become arbitrary?

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Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?
Can you hear me now?

Who would ever have thought that the Verizon Buddy Holly’s debut would also introduce the phrase that best articulates the direction industry music heads towards today—into the red, the 11 on the volume knob of your Fender amp, in so few words, LOUD!!!

And I’m not talking Van Halen loud, though they no doubt polished a few eardrums in their time. No, this loud applies to artists from Nelly Furtado to Red Hot Chili Peppers. The artist no longer determines the loudness variable, the consumer (you) does, perhaps not on purpose, but when your tunes play through small computer speakers, what’s soft will play inaudible unless sound engineers increase the volume to such a degree that the soft is loud. And when what’s soft is loud, what’s loud is loud enough to fall the walls of Jericho.

“So What?” you say, “If the engineers crank up the volume, I’ll just crank it down. It’s still the same music, right?”

Wrong.

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