The embarrassing Miley Cyrus Vanity Fair photo shows the value of public relations people—and why investing real money makes people more careful about what they do.
Continue reading "Miley Cyrus, Unprotected Celebrity" »
Continue reading "Former Beach Boys Settle Lawsuit" »
Continue reading "Rock and Roll Hall of Fame Honors Dave Clark Five" »
S. T. Karnick reviews It Is Time for a Love Revolution, by Lenny Kravitz
Lenny Kravitz's new album, It Is Time for a Love Revolution, is a superb listen for those that enjoy classic rock music with serious ambitions but few pretensions.
Continue reading "Lenny Kravitz's Superb Call for Revolution" »
Continue reading "Super Bowl, Miley Cyrus Rule the Weekend" »
Correspondent Mike D'Virgilio reviews the musical film Once. Or is it more than a musical?
Continue reading "An Ode to the Power of Music" »
The rock supergroup Asia can be seen as either having brought progressive rock ideas to the masses or as having bastardized the form. The real answer is probably a good deal of both.
The group, started in the early 1980s with a lineup of writer-performers who were not just stars but also were truly gifted musicians: John Wetton (vocals and bass guitar, formerly of King Crimson), Steve Howe (guitars, Yes), Geoff Downes (keyboards, the Buggles, Yes), and Carl Palmer (drums, percussion, Emerson, Lake, and Palmer). After a couple of decent albums with some big radio hits ("Heat of the Moment," "Only Time Will Tell," "Don't Cry," "The Smile Has Left Your Eyes," etc.), the group disbanded in 1985.
Continue reading "Asia Reforms, Norlander on Keyboards" »
If "Sexing Up Opera," as a Chicago-area Daily Herald article puts it, were a gimmick or detracted from the music and performance, it would be a very bad thing indeed. But the rise of several immensely talented and physically attractive and personable young performers can only be good for opera.
As the Daily Herald story reports, twenty-eighty year old soprano Danielle de Niese, a grad of the Metropolitan Opera's Young Artist program, represents the trend.
According to the Daily Herald story, she has brought not just beauty to the stage but also a great voice, a love for vocal improvisation which is just right for the Baroque-era works in which she specializes, and a talent for dance which is unmatched on the operatic stage of our time.
Continue reading "Physical Beauty in Opera" »
The Rolling Stones' recently concluded two-year concert tour grossed more than half a billion dollars, according to information sent to Billboard magazine by the group's tour producer.
It was the highest grossing music tour in history. The concerts sold a total of 4.68 million tickets.
The Tennessee-based progressive rock band Glass Hammer, led by songwriters and virtuoso instrumental performers Fred Schendel and Steve Babb, has created some of the most interesting and impressive music of the past few years, as readers of my essays on music for National Review Online and other publications know very well. Their new album, Culture of Ascent, takes the band to a new level by strengthening the emotional connection with the listener while retaining the musical intelligence and sophistication for which the band is justly celebrated.
Culture of Ascent will be released on October 23 and can be preordered here.
Continue reading "Glass Hammer's "Culture of Ascent": Brilliant Music, Powerful Emotions" »
The surviving members of the rock band Led Zeppelin will reunite to headline a concert in London, England, on November 26. The show will be in memory of the late Ahmet Ertegun, the founder of Atlantic Records, the label for which Zeppelin performed during their heyday. Ertegun died last December at age 83.
"During the Zeppelin years, Ahmet Ertegun was a major foundation of solidarity and accord," Led Zeppelin singer Robert Plant said Wednesday, according to the Associated Press. "For us he was Atlantic Records and remained a close friend and conspirator."
Original band members Plant, guitarist Jimmy Page, and bassist/keyboard player John Paul Jones will be joined on drums by Jason Bonham, son of the band's original drummer who died in 1980. After John Bonham's death, the band broke up, playing only a couple of concerts during the 1980s, although Page and Plant worked together on other projects. Hence the concert reunion will be a big event for the group's many admirers.
The journalist and novelist Mark Goldblatt has frequently gone out on a limb to criticize insalubrious aspects of today's black American culture, an activity that tends to bring anger, fear, scorn, and general cultural exile. His posture is truly a courageous one, and it is highly salutary for black Americans, who, like all of us, cannot reach their great potential unless they are held to the same high expectations as other Americans.
Hence Goldblatt's excellent National Review Online article today on Michael Vick and on Whoopi Goldberg's absurd defense of him on the TV program The View is very important indeed. Goldblatt writes,
Continue reading "Defending the Indefensible, Based on Skin Color" »
The celebrated Italian tenor Luciano Pavarotti died yesterday of pancreatic cancer at age 71. Thousands of mourners are lined up in Modena, Italy, to pay their respects.
He fully earned such admiration. Pavoratti employed his beautiful voice, superb diction, and bouyant, charismatic personality to bring to a mass audience a greater appreciation of the highest forms of vocal performance.
His life's work was an accomplishment greatly to be honored, and he surely must go into history as one of the greats at his art form.
Continue reading "Pavarotti's Achievements" »
It's a truism that the lyrics, manners, styles, and rhythms of rock musicians' offerings tend to express the joys of a rather devil-may-care, hedonistic lifestyle. Now a scientific study has confirmed what our mothers told us: you won't last long that way.
Reuters reports that rock stars do indeed die younger than the rest of us, on average:
A study of more than 1,000 mainly British and North American artists, spanning the era from Elvis Presley to rapper Eminem, found they were two to three times more likely to suffer a premature death than the general population.
Between 1956 and 2005 there were 100 deaths among the 1,064 musicians examined by researchers at the Centre for Public Health at Liverpool John Moores University.
Continue reading "Rock Stars Get Their Wish to "Die Before I Get Old": Study" »
Rolling Stones guitarist Keith Richards has written a letter demanding that two Swedish newspapers apologize to the band and its Swedish fans for publishing a very negative review of an August 3 Rolling Stones concert in Gothenberg, Sweden. The review said Richards looked "very drunk" at the performance.
Now, there's a shocker.
Continue reading "Richards Stones Reviewer" »
The mixing of genres can be interesting when it works, but when it doesn't, it's usually a disaster.
The producers of the forthcoming CBS TV primetime series, Viva Laughlin, based on the BBC series Viva Blackpool, will see if they can avoid the shoals. The series will feature mystery-suspense plots augmented with musical-theater sequences, the network has revealed. USA Today explains:
Continue reading "Another Try at Genre-Bending" »
One of the great albums of the rock and roll era was rereleased yesterday after 34 years. Boulders, by Roy Wood, is now available again, on CD.EMI has put together a remastered edition which is on sale in the UK now and will be ready for purchase in the United States on September 3, according to amazon.com. It is currently available for preorder at amazon.com.
Birmingham, England-born Roy Wood was the founder and driving force behind the classic late-1960s rock band The Move and the 1970s group the Electric Light Orchestra, which he founded with Move alumnus Jeff Lynne. Wood was the Move's main songwriter and arranger, and was the major creative force behind ELO's first and most creatively innovative album.
Continue reading "Classic Music Album "Boulders" Rereleased" »
Two stories in the news vividly encapsulate the astonishing gulf between left and right today. First, actor Sean Penn in Venezuela, where he applauded Marxist, America-hating President Hugo Chavez. AP reports:
That's bravery, all right. Penn languishes in prison to this very day, beaten brutally hour after hour, for those statements, as he would in Cuba or Venezuela.Chavez met privately with the 46-year-old actor for two hours Thursday, praising him as being "brave" for urging Americans to impeach President Bush.
Continue reading "Penn and Willis, a Study in Contrasts" »
Not all rock stars are mindless sybarites. Brian May, the superb guitarist for the hugely popular 1970's and '80s rock group Queen, is about to finish work on his Ph.D. in astrophysics.
The sixty-year-old musician-scholar suspended his studies in the early 1970s when Queen became an international success. May's guitar was as important a part of the band's sound as Mercury's voice, although the group could not survive the loss of the latter when Mercury died in 1991. May continued to record music, mostly on a variety of solo albums that didn't set the world on fire. Meanwhile, he continued work on his doctorate, and now plans to submit his thesis within a couple of weeks.
Continue reading "One Smart Rock 'n' Roller" »
Neal Morse: Sola Scriptura
I'll give this one a full review soon, and for now I'll just say it's absolutely glorious, and soli deo gloria. Neal Morse is one of the great popular music composers of our time, and this is the best work he has done since the Spock's Beard album V, which was released in the year 2000 and is one of the greatest rock albums of all time, in my view.
Continue reading "The Best Progressive Rock Albums of 2006-7" »
Our friend Carl Olsen has an amusingly pointed and insightful piece on recent music, at his home at the Ignatius Press website. I particularly like Carl's recommendations of Dream Theater, Kevin Max, Muse, and Frank Sinatra. Bach's Concerti is a fine choice in the classical section, and the mentions of Kate Bush, Charlie Peacock, and Keith Jarrett are downright laudable.
The one thing I disagree with his awarding of Best Prog Rock Album to Porcupine Tree for Deadwing—it's not a bad album at all, but there were several other much better ones released in the prog realm in the last year, in my view. See the article directly above for a list of some worthy recent releases.
All in all, however, it's a very interesting list, with some likeably eccentric categories such as Best Nordic Jazz Album. Read Carl's article here.
Country greats Ray Price, Merle Haggard, and Willie Nelson are touring in support of their new album, Last of the Breed, which will be released next Tuesday. The backing band is Asleep at the Wheel, a very talented group that has revived the Texas Swing tradition.
If this show comes around to your neck of the woods, you might do well to take it in. Dave Hoekstra of the Chicago Sun-Times reviewed the stage show recently. Here's a teaser from his review:
"Last of the Breed" could be the Rat Pack of country music: Ray Price assumes the sophisticated role of Sinatra, Merle Haggard is the playful conscience who takes a lot of pride in who he is and Willie Nelson is everyman's best buddy who knows everybody loves somebody sometime.
All three men stand tall in the Country Music Hall of Fame. . . .
Price opened up with his own 35 minute set with his own band of Cherokee Cowboys. He set the bar for vocal performance. At 81 years old Price's smooth pipes are in amazing shape, especially on ballads like "For The Good Times," "Make The World Go Away" and "Release Me." He hit his notes with clarity and integrity. Price deployed a three-piece fiddle section to set a Western Swing motif, in fact they delivered "Crazy Arms" and "Heartaches By The Number" in the same dance hall tempo.
Dressed in blue jeans, a crisp white shirt and black blazer, Price offered the evening's mission statement: "This is the music they've been trying to kill," [correctly characterizing the work of the music industry and corporate radio stations—STK] he told the crowd that included a six-month old with a red bananda (I'm not kidding). "And they're not going to get it done."
After Price's performance, there was a 15 minute intermission to reset the stage for "Last of the Breed." Ray Benson and Asleep at the Wheel opened up part two with their own set that consisted of "(Get Your Kicks on) Route 66"--with a shout out to Flagstaff---and "Miles of Miles of Texas."
But still no "Last of the Breed."Finally, Haggard strolled on stage like the eternal hipster saint. He hoisted his fiddle and took authentic delight in interacting with the twin fiddles, consisting of his own fiddle player and Jason Roberts of Asleep at the Wheel. Haggard twirled his foot and shook his ass before slicing into Bob Wills' "Take Me Back to Tulsa" and hitting the classic two-beat on "I Wonder If You Feel The Way I Do." Haggard covered the latter track on the Wheel's excellent 1993 tribute to Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys.
Haggard followed with several of his greatest hits: "Silver Wings," "Think I'll Just Stay Here and Drink" (big crowd pleaser with this crowd), and "I Take a Lot of Pride In What I Am," a '45 that used to have regular rotation in my old loft jukebox. Dean Martin also covered "Pride." When Haggard sings about things he learned in a hobo jungle, it is clear these guys are the last of a breed. Who sings about hobo jungles today?
As Hoekstra notes, Haggard "is America's voice"—or one of them, anyway. Willie Nelson then came out, and the show really took flight:
The trio then played songs from the "Last of the Breed" two-disc, 22-song CD that is out March 20 on Lost Highway. The three giants climbed new heights on Harlan Howard's 1958 honky-tonker "Pick Me Up On Your Way Down," wiith Haggard mimicking Bob Wills yelps and "I Love You So Much It Hurts" (both on the CD, produced by the empathetic Fred Foster). They followed the downbeat on the underchampioned Floyd Tillman material from the new record, most notably "I've Gotta Have My Baby Back."
You can read the rest of Hoekstra's review here. You can learn more about the CD release here.
After recounting the ghastly affair, Arroyo offers the following conclusion:
Given this one night’s collective assault on the ears, the eyes, and decency itself, is it any wonder that record sales have plummeted? If this is the best that the American recording industry has to offer the world, their future is very bleak indeed. While relatively cheap music downloads doubled last year, the industry’s bread and butter, CDs sales, continued to slide. In the year 2000, ’N Sync sold more than nine million copies of their album, No Strings Attached. This year’s bestseller, High School Musical sold a paltry 3.7 million. Big retailers like Musicland and Tower Records have called it quits for good. People will download a tune here and there, but their devotion to individual artists is slipping; their willingness to plop down 18 bucks to hear slickly packaged, homogenized drek is gone. As one record exec told a Canadian newspaper this week, “I think the fan is in control now… they have the power.” To quote those great Simpsons: “Heh, heh.”
True.
That's why most discerning consumers are turning to alternative sources and styles, as I noted in my Grammy piece last year on NRO.
It's not often that Hollywood depicts stockbrokers positively. That's only one of several nice surprises in The Pursuit of Happyness, a light drama based on a true story and starring Will Smith in a modern-day Horatio Alger tale.
Alger's popular stories were all about the value of hard work. The Pursuit of Happyness includes plenty of hard work on the part of the protagonist, but we live in an investment society today, so in this film the emphasis is on the value of the investments—of time, talent, and money—the various characters make.
The way he does so is through applying the film's central theme: investment. Smith plays Chris Gardner, a floundering medical-device salesman in early 1980s San Francisco. Gardner, heading fast toward middle age, with grey in his hair, wants to make it in life—he is pursuing happiness rigorously—but has flopped at his work and failed in his marriage. He's a decidedly poor provider, and the friction caused by the family's economically dire situation results in his wife leaving him and moving across the country.
Left alone with his five-year-old son, Gardner takes an internship at a big brokerage firm in hopes of getting that one big break.
The problem is that the internship doesn't pay a salary, and he has virtually no money at all. All he has is several hard-to-sell bone-density scanners, in which he invested all of his savings—unwisely, it turns out, as the machines aren't very good and are consequently difficult to sell.
It is clear, however, that he is an enormously intelligent individual; he simply hasn't invested his talents well. After his wife leaves, his situation becomes even worse, as her steady income as a nurse is no longer there to tide the family over the economic rough spots.
And rough spots there are indeed, as President Reagan and his team struggle to fix the economy after the depredations of Nixon, Ford, and Carter. Chris works diligently at the brokerage firm, having to do in six hours what the others have nine to do: he cannot work full days because he has to pick up his son after school and get in line at the homeless center lest he not get a room. As it happens, he and his son even have to sleep in a public restroom one night.
But Chris redoubles his efforts to sell the machines, and somehow he is now able to do so. Here too the theme is investment, as the machines Chris sells are investments in medical practices. Hence, as he spends his weekdays learning about the meaning of investment, we surmise that he is now better able to speak to the sales prospects about how the machine will pay off for them.
The film doesn't dwell on how Chris got to be in the poor situation he was in at the beginning of the story, but clearly he didn't use his gifts as well as he might have. Instead of continuing to work steadily and save a little each week, he went for the big time with the medical devices, but obviously hadn't invested enough time in research before deciding to plunge all of his family's savings into it. Otherwise, he would have known, as is revealed early in the film, that the devices are really unnecessary.
His wife has invested much in her marriage to him, but she decides to cut her losses and leave. The rest of the film will tell us whether her investment would have paid off, anc consequently whether she should have remained with him (beyond, of course, our opinions regarding divorce in general).
At the brokerage firm, only one of the twenty interns will get a job after the six-month trial, so this too might seem a bad investment. But Chris is so smart and so much more mature, motivated, and diligent than the others that one suspects he might just have a chance. Hence it's not so much a gamble as an investment—one that might not pay off, but certainly one well worth making.
His work at the brokerage firm, of course, is all about investments as well. And it's interesting how Chris makes his sales pitch: he talks exclusively about the individual being able to make the most of their resources and retire well, etc.
But most important of all to Chris is his son, Christopher, played by Smith's real-life son Jaden Smith. Despite several instances in which circumstances are conspiring to take the boy away—especially when Chris's wife leaves him—Chris won't let the boy go. He invests everything he can in him, playing little learning-games with him as they walk the streets or ride subway trains. This is an investment too, and it is an investment entirely of love.
Of course, investments don't always pay off, but as Chris learns, no one can guarantee happiness; having a chance at the pursuit of happiness is enough. And in Chris's case, it is.
Recommended.
Caitlin Moran of the Times of London asks several important questions about Christmas in the paper's December 18 issue, the most important of which is, who wrote and performed the better Christmas song, Roy Wood of Wizzard or Noddy Holder of Slade?
Slade is one of the most underrated rock bands of all time, at least in the United States. The great pub rockers brought a delightful Scottish, working-class flair to hard rock in the early to mid 1970s (and some of the worst clothing fashions of all time), and made great, fun music well into the 1980s. You've probably heard Quiet Riot's cover versions of Slade's classic songs "Cum on Feel the Noize" and "Mama Weer All Crazee Now," but Slade's originals are far superior. Slade is simply one of the fun-est rock bands ever.
And the two wrote a pair of great Christmas rock songs. Roy wrote, performed, and produced "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Every Day" (see video here), and Noddy and his band put out "Merry Christmas Everybody," which Ms. Moran describes as Noddy's attempt at "the great working-class Christmas song." Well, they're both perfectly delightful, but the point of Christmas arguments is that you have to decide. Here's what Moran has to say:
Slade v Wizzard: in the thrilling Merry Christmas Everybody, Noddy Holder intended to write the great working-class Christmas song. With its euphoric debauchery undercut with melancholy, and its Royle Family-like lyrics (“Does your granny always tell ya that the old songs are the best?/ Then she’s up and rock’n’rolling with the rest”), Merry Christmas Everybody does, to its endless credit, accurately simulate wandering round your home-town Woolie’s, drunk and whimsical on Christmas Eve, wondering whether to buy your mum a pink Ladyshave for £9.99. I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday, meanwhile, is so great that one simply goes along with Roy Wood’s assertion that it would be great if every day were Christmas Day. Rather than pausing for a minute and saying “Actually, Roy, if it were Christmas every day, the UK’s productivity rates would ensure that we were a Third World country by March, and we’d all have scoliosis from sleeping on an inflatable mattress in the spare room. And, indeed, would have noticed that the person most set to benefit from it being ‘Christmas every day’ would be someone famous mainly for having written a very big song about it being Christmas every day (ie, you).”
Winner: Slade. However much of a genius Wood is, there’s only one song that has Holder shouting “IT’S CHRIIIIIIISMUSSSSS!” Though honourable mention must be made of John and Yoko’s hilarious Happy Christmas (War Is Over), and the bit at the end where Lennon clearly can’t be bothered to write another verse of slightly pious yuletide doggerel, and he and Yoko go “ARGH ARGH ARGH ARGH” instead.
I love her description of John Lennon's song as pious and the lyrics as doggerel, though I would delete the word "slightly" and substitute something like "horrendously." But we're in basic agreement on that one, I'd say.
Getting back to happier things, however, why not compare the two contenders yourself? Here's the video for Roy's and Wizzard's "I Wish It Could Be Christmas Everyday," and here's a nice independent video of a couple of lads and their friends and rels larking about to Noddy's and Slade's "Merry Christmas Everybody!" Enjoy.
Advent is my favorite time of year, for all the conventional reasons, and Christmas music is for me an essential part of it. I listen to it as much as possible throughout the season. (I have found, alas, that this music does not work for me during other times of the year.) Unfortunately, there have not been many truly great Christmas songs composed during the past couple of decades, which means that most of the really good Christmas music is highly familiar to anyone who enjoys the airs of the season.
Given that engendering a worshipful feeling is a strong part of the appeal of Christmas music for me, the specter of boredom is of course something to be avoided at all costs. Of course, the true classics never fade. By this I refer, naturally, to the major Christmas albums of Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, and Elvis Presley. All of these are quite beautiful and moving. Their makers were incredibly skilled vocal performers, and their talents easily overcome whatever human flaws these gentlemen may have had. The spirit shines through.
Unfortunately, I have listened to these recordings so many times that they now tend to slide into the background rather than capturing my full attention. Hence, they can no longer supply a steady diet of Christmas cheer, though they remain wonderful complementary dishes.
One can, of course, cleanse the musical palate with a good many other Christmas albums of similar sorts, such as those by the Beach Boys, Nat "King" Cole, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Tony Bennett, the Glenn Miller Orchestra, the Mormon Tabernacle Choir, Mario Lanza, Harry Connick Jr., Patti Page, Oscar Peterson, Mannheim Steamroller, Amy Grant, Dwight Yoakam, and even James Brown, Spike Jones, and Lynyrd Skynyrd. As this list suggests, there is certainly a goodly amount of Christmas music for every taste, and probably an equal quantity for those with no taste whatever. As far as I can tell, in fact, I may be the only person in the country above the age of majority who has not yet released a Christmas album. This is something I hope to rectify soon.
Also enjoyable are some of the countless multi-artist collections with titles like Motown Christmas, Ultimate Christmas, Jazz Christmas, Christmas with the Thus-and-Such Brass, Blues Christmas, Reggae Christmas, Caribbean Christmas, Hawaiian Christmas, Country Christmas, Tejano Christmas, Celtic Christmas (of which there must be several hundred thousand by now), Creole Christmas, New Age Christmas, and A Very Special Christmas. Unfortunately, as with the single-artist releases, the musical quality varies considerably. Moreover, most of the songs on all of these discs are the same ones we've already heard scores of times before, with different arrangements.
As a consequence, in recent years I have gone far afield in search of good Christmas music. I have surely listened to more Medieval Christmas music than King Henry VIII did throughout his long reign, as well as classical Christmas oratorios and concerti, Gregorian chants, and Renaissance era, Elizabethan, Victorian English, Russian choral, Bulgarian folk, and Colonial American Christmas music. There is even a Jingle Dogs Christmas album, in which the familiar tunes are "sung" by a choir of canines. I have listened to it, I confess. Once. I am still recovering.
Through this great journey of exploration, I have found that what works best for me is Christmas music that retains the old melodies but brings something truly fresh to the arrangement. The 1985 release A Christmas Tree, is one of my favorites. It consists of traditional carols and hymns played on authentic nineteenth century music boxes from the collection of Rita Ford, a woman of whom I know nothing but that she has some darn good music boxes. Played at normal volume on a decent stereo, the tunes jingle along cheerily as if they were being played on a collection of miniature bells.
Another enjoyable disc of instrumental Christmas music is A Christmas Album, by the California Guitar Trio, released this year. Most of the songs included here are old standards, but the impressive virtuosity of the three guitarists carries these traditional tunes into interesting new realms. The inclusion of "Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence," written by Ryuichi Sakamoto for the film of the same name, adds a nice bit of variety, with its elegant Asian sound.
The two albums by the Trans-Siberian Orchestra also stand out for me. In Christmas Eve and Other Stories (1996) and The Christmas Attic (1998), Paul O'Neill, producer of the heavy-metal group Savatage, tells two original Christmas stories through classic songs and new compositions, with musical performances by members of Savatage and numerous guests. Combining musical arrangements varying from solo acoustic guitar to heavy pomp rock, and dramatic vocals in a variety of styles ranging from classical to gospel to Broadway to metal, each album brings the meaning of Christmas to life in the manner of a modern musical theater piece. Some moments on these discs are really quite moving.
Sounds Like Christmas, by the December People, is a similarly eccentric idea that works equally well. Performed by guitarist/singer Robert Berry and numerous guests from classic and modern progressive rock bands, Sounds Like Christmas presents traditional Christmas songs such as "We Three Kings" and "Angels We Have Heard on High" in arrangements recreating the styles of classic prog groups such as Yes, Genesis, Pink Floyd, Kansas, King Crimson, and Emerson, Lake, and Palmer. The musical impersonations are spot-on (although most of the vocalists did not try to mimic their predecessors). Some of the musical allusions, such as the David Gilmour-style guitar line in "Silent Night" and the manic King Crimson-style instrumental break in "The First Noel," are downright comical in their accuracy. Producer Berry's successful execution of the concept makes for a good deal of musical fun while giving the listener serious songs to keep the Christmas spirit flowing.
The recently released A Christmas Heirloom, by the New Blizzard Symphony, has a similarly refreshing effect. The group, a musically eclectic band from Cleveland, performs original compositions by keyboardist Jim Bossard, which in itself solves the over-familiarity problem admirably. The songs are musically interesting, and the lyrics, though by no means poetic, evoke the season effectively. The arrangements are quite interesting, combining strong rhythmic foundations with the complexity of the progressive rock, which is the group's specialty. The vocals are quite appealing, especially guest singer Debbie West's performance on "Offerings," which has a strange, alluring melody line, and Joanne Uniatowski's sweet soprano on the sparsely arranged "Heirloom." This is a CD I will surely listen to many times. Highly recommended.
Thanks to musicians such as these, "that glorious song of old" is new again.
This article appeared on National Review Online on December 21, 2002, and is reprinted with permission.
Follow-up note:
A third Trans-Siberian Orchestra Christmas album, The Lost Christmas Eve, was released in 2004. It, too, is well worth having.
Cadillac has a new commercial in which a group of young men in a Caddy discuss the great progressive rock group Yes. One of the guys is playing "Wonderous Stories" in the car through his Ipod, and the others express their doubts that this is cool: "Who listens to Yes?" one asks.
The Yes fan replies, "Lots of people listen to Yes." A bearded guy wearing sunglasses in the back seat says, "Everybody listens to Yes, huh?", oozing skepticism.
They decide to ask two attractive young women whom they see near the road. The young ladies reply, "Yeah, it's classic rock," and look at the young men as if the question were entirely stupid.
So there you have it. Everybody listens to Yes.
It's an interesting commercial in showing how people use pop culture to create their own little societies. Some things, however, transcend fashion, and I would agree with the implication that Yes is one of them. Find our more about Yes here and