Hymie's Vintage Records

Here on the Hymie’s blog we’ve grumped often enough about how the movies change music once its been included, and how the movie usually wins and the song (and the artist who wrote and performed the song) usually loses. We’re talking about the dumbass Disney films that have recycled “I Got You (I Feel Good)” into a soulless routine, or movies that use “Dream Weaver” as a clumsy code for love at first sight. Even if he’s super lame, Gary Wright deserves better.

“Dream Weaver” is sort of the nightmare scenario for a serious songwriter – Gary Wright meant the song to capture an image from a Paramahansa Yogananda poem about God. It’s seminal use as bullshit shorthand for sudden infatuation was in Wayne’s World, and Wright himself re-recorded the track to suit the film. He probably needed the work. And it went on from there.

And that’s what brings us to Mozart, as the title suggests. One of his most enjoyable piano concertos is his 21st, distinguished by its marching first movement and lazy, hypnotic andante (the second movement). It was featured in a sixties Swedish film about a nineteenth century tight rope walker, Elvira Madigan. Mozart’s masterful concerto has since – nearly two hundred years after its composition – been re-named “the Elvira Madigan”.

Have you seen the film? We haven’t – Who wants to watch a sixties art film from Sweden? But do you recognize the music you hear (scroll down and select the second movement)?

Many of the most famous pianists have recorded the 21st concerto, including marquee names like Alfred Brendel, Arthur Rubenstein and Robert Casadesus. Composer/writer Stephen Hough, who performed on excellent recordings of Saint Saen’s piano concertos, made a recording on his 1997 Mozart Album. Jazz pianist Keith Jarrett has also recorded this famous concert. Honestly, this recording was chosen because it was in a box of records we were cleaning, and caught our ear after we put it on the turntable. The awesomely-named Radu Lupu has recorded less than many contemporaries, but his performance of this concerto is graceful and moving.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

1st movement Allegro maestoso

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

2nd movement Andante

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

3rd movement Allegro vivace assai

It seems extraordinary that centuries after it’s composition a piece of music could still be recycled into a new role- it is both a testament to Mozart’s genius and to the often hopelessly unoriginal nature of cinematic music. Considering his great operas, Mozart would have been a far greater film score composer than any we could imagine. It’s just sad that his 21st concerto has come to be known as the Elvira Madigan, instead of the really, really good one.

This is a rerun of a post from 2010 about mix tapes. One of the thing you’ll hear if you play the tracks is from a tape a friend gave me almost fifteen years earlier. It’s one of my favorite tapes and it’s made a few appearances here on the Hymie’s blog. My friend passed away in 2008 and the bizarre tapes he recorded for me are one of the ways he’s remained a part of my life. Recently I’ve been given the job of finding a home for his CD collection and in it are all kinds of things, including the original source for every single song on my favorite mix tape.

Also in one of the boxes was a tape I had given him.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

“Ring Ring (Ha Ha Hey) / Piles and Piles of Demo Tapes by da Miles” by De La Soul – Recorded from a mix tape

In Sunday’s Star Tribune there was an article called “Are CDs broken forever?” and in yesterday’s paper one called “Lowly cassette has a kind of rebirth.” Clearly our local rag has an analog agenda, and we at Hymie’s like it!

Cassettes sell reasonably well around here – From time to time we even have some empty space on the shelves – but we’re pricing them pretty low. One or two dollars is a reasonable price for most cassettes, and we tag very few of them higher than that. That means that we’re paying a pretty low price for them (Though still better than some chain stores that you can find around town) and to a lot of people its not worth the trip.

Lots of people still have cassette decks in their cars which must be what keeps them moving. You don’t see moping teenagers with Sony Walkmen anymore, which makes you wonder what took the place of the mix tape in today’s culture.

(Photo of inner sleeves from a random hip hop record a regular brought in last week. -Thanks Stuart.)

One of the biggest responses we’ve had on Facebook came after I mentioned that mix tapes are better than mix CDs. Everybody knows this, of course, and a lot of us slowly stopped making mixes altogether after we ran out of recipients with cassette decks. I mean, if you’re going to spend all night pouring your heart into the perfect combination of Bob Mould and Joan Jett records, what’s it all mean if she can’t actually listen to it.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

(This mysterious track came off a cassette a girlfriend gave me years ago. I’ve long lost the insert and don’t know what most of the music on the tape is. I do still play it from time to time, however.)

Somewhere out there someone’s handing a cassette to someone else, and the second someone is thinking, “What the hell am I going to do with this?” The whole thing is kind of sad, like the cassettes you made for someone you liked but never actually delivered. Maybe they’ve work themsevles into the regular car cassette rotation, but they’re not like the other tapes. Mix cassette have moods and carry baggage in a way that CDs and playlists never will.

There is a book by Thurston Moore (of Sonic Youth) called Mix Tape which includes the insert from dozens and dozens of mix tapes. They’re not all his tapes, but mostly what he got when he started asking friends about their favorites.

Its sort of a coffee table book but you’ll probably enjoy looking at it if you made and traded a lot of tapes back in the analog days.

The most instantly appealing thing about the pictures in Mix Tape is the variety of what you’d have to call the “art direction” of people’s homemade compilations. Aside from the fact that the mix tape is extraordinary in the history of popular culture because it allows the consumer to become a sort of armchair producer, Matias Viegener points out that they are “a form of American folk art.”

Our mix tapes were also essential media. The truth is a lot of us weren’t cool enough to be the first ones to hear “Rebel Girl” or Robert Fripp’s “Bicycling to Afghanistan”. Its amazing how many bands that never sold a lot of records seem to reappear throughout the tracklistings in Moore’s Mix Tape. The Modern Lovers didn’t sell a lot of records and their cult following may have been built entirely on a foundation of mix tapes. I know I’ve given many friends and girlfriends tapes with Jonathan Richaman singing some silly stuff. In fact, Sonic Youth themselves might fit into this category – The first time I heard them was on a mix tape (Best Jonathan Richman song I’ve ever had on a mix tape? “You’re Crazy for Taking the Bus”).

At the record shop we have stacks of Hymie’s tapes, some of which even have his voice introducing the songs. Many of his tapes are hot jazz, some top 40 pop records, and others include 50s rhythm and blues. A lot of the tracks on Hymie’s tapes were recorded from 78s and I can’t imagine the work involved in collecting all of the music you could hear on just one of them.

I have tapes made by people who have moved to other cities and other states and tapes made by people who have died. I have tapes that are better than any of the top 1,001 albums of all time and they are one of a kind treasures.

Some of my mix tapes have not been played in ten or twenty years and some will probably never be played again. Others see a little fast-forwarding and rewinding every year. There are songs I’d call favorites which I’ve never bought – I don’t even know which album I’d buy to find this song by The The because I’ve been listening to it on “Balden’s Rock and Roll Tape” for fifteen years.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

“This is the Night” by The The

He worked really hard to assemble that tape for me because he hated rock and roll. The one before that was entirely Japanese noise and Muppet records. After he passed away they became more than mix tapes and I wouldn’t trade any of them for the rarest LP you could bring into the shop.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

“You Burn me up I’m a Cigarette” by Robert Fripp

The only thing I can really add, I suppose, is a song by Jonathan Richman. Here’s “You’re the One For Me” and even though I have the record its been recorded off a mix tape. Enjoy.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

“You’re the Only One for Me” by Jonathan Richman