New-Music Mondays
Mondays spotlight new and recent recordings of special merit.
Month: October 2016
Hansi Hinterseer – Hände zum Himmel
(Note: I guess this will have to serve as my belated Oktoberfest post.) Hans “Hansi” Hinterseer (born 2 February 1954) is an Austrian singer, actor, entertainer, and former alpine skier. In 1973 he won the overall giant slalom contest at the 1973 Alpine Skiing World Cup. He also won the silver medal at the world championship in 1974, and participated at the 1976 Winter Olympics in Innsbruck.
Starting in 1994, Hinterseer reinvented himself as a singer in the Schlager genre. Schlager really has no exact translation in English… . It literally means “hits,” but the musical context is, not to put too fine a point on it, a backlash against the post-WWII inundation of European culture first by jazz and then by rock and roll. (Hardly the first, let alone the most, arguable assertion I have made over the past three decades!) Therefore, angst and rebellion are out, and homecoziness und romanze are in.
The above is Hansi & Co. singing and jumping around to what appears to be an inspirational song, and one must agree that the huge live audience appears, um, inspired.
Click on the link for a brief encore of what appears to be traditional Tyrolean music!
Equipment For Making Archival Digital Copies of Vinyl LP Phonorecords (Pt. 1)
Berlin the Bear staying on top of things in LP-Land. (Photo by John Marks)
Time for a new project!
Over the past few years, a new consumer-audio product category has emerged, that of phonorecord playback equipment with the added capability of outputting a digital datastream via USB connection. (I.e., a phono playback stage that also has analog-to-digital conversion and a USB digital output.) The ultimate expression of that concept is a turntable with onboard phono playback equalization and digitization. Such a turntable has both analog outputs for listening and a USB output for recording via a computer or other compatible digital device. Such a package has the advantages of low or low-ish cost, and easy setup. But its cost constraints will lead to sonic compromises, and such setups cannot accommodate pre-RIAA LP discs or 78 rpm records.
So I set myself on a quest to find a Pareto-Principle solution. This will be a four- or five-part series wherein I will discuss alternatives to USB turntables for people who want better performance, or who already have a non-USB turntable they are happy with. Along the way there will be some history lessons, and some practical advice too.
What “Pareto-Principle solution” means; some background on the challenges of storing music on analog physical media; and more, after the jump. Continue Reading →
Anita O’Day: Live at the Newport Jazz Festival 1958
Anita O’Day’s stage surname was Pig Latin for “Dough.” As in money, in that O’Day was always looking for it.
When I mentioned this factoid (factoid in the sense of true, but trivial) to my musically-astute friend, she cracked up, thinking that I meant the musical solfège syllable “Do,” as in “Do-re-mi, etc.” Well, that would have been wearing an insult as a badge of honor… . But, as one can discern from this segment from the documentary film Jazz on a Summer’s Day, O’Day had no trouble finding “Do.”
Dough, however, was another story, in that O’Day was a heroin addict. Heroin use very well might have contributed to this exuberant, bordering on manic, performance.
More, after the jump. Continue Reading →