At the End of the Line

Years ago on a long-defunct website, I argued (like many others) that part of what's made the Beatles endure is the malleability of their myth. The band members were so easy to identify with, and their music worked so well, that you could read almost anything you wanted into them. In biographical fact, when Abbey Road was being mastered in 1969, "Her Majesty" was included at the end accidentally, when it was placed at the end of the reel and forgotten about after it couldn't be satisfactorily worked into the closing medley. It was discovered before release, and it was consciously kept in place as a joke. It wasn't placed there to invent the hidden album track, and it wasn't included as a knowingly self-deflating wink to the pristine career-ender Abbey Road would otherwise have been. But such was the mystique of the Beatles that if you wanted to believe either alternate history, you could -- Babe Ruth called his shot, George Washington felled the cherry tree, and the Beatles quietly informed a generation that it was OK to move on.

The Beatles reuniting for the Anthology project in 1994 owed much to timing. Some of the contributing factors were clear publicly. Animosity had faded (but not resolved) in the decades since the divorce and John Lennon's death; the teenagers who'd grown up with the band were now adults with nostalgia for their youth and dispensable income; George Harrison's work with Jeff Lynne had reinvigorated his career and provided the project with a suitable producer; and technology's advancement meant that a posthumous project was technically realistic for the first time. Also important, if less overtly clear, was a commercial need to revive the Beatles' brand in public consciousness, and the Anthology kicked off a second career for the band which has, in general, continued apace since. Like most Beatle projects from Sgt. Pepper on, the musicians might have enjoyed it more had it been more contained in scope. Instead, Anthology ultimately included an 11 hour TV series, a coffee table retrospective book, 3 archival double albums, and plans for 3 posthumous singles to open them. By most metrics, the first two singles were successes, charting well and receiving largely positive reviews. Work on the songs was complicated by the audio quality of the Lennon home demos they were based around, but "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" were completed uneventfully, and are held in favorable (if somewhat middling) estimation by most contemporary Beatle fans.

Two other Lennon demos, "Now and Then" and "Grow Old with Me," were provided by Yoko Ono to the band as contenders for a third and final posthumous single. With the latter having already been released as-is a decade prior, focus turned to "Now and Then," though this ultimately proved brief. Identified issues included more severe versions of the technical problems already encountered on "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love," as well as a song sketch less realized in its demo form than the others had been. Cursory attempts at a backing track were made, including McCartney bass, Harrison guitar, and an automated drum track. Ultimately, the song was abandoned after likely an afternoon. In retrospect, this decision was pinned to dissatisfaction from George Harrison, certainly with the hissy, wobbly tape recording, but possibly also with the song itself. Perhaps McCartney was tired of pushing his bandmates to do things they'd just as gladly give up on, or was wary of pushing them away again; maybe he himself had reservations this time about the project, too, or was just ready to go home. Regardless of the rationale, Anthology 3 arrived to stores in October 1996 conspicuously missing a leadoff single, which in spite of multiple revisitations over the ensuing decades, threatened never to arrive.

The Peter Jackson Get Back project is being credited for jumpstarting the technical leaps necessary to bring "Now and Then" to fruition nearly 50 years later. However, the roots likely stretch back as far as 2006, with the LOVE remix album, and especially to the Live at the Hollywood Bowl rerelease in 2016. The latter represented a major sonic facelift, diminishing the intensity of that album's infamous crowd screams and refocusing the recording on the music in a manner which would previously have seemed impossible.  It can be tempting, then, to view 2023's "Now and Then" as an inevitability, a project which was bound to materialize as soon as it was possible to cinch the final remaining loop. Why wouldn't they?

On the other hand, though, these are the same Ringo and Paul who for the more than 20 years that they've been the surviving Beatles have, with few exceptions, consciously avoided collaboration. Even as the Beatles have gone all-in on revitalizations of their back catalog, Ringo and Paul have steered clear of even a Page and Plant-style tour, let alone second-iteration albums along the lines of Queen or the Who. With that in mind, then, why would they?

Listening to "Now and Then" as released this year makes it more or less impossible to appreciate the technical concerns that (at face value) held it up for so long. John Lennon's vocals sound at least as clear as they did on "Real Love," if not more so, with no hiss or whine to announce the performance's archival origins. Paul and Ringo's instrumental work sounds just about as good as more complete attempts they might have made in 1994 likely would have. There is little to distinguish George's 1994 guitarwork from the supplemental parts Paul recorded with an attempt to emulate his playing. This includes the solo, which has received criticism in some circles for its understatement, but plays as well as George's own (also unfairly maligned) brief solo on "All You Need Is Love." The string arrangement is perhaps somewhat less understated, but still tasteful, with Giles Martin continuing to prove a capable steward of the band's legacy.

None of that is to say that this is a conventional Beatles recording, though, not even to the extent that the other Anthology singles were. The limitations of the song structure are clear. "Real Love" was essentially finished as it was; "Free as a Bird" required "We Can Work It Out"-style buttressing to complete, but likewise, was otherwise more or less able to stand alone. "Now and Then" is essentially a refrain, a chorus, and two functionally identical verses with a wordless bridge inserted in between. This isn't inherently a problem, but limitations in text do entail more emphasis placed on subtext. What sets "Now and Then" apart from its colleagues most are the vocals, which place the audibly aged Paul (and to a lesser extent, Ringo) up alongside John, frozen as he sounded in 1977. In 1994, the surviving Beatles' vocal timbres had changed, but it was nowhere near so glaring then as it is now that the singers are no longer contemporaries. Once again, in biographical fact, the Beatles did not intentionally hold back "Now and Then," their most bittersweet and nostalgic posthumous single, to complete only once the voices of a 37-year-old John and an 80-year-old Paul were disparate-sounding enough to instantly amplify existing themes of longing and loss. Once again, though, it's hard to escape the notion that if you wanted to believe it, you could.

"Now and Then" is currently tracking in the direction of topping the charts in both the US and UK, propelled among other things by a marketing campaign emphasizing that this is, will be, has to be, the "last Beatles song." While it's difficult to conceive that the executors of the band will never again put out previously commercially unreleased music -- "Carnival of Light" is still in the ether, after all, and Peter Jackson was just talking about the hundreds of hours of Get Back recordings that never made it past bootlegs -- it does seem unlikely that archival Beatle material and contemporary recordings of surviving band members will ever be merged again in quite this way. And with that in mind, it's hard to imagine that this project, through roadblocks, time, and all, could have turned out any better than it did. Those who want to should be able to consider this the "final word" from the Beatles, and if you so choose, it's a touching and fitting note to go out on. Those who don't can stop looking either at the end of the core catalog, or at the (presumably many) reissues yet to come, or anywhere else in between. And once again, if you're inclined to read something into the Beatles, whatever evidence you may need is likely already waiting for you.

Anniversary Editions Are Good at Arriving at the Right Time

Album reissues are at once a cash cow and tricky business for record labels. In an industry with ever-fading physical media sales, anniversary edition releases are not only a chance for companies to resell old property as new, but a chance to take advantage of already-beloved material to sell elaborate, expensive versions to waiting collectors. The stakes are high, though. With late 60s/early 70s classic rock albums reaching their 50th anniversaries, and said collectors often already owning multiple iterations of the album for sale, any reissue needs to fit the scale of the occasion, or risk falling flat and leaving unsold stock in unvisited retail outlets. Once the vaults have been emptied of suitable rehearsals/alternate cuts and everything has been remastered, it leaves the question of what else to do to justify another rerelease. For entries in the extended catalog of Beatle-related albums, this has recently involved not just remastering, but remixing the music. These, too, are murky waters. For every fan eager to hear the classics reinterpreted, another is concerned about the "sanctity" of the original, and there's typically no way to please everyone.

All Things Must Pass is an important and surprising album in nearly every way. On its release, it represented an explosion of material from an underrecognized talent, who was nonetheless famous worldwide. It arrived at a time when even double albums remained unusual in popular music, to say nothing of triple albums -- of which it was not the first, but did the most to set the stage for others to come. Then there are the tonal contradictions of the music itself. Lyrically, the album represents George Harrison going all in on the religious themes which had been ascendant in his songs since 1967. In keeping with his earnest Hindu devotion and bitter experience with the breakup of the Beatles, this often took the form of rejecting material matters in pursuit of spiritual fulfillment. Musically, however, the album was bombastic, with an outsized Phil Spector production that Harrison would later come to at least partially regret. Not for nothing, the minimalist themes also stood in conflict with the inclusion of a third LP of jams which, for all of their quality of musicianship and historical import, have often been dismissed as superfluous.

If the lyrical content of All Things Must Pass tended towards the ascetic and its music towards the indulgent, the album's packaging borrowed from elements of both without fully embracing either. Certainly, the very presence of a case and inclusion of 3 LPs and a full-size poster would have made a grand impression in 1970. Even so, the black box and small gold lettering would have evoked the visual vocabulary of a classical music album for collectors of the time, while the front cover's grayscale palate belied the wonderful eccentricity of the photo itself. While the pastoral theme was representative of Harrison and where his true interests lay in 1970, the overall package evoked the contradictions of the album it contained, and defined a good portion of its lasting appeal.

When George Harrison revisited All Things Must Pass in 2001 for its 30th anniversary, he publicly voiced disappointment in the album's production. Plans to remix the album were reportedly rebuffed by EMI, and Harrison opted instead to include a handful of demos and a rerecording of "My Sweet Lord" which was said to better reflect his initial conception of the song. Outside of sequencing, the album came out sounding much as it had 30 years earlier. The packaging, however, was substantially altered. The original cover was first garishly colorized, then digitally altered inside the case to reflect the artist's concerns about humanity's tendency to blight its environment. Predictably, these changes, however insubstantial, were met with mixed reception. "My Sweet Lord (2000)" was described as pretty indistinguishable from the original, except perhaps to demonstrate how much Harrison's voice had weakened a year prior to his death. No dramatic changes were made to the packaging thematically outside of the cover art, and when All Things Must Pass was quietly repressed on vinyl in 2010, the 40th anniversary version's packaging had reverted to that of the original.

In keeping with the 50th anniversary Beatles releases of the past 4 years, the most recent edition of All Things Must Pass fulfills all the expected criteria. Bonus tracks are abundant and include enlightening variations on the final album cuts alongside tracks that were never completed or featured on an album. The new stereo mixes by Paul Hicks offer enough changes to provide fresh looks at the songs without changing their basic identities; they more than likely won't please every purist, but are also not substantially enough better remastered to warrant those purists feeling dissatisfied with the other versions already available. For the exceptionally dedicated (or the idly rich), there is a positively decadent $1000 "Uber Deluxe" set housed in a wooden crate, with extras including replica figurines of George and his gnome friends from the cover. Tastefully, this version does not include any music unavailable on other, substantially cheaper variations. For anyone not purchasing the treasure chest, the album's packaging is designed to evoke the original release, from color schemes to a reproduction of the original pack-in poster.

Finally, there's the iconic cover. Previous Beatle releases had opted to mostly preserve the essences of the original releases. Wisely, the iconic covers of Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band and Abbey Road were left almost entirely unaltered [1]; the White Album retains the essence of the original's starkness, but superimposes grayscale versions of the bandmembers portraits on the front. When George Harrison opted to redo the 30th anniversary cover - and indeed, when he was denied the chance to release a reconfiugured version of the album itself - it was, on a small scale, in line with the late career revisionism that had landed George Lucas in hot water with Star Wars nerds only years earlier. These changes are not inherently a problem. In some cases, they may, as the artists will usually claim, faithfully represent their original visions; if nothing else, they certainly serve as a valuable source of insight into the mindset and creative process of those artists at the time they get to revisit their old work. The issue becomes thornier when that artist is dead. In Harrison's case, the mantle has been taken up by his son Dhani, who not only bears a striking physical and aural resemblance to his late father, but was also already closely involved in his musical work before his death. Still, while it's hard to dispute that Dhani Harrison may be the best suited person to make artistic decisions in his father's absence, it's also hard to see one of George Harrison's properties altered in any substantial way without at least passively considering what he might have thought about it had he been around. Sensibly, following George's death, his estate has shied away from altering the album's iconography as much as he opted to 20 years prior. The 2021 edition of All Things Must Pass adds a "50th Anniversary" subtitle to the cover in the stately Abbott Old Style typeface used for the original. The only other alteration is the understated but striking decision to colorize the font and Friar Park treeline in a lush green. 

Memories of George Harrison shared by those who knew him since his death in 2001 depict a man who was ambivalent about his time wavering in and out of the spotlight, and at his happiest in quiet, natural settings. He famously wrote "Here Comes the Sun" while playing hooky from a meeting with the Beatles' accountants, wandering around Eric Clapton's garden with an acoustic guitar. The complete package of the 50th Anniversary set strikes a difficult balance between allowing the album to remain itself while asserting its context within Harrison's life as a whole. It would have been an easy choice to make, especially in light of the 30th anniversary redo which never was, to attempt a stripped down version of All Things Must Pass (a la Double Fantasy) and present it as the definitive cut. The gentle remix and bonus tracks instead highlight a 27-year-old Harrison who was both relieved to have left the Beatles for (literally) greener pastures, and also eager to make a grand statement which he only in retrospect might have preferred to tone down. Similarly, the Harrison estate refrained from what could have been a defensible decision to artificially transport George from the photograph into a setting which more overtly emphasized his treasured relationship with nature. Instead, with a subtle tint, they pointed out that it had been there, in plain sight, all along.

Animal Crossing: New Horizons OST Tracklist

Though Animal Crossing: New Horizons failed to win any major Game of the Year awards (in the US) after its bigger-than-expected release, it was the definitive game of 2020, providing a chance at social connection and a retreat to normalcy to gamers worldwide during the COVID-19 pandemic. The game features a wonderful, expansive soundtrack overseen by sound director and longtime Nintendo composer Kazumi Totaka. Though complete YouTube playlists of game music were available to stream within days of the game's release, an official soundtrack release didn't take place until an elaborate, Japanese-exclusive, 7-disc box set arrived in June 2021. Given the absence of an official American release (so far), there is no official English-language tracklist or album cover available online. The album cover to the right is a composite made from the existing Japanese box, with icons slightly juggled and the English-language logo superimposed. (Unedited images of the Japanese-language cover are available elsewhere.) Below is a translated tracklist for all 7 discs, including the 4 disc "BGM" set of background music and the 3 disc "Instrumental" set of K.K. Slider songs. With any luck, Nintendo will someday opt to officially release the soundtrack in the West, at least so that my translating effort can be graded for fidelity.  

Disc 1

1. Opening Theme
2. 12 am (Clear)
3. 1 am (Clear)
4. 2 am (Clear)
5. 3 am (Clear)
6. 4 am (Clear)
7. 5 am (Clear)
8. 6 am (Clear)
9. 7 am (Clear)
10. 8 am (Clear)
11. 9 am (Clear)
12. 10 am (Clear)
13. 11 am (Clear)
14. 12 pm (Clear)
15. 1 pm (Clear)
16. 2 pm (Clear)
17. 3 pm (Clear)
18. 4 pm (Clear)
19. 5 pm (Clear)
20. 6 pm (Clear)
21. 7 pm (Clear)
22. 8 pm (Clear)
23. 9 pm (Clear)
24. 10 pm (Clear)
25. 11 pm (Clear)

Disc 2

1. 12 am (Rain)
2. 1 am (Rain)
3. 2 am (Rain)
4. 3 am (Rain)
5. 4 am (Rain)
6. 5 am (Rain)
7. 6 am (Rain)
8. 7 am (Rain)
9. 8 am (Rain)
10. 9 am (Rain)
11. 10 am (Rain)
12. 11 am (Rain)
13. 12 pm (Rain)
14. 1 pm (Rain)
15. 2 pm (Rain)
16. 3 pm (Rain)
17. 4 pm (Rain)
18. 5 pm (Rain)
19. 6 pm (Rain)
20. 7 pm (Rain)
21. 8 pm (Rain)
22. 9 pm (Rain)
23. 10 pm (Rain)
24. 11 pm (Rain)
25. 12 am (Snow)
26. 1 am (Snow)
27. 2 am (Snow)
28. 3 am (Snow)
29. 4 am (Snow)
30. 5 am (Snow)
31. 6 am (Snow)
32. 7 am (Snow)
33. 8 am (Snow)
34. 9 am (Snow)
35. 10 am (Snow)
36. 11 am (Snow)
37. 12 pm (Snow)
38. 1 pm (Snow)
39. 2 pm (Snow)
40. 3 pm (Snow)
41. 4 pm (Snow)
42. 5 pm (Snow)
43. 6 pm (Snow)
44. 7 pm (Snow)
45. 8 pm (Snow)
46. 9 pm (Snow)
47. 10 pm (Snow)
48. 11 pm (Snow)

Disc 3

1. Resident Services (Tent)
2. Resident Services
3. Blathers' Tent
4. Museum (Entrance)
5. Museum (Fish Exhibit)
6. Museum (Insect Exhibit)
7. Museum (Fossil Exhibit)
8. Museum (Art Exhibit)
9. Airport Lobby (Speaker)
10. Airport Lobby
11. Able Sisters
12. Nook's Cranny
13. Nook's Cranny (Upgraded)
14. Nook's Cranny (Closing)
15. Jolly Redd's Treasure Trawler
16. Dreaming
17. Island Life Orientation 1
18. Island Life Orientation 2
19. Island Life Orientation 3
20. Island Life Orientation 4 (Campfire Evening)
21. Island Life Orientation 5 (Normal)
22. Island Life Orientation 5 (Rain)
23. Island Life Orientation 5 (Snow)
24. Island Life Orientation 6 (Normal)
25. Island Life Orientation 6 (Rain)
26. Island Life Orientation 6 (Snow)
27. Island Life Orientation 7 (Normal)
28. Island Life Orientation 7 (Rain)
29. Island Life Orientation 7 (Snow)
30. Deserted Island Day (Normal)
31. Deserted Island Day (Rain)
32. Deserted Island Day (Snow)
33. Deserted Island Night (Normal)
34. Deserted Island Night (Rain)
35. Deserted Island Night (Snow)

Disc 4

1. Tournament (In Progress)
2. Tournament (Participating)
3. Easter
4. Wedding Season (Reese and Cyrus)
5. Wedding Season (Party)
6. Fireworks Display
7. Halloween
8. Thanksgiving Day
9. Thanksgiving Day (Cooking Start)
10. Thanksgiving Day (Cooking Complete)
11. Christmas (Snow)
12. Christmas (Clear)
13. New Year's Eve Countdown (11 pm)
14. New Year's Eve Countdown (11:30 pm)
15. New Year's Eve Countdown (11:50 pm)
16. New Year's Eve Countdown (11:55 pm)
17. Happy New Year
18. New Year (12 am)
19. New Year (2 am)
20. New Year's Day
21. Festivale
22. Festivale Dance (Normal)
23. Festivale Dance (Complete)
24. Deserted Island Getaway Package Check-In Counter
25. K.K. Slider Dream
26. Island Broadcasting (Tom Nook)
27. Island Broadcasting (Isabelle)
28. Facility Completion Ceremony
29. Travel (DAL Fanfare)
30. Travel (In-Flight Broadcast)
31. Travel (Waiting)
32. Travel (Welcome)
33. Travel (Seeing Off)
34. ! Rescue Service
35. Invite with Amiibo
36. Chased by Wasps
37. Stung by Wasps
38. Stung by Scorpion/Tarantula
39. Get Fanfare
40. Complete Fanfare
41. Radio Jingle (Morning 1)
42. Radio Jingle (Morning 2)
43. Radio Jingle (Morning 3)
44. Radio Jingle (Morning 4)
45. Radio Jingle (Morning 5)
46. Radio Jingle (Morning 6)
47. Radio Jingle (Afternoon 1)
48. Radio Jingle (Afternoon 2)
49. Radio Jingle (Afternoon 3)
50. Radio Jingle (Afternoon 4)
51. Radio Jingle (Afternoon 5)
52. Radio Jingle (Afternoon 6)
53. Radio Jingle (Evening 1)
54. Radio Jingle (Evening 2)
55. Radio Jingle (Evening 3)
56. Radio Jingle (Evening 4)
57. Radio Jingle (Evening 5)
58. Radio Jingle (Evening 6)
59. Radio Jingle (Easter)
60. Radio Jingle (Halloween)
61. Radio Jingle (Thanksgiving Day)
62. Radio Jingle (Christmas)
63. Radio Jingle (Countdown)
64. Radio Jingle (Festivale)
65. Opening Theme (Remote Performance Version)

Disc 5

1. K.K. Cruisin
2. Lucky K.K.
3. Mountain Song
4. Aloha K.K.
5. Hypno K.K.
6. Surfin' K.K.
7. K.K. Stroll
8. Two Days Ago
9. Only Me
10. Pondering
11. K.K. Birthday
12. Bubblegum K.K.
13. K.K. Safari
14. K.K. Western
15. K.K. Lament
16. K.K. Rally
17. K.K. Marathon
18. K.K. Calypso
19. K.K. Country
20. K.K. Groove
21. Agent K.K.
22. Soulful K.K.
23. K.K. Salsa
24. K.K. Samba
25. K.K. Chorale
26. K.K. Jazz
27. K.K. Jongara
28. K.K. Swing
29. K.K. Ska
30. Mr. K.K.
31. K.K. Soul
32. K.K. Song

Disc 6

1. King K.K.
2. K.K. Tango
3. Imperial K.K.
4. K.K. Dixie
5. K.K. Disco
6. K.K. Synth
7. K.K. Étude
8. K.K. Sonata
9. K.K. Milonga
10. Rockin' K.K.
11. K.K. House
12. K.K. Ballad
13. Café K.K.
14. K.K. Adventure
15. K.K. Parade
16. K.K. Rockabilly
17. The K. Funk
18. K.K. Fusion
19. K.K. Flamenco
20. K.K. Blues
21. K.K. Bossa
22. K.K. Moody
23. K.K. March
24. K.K. Oasis
25. K.K. Aria
26. K.K. Mambo
27. K.K. Folk
28. K.K. Metal
29. K.K. Love Song
30. K.K. Lullaby
31. K.K. Reggae
32. K.K. Rock

Disc 7

1. K.K. Bazaar
2. K.K. Waltz
3. K.K. Steppe
4. K.K. Dirge
5. Farewell
6. Comrade K.K.
7. K.K. Mariachi
8. I Love You
9. K.K. Technopop
10. K.K. Island
11. Animal City
12. Drivin'
13. K.K. D&B
14. K.K. Casbah
15. Neapolitan
16. To the Edge
17. Steep Hill
18. K.K. Gumbo
19. K.K. Faire
20. Spring Blossoms
21. Marine Song 2001
22. Stale Cupcakes
23. K.K. Condor
24. Wandering
25. My Place
26. Space K.K.
27. Welcome Horizons
28. Forest Life
29. DJ K.K.
30. Go K.K. Rider
31. K.K. Ragtime

Kobe Bryant, 1978-2020

One of the sad realities of Warriors fandom before the team's improbable rise was two decades of sharing a division with Kobe Bryant. At regularly-scheduled intervals, the Lakers would arrive in town for what felt predetermined: 30-50 points from Kobe and another undistinguished loss. And while "predetermined" made it sound like fate, the reality was probably worse: Kobe Bryant, deliberate and inevitable.

Inevitability was the hallmark of Kobe's career. The sense in watching him was that every triple-teamed layup, off-balance fadeaway, and clutch free throw was going in. Of course, the truth -- increasingly stark as his career wore on -- was something different more often than not. To be sure, he had his titles (3 with Shaq, 2 to prove he didn't need Shaq), but if his winning seasons defined his on-court legacy, his losing seasons were emblematic of his mentality. Hot takes, head coaches, and backcourt partners would come and go, but Kobe would ever remain Kobe. He would call his own shots and live with the consequences. Which is, of course, easy enough to do when you've won more titles playing hero ball than anyone else in history, save only your idol.

It having been a Warriors game, I was watching when Kobe tore his Achilles in 2013. Talking heads were professionally obligated to question whether he would (or could) ever return, but no one who had been paying even passing attention to Kobe Bryant doubted he would play again. When he took 50 shots and dropped 60 points on Utah the last time he stepped on an NBA court, well, of course he did. And as he transitioned from retired basketball player to Oscar winner and ESPN-sanctioned sports media mogul, one could hardly be surprised when it felt... inevitable.

It's truly jarring to see a man so willful die so young, and to think at all about the legacy of a 41-year-old with young children. My friends and I didn't enjoy much of Kobe's basketball prime, but even as adolescents tying too much of our identities to a poorly managed franchise, there was no point in denying the obvious, fair or not. In retrospect, I'm glad to have had the chance to have followed the NBA so closely across his entire career. On reflection now, it's apparent that what made Kobe Bryant so singular as a basketball player is an equally rare and remarkable quality to find in anyone: unflinching commitment to their vision of themself.

Get Yourself a Shave

My earliest memories of Local Hero come from Golden Gate Video. The store's comedy section was pressed up against the back left wall, across from the mini fridge with the 50¢ sodas. For years, Local Hero's enigmatic VHS cover watched over me as I scanned across new Adam Sandler releases and middle-period Bill Murray fare, always registering but never quite prompting me to rent it. This lasted until late middle school, when I rented the tape on one of our earliest family vacations to the Stanford Inn by the Sea in Mendocino. All at once, the film's soggy, vaguely enigmatic cover art gave way to a subtle but fully realized little world, reflecting a foggy Northern California coastline with an almost uncanny accuracy.

I began to collect DVDs in 2001, after noticing a Tower Records ad for the entire first season of The Simpsons miraculously spread across only 3 discs. Counter to my Mom's concerns that the discs were audio-only CDs, I in fact discovered not only visual quality surpassing any home media I'd seen before, but supplemental features; creator commentaries provided precious new insights into The Simpsons, but also introduced me to a way of learning about the media I loved which I would never have dreamed of. I quickly learned that not all DVDs were created equal. Transfers, special features, and even cases varied substantially between releases, with lower profile releases slipping into stores without the bells and whistles afforded their more popular counterparts. So it was that Local Hero arrived to my home in a snapcase, accompanied only by its trailer with a transfer that barely surpassed the preceding VHS releases in quality (albeit in widescreen).

Local Hero stuck with me through the ensuing years like few movies ever have. I watched it repeatedly in 2004 after losing my vision, with Ferness serving a perfect getaway after appointments. I included a rip of the film in the care package I sent my wife as she studied abroad shortly after we started dating -- a choice which in retrospect seems to say as much about how highly I thought of her as vice versa. As the years went by, I became more conscious of the high grain transfer with successive viewings on TVs at home and mobile device screens I'd bring on planes. My archaic DVD slipped quietly out of print, and in the absence of an American market replacement version (save a similarly bare bones appearance in a Burt Lancaster 4-in-1 pack), I settled with an understanding that my much loved disc would have to be enough.

I bought my first Criterion Collection DVD in 11th grade and began collecting them in earnest in college. When I joined My Criterion, I entered Local Hero as the film I'd most like to see added to the Collection. More than a decade later, the June email announcing future releases arrived with Local Hero as a surprise inclusion, characteristically tucked away second from the bottom. Three long months later, my snapcase DVD could at last be retired, likely 18 years after its original purchase.

The upgrade justifies the wait. The transfer looks terrific, offering well deserved clarity to the film's beaches and the craggy faces of its remarkable character actors alike. The abundant archival material is accompanied by an impressive amount of extras from director Bill Forsyth, who's largely retired from the industry since my old DVD was pressed. Local Hero's soft-spoken personality has always belied both the nuance of its characterizations and its assured craftsmanship, and it was never going to clamor for a reexamination (let alone the princess treatment) on its own. I hope this rerelease can help to broaden the film's exposure and call attention to it as the Great Movie it really is. For me, it's wonderful after half a lifetime thus far to see Local Hero with some of the visual haze stripped away, but the foggy core ever intact.

My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (3) The Stone Roses - The Stone Roses

[This is the eighth in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

The Stone Roses arrived on the international scene fully formed with their eponymous 1989 debut, a vast and outrageously confident album befitting a band that had already been touring for nearly 6 years. Through a complex series of contract disputes and interpersonal conflicts, the band would ultimately come to stand as the forebears not only of the figureheads of a second British Invasion, but also of those groups’ tendency to fizzle out just as they reached their peak. The thin drums and trebly basslines of The Stone Roses anchor in 1989 music that borrows liberally from very nearly everything preceding it – including, almost as if to make a point, Renaissance balladry on “Elizabeth My Dear.” The guitar-dominated proceedings certainly owe a great deal to The Smiths, an influence which may also have unlocked such unabashedly pretty moments as the chiming “Waterfall.” Much has been made of the absence of overt electronica on The Stone Roses, given band’s place within the drug- and dance-centric Madchester scene. If it isn’t quite a party album, though, it’s a relentlessly kinetic one thanks to its powerful rhythm section and swaggering frontman. The latter does ultimately steal the show, singing “I Wanna Be Adored” and “I Am the Resurrection” with absolute conviction, and either no awareness of or no concern for the disconnect. The effect is something of a magic trick, lending plausibility to The Stone Roses as a miraculous flash in the pan arriving at the precipice of the 1980s to encapsulate the decade, rather than the slow brew it really was. It was perfectly appropriate that the band’s next act was effectively to disappear.

My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (4) Paul's Boutique - Beastie Boys

[This is the seventh in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

Following an abortive career in punk, the Beastie Boys made an overnight leap to stardom with Licensed to Ill, a tone poem of gleeful idiocy that quickly became the best-selling album in hip-hop. Headed by producer Rick Rubin, and armed with an even more finely tuned version of the rock formula already worked to near-perfection on Run-D.M.C.'s Raising Hell, Licensed to Ill proved an enduring surprise, thanks to the sharpness with which the Beasties skewered the frat culture they had, from the outset, (mostly) transcended. Even those who appreciated the wink behind "(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (To Party!)," though, could never have anticipated Paul's Boutique, which presented hip-hop as a legitimate mode of expression on a scale never before attempted. It honed the wit of the debut and was saturated with a pop culture referentiality presaging nearly 3 decades of post-Tarantino media to come. It retained the signature, labored rhymes that lent the MCs their peculiar charm, but also provided the maturing rappers with genuinely impressive technical showcases. Finally, it lay upon an unparalleled bed of samples assembled by the Dust Brothers; befitting a medium that lives and dies on the spoken word, it not only surrounds and invigorates the lyrics, but complements and occasionally even answers them. Smarter than Licensed to Ill, better produced than Raising Hell, and more consistent than Straight Outta Compton, Paul's Boutique survived a vigorous commercial flop to find acclaim throughout the world of rap as perhaps the first album fully to live up to the genre’s potential. Of course, subsequent to the album’s release, both momentous litigation and a growing awareness on the part of record labels of the potential profitability of sample-based music would ensure that no album could ever be made to sound quite like Paul's Boutique again. Few other hip-hop albums have ever sounded so literate; far fewer have ever been as immaculately produced; and possibly none to date have been so resoundingly successful in both.

Peak Ringo

The ubiquity and adulation of the Beatles makes it difficult to cover their songs: one tends to mimic the arrangements and fail to recapture the magic, or else stray too far and fall flat (except in the presence of transcendent talent). Likewise, while many artists have revisited old songs late in their career, precious few rerecordings have offered value beyond their inherent novelty. A number of rock's legends are by now far enough into their 70s to have had one, or even a few, releases that have addressed aging with grace, and even elegance. With Ringo Starr recently releasing Give More Love, appended with 4 rerecorded back catalog tracks, it was easy to wonder whether he could follow his contemporaries' lead and produce a late-career curveball.

Ringo's discography features only one overt foray into introspection, which followed on the heels of Paul McCartney's nostalgic Memory Almost Full and borrowed from it liberally, thematically and musically. Almost by definition, it was a kindhearted look at a remarkable early career that offered little insight into its author. There's no doubting the song's sincerity, but it sounds like Ringo attempting a reflective Paul McCartney song, which in its heart it probably is. By all accounts, in Give More Love Ringo has produced his eighth-or-so consecutive amiable and largely indistinguishable studio offering. It was perfectly unsurprising for Ringo to revisit the well for 4 bonus tracks to please old fans on a nineteenth solo album. It is at least a bit surprising that one rerecording offers something different from the original.

"Don't Pass Me By" was written in 1962 and released on The Beatles 6 years later. It's a typical White Album recording, sharply arranged and more than a little frantic (especially in its sped-up mono incarnation). It's a simple song that perfectly suited a 1968 Ringo, earnest and immersed in the lovable sad sack persona he'd cultivated in the band's movies. While it was written as a raucous country and western number, it's been retrofitted into a gentle bluegrass arrangement, in keeping with 5 decades of changes to the genre and years lived by the performer. Where the other 2017 rerecordings are happy to retrace the originals' steps, "Don't Pass Me By" was shrewdly allowed to amble, affording Ringo an opportunity to sound not only laid back, but quietly dignified.

Ringo presumably never will release a Memory Almost Full: it's not just that his musical stylings aren't suited to a statement album, but that statements exceeding "Peace & Love" in complexity are not part of his personality. When he ends his own 55 year old song with a reprise of "Octopus's Garden," he sounds at 77 like a man at peace with himself and still content to sit in quiet safety with his friends. We should all be so lucky.

My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (5) Graceland - Paul Simon

[This is the sixth in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

Paul Simon followed up Hearts and Bones – the biggest flop of his career - with Graceland, which catapulted his star beyond even the heights he experienced as Art Garfunkel's secret mustache. The album was recorded in apartheid-era South Africa in an act of apolitical musical outreach; it nonetheless drew the ire of the UN and ANC, each of whom condemned Simon's breach of the prevailing cultural embargo. The album's mythology is subsumed by its political context, to which the virtual entirety of the official making-of documentary Under African Skies is devoted. As usual, this unfortunately glosses over what made the album truly special to begin with. Graceland was not only the original mainstream world fusion album, it remains unsurpassed 3 decades later in pure vitality. Paul Simon emerged from his messy divorce from Carrie Fisher with a remarkable, incisive set of lyrics, delivered in some of the best performances of his career. The music, meanwhile, was carefully edited down (mostly) from studio jams directed by Simon himself. These infuse the proceedings with a palpable feeling of discovery: that of an already accomplished artist being exposed, in real time, to an entirely fresh musical vocabulary. And indeed, many of the album's most magical moments are borne of instruments alone, from the storied accordion-and-drums opening bars to the ethereal coda of "Under African Skies." (It helps that he found musicians to perform with so uniformly outstanding as Ladysmith Black Mambazo and bassist Bakithi Kumalo.) Graceland remains touching at such a remove from the collapse of apartheid because it's simultaneously a man's lonely journey through personal turmoil and his being opened up to new, reinvigorating worlds of experience. It remains not only the pinnacle of Paul Simon's career, but an enduring testament to our shared humanity.

254-54 (82.4675%)

The 2017 Warriors were a hyperbolic sportswriter's dream: the first apparent champions in league history simultaneously good enough to ruin basketball and bad enough to be beaten by just about every previous title winner. Of course, the year's storylines were dominated by Kevin Durant's arrival from Oklahoma City. When the season ended on Monday in a second title in three years, the Warriors had tallied more wins in three seasons than any prior team, completed the winningest playoff run in league history, and most remarkably of all, capped a season in which they won 67 games almost as an afterthought. Throughout the year, fans and columnists nationwide downplayed Durant and his team, whose accomplishments invariably would be sullied by their audacious choice to mutually improve. History may bear these arguments out. Several points are nonetheless worth considering in the meantime.

KD

Kevin Durant's decision to join the Warriors was predicated on the team's culture and style of play, both of which are built primarily around selflessness. [1] In the better part of a decade spent as the NBA's preeminent bridesmaid, Oklahoma City failed to add the talent of three future Hall of Famers up to even the sum of its parts, much less anything greater. The Thunder ran a system so impossibly static that pundits somehow felt obligated to ask if consummate teammate Kevin Durant would prove able to share the basketball. Unleashed in Oakland, Durant revealed the breadth of his offensive talents with an efficiency unknown even to him, all while emerging as one of the league's most versatile lockdown defenders. Though he publicly credited Draymond Green and the coaching staff with improving his defensive approach, Durant plainly benefitted from being surrounded by an offense able – and more importantly, willing – to facilitate for him. Freed to take as few as seven field goal attempts in a game (if not called on for more), Durant hounded passing lanes and guarded the basket with ferocity. That a past MVP and 7-time All-Star even had a next level is shocking enough; Durant was wise to recognize the untapped potential few others would dared to have suggested existed.

The Warriors

The aforementioned questions about whether or not Kevin Durant could fit into the Warrior system were put to rest within weeks of his taking the court. Those who did find fault with the Warriors agreeing to sign Durant were concerned less with Xs-and-Os and more with the team's unwillingness to man up and win on their own terms. Though this argument fails to ring quite true in light of past contenders who acquired superstars in successful pursuit of a missing piece (e.g., Malone, Rodman, or even Love), it's worth considering that with the exception of LeBron James [2], KD is the greatest player in history acquired by free agency. It's better, then, to think of the move as the obvious culmination of what I already described two years ago as the best roster engineering in basketball. Since the 2012 Draft in particular, Bob Myers and the rest of the front office have nearly a perfect track record in free agency, drafts, and trades. 2017's roster changes exemplified these decisions even beyond the obvious choice of signing Durant. David West replaced Mo Speights seamlessly. Zaza Pachulia provided the team a body in the low post when it was needed. Most impressively, JaVale McGee joined Shaun Livingston on the Warriors' reclamation list of players who finally reached the potential that the league had seemingly been robbed of. Even if Durant was Bob Myers' (and Draymond Green's) masterstroke, it would not have been possible had not Myers already created the NBA's best working environment – a team whose dynamic (and potential) was so clearly worth enduring an entire year of unrelenting criticism from most people in the world of basketball.

NBA History

11 teams have won NBA titles since 1980. Prior to these Warriors' first title, in the preceding 35 years the trophy had belonged to only 9 teams. 6 franchises traded titles in 31 out of 35 of those years; in other words, correcting for what amounted to anomalies, the Lakers, Celtics, Pistons, Bulls, Spurs, and Heat had averaged 5.17 championships apiece within recent memory. Remarkably, in their quest to destroy parity within basketball, the Warriors and Cavaliers have slightly improved an average franchise's historical likelihood of winning a title. That, of course, is a meaningless but suggestive statistic. It's more telling to think back on the emotional legacy of recent decades of professional basketball. The 1980s belonged to Bird's Celtics and Magic's Lakers, more or less alone. Literal-minded fans might point to the titles of the Bad Boy Pistons or the '83 76ers [3]; few would even claim to think about the unfulfilled potential of young Hakeem's Rockets or anyone else. The 1990s belonged to the Bulls, and anyone claiming to wish that Michael Jordan hadn't skipped baseball and played in more NBA Finals is either an Orlando Magic fan or a liar. [4] Dominance in basketball is not only old news, it's one of the most cherished aspects of the sport's lore. What's easy to forget is that it didn't feel that way at the time: take the immortal Bulls, whose 72 win season was partially explained away in 1996 as a byproduct of expansion, or MJ himself, who stopped receiving MVPs only because people grew tired of him winning every year.

My takeaway from the above, as an openly biased fan enjoying his just desserts after 2 decades of unrelenting mediocrity, is that these Warriors are good for basketball. They have unlocked the full potential of three generational talents [5] and nearly a dozen other high-caliber players. Their managers and coaches have in every other respect enabled one of the most overwhelming runs in the history of American sport. And between them all, they have shown the way towards a brand of basketball befitting the unprecedented levels of talent and athleticism with which the NBA finds itself endowed. It would benefit both non-Warrior fans and the sport itself if other teams across the league found a way to follow suit; in the meantime, the Warriors fully deserve to reap what they have sown.

"Kind of Blue" and Album Sequencing

Previous posts have detailed my interest in musical formats and the effort put into programming music to the structures of those media. In this, the LP reigned supreme, as both the longest-lived format of aural media and – having a flip side – the one most obviously allowing for divvying up music thematically. Famous examples include the symmetrical halves of Led Zeppelin IV and the asymmetrical halves of What's Going On; the Abbey Road medley and the Purple Rain live suite. An example less frequently discussed is an album I've often referenced, yet somehow never written about in detail.

Kind of Blue was released in 1959 to warm (if less than overwhelming) critical and commercial success. It has sold continuously since then and become universally acclaimed. At least 260 variants of Kind of Blue have been released worldwide, yet bizarrely few have done full justice to the album's potential. All releases until 1992 were mastered with Side A at the incorrect speed and pitch, while most releases since 1997 have tacked the excellent alternate take of "Flamenco Sketches" immediately after the original, creating substantial redundancy in a fairly short album. Thankfully, Kind of Blue is now widely available as a 5-track album with all songs playing at their intended speed. The results are sublime, substantiating Jimmy Cobb's famous assertion that the album "must have been made in heaven."

In earthly terms, Kind of Blue was made at Columbia's 30th Street Studio over two recording dates, on March 2 and April 22, 1959. Side A includes – in order – the album's most famous, most catchy, and most controversial tracks. This at first would not appear to leave much for the flip side to lay claim to. What's more, the tracks were arranged by recording date rather than theme, with Side A recorded on March 2, and Side B (mostly) on April 22; little effort was put into sequencing, as was the industry standard in the late 50s. Yet despite being less famous pieces dropped on the end of what was recorded as just another album, "All Blues" and "Flamenco Sketches" form the centerpiece of the medium's most indispensable document.

"All Blues" is the longest track on Kind of Blue, and was by all accounts one of the most difficult to record, with a pulsating foundation that called for more than 11 minutes of precision from the rhythm section. Solos lead off with Miles Davis, followed by Cannonball Adderley, John Coltrane, and Bill Evans. Each is a master class in effortless playing, with Adderley in particular constraining his boundless energy for his coolest moment on the record. Davis, as usual, delivers an impeccable solo, but steals the show with the coda, returning after an already perfect 11 minutes for a subtle final brushstroke. During and after his lifetime, Miles Davis was set apart from other musicians by a magic that was difficult to pinpont: something that extended beyond his musical sensibilities, his understated technical prowess, or even his legendary cool. This master's touch allowed Davis to consistently assemble the greatest bands in jazz, and elevate even the most familiar standards to new heights. It is nowhere in greater evidence on record than as he guides "All Blues" to a close.

"Flamenco Sketches" sustains its predecessor's atmosphere while dropping its insistent pulse. It epitomizes not only the sound of Kind of Blue, but the mood synonymous with its name. Solos are by Davis, Coltrane, Adderley, Evans, and Davis again. This time, the spotlight belongs to Coltrane, who delivers likely the most pensive solo of his storied career, and among the most beautiful. By the time Evans and Davis have completed their solos, the tune is floating on air, and the album dissolves into the ether off of Jimmy Cobb's drum kit.

Serendipity (or divine intervention) is frequently credited in the Kind of Blue narrative. Admittedly, the circumstances were near ideal: Davis' first great quintet, including his all-time most famous collaborator, playing in jazz's greatest recording studio with Bill Evans as a special guest. Yet it was only with protracted effort that Miles Davis assembled that quintet, and it was specifically for his modal album that he included Evans – a pianist whose impressionist tendencies informed not only the band's ability to tackle the music, but even the liner notes. Fortune's greatest contribution to the finished product may ultimately have been the track order. Within a decade of the album's release, Kind of Blue was on its way to canonization, and consciously arranging LPs had become a major focus in jazz and beyond. Intentionally or otherwise, Kind of Blue's sequencing set an example for every album to follow.

Out of Print Gems: David Hentschel - "Startling Music"

Ringo Starr made his name as the odd Beatle out, pushing through only 2¼ songwriting credits on Beatle albums and playing the lovable loser in all four of the band's non-documentary films. Yet it was Ringo who burst out of the gates to commercial success following the band's dissolution. Armed with a bevy of songs co-written with (or ghostwritten by) his former bandmates – all of whom he alone remained more or less friends with – Ringo routinely charted both albums and singles in the US and UK Top 10 through the end of 1974. In 1975, at the height of his commercial success, Starr followed George Harrison's lead and founded his own record label, Ring O'Records. The label persisted through 1978 but suffered from distribution problems throughout, with releases being handled by Capitol, Polydor, or no one at all. Coupled with Starr's worsening substance abuse and declining commercial prospects, these logistical hurdles meant that only 11 artists would ever record for Ring O'Records, producing a total of 7 LPs and 17 singles.

The label's first release, an LP by British recording engineer David Hentschel, stands as the most meta release in the notably self-referential Beatle universe: a complete instrumental cover of Ringo's most successful album (Ringo), released as Ring O'Records 2320 101 under the punny title Startling Music. Recorded after (but released before) Paul McCartney's instrumental Thrillington, Startling Music is otherwise a unique entry in the extended Beatle discography. Hentschel himself, in addition to having engineered such albums as All Things Must Pass, was a talented synth artist with playing credits including the overture to "Funeral for a Friend" and parts on five Genesis albums. While his friendship with Harrison led him to Starr's record label, his other connections within the industry enabled guest drumming from future bandmate Phil Collins and other instrumental work by session insider Ronnie Caryl.

Startling Music is described in the album credits as an "interpretation of the album Ringo," which may be understatement. Where Thrillington was a fairly straight ahead, semi-classical cover, Startling Music is in fits jazzy and funky, but first and foremost, a prog album worthy of its Genesis pedigree. Even the most faithful cover – Ringo's signature solo hit, "Photograph" – is preceded by a Baroque toccata lasting 3:20. Collins is credited with drums/percussion on 6 of the 11 tracks and is tight throughout, while Caryl's guitarwork amplifies the already bombastic arrangements to impressive heights. Ringo himself contributed little to the album and is only credited with finger snaps on "Step Lightly." Nonetheless, thanks largely to the strong melodies inherited from him, Startling Music holds up nicely, even for those unfamiliar with the original album.

Following the collapse of Ring O'Records, the entire catalog fell out of print, dragging Startling Music down with it. Today it stands (along with the first four Splinter albums) as one of the rare projects tied directly to a Beatle to be commercially unavailable. Like Splinter's rich discography, Startling Music deserves and would benefit from a remaster and rerelease; until then, you can download it here.

1990-91 NBA Hoops

The Michael Jordan 90s were an exciting time to be growing up a basketball fan - even a Warriors fan - and basketball card collecting swept through my class around the time we hit 10 years old. I had two regular haunts for buying cards in the late 90s, both of them in the Inner Sunset. The first went out of business not long after I started collecting there, and was soon replaced by the original Craigslist office. Prior to shuttering its doors, this shop had sold an up-to-date inventory that supplied me with nearly all the contemporary cards I owned. My other supplier was down the block, an odds and ends purveyor called the Oriental Art Gallery (profiled here). Unlike the competition it left behind, the Oriental Art Gallery was a cluttered, dimly-lit room with a smell characterized only slightly more by incense than by old merchandise. Untouched by time, sports and entertainment cards from the late 80s were sold as though they'd been released the week before. (See photo - as of 2016, they still are!) My favorite set was 1990-91 NBA Hoops: stately in gray arches on the face, with well-selected stats and biographical trivia on the reverse. The rosters, too, were fascinating to look back on even then, with Dream Teamers suiting up alongside the kind of lumbering relics who within a decade would have no place in the NBA.

At some point, I stopped collecting basketball cards, but the gray arches and soon obsolete team logos were never far from my mind. I recently decided to look into rebuying 1990-91 NBA Hoops and found the whole set on eBay for $8. With the help of the internet, I learned about the set's many variants and oddities. The most notable is #223: Sam Vincent, then playing for the Orlando Magic at the tail end of an unremarkable 7 year career. Hoops' first version of the Vincent card featured a photo taken during a home game against the Bulls, which happened to be the Valentine's Day, 1990 game in which Michael Jordan's jersey was stolen prior to tipoff; the first and only time Jordan wore #12 is immortalized on the obverse of the card. For unknown reasons, this first version of the Vincent card was discontinued and replaced with a generic photo of Vincent dribbling. Other formatting errors and variations are less substantial, and the different versions of each vary in rarity.

In addition to the core 440 cards in the set, Hoops produced an unnumbered All-Rookie Team card featuring David Robinson on the face receiving his Rookie of the Year award, along with four other standout rookies on the reverse: legends Vlade Divac and Tim Hardaway, plus Pooh Richardson and Sherman Douglas. The card was available only by a mail-in offer on the back of packs of cards. The offer expired on July 30, 1991. Two card variants exist - one with only pictures of the four additional rookies on the reverse, and one with abbreviated rookie year stats added for each of the five featured players. The latter is less common. Like all other cards in the set, either version of this one registers just a tick above valueless.

Two additional sets of oddities exist, as well. The first includes a variety of uncut strips or sheets of (typically unnumbered) cards given away at games as promotional items. One example was a Taco Bell promotion at the LA Forum, which paired several sets of 3-card strips with a mail-in sweepstakes coupon for Laker tickets or Taco Bell prizes. This contest ran from January 28 to February 28, 1991. The second was a series of 58 Announcer cards, produced in unknown quantities and distributed to the announcers themselves and friends of the company as favors. These are especially uncommon, and uniquely for the set, demand high prices when they do surface.

Acquiring these cards 15+ years after I first collected them has been very enjoyable. On a personal level, it's allowed me to revisit a wonderful facet of my childhood and some of the unusual aspects of San Francisco that are slowly (and sadly) fading away. The observational experience has been similar from the perspective of a lifelong basketball fan: it's a game, and a culture, that for better and for worse has irrevocably changed.

The 1990-91 NBA Hoops set can be seen here. (Images will be added sporadically as I complete the scans.)

The Beatles - "Live at the Hollywood Bowl"

The Beatles at the Hollywood Bowl was always the black sheep of the band's core catalog, recorded live at an outdoor stadium at a time when recording equipment struggled to capture live music and pop artists - with one exception - didn't play stadiums. Reviews focused on the audience's continuous wall of screams, melodramatically describing the sound quality as bordering on unlistenable. In reality the Beatles' only sanctioned live album was an invaluable addition to the catalog, proudly (if roughly) showing off the tight, confident rock and roll band that John Lennon, even after the breakup, couldn't resist bragging about.

Live at the Hollywood Bowl is the absolute realization of the material's potential [1]. Sourced from different tapes than the 1977 LP, these digitally manipulated recordings miraculously present a sound that wasn't available to anyone at the Hollywood Bowl, including - or especially - the Beatles. The spacing between instruments, vocals, and crowd noise is comparable to a modern-day equivalent. Giles Martin, in his first solo venture as the Beatles' producer, accomplished what his late father's 1977 liner notes lament having been technically impossible at the time. What has been released in that worthy album's place is the definitive aural document of Beatlemania, preserving the impact of the screams with, at last, less input from the screams themselves.

My Top 10 Albums of the 80s: (6) The Joshua Tree - U2

[This is the fifth in a series of ten posts. The list'll be revealed as entries are written.]

U2 have always been searchers. Reviews of the band's albums, positive and negative alike, tend to touch on the sense of yearning that pervades the music. It's likely this very restlessness that lends the group its defining peculiarity: no band has ever put out so many great albums without producing any back-to-back. The Joshua Tree is the quintessential U2 album, not because it's definitively their best - Achtung Baby is at least as good - but because it features the band distilling this essence most successfully. The Unforgettable Fire sessions had expanded U2's palate, but most of the resulting music suffered from a lack of structure. Rattle and Hum, meanwhile, featured a bombast that lands on the album's anthemic highlights, but otherwise comes off as obnoxious. The Joshua Tree sharpens the atmospherics of its predecessor while withholding on self-indulgence just enough to almost never become unctuous [1]. Each band member gets a showcase: Bono sings to rafters on "Red Hill Mining Town," Adam Clayton's groove sets the album in motion on "Where the Streets Have No Name," and Larry Mullen Jr.'s thunderous drumming is the high point of "Bullet the Blue Sky." The Edge, meanwhile, dominates The Joshua Tree. The shimmering arpeggios of "Where the Streets Have No Name" were expressly designed to be the ultimate U2 riff, and the claim has stood the test of eight subsequent albums. He almost single-handedly provides the songs with their atmospheres, summoning dread on "Exit," rapture on "Trip Through Your Wires," and (naturally) yearning on "With or Without You" - a song prudently chosen as the lead single, and one that ultimately couldn't help but become the band's signature composition. It was perfectly in character for Bono to announce "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For," but The Joshua Tree represents perhaps the only time that U2 ever did just that. Fortunately for everyone else, it wasn't long before they felt compelled to return once more to the drawing board.

When the Daisy, At Long Last, Opens Her Eyes

A previous post detailed my search for "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes," an obscure recording by the once-famous violinist Albert Sandler used in the delightful 1973 documentary Metro-Land. Since November 2014, I had been regularly checking eBay for the record in question, and occasionally searching for more clues elsewhere on the internet. On March 10, I came across the website of the Centre for the History and Analysis of Recorded Music (CHARM), once operated by the UK's Arts and Humanities Research Council [1]. Their database included listings for several Albert Sandler recordings that had eluded me, including one disc (Columbia DX 961) comprising a medley of tunes by the composer of "Daisy," Haydn Wood. It was an encouraging discovery: though it fell short of naming the tune I was looking for, it was my first ever indication of which disc to chase. Soon after, I found an advertisement for the record in the Singaporean newspaper The Straits Times, published about 8 months after the recording session. So the record existed - it would just be a matter of finding it.

Five weeks of dead ends later, I received an email from a UK record dealer who had found a friend willing to part with his copy of "Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs." I still had no confirmation that this disc included the tune. However, having identified 136 Albert Sandler 78s that did not contain "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes," I felt assured my time had come and made the purchase. Thankfully, I was right: Sandler included "Daisy" in his Haydn Wood medley, closing the circle on my Search for Metro-Land. The record's details are as follows:

Albert Sandler - Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs (Columbia DX 961)

Side 1 (Matrix CAX-8713-1)
Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs - Part 1: Fleurette, I Shall Never Forget/Silver Clouds/It Is Only a Tiny Garden/Love's Garden of Roses

Side 2 (Matrix CAX-8714-2)
Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs - Part 2: When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes/I Love Your Eyes of Grey/Roses of Picardy

Both selections recorded January 21, 1940. Columbia DX 961 was released in March 1940 and deleted from the catalog in March 1949.

Download by clicking the arrow button beneath the Soundcloud logo.

* * *

Finding the record suggested answers to a number of questions. The dealer addressed the disc's scarcity, reasonably surmising that compositions by Wood (whose most popular song was published in 1916) would have viewed as hopelessly old-fashioned by 1940 and sold very few copies. Furthermore, the use of "Daisy" as merely part of a subtitle explained why I had found so little information on the song. For one thing, Albert Sandler's records had never been explicitly linked to the "Daisy" title on the internet: the internet ostensibly contains 3 prior references [2] to the Albert Sandler record "Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs," none of which list the subtitle. For another, even in general, "Daisy" is more often referenced as a part of Haydn Wood medleys than it is standing alone. One such fascinating artifact – part of the Australian Library of Congress' digital holdings – is a copy of sheet music bearing the same title as my record, copyrighted 1920. In keeping with "Daisy's" obscurity (apparently even at the time), it is not advertised on the front cover, but is included on page 10. It would seem likely that this arrangement of Wood's music actually served as the basis for Sandler's: though 6 of the sheet music's 13 songs were excised (almost certainly for time [3]), the remaining 7 are all found on the record, in order. At least one bit of evidence suggests the medley, truncated or otherwise, remained part of his repertoire after recording it: he performed it as the last program of the day for BBC Radio at 11:30pm on February 28, 1943.

* * *

My quest for "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes" has been the most obscure pursuit of a life already full of them. The year and a half between first seeing Metro-Land and completing the search for "Daisy" included the hardest 18 months of medical school and multiple other unforeseen challenges - sporadically interspersed with new information on a man I was unlikely to ever have heard about. It's been a pleasure to discover the gems populating his enormous discography. In this transitional period, it's also been touching to uncover the details of a life that it's felt time is on the verge of passing by. I decided to use what I've been able cobble together as the basis of a short biodiscography, which I've published online here. I hope it'll serve in a modest way to preserve his memory, and provide some interest to anyone else that should stumble upon Albert Sandler as haphazardly as I did.

Prince, 1958-2016

It was September or October 2006, about a month into my first year at Berkeley, when I saw a new copy of Purple Rain for $5.99 in the discount bin at Rasputin Music. At that point, I knew Prince as a symbol (literally), a revered musical icon, and a Chapelle's Show character, but had never actually listened to his music. I had gotten off to a rocky start to college, and my growing music collection played a substantial role in helping me through. I dug into every corner of the Beatles' back catalog; I continued to wear out the copy of The Eraser I'd bought the previous summer; and after only one or two months I had already spun St. Elsewhere more times than I could count. As I bought music, I'd always intended to listen to Prince, and this particular afternoon seemed as good a time as any.

Sometime towards the end of college – by which time I'd acquired most of the rest of Prince's discography and bought Purple Rain and its otherworldly accompanying poster on LP – I decided to average out that $5.99 over the number of plays or hours I got out of that tinny, mid-80s pressing CD. Though the index card bearing my arithmetic has long since disappeared, by whichever metric I used we were talking about fractions of fractions of a cent per unit. Among the storied peaks of the many discographies I acquainted myself with at the outset of college, Purple Rain resonated with confident, inexhaustible vitality. Today, it's my pick for the best album of the 80s, and certainly one of my 10 favorites ever made – yet it's not without competitors for the title of best album in his catalog.

Prince passed away this morning. In the sense that his health in some way necessitated an emergency plane landing last week, it's not surprising, even for someone as young as 57. And yet the idea remains a shock – perhaps because his transcendent otherness was so immaculately cultivated that it suggested he might, in fact, actually be impervious to such Earthly concerns as death. From his star-making turn dressed in a purple jumpsuit atop a motorcycle, Prince somehow grew more eccentric as he aged, including such highlights as waging war on the internet and fully embracing his extramusical celebrity. Even as he receded from the experimental forefront of popular music, he remained one of its few truly fascinating figures. He announced his memoirs a month ago, and for the first time in my adulthood (with one obvious exception), I remember being genuinely curious to read a musician's full take on their own life. In every aspect of his person, he was one of a kind, and the world is less rich for having lost him.