Mark Likes Music

Over the last couple of years, there's been a steady trickle of articles proclaiming the internet to be the last great hope of classical music. Last Friday, the Wall Street Journal contributed it's drop in the bucket with a piece that focused on the recently rejuvenated Classical Archives website started 15 years ago by entrepreneur John Jurgensen.

If classical music is dead, how can it so spectacularly capture the magnificence that is the mixture of peanut butter and chocolate?   And if we can have a chocolate bar named after an entire galaxy, why can't we also compare one to the largest planet in our solar system?   The music that accompanies this quick-and-painless Reese's ad is "Jupiter" from British composer Gustav Holst's orchestral work The Planets , another cheesy piece of classical music that everyone really should know.    Holst wrote The Planets  in 1916.  A collection of seven short musical character studies meant to depict the personalities of the gods each planet in the solar system is named after, it's by far the composer's most popular work, and lives on through references in (commercials, of course, as well as) the soundtracks to such movies as The Right Stuff and Wallace and Gromit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit , as well as on The Simpsons and other TV shows.  So grab some candy and...

I always thought of Rounder Records as a sleepy folk-music label, a place to go for Woody Guthrie re-releases and the like.  Then, late last year, I came across the rollicking album  Ode to Sunshine on Rounder  by roots-rock band Delta Spirit .    And then their Alison Krauss collaboration with Robert Plant,  Raising Sand,  won five Grammys .   Clearly, I have not been paying attention to what this Massachusetts-based imprint has been doing.  Rounder has its share of releases that appear to be an attempt to make a quick buck on nostalgia (a new Dennis DeYoung album is one, sad example).  With their major artists, however, Rounder has built up a roster of talent that stays true to its identity as a home for Americana while reaching out to listeners who have no particular interest in the genre.  Records such as  Ode to Sunshine and Raising Sand, both clearly rooted in traditional American music, are good rock records that anyone can love.  Founded in 1970 by Cambridge folkies Ken Irwi...

One-time journeyman basketballer Paul Shirley recently posted a tribute to Amoeba music on his ESPN.com blog.  A nostalgic ode to record-buying by a guy who's clearly a huge music fan, Shirley's piece inadvertently addresses two important reasons for the downfall of major labels and the CD format they held onto for so long.   For Shirley, shopping in Amoeba took him back to a time in his life when a record store was about discovery, a visceral experience that brought him closer to the world of music.   I remembered why I like to do my music shopping like a bipedal organism.  It's fun to be at record stores.  I like the posters.  I like the clacking sound the CDs make as people bang them together.  I like watching the nerdy girl's eyes light up when she finds an old PJ Harvey album.  It's all tangible; it's real reality, as opposed to the virtual kind offered up by a computer, a mouse and a credit card.  We hear and read a lot about how the music industry aliena...

As a kid, I first came across classical music in a commercial that ran on TV for one of those compilations that promised to send you on a journey to an enchanted land filled with enduring musical wonders.  Most of the music came off to me as pretty well all the same, but there was one piece that stuck out from the rest.   The opening of Tchaikovsky's First Piano Concerto, with the pianist pounding out the beat behind the thick syrup-pour of strings, seemed at once completely out of place with the other "relaxing classics" and their epitome.  While other pieces whispered apologetically, Tchaikovsky's concerto yelled, You are going to listen to some beautiful classical music now!  It was unashamedly, flamboyantly, cheesy music.  It's a staple of the repertoire today--a favorite piece of classical-music cheese--but when Tchaikovsky's concerto premiered in Boston back in 1875, reviewers were, at their most forgiving, skeptical of its staying power and, at their mo...

The popular online classical-music CD retailer Arkivmusic.com announced last week that it is now offering music downloads in MP3 format , beginning with five new releases from the budget-price label Naxos.  The company promises to expand its offerings in the future.   Arkivmusic.com, founded in 2002, has built a loyal following of classical-music aficianados who see the site as an independent, well-stocked alternative to Amazon.com and other online retailers.  In particular, the site has earned kudos from the hard-core for offering on-demand CD reissues of out-of-print material from major labels , a program that has been active since March 2005.  For years, people within classical music have held that the internet--and music downloading in particular--is an energizing force for their part of the music industry.  Alex Ross, in a New Yorker article from October 2007 , sees interest in the genre growing as listeners sample new classical music through iTunes and as a classical music cultur...

Most people think that the CD is finished (my office mate won't shut up about it), but there are still some who hold out hope that the format will endure. Instead of blaming the steady drop in sales of hard-copy music on digital downloading, these true believers have set their sights on retailers. Peter Kafka's argument is simple and to the point: the big-box stores, which sell the most CDs of any retail category, don't give recordings enough space. If people can't find music, Kafka argues, they can't buy it. Coolfer blogger Glenn Peoples provides a more nuanced view, writing that retailers aren't properly using the space they do devote to music. For Peoples, stores need to adapt to the changing behavior of most consumers, who have come to see music as an impulse buy. At the same time, labels need to provide retailers with high-end product to satisfy the small but steady demand of hardcore music fans, and retailers need to put the effort into properly merchand...