The last few weeks I have been enjoying revisiting selections from Sufjan Stevens’ catalog. This time around I am hearing more prog/folk-prog tendencies in his last few releases. This week’s show featured one such track, the fantastic mini-opus, “All Delighted People” from the album of the same name. This EP is probably oft-overlooked, but contains several gems that should not be missed. Additionally, I stumbled across this youtube video that tackles explaining, quite well, Sufjan’s compositional style by zeroing in on the fantastic track Casimir Pulaski Day which appears to exemplify one of his compositional formulas. If you want to see Sufjan Stevens in a full concert setting, there is a concert film that was recorded while he was touring in support of one of his more recent releases, Carrie & Lowell. This week’s show played the hauntingly beautiful track, “John My Beloved” from this release.
Recently, I watched the documentary “Terry Kath Experience : A Daughter's Journey” recently and enjoyed a large portion of it. The first half focuses a lot on Kath’s musical roots and the early years of CTA and later Chicago in a very engaging way including band members, family, and friends painting the fuller portrait of this legendary guitarist and Chicago bandmember. A reminder to those unfamiliar with Terry Kath’s guitar work, Jimi Hendrix, a friend of Kath’s, claimed he (Kath) was the greatest/greater guitarist! Pretty high praise. The later half focuses a bit on his tragic death, and more on his daughter’s circuitous journey to find his 2 more famous, and “missing” for many years, guitars—a Fender Stratocaster and his legendary “pignose” Fender Telecaster. According to the documentary’s website, the film will finally be released on DVD on December 12th. Worth seeing.
I have been waiting for this for a long time. The ECM label has released their catalog to music streaming services like Apple Music. The NY Times posted a nice article about this event, and shared a list of 21 essential ECM albums to get you started.. This week’s show featured a track off one of the releases on the list.
For Pink Floyd Fans, what more can be said that hasn’t already been said about Dark Side of the Moon? Well, actually, a few more things! I found this short documentary (~25 minutes) released in 2003, and coincided with the release of the 5.1 surround sound version of Dark Side of the Moon, offered up some points of interest that I did not know—including a peak into the process of making and recording the album, direct from the band members experience, that I found quite rewarding. Worth watching if you want a little more detail into the making of this legendary album.