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Remembering Gary Thain

One of the all-time bass greats. Glad to see that there are a few Thain aficionados out there. Audio Culture has a rough and ready page dedicated to the man. This YouTube comment pretty much sums up his status. bassgary thainuriah heep

Form and Function in Human Song

Here’s a recent open access paper in Current Biology along with a journalistic write-up in The Harvard Gazette. The present research provides evidence for the existence of recurrent, perceptible features of three domains of vocal music across 86 human societies and for the striking consistency of form-function percepts across listeners from around the globe—listeners who presumably…

Walk on by

My two favourite (and on paper, improbable) versions. The former is very Morricone-ish; the latter funky punkish. BURT BACHARACHEnnio MorriconeHal Davidisaac hayesmusicthe stranglerswalk on by

NOLA CDs of the year

My list of the year’s best releases associated with New Orleans and Louisiana. See Red — Deltaphonic Hot Like Fire — Bonerama Seasonal Affective Disorder — Loose Cattle Live in Concert — The First Revolution Singers boneramacountry and westernDeltaphonicfunkgospelloose cattlethe first revolution singers

On the Sly: In Search of the Family Stone

A decent documentary on Sly is long overdue: next year marks the 50th anniversary of the release of Dance to the Music, a landmark album for acid funk/soul. This documentary sounds promising but the distribution seems to be the standard damn snag: Michael should give mediAm a go (nothing to lose). Anyway, great to see that…

Brain connectivity reflects human aesthetic responses to music

Freely available paper in Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience. Humans routinely experience pleasure in response to higher order stimuli that confer no clear evolutionary advantage. Aesthetic responses through pursuit of and engagement with the arts activates the same reward network in the brain that responds to the basic, sensory pleasures associated with food, sex and drugs…

Stax Country

Prima facie, I think this should make for an interesting listen despite the dissenting voice of Hal Horowitz. Another Horowitz (Steve) in Pop Matters and Joseph Ryle in The Recoup think otherwise. Reasonable disagreement amongst reasonable people . . . countrymusicStax