Category: Top 40 Over 40
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Top 40 over 40.14: Susan Te Kahurangi King
This series of posts is mostly about musicians who had growth spurts after 40, but today I’m posting about a visual artist I read about today thanks to Alastair Galbraith, whose records I very much admire. I consider his album Mass to be among the finest in our genre. Alastair posted a link to a…
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Top 40 Over 40.12: Morton Feldman, Piano and String Quartet
I’ve listened to lots of records I’ve liked over the last 10 years, but the recording the Kronos Quartet made of this piece is probably my favorite. It seems remarkable that such a strange thing of beauty could be recorded at Skywalker Sound, George Lucas’s compound in Northern California. Morton Feldman spent the…
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Top 40 Over 40.11: Wurst is also Best!
I cannot pretend to write an objective review of today’s entry into my Top 40 Over 40 countdown, Transcendental Youth by the Mountain Goats. You see, I compete in an annual NFL pool with John Darnielle and Peter Hughes. I’m indebted to Peter for running this pool and to John for keeping me out of…
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Top 40 Over 40.10: Bill Dixon
In this series of posts on artists who inspired me to start recording again by doing first-rate work on or after their 4oth birthday, Bill Dixon is an anomaly. Most of the folks I’ve written about were known for an early body of work done in their 20’s, and managed a “return to form” after…
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Top 40 Over 40.9: Jandek….live?!?!
I didn’t pay much attention to what was going on in the undie music scene during the aughts. I listened to some things that were current, but mostly I was just writing lyrics on my own and listening to a lot of modern classical music. When I started lending an ear indie-ward over the last…
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Top 40 Over 40.8: Scott Walker’s hat trick
Sometimes pop artists you associate with youth surprise you with a new vocal persona that suits them as they get older. (Think Robert Plant on Raising Sand.) But in the case of Scott Walker, he never really sounded like a young man to begin with. Sure, he was a teen idol back in the late…
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Top 40 Over 40.7: Egypt by Youssou N’Dour
This album was one of a few that made me want to try putting strings on my next record. I don’t like how strings are often used in western pop as a soft bed of sound in the background. I do like how they carry the lead parts on much of this album. The Egyptian…
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Top 40 Over 40.6: Unplugged Youth
I can think of few artists more identified with the electric guitar than Thurston Moore. Unlike the guitar god of classic rock, Jimmy Page, who layered his hard rock records with gobs of acoustic fretted instrumens, the guitar god of post punk / undie music always stayed electric. The only exception I can think of…
johnhdavis / inundation records 