Author: DOuG pRATt

Classical Music’s Gateway Drug

Until February 2 the logo picture in the upper left corner will be the cover of one of my all-time favorite records, a 1971 recording by the BSO of “The Planets” by the English composer Gustav Holst. I am surprised and pleased that Deutsche Grammophon is putting the LP back in print, and my pre-ordered copy will be here on Friday.

“The Planets” is categorized as a suite, and not a symphony, but for all practical purposes a symphony it is. I first heard the Steinberg BSO recording of “The Planets” at the start of my freshman year of college. My roommate Brad played his copy on my then-new Dynaco A25 speakers, and I was totally blown away, as the old saying goes.

The legendary Dynaco A25 speaker, made in Denmark.

I certainly wasn’t unfamiliar with Classical music, but I did not yet have any Classical records in my collection. The previous April I had been in Boston Symphony Hall for the first time — not for a BSO concert, but with my girlfriend to see Randy Newman, whose warm-up acts were Sandy Denny and Martin Mull!

The suite was only 60 years old when I first heard it, and it was unlike any other symphonic music I had ever heard. “The Planets” inspired me to buy Classical records — on budget labels — almost exclusively for a while, including Bach’s Brandenburg Concertos and some Mozart Symphonies. Deutsche Grammophon isn’t a budget label, and for Christmas that year I requested my own copy of the Holst album. My mother worked in Concord, Massachusetts, and she bought a copy at a small record shop in the center of town. I was very excited and appreciative on Christmas morning, and I played the LP many times during the semester break.

Thanks in part to my generation’s embracing of “The Planets,” as well as the popularity of John William’s “Star Wars” score, Holst found his way into the standard symphonic repertoire. I still play my Christmas present from Mom, but those grooves have a lot of mileage on them, and I’m looking forward to having a new pressing. As YouTube sound quality goes, this transfer of an original copy of the LP is about as good as it gets. The record is in excellent condition, and the guy who posted it used a $700 Nagaoka MP-500 phono cartridge.

https://youtu.be/4flEfDF5r30

The Master of Big Foot Cartoons

1950 saw the introduction of three of the most successful and longest-running comic strips of all time — “Peanuts,” “Dennis the Menace,” and “Beetle Bailey.” Sparky Schulz passed away in 2000, Hank Ketchum died a year later, and Mort Walker stopped drawing today.

“Big-Foot” in this context means a style of cartooning, and not a tall, hairy creature that roams the wilderness! Forty years ago I visited the Cartoon Museum that Walker had at that time in Port Chester, NY.

A Genuine Stable Genius

I’m grappling with the realization that it’s already been almost fifteen years since I read “Tuxedo Park: A Wall Street Tycoon and the Secret Palace of Science That Changed the Course of World War II,” by Jennet Conant. Alfred Loomis had an astonishing and perhaps unprecedented combination of competencies. Loomis was scientifically gifted and eccentric, yet he excelled in business and he made himself independently wealthy, so he could do whatever he wanted to do. Later, his interests and accomplishments intersected with what had to be done in order for the Allies to win WWII.

A Long Long Time Ago

Happy Hippies, Linda Ronstadt and Henry Diltz.

This video features Linda Ronstadt in the shiny striped dress with hoop earrings that were made famous by photographer Henry Diltz. It also shows why Capitol Records producer Nick Venet had studio musicians, rather than Linda’s band the Stone Poneys, play on her recording of Mike Nesmith’s song, “Different Drum.”