Crambe Repetita #201
Welcome to a (mostly daily) newsletter of recommendations from Todd L. Burns. In every email, I suggest some things that I find interesting. Maybe you will too…
Listen
Jan Hammer - Earth (Still Our Only Home)
Hard funk from the dude who made the Miami Vice theme.
Read
Revisit New Sounds, SPIN’s 1985 Experimental Music Column by John Schaefer
It was a sidenote in the campaign to help save John Schaefer’s New Sounds show recently, but I’m glad these funny and interesting columns from SPIN made their way online as a result. It includes interviews with the likes of Philip Glass, Steve Reich, Glenn Branca, and Vangelis, but he’s at his best when he’s making fun of New Age.
In the notes to his album Planetary Unfolding, talented synthesizer player Michael Stearns lets us in on his inspiration: “I had a dream about the earth. In my dream the earth wasn’t a solid mass, but a mass of sound held together through resonance….Suddenly, I and some others were shot out of the earth’s resonance. We were sound vibrations, too…Then I became aware that the cosmos as a whole was, itself, a vibrating orchestration. The resonance was so complex and deep [the magic word] that I couldn’t hear anything. I felt engulfed by a vast and tender silence. Yet I heard one small sound, almost like a moist breath. As I awoke I realized that moist breath was the earth.”
Or maybe someone spat on him while he slept.
Look
A neat website based on Yancey Strickler’s new book, This Could Be Our Future: A Manifesto for a More Generous World.
Bentoism is the belief that our self-interest isn’t solely defined by what we want and need right now. Our self-interest extends to the considerations of our future selves, the people who rely on us, and the next generation.