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| Tuesday, July 03, 2007 |
Musical Notes: Robert Goldstein and others
From our July/August 2007 issue
What’s the soundtrack to the Darfur famine? Or a China economic summit? For the rest of us, the question is reductive and crude, but for Robert Goldstein — the music repository and tastemaker for NPR — it’s his job to answer.
Goldstein, 57, is the music librarian for more than 65,000 albums, ranging from hip-hop to classical music and everything in between. “Archiving knowledge, preserving knowledge, and passing knowledge along,” he explains. “There have been some great Jewish librarians.”
Goldstein started listening to music as a toddler and at an early age became an addicted musicophiliac. Almost 15 years ago, while working as a composer for documentary films in D.C., he started a part-time job at NPR and quickly took over the music library. Today, he is the go-to guy for song choices. No matter the on-air story, Goldstein’s library likely has something apropos — from every major composer to an album of Christmas carols played with power tools.
The trick, according to Goldstein, is to understand the story, to know the music in the library and to not recycle clichés (the ubiquitous ‘children at play’ sound effect in urban stories comes to mind) or misplace regional music. If you play Sunni music during a Sufi segment, you can guarantee some NPR listener will notice. Most importantly, though, on a personal level “I look for music that makes me feel like I felt in high school. Where I couldn’t stop listening to it."
Escaped Manatee Music: When NPR’s All Things Considered aired a breaking story on an escaped, presumed male but now identified as female manatee, the director called Goldstein for music to end the piece. Live on-the-air, they needed it in a minute and a half. He decided on a muzak version of “I Enjoy Being a Girl” from Flower Drum Song, delivering it to the control room with seconds to spare. That heroic display of taste earned him a round of applause from the studio.
Playing with Eno: Goldstein’s band, the Urban Verbs, got a chance to record with Talking Heads (and later U2) producer Brian Eno in 1978. He saw them onstage at CBGBs and sent them a two-page, single space, typed letter describing how floored he was by their music. The recordings earned the band a contract with Warner Brothers Records. Early Damage, the Urban Verbs second LP, will finally be re-issued on CD later this summer.
*** MORDY'S CD REVIEWS ***
Therion: Gothic Kabbalah
Swedish Death Metal bands love dropping Kabbalah references next to pagan symbols. It’s all part of the hodgepodge rendered unintelligible by that horrific death metal growl. What distinguishes Therion is that instead of garbling vocals, the band
employed two female opera singers: Katarina Lilja and Hannah Holgersson. Breathtaking melodies that should be coming from a strings section, not a death metal combo, abound. The confusing mix of Jewish imagery with Norse mythology remains (the Gnostic deity Sophia is called the Shekina on “The Perennial Sophia”), but during the band’s sweeping choruses, you won’t even notice.
Yidcore: They Tried to Kill US. They Failed. Let's Eat!
Maybe one day singer Bram Presser’s obsession with Natalie Portman will get old, but that day isn’t today. Aside from yet another paean to the Star Wars’ actress, the punk’s take on Jewish themes are still fresh enough to justify Yidcore’s shtick:
loud, thrashing guitars and Presser’s off-key, howling declarations about Skinhead girlfriends. Still, the band rarely bypasses the novelty, and only the title track, a klezmer-inflected single about beating on “Nazi lunatics,” sounds sincere. Yidcore isn’t quite a novelty act, but they aren’t quite legitimate either. Like Woody Allen, they pull off satirical self-deprecation, only they do it loud.
Throbbing Gristle: Part Two, the Endless Knot
Early 1970s industrial music, of which Throbbing Gristle were pioneers, was the bastard child of Beckett’s obsession with fascism. Early Gristle concerts used large photographs of Nazi concentration camps as backdrops for their gritty
sounding dirges. They weren’t sympathetic to the regime, they just found darkness fascinating — and listeners found it horrific. It’s thirty years later, and Gristle’s new album seems more concerned with mortality. “Above the Below” sounds like staring into the soul’s abyss. Still, when they sing “Are you scared?” the answer is the same as it was in 1975. Very.
Nehedar: Pick Your Battles
Nehedar is the consummate underground Jewish band. Their lo-fi debut album places singer Emilia Cataldo’s voice at front and center, which succeeds on songs like “Sign” and “Hide Now,” approximating a lounge-version Regina Spektor.
On other tracks, though, the instrumentals strip away to a bare-voice; a confessional-style that never really takes off. The lyrics, too, are underdeveloped, attempting to function as surrealistic come-ons (“Do you want to drink with me?... I have a basketball in the closet.”) but sounding more like nonsense nursery rhymes. Luckily, guitarist David Keesey compliments Cataldo’s singing with poppy hooks and a keen sense of song craft.
Anat Cohen: Noir and Poetica
Tel Aviv saxophonist and clarinetist Anat Cohen, followed up her debut this year with the simultaneous release of two albums — Noir and Poetica. The former has strong
South American influences, but it’s the latter album that shines. Opener “Agada Yapanit (Japanese Tale)” is as rhythmic as an actual shishi odoshi in a garden. “Nigunim” lacks the up-tempo thrust you’d expect from a Chassidic song, instead building themes through hushed repetition. Poetica is as peaceful as a Sabbath nap — in a hammock over a Japanese garden.
Pharaoh's Daughter: Haran
Basya Schechter is the heart of Pharaoh’s Daughter, and thus every new album they produce becomes a referendum on her relationship to Judaism. Listeners to Haran can speculate about Schechter’s Sabbath observance or whether the influence of traditional Jewish songs indicates a swerve from her world music debut days. Schechter sounds closer to Soulfarm’s C. Lanzbom on Haran than she does to her fellow artists at the Knitting Factory — a New York venue she appears at frequently. The title track courts this kind of speculation: “By Way of Haran” refers to Abraham’s journey, a cogent metaphor for Schechter’s own. Haran is starkly beautiful music, the sound of Schechter flirting with God.
-- Text by Mordechai Shinefield / Photo by Meghan Gallery
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