Aural Robert

As I sit down to write a year's-end musical retrospective, I feel that the old column-writing joke between Stereophile editor John Atkinson and myself about first needing a subject and, second, needing it to make sense, will not be a problem this time out. For me, the music and almost everything else about 2001 have been dwarfed in importance by the mayhem wreaked on New York on September 11.

Back in 2003, in an uptown New York City studio, a man who epitomized cool in the 1960s waited patiently for my next question. Well into his 70s but still thin and handsome, Burt Bacharach was casually dapper in his contrasting sweater and polo shirt. In town to perform with Ronald Isley in support of their new record together, Here I Am—Isley Meets Bacharach, the songwriter extraordinaire is warm and approachable, wary but unusually guileless when answering the questions of a lifelong fan of his melodies, a fan who's trying hard to be professional and hide the fact that he's utterly starstruck.

As rhythm has become predominant in pop music and melody has receded in importance, Bacharach and lyricist Hal David's brand of sleek, memorable tune craft has slipped into history. Yet despite Bacharach's death in February 2023, at age 94, their body of work is timeless.

A cultural steamroller that's sold more than 20 million copies so far, Frampton Comes Alive! is also the most celebrated example of an artist who broke through to worldwide fame thanks to a live record. In the wake of this monster success, fans went back and listened to Peter Frampton's four solo studio records that predated the live behemoth. Sales and respect grew.

Three of those four releases, Wind of Change (1972), Frampton's Camel (1973), and Frampton (1975), have been remastered and reissued in a limited edition, 180gm vinyl-LP box set, Frampton@50, In the Studio 1972–1975, by Intervention Records.

There's a fear out there, even among jazz cognoscenti, that the music's best years and true geniuses are all part of the past. Even in New York City, the richest magnet for live jazz on earth, it sometimes seems that experiencing generational talent, the kind that once drove the music forward, is now confined to gazing at the famous photos on the walls of the music's most revered shrine, the Village Vanguard. Yet, seeing pianist Sullivan Fortner at the Vanguard, as part of Cécile McLorin Salvant's band, convinced me that there's still jazz magic in the world. By turns playful, blindingly brilliant, and at times puppy dog goofy, Fortner was spectacular. He is clearly a star in the music's future.

Resurrecting musical treasures is a tough business. The explosion of vinyl-reissue labels, ranging from superlative to second-rate, has made it increasingly difficult for newcomers to stand out—to make the kind of splash that serious LP buyers will notice. Even more elusive is endurance and turning a profit. The affable, musically savvy James Batsford, owner of a pair of vinyl-only UK labels, New Land Records and Omerta Records, can't help but laugh over our New York–to–London Zoom connection when I ask why an obviously intelligent person with taste, like himself, would jump into the vinyl-reissue tarpit?

Having just finished this review of The Replacements' Tim: Let It Bleed Edition, I thought I'd glance at a couple of online forums to see what the collective verdict was on the sound quality of the set's main attraction: a remix of the album by Ramones engineer Ed Stasium. At Steve Hoffman's forums, I saw this in one of the first posts: "It sounded like I expected Tim to sound when it came out in the fall of 1985. I've also listened to the newly remastered original album that comes with the set, and while it sounds good and I'm glad to have it, it pales compared to the 2023 Stasium mix." Ticking down a post or two, exuberance gushed forth: "Well, IMO the [Stasium] version of Tim may be the greatest rock record of all time."

Audio engineers never get the credit they deserve. The same is true for music arrangers, who are also an unheralded but hugely fundamental part of any musical success. As a composer, conductor, and inventive arranger of popular music, the modest but multitalented Vince Mendoza says he's most focused on enhancing the song he is arranging and the story it is trying to tell.

"Young arrangers are very concerned with their own voice and spinning their own melodies and turning things upside down and backwards, and they forget what a song really is about," he told me in a recent Zoom conversation from his home in Los Angeles. "You could be writing about heartbreak, and there are a million and one ways to tell that story, but the listener still has to feel it."