"'Music's first offering, an eclectic, disparate, but mostly functional compendium of influences from 5000 B.C. to present day, hints that this trend's time may not only have fully arrived, but is already on the wane,' [editor in chief Ryan] Schreiber wrote. 'If music has any chance of keeping our interest, it's going to have to move beyond the same palatable but predictable notes, meters, melodies, tonalities, atonalities, timbres, and harmonies.'"
Ian MacDonald's Revolution in the Head: The Beatles Records and the Sixties is, quite simply, the best book ever published about the Beatles and their music. Its first half is the best description of the '60s I've ever read; its second half is a track by track exploration of the songs and the process of recording them. It's out of print in the USA, but there's a new edition available in the UK and it can be ordered from the link. Do yourself a favor and read this book if the Beatles mean anything to you at all.
A musical highlight for us at Stereophile in 1995 was the opportunity to record several concerts at the world-famous Santa Fe Chamber Music Festival. The result was a Stereophile CD, Festival (STPH007-2), which features the original chamber version of Aaron Copland's Appalachian Spring, Darius Milhaud's jazz-inspired La création du monde, and the premiere recording of the 1995 Festival commission, Tomiko Kohjiba's The Transmigration of the Soul (see Stereophile, January 1996, Vol.19 No.1, p.132). We were pleased, therefore, to be asked back by the Festival in 1996. Once again we have produced a CD of live recordings, Serenade (STPH009-2), which features chamber works by Mozart, Brahms, and Dvorák.
I'm a reggae snob, so I began reading this article with suspicion. I was wrong, Field Maloney knows his Wailers—and he knows that the Wailers' best recordings are seldom heard here in the 'States. If you haven't heard Soul Rebels, African Herbsman, and Rasta Revolution, you haven't heard them at their best. The American releases were way too prettied up and defanged. If you think you love Bob Marley, you must hear African Herbsman. Full stop—end of story.