Music

“If music be the food of love, play on.”
Shakespeare, Twelfth Night

“If I were not a physicist, I would probably be a musician. I often think in music. I live my daydreams in music. I see my life in terms of music.”
― Albert Einstein

Music has been in my life from infancy. At the age of eight, I was so entranced by Bach’s “Toccata and Fugue in D Minor” that I tried to pick out the melody on the piano. (I did so in C minor, because I knew what that “looked” like.) My family had 78rpm discs that had perhaps a single song on a side, and these 12″ disks came bundled together in a box that was called an album, like a photograph album, and that’s why we called 33-1/3rpm records “albums”. My sister collected 45s in her high school days, and then came all the changes — tape (reel-to-reel, 8-track, cassette), audiophile vinyl pressings, DATs, CDs… I love it all, and there are a great many tales to tell, about songs, about instrumental work, “classical” music, musicals, electronica… any number of genres. Like all my reviews, these are presented on the main page as I post them; here, I list them in alphabetical order by title and performer, so that you might see if you recognize any that you’ve heard and wish to compare views.

Rating System

★★★★★     Best of the Best; highest rating. Something to howl about.

★★★★☆  Really good; worth exploring and revisiting. Anthropomorphic wolf’s-thumb up.

★★★☆☆  Pretty good; likely to be worth your time and interest. Read through the review to help you make up your own mind.

★★☆☆☆  A good effort; flawed in various ways, but might have some redeeming qualities to it.

★☆☆☆☆  Seriously flawed, for reasons stated in the review. This is likely time that I, personally, regret not being able to get back.

☆☆☆☆☆  Irredeemably, horrifyingly, devastatingly horrible. Should be destroyed. Worth inventing time travel to make sure it was never created in the first place. Run from it like your life depended on it. (This is a rating rarely issued. Yeah — something that bad.)