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Top CDs
Sting - Brand New Day
Super Furry Animals - Fuzzy Logic 
Coming right at the height of what the world knows as Britpop, Fuzzy Logic is a wonderful masterpiece filled with rocking guitars and gorgeous melodies. Gruff's (pronounced Griff) voice is strikingly superb for a first record, and his bandmates equal the quality on every single song.
This is by far the Furries most straight ahead rock disc, while albums like Outspaced and Rings Around the World bounce through many many styles.
Santana - Supernatural
Customer review: "Supernatural makes me hope for the day that Carlos teams up with Sting..."
Joined in the studio by contemporary chart-toppers like Dave Matthews, Wyclef Jean, Lauryn Hill, Everlast, Eagle Eye Cherry, and Eric Clapton, Santana's fluid and fiery guitar blends with Afro-Cuban percussion and soul-filled hip-hop for an exhilarating exhibition of multi-culturalism. The percussions are Latin perfect throughout the CD. Santana's guitar playing is always present and commanding as he weaves in and out of ballads, punches up hip-hop numbers, and stretches through his own style. No black magic, just sheer talent.
Hits
Carly Simon
- The Best of Carly Simon
Prog rock (classics)
Sun Ra - Mayan Temples
Alan Sorrenti - Radici
Today's rock
The Sebadoh - Sebadoh
Stone Temple Pilots - No. 4
Classical Arnold Schoenberg
During the opening decade of the century, Schoenberg (1874-1951) evolved a freely atonal style that overturned the tonal system which had dominated Western music since the time of Bach. But the final victory over tonality only occurred after World War I, with his discovery, or invention, of serialism. The first completely serial work was the Suite for Piano (1921-3), where unity of the work and equality between all 12 tones is achieved by ordering them in a "series". This determines their appearance throughout the work -- E always followed by B flat for instance, and so on. Although this appears mechanical, Schoenberg rightly insisted that he wrote "12-note compositions, not 12-note compositions".
A. Schoenberg- Pierrot Lunaire, etc. (Boulez, Schäfer, et al.) It is a song cycle, in that it sets 21 poems in the proto-expressionist style; it is a theatrical work from the cabaret tradition intended for some sort of staged presentation by a soprano singing in Sprechstimme, a method of declamation somewhere between song and speech; it is rooted in the comedy cult of the time; it is a chamber work for vocalist and five instrumentalists; and it is a mature exploration of the possibilities of the atonal style that often looks forward to serialism. Pierrot Lunaire, featuring a grotesque harlequin figure, introduced the world to a hitherto unthought -- of musical landscape; to call it innovative would be an absurd understatement.A. Schoenberg- Piano Concertos, Symphonies (Brendel, Gielen)
In Schoenberg's Concerto for Piano and Orchestra (1942) a 12-tone row is established early on--but so is a precise logic of form and evolution of theme... Schoenberg's rejection of tonality does not mean the rejection of structure or the possibility of other ways music can be pleasing. He practically invented 20th century music, or at least freed it from the spell of Romanticism, and his famous Chamber Symphony 1 fairly started the revolution. Almost all subsequent Western classical music was influenced by Schoenberg, especially in the immediate vicinity of Vienna, where his two pupils Weber and Berg hastily mastered his innovations and passed them on to the post-war generation.
A. Schoenberg- The Piano Music (Maurizio Pollini)
The first great pianist to record all of Schoenberg's piano music was Glenn Gould, and if you grew up with Gould's interpretations, then you're in for a shock. In the first place, Pollini actually plays what Schoenberg wrote -- Gould freely altered the text in ways that would have driven the composer insane. And then there's the humming -- yes, believe it or not, Gould did manage to sing along as he played. Pollini's quieter, less vocal approach conveys much more of what Schoenberg actually wrote...
A. Schoenberg- Transfigured Night, etc. (Salonen, Stockholm CO)
Transfigured Night was originally composed for string sextet, but it has since become popular in the composer's arrangement for full string orchestra. Since the Second String Quartet (1908) was also arranged by the composer in a similar fashion, it's amazing that no one has had the idea to couple the two works together before now. The first three movements of the Second Quartet are, in theory at least, still tonal, but in the concluding fourth movement Schoenberg definitively slips the time-honoured moorings of musical history, breathing freely what his soprano soloist (another innovation) refers to as "the air of another planet". Salonen is, along with Pierre Boulez, the most persuasive advocate of contemporary music on the podium today.
Sci-fi
-
Software
by Rudy Rucker
Rucker's Software Trilogy (Wetware, Software, Freeware) presents his ideas about using artificial evolution to create artificial intelligence. Philip K. Dick meets Arthur C. Clarke.
Tim F. Lahaye, Jerry B. Jenkins - Soul Harvest: The Word Takes Sides (Left Behind)
Having survived the wrath of the Lamb--a global earthquake in the 21st month of the Tribulation--pilot Rayford Steele and reporter Buck Williams now embark on a journey of absorbing adventure and Christian triumph. Carpathia and the devastated globe hurtle toward the midway point of the Tribulation, and already the small band of believers finds itself struggling merely to survive.
Soul Harvest is book four in the enormously popular Left Behind series (seven books are planned in all), based on those who are left behind in the Rapture.
Silicon
Embrace by John Shirley
Concerned about aliens, secret societies, and goverment conspiracies? In Silicon Embrace, Shirley weaves together these themes along with up-to the-minute pop culture references and older myths. A great book with a lot going on.
Architecture
The first book to examine the architecture of Wall Street between
the wars.
Other books of great interest: Grand Central Terminal : Railroads, Engineering, and
Architecture in New York City ; The Architecture of R. M. Schindler ; The Destruction of
Penn Station ; The Late, Great
Pennsylvania Station
Film books
- The Cinema of
MARTIN SCORSESE by Lawrence S. Friedman, Lawrence S. Friedman
- Best books of the 20th Century
- J.D. Salinger - The Catcher in
the Rye
- Jane Smiley - Ordinary Love and Good Will: Two Novellas
- At a reunion with her grown children, a woman recalls the long-ago affair that ended her relationship with their father--and changed all their lives irrevocably. "Smiley's stories lucidly explore the complexities of contemporary sexual and dometic life...the emotional and moral complexity that she uncovers in the characters of these resonant novellas confirms Jane Smiley's singular talent. Ordinary Love and Good Will is an extraordinary achievement." (The Washington Post Book World)
William Safire
- Scandalmonger
- Through this historic novel set in 1790s New England, Safire
demonstrates that a scandal seeking function is not unique to the modern press, but was
alive and well in the era immediately following the Revolutionary War. Almost everyone
knows the historical legacy of Hamilton, Jefferson, Monroe, Adams and Madison, but this
book reminds us that even our founding fathers were susceptible to the weaknesses for
which we condemn our current leaders.
Duels, stolen letters, written admissions of guilt, peculation, and pecadillos, these bits are all true. The Alien and Sedition act, one of the most notorious pieces of legislation in our Country's History plays a prominent role. Add then murder, wrongful imprisonment, treason, and trials with "The Hanging Judge" Samuel Chase. - The Simple
Truth by David Baldacci
Bestsellers
Neal Stephenson - Snow Crash
A cyberpunk thriller
Movies
Shake Hands
with the Devil 
(1959) VHS, Black & White
Starring: James
Cagney, Don Murray
Director: Michael
Anderson
- Stir Crazy
Starring: Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder
Sidney Poitier
Director:
NTSC format
Color, HiFi Sound, NTSCA lot of goos laughs!
Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor are two New York yoyos who try their luck in California and are accused of robbing a bank. Most of the laughs concern their survival strategies in prison (at one point, Wilder decides to "reach out and talk" to some hulking murderer) and their plans to escape. Both performers are so brilliant in any situation that they give this film plenty of funny moments (one or two of which became instantly classic).
Other formats: DVD - See No Evil,
Hear No Evil
Starring: Richard Pryor, Gene Wilder, Kevin Spacey
Director: Arthur Hiller
NTSC format
Closed-captioned, HiFi Sound, CX Encoding, NTSC
Very, very funny comedy about a deaf man and a blind man who inadvertently become murder suspects and take it on the lam, hoping to catch the real killers.Great performances by Gene Wilder and Richard Pryor, and Kevin Spacey is a hoot with that mustache and accent.
franc'O'brain
& Transputer Qasar. 2001.
Email: francobrain@angelfire.com.
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