Something Magical

When I first started buying music on vinyl, around the age of fourteen, I listened to every album I managed to buy as much as possible, to get my money's worth. I reckon that might have involved playing a new LP every single day for a month or more, possibly more than once. I can't recall getting tired of anything at that time. I suppose I was usefully learning to listen. But by the time I graduated from university things had changed regarding the frequency with which I listened and no longer played every album to death - with honourable exceptions. I have a feeling that Springsteen's The River featured in my life with some regularity, and I would have been approaching my mid-twenties by that time. But, as I say, that was an exception to the general rule. 

The result of this intense listening was burn-out, generally speaking. If I gave Fairport Convention's Angel Delight - one of my earliest purchases and one I delighted in - a spin this evening (I've now got it on CD) I reckon I'd enjoy it but find it more than a tad predictable and, therefore, kind of tired. 

But in later years the way I listened, and listen now, to 'new' purchases changed significantly. I might play an album three or four times initially, and then put it on hold, happy to go back to it intermittently but not obsessively. I've rarely found myself so besotted with an album that it demanded extremely frequent listening and generally even those that have hit me hard initially will lose that entirely magical edge in a few months.

However, there remain, I'm happy to say, exceptions and I hit upon one on Sunday morning, and have been repeating the magic this evening. The Yellow Shark bit me hard over the weekend and continues to grip. I hear stuff now in every piece that I've never quite picked up before, with an awareness that next time round the textures are likely to strike me as even richer and I'm likely to notice a detail of phrasing or harmony that I didn't quite pick up previously. The Ensemble Modern have got to be the best people to go to for Zappa at his most demanding, also doing ample justice to the Great Man at his most accessible. Let's face it, if G-Spot Tornado doesn't do it for you nothing will.

It helps considerably that the CD package comes with a highly informative booklet with lots of commentary on the music from FZ himself and from Peter Rundel, the conductor of the ensemble and, I suspect, a genius himself.