David Langwallner: Easy Listening

From top: The Rolling Stones in 1968;  David Langwallner

These are troubled times, and many have accused my columns of being dark. What is the solution in our awful times to appease the savage beasties?

Well, music helps.

So, allow me a few personal recommendations.

If you are committed to a stressful job or coping with the dehumanisation of unemployment and deprivation, how do you turn off. What should you listen to?

Well, the greatest rock song ever written is, in my view, Sympathy for The Devil by The Rolling Stones and it is far from relaxing, but appropriate to our times.  More of it later but I would suggest it should be listened to before the relaxants or after as an antidote. Let us not be soporific. Let us confront the gorgons head!

Now, although he did not apply it to his own fraught life, Glenn Gould was the greatest improviser of Bach and, despite conventional and absurdist critics, the greatest interpreter of Bach. My first recommendation thus is to listen to his Well-Tempered Clavier and then the Partitas and then the Goldberg Variations.  They have been put into outer space as exemplars of our civilization as was, so perhaps you should give it a try.

Bach is in general restful in a secular way and the religious dimension can be transliterated to the contemplation of insignificance and eternity. Cosmic insignificance and not just Gould’s interpretations. The Cantatas are the great works of western civilization.

Mozart, as an Austrian (a deliberate emphasis on my behalf) is a complex case and one would not recommend Don Giovanni for easy listening. Chocolate box aside much of the orchestral music soothes and Cosi and indeed Figaro help. The incandescent The Magic Flute is one of the great works of western civilisation and, although influenced by freemasonry, a crucial work of our Manichean times where music has the power to transcend human fear and through tasks, we acquire goodness.

Now I dislike muzak or packaged new age relaxation. It is synthetic so let me try a few others in music terms. Entirely up to you. Non classical.

Sinatra matters and the great ballads of the Capitol Records period including and above else In The Wee Small Hours of the Morning. He is the greatest of all baritones in any field in my view. So does much other jazz, a neglected art form. Now there is jazz light and there is John Coltrane. I will separately write a piece about that genius hopefully. Mostly dark. Not light. Not suitable for comfort.

So, I suggest in jazz light terms the great Django Reinhart and above all else Shine and Nuages .  Louis Armstrong, I favour Potato Head Blues. Dame Ella singing the great American Songbook is recommended but not the great Dylan’s mangling of same in recent albums, far too dark, but the great Charlie Parker has an effervescent quality as does earlier Coltrane.

The latter, one of the great geniuses of the 20th century, did produce in light terms, My Favourite Things and The Blue Train and Kind of Blue by Miles Davis. which is I think more Coltrane than Davis. Nina Simona is a little soporific. And the darkness of Billie Holiday should be mediated through Them There Eyes, a song of utter lightness and gaiety at great disparity to her life.

The greatest jazz artist of utter relaxation is the pianist Thelonious Monk and, with Glenn Gould, the greatest pianist in my view, thus Misterioso or Round Midnight. Though perhaps, in contemporary terms, Keith Jarret also helps –  in The Koln Concert, Vienna and Milan concerts,  Jarret is the great improvisational jazz genius of our times.

As far as kitsch is concerned, we come to Andrew Lloyd Webber. Music of the Night is tremulous and one of the great British songs from a genius of the light.  A pre-Raphaelite extension. A boule de suit and a truffle but curiously relevant.

Bernard Shaw despised opera but wrongly so. To hear Jussie Björling, sing La Donna Mobile is to hear one of the great artefacts of 20th century culture  or, in present times, Cecilia Bartoli sing Leschi a Panga is to listen to contemporary absolute greatness. The great mezzo soprano of our times.

Callas, of course. The great flawed voice and such songs as Caste Diva or  La Wally cut to the absolute core of human existence.  The classical voices of pain and abuse. The imperfections are irrelevant to the songbird.

Which leads us to Edith Piaf, a life as awful as Callas’ perhaps with even greater abuse,  but to hear La Vie En Rose is to hear one of the greatest songs ever written by a great interpreter even if self-destructive.

But she is not the greatest French singer and, bar Mr. Dylan and even then co equally, the greatest singer songwriter of all time is Mr. Brel and his songs of the frustrations and disappointments of the middle class as well as his great declarations of love such as Madeleine as well as the contemplation of time and the reflection of the human merry go round circus that is la Valse a Mile Temps.

One should avoid, in my view, soporific rock, but the following can be recommended without equivocation. Dylan Love minus Zero, Mr. Tambourine Man, Lay Lady Lay, Most of the Time, Shelter from the Storm and indeed all of Blonde on Blonde. Though not late Dylan. Like all great artists,  lateness is darkness, though Key West on the present great album is worth a gentle, wistful listen.

Cohen’s earlier songs have romantic chocolate box uniformity, but some find them appealing. The later songs are not ones to listen to us if one wants to relax but Going Home has a certain autumnal clarity.

The greatest soul singers are Aretha Franklin, Marvin Gaye, and Otis. Try a Little Tenderness by Otis cannot not be improved upon nor his My Girl, a much better version than Smokey Robinson’s.

As far as the king of cool, Mr. Burt Bacharach, a much-maligned person, we have I Say a Little Prayer by Aretha, one of the greatest and most inspirational work songs ever written. In fact, a model for living  if dangerously compliant.

Sexual Healing by Marvin Gaye is also important, but be wary should you have a Christian pastor father. Abba lift the spirits as does the eccentric part of the Beatles canon. To listen to Octopus Garden, Yellow Submarine or McCartney’s Martha My Dear is to  enter a world of dream dotty land English goodness. Harrison’s Here Comes the Sun is one of the great songs as of course is My Sweet Lord.

The greatest living Englishman, in my view, is Ray Davies. And his greatest songs are all wonderful. A Dedicated Follower of Fashion is my favourite, but Waterloo Sunset relaxes entirely and says something profound about England. In fact, it is the quintessential English song as you walk over that bridge as I do perhaps three times a week at dusk one sees what he is saying about this great but flawed country.

The greatest dead Englishman, Mr. Bowie, has produced many works of jaw-dropping wonder but to listen to Kooks and Hunky Dory is to understand all the comforts, oddities and quiddities and genius England has to offer. His electronica offerings are also of value and Wild is the Wind on Station To Station a masterpiece.

But, as one reader of Broadsheet remarked, I can be an elitist, and some doubt my Irishness, so let us be irocentric. Van Morrison’s Summertime in England as a replicant remembrance of things past.

So, to my final list.

Not Dark Yet, Murder Most Foul and Hurricane by Dylan
Don Giovanni by Mozart.
Old Ideas by Cohen. Also, Democracy and the Future.
A Day in the Life by The Beatles. our alienated universe
You Do not Miss Your Water by Otis. Racism abounds,
MS Otis Regrets or Strange Fruit by Bily and Ella. Racism abounds again.
Sinatra One for my Baby or Autumn of my Years. Drowning in dissolution and tears.

And lastly those great satanic masters of observation The Rolling Stones what better than Sympathy for the Devil. The most unsettling rock song ever and the most appropriate for our dark times. Odd That Sir Michael is more appropriate than Bach. For the devil now is fascism, murder, satanism in all its religious and non religious guises, tribalism, neoliberalism. and greed.

Though one should relax.

David Langwallner is a barrister specialising in public law, immigration, housing and criminal defence including miscarriages of justice. He is emeritus director of the Irish innocence project and was Irish lawyer of the year at the 2015 Irish law awards. His column appears here every Tuesday and Friday. Follow David on Twitter @DLangwallner

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