SILVER CITY HI-FI’S records are in three rooms, back beyond the audiophile Alamut of the store’s front rooms and listening spaces, sorted “by the first letter of the artist’s name.” Wonderfully lacking further labeling other than one room for new and two for used, this invites perusing without prejudice. Expensive punk originals resting against $2 forgotten Countrypolitan, Clash re-issues with classical. But this cover for ‘The Baroque Head’ – oh, this cover! – yelled at me, louder than its co-crated Beatles and Bachman Turner Overdrive and Bee Gees. (It should be mentioned that the “B” crate records aren’t in further alphabetical order). Despite the title, I assumed the music was not actually baroque: this album came out in 1972, it’s got that Terry Gilliam-esque cover*, so I figured “baroque” was a non-sequitur.
I was wrong.
If you’re not a baroque or classical music fan, you will still know some of these songs and composers. If you can’t name any baroque songs, you do know the first song – “Pachabel:Canon” – and at least heard of Bach, Handel, and Vivaldi, even if you couldn’t pick out one of their songs. Not to worry: music journalist Ed Ward wrote the incredibly helpful liner notes, aimed at people like us.. He uses three distinct columns in describing “THE BAROQUE PERIOD,” “LISTENING TO BAROQUE MUSIC,” “THE MUSIC ON THIS ALBUM.” He explains baroque’s similarity to rock (“…and roll”, as they still added alot in 1972): an emphasis on freedom, melody, emotion, and bands rather than soloists, thought by the culture makers to be a passing fad. He’s of course writing this in 1972 (or even earlier), when rock [and roll] was barely old enough to drive, and its future not a given. “But this music,” he writes of Baroque, projecting onto rock [and roll], “is so good that someday somebody was bound to realize its value, no matter how far it fell from grace.”
Ed begins the “LISTENING” column with “Just about everybody I know who digs rock and roll digs baroque music…, adding “..it was music to be played for the sheer fun of playing it, and anybody can dig that.” Each song gets a paragraph description, with some biographical information about the composer, and something about the musicians involved on this particular recording (it’s an international bunch, with each song by a different orchestra). Fifty, or four hundred, years after this music’s introduction, it’s still new to many of us, with enough of the familiar and of the unknown to be worth a few listens, and to come away feeling like one has learned something. It’s more than that though, or can be: Baroque Head’s cover, notes, and content sustain relevance as an analog mash-up of particular times and places, trends and passions and taboos, “…something to put on your shoulders and lighten things up and make you happy,” writes Mr. Ward. All that, available without tracking devices or cookies or side effects, great for listening, passable for wall art, for less than the price of a medium coconut latte.
[Bargain being $10 and under, even if not in a segregated crate.] *A Doug Johnson is the cover artist for this album. Maybe inspired by Python, or maybe an inspiration for Python, as this album – from “Orphic Egg, A Product of London Records” – was hatched in the UK. There are other “Head” records too, the back tells us, in the “Orphic Egg Composers’ Series,” so, go start looking for those now.
