Philip Glass was my favorite band for the most number of years that I picked a favorite band.
When I was young, I did not particularly care for the music the radios played. They tended to play ‘Top 20’ or ‘Top 10’, so I would hear the same song, over and over and over and over. I would go to the record store and purchase random movie soundtracks. Then if a song on that album was good, I’d start buying albums from that band.
One day, when I was purchasing one of those random albums, I purchased the official music of the 1984 Olympics. (Or maybe 1980), it has 2 repeatable tunes. One was a Philip Glass song (the Olympian) it was so good, I bought a Philip Glass album, but also I bought a keyboard, and the sheet music for that same song. I even took piano playing classes to learn how to play that song. While today I can do an interesting rendition of the Olympian on the keyboard, I would not say that I’m a great keyboard player.
In any case Philip Glass became my favorite band.
Here’sa few things to note about Philip Glass
- He was born in 1937 so today he quite old, but still producing albums, and I’m still buying them.
- For awhile, Philip Glass has an ensamble (a small band)
- Philip Glass is known as a composer - so he is commissioned to write music for others.
- While he does have one rock album, he is not known in the rock music circles. These were collaboration songs with people like Suzanne Vega, and Paul Simon and a few other 80’s timeframe singers
- In the early days, the critics would say his work was minimal or minimalistic. I think this was kind of an insult.
- Some of his work is minimalistic, some very repetitive.
- I was buying his work in the early days because i was looking for alternative music, and his was. But not in a bad way.
- There are several operas - of you hate opera like I do, then some of these would convert you to an opera lover.
- There are several symphonies - they start becoming great around symphony 5 and after.
- Around symphony 7 he brought in the Lintz Orchastra, a collection of over 100 musicians. You would think that would shake off his minimalist reputation, but there is always a critic out there who uses that term. I found a lot of noise, and several very powerful tunes.
- There are many movie sound tracks.
- Because Philip Glass is a composer, there are many musicians playing his music.
- If you decided to buy and collect Philip Glass albums you would find a lot of duplicate songs. For scale there’s an version of one of his songs on steel drums, same song performed with a saxophone, another with cello, and another, actually several with piano. And you would find numerous duplication of songs. But at least they sound different due to artists and instruments.
- For the most part my wife doesn’t care for Phillips repetition. Which kind of excluded about half of his albums.
- There’s one album - music on 12 parts. It’s at least 4 hours long, very repetitive - 1 song.
- One opera - Einstein at the beach - originally performed as a 16 hour opera (the secret is its the same opera performed 4 times), repetitive but good. At first I didn’t care that much for it. And then one insomniac day, it was the greatest music I ever heard. At least it was perfect for the mood.
- One soundtrack - Koyannatsi - was ok, then i was driving through Nevada, my eyes starring to glaze over and I put this album on and that was so good. Hit my mood perfectly. Actually, I bought the sheet music for Koyanatsi and am learning to play it somewhat well.
- One opera - les infants terribalas - great great great. And powerful.
- Another opera - the barbarians at the gate - pushes a mood best decribed as fret.
- I once attended a filming of koyanatsi and Philip was being interviewed, and he said something to the effect ‘If you don’t like it, don’t listen to it’. My guess is there are a lot of critics out there. But for me I would say, ‘If you don’t like it, you’re probably not in the right mood.’