And yes, mixes need to be just right. Each song needs to flow emotionally and thematically into the next.

That's what I'm talking 'bout!

It's a little trickier with the spy mix than the crime jazz mix because by the mid-sixties there was a vogue for creating a soundtrack that had one strongly identifiable theme and then you would just arrange that same theme in a variety of different ways and at different tempos according to the scene. So you'd have the main theme with guitars and brass blasting. Then you'd play it with an electric harpsichord to indicate the chilly villain. Then you'd give it a lush bossa treatment for the seduction scene etc.

So when you do a mix like this and are basically trying to create a kind of soundtrack for a movie that's not there, you wind up with a bunch of Main Themes.

Whereas in crime jazz you've got seven or eight basic musical moods you need to hit: introductory main theme (like...Man With The Golden Arm, or Touch of Evil); hero arrives with much swagger and bassline (Peter Gunn, Richard Diamond); skulking music; villain's theme; slutty girl sax; "Requiem for a Sideman" type pieces - sad sax in a cityscape things; bongo action chase scene; evening nightlife music; fake rock and roll/twist/cha cha music for the nightclub.

Best of 2006

I won't be organizing anything into a top ten of any kind, I'm too disorganized for that. But music played a big role in many parts of my life this year, and I wanted to comment on some of what I've been listening to. Some of it isn't even from 2006. Some of it was released late 2005, but featured heavily in 2006 for me. Some of it may even be older than that, but it's what I listen to, and it gets included because I said so.

The first piece I want to comment on is actually an entire album. It's a choral/chant piece called Path of Miracles, composed by Joby Talbot and performed by Nigel Short and Tenebrae. I first heard one part -- the third movement, Leon -- one night on a local classical station. I missed the composer and title, but thankfully the station posts a playlist on their website. After hunting down the piece I wanted, I found it on iTunes and bought the whole album. I would have just bought the one piece, but thankfully the individual tracks were not for sale. The album blew me away.

Talbot was inspired to write the four movement piece while travelling the Way of St. James pilgrimage trail through Spain. Each of the four movements is named for one of the major sites along the trail -- Roncesvalles, Burgos, Leon and Santiago (the destination).

The piece is sung in a multitude of languages, including English, Latin, and Basque, and includes passages from meadival texts about the pilgrimage. The first movement, Roncesvalles, starts with and heavily features a Taiwanese singing technique called pasiputput, that uses an eerie rising glissando starting with the bass voices slowly rising in tone and volume. The remaining movements occupy more traditional musical space, but many exotic influences can be heard in the composition, which occasionally includes simple chimes and bells accompanying the voices.

Gorgeously recorded at the church of St. Bartholomew in London, it was originally scheduled to be performed and recorded on July 7th last year, but was postponed a day due to the bombings that rocked the city. The sumptuous acoustics of the church make for a profound listening experience, all the way through the end, which fades out not due to any engineering trick, but because the singers, repeating the phrase "Holy St James, great St James/God help us now and evermore" repeated over and over, walk out of the church while singing.

I've been listening to it nonstop while writing recently, as it is a highly stimulating piece that plays nicely in my headphones. Highly recommended.

Incidentally, I discovered a nice piece of trivia the Buffistas would appreciate. The composer, Joby Talbot, also wrote the score for the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy film, including the wonderful "So Long and Thanks for All the Fish," number.

Question. How would someone go about visiting this buffistarawk thingie?

How would someone go about visiting this buffistarawk thingie?

I will answer you via the email.

Then I will check the email!

Then I will check the email!

It should be filled with important information about BR as well as pertinent spam about "Hott Rectal Action!!1!"

So...not the one where I send y'all $5,000 and then you deposit $1,000,000 into my account is it?

Pffft. What would you do with a million dollars? Your life's already perfect.

Interesting tidbit from the Slate music year-end roundup. Jody Rosen confirms my opinion that modern Nashville country is really just power pop in disguise.

I spent lots of time listening to country in '06 (the Nashville kind, not alt-), and the unkindest cut on my albums list was Dierks Bentley's Long Trip Alone, nipped at the finish line by Willie Nelson and his gravitas. Long Trip Alone is a great big slab o' hokum—Dierks spins a lot of grizzled talk about the open road and compares himself to a "worn-out pair of boots"—but it has everything that I love about current Nashville country, which, in case you haven't noticed, is really old-fashioned melodic pop-rock with better words. If you like loud guitars that crash between minor chords, sing-along choruses, smart narrative lyric-writing, and have a higher-than-average tolerance for the purple stuff, CMT is heaven.

Responding to another section of Jody's year-end review:

But I think I'll leave you with a surprising revelation: The worst song the year was not, I repeat not, "You're Beautiful," by the rabidly loathed James Blunt. (I'll bet you can guess his cockney rhyming nickname.)

I need to note that when I can't avoid this song on the radio or in a store I subconsciouisly replace the word "beautiful" with "newticle" (which is, of course, a prosthetic testicle). This changes the song from "You're Beautiful" to "Your Newticle" - which is infinitely more intriguing.