Sunday, March 01, 2009

Sucks

Do you know what sucks?

I'll tell you what sucks.

In fact, that's the point of this post, as evidenced by its title.

Now, many things suck, but there's only one thing that I'm kind of on my soapblog about today, and that's the relative unavailability of good classical music.

I know what you're saying. You're saying, "Spencer, what are you talking about? There's a whole radio station full of it right here in the good old SLC." And I don't disagree with you - in fact, you've made my point for me, and I thank you, except it's really me putting words in your mouth, and you've not, in fact, said anything (unless you happen to make random catty remarks aloud while reading other people's blogs, in which case you have more serious problems than a relative unavailability of good classical music - but I digress). My point is that there is ONE classical radio station and like A GRAJILLION other radio stations.

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike the music that these grajillion other radio stations are playing, it's just like, what do you do when you want to hear some classical music? Well, you switch to Classical 89, of course, but what if it's playing something you don't like so much? Like, there's some sort of Bach playing, and you're just not in a very baroque mood today. It's understandable and it happens to all of us. Nobody is in a baroque mood all the time.

So then what do you do? If you've thought ahead, you have a couple of CD's full of classical music you enjoy, and you throw one of those in. Good thinking! But wait - where did you get those CD's in the first place? I challenge you to think of an even slightly obscure composer or piece and walk into your local music store and find a recording of it. Chances are you won't. For instance, good luck finding, say, some of Grieg's lesser-known works, or pretty much anything by Sibelius. And Gershwin? Unless you're looking for Rhapsody in Blue or Porgy & Bess, you're probably out of luck. Which is totally not the case if you're looking for the High School Musical 3 soundtrack, or the latest release from U2.

So thus I appeal to you, my faithful readers - where can you find good classical music for purchase? I'd prefer something local, because supporting local businesses is what all the cool kids are doing these days, and if there's a guy who's making a living selling classical music out of some hole in the wall downtown, I want to hear about it, because I am going to go drop like $40 in this guy's store.

ps - post number 100 on tophatrabbit! I know, can you believe it?

1 comment:

Silas Humphreys said...

I would strongly recommend finding someplace that carries CDs from the Naxos label. Not only do they do the less-famous stuff, (such as the lesser-known works of Sibelius; normally all you'll find is Finlandia and maybe the Karelia Suite) they do it with appropriate orchestras (the aforementioned Sibelius is done by an Icelandic orchestra with a Finnish conductor) and the resulting CDs are sold at "budget" price points.