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The Sprawl

Mar 11, 2021 3:00 PM – 5:00 PM

With Mickey

Episode 483: Different Trains

3:00 PM		MF Doom Eucalyptus Special Herbs Vol. 2 Metal Face/High Times 2002
3:04 PM		László Sáry Studies on Steam Engines Locomotive Symphony Budapest Music Center 1998 Composed/Recorded in 1996
3:12 PM		Steve Reich Different Trains Different Trains / Electric Counterpoint Nonesuch 1989 Featuring the Kronos Quartet and various narrators.
3:39 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
3:42 PM		László Sáry Locomotive Symphony Locomotive Symphony Budapest Music Center 1998
4:00 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
4:01 PM		Charles Ives II: Comedy/"Celestial Railroad" Symphony No. 4 Columbia Masterworks 1965 Leopold Stokowski conducting the American Symphony Orchestra. A symphonic arrangement of the earlier piano piece "The Celestial Railroad"
4:13 PM		John Morris w/ Gene Wilder, Rolfe Sedan & Rick Norman Train Ride to Transylvania Dialogue & Music From Original Soundtrack Of "Young Frankenstein" ABC 1975
4:14 PM		Sonny Terry Locomotive Blues Harmonica and Vocal Solos Folkways 1952
4:17 PM		Vincent Price/Oliver Wendell Holmes The Broomstick Train Tales of Witches, Ghosts and Goblins Caedmon 1972
4:18 PM		John Fahey The Last Steam Engine Train The Dance of Death & Other Plantation Favorites Takoma 1964
4:20 PM		The Kinks Last of the Steam Powered Trains The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society Pye/Reprise 1968
4:24 PM		Lord Buckley The Train A Most Immaculately Hip Aristocrat Straight 1969 Recorded in 1956
4:27 PM		John Mayall Catch That Train The Blues Alone Ace of Clubs/London 1967
4:29 PM		Daphne Oram Snow Oramics Paradigm 2007 From 1963. Soundtrack to this film, please watch: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl4pJwcE7JI
4:37 PM		Philip Glass & Robert Wilson Act II, Scene II: Night Train Einstein On the Beach Tomato 1978
4:50 PM		Set Break: ----------------------------------------------------
4:53 PM		John Coltrane Blue Train Blue Train Blue Note 1957

Chat is archived.

Sprawl 483 until 5pm. All aboard.

🚂

Great to have you on board Liz.

At the beginning of that MF Doom track, did I hear “time to kick back and give yourself a hard time”? I don’t know if I misheard that, but it made me laugh

John Lennon on a bootleg saying "Turn on the incense, light the candles, and give yourself a hard time."

Thanks, Mickey. Also, before it was apparent that these were trains- before the whistles kicked in- I thought I was hearing the sounds of large beasts exhaling through the nose- like a manatee or a rhino or something

It always cracks me up too.

Ahhhhh. Yeah, I like that snippet! Then kick back to this chill MF Doom track!

I can dig locomotives as automaton rhinos.

All aboard the rhinotrain!

Hell yeah.

Check yer tickets please....

Nah, honor system, like Copenhagen

Best train song ever!

So that’s what Adrian Belew’s Lone Rhino was about

Gleis nummer zwei

It's up there Bud

I saw the Kronos Quartet on the premier tour for Different Trains a long long time ago. It was very powerful live.

... with tape accompaniment, of course.

Bud, that is fantastic. I can only imagine.

The second half of the show included Arvo Pärt's "Fratres", which started my endless obsession with Pärt. It was quite a night!

My goodness. This isn't really a competition, but Bud is running away with the "I saw some awesome shit" stories so far today.

I saw most of the old Reich Ensemble perform Drumming with So Percussion, and Steve did an interview/Q&A with Adam from So afterwards. I feel very fortunate for that one.

Was that in Princeton a couple years ago? I was there for that one, too. I think it was filmed, but I never heard about it being released.

Yeah, that was it. I have some photos somewhere. That was a good night, cuz they showed Stalker from Tarkovsky at the Garden Theatre the same night, and I pulled off going to both. That was a nice, uh, 5 hours.

Wow, that's quite a night!

I think it was raining too. My kinda night. Good times.

Going to live events was fun, back before the world ended and everything.

It'll be the last thing to come back, small ones anyway, but it'll come back.

Yep. I admit to having vaccine envy.

wprb.com/survey

Look, I did it.

I remembered that part.

It should be noted that this piece/cd was fervently recommended to me some months back by Thomas Myernick, aka the Worried Waltzer, and it inspired the compiling of the rest of this show over the last few weeks. Thank you Thomas.

Love this already,I'm a 30+ yrs PRB listener & a life long train enthusiast aka a "former" what real RR employees call a"former" I.e. Those who seemingly foam at the mouth when they here the sound of an approaching train, ideally a real long freight train.

& Apologies for the "former" typo

Glad to hear it Mr. I. I'm not super knowledgable on the mechanics, but I've always loved them and their sounds, and ride them while traveling any chance I get. I've got some great recordings of trains in a folder somewhere.

Somehow, I'm not the least bit surprised that Thomas recommended this!

I wasn’t necessarily sure I would fill out the listener survey before, but now I know that for “what you’d like to hear more of” I can write “trains”

He's good like that, Bud. One of the best $1.00 I ever spent.

I have a recently acquired 60's record sitting next to me called "The Railroad in Folk Song." No train sounds, but I'm sure you'd enjoy it, Mr. I.

The desired effect, Rob of many b's.

My version of trainspotting is I write down my car number every time I take NJ Transit to NYC. 20+ years, only 1 or 2 repeats.

One of the old brown naugahyde seaters once a decade or so apart.

I live adjacent to the northeast corridor, so I call this "ambient music".

I spent 2 years in college living in the building directly next to some tracks. Fairly fast-moving freight train every morning at 5:30, and again at 10ish pm. Not a popular opinion, but I loved it.

This is the soundtrack to a short film about the intense winter of 1963 in the UK, featuring a train traveling through a very snowy landscape. Watch it here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cl4pJwcE7JI

I get fast trains every 5-20 minutes. It's fine unless they're working within a mile in either direction. Then each train is required to lean on the horns. Day and night. 🙉

That horn sound even made it onto one of my mic breaks last summer.

So you could probably get away with a lot of racket on your own then too, right?

Yeah, the neighbors are all half deaf by now.

Sounds like the perfect opportunity to start a Master Musicians of Jajouka cover band.

appropriate sound for me as I’m on a converted rail to trail on this almost summery day :)

Right on Mark

i lost my einstein box set a long time ago / don’t know how a train fit into the whole story/opera if there was a story ?

I mean, this sounds like a train to me. And now that I think about, so does a lot of Glass' music. I never read the notes to this though, just put it on a space way out.

i guess from what i just read quickly it’s probably his relativity example we learned in High school / if we had paid attention:)

it’s a great sound no matter what - pretty mesmerizing

I didn't realize it was calle Night Train until I was putting this together. I said "oh shit, look at that" and put it on the list.

Folks, this train is rapidly approaching its destination, Doubleplusgood with Lizbot. When the 'Trane fades, please disembark, mind the gap and such, have a pleasant time with Liz, and I'll see y'all next week. Thanks for traveling Sprawl.

The train appears onstage several times throughout Einstein. I assume it's a metaphor for something or other?

I love this the show today! Lord Buckley cracked me up

Bud, "A metaphor for something or other" is great description of that and much of the art I consume.

Cracked me up, Bud.

Thanks Liz!

It's safest to assume that anything I don't understand is a metaphor.

Right there with you Bud