Name this tune, please.
January 30, 2005 7:50 PM   Subscribe

Name. This. Tune. Please. Short clip (218k); More (531k). I heard it many years ago on NPR, as background to a Joe Frank monologue. Fortunately, I taped it. I've tried every avenue I could think of to identify it, with no success. Can you? (Sorry if this is too specific—"could you get more specific?"—but I need want to know.)
posted by bricoleur to Media & Arts (15 answers total)
 
I don't know the song but the first name that popped into my head when I heard the clip was Ry Cooder. Could be.
posted by davebush at 8:26 PM on January 30, 2005


That's exactly what I thought. I'm pretty sure it's Ry Cooder.
posted by GriffX at 8:33 PM on January 30, 2005


I can't identify it, but might want to try looking at this. It has info on background music for some of Frank's programs. You might get lucky.

JF also composed and played a fair bit of the background music himself, so you might just have the only recording of it...
posted by googly at 9:22 PM on January 30, 2005


Joe almost always states the artist's name for his backing music at the end of the show.

He's also a fan of Ry Cooder, so that's not particularly implausible.
posted by ikkyu2 at 11:54 PM on January 30, 2005


Response by poster: Googly, I assure you, I've Googled—I wouldn't waste MetaFilter cycles without doing my homework. And I had found the page you referenced (thanks!). But. This particular show was titled "At the Border." That FAQ lists the music as "A Different World" by Popol Vuh. I got ahold of Best of Popol Vuh, which includes that track, and there is no resemblance between "A Different World" and the music in these clips.

I really hope this is not the only recording of it.

For some reason, I hadn't thought of Ry Cooder. I'll look into that. The problem is, without a title, it's hard to know where to start looking. Anyone have any methodological suggestions for this kind of search?
posted by bricoleur at 1:47 AM on January 31, 2005


Interesting. It might well be Popol Vuh. They are very eclectic, ranging from ambient drone to guitar rock to world music, and could certainly have turned out this style of music. Could be that the FAQ just lists the wrong album and track. But beyond wading through every Popol Vuh album (or at least every snippet you can find on Amazon) I can't be much more help. Sorry.
posted by googly at 2:17 AM on January 31, 2005


Popul Vuh has a lot of different sounding stuff, fwiw. I have their soundtrack from Aguirre The Wrath of God and some of the music on there sounds similar to the clip you included though regrettably, not the same. Frank has used music from at least two other Herzog soundtracks by Popul Vuh and the track listing I found for Frank's shows says it's from the soundtrack of "Cobra Verde" which, yes, is supposed to be the same song as on the "best of" album but you might want to check out the movie and see if the sounds somewhat match. Other than that, scanning Popul Vuh and Florian Fricke clips seems to be the direction to go in.
posted by jessamyn at 3:21 AM on January 31, 2005


I have no idea why, but winamp identified it as a track from "Rock Tune-up #183 compilation?PROMO ONLY". It lists all the artists except for that track.

I found it for sale here, the artists listed are all identical to the winamp listing, except for gravity kills, which uhh.. probably isn't it.
posted by Jack Karaoke at 4:55 AM on January 31, 2005


Try running the song through the Musicbrainz database to see if you can get the title that way. Failing that, you could try emailing allsongs@npr.org for help.
posted by initapplette at 7:52 AM on January 31, 2005


Response by poster: Thanks for some good ideas, folks. Maybe if I just emailed Joe Frank? Hmmm...worth a try.
posted by bricoleur at 6:18 PM on February 1, 2005


Any updates on the identity of this song, bricoleur? I've been captured by it, just from listening to your samples, and would like to get it myself.
posted by event at 6:20 AM on February 3, 2005


Response by poster: event: One poster to a krautrock group I belong to says she knows the piece--but can't place it. Dang it. But that was only 2 days ago. There's still hope; it may pop into her head in the shower. I will post it here if and when I find out, assuming the thread hasn't gone into deep storage by then.
posted by bricoleur at 3:27 PM on February 4, 2005


Response by poster: FOUND!

I posted my plea on rec.music.newage, and a kind soul with a long memory i.d.'ed the piece—or at least i.d.'ed the album and the artist: Aragon, by Tatsuo Hayashi. For more details, see the newsgroup thread (Google link).

Thank you all again for your suggestions.
posted by bricoleur at 4:33 AM on February 7, 2005


Thanks for the update, bricoleur - glad you found it!
posted by googly at 9:29 AM on February 8, 2005


Awesome! Thanks bricoleur!
posted by event at 6:12 PM on February 9, 2005


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