Rabbit Holes

In 1955, Canadian pianist Glenn Gould surprised executives at Columbia Masterworks by choosing J.S. Bach's Goldberg Variations for his debut recording. His performance was fast and fluid and sparkling and delicious, and it was an astonishingly big seller. In 1981, Gould came full circle and recorded the Goldbergs again. It was his last studio recording. That second attempt could not be more different from the first: relentlessly intellectual, percussive, insistent.

Late last year, to honor what would have been Gould's 90th birthday, Sony put out a package with a full-color coffee table book and 10 CDs of unreleased outtakes from the 1981 sessions—The Goldberg Variations: The Complete Unreleased 1981 Studio Sessions—with an 11th disc containing the 1981 album.

The year 1965 was turbulent, pivotal, and consequential. LBJ sent soldiers to the Dominican Republic, stepped into Vietnam with both feet, and signed laws expanding voting rights and creating Medicare and Medicaid. Antiwar protests gathered steam, Bob Dylan went electric, the Beatles played Shea Stadium, Sandy Koufax pitched a perfect game, and pioneering DJ Alan Freed died.

My tastes coalesced around rock music, particularly the harder and faster kind, by the time I was in middle school. Earlier, they were oriented toward pop: The Beatles are my first and forever musical love.

After a wild decade in the biggest pop music group ever, John Lennon's post-Beatles years were spent in protest, in various kinds of therapy, in immigration court, and in search of a new musical identity. He had been a musician since age 16 and a superstar since his early 20s. He was only in his 30s.

By summer 1973, when Lennon's fourth album, Mind Games, was recorded at New York's Record Plant Studios, the turbulence of Lennon's life seas was at gale force. He was separating from Yoko Ono and starting a 16-month relationship (consummated at Ono's suggestion) with their shared administrative assistant, May Pang. The Nixon Administration was targeting Lennon and Ono for deportation because of their left-wing political activities, mostly focused on the Vietnam War.

New recordings of Julius Eastman compositions aren't as rare as they were a decade ago. Eastman's profile has grown with each repetition of his story, which seems to become more dramatic with each iteration. Trained at the Curtis Institute of Music; worked with Peter Maxwell Davies, Meredith Monk, and Petr Kotik; composed significant works often for instrument multiples (four pianos, 10 cellos); then drugs, homelessness, and dying alone in a hospital at the age of 49. A recent resurrection has brought new recordings, new research, and new visibility. An exciting recent realization of his 1974 composition Femenine, recorded jointly by Talea Ensemble and Harlem Chamber Players, offers fresh perspective. It led me to listen to some older releases, some with the composer himself performing.

A quick survey of 1977's rock albums shows a vibrant genre, pushing in many directions at once. British punk went major label, with debut albums from The Clash, The Damned, Wire, and The Sex Pistols (their only studio album). The Ramones released Rocket to Russia. David Bowie explored a new direction with both Low and Heroes. Mainstream blockbusters included Rumours by Fleetwood Mac, News of the World by Queen, Slowhand by Eric Clapton, and Pink Floyd's Animals. Not to mention Meat Loaf 's Bat Out of Hell and the soundtrack to Saturday Night Fever (footnote 1).

Amid all of this, there was a distinct new sound, quickly labeled New Wave. It wasn't rock like Queen, Pink Floyd, or anything coming out of Laurel Canyon. And it wasn't manufactured in the disco-pop factories. But it wasn't punk. It was NYC-centric, but there was also Brit brat (before brat was a thing), Elvis Costello, introducing himself with My Aim Is True. Back in the Big Apple, two seminal new wave debuts dropped in 1977: Television's Marquee Moon, and Talking Heads: 77.

Although King Oliver's Creole Jazz Band was indubitably led by Joe Oliver himself, this deluxe box set, marking the centennial of the band's recorded debut, focuses on its second cornetist, Louis Armstrong, who was making his own debut. These landmark jazz recordings, nearly the first by a black band from New Orleans, had a profound impact on the jazz that came afterward. They were recorded acoustically, without the use of electricity, and previous reissues have suffered from terminal murk, to the point that individual horn lines could hardly be discerned. Richard Martin and the Archeophone label have done an outstanding job of restoration, rendering the instrumental parts with remarkable clarity.