The Christmas Album (12/25/2017 1:14:11 PM)

I'll Be Home for Christmas

A cover of the Jagger-Richards song. copyright 1969 ABkCO Music. This was recorded by a band called the Scotch Plains Sanitation Department in July 1972 at Mama's Illusion, a teen-run coffeehouse in  Scotch Plains, NJ.

Wild Horses.mp3

There's a simple riff and a head that the horns are playing in ensemble. This was recorded live at my senior recital on May 4, 1975 at the Livingston College Music Hall in Piscatway, N.J. We had only one microphone left for recording so the sound favors the electric instruments.

Dance On Fire

The verse, chorus and a bridge are a Western-style tune playing on the love of Gamelan, an Indonesian orchestra of gongs and drums, grafted onto a traditional Gamelan structure. I wrote it for the Livingston College Gamelan Ensemble. We didn't have traditional gamelan instruments to play. These were made at the school, subsituting metal keys for most of the pot-like gongs. We had one big traditional gong that closes out the piece. We played it at my senior recital in the Livingston College Music Hall in Piscataway, N.J., on May 4, 1975.  

Ramble On Gamelan

"Bima Kurda" is a traditional Gamelan piece. It was played by the Livingston College Gamelan Ensemble during my senior recital in the Livingston College Music Hall in Piscataway, N.J., on May 4, 1975. 

Bima Kurda

A live reading from Franz Kafka's "In the Penal Colony" accompanied by a audio collage of sine-wave sounds. 

The Harrow

I thought that the clarinet could be great used in a "color ensemble" for softer rock. "How Are Yours?" is another minimal song I wrote and the clarinets played out a series of variations and improvisations. Guitar and vocal, Sal Caputo; bass, Peter Siegel; drums, Don Perrin; clarinets, Bob Ruyle, Peter Mataset and Michael Caputo. Played at my senior recital in the Livingston College Music Hall in Piscataway, N.J., on May 4, 1975. 

How Are Yours

This is the Lennon-McCartney tune we used to close the live performance at my senior recital. You can barely hear them, but the clarinets play the call and response harmonies that the Fab Four sang in the original. 

Please Please Me

A solo performance of Bob Dylan's "Shelter from the Storm" at my senior recital in the Livingston College Music Hall on May 4, 1975. Dylan had just released "Blood on the Tracks," the album where this song debuted. 

Shelter From The Storm

Wind Song Gone Haywire is a piece I wrote in three parts. Parts 1 and 3 are fully composed and feature two clarinets and two saxophones. Part 2 has a composed opening and ending, and pianist John Grove turned my chord sketches into a composed piano accompaniment. In the middle of this part, which features two flutes, piano and marimba, the flute and marimba improvise the "haywire" part. This was performed at my senior recital at Livingston College Music Hall in Piscataway, N.J., on May 4, 1975.

Wind Song Gone Haywire

Sal's Christmas

Winter Wonderland

This is my dad singing a Neapolitan song called "Soldato." In it, the lieutenant tells the raw recruit that he has enlisted to be a soldier, not a tenor. The soldier tells the lieutenant that it doesn't matter if he throws him in the stockade, he is far away from his home, he is Neapolitan and if he doesn't sing, he dies. I think this was my father's deepest truth as an immigrant here. This was recorded at Christmastime in either 1968 or 1969. I can't be sure.

Surdate or Soldato (Soldier)

This is a pilot episode for Popmuse Podcast, featuring Salvatore Caputo, a writer and former popular music columnist for The Arizona Republic. He is one of the voters in the Village Voice Pazz & Jop poll and has voted in MTV Video Music Awards. He has also written for the Music Hound series. This podcast looks at the intersection of popular music, culture, social trends, politics and technology. This episode focuses on a column from 1993 that virtually predicted music and video streaming.

Sal Caputo

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