high road. . . .

Birthday frosting

Yep. It's my birthday. Here's the view this morning. That's the sun peeking out in between the snowflakes, by the way. Cool, eh? Hey, if sun and rain is a sun shower, is snow and sun a sunfall?

That's my take on it and I'm sticking with it!

Here's my new favorite song. I awoke to find it playing in my head. Ignore the wierd woman in the hat.

music for looking ahead

My latest 'favorite song'.

new music

OK - so maybe not so new, it appears this chick has been around for a while, I've just not heard of her. Anyway, it's been a while since I've been excited about a new song - and this is a really cool song.

If you haven't heard her yet, it's Brandi Carlile, and the song is "The Story". The above is a live version. For the pretty music video version [for which embedding was disabled - so I can't post it here], click here.

ethics and music

On an interview at Measure for Measure, Michael McDonald [of Steely Dan and Doobie Brothers fame]is quoted as follows:

MICHAEL: I was never an ambitious piano player or singer. If I ever rolled up my sleeves and put my energy into anything, however good I may ever be at it, I hope it would be songwriting. In my family — an Irish Catholic family — the two best things you could become was a priest or a songwriter.

I always admired these guys like Don Henley and Neil Young who could take the events that are going on around them and so poetically put them forth and make us all think about the world around us — events and politics. To lasso your own view of the political climate into something poetic and clever and musical. But for me I don’t really think it was the level where I write the best.

If I was going to write a song like that, the first line would go:

When did Halliburton’s advancement of its own enterprise
become the sole focus of the foreign policy of the United States?

You know, you’d lose people. The song would be over by then.

So. How do you say something - in art - about the role private corporations and contract military organizations play in the conduct - and conflict - of our nation?

I've written before about the apparent dearth of protest songs. It would appear to be an area of growth opportunity.

Meanwhile - man I wish my hair would turn that colour of white!

levity, anyone? (Gen. Salami & Veggie Tales)

Hossein Salami is a name that makes me laugh. I don't know why, but General Salami just strikes me as funny.

Something out of Veggie Tales.

Unfortunately, the more I hear about this guy - a top guy in Iran's "Republican Guard" - the more I think he's on a mission to live down his name. Two missile "tests" in two days - to show Iran's 'toughness and resolve', apparently - and a personal background in so-called martyr-recruitment: the finding and training of people willing to blow themselves up so that America will be afraid, very afraid.

I wonder how he gets past what I imagine would be the potential recruit's primary objection, namely that the recruit himself will be dead, very dead?

Anyway, Salami's not written about too much that I've found with a cursory search, but this lady wrote about him, past missile tests (2006), and Condaleeza Rice's comment about Iran's "Salami tactics" - which I now understand has nothing at all to do with General Salami, the name notwithstanding.

OK. Time for a verse of the "Pirates Who Don't Do Anything" - Salami's intentions apparently to the contrary.

music clearly necessary

The problem will be deciding on just what music would do the trick.

sigh.

Yesterday doesn't bear commenting on. You can't imagine the day. One thing after another. And then yet one more. Each time I thought we might be done and ready for "happy" hour. No happy arrived.

No music comes to mind. Not really. I was hoping for some kind of rock pick-up. Ah well, the little ditty from Bowie's "Ashes to Ashes" might be cheering. I think I've posted this before.

many moons ago. . .

Many moons ago - like over twenty years' worth - I came across a woman singer named Marti Jones. As I recall, I was more interested in her musician husband, Don Dixon, whose voice I liked. I have no recollection of any of Dixon's songs anymore, but I still have a cassette of Marti's album "Match Game" - which doesn't seem to be in release anymore.

I popped it into my car cassette player to see if the sun hadn't baked the songs out of it and heard Marti's cover of David Bowie's song Soul Love [from the Ziggy Stardust/Spiders from Mars album]. Amazing! Mega years in the glove compartment of my little-used car and it still plays.

I haven't been able to get the song out of my mind, since! Count yourselves lucky I can't find an online recording of it. You, too, could be hearing the start of the guitar and the rather strange lyrics:

Stone love, she kneels before the grave
a brave son who gave his life to save the slogan
that hovers 'tween the headstone and her eyes
for they penetrate her grieving.

New love, a boy and girl are talking
new words, that only they can share in
new words, a love so strong it tears their hearts
to sleep, through the fleeting hours of morning.

Love is careless in its choosing, sweeping over cross a baby
love descends on those defenseless
Idiot love will spark the fusion
Inspirations have I none, just to touch the flaming dove
All I have is my love of love - and love is not loving.

Soul love, the priest that tastes the word and
told of love, and how my God on high is
all love, though reaching up my loneliness evolves
by the blindness that surrounds him.

Love is careless in its choosing, sweeping over cross a baby
love descends on those defenseless
Idiot love will spark the fusion
Inspirations have I none, just to touch the flaming dove
All I have is my love of love - and love is not loving.

I wonder what it all means?

Marti Jones does a great job with it. Better than Bowie. I think. . . .
Heresy. [but all I can find on You-Tube is the Bowie version. Sorry!]

leaving on a jet plane

We haven't done any music in a while. Here's the original recording of Peter, Paul and Mary's Leaving on a Jet Plane. It's a bit of a cheesey slideshow that goes with it, but the only live version I could find of them doing it (that John Denver wasn't involved in) was one where they are all well into their middle years and Mary seems incapable of just singing the melody line.

She has to "interpret" it.

It's pretty dreadful.

Now this is a song that became a cliche. I got to the point where I couldn't bear to listen to it. Sort of like "Feelings", or "Tie a Yellow Ribbon".

Listening to the words again though, after so many years, I realize that it's come to mean something else, something we need to pay attention to. If you don't believe me, listen to Justin Timberlake's reggae version. He sings the same words, but they have a very different connotation. He's bored with the whole travel and departure thing - it's no big deal except that it momentarily separates him from the one that he thinks he now wants to be with. At the end of the song, he sings that his lover should "dream about the days to come when I won't have to leave alone" - and somehow the implication is that they'll travel together - whereas the implication in Peter, Paul and Mary's version is that the traveling will stop.

They will settle down - "I'll wear your wedding ring."

This brings us right back to what I wrote about a week or two ago in marriage or liberty, looking at the problems that can develop when we try and base so-called rights on freedom, without also taking into account the obligations that go along with it.

Onora O'Neill also speaks about this.

Check out Deneen's Fear of Not Flying. Meanwhile, here are the lyrics to the chorus - written in 1967 by John Denver (news to me):

So kiss me and smile for me,
tell me that you'll wait for me,
hold me like you'll never let me go.

I'm leaving on a jet plane.
I don't know when I'll be back again.
Oh babe, I hate to go.

fugue for broccoli

Oh. My.

Must be seen and heard to be believed!

The broccoli has a better sound - amazingly - than does the carrot. More links to be found at Garden Rant's Playing With Your Food, including (in the comments) a whole vegetable orchestra. . . .

the piano

This is a stunning movie.

Beautiful music.

When we finish the house, I hope to buy a piano if only to learn some of the melodies in this movie. Sheet music available here.

old music

the protest song

I protest. No one is singing about what bothers me.

Does no one care?

Maybe it's that I can't quite figure out what's bothering me. I'm bothered - I know that - and feel generally pessimistic about where "we're" heading. And I want to protest. Or at least have an anthem song I can grab hold of.

Recently, though, our "protests" are supposedly on behalf of other people. We "protest" against the war in Iraq - the poor Iraqis. . . . those poor soldiers (unless, of course, they're hurting the poor Iraqis). The 'poor' Palestinians. . . . the Jena Sixians. . . . whatever African country is currently killings its inhabitants, or those of the neighboring country. . . . and let's not forget "Free Tibet" and "Save the Whale."

There's more. LOTS more.

But I can't get myself real worked up about that when it seems that everywhere I look is evidence of a general moral decline - decay, even - that makes worrying about others seem a bit out of place. I'm worried about us. Us, of the reality TV dramas, the Brittney fiasco's, American "idols", call girl dramas and client numbers, followed by the replacement politician's preliminary (and pre-emptive) confession of mere run-of-the-mill infidelity, an imploding stockmarket, magic money & Fed bail-outs, natural disasters, foreclosures, and billions spent on American Political Gladiators. 'It's the economy, stupid'? Maybe it's more than that.

I wish I could conjure up a "change I could believe in", but I don't trust it.

I don't trust us.

Maybe that's the problem. I have seen - not the 'promised land' - but the blackness of our own human hearts, the 'land of the damned.' It is us. It appears inescapable. If ever a people needed 'saving', we are it.

Don't make me get my guitar. . . .

********************************
PS - since then, I found a posting Music to Protest By. Interesting, as far as it goes. Most interesting that most of the music is from some time ago.

posted without comment

Cake's Building a Religion and Barack Obama.

But what do you think?

spem in alium

[click "play" and then read on - this is more about the music than the random (although pretty) images. . .]

No - not a plant, although I was looking for alium bulbs as I pondered and daydreamed about my garden this cold winter's day. . . .

A 'google' search of alium reminded me of Tallis' Spem in Alium, a motet for 8 different choirs of 5 parts each - or 40 different voices - simultaneously. . . .

I attempted it 3 or 4 years ago with a band of other like-minded musically-adventurous types in Galway City's St. Nicholas' Cathredal. We got through it - amazingly - although there were some periods of unscheduled silence before some intrepid soul would pick up the lost thread and, like hounds to the scent, the rest of us joined in.

You can download the music here - and what a boon that site is to the ancient music lover! Tons of sheet music and scores in the public domain, available for free as pdf's. Amazing. There appear to be a lot of recordings there as well.

Anyway, here's the song. It's a long one - some 10 minutes. I sure did enjoy trying to sing it. 8 small choirs gathered in a circle, each with our own music director, and then the "professional" director flown in from England to stand in the middle and try and meld us all together. A small audience of maybe 25 or 30 people also sat in the middle surrounded by choirs and were nearly as relieved as we were when we managed the final chord. Thereafter, we drank sweet wine and ate 'biscuits' by candlelight.

We were elated and yet sad at the same time. It was a strange combination of emotion. I think it had to do with the ephemeral nature of the enterprise, knowing that we would in all likelihood never again be a part of something quite that ambitious. It's hard enough to get people for 5 different parts let alone to get a multiple of 8 times 5!

I watched the movie Troy for the first time the other night. Achilles comments that the 'gods' are actually envious of mortals, because our very mortality lends a sweetness to the moment that the immortal can never taste. . . . We savor the moment because it will never come again.

It was an amazing moment.

one man's dream

Why does everyone 'love to hate' Yanni?

I'd never even heard his music and yet he was an object of derision. Maybe it's the hair.

But you know what? He writes beautiful melodies. What I want to know is how he gets to play his music at such amazing places. The Acropolis. The Taj Mahal. China's Forbidden City.

This is his song "One Man's Dream".

music therapy - the lullaby

Ravel's Pavanne for a dead princess

This is a nice interpretation by a pianist I don't know. . . .

And this is the closest thing I can think of to a lullaby for a grown-up. (although you'd better be asleep before that last chord sounds, or it'll wake you up again!)

I listened to this over and over again when my official best friend's mother died. Years ago now. I don't really know why I love it so, or why it calms me.

I think I can sleep now.

stairway to heaven. . . .

Yes, that stairway to heaven, courtesy of the "Beatles". (actually, the "Beatnix”, a Beatles tribute group from Australia.

It takes a minute, but yes that is rather close to the actual melody! Arrangement is everything. . . .

I must say, I do miss the beginning guitar bit with the recorder flute.

This is amazing, though! Makes me laugh.

strange music. . . .

There's a TV ad for some kind of car that features beautiful haunting music. . . .

There's a girl sitting in the backseat, looking up through a clear roof at the Manhattan skyline. And this music plays.

After some sleuthing, I found that the song in question is by Band of Horses, and that the song is called Funeral. (if you haven't already, click to play above, while you read the rest. . . .)

I haven't made out the lyrics yet, but the official music video by the band includes footage of a very depressed-looking man drinking, driving, more drinking-in-a-bar shots, and heading in the end towards a scary-looking accident with a truck. Driving a vintage car.

Funeral.

Rather a strange song to select to advertise a new car, wouldn't you say?

Then again, they don't play the lyrics in the ad. Just the beautiful, floaty bits. . . . (and I liked it well enough to take the time to track it down. That says something) And maybe this is about the death of driving old cars? whatever. . . .

I just like the song.

music therapy. . . .

You knew it. . . .

time for some music for my soul.


Here's a little Sarah. . . . covering a great Joni Mitchell song that Non-Essential Equipment reminded me of. Nee likes the version by Robert Downey Jr. [?!] - I never even knew he sang! RD Jr.'s is a pretty good version. But Sarah McLaughlin is my go-to for melancholy.