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Archive for the ‘Music’ Category

May Feeling, Maybe?

Posted in Music, My Life's Rich Pageant, tagged , , , , on June 6, 2023| Leave a Comment »

Early May in recent years has been subject to the feeling in one of my posts, namely this one and this one. That sadness is coupled with another, more invigorating feeling, in mid- to late May. As I sit in early June listening to a lovely piano concerto by Saint-Saëns, I thought I’d turn to it for a moment, if I may.

I’ve long had a vague notion that back in 2008, a certain love was developing rapidly in late spring, so since then my music-playing in May has been Bic Runga and The Go-Betweens—music from Down Under. I’d already listened to the Go-Betweens and their catalogue full of associations, so this year it turned into a season of Crowded House, with some Split Enz thrown in at the end—more music from Down Under.

May 11. Little did I suspect that May would be a month of my own shadows, a subject that seldom shows up in my pictures.

Long-neglected World Party also crept in as did The Red Hot Chili Peppers. These two groups, and the tones of regret and nostalgia and loneliness they strike at favorite moments, fit into the general spell. For, not only was it May 2008 that I was in this mood, but I’ve come to realize it was also this way in 1997: both are years that love really struck me.

I wasn’t listening to some of this music back in those days, in media res, but gradually this music came to sum up everything—the feeling then as well as the place the romance holds in my psyche now.

May 26. The month really did seem to last a long while, and its Wonderland was indeed full of trees and grass for me as well as these feelings and songs.

So, what exactly is this feeling, and where are the songs? The songs first. I listened to most of my Crowded House music, with “Sacred Cow,” “I Love You Dawn,” “World Where You Live,” and “People Are Like Suns,” bringing back a lot of that 2008 feeling. World Party chimed in: “I Fell Back Alone,” “She’s The One,” “Is It Like Today?” bridging back to the ’90s more so than the ’00s.

Love was growing in those Mays, and two songs really do capture what came of it all. For 2008, it’s “Poor Boy” by Split Enz. That year, the impetus to give it a go gathered serious steam with someone I’d known for years when she re-appeared in my life. Back when we had first met, it was she pursuing me from about as “afar” as you can get on this planet:

My love is alien, I picked her up by chance
She speaks to me with ultra-high frequency
A radio band of gold
Gonna listen ’til I grow old

For 1997, it’s “Dosed” by the RHCPs. I had just met her in 1997, but this song speaks to how it all turned out in the short and long term:

I got dosed by you and
Closer than most to you and
What am I supposed to do?
Take it away I never had it anyway
Take it away and everything will be okay

Rather than provide the details, I’ll let the lyrics hint at them. The impact of those times will never change, I suspect. For all the pain and sadness, there’s deep pleasure in those loves and what they brought me.

It’s amazing what a few words and bits of music can do. And there you have it, along with one more shadow photo.

May 31. But is any of it art? Actually, that’s about as “Who cares?!” a question as you can pose.

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The Cure and The Gut

Posted in Music, tagged , , , on May 30, 2023| Leave a Comment »

A couple of weeks ago, a friend and I exchanged Top 10 Songs by The Cure lists. He’s an exact contemporary of mine, age-wise, with the fundamental difference here being he discovered the group several years after I did, my awakening coming around 1988, his 1991. Perhaps that has made all the difference, but in reality his tastes are quite different than mine, his seeming stubbornly obscure even to me, not to mention terrible. And then there’s my possibly extreme belief that The Cure really dropped off after Disintegration, much as my R.E.M. experience.

Neither of our lists is in any particular order. Here’s his:

1. A Letter to Elise 2. Pictures of You 3. There Is No If 4. Pirate Ships 5. Strange Attraction

6. The Caterpillar 7. Burn 8. Wrong Number 9. In Between Days 10. The Lovecats

I’d never heard of half of his. Here’s mine:

1. Three Imaginary Boys 2. Do The Hansa 3. Just Like Heaven 4. Catch 5. A Forest 

6. The Caterpillar 7. A Night Like This 8. Close To Me (horns version)

9. The Perfect Girl  10. Grinding Halt 

And there is a “secret” order to mine. It’s the order I built the list, mostly in my head, by the gut, with a bit of quickly moving through the albums chronologically to be sure I didn’t miss something obvious.

As he pointed out, it’s pretty cool that our overlap is “The Caterpillar,” which makes it fitting that this is the link I provide. We have some near overlap in his numbers nine and ten, which I’d put on a greatest hits of a decent length. He mentioned personal stories (unknown to me) attached to many of his picks; one or two of mine are here partly because of an incident behind them.

There’s so much more that could be said and done with this. For now, I’ll listen to his list sometime soon. The Cure figured pretty greatly in my early life and there’s a lot that reflection upon that, their albums, their songs, their continued existence could bring forth.

For now, I’ll recommend this to those who’d like to explore the breadth of their work over the decades: Cureation: From There to Here From Here to There. A song from each album, starting with the oldest, then back again. A kindred soul in music pointed their efforts like these to me a few years ago and for that I am forever grateful. I know this person hated by #2 song. Maybe we’ll meet again one day.

Meanwhile, what are your favorite Cure songs?

p.s. This is most amusing too! Man of a thousand faces Long live Mad Bob.

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Desert Island Discs (finally)

Posted in Music, Non-Music, tagged , , , , , , , , on March 28, 2023| Leave a Comment »

As much as I’d like to use a Greek “k” when spelling disc, I’ll go with a standard that’s been around for decades. This British staple is not so well-known here, but it seems about time for me to appear on this radio show where eight tracks are selected, plus a book and luxury item to have at one’s disposal while stranded on a desert island. What are yours?

I came up with my selections off the top of my head after only briefest musing. I wonder how they’ll hold up.

Eight Discs
1 “Swan Lake Suite” by Tchaikovsky. I figured I could be granted this if not the entire opera. Drama, beauty, melody, atmosphere, birds, ballet.

2 “Moonlight Serenade” by Glenn Miller & His Orchestra. I love Big Band vocals, but the beauty of the sound, mood, and feel of my grandparents’ generation makes this the one.

3 “The Rain, The Park & Other Things” by The Cowsills. My favorite of a certain 60s genre and subject matter.

4 “Everybody Is A Star” by Sly & The Family Stone. Captures so much in its brief stay.

5 “Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)” by Talking Heads. For certain moods.

6 “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” by The Smiths.

7 “Streets Of Your Town” by The Go-Betweens. Everything comes together perfectly for a band’s music that is full of associations with many of my favorite people on this planet.

8 “Hurricane” by Natalie Imbruglia. One in my quests for the best of the female voice. A song I didn’t know until recently, so good to have something fresh to get to know on this island. And it might be quite à propos for a desert island regardless.

Many important figures in my life are left out. I did an exercise in picking five songs with some friends years ago, with different tunes, but this is how this one turned out. I’ll share those sometime too.

Book
Contestants are granted a copy of the complete Shakespeare (thank you) and The Bible or other religious tome that suits them (not so keen). I apparently echo Eleanor Bron and others in my selection of Homer’s Iliad in dual language (original and the Richmond Lattimore English translation). Could I put this in the place of The Bible and pick another one?

Luxury Item
Pending. Any suggestions?

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Ageless and

Posted in Music, tagged , on January 23, 2023| 2 Comments »

I hear the opening bars and how can I resist? I’m back in the 1970s again, Barbra Streisand’s “Evergreen” bringing me there. This transport is instantaneous. Resisting isn’t even an option; there’s no time for it. Hearing that song again after a long time, I think it would be fun to pull together a collection from Streisand’s peak era, that decade. I tried the same with Bette Midler and that failed miserably due to lack of quality material, but in this case it worked out, as it has recently for in-depth looks at Natalie Imbruglia, Laura Nyro, Lisa Loeb, Sarah McLachlan, and an over four hour sampler of Olivia Newton-John’s entire career. With Streisand, as I collect the songs I remember that I once owned her second greatest hits cassette. No wonder this is so familiar.

Streisand’s never meant too much to me. Stoney End is a great album I invested in some time ago. But, otherwise, of her films, her life, and her earlier and later songs, only her ridiculous version of “Jingle Bells” figures in my active consciousness as I find myself singing it once every year or two. And, although she didn’t write anything I can think of, she did have a way of making songs her own, as singers of earlier eras and her ilk do. (Sometimes—even in the era of sing-songwriters—it’s surprising to learn that they did write a lot of their own material, as is the case of Melissa Manchester.) In the 70s, Streisand’s songs were beautifully arranged and lovingly orchestrated—she definitely cultivated a sound.

So, spurred on, I started listening to a bunch of her songs from my early life and created a 17-song “golden hour” group. Some are from that old hits collection and some I’d never heard or heard of. I left out the duets with Neil Diamond and Barry Gibb, wanting to keep it her voice—although the Donna Summer song is included (“No More Tears: Enough Is Enough”) as they meld well in their womanly sentiments.

I wound up grouping them haphazardly, but by album. Along with “Evergeen” and “The Way We Were,” two songs written to make me want to cry, there’s “All in Love Is Fair” and the towering “Woman in Love.” I hadn’t heard “Prisoner” in ages. “Superman” and the touching “Songbird” were faint memories.

Hearing “My Heart Belongs to Me” again for the first time in decades is a grand reunion; it might be her very best song. Possibly more exciting, there were songs I’d never even suspected existed: “The Summer Knows,” the surprising (based on its eyebrow-raising title) “Wet,” and best revelation of all “Lazy Afternoon,” a truly amazing atmosphere you can enjoy during any season (winter especially?), which I link you to here.

With all of the music coursing through my veins and across my ears, I should be doing posting daily to squeeze this all into what’s left of my lifetime. One day I’ll pursue my “Women of Song” or “1970s Epitome” ideas. Maybe I’ll analyze just what this 1970s feel is; for now I think of it as beauty unfiltered by experience. But for now there’s this, the song that’s haunted me in and out, off and on, for days: click here.

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Recommending Music

Posted in Music, My Life's Rich Pageant, tagged on December 10, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Despite lengthy inactivity due to other commitments, this blog still crops up in my thoughts and will continue. I originally planned to focus on music here, which I considered one thing I knew something about, and that the things I knew about it were fading. This led me to think that the “younger generation” or the international set might get something out of what I was writing, that maybe my personal recollections and opinions, and a healthy dose of links and images might bring some joy of discovery.

Now, I have often strayed from the blog’s intent into the personal realm, often thanks to the thoughts music has dredged (or conjured) up. Apart from these more meditative (or cathartic) entries, though, music remains the focus. It struck me the other day, though, how instinctively resentful I can be when someone recommends music to me. Music takes less time than a book or even a movie, so a music recommendation is easier to pursue, and there’s a broader pallet of music I want to spend time on than for books or movies, but there is still that knee-jerk reaction.

This resentment is not universal and it is not historical—a lot of my early musical taste came thanks to others and people to this day, especially if I like them, can send me in wonderful directions. I recently met someone who has had just this effect. There is great joy in discovering something for one’s self, but it doesn’t need to always happen that way.

So, when it comes to this blog, I am not necessarily recommending music to people when I write about it: I am mentioning it in the context of my life and tastes and if people latch onto it so be it and fantastic! I discovered a lot of music incessantly listening to the radio and poring over entertaining reference books on the subject, and people now allow some music service to shower them with similars. I prefer the album format, and will continue to push that here, but otherwise I am looking forward to just continuing to recount my personal taste and experience and letting it be for whomsoever.

Here’s to 2022.

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Can’t Change That

Posted in Music, tagged , on June 6, 2021| Leave a Comment »

I was listening through my mix CDs the other day and came across these two classics:

Raydio, much better than Ghostbusters, “You Can’t Change That“

Naked Eyes, of so many New Romantics, “Promises, Promises“

After thoroughly enjoying both, I wondered which was better. Then I realized, of course, that luckily it doesn’t matter. Both are awesome!

So, back to the old station wagon car and little transitor radio tunes. Sometimes it seems it would have been good if the world had frozen sometime around then, but maybe the past can be much more thoroughly enjoyed when it’s pretty deeply buried, so I get luckier and luckier as the weeks and months move along.

Okay, logically-unsound-and-not-thought-through thought for the time being. But another post and a couple of great songs for whoever sees this.

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with a Hip

Posted in Music, My Life's Rich Pageant, tagged , on January 22, 2021| Leave a Comment »

Arrowhead

Bits of Echo & The Bunnymen’s “My Kingdom” looping in my mind while a sequence of overbearing buzzes, alarms, whirrs, and beeps, reminiscent of 1980s Atari games—the Combat cartridge springs to mind—take their turn. It ends with mighty, stabbed organ chords that are really impressive and appealing. It’s my right hip MRI, the quest for diagnosis making headway.

Afterwards, I played the rest of the Cure tape my sister had given me long ago by way of introduction to the group, over 30 years ago, driving down Ogden past vacant stores now torn down replaced by vacant lots bringing who knows what. It’s much-changed, even Ogden Avenue. Other than the familiar looping of the street, parts are becoming unrecognizable even though I traverse it often. At least I know where I am going even if there’s few places I want to stop along the way.

I head directly to the snowscape of Arrowhead Park, home to park district soccer games as a kid. I park with windows all down slightly to hear any birds. No sound, just the empty snowy field and hill and creek, with what looks like a raft of flood ice in the distance. Now I see it’s traversed by two sleek, bundled up figures. No sound, but my head pictures my sister and her best friend as those two out on the icy snowfield. The latter lived a block away from this park, and she’s the reason my sister can’t return here when I want to walk it for bird and nostalgia. How has 30 years passed? The breeze blows into the rolled-down window, I view the field through a snag of hair the color of the gray sky and think of that time, their friendship, what they might have been talking about. I drive home to “The Perfect Girl.”

A week later, back for the left hip MRI, this time spent singing the guitar lines of Will Sergeant and insistent, urgent, defiant choruses of Ian McCulloch in my head—”Over The Wall,” “Show of Strength”—thinking of just re-viewed Donnie Darko and a more than pleasant dream I had of a friend. And back to Arrowhead, with one finch sweetly singing somewhere in the trees behind where I parked, the ones you see below.

But this blog is called Music and More, so I will get back to music soon. More music, less more: A Promise.

Arrowhead: A Week Later

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Place Beside Me

Posted in Music, My Life's Rich Pageant, tagged , , , , , on October 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »

As a kid I played the standard football, baseball, and basketball with my friends on the block, and was in the local soccer league through the park district, complete with reversible shirt, allowing us to be the yellow or blue team as needed. Gym class, a tiny bit of track, tennis lessons, and then softball and misc in college and after. Most of what I played in did not attract a crowd.

My parents I am sure did a great job cheering me on, and my dad certainly ran to my rescue when I was kicked in the jaw by my own teammate, but I can only think of two occasions when I noticed being cheered for while playing.

The first was in junior high, a day when for some reason we had to run laps around the school—state fitness standards or track tryouts? A certain tall, curly-haired KJ made a point of yelling my name and encouraging me, something immensely more inspiring than the binomial equation she wrote when she signed my yearbook. It must have been our Project Idea ties and general camaraderie in sharing a bunch of classes throughout our careers. I hope I cheered her on when she was similary forced to lap the school.

The second, still more treasured, a certain blonde-haired and blue-eyed BD in college cheering me on by name from the sidelines in an intramural basketball game. (Not the greatest basketball player, but I had my strengths.) We were most likely playing the fraternity whose members she hung around with, so her mentioning me from the sidelines was especially exciting and inspiring for me. Thank you, B.

What effect it can have when someone on the sidelines is there for you, especially unexpectedly. BD also majored in English, but, not surprisingly, we didn’t see much of each other as I seldom saw much of English majors and there was no apparatus tying such majors together.

Such tiny slices of memory taking on such a relatively large shape. The mind and heart are amazing. I could catalogue moments like these.

* Musical Interlude *

Two trios of songs joined me yesterday.

The first started with me listeining to Document after ages away from it. R.E.M.’s “Central America Triptych” has some of their best music and more intriguing lyrics and concepts, all seemingly inspired by Noam Chomsky’s Turning The Tide and the general 1980s anti-Reagan vibe I remember fondly.

Document offered “Welcome To The Occupation,” with “The Flowers of Guatemala” and “Green Grow The Rushes” from their previous two albums. The third has quite possibly my favorite R.E.M. guitar hook, the second a rousing solo, and the “Welcome…” just an all-around vibe and melody that easily lands it on my best of R.E.M. which should one day exist. Until yesterday I’d barely connected any of them to 1980s U.S. intervention in Central America. Oh well. Layers of meaning?

In the evening I played Dionne Warwick and pleasantly remembered she had recorded the Bacharach-David “This Empty Place.” Is it somehow only my third favorite version of this excellent song? I think so. I first heard it by The Searchers as an extremely catchy album track, backed up with their smoothly great instrumentation. Then, it came again later as a highlight album track for Swingin’ Cilla Black who has a way with the drama and nearly veering out of control, and this song is no exception. Her version’s modeled on Dionne’s and I can only say, woo-weee!

Think pink cover from Cilla’s 1965 U.S. album. (from Discogs.com)

Some old Sandie Shaw stuff is next.
We’ll see how that goes!
Long long live love.

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Noted Lyrics

Posted in Music, tagged on October 22, 2020| Leave a Comment »

My junior year independent study advisor—a Scot who taught at Leeds, but was enjoying a visiting year with us in Ohio with our “fortress in the middle of a cornfield,” as he described it—wryly informed me that I should have titled my work, Don’t Quote Me On That, as it was indeed an artfully strung together melange of quotations from Thomas Love Peacock’s Nightmare Abbey, scholars’ comments, and a little me thrown in.

Continuing in that tradition, with even less reliance on my words, let’s start a list of some favorite lines in songs that always make me sit up and take notice, relish the singing along with, and hit the rewind button:

Beelzebub is aching in my belly-o
My feet are heavy and I’m rooted in my wellios
~Kate Bush, “Kite”

Suddenly my feet are feet of mud
It all goes slo-mo
I don’t know why I’m crying
Am I suspended in Gaffa?
~Kate Bush, “Suspended in Gaffa”

All my colors, turn to clouds
All my colors, turn to cloud
~Echo & The Bunnymen, “Zimbo”

It’s been cold,
This vein of blue is seizing me
~Shelleyan Orphan, “Century Flower”

The note I wrote, as she read
She said, “Has the Perrier gone straight to my head?
Or is life sick and cruel instead?”
~The Smiths, “I Won’t Share You”

Like a liar at a witch trial
You look good for your age
~Hole, “Plump”

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Cooler than ice cream, warmer than the sun

Posted in Music, tagged , on September 29, 2020| Leave a Comment »

I got a lot done yesterday, accompanied by the music of three 80s gals.

Starting out with Annie Lennox’s Eurythmics, the 1985 album Touch. Who’s That Girl?

Then Suzanne Vega’s Retrospective, with this awesome 1986 single. Left of Center.

And winding things up with Tina Weymouth’s Tom Tom Club, eponymous first album from 1981. She just so happens to have some French-Breton heritage. L’Elephant.

In the outskirts and
In the fringes
In the corner
Out of the grip

 

 

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