Original Face

Suggested by Ben, stolen from Bronwyn, stolen from Edmund...

    My son, Ben's good friend, Bronwyn, posted a really fun game the other day.  She listed the first lines of the first 30 songs that randomly came up on her IPOD playlist and challenged everyone to name the artist and title of the piece.  The rules also included no use of computer databases (I used a person for one so I will close that loophole here :)  ).  Write in and if you are the first correct response your name will be listed next to that entry.  To make it a bit more fair I only included popular music--no world, serious or sacred music in my list.  Ok.  Have your thinking caps on?  Here it comes...

1.  I heard there was a secret chord
2.  Well, they're flickin' on the bar lights
3.  I can't stand it, I know you planned it
4.  Yesterday, all my troubles were so far away
5.  Voy ya cantar estos vergos, aunque yos no soy de aqui
6.  Sometimes I think about you, wonder if you're out there thinkin' 'bout me
7.  24 hours to go, I wanna be sedated
8.  I marched in the battle of New Orleans
9.  The way you wear your hat
10. I wanna meet Santa, the real, real, Santa
11. Well, I went home with a waitress, the way I always do
12. The theatre is so obsessed with drama so depressed
13. Have you seen the old man in the closed down market
14. In the summertime when the weather is hot
15. Way down south in Birmingham
16. Gallieo's head was on the block
17. There's a place I like to go, cherry bombs and cherry wine
18. I know what you want. I want to take you to a midnight show tonight
19. He was sittin' up there for more than an hour
20. We skipped the light fandango, turned cartwheels cross the floor
21.  Come on, come on, come on. Didn't I make you feel like you were the only man?
22. First thing I remember I was lying in my bed , I couldn't have been more than one or two
23. They say every man must need protection; they say every man must fall
24. Drew looks at me, I fake a smile so he won't see
25. Driving that train, high on cocaine
26. She was in the backyard and it was a little past 9 when her prince pulled up
27. I met him on a Monday and my heart stood still
28. One week since you looked at me
29. The dutchman's not the kind of man who keeps his thumb jammed in the dam that keeps his dreams in
30. Spring is here, Spring is here, life is skittles and life is beer

Rip my heart out...

I just watched Kelle Pickler's performance on the CMA show.  She sang her autobiographical song  "I Wonder" about the non-relationship she has had with her mother who left her when she was two and from whom she has never since heard.
As she sang the song she broke down crying and the camera then zoomed in on her younger brother and her grandfather who were also sobbing.  She wrote about the song on her website:  "She left me when I was a little girl and I wonder my whole life...where is she, what is she doing?  Do you think about me?  Because I think about you."

Watch her video--http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h7M0fvReVWE

Music for a summer night

Even in the dog days when everyone seems to be somewhere else (I mean it.  No one is at their offices this week.  It is as empty as the week between Christmas and New Years.) there is a need for music.  I'm not writing about beach music or other fun but soon forgotten tunes that flood the airways.  I mean music with a mind. Music with a soul.

All music should move us somehow.  It is a direct link to our emotions without passing through the rational mind.  Neurophysiologically it is even true.   The parts of the cerebral cortex which process music have close connections to the emotional, primal part of the brain called the limbic system.  It is why one can hear a piece such as Elgar's Nimrod and feel a melancholy that becomes saccharine when one attempts to put the music's sentiments into words.

But summer nights are not for melancholy.  They are for laughter and enjoyment of merely being alive. If you want to smile, go to "You Tube" and download the amazing, incredible Giles Apap's Mozart cadenza.  Listening to it you know that Wolfgang would have doubled up in laughter had he heard it.  I think that you will laugh out loud in places too.  Aside from his Victor Borge-like improvisations, he can just damn well play the violin.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DmJ7jyIJnn4

He must be just a delight to see live.  Unfortunately most of his concert schedule is on the other side of the Atlantic and so we are stuck with hearing/seeing him via recordings. Luckly for us, there seems to be a number of them to enjoy.

Check out his web site, www.gilesapap.com .  It is wonderful too, especially the section on how to get rid of the fungal disease contracted in musical conservatories.  It should be required reading for all M.Mus. students.

Eraserhead

It is amazing what a professional can do with the eraser at the back end of a pencil.  Some people rub out mistakes and sentiments that are best left forgotten, while others can make music.

If not music itself, they can make string instruments sing in ways their owners could hardly imagine.  Cao Meyer, known as Ken, is one such professional.  Taking a pencil eraser he gently taps on the bodies of violins, violas and cellos looking for resonance.  When he finds what he is looking for (which to the neophyte is very difficult to discern) he pushes the instrument's tail piece one way, its sound post another and its bridge a third way.  The he taps again, and readjusts.  And again.  And again. 

Finally he smiles and hands the instrument to its player.  Feeling a bit odd, like having witnessed a bit of voodoo magic, the player takes out his bow, rosins up and pulls the horse hair across the strings.

Maybe he has witnessed magic.  The sound from the cello now possesses a vibrancy and depth that the player hasn't heard before.  It rings.  It purrs.  It sounds...wonder-full.

It is amazing what a professional can do with an eraser, a great pair of ears and a perfect touch.

Life imitates art

I just got drove home and what did I see on the street outside the house?  A dead squashed skunk.  Skunks are particularly evil.  Most critters use their defense mechanisms to ward off an attack, but skunks will make everyone in the area suffer even after they die.  Given how close this dead skunk is, I am going to smell it for a lllooonnnggg time.

Speaking of a long time, many years ago Loudon Wainwright wrote a song about just such a situation.  So, before I go and get some clothes hanger clips for my nose, here are the lyrics to "Dead Skunk in the Middle of the Road."

Crossin' the highway late last night
He shoulda looked left and he shoulda looked right
He didn't see the station wagon car
The skunk got squashed and there you are!

You got yer
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
You got yer dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinkin' to high Heaven!

Take a whiff on me, that ain't no rose!
Roll up yer window and hold yer nose
You don't have to look and you don't have to see
'Cause you can feel it in your olfactory

You got yer
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
You got yer dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinkin' to high Heaven!

Yeah you got yer dead cat and you got yer dead dog
On a moonlight night you got yer dead toad frog
Got yer dead rabbit and yer dead raccoon
The blood and the guts they're gonna make you swoon!
You got yer
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
You got yer dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinkin' to high Heaven!

C'mon stink!

You got it!
It's dead, it's in the middle
Dead skunk in the middle!
Dead skunk in the middle of the road
Stinkin' to high heaven!
All over the road, technicolor man!
Oh, you got pollution
It's dead, it's in the middle
And it's stinkin' to high, high Heaven        

Cover that up!

Covers of popular music tunes have a bad reputation.  They reek of pimply faced high school bands making up in volume what they lack in talent.  But that is not fair.  Many great renditions have been covers, often better than the original songwriter/singer has done with the piece. 

Take all the songs of Leonard Cohen.  Great writer but a total downer as a performer.  Jeff Buckley's "Hallelujah" or Judy Collins' "Suzanne" are the standard for those songs, not the Cohen's version of those pieces.

So question for all of you out there: What is the best cover you know? 

See that button over there?   Yes, that one.  Click on it and leave a comment.

My choice:  Ike and Tina Turner's "Proud Mary."  The original version by Creedance Clearwater Revival is such bubble gum crap, but Tina Turner's pipes make it raw and powerful.  Their band's brass and percusssion round out the driving sound.

Ok, don't be shy.

Thank God, I'm [somewhat of] a country boy...

While country music, especially the goop found on many C&W stations, is enough to make you want to heave, (one wag said that all country music involved guns, liquor, dogs, trucks, gilted love, horses and lottery tickets...ok, I made up the lottery tickets...) I have become really fond of a group called Two Tons of Steel.  Yes, they sing about their trucks (hence the group's name), liquor, women, and horses.  But the music is a cross between country and swing.  Very much fun...They have a great string bass player and I even like the pedal steel...OMG, does this mean soon I will have Tammy Wynette on my I-Pod?

Addendum:  Check out their cover of the Ramones' "I Wanna be Sedated" with a Buddy Holly-esque lead vocal...wild.