Category: Music
What’s that sound? ~ All Along the Watchtower, Bear McCreary style.
It’s a rare enough thing that television offers art of remarkable quality, but (imho) Battlestar Galactica — the “reimagined” series which aired beginning in 2003 — did just that. Not only in its scripts, cinematography, visual effects and acting, but also the soundracks scored by Bear McCreary and (for the pilot) Richard Gibbs. Exquisite stuff…
I can love that tune on the very first chord ~ Donny Hathaway
And some stuff you just love from the very first chord … timbre, qualities of its attack, sustain and decay, the authority with which it’s played, the key it’s played in, the instrumentation and even their arrangement, the way all these elements come together in that brief moment when sound establishes itself as music. You…
To be kissed and salted ~ here is a picture
This is, I am So beautiful and fierce This is, violence And holy words And I swear fealty To smile beyond dignity To be kissed and salted To be kissed and salted Oh to kiss and be salted By love extreme This is Veda Hille. A pianist friend tells me her style is ‘percussive’.…
Don’t Drink The Water ~ A troubadour of the first order.
Matthews is a hell of a showman. I have a number of live versions of this song done fully-kitted out with a full complement of musicians. He and his band let it all hang out on stage and, as they say, the crowd goes wild. Which makes the essential power of this live rendition, featuring…
Jethro Tull’s Journeyman ~ Kick back and enjoy the ride
I’m not sure a more fascinating and inventive song — both lyrically and musically — has ever been created about the simple act of commuting home on the train. What I really love most about Jethro Tull’s Journeyman (Heavy Horses, 1978), is the way the bass drives both the melody and cadence, right from the…
Uncomfortably numb ~ David Gilmour and I can’t put our finger on it
I’m going to tell you a story about someone who became a part of my life in a way few other people ever experience. Well, I wonder about that. I wonder how many other people go about their day-to-day lives only vaguely aware that there’s something unusual going on in their life, but just can’t…
Letting go, moving on, going forward ~ Camel and Ice
Camel’s lilting, melancholic and epic instrumental, Ice is among my favourite pieces of music. Discovered on a late-night college radio station in 1979 in Rochester, New York, it stands out on the album I Can See Your House From Here (despite the DJ’s touting of Remote Romance as, “Best on the album”) I suppose its…
Trundling across Terra Incognita ~ Gondwanaland
In 1994 I criss-crossed Australia, much of it across the expansive aridity of the so-called Red Centre, and all of that was sharing a ’79 Holden Gemini with my travel partner. A Gemini is a sub-compact sedan. This one had no air-con, and so we trundled across the expanse with the windows rolled down, and…
Tumare Darshan ~ The essence of Noosa
OK… something to end this very loooong, but very productive day. A song that I will always associate with a beautiful beach in a faraway land and a short strip of magical bistros and restaurants barely more than a stone’s throw from the beach. There were sacred sunrises, and uncanny encounters, bliss and sorrow, beauty…
