Beyond Rivalry - music

Cavalcade of Christmas Extravaganza

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Mon, 15 Dec 2008 12:00:00 -0500

Welcome to the festival of Christmas goodness!

The Astonishing BetaMax Christmas: Click on the TV Guide to see the bazillion Christmas ads, Christmas shows, Christmas cartoons from days of yore, including ads by Folgers, Nyquil, McDonald's, Atari, Kodak, Tesco, Cabbage Patch kids, plus clips from Perfect Strangers, Teddy Ruxpin, Pee-Wee's Playhouse, the Muppets, One to Grow On, Will Vinton's Claymation, the annual CBS Christmas card, a Hall and Oates 'Jingle Bell Rock' video, some Max Headroom, ETC! Click the remote's channel buttons to change channels, and click on the TV Guide to see what's coming up in the next hour and a half or so.

If nostalgia from the 1970s and '80s isn't nostalgic enough for you, listen to Voices of Christmas Past, humdingers from 1898-1922, including Santa Claus Hides in the Phonograph, 'And the Glory of the Lord' from the Messiah, Christmas Morning at Clancey's, Uncle Josh Plays Santa Claus, Angels from the Realms of Glory, and 18 more!

Santas Working Overtime is a chaotic link dump of all things Xmas, from recipes and crafts to videos, audio clips, lists, quizzes, reviews, podcasts and mix tapes, charity links, classical music, Christmas customs, cartoons, and on and on. For instance: John…

Songs for Summer

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 17:15:00 -0400

On NPR's All Things Considered today, a selection of summer songs from Tom Moon's 1,000 Recordings to Hear Before You Die. You can hear audio at NPR for 'I Want to Take You Higher' from Sly and the Family Stone's Stand! (I think I would instead choose 'Dance To The Music' or the obvious 'Hot Fun in the Summertime'), 'Poinciana' from Ahmad Jamal's But Not for Me: Live at the Pershing, and "L'estate: First Movement" from Vivaldi's Four Seasons as performed by Janine Jansen. Moon also cites Springsteen's Born to Run album.

Entertainment Weekly lists its 100 Greatest Summer Songs of All Time ('Hot Fun in the Summertime' is #9 on their list); Pop Culture Madness lists 40 Beach Music Vacation tunes.

The most summery song I know is The Catalinas' 'Summertime Calling Me' (1975). Brings back those Myrtle Beach days. Lately, I'm loving Springsteen's 'Girls in the Their Summer Clothes.'

Favourite Funeral Music

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 12:30:00 -0400

Looking for music for your memorial service? Check out these ideas, which include the Monty Python song, 'Always Look on the Bright Side of Life'; Brahms's Ein Deutsches Requiem (Kempe or Klemperer versions, 79 minutes long); Bach's 'Sleepers Awake;' Prince's 'Let's Go Crazy;' Gillian Welch's 'I Dream A Highway;' Crash Test Dummies' 'At My Funeral;' requiems of Verdi, Faure, and Mozart; AC/DC's 'Highway to Hell' ...

(My list includes, at the moment, Louis Armstrong's 'What A Wonderful World,' Kate Smith's 'I'll Be Seeing You,' and either Ella's or Bobby Short's 'They Can’t Take That Away from Me')

EmoMusic

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 15:35:00 -0500

Tagging along to Belle Lettre at Law and Letters' list of music she listens to "in order to exaggerate a certain emotion," which in her case consists of country and jazz (esp. for music of longing), here's a first stab at mine. What are yours?

(I can't vouch for the YouTube videos -- I'm including most of them for the audio performances)

Wallowing, Despondent

Unbreak My Heart - Toni Braxton

Pills - The Perishers with Sarah McLachlan

By Your Side - Sade

Leave Me Be - Kate and Anna McGarrigle

Damn Crazy - disappear fear

Somebody Already Broke My Heart - Sade

Quickly Enough - Scissor Sisters

Still Within the Sound of My Voice - Linda Ronstadt

Streets of Philadelphia - Bruce Springsteen

Seven Year Ache - Rosanne Cash

My Immortal - Evanescence

What You Didn't Say - Mary Chapin Carpenter

Radio Nowhere - Bruce Springsteen

I Miss You So - Diana Krall

Bursting with Happiness

While You See A Chance - Steve Winwood (my favourite song to wake up to)

Life - Des'ree (the lyrics may not be much but the music is so happy)

The Lucky One - Alison Krauss and Union Station

Roam - B52s

Beautiful Life -…

RIP Larry Norman, 1947-2008

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Wed, 27 Feb 2008 16:24:53 -0500

Christian rocker Larry Norman died on Sunday, at age 60, of heart ailments. His music meant a lot to me when I was in college. More at Christianity Today and The Huffington Post, where Mark Joseph comments:

"Norman will be mentioned in obits as the Father of Christian Rock, but that's a misunderstanding of who he was. Someone once said 'I'm too saved for the Sinners and the Saved don't want me around' and that best described Norman's amazing life and career."

I wouldn't mind that epitaph.

His "The Great American Novel" is remarkably current, though written in 1972:

"You are far across the ocean in a war that's not your own / And while you're winning theirs, you're gonna lose the one at home. / Do you really think the only way to bring about the peace / Is to sacrifice your children and kill all your enemies? / The politicians all make speeches, while the newsmen all take notes / And they exaggerate the issues as they shove it down our throats ...."

"The Outlaw" is lovely, and it probably influenced my understanding of Jesus more than I know, though the assumption in this song and his others that…

RIP Oscar Peterson, 15 Aug. 1925 - 23 Dec. 2007

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Wed, 26 Dec 2007 10:30:00 -0500

I heard on All Things Considered Monday that great jazz pianist Oscar Peterson had died the day before, at age 82. Today Sheila Lennon at Projo offers a short list of links to mp3s, including Peterson playing The Christmas Waltz, and obits. More at NPR here and here, and at Wikipedia.

What I'm Reading: Teens, Happiness, Theology, Music, Violence, Death (the usual)

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 18:20:00 -0500

Assorted reading:

1. What teen girls are made of, in Salon: "In their own dark and funny words, four teenage girls tell us everything we need to know about sex, parents and gym class." Excerpted from Red: The Next Generation of American Writers -- Teenage Girls -- on What Fires Up Their Lives Today, edited by Amy Goldwasser (2007). Better than you think it's going to be. (If you're not a Salon subscriber, you may be asked to watch an ad or two.)

2. Two from Gretchen at The Happiness Project:

Four tips for surmounting boredom or irritation. I'm rarely bored but frequently irritated. The one that almost always works for me is: "Take the perspective of a journalist or scientist. Really study what's around you. What are people wearing, what do the interiors of buildings look like, what noises do you hear? If you bring your analytical powers to bear, you can make almost anything interesting."

What’s making you 'feel bad'? I don't think I agree with all she says here, but it seems worth thinking about: The premise is that "removing sources of bad feelings will protect your good feelings from being swamped by guilt, anger, remorse, irritation, envy,…

Hendrix, Beethoven, Keren Ann, Coltrane, Nick Cave, Lucinda Williams ...

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 12:05:32 -0500

... and more, on crime fiction writer Peter Robinson's predictably eclectic playlist, at Paper Cuts.

Phrases in the Aether

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 15:46:39 -0400

I imagine this is true for other people too: The lyrics I hear (find salient) when I listen to music lodge in my head like pieces of a dream. They resonate and reverberate inside me, contributing to my mood, my choices, my actions, what I say and don't say; and, if you ask me what I dreamed about three days ago, or what were the words of the song I listened to yesterday, I probably can't tell you. In both cases, if you could start me off with a few lyrics, or a few images, I could give you the next line of the song, or describe the dream scene in some depth. In other words, dreams and songs are powerful for me, sometimes influencing far-reaching decisions made in a split second, and yet they feel so transient because after a very short time, they are not accessible to me by intention, only by chance. Does anyone know what I mean? (Looks like anyone who does might actually be fortunate, according to this article ...)

What I'm listening to today -- or rather, what I'm hearing today -- and won't remember (consciously) tomorrow unless I'm cued (I wonder if you could…

Glenn Gould

noreply@blogspirit.com (mmw) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 20:40:00 -0400

If you have an interest in Glenn Gould, I recommend this article from the Toronto Star to you: "The Secret Life of Glenn Gould: Nearly 25 years after the death of perhaps the greatest piano virtuoso of the 20th century, the Star reveals a dramatically fresh portrait of the Canadian icon." Describes his relationship with a married woman (and quite a bit about her apart from him), his unusual sense of humour, his paranoid episodes, and his phobias, addictions and obsessions.