Thanks Tild, your challenge - as well as Robin's new iPod, onto which he's now uploaded all the stuff from his iTunes playlist to which I can now listen - gave me incentive to pay attention to music again during this long weekend. It's not that I don't like music, it's that I haven't paid a lot of attention to it the last couple of decades, ever since MTV and VH1 stopped playing actual videos. Music is something to which I like devoting attention, both because I consider listening to be a more active process than most and also because I enjoy singing along. So when other things require my attention, unless the music is completely in the background (in which case, I reason, what's the point?) it's very difficult for me to multitask. I almost never listen to music whilst writing, for instance.
But when I was younger... ah, when I was younger. My first favorite songs were things like Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now, which I swore to myself, in the way that children do, that it would remain my favorite song forever and ever, and I'd never pick another one, and still every time it comes on I feel the same twinge of nostalgia and guilt and childhood longing that arises whenever I also hear David Cassidy's voice. I mean, some things don't leave you. So it was Both Sides Now (as sung by Judy Collins) and Circle Game (which I later performed in a contest semi-final at the Garden State Arts Center during my high school years when I learned to play guitar) and Carole King's Tapestry (the first album I ever bought on my own) and Tom Paxton's Marvelous Toy and Puff the Magic Dragon and, oh, I may not have been into the fashions of the era (in the wisdom of youth I'd ask the other kids "if you're dressing that way to show your individuality and everyone else is dressing like that too, how are you an individual?" - I was not a popular kid) but I loved me the kid-friendly music.
Then I underwent my Beatlemania phase, as you do. Hence the name of my fictitious corporation (as I was also writing regularly by that point) and, of course, this blog. I loved puns, I loved Penny Lane, shit happens. I also adored much of the solo stuff from the Ones Who Weren't Ringo - my favorite Lennon song is Imagine, I'd listen to McCartney's London Town as well as Venus and Mars repeatedly, and I quite appreciated Harrison's humor in songs like Crackerbox Palace (great video!) and later songs like Got My Mind Set on You.
And I had musical crushes from time to time, on the lyrical agility of Paul Simon (my favorite of his is probably American Tune) and Billy Joel (Summer Highland Falls), the sheer movie soundtrack madness of Richard O'Brien (Superheroes is still my favorite from Rocky Horror) and Peter Stone (I think Cool Considerate Men is brilliant), the passion of protest singers like Phil Ochs (Chords of Fame, even though not expressly political, is my favorite of his), and the intricacies of Genesis (with and just after the departure of Peter Gabriel), which I guess leads me to my current favorites:
Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill - Yes, I know, this is so ubiquitous in movie trailers you'd think it was public domain by now, but I don't care. Who hasn't gone through periods of "I must be an alien changeling and one day they'll be back to rescue me from this strange world?" No? Well, maybe I've said too much. And it's got a 5/4 time signature!! I mean, go wrong.
Renaissance - Scheherazade and Other Stories - Art rock at its finest. I realize this is an album rather than a song, but it's more or less of a piece (three bits on Side A and one long piece on Side B, just like this album) and I love everything on it just that much. I probably wore out this LP in college. Annie Haslam sings like an angel. I still play Trip to the Fair every year before visiting RenFaire, and I've been in love with the Scheherazade myth for ages. This LP quite likely contains the key to my psyche.
The Roches - We - Another LP of repeated playings from my college days. Susie posting the lyrics to The Train reminded me of how much I love these ladies. I wish I'd kept up more with their careers - this song from last year sure sounds interesting.
Indigo Girls - Closer to Fine - Maybe they're kind of the Roches' spiritual heirs, eh? I still don't know all the lyrics but that doesn't stop me from trying to sing this whenever possible. A great little slice of philosophy.
Moody Blues - Your Wildest Dreams - Yeah, I still drool over Justin Hayward, you wanna make something of it? The video was lots of fun too, incorporating some footage of the band's early days into the story of the song.
Well, I'm glad that's done, now I can go back to listening again. After all, there's the whole holiday season catalog to get through (of which I can never seem to get enough of these two)...
But when I was younger... ah, when I was younger. My first favorite songs were things like Joni Mitchell's Both Sides Now, which I swore to myself, in the way that children do, that it would remain my favorite song forever and ever, and I'd never pick another one, and still every time it comes on I feel the same twinge of nostalgia and guilt and childhood longing that arises whenever I also hear David Cassidy's voice. I mean, some things don't leave you. So it was Both Sides Now (as sung by Judy Collins) and Circle Game (which I later performed in a contest semi-final at the Garden State Arts Center during my high school years when I learned to play guitar) and Carole King's Tapestry (the first album I ever bought on my own) and Tom Paxton's Marvelous Toy and Puff the Magic Dragon and, oh, I may not have been into the fashions of the era (in the wisdom of youth I'd ask the other kids "if you're dressing that way to show your individuality and everyone else is dressing like that too, how are you an individual?" - I was not a popular kid) but I loved me the kid-friendly music.
Then I underwent my Beatlemania phase, as you do. Hence the name of my fictitious corporation (as I was also writing regularly by that point) and, of course, this blog. I loved puns, I loved Penny Lane, shit happens. I also adored much of the solo stuff from the Ones Who Weren't Ringo - my favorite Lennon song is Imagine, I'd listen to McCartney's London Town as well as Venus and Mars repeatedly, and I quite appreciated Harrison's humor in songs like Crackerbox Palace (great video!) and later songs like Got My Mind Set on You.
And I had musical crushes from time to time, on the lyrical agility of Paul Simon (my favorite of his is probably American Tune) and Billy Joel (Summer Highland Falls), the sheer movie soundtrack madness of Richard O'Brien (Superheroes is still my favorite from Rocky Horror) and Peter Stone (I think Cool Considerate Men is brilliant), the passion of protest singers like Phil Ochs (Chords of Fame, even though not expressly political, is my favorite of his), and the intricacies of Genesis (with and just after the departure of Peter Gabriel), which I guess leads me to my current favorites:
Peter Gabriel - Solsbury Hill - Yes, I know, this is so ubiquitous in movie trailers you'd think it was public domain by now, but I don't care. Who hasn't gone through periods of "I must be an alien changeling and one day they'll be back to rescue me from this strange world?" No? Well, maybe I've said too much. And it's got a 5/4 time signature!! I mean, go wrong.
Renaissance - Scheherazade and Other Stories - Art rock at its finest. I realize this is an album rather than a song, but it's more or less of a piece (three bits on Side A and one long piece on Side B, just like this album) and I love everything on it just that much. I probably wore out this LP in college. Annie Haslam sings like an angel. I still play Trip to the Fair every year before visiting RenFaire, and I've been in love with the Scheherazade myth for ages. This LP quite likely contains the key to my psyche.
The Roches - We - Another LP of repeated playings from my college days. Susie posting the lyrics to The Train reminded me of how much I love these ladies. I wish I'd kept up more with their careers - this song from last year sure sounds interesting.
Indigo Girls - Closer to Fine - Maybe they're kind of the Roches' spiritual heirs, eh? I still don't know all the lyrics but that doesn't stop me from trying to sing this whenever possible. A great little slice of philosophy.
Moody Blues - Your Wildest Dreams - Yeah, I still drool over Justin Hayward, you wanna make something of it? The video was lots of fun too, incorporating some footage of the band's early days into the story of the song.
Well, I'm glad that's done, now I can go back to listening again. After all, there's the whole holiday season catalog to get through (of which I can never seem to get enough of these two)...
0 comments:
Post a Comment