Listening to Shivaree is like looking through a prism of musical facets and moods. The torch song sensibilities are overlaid with Cowboy Junkies alt country leanings. It’s dark. It’s creepy. It’s coffeehouse vibe. It’s smokey late-night last call. It’s jagged with reverb and Tom Waits cacophonous clash. It’s smooth with a sultry R&B feel. Wait, was that a banjo?
Pulling it all together into an appealing blend is the voice of Ambrosia Parsley, she of the Wednesday Addams besuited cover photo, whose interesting past is explored in the post linked below.
Shivaree disbanded in 2007 after four full-length albums, 2 EPs and various singles.
John Denver’s credentials as a songwriter are impressive. He is also the subject of a unique bit of music trivia in that his first two top 40 hits have been adopted as official state songs.
Colorado recognized “Rocky Mountain High” as such in 2007. And in 2014 “Take Me Home, Country Roads” (co-written by Denver with Bill Danoff and Tammy Nivert) was given the same distinction by the state of West Virginia.
But Denver wasn’t averse to putting his stamp on other writers’ work if it spoke for him.
And Randy Sparks’ moving ballad “Today”, a #17 hit in 1964 for Sparks’ folk group the New Christy Minstrels, is one of the most sublime songs Denver ever sang.
Denver’s beautifully recorded live double LP An Evening with John Denver reached #2 on the pop album chart and was a #1 country album in an era when double and even triple live albums cracked the top 10 with regularity.
Adolf Fredrik Girls Choir: “Varmlandsvisan” (1993)
Choral music from one of Sweden’s most acclaimed and awarded choirs, representing the Adolf Fredrik Music School in Stockholm.
The choir is comprised of girls from grades 6 to 9, so membership turns over each year, but the spirit and sound remain consistent, and consistently excellent, through the years.
She just turned seven yesterday. Seems young, but some seem to gather in more in seven trips around the sun than others. She’s always looking for the next thing to love, the next thing to dive into. Like her mom did at seven.
A musically-obsessed grandpa throws a lot of things her way. Certain things have stuck, become obsessions of her own. She loves Herman’s Hermits, Veggietales, Vivaldi, singing cats, the Cowsills, Julieta Venegas, ABBA, Veruca Salt singing “I Want it Now”, Lennon’s leather-tonsilled “Twist and Shout”, McCartney’s “Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey”, this video, and, most obsessively, “Maybe” from Annie.
She’s long been enamored of the two better-known songs from this musical. She’s watched the “Hard Knock Life” movie clip on YouTube countless times. And when we visited a community park with an old bandshell she took the stage to give her grandpa an exclusive performance of “Tomorrow”, taking immense pride in holding the final note even longer than Andrea McArdle did.
Finally this year the off-Broadway production of Annie came to town. We knew that “Tomorrow” and “Hard Knock Life” would be highlights.
What we didn’t know was that an unfamiliar song would be the highlight.
In the show’s first number, lead character Annie is quieting a younger housemate who’s had a bad dream. The conversation turns to their dreams of being taken in by a real family. Annie, who holds onto hope that her parents will return for her any day, sings the heartbreaking “Maybe”.
Grandpa and granddaughter alike were, apparently, blindsided. Enthralled. That moment, that song, that performance–it was magic. The kind of moment you wish could last and want to relive over and over.
So by the end of intermission she’d made sure I’d put “Maybe” on the Spotify playlist she curates on my phone. And on the way home from the theater we heard one song on repeat. And after every play she asked me if I was sick of it yet. And I answered honestly that I wasn’t.
A couple days later we went to our favorite coffee shop for chai and to the roller rink. It’s become a semiregular routine of ours and involves a bit of a drive. We stopped at Chipotle to pick up some dinner, then to my house to eat it, then back home for her. I think I heard “Maybe” over 30 times that day.
“Are you sick of it yet?”
“Nope”
And even if I was, I wouldn’t say it. She’ll get no wet blanket from me. It’s a joy to see the joy she gets from music. In a young person there’s no pretense and no posing; the love of music is luminous, instinctive and real.
Even when the car contains two older brothers, their devices, their more contemporary urban music tastes and their propensity to tease her for her musical sensibilities, she only sings louder, completely undeterred.
This is the gift of being inside the music, coupled with that of being too young to feel shame about loving the stuff you love.
Annie has become a bit of an obsession for both of us. The next musical obsession will come along of course, but until it does we watch YouTube Annie performances and compare the Annies over the years (she prefers Brooklyn-accented Lilla Crawford while I’m partial to the original cast’s McArdle). We rate which girls sing the best versions of this song that stole both our hearts unexpectedly.
We can’t wait until another production of Annie comes to town, and this time “Maybe” will be the most anticipated moment.
Blood Oranges in the Snow was the third holiday-themed release from prolific Ohio-based indie folk group Over the Rhine.
As so-called “Christmas music” goes, their homespun, thoughtful Americana–touching as it does only lightly at times on holiday themes–is as far from the Mariah Carey scene as one can get.
Refreshingly honest. Devastatingly real.
My father’s body lies beneath the snow High on a hill in Holmes County, Ohio From there you can look out across the fields A farmer guides his horses home as day to darkness bends And finally yields
Dad’s gravestone holds the words Be Still My Soul A song we sang together long ago And there were times we even shared one hymnbook His right hand and my left hand side-by-side holding pages Of music
But now his hands hold nothing but the earth Hands that held me moments after my birth And so we must all finally surrender As we release our grip upon whatever we hold dear And call familiar
My father’s body lies beneath the snow And I’m still learning how to let him go I’ve come to know him better since he’s gone And often wondered if or how I could’ve been a different Better son
My father’s body lies beneath the snow Sometimes on Christmas Eve that’s where I go I hear faint Christmas bells from far away Ring out all the unspoken words I’ve never found within myself To say
Another gem from the deep catalog of a band whose hardcore fans seem to think every release is a masterpiece (they couldn’t be more wrong) but who gets such little mainstream critical respect that, as of this writing, the band hasn’t been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (they couldn’t be more wrong).
Similarly to Fleetwood Mac, Jethro Tull started out as a British blues-rock band, but lineup changes–and perhaps commercial considerations–dictated a musical course correction.
Following the departure of band leader and guitarist Mick Abrahams after their first album, Tull was effectively Ian Anderson’s band (and has been ever since).
After a brief (less than 2 month) stint by future Black Sabbath legend Tony Iommi, guitarist Martin Barre was brought aboard to replace Abrahams on guitar. A more versatile musician, Barre was adept on mandolin and had actually been playing flute longer than Anderson himself.
Tull’s signature sound would be forged by Anderson’s flute and Barre’s guitar licks over the next decade. In the meantime, second LP Stand Up was the record on which the transition from blues-influenced rock to a folk-inflected style began. Soon after, their distinctive folk/progressive rock blend fully unfolded.
But Tull has never truly abandoned its folk-rock leanings under flautist Anderson’s leadership.
“Reasons for Waiting” is nowhere on any Tull fan’s list of favorite songs. But this beautiful Ian Anderson ballad showcases the versatility of the writer better known for such canonical classic rock as “Aqualung”, “Locomotive Breath” and “Thick as a Brick”.
Palmer, 1970’s
Palmer, recent
This was the first song on which the band used orchestration in the studio, and Dee (at the time David) Palmer’s string arrangement is what raises the song to another level.
Palmer, perhaps Jethro Tull’s true unsung hero, would later become a full-fledged recording and touring member of the band, helping to build the lavish arrangements on albums like Songs from the Wood and songs like “Orion”.
Credited as composer of the 1979 Stormwatch album-closer “Elegy”, one of the few Tull songs without an Anderson writing credit, Palmer wrote the song as an ode to her father, writing it within an hour after first hearing he had died.
Every Moment Has A Song 