Art is the music we make from the bewildered cry of being alive. ~Maria Popova
29 Oct 2012 Leave a comment
in General Posts Tags: the rolling stones
“I’m not a musician. I just play in a band, you know”
29 Oct 2012 Leave a comment
in General Posts Tags: the beatles, the rolling stones
(Source: Open Culture)
Today we set the Wayback Machine to Ireland, 1965, where we find a young Mick Jagger and a shockingly restored Keith Richards staving off the downtime boredom of a two-day tour with a not-entirely-reverential Beatles singalong. Despite the drabness of the room in which documentarian Peter Whitehead caught the lads clowning, it’s clear that Jagger was feeling his oats. Go ahead and read those famous lips when he wraps them around the chorus of Eight Days a Week.
This priceless private moment is culled from the just released, not-entirely-finished documentary, The Rolling Stones: Charlie Is My Darling — Ireland 1965. Former Stones’ producer Andrew Loog Oldham recently chalked the near-50-year delay to the massive explosion of the band’s popularity. Padding things out to a proper feature length would have required additional filming. (I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction had shot to the top of the American charts just two months earlier, from which point on, the lads’ dance card was filled.
Lucky thing, that. What might in its day have amounted to a fun peek behind the scenes feels far more compelling as a just-cracked time capsule. The sad spectacle of Brian Jones musing about his future options is offset by the youthful larking about of rock’s most celebrated senior citizens.
29 Oct 2012 2 Comments
in Songs You May Have Missed Tags: andar com fé, gilberto gil
Gilberto Gil: “Andar Com Fé” (1982)
Brazilian legend and Caetano Veloso collaborator Gilberto Gil’s sometimes political and topical songs led to his arrest by the Brazilian military and eventual exile to England, where his career continued both as musician and social activist.
“Andar Com Fé” is not one of Gil’s more subversive tunes, unless catchiness is a crime. It translates thusly:
I’ll walk with faith/Faith doesn’t usually fail
Faith is in a woman/Faith is in the coral snake, in a piece of bread
Faith is in the tide, in the dagger’s blade, in light, in darkness
Faith is in the morning, Faith is in nightfall, Faith is in the summer heat
Faith is alive and healthy, Faith is also about to die, sadly in solitude
Right or even wrong, Faith goes wherever I go, on foot or by airplane
Even those who don’t have Faith, Faith usually follows
Through yes and through no
28 Oct 2012 9 Comments
in Best of the Blog, General Posts Tags: the seekers
I post this with some trepidation. Either you, dear reader, will have some appreciation–or at least tolerance–for the music of the 60’s folk movement…or you will not.
If so, you’ll find the Seekers’ 1968 farewell show a treat, dubious attempts at humor aside.
The Seekers formed in Melbourne, Australia in 1962. After immigrating to England in ’64 a string of worldwide hits followed. Their music was a somewhat sugar-sprinkled hybrid, perhaps too close to pop for some folk purists, but it was a winning sound that earned them the distinction of being the first Australian act to land in the top 5 in England and the U.S. as well as their home country.
Just four years later, though, lead singer Judith Durham announced her intention to leave the Seekers for a solo career, and the group called it quits.
Their final performance together was shown live by the BBC in the form of this special, called Farewell the Seekers. It drew an estimated 10 million viewers, a testament to just how well-loved the group were in England and elsewhere.
The mode of music they specialized in is as out of fashion as Durham’s dress. But there’s no denying the talent on display here, or the timelessness of some of these songs.
Fans of singing competition TV shows like The X Factor and American Idol have been brainwashed, frankly, into thinking that a great singer is measured by the level of histrionics in a performance, or the number of notes, other than the ones on the page, that a song is adorned with. Judith Durham’s purity of voice and seemingly effortless performance–the way she gets out of the way of a great song instead of imposing herself on it–is a lesson in how it once was done, and still is by the best ones. Celine Dion is gifted. Durham is a great singer.
25 Oct 2012 Leave a comment
in On a Lighter Note Tags: mumford & sons
Womp womp…
(Source: BuzzFeed)
Every Moment Has A Song 