Songs that benefit from orchestral treatments

Much of Tears for Fears sounds truly wonderful in full-blown orchestral performance. Check out Mad World . Lush, memorable, and really uses the chorus to great effect.

Here’s the same song in 1982.

The second I would love for zipping around in my car, getting to work in the morning. Somehow, early 80s synthesizer music is really wonderful for commuting. Well, that and Bonnie Tyler or Pat Benetar’s Love is a Battlefield (I’ll get you started… “we are young…”).

Music videos and a fascination with the past

Whether it’s a fascination with French filmography: Smashing Pumpkins

Or green-fairy induced monomania/Victorian mourning with an unpleasant singer who was possibly told to overact: Nine Inch Nails

People in wigs and crushed velvet: Annie Lenox (Hugh Laurie and John Malkovich)

Incomprehensible Cold War camp when you go west with the Pet Shop Boys

A lovely video that might be from Martina McBride or not… called “For These Times” (starring NYC). I mostly posted this because I want to visit it again.

Enjoy the timewarp.*

*Courtesy of my desire not to look at the news and obsess more about earthquakes and not being able to feel like I’m making a difference. BTW: If you’re interested in helping, check credible nonprofits out there, okay? There’s Doctor’s Without Borders, Red Cross (although I feel weird about texting something on my phone to donate), and other places that have a track record of helping others.

New song artists and creativity in video

Yes, people say that Video is dead. And that might be true if you just went by what MTV spoonfeeds cable viewers. However, in visits outside of the US, during bouts of insomnia, I’ve watched a lot of video shows. Yes it’s a waste of time, but sometimes you see something charming that introduces you to an artist with a good voice.

• Marit Larsen, from Norway, has a video for If a Song Could Get Me You that is charming (and hey — it’s kind of Project Spectrum appropriate too)
• The video for the song Chasing Pavements is creepy but one of the best examples of shadow dancing I’ve seen in a long time. The singer, Adele, has an amazing voice.
• And I still need to remember to go to the record store and pick up some Duffy.

Hoping to finish one of my latest projects (or at least one sock) so I can photograph something in the sun sometime. But for now, links to other people’s creativity will have to suffice.

Lets go down to the sunset bridge

Let’s go down to the sunset bridge

And watch the working barge go by

And watch the mosquitoes bite people,

And stare up at the maroon sky….

– with all apologies to Don Henley

A Day Told in Numbers

• 4.5 hours round trip commute (thanks to rain and roadwork).
• 9 hours typing frantically on a computer, trying to meet deadlines, and squinting at the screen. Perhaps computer glasses in my future?
• 2.5 hours at choir practice, standing and holding a music folder in front of me.
• Only 7 hours of sleep before I get to wake up and do it all again (except the music lessons will be at home, sitting, thank you very much). And I’ll have easy access to aspirin.

First Music

I remember sitting on the floor, wearing a buckled shoe on one foot and on the other a sock. In front of me was a square tin box with yellow, red, black, and blue diamonds painted on it and with a handle made of metal and a ball of wood. The square box was a hard thing for me to struggle with, holding it steady while I cranked the handle to listen to the creak of the mechanism and the galloping tinny sounds of “Pop Goes the Weasel” until the lid of the box flew off to reveal a clown made of crinkly paper with a bobbing, heavy face and outstretched arms.

If I dig further back, I remember being tucked into bed with a teddy bear that played a lullaby. The clockwork ticked away underneath the bear’s body until the key on its back when still. The bear broke when I was very young, and it was featured in photos from my first Christmas. I certainly have other memories, of people singing and playing the piano (my mother) or chanting silly rhymes over and over again (my father, who can appreciate music and sings quietly among the congregation at church, but rarely sings solo).

In each of these moments of memory, I’m rewarded with a reminder of how tactile music can be. It’s not just the sounds, but also the biting sharpness of the edge of a jack-in-the box as you crank the key ["Brahms' Lullaby"]. It’s the woolly warmth of a soft baby’s toy that’s meant to encourage drowsiness. It’s the melody of a folk song ["Hang Down Your Head Tom Dooley"] with the smell of chocolate cake in the oven and a bowl to lick. At live performances, it’s the feeling of being swept off your feet by the vibrations of the pipe organ behind your chair ["A Mighty Fortress Is Our God"]. Or the swoosh of air moving your hair as singers rush past singing the opening song of the second act [a medley of songs from Hair, including "Let the Sun Shine In"].

It’s this tactility, of acting within the moment of the music, that makes me join up for chorus and daydream about taking time off to catch a musical in NYC. To me, there are no performances of music that are just about the music. If nothing else, there is the feeling of open space and the hushed motions of listeners in the audience. So how about you? Do you find music to be just purely an effect of sound? Or do you feel as though you are living more deeply within life’s experience while singing, playing, or listening to a musical piece?

Young Republicans

… Yes, set that line to a David Bowie song, and you’re right about where my brain is right now. Well, that and boggling at the spectacle of well-dressed, young Conservatives dipping and swaying to “Come to my Window” being sung by a live band.

Irony is not dead. It’s just stuck in the 80s, with Alex P Keaton. Perhaps people did not know the words (or the backstory) and just loved the guitar bridge. [I do suspect few of them remembered critically analyzing a poem in college. Do they even teach that these days?]

Officially Feeling Old

The media keeps talking about the line between the boomers and the rest of us. I just tripped over the line between me and people born in the 80s. A friend just told me she never heard of Hall & Oates.

This is like catching a glimpse of yourself in a mirror while you’re talking with someone and thinking “Good GOLLY I’m short!” or, alternately, “when did I suddenly get tall?” Think I’m gonna just trawl teh Internet for some goofy, fun tunes. If you want come along on my nostalgia trip, visit: I Can’t Go for That (No Can Do), Out of Touch, and Kiss On my List. While we’re at it, who wants to play Chinese Jump Rope? Anyone else’s inner child need some exercise?

Gifts for Artists and Musicians

One of the things that get cut in a bad economy are the Arts — schools cut art and music classes rather than sports. One way to counteract this economic Grinch effect is to provide kids and kids at heart with the tools they need to practice their craft of choice. Luckily, it doesn’t have to break the bank.

• If there’s a kid in your life who loves trombone, clarinet, violin, and you know the family can’t afford lessons, see if you can get other family members to help you cover the cost — maybe split it up so each person covers one day’s lesson.
• Match sheet music to the musical taste of budding performers — sheet music from Wicked or Pirates of the Caribbean may fill a young musician with joy.
• Paintbrushes, sheets of disposable palette paper, and refills of paint colors that get used up quickly (for instance, titanium white) are welcome additions to any painter’s studio. Ditto for pastels, kneaded rubber erasers, and tortillions for other artists.
• If they’re learning to draw, provide them with art pencils, colored pencils, and paper.
• Little artists need refills of paper for painting easels, child safe paints, inexpensive brushes, glitter glue, crayons, and modeling clay.
• Teens might enjoy a book on drawing cartoons and caricatures, along with some of the tools mentioned in the book.

And, of course, give the gift that’s free — encouragement. If your niece or nephew want to play their violin, drum, or clarinet after dinner on Christmas Day, sit and really listen. If they want to show you their latest artworks, smile and look for things you can identify and talk about (like color choice, if the art is abstract). Remember — even really great performers like Wynton Marsalis, Yo-Yo Ma, and Marian Anderson and famous artists like Mary Cassatt probably needed encouragement when they were young.

Life’s Little Ironies

… working in an office filled with people nattering on about the stock market (updates from the US markets every 5 minutes, direct from a website someone’s watching like a hawk), what their funds are doing, and how the whole world is slowly tipping into oblivion…

Luckily I get to listen to my IPod with its steady stream of Starship, Bruce Springsteen, and songs that were popular during the Crash of the late ’80s. And then the Pet Shop Boys show up with, “I Love You (You Pay My Rent)“. So close to all the conversation I was hearing behind me. Who knew Ipods on shuffle have a sense of wicked timing?

Hopefully soon I will have light to take a quick photo of the Amazonian sock, now with added toe.