I’m rather pleased with myself, which doesn’t happen very often. I managed to keep this blog going with its weekly post for the last 2 weeks despite the temptation of the various delights Turkey has to offer. Cell phone turned off, staying off the internet (except for updating this blog)…aaah! bliss. But now I’m back. [...]
Posts Tagged ‘Music’
Burning Some Midnight Oil
Posted: May 18, 2012 in MusicTags: Beds Are Burning, Dream World, DyingNote, Midnight Oil, Music, Peter Garrett, The Dead Heart
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Some Fine Folk
Posted: May 8, 2012 in MusicTags: DyingNote, Fairport Convention, John Martyn, Music, Nick Drake, Sandy Denny, Shelagh McDonald
About the time that I wrote Her Name Is Shelagh, I was listening – not surprisingly – to a lot of British folk music. My introduction to that form was through a compilation CD released by Island Records. I was fascinated by much of what I heard, enough for me to build a music collection [...]
A World Of Music
Posted: May 1, 2012 in MusicTags: Afro Celt Sound System, Ali Farkah Toure, Blair Douglas, DyingNote, Jesse Cook, Music, Prasanna, World Music
Our need to categorize, slot everything into a hole, has given rise – among many things – to the blandly named genre of ‘World’ music to fit all music falling outside the realms of modern English music (as if this latter is other-worldly). I don’t care much for that name, but I use it for [...]
Her Name Is Shelagh
Posted: April 24, 2012 in MusicTags: DyingNote, Folk Music, Music, Shelagh McDonald, Stargazer, The Shelagh McDonald Album
For three decades and a half more, she was as much a creature of myth as she was a creator of music sublime – Shelagh McDonald was. She illuminated the London folk music scene with two brilliant albums, the simply titled debut ‘Album’ and the stellar ‘Stargazer’. And just a few months after the release [...]
Take It Down A Notch
Posted: April 17, 2012 in MusicTags: Bruce Springsteen, Counting Crows, DyingNote, Leonard Cohen, Music, My Morning Jacket, Robbie Robertson
This was not intended to be the Yin to the Yang of my earlier Out Loud post. Rather, this was ‘inspired’ by my listening to samples of Norah Jones’s upcoming album, ‘Little Broken Hearts’ due for release on May 1st. Her cool, calm voice never fails to send me to a pensive state a la Gandalf [...]
Father and Son
Posted: April 6, 2012 in MusicTags: Barlande, DyingNote, Gaspar Claus, Music, Pedro Soler
When one hears the term ‘Flamenco guitar’, what pops up in imagination is fierce virtuoso playing. But that’s not all there is to it. There’s a stateliness in its gentler phrasing, an expression of dignified emotion in its silences interspersed with single, clear notes. And when the Flamenco guitar in that mood combines with the [...]
Shades of White
Posted: March 31, 2012 in MusicTags: DyingNote, Jack White, Music, The Dead Weather, The Raconteurs, The White Stripes
Pale skin, raccoon eyes – does Jack White ever sleep? One of rock’s hardest working musicians and most fascinating personalities (among other things, John Gillis did take Meg White’s – his ex-wife and the other half of the White Stripes – surname), the seemingly insatiable Jack White creates multiple projects as vehicles for his prodigious [...]
Of The Returning Troubadour
Posted: March 22, 2012 in MusicTags: DyingNote, Music, Spoon, The Hold Steady, The National
While I was writing the post on Tanita Tikaram (A Long-lost Voice), I started thinking about musicians that had not been heard of for a while – many for the good of the world at large and some, like Ms. Tikaram, that I for one would love to hear more of. And in that respect, [...]
I had read about Adam & The Fish-eyed Poets on the Moopcity blog (there is place in this country and in the world for this band – they’re too good not to) a few months back. What monumental lapse of reason it was that took me as long as this to give them a listen is [...]
Out Loud
Posted: March 3, 2012 in MusicTags: DyingNote, Jack White, Jay-Z, Muse, Music, My Morning Jacket, Porcupine Tree, The Raconteurs
There was a lot of noise last year around 11/11/11 to celebrate the mythical level 11 on the volume control made notorious/famous in this scene from Spinal Tap. I had for long wanted to write about my list of songs (or just some of them) that I love to turn the noise knob up on. [...]
