18 posts tagged “music”

Caught this kind of randomly the other day when digging around an MP3 player I don't get to use enough, I love the rhythm to it, the underlying piano riff.  And there's the imagery of course, it's sort of what I imagine parts of the US to be like.  Anyway, here it is, Jesusland by Ben Folds.  Might write more about him sometime soon as well, maybe about piano stuff more broadly...

[update the following morning] I wonder, is it possible to feel melancholy tinged with joy?  How terribly dramatic of me, and as I write this yes, the mood and the moment, intangible, both have now passed.  I caught the 7am bus, commuters wrapped in themselves against the cold, dawn was only just breaking and I listened to the song again.  The rhythm of the song lends itself to travel, the soft shuffle of the drums and the tumbling piano riff.  Government buildings in Woden stark against the grey sky.  Naked oaks and elms on Adelaide Avenue, and the morning rhythm continues with mini-pelotons of lycra-clad travellers holding up cars at the exit lanes.

Take a walk

Out the gate you go and never stop

Bleh.  I've been home sick today and have just spent five or so minutes trying to articulate what I think about the act of singing.  So rather than mucking about why don't I just put it in dot point form:

• We all sing, though the vast majority of us wouldn't dream of singing in public.  We respect, somehow, those who do.
• There's something inherently personal about the act of singing - we are revealing much of who we really are when we sing. 
• Singing is a key part of maintaining community.  The national anthem, hymns, the club song, Khe San on the pub jukebox. 
• We pass songs down through generations.  Nonsense children's songs and lullabies, story-songs.  Songs of personal importance.

I've been prompted in part by the wonderful experience of seeing Finnish acapella group Rajaton perform recently.  My oh my, they were something.  Just... just great, really.  Sort of poppier than I expected - I went in expecting much more traditional music from the region than they performed.

I've picked up a video of their song Butterfly to add to this post - it's not the clip they did for it, just a photo of the group, deliberately chosen so there's no distraction from the music. 

There's something about this song, it sort of captures a sense of sadness, of fleetingness -

Love me, love me on the leaves
Before we say goodbye
Love me, kiss me with the breeze
You will be my lullaby

Ready to go

Had one of these great sort of, I don't know, "generation x parenting moments" the other night.  The Boy and I have been taken with the idea playing both real and air guitar on a semi-regular basis, to the point where he's so keen that I'm thinking I'll have to get him a half-sized nylon stringed acoustic for him when he's just a bit bigger. 

Which means we'll probably end up having a surly teenager playing old Cure covers in his bedroom on a beaten up electric guitar but, hey, I can probably live with that.

So I found a bunch of old cassettes the other day while I was packing up a bunch of stuff to go under the house (making room for no. 2 given that we're into the final trimester now) and among them was the first REM album I ever bought, Document.  What a great set of songs.  Marked, of course, by It's the End of the World As We Know It (and I feel fine). 

I only have to reach up to the little stereo perched on top of the kitchen cupboards for monster-moo here to start shouting "air guitar! air guitar!" excitedly, I fast forward to the right spot, turn up the volume, press play and from the opening drum riff we're both leaping and jumping around the kitchen like maniacs.  This is A Good Thing.  Here's the clip:   

It's been a hard week. 

You know, I started going into details about it all just now but thought no, best not to share it.  They're just details and they won't add anything. 

So I got in the car to drive home and I remembered those Friday nights when I'd head to a friend's place, others would gather, a drink, a smoke, a joke, and eventually guitars would come out and be passed around and we'd sing, sing, sing.  There's a Buffalo Tom cd in the car and I know what I have to do.  I sing Taillights Fade, twice, and am pleasantly surprised to hear that over 10 years later I can still hit the high notes.  I'm running through the chord changes in my head, E minor to C, D to G to D then it starts again.  The window is open as I drive around the lake, I'm taking the scenic route home and part of me is secretly hoping I'll be heard.  I sing, sing, sing.

I'm not one for musicals really, but I do have a soft spot for West Side Story ever since high school friends of mine performed in a rather excellent production in Brisbane around 15 years ago.  The harmony arrangement for the chorus in Somewhere is one of those melodic elements that I can never quite forget. 

I've been thinking of it lately for various reasons, not least because this weekend marks a ten-year reunion for a musical I was heavily involved in which riffed off WSS remorsely.  Looking back, we didn't realise at the time that bringing a bunch of kids together (many of them from what you'd consider to be disadvantaged backgrounds) and "putting on a heck of a show" for the community was actually kind of significant in an "affecting people's lives" sort of way.  I was responsible for organising, arranging, rehearsing and performing the music with a ragtag band (featuring me running between bass guitar and piano and a terminally shy but shit-hot teenage guitarist), and also a had an onstage role requiring me to recite Hamlet's "To be or not to be..." soliloquy with a plastic skull.  Those were the days, as they say...

Things have been busy down at Casa de Daddy-Fu, what with me returning to work three days a week and all (and promptly seeking a temporary promotion to boot) and my dear wife working her arse off at studying, working, and trying to placate a husband who finds it tricky to manage a two year old.  So it's been a bit light-on vox-wise, though I always have posts brewing.

Anyways, here's the Jets with a song about the policy challenges facing youth servicing programs, particularly when different organisational components aren't communicating effectively with each other about the young person's specific needs, followed by a couple of lovebirds not singing the Tom Waits version of Somewhere.  Enjoy.

The "old" album that I referred to in the previous post can be found in the bargain bins of most record stores nowadays. 

I had the soundtrack to the movie Singles on high rotation for a time in 1992.  It was my "gap" year between high school and uni (back before the term was to mean anything here in Australia) which I spent doing hard, shitty work in a Bi-Lo warehouse and a couple of their supermarkets.  I also knocked off my grade 6 piano exam, got my driver's licence, and tried to work out whether to go with an Arts-Humanities degree or audition at the Queensland Conservatorium of Music to do an Arts-Music degree to come out as a music therapist.

I opted for the former and, well, here I am. 

I won't bore you with details or opinions about grunge, but I will mention that I've always regretted not being able to go in and see Nirvana supporting the Violent Femmes at Gold Coast venue Fisherman's Wharf, literally days before Nevermind went apeshit on the mainstream charts and "alternative" rock suddenly got a bit blurry.

There are some excellent tracks on this album though.  One of the reasons I picked it up after so long was that I'd had the Screaming Trees song Nearly Lost You bouncing around my head, along with Mudhoney's Touch Me I'm Sick.  Thinking I might look for the movie again sometime soon.

It's one of those albums that takes me back though, which I guess is the primary reason I picked it up.  I've included a video below of Pearl Jam performing State of Love and Trust (not sure about the quality) which was one of my favourite songs to play back when I was a young, angsty, long-haired bass guitarist.  Saturday nights the band would be playing for simple, pure enjoyment in a room we'd soundproofed with cardboard, blankets and empty egg cartons, the windows were closed and covered so there was no ventilation at all, just an overhead fan serving merely to shift the stale air around until we opened the door for a break, standing outside in the night air alongside the weatherboard walls of the house.  I'll devote a proper post to the band stuff sometime, I've mentioned it a little obliquely before.

Anyway, Pearl Jam, State of Love and Trust, track no. 8 on the Singles soundtrack -

Oh No

OK Go

I have this wonderful godmother in Sydney who, without fail, sends me a few bucks every year for my birthday.  Not enough for whisky so I put it to good use by buying some music for the first time in ages.

I like to get one old and one new, partly as an attempt at gradually replacing the collection I lost around 15 years ago when my place got burgled.  The "new" one, such as it is, is Oh No by Ok Go (and what a great band name that is, conjuring up a couple of beat generation associations).

Now you'll probably know of these guys through their ubiquitous YouTube clip for their song Here It Goes Again, featuring the band members going through their paces in an elaborately choreographed routine on exercise treadmills. 

But the song I've got stuck in my head is Do What You Want.  Here's the clip -

The whole album itself is pretty good, strong on a track by track basis.  Occasionally I find myself wanting to listen to this sort of clean, slightly alternative guitar based stuff and it fits the bill more than adequately so I'm happy with the purchase.  They're worth checking out, looking forward to what else they come up with. 

Brilliant:

Friday evening, 18th January, I've trudged up Pitt St from Sydney Central station to Angel Place recital hall after a back-tiring four hour bus trip from Canberra, soaked and sweaty from the rain I changed shirts in the toilet and had a couple of rehydrating beers in the foyer with my companions.

A touch after 9:30pm Pohjonen enters from stage left, in an industrial apron and silvery vest cut off at the arms, teutonic, impassive, he sits down, changes a couple of settings on the desk to his right, hoists his accordion to his chest and we're away.

The following hour is, for me, completely absorbing.  What he does is sets up the rhythmic and underpinning bass sounds, loops them with the effects pedals (ably assisted by his sound engineer Jukka Kaven, who swirls the music around the hall and beefs up the bass as required) and then runs away with his melodic and harmonic themes over the top.  He uses these wonderful traditional finnish folk elements and riffs as the jumping off point for a broader exploration of the capabilities of the instrument.

There were a couple of pieces that really stood out for me.  Song 4 started with the valves off and the bellows moving back and forth, the accordion breathing, like the lungs of the sleeping Kalevala giant, Antero, then the sound is looped and augmented and now it's oceanic, the sea in the harbour, and Pohjonen plays an orchestra of harmony through several movements.  The music finishes but the breathing's still there.  Piece 5 has no accordion at all and is purely vocal, with a percussive clicking from an open mouth that sounds like winter's ice breaking in spring, Pohjonen has a good voice but he uses it for effect and avant-gardeish howls.  Song 6, the final of the set before the obligatory encores, is basically the soundtrack to the end of the world. 

Before the clapping is done Pohjonen comes on for an encore, apologising for bringing the weather with him from Helsinki.  He plays two more pieces, the last of which is the one I've included here - it's poor quality but it comes through.  In a way, it felt like a nod to the old Finns in the audience who would have come perhaps hoping for a more traditional display of his ability, though they wouldn't have been disappointed.  It's a beautiful piece, as melancholic as it needs to be but assuring, too. 

It was a wonderful experience, giving me much to consider from musical and technical points of view.  If I ever manage to get my hands on an accordion I think I've got a pretty good idea of how to proceed, of the bellows as lungs, of the importance of breathing, phrasing, of finding the voice of the instrument.

Few links with further info:

Brief interview with Kimmo in the SMH;

Review of the performance, also in the SMH; and

More YouTube videos.

Just can't get this out of my head these last few days - Lone Star Song by Grant Lee Buffalo -

Found the tab, got the lyrics, will strip it back on the piano sometime this week.