noise."March Music Monday 1 · 2:05am March 5th
This is pretty much what it says on the tin.
See, ponies like music, I think that's pretty well-established canon. I like music, too, and I thought I'd introduce you to some music you might not have heard before. After all, I've been introduced to music by other people through the years, oftentimes something I'd never have found on my own.
And I think for the four (or five, I don't remember how many Mondays there are this month) that I'm gonna choose, they're gonna have a story that goes with them. Maybe how/when I first heard the song, or my efforts in finding it when I couldn't remember the artist or the name of the song.
For whatever reason, my manager insists that the shop radio only play country music, and only the same top-40 Country station every single day. I don't hate country per se; in fact there's a lot of older country and some new country that I really do like. But I just can't take hearing the same Jelly Roll song five or six times a day, every day.
So I finally bit the bullet and bought myself a set of wireless earbuds (JBL ones, I can't remember the specific model) and those have been life-changing.
I started off just listening to my usual mix of music, but of course that gets old after a while and so I started picking artists and just playing a mix of their stuff for a while before switching to a different artist, and that was fantastic. Heard some Mitchell Trio songs I'd never heard before (my parents didn't have all their records), found an old favorite Neil Diamond album, and of course Silver Apples (we might get to them later).
One day I was on a Dead Can Dance kick. What you need to know about DCD is their lead singer, Lisa Gerrard, has an amazing vocal range and a voice like a woman twice her size.
I won't say that I know all their songs, but I know a lot of their songs. So I'm jamming along to the ones I do know, and then something else comes along.
At the time, I didn't know that Amazon Prime Music would mix in other similar artists, and in my defense it did kind of sound like something DCD would do, and the vocalist had an amazing range. Also I wasn't sure if everything she was singing were actual words, but that's kind of on-point for Lisa Gerrard.
The song also has several different sections, as I would find out.
So it starts off, and I'm doing a brake job and enjoying it, and it just keeps going. At one point I tell one of the other mechanics that I'm listening to an absolute banger, and then go back to work.
Five minutes later, it's still going, and I mention this to him.
Five minutes later, it's still going, and I tell him that I have no idea any more what's happening in my ear but it is absolutely amazing.
And it still wasn't over; I hadn't even made it into the final section.
I did have the presence of mind to write down the title of the song, but not the artist (since I assumed it was DCD). Luckily, YouTube is good at figuring out when you give it a bunch of keywords that don't quite line up, and it did find the song which was not by Dead Can Dance.
There was a moment I thought it was a cover of one of their songs, but it isn't. It's an Anna von Hausswolff original.
Ironically, I already knew of her; one of the songs on my epic music playlist is by her, and she not only sings in it, but she also plays the pipe organ*
Here's the video to the live version (which is what I heard):
Warning: strobes
*in fact, I discovered that song quite by accident when I was listening to a bunch of pipe organ music, some of which inspired No Time for Caution.
I loved DCD, and that's mostly down to Gerrard's vocals. Followed her after DCD, and she kept on amazing me. Hadn't heard of Anna von Hausswolff, so thanks a bunch for that!
Im pretty sur the only reason I have 17 hour playlist on my old phone repurposed as alaarm and mp3 player is that at thee time I could only afford an 8 Gig SD card.
That, and the battery in play music mode only lasted 11 hours.
I used to be able to remember what the name of the tracks were and the Artists. No idea of Albums except for very few,a nd trying to sing along would break Karaoke machines.
Organ music? Although several hyms can have good tunes, Ill always stick with the big one.
Toccata and Fuge in D Minor. Apparently it was written for the Berlin Organ, and the Cathedrals massive reverberation time, hence the pauses and resulting choral build up of overlapping notes, just like Dr Brian May?
I have a radio app on my phone. I like to use that to listen to classical music at work. Interestingly, the people there consider John Williams to be a classical composer, so I sometimes hear famous movie scores, too. I've heard the themes to Indiana Jones, E.T. the Extraterrestrial, Superman, Jurassic Park, and Star Wars. They often seem to come on when my health is poor and I'm tiring out. They give me enough of a mental boost to at least finish my current task. Amusingly, the first song I ever heard on it that I recognized was what's now known as "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star". Specifically, it was a remix of it that Mozart came up with.
I'm a fan of both classical and country. I have the radio in my car pre-set to all three local country stations. AM is classic country, the first FM is newer country (the kind you just complained about), and the second FM station plays the songs in-between. I prefer the classic, but will sometimes switch to FM #2 if there's a song I don't like or there isn't any music (when it's airing news, agricultural information, sports, or a particularly long ad break).
One of my favorite Beatles songs is "Taxman" (Harrison). There's a Weird Al parody "Pac Man" that was never officially released (legal complications).
I can totally empathize about the dumb work radio. Some days it's okay, but there are days where "top 10" means (what feels like) literally 10 on some form of repeat. Or the 7 AM dulcet sound of early 2000 "bling/gangsta rap"
Have you perhaps heard of Vylet Pony?
Gerrard did one of the best renditions of the Wind that Shakes the Barley. That's what I know her from. Good sean nos dynamics.
I had rebel songs like The Wolfe Tones played by my cradle, and grandparents, aunts and uncles gave me a tin whistle and taught me some. My mother was a bit annoyed when she found out I knew The Men Behind the Wire.
feels very warhammer 40k'ish ... respect for the artists than come up with tunes like these.
Dead Can Dance is good shit :D
I listen to podcasts more than music at work. Wireless earbuds are amazing, I’m glad I have a pair. They’re also noise cancelling and that works to well, my coworkers will have trouble getting my attention lol.
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Classical music. The radio in my car is old and doesn't like being touched. So I leave it tuned to the local classical music station.
The other style of music I love is 80's pop. Born in the early 80's it was my decade and the music can be so fun.
Maybe that why I love brony artists such as Foozogz.
Now you're speaking my (music) language
!
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I'm gonna give you a sort-of spoiler for tomorrow's blog post, just 'cause I came across it quite by accident as I was preparing the next blog:
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OMG! That's awesome!!!
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It probably doens't work anymore, but I have an old Netbook that has about 60 gigs of music on it. Used it for years as a glorified MP3 player, I got whole music libraries from a couple friends and it was varied.
I was never good with the technical details. I know the song, but have no idea who sings it or what it's called. One of my co-workers at a different job would sometimes feed me a song lyric and see if I knew the next one.
Battle Hymn of the Republic, O Holy Night, or that other one with the big triplet chords (I used to know what the page number of that one was in the hymnal)? The organ at one of our churches cracked plaster and made all the sheet music in the choir tunnel vibrate, which is about the right volume for an organ IMHO.
There is something about the right music and the right space. This vid comes to mind:
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I was listening to a Meatloaf playlist a while back and there was suddenly an opera song. I was surprised for a second, and then thought 'well, they're not wrong.' Also speaking of soundtracks, I recently re-found a much loved soundtrack piece with the vague memory of the name 'Trevor' and either the word 'convoy' or 'hijacking'; after a few false starts Amazon Music found me Trevor Jones, and when I went through his songology, I discovered that he'd also done the soundtrack to several other movies that I really liked.
There's nothing like music inspiring you when you feel down. Especially when you aren't really expecting it, and then a real banger comes on.
I don't hate country overall, especially some of the older stuff, but hearing the same ten songs on a looped playlist all day long, every day, is just too much. If we listened to the station one day a week and other stuff the other four days, I'd be a very happy pony.
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I think my all-time favorite Weird Al song is Amish Paradise, but there's lots of good ones. Saw a surgeon review the music video to Like a Surgeon, and she said that everything in the video was perfectly accurate, so good on him for getting the details right.
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On more than one occasion I've been tempted to commit an act of violence against the radio just to get it to shut up forever. It was lots better when we had some variety in the music we listened to every day. I'd rather listen to an air hammer against a control arm for five minutes than Jelly Roll for the fifteenth time today.
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Nope! Weirdly enough, my playlists contain very few pony songs. Of the ones that do, Cutie-H Equestria by Velvet R. Wings is my favorite, especially after learning the the radio calls are accurate. Apparently, Velvet's also a ham radio operator.
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I know that one. I can't really pick a favorite, but there's a few I really like. Be damned if I remember the names of them, though. Might be about time to crack open the DCD/Lisa Gerrard playlist again.
I used to listen to my parent's Mitchell Trio records, and there were lots of protest songs on them. Amusingly enough (or perhaps not) some of them are still relevant.
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I feel like this is one of those songs where she's channeling something that's beyond the reach of us mere mortals. I can't even begin to comprehend that there might be sheet music to it, I think the band's just playing and she's doing her thing.
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Yes, agree 100%
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I will say that my earbuds don't like all the little bits of metal that they wind up magneting to themselves; had to fight with them today to make them charge, which meant I spent the last couple of hours with no music in my ear. At least I could offset it by telling an older Chevy Blazer with a 4.3 what I thought about its designers, rust, coolant, and life in general, so that was something.
I've also been listening to podcasts lately, but it's about time to switch back to music.
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I've owned my current van for six years, and I still haven't set a single station on its radio. Headset and YouTube or Amazon Music does it for me.
I tended to listen to music that was a few decades older than me for whatever reason, and that still generally holds true. Never really got into the brony music scene, although there's a few songs that I really love. I do have a couple resources for sharing brony music with me and maybe I ought to hit them up for more recommendations; I know there's some really good stuff out there.
Also it's my headcanon that ponies love 80s power ballads and you'll never convince me otherwise.
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Yeah, a LOT of people like "Amish Paradise". It's a lot funnier if you've ever actually heard "Gangster's Paradise".
On the other hand, he has parodies of the Beverly Hillbillies & Gilligan's Island & many of his fans aren't old enough to have ever seen those shows or heard the songs they imitate.
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That's why I don't really make music playlists. Hearing my favorite song gives me much more of a pick-up when I'm not expecting it.
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I got away with letting my YouTube play at work today (a rare treat).
As to inanimate violence, I feel the same way about our doorbell to get let in via the loading dock "staff entry". Instead of a pleasant chime or ding dong, it's hooked up to the klaxon so I'll be digging in my locker or waiting to clock in and the speaker is right above "BRRAAAP!!!"
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Yeah, you do have a good point there. I remember trying to record some of my favorite songs off the radio with varying degrees of success.
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Nice!
I rarely use YouTube at work, but have on occasion . . . I listened to a reading of AlwaysDressesInStyle's Business Trip at work.
Ooh, that's terrible. I've heard that you can make klaxons quieter by putting some RTV in there.
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That's an idea...or my (mostly insincere) threat of ""accidentally"" knocking it out of the ceiling.