I haven’t forgotten about Gordon Lightfoot week; but the songs may appear episodically. We’re listening to music from his first and greatest album, Lightfoot!, which came out in 1966, when I was a junior in high school. “The Way I Feel,” a moving lament for broken love, uses the nature similes common in Lightfoot songs. And notice […]
Today happens to be exactly one year since reader Carol Piller adopted Gus the snow-white cat, a cat deliberately trapped in an outdoor cage last winter by a miscreant, and who, as a result, lost most of his ears to frostbite. But after the local humane society rescued him, Gus found a loving home, and has now […]
I don’t have the statistics, but I suspect that, given its population, Canada has produced more great singers and songwriters per capita, both in folk and pop music, than the U.S. There’s Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, Robbie Robertson, Leonard Cohen, the McGarrigle sisters, Sarah McLaughlan, and on and on. And of course there’s Gordon Lightfoot (b. […]
Here’s ensemble of rock greats at Dylan’s 30th anniversary concert in 1992 (!). The split screen is annoying, but this is the best version I can embed. No twerking, no flames, no flashing lights, no dancing M&Ms: just fantastic music—and great solos by Clapton and Young. If you don’t know who everyone is, you need to bone up. […]
People decry the popular music of the 1980s, and in general they’re right. But there are exceptions, and this song, by the British group Tears for Fears, is one. Released in 1985, it rose to #1 on the U.S.’s Billboard Hot 100 chart and got the award for Britain’s best single in 1986. It was the […]
I’ve put up my two favorite Steely Dan songs before, but I heard favorite on my iPod while walking in to work, and thought I’d share it. Anybody who wants to guess what it means is welcome to comment, for I have no fricking clue what it’s about, though drugs are clearly involved. (Typical of Dan […]
One of the highlights of my trip so far has been a visit to Shantiniketan, the “university” founded by the the polymathic poet/artist/novelist/playwright/songwriter/educator Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). Tagore came from a wealthy family of landowners, and many of his relatives were renowned artists. But Rabrindranath was by far the most famous. He took up painting at the age of 60 (producing […]
Reader Natalie, a professional harpsichordist, performed a birthday song for me: “The Fly,” which appears on YouTube with the following note: After “Le Moucheron” by François Couperin (1668-1733) It is cold in Europe today. The fly settled on my hand and expected me to play slowly so it wouldn’t fall off. Be sure to listen all the […]
When I returned from Calcutta yesterday, I was shocked to learn from my CNN news feed that Joe Cocker had died. He was only 70, but the BBC reports that he died from lung cancer, so I suspect he was a smoker. (This was the same malady that killed George Harrison—born a year earlier than Cocker—at […]
by Grania Here’s a little something from my favorite a capella group Pentatonix, a young group of talented singers from the States who not only arrange compositions in delightfully creative ways, but also do incredibly inventive things with very modern, nightclub-sounding tracks. Here’s the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairies and Carol of the Bells […]
