Music That Blew Me Away

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: wysiwyg
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 07:46 AM

Seamus Kennedy-- too numerous to mention. On any CD there are at least two. It's the song itself, it's the voice, it's the phrasing, the perfectly-chosen accompaniment-- it's that he has such a wide emotional range and so much raw talent, harnessed with matured professionalism-- you can't hide from a Seamus song, whoever may have written it. HE will say I am gushing... but if you've HEARD him you will know that I am understating.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: alanabit
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 03:11 AM

Just a footnote to Amos and Lizzie:
"You Who Are On The Road" is actually called, "Teach Your Children", form the Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young album "Deja Vu". A friend of mine swore it was a Neil Young song, which it certainly sounds like. It is actually by Graham Nash. I agree with Amos's assessment of it. It is charming, without actually being very profound.
Lizzie: That song "One of Us" was written by Eric Bazilian, formerly of The Hooters, one of my favourite bands. He produced the most famous version of the song, which was a hit for Joan Osborne, a few years back. He has written several other songs about religious dilemmas. I particularly liked "Satellite",(written with Rob Hyman), which was a cutting comment on those TV evangelists - before they fell from grace.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,Phil
Date: 20 Dec 04 - 11:49 PM

Hearing Jerry Jeff Walker's "Mr Bojangles" on the radio, preceded by the interview with Uncle Charlie and his dog Teddy - the segue between the two made me go out and buy the album that afternoon. Didn't know who wrote it, didn't know who did it, didn't know the title, had to sing it to the guy at the music store.

I agree with one of the preceeding people about Ellen McIlwanie's slide guitar.

Siegal-Schwall Band (live, at the Quiet Knight) doing their unusual "low-energy" version of "Corrina". You think Taj Mahal is relaxed, listen to Corky Siegal, Jim Schwall, Rollo Radford and Shelley Plotkin do it.

Interviews with the old folks, segueing into "Old Friends" - Simon & Garfunkel of course, on the album of the same name.

I'm sure there are many more.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 20 Dec 04 - 10:00 PM

Yes, more songs come to mind. I remember sitting at a booth having pizza with my two closest buddies when I was in college, and all of us totally lost in singing the bass lead on Come Go With Me. That's as mezmerizing as the opening to Barbara Ann..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,heric
Date: 20 Dec 04 - 09:23 PM

This doesn't fit the mold but it's the true answer to the question: Hell's Bells opening the Back in Black tour, when we had to go see AC/DC without Bon Scott, knowing it was all over, and really just going out of sympathy. Good Lord, that was an awesome moment. I'm sure Jimi Hendrix even smiles up there when he thinks about it.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,ranger1
Date: 20 Dec 04 - 07:09 PM

Hearing Joan Baez live when I was sixteen (1985). My mom took me, it was my first big concert and she did a wicked impersonation of Dylan doing Jack of Hearts.

Hearing the Kyrie in Notre Dame cathedral, which led to my buying the CD Chant, which still blows me away.

Hearing Amazing Grace on the bagpipes for the first time. I think I was about 5 and it was on my Grammie's Black Watch album.

Going to see the Saw Doctors in concert the first time (and the second and the third and the fourth...).

And just last Friday, I bought a bunch of CDs, one of which was Robert Johnson, who I had heard of but not yet heard. I put it in the CD player and stood transfixed for the first 4 tracks. WOW!!! I never moved until my SO walked into the house and asked my why I was standing and staring at the CD player.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Lizzie in Sassy Sidmouth
Date: 20 Dec 04 - 04:00 PM

Martyn Joseph......when I first heard him sing "One of Us"....you know the one that goes..."What if God was one of us, just a stranger on a bus...." it just made the whole theatre sit up and listen, we were all right on the edges of our chair. I've never heard a song sung with such passion and understanding before! He just made you melt!Martyn is a deeply spiritual man and he said that this is one song he truly wished he'd written. He brought it to life so vibrantly!

But then he sang one of his own songs "The Good in Me is Dead" which is about a young lad in Kosovo who has lost his father and his brother, his house, everything he has ever owned, blown away, gone...and how he eventually seeks refuge in his mother, but not without first feeling an intense desire for revenge. Nowadays Martyn updates it to take in 9/11 and the same sense of terrible suffering that was felt there.

An intensely compassionate man, with a voice of such power. His songs will put you through every emotion you've got and you'll just come out hooked!! (And he's big in Canada, Jerry!)

This is SUCH a good thread, trouble is you put down your favourite song and then you go away and think....Oh No!...I forgot to put 'that one' down as well......

This thread may just last for years and years!! :0)

Lizzie

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Amos
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 01:48 PM

First time I heard Crosby, Stills and Nash sing "You Who Are on the Road" I thought someone had just articulated my cosmos entire, it was so sweet. I have grown more discriminating in my old age, though.

A

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: ev
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 12:26 PM

I am in love with virtuosity.

I recently had an experience on another board when I was talking "things without equal are equal to each other", and in drawing a parallel brought up Handel's Harmonious Blacksmith -- taking for granted the recording everyone would naturally have access to would be Trevor Pinnock's ©1984. [blush].
I also mentioned elsewhere Cyprien Katsaris' recordings of the Beethoven / Liszt transcriptions. the 6th in particular.

Then there's my current long time favorite well known electric guitarist, who recently having celebrated his 50th birthday has decided to "come out" as an acoustic player (yes even more extraordinary "unpluggged") and pianist (OMG! can you just say -- OMG!!??) His music *consistently* blows me away.
eric johnson.

Then of course I could rhapsodize over the artists everyone recognize: Joni, Dylan, Paul Simon, unique voices with Universal access to our collective minds and hearts. Living, expanding,Treasures.

I'm remembering more things, the soundtrack to my life unfurling like an aural crazy quilt tapestry by a benevolent goddess of music chasing the cold winter of middle age with the borrowed warmth of endless summer in songs. It doesn't matter when I heard them first -- they still ignite that spark within --all I need do is think of them: and well -- time to fire up the turn table:

The Great Paris Concert
Most anything Charlie Parker breathed on
first 3 Jimi Hendrix albums
The first single I ever bought that I hadta have pleeease Mom! -- "I Can See For Miles" by the Who (I was either 6 or 7.)
oh, those Mozart arias....
needless to say I am a guitar-a-holic: Keaggy, Redbourne, Fripp, DiMeola....
Richard Thompson's "How Will I Ever Be Simple Again". and so much more...
Songwriters, oh maaaan...
Robyn Hitchcock, Ray Davies, Lennon & MacCartney, ...
can we talk about vocal stylists?
Patsy, Piaf, Lady Day, the Divine Sarah, Ella,
oh and the fellas too -- Bennett, Sinatra, Darrin, Cooke, Elvis.. Brother Ray...

There are so many artists who blow me away you would think I spend all my time in a perpetual cloud of Happy Dumstruck Wow-zation.
well -- all I have to do is switch on Terrestrial Radio and I'm back, Jack. argh.
Thanks for the memories. Time to pop in some Christmas movies and go be sociable. If I behave and don't bite anyone -- I'll reward myself with the Brandenburgs.
Pinnock and the English Concert, of course. heheh.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Rosebrook
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 12:21 PM

Terrific thread.

My first exposure to hearing the sound of a hammered dulcimer - the concert was The Whammadiddle Dingbats - 2 dulcimers! It was pure heaven! I fell in love with the sound of the instrument.

The first time I heard Justina Golden sing Dark Eyed Molly. The deep, rich timbre of her voice enchanted me. Still does 12 years later.

The musical flexibility and creativity of Joe Craven amazes me. He not only plays so many instruments, but he makes MUSIC (not just sound) out of many non-instrument objects. What a creative being!

The vocal range and the range of vocabulary used by Shawn Phillips ~ and his mouth music.

The first time I saw live on stage musicians from South America. Different players use varying sized "panpipes". As each of pipes does not contain all of the notes for a song's melody, two players carry the tune cooperatively, alternating notes between the 2 musicians. To carry it off (allowing the audience to hear 1 continuous melody), the musicians must have perfect timing. What a feat! Technically, this blows me away!

Rose

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Bill the Collie
Date: 19 Dec 04 - 10:42 AM

"Chirpy Chirpy Cheep Cheep" by Middle of the Road. It was and is Unforgettable.



.



.


BTW, what DOES blew me away mean?

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: number 6
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 07:30 PM

MojoBanjo - I luv your line about Doc Watson. So, so true!!

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: MojoBanjo
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 06:54 PM

Well, first, thanks in advance for letting me ramble. The answer to the question, for me, depends on what part of my life.

When I was 16, I used to hang at a coffeehouse in Houston by the name of Sand Mountain. That's where I ran into Townes Van Zandt, who was just starting out. I think it's hard to know which of his songs I heard night after night -- Kathleen, The Tower Song, My Mother The Mountain -- but I knew,without a doubt, I was going to play music and I'd happily be Townes Van Zandt, although the job was already quite well taken. I finally auditioned for Sand Mountain and, of course, it was in front of Townes who waved me through to the stage without a second thought. Off launched my life of playing music and the stuff still stops me dead in my tracks.

About the same time or a shade earlier, believe it not, Ravi Shankar. It was more like remembering something deep within rather than hearing it for the first time.

In college, John Lee Hooker on a radio station late one night doing an impossible boogie that got me up and dancing through my house where I lived alone for 13:24. That turned me toward the blues.

Ten years ago, Leonard Cohen live. It was astonishing. Period.

Finally, last week. I saw an 81 year old Doc Watson with David Holt. It was as if the mountains had been given a voice and ten fingers.

Best,


Brian Robertson

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 06:16 PM

That's a sweet memory, Ranger... I taped my Dad at length when he was in his 70's (seems young, now) but he didn't sing much.

Good to have those memories though. My Dad had the most musical laugh I ever heard and that was enough for me.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,ranger1
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 06:10 PM

For a short time after I was born, we lived with my paternal grandfather, who was this little old Franco-American who sang constantly, both in French and English. In 1981, a year before he died, my Grampa Moses was interviewed by a professor from the University of Vermont. Few people in the family remembered this and it wasn't until about 15 years later that my cousin, who had copies of the original recording, made copies for my dad and his four siblings. My dad loaned me the tapes a couple of years after that. Hearing my Grampa Moses sing some of the old French songs he sang to me when I was barely old enough to remember them, almost twenty years after he died, truly blew me away.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: wysiwyg
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 10:50 AM

Instead of posting a list of particular songs, I'd rather describe a bit of how this happens for me and what happens as a result.

I'm the main song-finder for our band. Makes sense, since I'm also the main lead singer. Our band, as most of you know, is primarily a songleading band as opposed to a perfromance band. One place we do that is weekly, in church, in a unique kind of service only a pair of Mudcatters could come up with!

I find our songs by hearing them. I range all over the internet, airwaves, and recorded world listening my way through everything I can. And often, say maybe several times in a week (in weeks when I am devoting time to this), there will be a song that grabs me in the first bar, carries me onto a cloud in the first verse, and blows me away totally by the end of the first refrain. By the middle of the song I know how our band will do it.

By the end, I know we will learn it and do it very soon. And I know the tune, never to forget it. Don't need no stinkin' dots. At most, to recall it, I will eventually play a line or two of the chords, and it's all right there, in my own version of it complete with variations. Years have sometimes passed between hearing it and playing it (myself, on autoharp) again. I thank God regularly for this amazing tune-memory I'm blessed to have.

So-- after being blown away, I keep listening to the song (or group of songs for that week), for a few days, singing along, doing dishes, driving.... playfully, experimenting with it. By then, it's mine, all mine. It's completely in my head, every instruemntal and vocal nuance, in layers of what I heard originally and what I now hear our band doing. Sometimes there are three or four songs in my head all playing sequentially or at once, overlapping, echoing. Not a good thing! It's maddening, and I know then that I have overworked my mind. And it wakes me up!

Next, I stop listening and let it rest for a few days. In that time I usually can't tolerate hearing any music at all, and poor Hardi suffers when I tell him to please, stop practicing his fiddle where I can hear it!!! For those few days, I will not be able to recall the tune of the song(s) "in process" at all, and if I listen to the song(s) again during that time, it will hurt somehow, and mess up the storage process. I've learned it's like bread-- the song needs calm and warm quiet to rise.

Then it's on to arranging, once it comes back into recallable memory. By now the tune may have morphed (and that "new" tune will also be recallable forever). The style may also have morphed, into a style that will better fit our band and our use of the song. I may be hearing instruments by this time, too-- side parts, a rhythm section, whatever. Not from the original-- it's making itself up.

THAT arrangement is what I "hear" in my mental jukebox as I start finding the right key and chords. The lyrics have been found or transcribed by this time (sometimes in the first day's hearing). At this stage, tho, I'm editing, adapting, sensing out the message and extending it for enough verses or to fill in the gaps of the message a bit, or maybe changing the emphasis to something closer to our band's mission. Not all of our music or performance is gospel or church, but there is a basic underlying mission of positivity and I may use my editing skills to punch that up. (I don't change the basic thrust of the song, even if it's a real pretty one. If it doesn't fit our mission, I will usually go ahead and arrange it just to get it out of my system, but we won't do it unless I later see a way to make it work for us without crapping all over the author's creation.)

Once the arranging is done it's time to try the piece with the band. Sometimes I have mis-estimated either our capabilities, the key, or the right style for us to use. Those go back in the binder to consider at another time.

One like that-- for "later"-- is Isaac Freeman's astounding song, "Beautiful Stars." I've worked on it, off and on, for years, but its time for us has not yet come. By now I know it is surely an offertory/solo piece for me, not a singalong song, but even knowing that took awhile.

A recent one that took only a few days to go from hearing it to performing it was a song Allison Krause sings, "A Living Prayer," by Union Station member Roy Block.   It went so well and was so much MY song that it went into the set list for something we had agreed to do months previously. The set list had been dutifully and laboriously planned, rehearsed, etc. I threw that whole setlist out when I did that song in church the night before the gig-- it went so well it became the centerpiece fo an entirely different set list for the gig. A band member came to me after the church perfomance and suggested the same setlist-change. When we did it at the gig-- the people hearing it..... there were tears.

When the people are as moved as I was (at least the second time we do the song, since it improves each time we do it), it confirms for me that whether this process works this way for anyone else, it is MY process and it works for me, and for our band. Until I dioscover something even better.

And once we have done the song, or once I am done fooling around with the arrangement, it no longer plays in my head incessantly, and I can move on to evaluate more new material.

~Susan

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Amos
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 10:30 AM

The first time I heard old Frank Warner singing the tale of Old Tom Moore (The Days of Forty-Nine) I knew that whatever else I did with my life I was gonna sing that song.



A

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Scooby Doo
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 09:39 AM

sorry cant count,lol.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Scooby Doo
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 09:38 AM

no its not

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Leadfingers
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 08:48 AM

Hey Ted -- 100 !!

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Leadfingers
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 08:47 AM

If it comes down to it , the first 'live' Folk Club I ever went to had
a serious effect on me too - Run by Louis Killen and Redd Sullivan as the guest ! Absolute knock out !

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 07:44 AM

Hey, Bill:

A near mystical experience I was reminded of by your memory of the young girl singing Go Tell It On The Mountain...

Many years ago, at the lowest point in my life, I was walking down a city street in the middle of the day. I was very depressed, and couldn't see any way forward in my life. I was walking along, shoulders slumped, gazing at the sidewalk, when I heard this voice. It was a young girl, maybe nine or ten years old, and she was coming toward me, skipping down the sidewalk with her hair flying, totally consumed by her singing. As she passed me she smiled and kept on singing.

The song she was singing was A Mighty Fortress Is Our God. It never occurred to me that you could skip to it. I was so taken aback by it, that I turned around and looked behind me to see if I had imagined her, and the street was empty.

A couple of months later, I was walking down that same street, fueled by a little, tentative hope and I remembered that little girl. I was at the same spot where I saw her, and just as I was saying to myself, "This is where she was singing A Mighty Fortress Is Our God, the Carrilon in the church a block away started playing... A Mighty Fortress Is Our God..

Still gives me the chills, remembering it.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Dreaded Thumbpick
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 11:39 PM

This is a hell of a thread, Jerry. Causes all kinds of memories to well up.

Art Thieme's "Death of Robin Hood" and Michael Cooney's 52 verse "Tam Lin" leave me with my jaw hanging. The stories are so good and the story telling transports me back in time so that I feel like I'm a fly on the wall.

W

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Dreaded Thumbpick
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 11:25 PM

I was at a Josh White concert at Town Hall in NYC in the lat 50's - early sixties and Josh brought his daughter Beverly out to sing with him. She was a show stopper - beatiful voice and great singer. I never saw her again. Anybody know if she kept singing?

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Bill D
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 10:11 PM

wow...every post I read makes ME think of one more experience..

where to start? This might take several posts..

in the early 1960s, out local library used to lend out LPs...and one day I picked one by some young Scottish lady named Jean Redpath...The record was "Scottish Ballad Book", and I think I paid a fine for keeping it too long. (I had no tape recorder to copy it in those days)...I just couldn't believe that voice. I could listen to Jean sing the phone book.

Still in the 60's...late '64, walking a picket line for 'voting rights' in Hattiesbug, Miss., (much to the consternation of the locals)..we were trudging 'round & 'round, bored....when directly in front of me, a small black girl about 15 years old began singing, in an absolutely beautiful, clear voice, in perfect time to our steps:

"Go tell it on the mountain
Over the hills and everywhere--
Go tell it on the mountain
To let my people go!"

...the hair stood up on my neck as various folks joined in, and we got thru maybe 4 verses before the chief of police appeared and told us "You got a permit for marchin', not for SINGIN'!"....but I could hear that song every step we took for the rest of the week. I never found out who that girl was, but she should have had a career singing.

Maybe 30 years ago, I got several volumes of the Peter Kennedy & Alan Lomax "Folksongs of Britain" series, and on Vol 2, I think, was Davy Stewart doing "The Merchant's Son and the Beggar's Daughter"....and it just grabbed me in ways .....anyway, I NOW knew what it meant to put one's whole self into a piece of music. Then again, the first time I heard Jeanne Robertson sing "My Son David" I was transfixed...wow...it felt like it WAS her son being quizzed.

......but perhaps one of the most single moving moments was one night at a little vegetarian 'coffeehouse', long since departed (The Bethesda Co-op) when, with lights low, Helen Schneyer sang "I Know Moonlight". I had heard her sing it before, and was impressed...but sometimes a singer is just 'on'....and the power of that song, with most of her local friends providing humming and harmony........ummmmmmmmmm

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 08:05 PM

It was the Promenade, Mary In Kentucky. For an interesting take on Pictures At An Exhibition, listen to Emerson, Lake And Palmer do it. They did a particularly good job on the Gates Of Kiev.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 07:36 PM

The University of Texas song I was thinking about is "March Grandioso." Watch for the Longhorn Band in the Rose Parade - they'll probably play this one as they strut down the boulevard! link to the Longhorn Band

Some people may not hear the similarity that I hear. See/hear for yourself.

March Grandioso here.

Great Gate of Kiev here.

...and yes, this one blows me away!

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 06:53 PM

Oh, go ahead and tell it here!

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: freda underhill
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 06:51 PM

the atlantics, 1963, aussie surf music, brilliant guitar instrumental


the atlantics


try listening to Flight of the surf guitar

or Bombora

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: PoppaGator
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 06:46 PM

There's more to my "Hem of His Garment" story - might as well add it here and now.

I hadn't posted this epic tale last year, when I first wrote it as part of a couple of PMs, because I had some intention of expanding what I had into an essay on the nature of memory. I half-assedly planned to sit on what I had written until I got around to expanding it, adding another incident and figuring out how to tie the whole thing together around the theme of how I experienced an ebb and flow of memory over the years. My recurring awareness of this one particularly spine-tingling musical moment has been a mysterious and fairly important experience for me, and finding a way to write about it coherently seemed like an interesting challenge.

As described above (16 Dec 04 - 04:59 PM), I heard an incredibly impressive Gospel performance at an early age, sometime in the mid-to-late 1950s. I had no idea at the time who the performer might have been, and it happened during a period of several years when I heard *a lot* of incredible gospel singing, at least twice a week, most of which has blended into one general overall memory in my current consciousness. The one thing I definitely remember is becoming obsessed with the search for information on the hem-of-His-garment Bible story, somehow prompted by a particularly transcendant musical experience.

A year or two later, when I first heard Sam Cooke as a "new artist" on the radio, I knew his voice was very familiar -- one of my very favorite singers, someone *not* "new" to me -- but I don't believe I was able to make the explicit connection to "Hem of His Garment" at that time.

Finally, many years later in the 1990s, I heard the Soul Stirrers' recording and everything fell into place. Memories from the distant past actually came back with great clarity as I could see the connections among certain peak experiences.

What I had *not* included in my writings so far was an related incident in about 1962-64. I went to a Peter Paul & Mary concert in Newark NJ with one of my buddies (one of my *few* fellow folk-music enthusiasts) when we were high-school sophomores or juniors. We were serious PP&M fans, and PP&M were still a very new phenomenon. At one point in the show, the performers began a lengthy introduction of their next number, discussing the wonderful rich tradition of Negro Spirituals, etc., etc., and now they were going to sing us a great classic song about Jesus meeting a woman, it's the retelling of a Bible story, etc., etc.

I'm going nuts, elbowing my friend in the ribs: "Oooh, I know what they're going to sing! This is gonna be great! Wait'll you hear this!" -- Of course, my deep-seated memory of "Hem" had been reawakened, and I was primed and ready to listen and get goosebumps.

Of course, PP&M did not do the Sam Cooke number, they sang "Jesus Met the Woman at the Well" -- nice song, sure, but NOT what I was anticipating, not even close. I was *so* let down; I was suddenly disilllusioned about PPM and about "commercial folk" in general, and became a fairly hard-core blues/traditional enthusiast pretty much on the spot. Yeah, I eventually got over it to an extent, and would again be able to enjoy and admire Peter Paul & Mary for their great harmony singing and their inspiring social/political commitment, but I no longer expected them to show me that magical musical Holy Grail -- I knew I had to look elsewhere.

(What I eventually found, upon following my nose to New Orleans, was Professor Longhair, creator of the MOST sublime music I've ever experienced. But that's another story for another time.)

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Nancy King
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 06:37 PM

Thanks, Shanty Filker, I'd love to! But it probably won't happen any time soon, more's the pity...

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jimmy Twitcher
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 06:25 PM

Hey, Nancy King! Come out here to the left coast some time for our monthly shanty sing at the National Maritime Museum on Hyde Street Pier in San Francisco. First Saturday of every month, 8:00 to midnight. I won't say that every time is as special as what you describe, but we have our moments.

Oh, and not the first Saturday of Januray: the park's closed on 1/1/05. Second Saturday in this case.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 06:23 PM

typo....7th one...two Polish Jews

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 06:22 PM

Jerry, last month I heard "Pictures at an Exhibition" played by a 21 yr. old Japanese boy, 2003 winner of the Cleveland International Piano Competition. (There is a piano arrangement of this.) I thought he would levitate off the bench! Some of the parts were very, very big - trying to put an entire orchestra on the piano.

There are several "pieces," or "pictures" with walking music between them:
Promenade
Gnomes
The Old Castle
Tuilleries
Bydlo (The Oxcart)
Ballet of the Unhatched Chicks
Samuel Goldberg and Schmuyle (Tow Polish Jews)
Promenade
Limoges
Catacombs
The Hut on Fowl's Legs (Baba Yaga)
The Great Gate of Kiev

Most people recognize the "walking music" (promenade) and the last "picture," The Great Gate of Kiev. Both show up as background music in ads, etc. One local interior design business here in town uses the promenade theme in their TV ads - very sophisticated sounding.

The fight song for the University of Texas (Hook 'em Horns!) is very similar to the Great Gate (not identical). If you ever see that band, watch as they march with long strides to that music.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: sue exhull
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 06:12 PM

I love pink floyds Final cut, the re-mastered cd has "when the tigers broke free "added to it, from the film version of "the wall", I think tigers is one of the best tracks of all.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Margret RoadKnight
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 05:53 PM

Wonderful selections .... makes me want to get out/ check out so many pieces ....
My nominations for instant breath-taking & jaw-dropping (literally) impact:

* Bulgarian women's village songs as recorded by the Radio Sofia Choir singing arrangements by Philipe Koutev, especially featuring soloist Yanka Rupkina (released as "Le Mystere des Voix Bulgares") .... unbelievable harmonies & tone

* Kora (first heard live courtesy of "Les Ballets Africains" 1965 Australian tour) .... currently the classic Jali Musa Jawara (Djeli Moussa Diawara) ensemble with his kora & singing augmented by balafon & guitar & 2 backing singers is hard to beat ..... pulse rather than beat.

* Ellen McIlwaine singing and playing her amazing & innovative slide guitar on "We the People", recorded live & solo at Carnegie Hall.

(Re previous posts:
- lead singer of The Platters back then: Tony Williams.
- "Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet", with Tom Waits eventually singing along with anon homeless man, is out on CD under name of arranger Gavin Byers)

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: darkriver
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 05:33 PM

This is a really memory-inspiring thread, Jerry.

I have to go along with a lot of those choices from over the years--
Gospel, Tom Waits, Pink Floyd's Dark Side, Bach, mysterious unnamed pieces on the radio (in my case, part of Water Music).

Only thing I can actually add is the first time I heard von Biber's Passacaglia in G for solo violin.

doug

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: PoppaGator
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 05:27 PM

Jerry ~ was it "The Great Gate at Kiev"?

That's the only "picture" among those at that "exhibition" that I know ~ I had a classical-sampler album years ago that featured just the one piece (among other short pieces by other composers, performed by various orchestras/conductors). I figured the record company included it becaused it was either the first or the best-known of the various separate pieces making up Mussorgski's suite.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 05:06 PM

One night, back in the late 50's, I was driving my 51 Chevy, collecting fossils in central Illinois. I was in college then, and had no money, so I was looking for a quiet place where I could sleep in my car without being hassled. It must have been around midnight, and it was very foggy. As I drove through Kickapoo (yes there is a town named Kickapoo, you can look it up) I saw a sign for a historic site. What better place to sleep than at a historic site? I was driving through a very foggy stretch of road across a bridge and a small creek when I turned on the radio. Out of the speakers came music I had never heard before. It was the theme song for a midnight radio program, and they didn't say what the music was. But, the combination of being tired, it being foggy, and my approaching a graveyard (where I slept that night without being bothered by nobody,) the music really transcended the moment. I was mesmerized by it, and waited to find out what it was, but the announcer made no mention of the music.

When I got back to school, I went into a record store, trying to find that piece of music. Only the young could be so foolish to try to find a particular piece of music, with no clue to the title or the composer. As I flipped through album after album in the classical music section, I came across Pictures At An Exhibition, which I had at that point never heard. I thought... "Maybe this is it." And I bought it and took it home. When I put it on the turntable, the first notes that come out of the speakers were the same ones that came out of my radio that foggy night in Kickapoo. I have no explanation of how I found the piece, with no information to go on. It seems unbelievable now. But then, it seemed unbelievable then.

But it's true.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Dani
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 04:59 PM

Wow, great topic, Jerry. I'm sure I could think of a bunch, but one that jumps out is the soundtrack to The Black Stallion, composed by Carmine Coppola and Shirley Walker. It was used as 'mood' music in a production of a Sherlock Holmes play I worked on as a theatre apprentice. Don't know if it was the time in my life, too, but I was mesmerized, every time I heard it. I had to keep 'snapping out of it". Hadn't seen the movie until a year or so ago, and had the same reaction: my whole body was listening, and I got carried away with the sound.

Also, without a doubt, the first time I heard the Shellback Chorus. It was like a wall of sound threatening to push me over! It was all I could do not to stow away in their luggage so I could join them!!

Dani

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Auggie
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 04:52 PM

One of he best things about music is that it has so many different avenues through which it can blow you away.

I find both Stephane Grapelli (how could he have been that old and still be getting better?) and David Grisman remarkable in that they can bring you to tears, sans lyrics.

As far as vocalists go, when I first heard Eva Cassidy (doing "Fields"), it was enough to spin me away from my usual world and into someplace I hadn't been before.

But for a total epiphany, it had to be Michael Smith's entire CD titled "Michael, Margaret, Pat and Kate". I listened alone,in the car, driving a rainy two lane highway and just couldn't imagine how some stranger had written so much of my life story.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 04:38 PM

Frank and I were at Grey Fox festival a few years ago (actually, we go every year, but this thing happened a few years ago) when a musical epiphany happened. The jam at our campsite had just broken up and it was around 2:30 a.m. so we walked down to the stage area to see if anything was still happening there.

As is usual at Grey Fox, the last act was still lingering on stage, and many of the performers from other bands had joined them. This particular night was before they started booking bands with drums and electric, so it was all straight-ahead bluegrass.

As we wandered up to the CROWDED audience area, we saw Sam Bush manically leading the charge, leaping from one end of the stage to the other, one instrument to the other. He's an unbelievably talented dynamo, and he was leading a dynamite jam that included Tim O'Brien, Bela Fleck, Jerry Douglas, Mark Schatz, Tony Rice, Stuart Duncan and several others I can't remember.

So there we were with our jaws gaping, until we started screaming and carrying on like all the other crazy bluegrassers watching and hearing this amazing performance that went on for at least an hour more. There were teenagers and geezers like ourselves, equally blown away on a farm at the top of a hill in rural NY state. Never to be forgotten.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,Nancy King at work
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 04:00 PM

A musical phenomenon that blows me away every time I experience it is a good shanty sing. At the Mystic Seaport Sea Music Festival, for example, when you have a whole room full of people who know and love the shanties, one person will start a song and the WHOLE ROOM spontaneously joins in! Gives me goosebumps every time!

Nancy

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 01:08 PM

And....its a good thing that I never quite managed to subject myself to the fundamental resonance of the human sphincter or I could have joined Spaw on another thread.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 01:03 PM

I eventually discovered that a live band could do the same thing to my whole body.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 12:40 PM

Oh yeah, it might have been a stero recording of the New Orleans railway switching yard, but I soon discovered it was a great way to listen to music as well.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 12:28 PM

Speaking of headphones, before they were common, I think I was first blown away, when I was young, when I emptied the record contents of my Mom's cabinet stereo, lay on the floor and stuck my head in between the two speakers and slid the little doors shut. I can't remember what was playing but I certainly found it addictive.LOL

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: kendall
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 12:20 PM

I was raised on country music, and went over to Buryl Ives,and the Weavers etc. Back in 1959, I was in the state patrol boat EXPLORER tied up in Camden harbor alongside the ALICE WENTWORTH. In order to get to the Explorer, we had to cross over the Wentworth. One day while crossing the Wentworth, there was a young man sitting on a hatch cover, bare foot, playing an old Harmony guitar. It stopped me in my tracks because I had never heard such beautiful music before. Never knew a guitar could sound like that. The player turned out to be Gordon Bok, whom I had never heard of before, but we became instant best friends, and even after all these years he never fails to impress me with his music.
I don't know that I have ever been "blown away" by music, but that day I had to take a reef in my topssil.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: dwditty
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 11:53 AM

The first time I heard Joseph Spence I was wearing headphones. One listen to his guitar playing and I was completely blown away. How anyone can milk the space between notes like he did is something I just cannot get my brain (or my fingers) around. So instead, I just let it ride, and enjoy some truly remarkable guitar playing.

dw

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: JohnB
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 10:27 AM

The one I still remember was year? Ready Steady Go, late at night, sat up alone. You have to remember RSG was a POP music Programme. Manfred Mann (a pop group) came on and Paul Jones sang Dillon's "With God on Our Side" at the end there was total SILENCE throughout the entire audience, me too, for about 10 seconds before the whole place just erupted in applause.
I still have to thank Steeleye Span for breaking the Irish trap and showing me the Trad English Light.
Jennifer Warnes sends the shivers down my spine too.
And Davy Graham, Bert Jansch, John Renbourne, Nic Jones, Martin Simpson, to name a few guitarists.
JohnB