Music That Blew Me Away

Subject: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:17 AM

I'm not talking music we like, in this thread. Not even just music we love. I'm talking music that blew us away the first time that we heard it. There's a lot of music I love, but there are a few recordings that completely floored me when I first heard them. I love to see that excitement in other people. Never mind whether it was opera, folk, rock and roll, jazz or even disco (although I'd have a lot of trouble, myself, with disco.)

Here's one from me to start it off.

Back in the early 50's when I was a teenager, pop music was Patti Page, Doris Day, Perry Como and the lot, I used to listen to WFOX out of Milwaukee, Wisconsin. I'd lie on my bed late at night with my Motorola using my arms as antennae as the reception would fade in and out. Without any advanced preparation, this song came out of the speakers and it created an appetite that I've never completely satisifed. It was by a group named The Crows. What kind of a name was that? A group named for a kind of bird? Next thing you know, they'll come up with groups named after Orioles and Cardinals and BlueJays. The song was Gee, recorded with just an electric guitar, piano and drums. It didn't sound like anything I ever heard before.
When I went down to the local music store, they had never heard of the song, and couldn't even find it to order it. No wonder. WFOX was a radio station that played "race" music. Early rhythm and blues.
I had a friend who was going to Marquette University in Milwaukee, so I went to visit him one weekend. The program of WFOX was sponsored by a record store, and that was my real reason for going. I ended up walking a couple of miles to get to the store. I had pictured it as a gigantic store, filled with exotic rhythm and blues records. It was about 8 feet wide. But, when I walked in, I said, full of confidence.. "Do you have Gee, by the Crows?" And the guy behing the counter turned around, reached behind him and pulled as copy off a stack of 45ps a shelf.

I still have that 45. It's gray from being played, and almost smooth, but when I hear that song, it still gets me.

I can give folk samples, and jazz and gospel... and rock and roll, too. Not just songs I liked.

Songs that totally blew me away the first time I heard them. Songs I would gladly travel to another city and walk several miles, just to get a copy.

Tell me one of yours.. and if you can take the time, tell me a little more than just the title of the song. I'd like you to recall the excitement you felt the first time you heard it.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Flash Company
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:30 AM

I walked into a local record store in Northwich in the 1950's and a record was playing which was so rhythmic and different to any of the current pop music that was about at the time. The girl on the counter swiped it off and said 'You must hear this!' and put on her latest record to plug, Bill Haley's Rock around the Clock.
When it had finished I said 'Yes, but what was that one you were playing when I came in?' 'Oh, something called Fish Seller by a guy called Sidney Bechet, rubbish isn't it!'
I said 'Put it on again', and that friends is why I never really took to Rock & Roll.

FC

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Georgiansilver
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:37 AM

I don't think, apart from "The Beatles" that I was ever blown away by any particular person or groups music but there have been songs that have blown me away at the time.
"Nights in White Satin"...The Moody Blues is probably the most memorable.
Clifford T Wards "Where did we go wrong"
Glen Campbell..."Wichita Lineman"
Steeleye Span.."All around my hat"
Many more...too many to mention
Best wishes, Mike.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: muppett
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:41 AM

First time I heard Dire Straits Album, LOVE OVER GOLD, Particularly Telegraph road, WOW, still gives me goose bumps.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:41 AM

Anything by Cara.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Paco Rabanne
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:48 AM

One musical memory I will never forget was the in the early 1970's, when a friend of mine walked up to me holding a portable cassette recorder, which I had never seen before. He simply said 'listen to this' pressed the play button, and out came Voodoo Chile by Jimi Hendrix! It was also the first time I had heard Jimi, fabulous!

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Rt Revd Sir jOhn from Hull
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:51 AM

In the early 70's?
you must be really old!

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:52 AM

I remember learning to play the guitar when I was a kid and I'd learn Donovan and Dylan songs - just strumming along as best I could. I was really proud when I could change chords without stopping or looking. Then one day my sister's boyfriend, Chas Kirinich, turned up with an album called Another Monday by some bloke called John Renbourn. I just couldn't believe my ears and songs like I Know My Babe and Lost Lover Blues I play to this day. And then of course there was Bert Jansch.

That was back then. Two years ago I got into Steve Earle after seeing him at the Cambridge Folk Fetsival. This year he released The Revolution Starts Now with songs like Rich Man's War, Home to Houston, The Gringo's Tale and the title song itself. Inspirational.

Went to see him and The Dukes in Birmingham (UK) Monday night - supported by Alison Moorer - a truly great show. Next week I'm going to debut my version of Rich Man's War - should make from Christmas Carols all right.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:56 AM

Early 50's, John. I am really old... 69. But then, I was even older, ten years ago..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: beetle cat
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 11:02 AM

I'll never forget the first time I heard a recording of the Watersons. It was like nothing I'd ever heard before, and yet it represented everything I'd ever valued.   

.. There are a few songs in particular that I associate with that first impression of them, and of folk music in general. The Greenland Whale Fishery. T for Thomas.

Somehow it was traditional for me, even though it wasn't really. Like invisible roots.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 11:09 AM

Ray Harvey sang the blues last night in The Bedroom and nearly blew everyone away

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: muppitz
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 11:16 AM

Crowded House - Fingers of Love

A most amazing and haunting song.
The first time I heard it live, Neil Finn's son was touring with him and he played the lead guitar, it was amazing, I just closed my eyes and wished myself to another plain of existence.

muppitz x

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Stu
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 11:19 AM

Folk: Forst and Fire by the Watersons. A true epiphany for me. Until then, I only really loved the Irish stuff, playing in sessions, and largely ignored my own indigenous musical heritage, but this record changed all that, especially with regard to songs.

For tunes, the third track on a NaConnery's CD I was given. The last in the set of reels is Man of the House, one of the others may be Ship in Full Sail but I'm not sure. Anyway, that set blew me away and still does every time I hear it. For my money, the best set of Irish tunes (or perhaps, any tunes) anywhere on record. It is perfect and utterly flawless.

Other stuff: Tom Waits singing "Innocent When You Dream" at the end of the film "Smoke".

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,milk monitor
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 11:19 AM

I remember lying in bed, listening to the radio under the covers..which leads me to believe it was very late and I was about 11 yrs old. There was a track playing as I tuned in, the station was either Radio Caroline or the pirate Radio London ( I think there was one called that?).

Having been brought up on a diet of The Men Behind the Wire and Paddy McGinty's Goat, this was an under the covers epihany, to hear 'real' guitars and percussion to die for......waited for track to end and found out it was 'Cosmik Debris' by Zappa. My ears had never been so happy.

Pink Floyd's Wish you Were Here left me similarly gob smacked. I heard it in it's entirety in a dark, smokey room for the first time,with about 6 other people, and it was one of those moments that everyone chooses not to speak for ages, and when you realise you are all consciously not speaking, you can really feel the music. Thats explained real badly, but it was a perfect warm moment in time.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Little Robyn
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 02:02 PM

Back in 1958, a song that was being played on the NZ hit parade, by a group called Elias and his Zig-Zag Jive Flutes, called 'Tom Hark'. I found out much later they were a South African street band. We'd never heard a sound like it.
And I still have the 45!
Robyn

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: SINSULL
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 02:09 PM

I have told this story before. I attended a Joan Baez concert in the early sixties. She brought out an unknown named Bob Dylan who first sang "The Lonesome Death Of Hattie Caroll" to an audience dumbfounded at his voice. He followed with "Hard Rain's Gonna Fall" and the audience went crazy. Bought his first LP the next day. Definitely blew me away.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 02:10 PM

J.S. Bach.

Also, when Paul Oorts showed up at O'Hurley's jam session with his continental chromatic accordion and played something that sounded very "continental". That was what inspired me to learn to play the accordion.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: robomatic
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 02:11 PM

I was raised on Mozart and Perry Como. So imagine what went through my tiny mind when I heard "Rite of Spring" for the first time.

I understand that its first public performance sparked a near riot within the concert hall.

As for songs, most recently it was "Marilyn" by Dan Bern. His frankness with the language, ability to sustain a somewhat novel idea through a lot of words with a catchy refrain. I went to see him in downtown Anchorage about four years ago and he had this room absolutely packed. I went with a woman my age and a woman ten years younger who missed all the references and went home in disgust halfway through the performance. I enjoyed it all the more.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: dwditty
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 02:32 PM

I first heard Oscar Brown, Jr. in 1960-61...his SIn & Soul Album. I learned that entire album by heart, but it was the first time I heard him sing his lyrics to the Mongo Santamaria song, Afro Blue, that completely floored me. I am still listening to it regularly to this day.

Another instant musical connection was AMos Garrett's guitar solo in Maria Muldaur's Midnight at the Oasis.

It happened with It's a Beautiful Day, too, but it might have been that particular batch of illegal chemical substance.

Then there was Eugene Ormandy conducting the Philadelphia Philharmonic conducting Vivaldi's Concerto for Two Violins and Ochestra in Gm with Isaac Stern and David Oistrakh.

I am sure I will think of others. Good thread topic, Jerry.

dw

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: dwditty
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 02:34 PM

Oh, and John Fahey's original release of Requiem for John Hurt.

dw

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Rasener
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 02:48 PM

If I were a carpenter - Bobby Darin

This has remained one of my firm favourites all through my life. The way he treated the number had such feel. This man was a master and I personally think very underated in certain ways.
His versatilty is just amazing.

I recently played a CD of Bobby Darin to my wife and children who hadn't heard of him, and to my utter amazement they all said they really liked him. I don't normally play my real oldie favourites to my family because I don't want to bore them.

Another was Gaye by Clifford T Ward. I can't explain why I like CTW. Just a very good songwriter who suffered ill health.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: beetle cat
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 02:51 PM

ooof i just thought of another.
Bob Conroy's Erin's Green Shore on Irish Folk Songs From Old New England.

What a performance!
the rest of the cd is almost as amazing, but there is just something about that song. The first time I played that cd, I must have repeated that track about 20 times, and I still do, every time I listen to the CD. The way it opens with the banjo.. like magic.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Sttaw Legend
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 02:58 PM

"Music" by John Miles

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Blissfully Ignorant
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 02:58 PM

They've all been said already...Tom waits' Innocent when you dream, Jimi Hendrix (anything by Jimi Hendrix)

Hurricane by Bob Dylan, too...although i was blown away by the whole album. Sends shivers up my spine...

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,chinmusic
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 02:59 PM

I'll give you three of examples. I recall hearing Eva Cassidy singing 'Over The Rainbow', and I was stunned by the power and beauty of her extraordinary voice. She was singing 'Over The Rainbow, and she put me over the moon. I went straight out and bought her cd.

My second example goes back to the 50s, and it's the first time I heard the original lead singer of the Platters singing, 'Smoke Gets In Your Eyes'. I don't know this gentleman's name, but his amazing vocals blew me away.

Finally, back in the 60s, I heard John Fogerty sing 'Heard It Through The Grapevine'. When I think of great rock 'n roll voices, I think of Mr. Fogerty.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Barbara Shaw
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 03:12 PM

Before I was even a teenager, I heard Elvis Presley on the radio singing "Too Much." I was completely mesmerized. My parents finally bought me the 45 (worrying about the bad influence). I got it home and literally played it for hours, over and over and over, dancing alone in my bedroom to the song. Something about it grabbed my adolescent pulse.

Several years later, I had the same visceral reaction to Herbie Mann on an album recording of "All of Me." In fact, for that one, I choreographed a dance at a school variety show. The little old ladies in my small town audience were probably shocked.

And then there was the Bach Bourree that made something click into place in my head as all the turns and landings and leaps and flourishes hit every corner of my musical consciousness. I've tried playing this piece on the violin (renaming my fiddle for the occasion) and catch some of the spirit, in my imagination anyway.

But the one that really blew me away was Beethoven's "Adieu to the Piano" which I found while skimming through one of my old piano books and trying out new pieces with my halting sight-reading. I literally started weeping all over the keys as I listened to this beautiful piece unfold note by note. Knowing that he had probably composed it while deaf made it even more precious.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,Arkie
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 03:17 PM

Back in the '60s, the 1960s not the 1860s, I'm not that old, I was in the Folk Ghetto coffeehouse in Norfolk, Virginia. One of the singers, one I have never seen before or since, sang "Suzanne". I don't think he ever changed chords. I was entranced. I finally found out Judy Collins had recorded it. I bought the record and played that one song over and over. I finally listened to the whole record. That turned me on to Judy Collins.   Then I found out that it was written and recorded by Leonard Cohen. So I bought that record and played the song over and over. Then I listened to the rest of the record and was turned on to Leonard Cohen.   Then I found out that Jennifer Warnes had recorded songs by Leonard Cohen and there was another amazing discovery.   "Suzanne" took my hand and led me to some wonderful places I often visit and always with pleasure.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 03:27 PM

Man, what a lot of great stuff!

Little Robyn: that sounds like the first time I heard Skokiann by the Bullawayo Sweet Rhythm Band... another African band. It took me close to twenty years to find a re-issue of that recording, and my 45 rpm on London is pretty scratchy after a million plays. But, I found a two CD set of African jazz, and it's on there. It still gets me excited!

And Barbara: I was a big Herbie Mann fan. I very briefly took flute lessons when I was about 8 or 9 but my already shakey macho image was rapidly being destroyed, so I stopped the lessons. I always liked the flute in jazz. whther it's Bud Shank or Herbie Mann or a small handful of other musicians.

I'll add one:

Dark Was The Night - Cold Was The Ground by Blind Willie Johnson. Back in the early 60's when I was taking lessons from Dave Van Ronk, after he'd run through the lesson (which took about ten minutes) he'd play records for me. That's where I first heard Blind Willie. When he played that recording I was chilled to the bone. There are no words... just moaning to his slide guitar. No words could have conveyed the cold, dark desolation of that moan. It still gives me the shivers thinking about it. Many years later, when I was watching a foreign film, The Gospel According To Matthew, there is a scene where a leper comes up to Jesus, all crippled and barely able to walk.
Dark Was The Night- Cold Was The Ground was the only sound, and my heart just about stopped. Such power!

Keep 'em coming..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: CarolC
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 03:50 PM

...also Northwest Passage by Stan Rogers.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 03:56 PM

About 1963 or so.......I picked up an album called "Blues in Time".....a re-issue of an earlier album cut 6 or 7 years before. Paul Desmond and Gerry Mulligan together and using Mulligan's piano-less quartet platform.........alto, bari, bass player and drummer. The cut "Wintersong" (along with the rest of the album) was so......so something! It really did blow me away! Just fuckin' unbelievable...........Mulligan and Desmond also had an album called "Two of a Mind" and they were. "Wintersong" remains to this day one of the most unbelievable pieces of work I have ever heard

Spaw

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 04:09 PM

I have that Two Of A Mind album, Spaw, and it is great... Take Five was another mind blower when I first heard it... and it hit the top 40.. never hear it on top 40 again unless it's sampled as the background for a song about gang rape.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: catspaw49
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 04:45 PM

That's about the truth Jerry.   I have Take 5 on CD and now that I get to thinking about it, I may try to round up a few of the others this coming year. Did you have the Getz/Mulligan collaboration where they swapped horns on some cuts? Loved that one....Gave me a lot better perspective on Getz.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: PoppaGator
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 04:59 PM

From ages 4-10 I lived next door to a "colored" church (Christian Methodist Episcopal, or CME) and thus spent several formative years listening close-up to some of the world's most incredible vocal music. This was in a working-class neighborhood in Plainfield, New Jersey, where most of the other white immigrant families (Irish, Italian and Polish) were leaving and black folks from the south were moving in. The neighboring congregation, as I understand it, was mostly from rural south Alabama, and the sound they produced was unlike anytrhing I've heard before or since.

You could easily pick out the voices of some of the older folks chiming in, demonstrating a very free, very "primitive" or tribal and kinda dissonant approach. The only music I've ever heard that is at all similar is the Georgia Sea Island Singers. An important difference: my neighbors included plenty of younger and more citified members, so the overall effect was a mixture of styles whereas in the field recordings from the Georgia islands, everyone in the ensemble employed the same ancient style.

Also, the pastor booked plenty of the top touring Gospel acts of the day, generally on weeknights, probably in-between gigs in New York and Philly. I remember the huge tour busses parked right outside my 2d-floor bedroom window, while I lay in bed pretending to sleep while listening to the church members singing along with professional artists, quartets, etc. Wow!

One late weekday evening, probably within the last year or two that we lived next to that church (making me about 9-10 years old, in '56 or '57), I lay in my top bunk listening to the most electrifying, most ecstatic, most totally abandoned music I had ever experienced. There was a big old tour bus parked in the reverend's driveway; one of the many great professional gospel acts was up in front of the crowd singing their hearts out, and the crowd's participation was as awesome and goosebump-inducing as anything that was coming out of the altar/stage area, as they sang along, in multi-part harmony and polyrhythm, with the wordless chorus ("wo-o-o wo/wo wo wo . . .).

This time, I *could* understand all the words of the verses being delivered by the lead singer, and the next day I was paging through the Bible trying to find the story of a woman who chased after Jesus, wanting only to touch the hem of his garment. I didn't find much -- I think it's just a few lines in just one of the Gospels. The song had really provided much more of a story, and certainly much more impact, that the brief little passage of Scripture.

Flash forward another year or so. A new popular (i.e., secular) tune is coming out over the radio, sung by a very familar voice, a favorite of mine. Then the announcer comes on and tells us that we've just heard a brand new artist with his very first record. I'm thinking, no way, I'd know that voice anywhere, he's been one of my favorite singers for . . . well, I don't know since when, or just exactly who he was or where I heard him, but he's sure not brand-new to me!

The record was, if you haven't guessed, "You Send Me," by Sam Cooke.

Another 30 years or so went by before I got a "Best of Sam Cooke" cassette that included two of his old recordings with the Soul Stirrers, dating back from before he quit the gospel world to go "pop" (commercial). Cut #2 was something already long-familiar; I'd heard it from Aaron Neville and probably several others as well, "[My Lord Is] Wonderful," which Sam had later recorded with secularized lyrics ("My Love is Wonderful, Wonderful," etc.) to the exact same tune.

But it was Cut #1 that really blew me away. For the first time since my childhood, I got to hear "The Hem of His Garment." Tears came to my eyes, every hair on my body stood straight up. It's a good recording of a great composition, with one of the all-time best harmony-singing groups backing up their talented young lead singer, but in *my* ears, I also heard the elusive memory of a whole churchful of additional voices joining in, adding so much emotion and spirit:

There was a woman, back in the Bible days,
She had been sick for so, so very long.
Then she heard my Jesus was passing though
So she joi-oined
the gathering throng.
And as she was pushing her way through
The people asked her, "What are you trying to do?"
She said if I
could but touch the hem of his garment
I know I...... would be made whole.

And she cried, Whoa-oh [etc. There's no point in trying to transcribe a whole 16 bars of scat. If you know Sam Cooke, you have some idea of the approach and the sound. I can tell you that the membership of the First Christian Methodist Episcopal Church had NO trouble immediately learning how to sing along with *this* part!]

She spent her money / here and there
Until she had / no more to spare
And the doctors / they did what they could
But their medicines / could do no-o good.
And when she touched Him, the Savior didn't see
So he turned around and cried, "Somebody touched me."
She said it is was I who wanted to touch the hem of Your garment
So I / could be made whole / right now.

And she cried ... (you'll have to imagine the rest.........)

That's the music that blew me away, once and for all, and I ain't been the same since.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: beetle cat
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 05:08 PM

..you win.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 05:19 PM

Wow... PoppaG... Yes, that is my favorite Soul Stirrers song. We're going to try it with the Messengers, with our tenor Derrick singing Sam Cooke's lead. He's one of the very few singers I've ever heard who I think can take the song on and do it justice. Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver do a bluegrass a capella version of it that is almost a note for note copy of the Soul Stirrers arrangement, and it works beautifully..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Chris Green
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 05:19 PM

Canadee-io - Nic Jones. It completely revolutionised my approach to the guitar and still is one of those songs that I can't listen to without going all gooey.

Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd. It STILL sounds fresh and it's over thirty years old!

Anything played by Vin Garbutt on his whistle. He makes that instrument sing!

More will doubtless occur to me! I agree wholeheartly with Carol about Bach - without a shadow of a doubt the greatest musician who ever drew breath.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: SINSULL
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 05:29 PM

Miles Davis' "Sketches of Spain", still my favorite jazz LP.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Chris Green
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 05:48 PM

I agree. But for me "Kind Of Blue" is the better record. I remember hearing it for the first time and thinking "how can you make something so complex out of something so simple?"

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: PoppaGator
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 05:57 PM

About that little essay on Sam Cook[e]'s "Hem of His Garment" -- I took my time writing that, over the course of *two* PMs sent more than a year ago. When I saw this thread, I felt compelled to to dig it out of my PM archives and copy-and-paste it here.

Helluva story, huh? I know I couldn't have written it on-the-spot today (at work, yet).

Sam's last name, incidentally, was originally "Cook," and he was "Sam Cook" for his entire tenure with the Soul Stirrers. He added the "E" when he "crossed over" to secular/pop.

I'm not sure, but I think "Hem" was one of Sam's last efforts before leaving the Soul Stirrers and the Gospel world. I'm almost certain the song is his composition.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Lizzie in SASSY SIDMOUTH!
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 06:09 PM

'Cousin Jack' by Show of Hands....and now a few years later, again by SoH 'Crooked Man' and 'Country Life'!

'Street of Dreams' by The Oysterband....I see fireworks when 'that bit in the middle' comes on!! Also by The Oysterband, 'On the Edge' and 'John Barleycorn' from The Big Session CD with Show of Hands, The Oysterband, Eliza Carthy, Jim Moray, June Tabor and The Handsome Family!


Good to be Alive Music!

Lizzie :00

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: JennieG
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 07:23 PM

The first time I heard early music played by David Munro and the Early Music Consort. I knew some classical music and liked most of it, but this was so amazing. It started off a musical journey that is still going on. Then when I heard Hildegard von Bingen I thought I had died and woken up in heaven with the angels singing in the background.

Cheers
JennieG

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Leadfingers
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 07:42 PM

The record that stopped me being a 'Purist' Trad jazz man was a reissue of the King Oliver Band with Louis Armstrong fresh up from New Orleans in 1923 ! First introduction to REAL Jazz !!! Johnny Dodds was MY Clarinet hero !!!

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 08:12 PM

Add Rock Island Line by Lonnie Donegan. There are probably a half a dozen songs in my life that have been turning points in my musical life. Those were records that suddenly opened a door I didn't even realize existed. Rock Island Line was one of them. At that point, my exposure to folk music was mostly the white bucks and matching striped shirts variety, with the exception of Burl Ives and Harry Belefonte. Not quite roots music, although I appreciate the desire they created in my heart to hear more.

Lonnie sounded like he must have stepped out of the recording studio directly into a strait jacket. Talk about taking no musical prisoners! Lonnie brought rock and roll intensity to folk music, which may be offensive to some of the traddies in here, but I loved his "What the Hell!!" intensity. I never cease to marvel at that recording, even after all these years.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jimmy Twitcher
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 08:29 PM

"Cruel Sister" by Old Blind Dogs. I'd heard the song many times before, but OBD's version (based on the old Pentangle arrangement) really pops out. Gave me shivers down my spine the first time I heard it.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,Nancy King at work
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 08:33 PM

PoppaGator, love your Sam Cooke story. He's always been one of my favorites.

One that blew me away is "Walk Right In," by the Rooftop Singers. What a sound!

Nancy

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 08:44 PM

I was only about 12 years old when I played an arrangement of Beethoven's 5th Symphony on the piano. The soaring second theme of the second movement brought tears to my eyes.

Then as a teenager I was introduced to Beethoven's 6th Symphony. My music teacher described how her sister sang the last theme in that one at the top of her lungs in the hospital when she was coming out of a coma. It's still one of my favorites.

...and today is Beethoven's birthday!

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: KT
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:03 PM

Eva Cassidy's rendition of "Fields of Gold" blew me away the first time I heard it, and still moves me deeply. Especially the line, " I swear, in the days still left, we will walk in fields of gold." That line speaks to me of relationship, and the uncertainty of the the amount of time we have left with one another.

Another is one I've heard sung at this time of year - "Of the Father's Love Begotten." I don't know quite how to articulate why it stirs me so, but it has something to do with the ancient words, and the age old message, with a very simple piano accompaniment...... In the deep dark days of winter....

Good thread, Jerry.

KT

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 16 Dec 04 - 10:27 PM

Was listening to Everybody Hurts by R.E.M. this evening, and it still brings tears to my eyes. Michael Stipes conveyed so much emotion with his voice, and it brings to mind all the people I see who are hurting, and the repeated line "hold on" really grabs me.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: number 6
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 12:04 AM

As mentioned before in a previous thread, hearing Bert Jansch's Angie when I was 15.

A few years later Jack Bruce's album 'Songs for a Tailor' became a memorable collection of tunes that have always endeared me, especially Rope Ladder.

One current musician I must mention that has caught my ear is Gillian Welch.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jimmy Twitcher
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 12:22 AM

Another one that really gets me is "My Favorite Spring," by Tom Paxton. Being a father, that song makes me sob every time I hear it. I'd like to learn it and sing it myself, but I don't think I could get through it without breaking up.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Metchosin
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 12:41 AM

An acapella unmiked solo performance of She's Like a Swallow in St John the Divine. The voice so beautiful, clear and powerful that as one line was still echoing in the stone ceiling arches, the next held it aloft, until the whole inside of the cathedral was a cascade of sound.

Another, an old tape recording of some old down and out fellow on the streets of London, singing Jesus' Love Never Failed Me Yet, over and over.

And a third, again acapella, of John Gothard singing You'll Not Get Me Down Underground in your Mine, many years ago.

I believe what struck me each time, to the fibre of my being, was the absolute lack of artiface. It was plain song and it was naked.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 01:02 AM

As a child I attended a concert by Richard Dyer-Bennett that was the one where I learned how powerful live music is over recorded music. He sounds so good on his albums, but he was marvelous live. But the performance that I heard a few years ago that was so memorable and I'd love to find a copy of it was I think at one of the Kennedy Center Honor's concerts, and it was when Bill Clinton was in office and in the audience. Leontyne Price sang one of Clinton's favorite songs, "Amazing Grace," and I just stood transfixed, crying and with shivers running up and down my spine while she sang. And I remember the camera passing over the Clintons, with tears running down his face. Simply unforgettable.

SRS

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

"Twenty Years Ago" by Kenny Rogers. I cannot listen to it without crying.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,Trix
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 01:07 AM

Cancel Today by Ezio from the Black boots on Latin feet album.
That wonderful feeling of being so in love and lust that you just want to stay in bed all day.
The only thing that has spoilt this song for me is Tony Blair choosing it on Desert Island Discs.I can never forgive him,I tried not to like the song but I can't help its great.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: PoppaGator
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 02:29 AM

Earlier this afternoon The Villan mentioned Bobby Darin, truly an underappreciated Great One. I had the opportunity to see the new biographical file "Beyond the Sea" last night, which brought back memories of this really hot singer.

The movie is pretty good, and Kevin Spacey's performance is *really* good. But I digress, I want to discuss Darin, not the movie.

How terrific a singer do you have to be to redo a LOUIS "SATCHMO" ARMSTRONG hit ("Mack the Knife") and make it into your own signature number! What incredible balls, AND talent!

At the very time that Bobby Darin was having his greatest success, moving "up" from American Bandstand to the big time nightclub circuit, I was more than ever turned off by mainstream American adult commercial music, because I was in the first flush of infatuation/discovery of unpolished traditional blues and folk music. Bobby Darin seemed to represent all that I liked *least* in popular music, and I decided not to like him, tried not to like him, but (of course) couldn't help but enjoy is renditions of, well, just about everything he tried.

Well, I still probably prefer Tim Hardin's rendition of his own "Carpenter" to Darin's, and always have, but Bobby's is not bad at all, and *all* his songs were terrific: "Splish Splash" (which he wrote on the spot in the recording studio) -- nothing serious, but good enough to be an unknown's breakout hit; "Dream Lover," the quintessential romantic doo-wop cha-cha-cha; the aforementioned "Mack the Knife," which managed to duplicate most of the power and soulfulness of Louis' definitive reading while lending the purer, sweeter tone of a great singing voice; the defining composition of his late hippie period, "Abraham, Martin and John," inexplicably omitted from the new movie in favor of two renditions of "Simple Song of Freedom" -- the guy was too much.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,Vic at work
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 03:25 AM

I find it interesting that almost everyone of the songs and artists mentioned above have also blown me away. Maybe the Jazz, blues, folk, classical (and in that order) route just has something special about it.
However if you want epiphony then it must be Joseph Taylor singing Brigg Fair, what he must have sounded like as a younger man I can't imagine. He should be in the collection of every 'folk' enthusiast in the world. (rant over)

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,MCP
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 03:29 AM

My first exposure to Django Reinhardt in my early teens started a life-long love. Louis Armstrong's introduction to West End Blues stunned me the first time I heard it and still never ceases to amaze me. And Joe Pass' version of Night And Day, the only time I've heard something on the radio one evening and gone out and bought it the next day.

Mick

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Rain Dog
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 03:39 AM

Back in the late 70s on the BBC TV program 'Old Grey Whistle Test' I saw Tom Waits perform Tom Trauberts Blues and Small Change. It was one of those 'what is this ?' moments. I was not listening to music so much in those years but as time went on I started listening to more Waits ( amongst other things ) and continued to find him interesting, exciting, moving etc
Move forward now to 2004. Me much older and more cynical. Turning into one of the proverbial grumpy old men. Berlin 15th November, sitting in the packed Theater des Westens, along with 1200 or so other people waiting for him to appear on stage.
Yes I know he is a 'performer' of songs, he works at his craft as he sees it, his stage act. Yes, I had read enough about him over the years to know what I was going to see and hear ( though I was wondering how he would cope with performing the new material live ). The bass player , the guitarist and the drummer take their places and begin to play the intro, the crowd already start to get excited and begin to cheer and clap and whoop. And then striding quickly from the back of the stage comes Waits, black shabby suit, hunched over , grabs the mike stand, waits for the noise to quieten down, says a quick 'good evening' and goes straight into Make It Rain.
Wonderful, exciting, powerful stuff, a force of nature standing on a small stage, magical. If any of your own favourite singers / musicians do the same for you, then you know what I mean. He just exceeded my expectations. The man still has it.

The magic of song.
The magic of performance.

Made me feel less cynical for a while at least

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Hovering Bob
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 04:36 AM

The first time I heard "The Vampire" By Kipling/Marsden was a party where a Cockesdale album was playing in the background so that I could only hear Marsden's tune. I was so taken by it I immediately asked the hostess if I could borrow the record.
I took it home and played it just to hear that track and then Kiplings words hit home. It was at a time in my life, my first marriage had just broken up, when the words expressed exactly what I was feeling.
It instantly became a favourite and it still is, I sing it as often as I think folk club audiences can bare. I treasure the memory of hearing Keith sing it at Wherwell folk club for me.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,Bernie
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 04:50 AM

The first time I saw Donovan singing Catch the Wind on Ready Steady Go!. Liege and Leaf from Fairport, Summer Solstice from Tim Hart and Maddy Prior and hearing Richard Thompson live for the first time.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Bunnahabhain
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 07:02 AM

J.S. Bach. especally the concertos,
Various Leonard Cohen songs,
Brahms, A German Requiem,
Pete mortons "Another train"

It's good to see what really touches people, though.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Grab
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 08:04 AM

Formative tracks:-

- The whole of Iron Maiden's "Seventh Son" album (definitely one of the greatest rock/metal albums ever)
- Live version of "Sultans of Swing" off Dire Straits' "Alchemy"
- "Galway Farmer" by Show of Hands

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Pete Jennings
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 08:08 AM

KT mentioned Fields of Gold. Always a spine-tingler. Me and my wife spent a fortnight on holiday in the Med many years ago and the crooner in the local bar sang it every night. He sang it really well.

Back in September this year, they played it at her funeral. Blown away? More like disintegrated.

Pete

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Mooh
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 08:31 AM

The earliest I remember are the choral records made to accompany the Cambridge Hymnal. I was very young, and church music was the only serious music I knew, but this stuff was and still is a major love.

In no particular order: Roy Buchanan, Simon Mayor, Tony Mcmanus, Oscar Peterson, Stephane Grappelli, Dire Straits, Led Zeppelin, J.S. Bach, Leo Kottke.

If I listened to it then and listen to it now, it's good, especially if I've seen them live.

I might as well add J.P. Cormier, I'm listening to him now, and he scares the shit out of me.

Peace, Mooh.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: KT
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 08:45 AM

Ah, Pete, my heart goes out to you.

KT

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: KT
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 08:46 AM

I was watching a PBS special the other night, featuring Peter, Paul and Mary. I was fine 'til they sang "We Shall Overcome," followed by Mary singing "For Baby, For Bobby" as she held her granddaughter in her lap, each looking adoringly at the other. The frosting on the cookies was when Ritchie Havens joined Peter Yarrow on "The Great Mandala." I was reduced to a puddle. Blubbering, that is.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 08:55 AM

In the 80's, I was recently divorced and raising two sons on my own. The soundtrack for our lives back then was varied. Folk music (which my sons liked o.k. and heard a ton of because I was running a concert series and there was a steady flow of musicians through the house; rock, jazz, gospel, blues, reggae,country and classical. There were certain recordings that defined those years for us, and yesterday I did volume one of that "soundtrack." Reading all the postings in this thread, which I am thoroughly enjoying, I realize that our soundtracks vary, not just because of personal taste, but the country we live in. There's a definite split in this thread, with some music spanning all countries, and some being completely unfamiliar to everyone but the people who live in the country where it was popular.
My Volume One Soundtrack includes people like Dire Straits, The Police, R.E.M. and Tom Petty, who most people have probably heard, if they listen to rock at all. Others like Robyn Hitchcock, Bob Mould, and Timbuk3 are more obscure, even in this country. My oldest son was more into heavy metal, which I never could get serious about, and my younger son was more into alternative rock like R.E.M., and groups like Crowded House, INXS. Like me, he also loved rhythm and blues and soul. That'll probably end up on volume Three.

I've offered to send a copy of volume One to a couple of my friends in Canada (no, there aren't any tracks by Celine Dion on there...) I'll be interested in seeing if they can enjoy the music. Of course, if you don't like rock and pop music, it doesn't make much different whether you've heard individual tracks or not.

Maybe at some point, I'll start a thread to see which musicians have made it overseas (or up to Canada.)

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Dreaded Thumbpick
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 09:14 AM

At various stages of my life, different things blew me away.

Early memories of songs that I couldn't get enough of are Vaugn Monroe's "Ghost Riders in the Sky" and "Cool Water" by The Sons of the Pioneers. It was impossible to hear these songs too often on the radio.

"Skokiann" came a little later. It had a rhythm that I was totally unfamiliar with and that I couldn't get out of my head.

"Unsquare Dance" by the Dave Brubeck Quintet -- 7/4 time was and is still amazing to me.

I met Bob Coltman in the early 70's and found him to be one of the most electrifying singers and musicians I've ever met. Plus a sweetheart of a human being. Many of his songs have had an effect on me that has stayed with me for over 30 years. The first one was "Cool Drink of Water Blues". I later heard Tommy Johnson's version, but Coltman's voice is the one that stays in my head.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Flash Company
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 09:49 AM

Seems like only yesterday I was second posting on this thread, hell, it was only yesterday! This one surely started something.
Thinking on it, I suppose if I go back to schooldays, I had a music teacher who did a lot to open my ears. On our Founders Day at the service at our local church he played something on the organ which I had never heard before, but which haunted me for weeks. I still didn't know what it was so it was referred to as 'Andy's tune'.
Later I heard Pete Seeger play it on the banjo-- Jesu, Joy of man's desiring.

FC

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

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: 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: 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: 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 - 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 - 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Mary in Kentucky
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 06:23 PM

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

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: Leadfingers
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 08:48 AM

Hey Ted -- 100 !!

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: Scooby Doo
Date: 18 Dec 04 - 09:39 AM

sorry cant count,lol.

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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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: 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,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: 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: 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: Barbara Shaw
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 08:09 AM

There were three songs I remember where I would practically have to pull over to the side of the road: the Rooftop Singers (mentioned above) doing "Walk Right In," Janis Joplin doing "Take a Little Piece of My Heart" and Aretha Franklin doing "Baby, I Love You." Anyone passing this crazy lady howling at the top of her lungs, rocking her head side to side in wide sweeps while driving a car would undoubtedly fear for their lives and wonder what the young people were coming to nowadays (and now we know...)

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: PoppaGator
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 12:59 PM

Janis Joplin, indeed!

I first heard her at the Newport Folk (!?!) Festival, and was absolutely amazed. But the *best* performance of hers that I ever witnessed was as an unannounced guest with the Grateful Dead one night at Pepperland in Marin County, CA (just north of San Francisco). Janis and Rod "Pigpen" McKernan were "an item" at the time, and they gave us some unbelievable vocal-and harmonica duets.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Arkie
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 08:08 PM

Two more things come to mind. One is an album, A.L. Lloyd's "Australian Bush Songs". I found it in the cheapo bin in a little book store in Norfolk, Virginia. I bought most of my records there at one time including Ed McCurdy's Dalliance lps. I've listened to the bush songs a lot over the years and developed a love and respect for Australian music because of that record.

The other is the song "Lord Of The Dance".   I was on the staff of a Methodist Youth Conference in Blackstone, VA one summer during the '60s and as "folk" music was popular in that era, a group had been invited to perform. Two of their songs stayed with me, "Shame And Scandal" and "Lord of the Dance". I learned those songs from one of the girl singers. I can't remember her name, but I still recall the little footprints on her legs headed upwards under her dress. A short time later a friend who had been working in Scotland sent me a Sydney Carter songbook and I learned more about Sydney Carter's songs. I then learned other songs of his but "Lord of the Dance" is still my favorite and a song I never tire of singing or hearing. When both my children took a liking to the song it was elevated a bit more.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 08:27 PM

Australian Bush Ballads definitely blew me away, and still does. It single-handedly turned me on to Australian music. I've never heard anything since (and Bob Bolton and other Catters have shared some fine music with me) that had the same impact.

Nothing like the first time..

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: goodbar
Date: 21 Dec 04 - 11:31 PM

phil ochs. usually it takes a couple listens for me to be "blown away" by a band but when i heard the first 10 seconds of "draft dodger rag" by phil ochs i knew he had become one of my all time favorites.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Wolfgang
Date: 22 Dec 04 - 05:36 AM

For me it was

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Wolfgang
Date: 22 Dec 04 - 05:39 AM

(... praecox) For me it was the Watersons. I heard that sound in the radio (just one part of one song) and didn't get the band's name. I did search for the band's name for several years before finding them.

Wolfgang

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From:
Date: 23 Dec 04 - 11:20 PM

Hi Wolfgang
I see a long time ago you were looking for the words to MacColl's "The Big Hewer" This was put out complete on vinyl in addition to the Radio Ballad. If you still need them please reply.
Roger

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Fifteen Iguana
Date: 24 Dec 04 - 12:42 AM

Wow, what a great thread.

When I was five or six (circa 1960) I went to a party at my uncle's house. His son, my cousin, was a college student. He had a guitar and played three songs I remember (and as I recall it was out of earshot of the adults). Malvina Reynolds' "Little Boxes." Shel Silverstein's "Boa Constrictor" and ""25 minutes to go." My first encounters with subversive songs.

In college I went to the Middletown NJ Folk Festival, my first encounter with that phenomenon. At one point the MC said "We had this guy here a few years ago. We think we have recovered enough to have him back." And out came Utah Phillips. He played "Goodnight Loving Trail," and "Old Buddy, Goodnight," I think. I was hooked.

A few albums by people I never heard of that I picked up in a used pile and fell in love with: Si Kahn. Ad Vielle Que Pourre. The Wrigley Sisters.

At various Vancouver Folk Festivals I discovered Ani DiFranco, Moxy Fruvous, and Bob Snider. Several years went by in which I heard no one who excited me. I wondered if it was them or was it me? Maybe I was too old and jaded to get excited by a new performer. Then I heard David Francey. I concluded it wasn't me.

Oh, but I forgot one. One year at the Vancouver Folk Festival, Friday night concert, a blues musician was playing. That's not my favorite stuff so I was heading off to the food. The man sang a traditional sounding tune with lyrics that went like this: "You don't love me like you used to do... the feeling's so much stronger now." I remember spinning around to gawk at the stage. A blues musician singing about true love and marital happiness? By the time I got to the album tent all his CDs were sold out. That was my introduction to Eric Bibb.

And now the most recent. My wife and I go to Port Townsend (Washington) Fiddle Tunes workshop most years and this year there was a fellow there named Mark Simos.   I only head him playing backup guitar so I wasn't that thrilled by him. On the way home I opened his CD that my wife had purchased, "Crazy Faith." By the end of the first song I had my notebook out, taking notes. This guy knows traditional music backwards and forwards, but he writes modern, inciteful lyrics. The closest comparison I can make is Dave Carter. Wow...

Fifteen Iguana

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST
Date: 01 Jan 05 - 05:04 PM

Amadan

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Pogo
Date: 02 Jan 05 - 12:57 AM

When I was 11 or 12, we had a bagpiper come to our school to perform. I remember our class standing outside of the cafeteria and the fellow there with his pipes and in his full costume. People joke about how obnoxious bagpipes are, but I swear when he started playing it was like something woke up inside of me. I stood there very quietly, listening so intensely and trying to understand what that music was saying to me while all the other kids were around me giggling and holding their ears and making faces. I don't remember the song but I remember how it made me feel. I've loved Celtic music ever since.

There's been other songs that have had that sort of effect on me at various points in my life. In the classics it was Beethoven's Ode to Joy, Handel's Messiah, the Erlking, Carmen, Mozart's Magic Flute and many, Noelenn Brenhedd (sp?) as performed on the Celtic Spirit CD gave me the shivers the first time I heard it, gorgeous acappella song. Stairway to Heaven and Gallows Pole by Led Zepplin and Music of the Night and Think of Me from Webber's Phantom of the Opera on the less traditional side of things. Just recently I've fallen in love with Idumea on the Cold Mountain soundtrack and Down In The River on the O Brother Where Art Thou? soundtrack. I can remember hearing She's Like the Swallow the first time at a St. Patrick's Day festival in Roanoke and being completely enchanted with it.

There's been many others...so many moments like that, where a song comes on and compells you to listen to it with your entire being. Good music never really ever stops having that effect on you, I believe

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: wysiwyg
Date: 15 Jan 05 - 05:01 PM

This:

VERDANT GROVES (SHAKER CD)

There are LONG song clips there, for every track. Go hear it for yourself!

~S~

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Herge
Date: 15 Jan 05 - 05:02 PM

Alison Krauss - Ghost in this house
Boys of the Loght - The midwinters waltz

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,Auggie
Date: 15 Jan 05 - 05:25 PM

Janis Ian's "At Seventeen".
I don't believe a performer could write and sing a song that would leave her anymore emotionally vulnerable in front of an audience full of strangers than this one.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jeff Green
Date: 15 Jan 05 - 09:19 PM

There were songs that led me in new directions
"If I had a ribbon bow" by Fairport on an Island sampler LP which I suppose led me into folk.

Missa Luba track Sanctus from the film "If".

Leonard Cohen's Suzzanne, Sisters of Mercy etc

Santana - I'd never heard anything like that

I remember seeing Plaxty live - I hadn't heard of them at the time - I was buzzing for days.

Kitaro's Tenku CD lent to me by a German guy in a Singapore crash pad - I'd just treated myself to one of those new (at the time) Sony portable CD players

Ani Difranco with Maceo Parker doing Prince's "When You Were Mine"

Fugees The Score - I consider much of Wyclefs output to be almost folk music.

Kronos Quartet and Lux Aeterna

Some things I missed the first time round - I never used to like Pete Seeger or Harry Chapin ("If you like Harvey Andrews you must like Harry Chapin" I remember someone saying - At the time I didn't) -Now I consider the former to be brilliant and the latter as a natural progression.

I'm getting more confused by the demarcations in music - why do I suspect that talking about Harry Chapin singing about a waitress is OK here but talking about Wyclef singing about a waiter might not be as aceptable?

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Teresa
Date: 15 Jan 05 - 09:42 PM

More than one.

I'd been listening to Peter, Paul and Mary, the Dubliners, and some bluegrass programs on the radio through the 70s. One day I heard an Irish music group with whistles, bouzouki, guitar, and pipes on KPFK around 1981 when I was fifteen. I don't remember the group, even, but the music was so different from what I'd heard previously that I felt as if I was having a religious experience. I couldn't get to sleep that night; my whole life changed from that moment.

Some months later I heard a Canadian singer being introduced on the radio and they played Stan rogers' "Northwest Passage". Wham! That was almost like a physical blow; I had to get that. Unfortunately, I lived in a small town, and I didn't think I'd come by it any time soon.

A few years later, I moved to the San Francisco bay area, and someone told me about a record store that sold folk music and other rare stuff, and I went in and asked if they had any Stan Rogers.   "Which one?" So there's where I got Northwest passage. :D

Teresa

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Kaleea
Date: 16 Jan 05 - 12:29 AM

There are a few times in my life when I have been totally blown away by another Musician--and I've heard many in concert. There are some who stand out the most. The first time I remember feeling like that was as a little girl when I first heard Ray Charles. It happened again when I got to hear him at a Jazz fest.
    As a child, when I heard Mahalia sing on tv, I heard what I'd never heard before. My father bought me a record of hers, & to this day, I have voice students listen to her to understand "how to sing."
   Then there was the time I heard Ella, about 20 yrs back before she passed. Ella! Wow.
    And when I heard Yo Yo Ma, I was completely enraptured--in a state of total bliss. I believe that my Bass Violin major boyfriend was jealous. To think that the tickets were free to we who were starving college Music majors then.
   Then sometimes when I'm down at the Walnut Valley Music Festival in Winfield, Kansas I get that same feeling.   And not just when I'm listening to the paid performers.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 04 Nov 06 - 06:42 AM

>>>>Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: PoppaGator - PM
Date: 17 Dec 04 - 02:29 AM

Earlier this afternoon The Villan mentioned Bobby Darin, truly an underappreciated Great One. I had the opportunity to see the new biographical file "Beyond the Sea" last night, which brought back memories of this really hot singer.

The movie is pretty good, and Kevin Spacey's performance is *really* good. But I digress, I want to discuss Darin, not the movie.<<<

Question - I saw the movie last week and they made it seem as if Darin wrote Simple song of Freedom - is that possibly right? When I google it, I see sites saying it's another Tim Hardin song. I searched the DT and nothing came up

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 04 Nov 06 - 06:45 AM

NEVERMIND

Answered my own question, the wesite that credited it to hardin is clearly wrong.

Here:


"Cease Fire" song in a medley with Bobby Darin's 1968 hit, "Simple Song of Freed

Good article

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Hillheader
Date: 04 Nov 06 - 02:48 PM

Silent Night/7am News - Simon & Garfunkel still gets to me and is as relevent today as then - just swap Iraw for Vietmen and it's still going on.

Carrickfergus. I knew of the song but had never learned to sing it. A freind asked me to and I did. I sung it one evening and he was delighted. Two weeks later he was gone - heart attack - and I still cannot sing it without thinking of him.

Tom Paxton - The Bravest. "...firemen running up the stairs as we were running down....".

Davebhoy

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Big Al Whittle
Date: 04 Nov 06 - 04:55 PM

talking of music that blew us away.

Does anybody (apart from me) remember The Farting Song by Dave Turner?

theres one for the teenagers.....Does anyone remember Dave? He had an album out on Joe Stead's Sweet Folk and Country label, along with the likes of Paul Downes and Phil Beer, Bob Williamson, Doug Porter.

he was a Nottingham bloke and he wrote a number of funny songs - one about Robin Hood called Ban the Bow! terrific guitarist - he played an old Guild with cracks all the ay round the belly. And he did Rob Wilton impressions.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: alanabit
Date: 05 Nov 06 - 11:09 AM

I saw him once in the mid seventies. I recall his "Farting Song" and he did a lot of routines about bodily functions. To be fair, so did Shakespeare (whom I never saw live), but but Bill definitely had the greater range in his repertoire.
I remember Dave Turner as a fine guitarist, with exemplary timing. He mainly did long monologues, to a guitar accompaniment, with virtually no singing. I think he also did a funny routine about either the Creation or Noah's Ark, which was a definite improvement on the one I had read in Genisis.
Most of what I know about Dave Turner is heresay, but the consensus was that he had disagreements with the authorities about what sort of recreational herbs should be available. Apparently, this resulted in his being unavailable for gigs from time to time. He could well be in his seventies now.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Uncle Phil
Date: 05 Nov 06 - 11:22 AM

Recorded music that blew me away -- The Mamas and The Papas first album. I hadn't even heard of them when a friend played the album for me. I was stunned and slack-jawed.

Live music? Wiilie Nelson at the old Sportatorium in Dallas before the Red Headed Stranger hit. Spare, straight-ahead music in an era of overproduced muck.
- Phil

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Alice
Date: 05 Nov 06 - 11:41 AM

When I was in Hawaii, staying on the big Island with friends, an incredible voice came over their stereo speakers that stopped me in my tracks. It was the late singer IZ, Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Anything he sang was stunning, but the medley "Wonderful World/Over the Rainbow" blew me away.

"This Guy's In Love", Herb Alpert. He wasn't a great singer, but I was a teenager in the sixties, and the lyrics were just what I needed at the time.

"Thunder and Lightning", Chi Coltrane. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chi_Coltrane

"Norwegian Wood" "Blackbird" "Eleanor Rigby"

And Mary O'Hara, who inspired me to be a singer.

Alice

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: DoctorJug
Date: 05 Nov 06 - 04:38 PM

Music that left a permanent mark right away:
Venus by Shocking Pink
Don't Let It Die by Hurricane Smith
Halle Hallelujah by Sidney Bechet and Claude Luter
Brainstorm by Hawkwind
Wolfpack, and Dominoes by Syd Barrett
21st Century Schizoid Man, and Moonchild by King Crimson
Shine On You Crazy Diamond by Pink Floyd
Ravel's Bolero
Beethoven's 7th Symphony, 2nd movement

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Dave'sWife
Date: 08 Nov 06 - 03:45 PM

Sidney Bechet - oh yes. My dearest friend in the world, now departed, julie Schartz was a huge Sidney Bechet fan. I thought I was a pretty sophisticated little jazz baby when I was 21 and listening to Eddie Condon in my car driving Julie (a man by the way) to a some SF convention in philidelphia and he pops in a tape that I think greg Thiekstan gave him and it's Sidney Bechet.. rocked my world.

Israel Kamakawiwo'ole - another one of those sublime voices. Most people know his medly of Over The Rainow and What a Wonderful World which played over the end credits of Meet Joe Black and was in some other films too. it;s in a few commericals now on US TV.

Herb Alpert! My parents had two of his alums when I was a kid and we played the grooves right off of them. I really need to get those on CD.

Nothing to do with Folk, but I was involved in an apocolyptic and very pulic breakup with a man I'd lived with for years when Nirvana's "All Apologies" first started playing on the radio and it expressed everything I felt at the moment. It reminded me of another very nasty breakup I'd had in 1987 right after grad School. After I had packed all my stuff and was driving away while he was at work (I needed a clean gettaway), "Ticket To Ride" came on the radio and I was in awe of how well such young men were able to express the utter futility of some relationships at the end and how the end is just a given. Granted, it was decades before that the song was written but it still captured the moment

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,Adrianel
Date: 08 Nov 06 - 08:57 PM

Apart from the "Rite of Spring", and if that doesn't blow you away, you're dead, the two I remember are the Animals' "House of the Rising Sun", and Piaf's "Les Amants d'un Jour" - a real weeper that one.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: PoppaGator
Date: 25 Jun 07 - 02:24 PM

refresh

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Arkie
Date: 25 Jun 07 - 10:56 PM

It is nice to see this thread back again. Lots of good music to search for. In scanning through the thread again I was reminded of Mike Cooney singing all the verses to Tam Lane. I saw him at the Florida Folk Festival back in the early 70s and his whole set consisted of that one song, and a masterful set it was.   Also at that festival an unknown singer blew me away with "The Mountain Whipporwill".   I still prefer the memory of that performance to hearing Charlie Daniel's The Devil Went Down to Georgia.

Hearing Bob and Evelyn Beers perform Fiddler's Green was also a high moment. Last year Peter Yarrow was in Mountain View with his daughter Bethany and her partner Rufus Cappadocia. That was a magnificent concert and the gospel medley including Long Chain On was unforgettable. This past Saturday at a St. Louis Irish Arts concert, a teenaged girl did a number on the flute that was nothing short of amazing with melody, counter melodies, and rhythm for her father's guitar solo.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,Young Hunting
Date: 26 Jun 07 - 02:36 AM

Willie Scott The Shepherd's Song lp. Particularly the track The Dowy Dens of Yarrow. That was it for me at age about 18. I (metaphorically at least) threw all the Guthrie/Dylan/Leadbelly albums I had spent years listening to out of the window. I knew ballads were what I wanted to sing and this was how you were supposed to sing them. Still can't, but still trying.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: SharonA
Date: 26 Jun 07 - 03:11 AM

Music that blew me away: "The Wayward Wind".

Now where'd I put that coat?...

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 26 Jun 07 - 07:29 AM

Yes, nice top see this thread back. Thank you, Poppa.

These days, instead of remembering songs that "blew me away" many years ago, I've stumbled across a whole body of music that has been so neglected that hearing it after all these years is like stepping in to another world. One I used to know.

Back in the fifties, when Patti Page was the rage, and Perry Como had a hit tv show, there was a new music brewing that most of America had no idea existed. It was the very first rumblings of R&B, doo wop and rock and roll. You never heard it on national radio, and the music never made the Billboard charts. It was played on black radio stations in major cities, for a black audience, often late at night into the wee small hours of the morning. I lived in a small town, but when the climate was just right, I could pick up WFOX in Milwaukee, and if I lay on my back on my bed with my Motorola portable on my chest, turing it so that the antennae was in just the right position, I could pick it up. The music was primitive, in comparison to the popular music of the time. Lightnin' Hopkins shared air time with Count Basie, Joe Turner, Ivory Joe Hunter, Big Mama Thornton, the Ravens, the Orioles and the Crows. Not to mention all the music by singers I'd never heard of before, and hadn't heard of since. Until I bought a 10 CD set containing 200 early Rhythm and Blues Masters from the 40's and fifties. That's what I've been listening to. For me, it's exciting to hear early Ray Charles, almost comnpletely unrecognizable, or B.B. King sounding more like a country blues singer in a juke joint.

One of the things about "Oldies:" if the song wasn't in the top 40, it's like it never existed. And, it's never re-issued. At least not in this country. Some of the most exciting music that's been made in America is only available on CDs from Holland, Germany, France or England. To me, this old music is as exciting to discover (or rediscover) as a lost Doc Boggs recording. The music speaks to the times and the community it reflected as surely as traditional ballads from the Appalachians. A lot of the music I'm listening to, I don't like, but every once in awhile something completely blows me away. "So that's where Little Richard, or Elvis came from!"

Exciting stuff, not for the ears of most Catters. But is is to me.
Would probably be for Poppa Gator, too..

Thanks again for refreshing this thread.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Silver Slug
Date: 26 Jun 07 - 01:06 PM

Does anybody else get that tingling feeling in their scalp whenever they hear a particular piece of music for the first time? That's how I define being 'blown away.' It doesn't often happen now and I guess that's just part of growing old. It isn't just your hair that loses it's colour!

We started using a pub called The Barley Mow just before my 16th birthday. Lil and Lew were the tenants and they knew exactly how old we were. The let us have two pints of mild on a weekday and three pints on Friday and Saturday nights, a great way of learning how to drink sociably.

They had a jukebox which they kept fairly well up-to-date and one night I remember selecting Living In The Past by Jethro Tull, trying to show an ex school bully that I had good taste (i.e. the same as his) when it came to music. That record changed my whole outlook on popular music and I quickly purchased copies of Stand Up, followed by LPs' by The Band, Fairport Convention, Cream, Jefferson Airplane and Led-Zeppelin.

There are plenty of records that have made my scalp 'itch,' but I thank Mr Anderson and co for the record which did so much to broaden my musical tastes.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,TJ in San Diego
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 01:20 PM

Live music in small, intimate clubs, circa late 1950's and early '60's. I love folk, but also happen to like jazz - both traditional New Orleans and Chicago style and "progressive," not the electronically produced, over-arranged "mind candy" that masquerades as jazz now, a la Kenny G, et al, ad nauseum. We were able to sit by the stage and hear and see people like Cal Tjader, Oscar Peterson, George Shearing, Cannonball Adderly and many others. The same was true for folk music, in the same period. Clubs like the Hungry i and Purple Onion, in San Francisco, Mr. Kelly's, in Chicago, The Icehouse, in Pasadena, the Ash Grove in L.A. and legions of real coffee houses, before Starbucks was a gleam in some investor's eye, where you could hear local and up-and-coming talent.

Live music is what "sets me free." I've yet to hear a recording that had the same effect.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: alanabit
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 01:33 PM

There is a lot to be said for live music over even the best recordings. I know that I would not usually buy records of trad jazz or country music. If I am there at the gig though, it can get to me in a way a recording never could.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: PoppaGator
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 02:22 PM

So many of those mostly-forgotten "minor" R&B hits Jerry mentions, singles that sold only within a small geographical region and/or only to the "race records" market, actually enjoyed wider exposure to white teenagers in England than here at home in the states.

I'm not sure why ~ I suppose that when recordings of strange new sounds come to the shores of Liverpool in sailors' duffel bags, no one asked which record was a hit and which wasn't, nor even which side of a given record was supposed to be the "A" side and which the "B." Kids listened and judged each song on its own merits, and the upshot was that the Beatles and Stones and many other less-well-known rock groups wound up "covering" American recordings that never got much airplay back home in the states, and no exposure at all the the "mainstream" US Causcasian market.

I recently heard several different made-in-New-Orleans renditions of an old R&B hit, "Anna (Go With Him)" on WWOZ-FM. Since it had been recorded by several New Orelans artists, at the legendary local J&M Studios, I assumed it was written here, too, but I was wrong.

What I learned from the Internet: (1) the song sounded so familiar to me probably because it was also recorded by the Beatles, and (2) it was written and first recorded by one Arthur Alexander of Florence, Alabama.

Alexander has the wonderful trivia-question distinction of being the only songwriter to have his word recorded by Elvis Presley, Bob Dylan, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones. He was also the first artist to record at the soon-to-become-legendary F.A.M.E. studions in Muscle Shoals, AL.

Familiar titles of some of his compositions besides "Anna":
"You Better Move On" (covered by the Stones)
"Sally Sue Brown" (Dylan and Elvis)
"Every Day I Have to Cry Some"
"A Shot of Rhythm and Blues"
"Go Home Girl"

Alexander also is credited as being the first lyricist to use the word "girl" as direct-address (as "I wanna tell you, girl...), a usage that was immediately taken up by many other writers, notably John Lennon.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: alanabit
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 03:19 PM

Correct me if I am wrong, but I think "Bad Boy", and "Dizzy Miss Lizzy" two of my favourite Beatles covers, were also by Arthur Alexander. He was certainly more than a one trick pony.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 27 Jun 07 - 05:55 PM

Interesting stuff, Mr. Gator. I just bought a 4 CD boxed set (for $9.95) Of Wynonie Harris. I've heard his name more than his music. curious to listen to the stuff...

Your observations on minor, regional hit recordigns being picked up by English rock and rollers is right on. As they used to say.

Jerry

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Banjiman
Date: 28 Jun 07 - 08:24 AM

Call me an old romantic but the first time my wife sang "The Loch Tay Boat Song" to me in her little flat in Glasgow many years ago is the most spine tingling musical moment I have experienced....it tingled my spine so much I had to ask her to marry me!

Alison Krauss and Union Station singing "Ghost In This House" at the Sage in Gateshead a couple of years ago almost took me to the same place (wow...those harmonies), I'm not sure Alison Krauss would marry me though.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: PoppaGator
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 03:48 PM

refresh

It's been almost three years since this truly exemplary discussion has been active. I'm sure that, in the meanwhile, some new folks have come around here who will enjoy it ~ also, that many more recent "blown-away" epiphanies have occurred that some of you might like to add.

This concludes my search through all my old posts in an effort to find something I wrote years ago and don't wanna have to write all over again. So, I'm not likely to continue resurrecting old discussions on a daily basis

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Jerry Rasmussen
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 04:05 PM

Stand By Me - the video collection of people from all over the world recording verses of this song stood me on my ear. Very uncomfortable, but worth it. I bought the video and the CD. If there'd been a t-shirt, I would have bought that, too.

Thanks for refreshing this Poppa G.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: eddie1
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 05:10 PM

Hi Jerry
The video compilation of "Stand By Me" is by an organisation called Playing for Change which believes, and proves, that music can bring the whole world together – so does Mudcat of course!
PfC also have an incredible version of "One Love" – have a look for it.

Reading this thread has brought back a lot of memories and forced me to seek out some new ones. Thanks guys!

Someone way back wrote about the hairs on their head standing on end. Many of these songs do that for me too.

Two that really grabbed me are ones where, in one case I don't understand all the words and in the other, none at all – "It's Good See You" from the Alex Campbell Memorial Concert, sung partly in English and partly in Danish by too many people to list and "Pokarekare Ana" sung acapella in Maori by Marie-Adele McArthur, an operatic soprano, in a concert hall. The audience, obviously mostly New Zealanders, react exactly like a folk-club audience, trying the song out quietly to see if the key fits then joining in with a bit more power as they gain confidence and finally singing harmonies. She, although presumably unused to such audience participation, gets right into it, even singing harmony herself while the audience carries the melody!

We're pretty lucky to have such experiences aren't we?

Eddie

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Bettynh
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 05:12 PM

A concert by Carlos Montoya, followed within a month by a concert by Doc Watson. For various reasons I found myself in the front row at both concerts. I'm still in awe at the memory of those hands.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Joe_F
Date: 04 Mar 10 - 08:25 PM

In 1942 or so, when I was 5 or so, my parents were out of the house for a while, and a piece of music came on on the radio that made me cry. I told them about it when they came back, but I never found out what it was.

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 02:08 AM

What a lot of songs and artists to seek out! Many of those mentioned I don't know at all.

I grew up in the Amish church. The songs they sang on Sunday mornings were all in German, of course, the tunes and treatments very similar to Gregorian chant. No particular song but I simply floated when my mother and her best friend sat together and sang. My mother's voice was warm and textured, her friend had a silvery edge to hers. (Ha! I just realized that may account for my love of Pavarotti's voice; much silvery-er than Placido's.) I would hardly be aware of the other singers, so fixated on their sound was I.

My next one was 'My Little Home in West Virginia', an instrumental featuring a fiddle. Intricate yet strong and full.

Thirty years or so later I was mesmerized by 'Moon over Naples', also an instrumental with multiple violins. It soared and swooped and moaned.

Soon after, someone recorded a version of that tune and called it 'Blue Spanish Eyes' with lyrics which became a hit although it was not even close to being as good as Moon over Naples...

A phenomenon that I experience regularly is that I literally 'hear' songs, complete with harmonies, sometimes just two people, sometimes whole choral groups. When I want to hear a certain section again, I can 'make' them go back and start from there again. I said this to my sister one time and she got this alarmed look on her face, so I added truthfully: I've noticed that if I don't know all the words, they don't either.

Anybody else hear voices in their head?

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Ebbie
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 10:24 AM

Sorry. I think we need another 'Threads I Have Killed'. :)

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: PoppaGator
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 05:37 PM

Nah, give it a little more time; this ain't dead yet! Most of us were asleep the whole time this sat inactive between your two posts...

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Tattie Bogle
Date: 05 Mar 10 - 07:52 PM

Lots of stuff from the "classics" including Beethoven, Brahms, Verdi, Sibelius, Respighi, Berlioz, Britten, Vaughan Williams, Elgar, Rodrigo, etc, etc.
Then I suppose the early folk-rock such as Steeleye Span Fairport Convention, and later after coming to Scotland, Runrig.
And a whole raft of all sorts of Scottish, English and Irish traditional music.
Then there was the all the "Celtic Connections" stuff like Carlos Nunez and Susana Seivane.
If you ask me tomorrow, I'll probably give you another list too!

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: GUEST,Guest from overseas
Date: 18 Aug 10 - 10:54 PM

...and it still keeps blowing

Subject: RE: Music That Blew Me Away
From: Allen in Oz
Date: 18 Aug 10 - 11:17 PM

Anything by Frankie Lane , and

"Oh My Papa "

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