Music That Blew Me Away

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?...