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Saturday, December 24, 2011

Song Saturday-Christmas Edition

My all time favorite Christmas song. It really applies to anyone and everyone, whether you celebrate Chrstmas or not. Those times when you sit and remember wistfully or fondly the people in your lives. I hope you all are doing so with fond memories, but we all know there are the hard ones too. Embrace them. Love them too. Winter is a good time to do so. I hope all are well and enjoying their Holy-Day (s) /weekend. Love each other.

Song Saturday- Christmas Edition

Feliz Navidad to Y'all Sharing with you my favorite Christmas of all time. See here's the important thing about this song, it applies to anyone, even those who aren't celebrating the Christ day. It's about life, love, love lost, love missed and celebrating. It's a Faerie Tale. Have a good weekend, wheresoever you are, whatsoever you believe,

Monday, December 5, 2011

Music Monday-Find out what idiotic music I like.

Also find out what intelligent music I like.  I'm complex, people. 

So, I was dating this guy in the early 90's whose only apparent taste for music was Reggae and the obligatory Led Zepplin.  (I have found nearly everyone likes at least one Zepplin song.)

Reggae is okay, don't get me wrong.  But I cannot listen to Reggae for more than a couple of hours without grinding my teeth.  It's just all the same, it mushes together in your head.  For the record Dub-Step is worse...much....at least for me. 

To his credit I did finally find some Coltrane in the back of his collection like he was embarrasedly hiding it. 

When I asked him about going to a Billy Bragg concert he looked at me funny and said "That country guy?" 

*sigh*

It was Irish country-when it was country, which is a whole different thing than Nashville country.  Somehow the Irish get it better than Americans, who think they invented it.  It kinda makes sense because Mountain Music which Country came from, came from mostly Scottish and Scots-Irish settlers...but I digress.

I didn't hold it against him as we all experiment musically.  Like the year I liked RATT. 

That's right, shitty hair band RATT.  I think it was the "Round and Round" video that I really liked.  I thought anyone who empoyed Milton Berle for a video and dressed like girls had to be on to something.  They reminded me of Ed Wood.  That was when I was 12 or somewhere thereabouts and didn't realize that bands like this didn't do their own videos.

Okay so RATT obviously sucked which I learned when I lifted it from Gemco.  Yes, I was a theif then too, sorry to shatter your dreams of my lifelong integrity. 

Fuck, I've lost the thread....

Okay so, The very first album I owned all my own was the soundtrack to Disney's Robin Hood.-Ooo-da-lali.  I can still sing every song from that album.  I'm tempted to go into what albums were but I won't look it up, in a dictionary or encyclopedia. 

My second was Pete Seeger-Children's Concert @ Town Hall.  I loved the hell out of that album and wore it straight out.  Anyone still remember wearing an album out? 
Children's Concert At Town Hall

Anyway it set the stage for my extreme love of Folk music.  Since then I have fallen in love with everything from Beatles to Punk to Rap and beyond.  But I will always always listen in quiet awe and love to folk music.

The thing is folk music is music for the people.  It is about everyday struggles big and small.  From slave songs all the way up to music to fight the union busters.  It is about telling the story and supporting the common people.  It is not flashy, it is usually extremely simple but it is more than a story, it tells history. 

Like Woody Guthrie- btw that same boyfriend when I brought Woody up, said "The guy who wrote that song we had to sing in school all the time?"  Me: "You mean 'This Land Is Your Land?"  Him "Is that what it's called?" 

This boyfriend got a real musical education and still does.  I decided to keep him after all that investment.  Now he's amazed by all the prohibition era songs I know.  I don't even know how I know these songs really, just do.

Back to Woody he set the stage for the real American Worker's Union fight back songs.  He wasn't kidding when he wrote, "This machine Kills Fascists." on his guitar.

Which brings me back to  Billy Bragg, who is today's Woody Guthrie I think.  He has been backing strikes with his songs for some time now, when he isn't collecting almost forgotten or never before heard folk music. 

Okay crap I'm really off thread.  In anycase have a listen to Billy Bragg this year, supporting London Strikers.

Oh and stay to the end, There's several good songs in there.