1 Week On

Tags

Kyrie Eleison, Lent

Owning Up

Tags

Music

With BBC4 and radio2 doing a whole load of nostalgia at the moment about the vinyl album I thought I would come out of the cupboard and admit to the first music I owned, which actually may surprise you but also explains why I still have such an eclectic taste in music.

So starting with the first single:

 

I remember cycling down the country lanes around the village were we lived singing this at the top of my voice to the fields.

Into the next decade and I went out with my own money and rather than buying another single blew all my money on …..

drum roll ….

are you ready for this?

 

I played it so much that my mother also got to know the songs and could be heard singing her favorites around the house!  But neither of these was the first music I really listened to.

I can not remember how it happened but somehow I acquired, rather than was given, an old bush radio – you know, the kind with the big dial which is now all the retro rage.  Listening to this radio was the reason behind me screaming around the house Blockbuster or Young Hearts Run Free or Werewolves of London to name but a very few.   I would tune into Radio Luxemburg and listen to it until the crackles became too much, then if re-tuning and trying to find something else didn’t work I was left with two choices.

Downstairs I could ask permission to go and listen to the old gramophone, yes it was a proper gramophone with the volume control being how wide open you had the doors.  On that I would play one of three records my parents owned.  Two were 78′s Harry Belafonte’s Banana Boat Song

and Spike Jones and the City Slickers Cocktails for Two

The third record had Paul Dukas’ L’apprenti Sorcier on one side and on the flip side Maurice Ravel’s Boléro, while I would sing along or dance to the 78′s, if I put this record on I would lie on the floor with my eyes closed and imagine dancing on stage as a prima ballerina to them.

If, for whatever reason, I couldn’t play a record I would borrow my mothers Andy Williams best of tape or The Carpenters – Now and Then and retreat once again to my bedroom to listen to it on a battery driven cassette player.  Even now if I hear a track off either of those cassettes I will immediately start singing the next track when it finishes.

But that was then, what, you may be wondering is my latest musical purchase, well it is Emma’s Imagination – Stand Still.  I am slightly late to the party with discovering her but as they say better late than never.

 

Riddling With the Animals

Tags

Music, Poem, Psalms

A verse from the psalm from yesterdays evening office as being playing round my head all night.

I will incline my ear to a proverb;
I will solve my riddle to the music of the harp.

Psalm 49:4

As usual my brain has been doing a bouncing act all over the place first to the opening lines to Willima Congreve’s ‘The Mourning Bride’:

Musick has Charms to sooth a savage Breast,
To soften Rocks, or bend a knotted Oak.

It sounded like some deep muscle massage therapy, just like solving the riddle with the harp.

Then I started to think of music, which type would help solve a riddle?  Pieces of music started to flit around my head most were discarded being too distracting for various reasons then for some reason Saint-Saens with his ‘Carnival of Animals’ stuck.

It starts of with the royal march of the lions a smooth power chasing away anything that might distract.  However before the lions themselves lull you into distraction the chickens and roosters arrive with their scratching to bring you back to the riddle.  A quick run with the wild asses to focus the mind before having to listen intently to the quiet tortoise hesitantly ponder along as the riddle is mulled over.  As is always best in these cases some more pondering from a slightly different perspective as the lumbering elephants take over.  Then, well then some bouncing up and down with the kangaroos realising you are on the cusp of something before joining the harps in the aquarium to glide up and down testing a solution.  The eureka scream with the mules, before a gradual realisation that the cuckoo in the woods has come along and you might have hatched the wrong egg!  The other birds come along revisiting of the original riddle and the solution swooping and flitting between each part.  Then come the apes or pianists with their ordered scales putting the riddle back in the right order before the fossils tap at your head trying to knock out the solution that is already there.   Then the swan arrives gracefully leading you back to the solution from the harps and everything becomes calm as the riddle is realised as solved.  All that is left is to celebrate with the finale!

No knots or rocks but I can’t help wondering if the popular misquote of Congreve ‘Music soothes the savage beast’ led me unknowingly to that piece of music.

Up On The Roof

Tags

Music

I happened across a concert recording of Carole King and James Taylor at the Troubadour in Los Angles in 2007.  Such talent, sheer beauty, enough to lift any and every day here is a taster, I dare you not to like it:

Go To Sleep Little Baby

Tags

Books, Films, Music

Hubby and I sat down to watch ‘O Brother, where art thou’ on Sunday.  Bassed on The Oddesy it is a great way to remind oneself of the book without having to plough through it again, plus it has the added advantage of some great songs.

To Be A Pilgrim

Tags

1 Corinthians, Music

Yesterday’s reading from St Paul – 1 Corinthians 9:24-27 – always reminds me of this hymn, this version sung by the ever wonderful Maddy Prior.

AGM Alternative

Tags

Music

If it wasn’t for All Saints AGM tonight, I would be off to St Andrew’s by the Green to see Kieran Goss who I had not even heard of before Sunday evening when he was supporting Eddie Reader.

Not only can he play that guitar and sing, he is also entertains with his craic, but then again maybe there will be some good craic at the AGM, one never knows.

They Write the Songs

Tags

Lee MacDougall, Rumer

It’s been a while since Hubby and I have been to a concert but last night saw an end to our musical dry spell.

Over the years the quality of support acts have grown and now my expectations of them are quite high, so Lee MacDougall had a lot to live up to and live up to it he did.  When he stepped out from behind the mike and sung to hushed concert hall without any amplification he showed just what a talented singer songwriter he is as his voice filled the Glasgow Concert Hall without any sign of straining.  His set of songs could have easily come off any charting album, he just needs that break through song to make the jump to being the headline act.

As good as Lee turned out to be we hadn’t taken a trip into Glasgow on a wet Friday evening to see him it was Rumer.  Her voice and style has captivated me this year and  I really wanted to see her live.  Despite having only the one album out as yet she and her fantastic band filled the next hour with a mixture of her own songs along with hits from Elton John, Carol King, Joni Mitchell to name a few.  We also got a sneak listen to a few tracks from her new album (February 2013 expected release) which is a host of less familiar covers from some big named boys from the 70′s.  For parts of the evening I just sat back closed my eyes and floated away on the ripple of her voice.  If you have yet to discover Rumer’s soulful jazzy sound then here’s your chance.

New Harvest Hymn

Tags

Liturgical Seasons, Music

Thank you Lord for all your blessings
for the food that we enjoy.
We give thanks for those who harvest
all whom sea and land employ.
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven.
Feed us now and evermore.
Feed us body, mind and soul.

Through the seasons you are with us
sunshine’s warmth and cooling rain.
Year on year, we harvest plenty
wine from grapes and bread from grain.
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven.
Feed us now and evermore.
Feed us body, mind and soul.

In our fertile world of bounty,
all creation sings your praise.
Teach us how to be good stewards
of your Word and gifts always.
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven.
Feed us now and evermore.
Feed us body, mind and soul.

Help us Lord to remember
those who struggle to survive.
We have plenty they have little
we should share what you provide.
Bread of heaven, bread of heaven.
Feed us now and evermore.
Feed us body, mind and soul.

Sung to the tune Cwn Rhondda

The Protecting Veil

I have been living the evocative whole 45 minutes of this John Tavener music over the past weeks, the more I hear and work with it the more it seeps into my soul.  Have I just discovered it you may be wondering, is that why the haunting cello strings are echoing through the Rectory?  Well what I have recently discovered is that a member of the congregation who plays cello with the Scottish Opera is prepared to play it on Easter Eve as part of our Vigil with a difference.  Although we wont technically be in Lent by then this music has already become a wonderful companion for me during Lent, and so I offer it to you as another way of also journeying through this season.

All Saints The Protecting Veil for Easter Eve will be on April 3rd at 7.30pm.