Music

I love music.  I love to sing it, play it, listen to it.  And so it is only appropriate that I profile some of my favorite music-makers here.  Mostly they are popular groups and such things, but some of those classical fellas can really jam.

Queen

I got into Queen awhile ago when I decided to see what else they had besides Bohemian Rhapsody and We Will Rock You.  We have a record of A Night at the Opera, so I learned how to use the turntable and started listening.  I think in the following weeks I drove my poor parents nuts listening to that thing.  It was there that I found one of my favorite songs, the wonderful Prophet's Song.  It's a haunting, beautiful tune, akin to a sculpture of music.  I could wax rhapsodic (*rim shot*) about these guys for hours.  You find groups nowadays that have great rhythms and stuff, but their singers sound like drowning cows.  You listen to Queen, though, and you realize (or, I did, anyhow) that, wow, these guys can actually sing!  And they do harmonies!  What's that all about?  Too bad that Freddie Mercury is dead... I wonder how many more great songs he could have contributed. My favorites: The Prophet's Song, Innuendo, I'm Going Slightly Mad, Killer Queen, Breakthru, Save Me Here's a great Queen site I found.

Phil Collins / Genesis

I think I have the song "Take Me Home" about four times.  I've been listening to "No Jacket Required" since I was little.  Needless to say, I think Phil Collins and Genesis are pretty darn good.  He's got so many moods!  For example: I Can Feel It (Coming in the Air Tonight) is this eerie, weird, garbled song that puts me on edge sometimes when I listen to it.  One More Night is a wistful ballad.  Long, Long Way to Go makes a pretty damning statement about society.  I Can't Dance is a fun little tune.  Driving the Last Spike is a ten minute rant about slaves and the railroad.  Et cetera and so on and so forth. He's another one who can sing, and does so with great energy.  He also does a pretty decent cover of Can't Hurry Love, showing that he's not one to mess around with something that's already good. My favorites: We Said Hello, Goodbye; Driving the Last Spike; Take me Home; Easy Lover; I Wish It Would Rain

Pebble Dare

A few of you are probably asking, "Who?" about now.  These guys don't have a wide distribution yet, but if their talent is any indication, they will.  I'll just have to keep badgering them. Pebble Dare is an acoustic group consisting of a couple of guys that I know named Joe and Jim, and a guy I don't know real well named Justin.  Jim sings, Joe sings and plays guitar, Justin plays guitar.  They've played several times at a coffee house near where I live, and every time I get a chance I go and see them.  These fellas are pretty damned good at what they do.  Both Jim and Joe have lovely voices, and convey great feeling when they sing.  They do covers (some of which they do better than the people who did it originally) as well as their own material, which is phenomenal.  They're also pretty prolific; they've turned out an incredible amount of songs in the short time they've been together.  Their new CD, entitled "Crashing into the Sun," contains some of their best work, and I highly recommend it! My favorites: Wait for Me; Fire; I, the Joker; Venus; Reconcile; Schizophrenic Discussion; In Sanity; Not Like This; The Flow; No More Lullabies And here's their homepage!

The CruxShadows

Many of my friends know that one of my favorite names is Eurydice, so when my friend Erica told me that there was a group called the CruxShadows that sang a song with that as its title, I immediately went and found it.  The rest is history.  The CruxShadows is certainly the most unique group I listen to; their songs are goth techno with synthesizers and violins and a somewhat whiny lead singer with a beautiful voice.  They never go over the top, and their lyrics and tunes and lovely and haunting.  They go from the eerie to the playful to the frightening to the wistful, and do a cover of "Here Comes the Rain Again" (minus the "shoo-wop"s) that's actually fairly decent.  I would recommend this group to anyone; even people that have never listened to or even liked techno love the CruxShadows (in my experience; I am indeed one of those people).  It's a treat for the ears, so if your aural capacity needs stimulation, the CruxShadows are sensual and mysterious and downright beautiful. My favorites: Eurydice; Ballrooms of Mars; Breathe; Deception; Cruelty; Clerestory; Sympathy (for Tomorrow) {Note: this is not my absolute favorite, but it's up there because, to put it simply, it is one of the most beautiful songs I have ever heard); Insomnia; Monsters; Marilyn, My Bitterness; Purgatory

Here is a section of artists I like that get little blurbs, because I don't feel like writing huge paragraphs about them.

Alanis Morisette:  Yes, I still like her.  I think she writes good music and has a fine voice.  She gets a lot of flak for being whiny and angry, but she's a lot more than that. They Might Be Giants:  How can you not like these guys?  Okay, well, it's possible, but I don't see how.  They're goofy and fun.  The King's Singers:   These guys can really sing.  They're a wonderful a cappella group that runs the gamut from English folksongs to Good Vibrations. Dvorak:  Three words:  New World Symphony. REM:   These guys are just freakin' cool. The Monkees: So they don't sing their own songs.  Who cares?  They're so much fun!

Other Notable Songs

"In The House of Stone and Light", by Martin Page (my favorite song of all time) "Kashmir" and "When the Levee Breaks," by Led Zepplin "Mexican Radio", by Wall of Voodoo Anything at all by Kansas "The Story in Your Eyes," by the Moody Blues "Steam" and "Digging in the Dirt", by Peter Gabriel "Baba O'Riley", by the Who "Silent Running", by Mike and the Mechanics "Let's Live for Today", by the Grass Roots "Electric Blue", by Ice House "The Dolphin's Cry", by Live (Live is pretty cool in general, too, I forgot about them) "She Cries Your Name", by Beth Orton "In the Meantime," by Spacehog "The Old Apartment," by Barenaked Ladies "Winter," by Tori Amos "Purple Haze," by Jimi Hendrix

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