A couple weeks back we made our annual trek to the Sterling Renaissance Festival, where we did all our usual things, including me taking over 200 photos over the course of the day. These are still forthcoming, but let me say…I am incredibly happy with some of the shots I got!
The Faire always puts me in mind of this band, and this song, which I know I’ve featured here before but I’m pretty sure it’s been six years since the last time, so we’re good. Here is Blackmore’s Night with “Under a Violet Moon”.
In shocking and sad news, singer-songwriter Glen Hansard died in a motorcycle crash the other day. This one hurts. As he did for many people, Hansard came to my attention via the wonderful movie Once, which I watched many years ago (and, oddly, have not watched since…I need to rectify that).
Below is the text of the post I wrote about Once back in 2009, but first, here’s the song that really put Hansard on the map from that movie. This song won the Oscar for Best Song, and it remains one of my favorite songs from the last twenty years. Even longer, frankly.
Thank you for the music, Glen Hansard. You are gone too soon and will be missed.
My original post on Once:
“Take this sinking boat
and point it home.
We’ve still got time….”
-“Falling Slowly”, song from Once
A vacuum-cleaner repairman in Dublin works on the side as a street musician, playing his guitar and singing his songs on the streetcorners for whatever change he can get from passers-by. Occasionally he does well, other times he does less well. He has to contend with the occasional thief who tries to run off with his guitar case and the money inside it, and he has to refrain from singing his own songs for night-time when foot traffic is lower, since most people are more rewarding of a musician playing songs they know, this even though his performances of his own songs are searingly emotional. There’s something eating away at this guy, though; we can see it, although we don’t know what. He looks young but weary, idealistic and cynical at the same time; his guitar is so old that it has a second hole worn through its face and the strings are not neatly trimmed but have lengths that dangle off the ends of the frets. He wears a black overcoat and a scarf tied around his neck, even oftentimes when he is inside.
Along comes a young Czech woman who also works the streets of Dublin, selling her own wares: magazines, individual flowers. She hears one of his songs at night, and compliments him; he is trying to end the conversation when he lets slip that he’s a vacuum cleaner repairman, and her face lights up because she has a broken vacuum cleaner! She vows to bring her broken cleaner to him tomorrow, and she does. They then begin a brief friendship that deepens quickly into love as they walk the streets together, him carrying his guitar and her pulling the vacuum behind her like a dog. She seems more open, more willing to smile, more idealistic than cynical, but it soon becomes clear that she is masking her own series of hurts as well; there’s a sadness in her eye that she hides except for when she thinks no one is looking, she has a two year old daughter with no father in sight, she buys her clothes at a cheap mens’ store, and she too spends much time wearing a heavy overcoat with a scarf round her neck.
It turns out that she is a piano player too, although she keeps that part of her life carefully secret, only playing an hour a day in the studio of a music shop while the owner closes for lunch. She offers to play for him there, and he goes to hear; after she plays him some Mendelssohn, she asks him to play, and he does, to her accompaniment, teaching her one of his songs. He seems slightly skeptical of this whole thing, until she begins to sing along with the lyrics he’s placed in front of her, harmonizing his own vocals. He smiles in pleasant surprise; he’s made a connection with this woman, a musical connection, the kind that comes when we discover entirely by accident that someone we’ve just met is, on at least one level, completely in tune with ourselves.
Is that when they fall in love? I’m not sure. But it starts there, with that smile of surprise and delight. It happens early in the movie Once, about twelve minutes in, and the rest of the film follows the guitarist and the pianist through the next few days as they get to know each other and to love each other and to make music together. (The scene is helped by the fact that the song, “Falling Slowly”, is a wonderful song that would eventually win an Oscar for Best Original Song.)
The feel of Once is very similar to Before Sunrise, another great romance film about two people in similar circumstances who find each other and get to know each other over a fairly short period of time. Here it’s a few days, but it’s still fairly brief. There is a girl in his past, and a husband in hers; both lean on the other in efforts to deal with their respective pain and find their ways to their respective next steps. Those steps make sense, in the end, and if I found myself hoping for a different outcome, the one the film depicts is still moving and satisfying and right.
A movie like this can’t possibly succeed unless its performances are good, and there’s not a false note of performance in the entire movie, from the leads (who are never named; the credits list them as “Guy” and “Girl”) all the way to the jaded soundbooth operator who first thinks he’s recording a bunch of yahoos but soon realizes different once he’s heard the songs. The leads are played by Glen Hansard and Markita Irglova, who have paired as a singer-songwriting duo, penning some of the songs used in the film. And the film’s songs, by the way, are really very good, with one, “Falling Slowly”, being a truly excellent song indeed, the best movie song I’ve heard in years. This song won the Oscar last year for original song, and this was richly deserved. (And I cited it as my song of 2008.)
Once is a beautiful, beautiful movie. This is what movies are for.
Singer Linda Ronstadt turned 80 yesterday. She’s been a fixture for my entire life, though I have to admit that I don’t know her musical output very well at all. In retrospect I kind of wonder why this is; she sang in genres of music that my parents listened to a lot when I was a kid, and she sang those genres very, very well…and yet, somehow, I don’t recall any of her music ever getting played much at home, so she was relegated to whatever got played on the radio when we were out and about. It’s a shame, then, that for me she’s always been a person of whom I think, “OMG, who is that singing?!” and the answer, supplied by a DJ, is along the lines of, “That was Linda Ronstadt.” Apparently she is now permanently retired from singing, due to an ailment that has rendered her unable to do so, which is very sad; we could use a musical elder stateswoman or two right now.
I am also belatedly discovering what a stunningly beautiful woman she is and always has been!
Linda Ronstadt
Here she is with one of her best-known performances. This song is just stunning.
And finally, how could I not feature this image? I think I need to track down a photo book of Linda Ronstadt’s looks in the 70s and 80s….
Born this day, 1879: Ottorino Respighi, who after a slow musical development in his youth would become one of most notable Italian composers of the 20th century. Respighi’s music is wonderfully pictorial and lyrical, often with a sense of size that is nevertheless modern enough to sound removed from the traditions of Romanticism. Italian music tends toward the dramatic anyway, and Respighi’s work is certainly that.
For all that, I’m not nearly as familiar with Respighi’s music as I should be; I’ve listened to several of his tone poems (The Pines of Rome is one of the greats, and a favorite of mine), but not much else. So here, to honor his 147th birthday, I present a work for solo piano: “Notturno” from Sei pezzi prr pianoforte (“Six pieces for piano”). Apparently the “Notturno” is one of Respighi’s most popular piano pieces, all by itself. I can certainly hear why. Its pianistic tone painting is certainly redolent of Chopin, but with a decidedly modernistic twist to it.
Hey, it’s still Thursday as I write this! In fact, there are still 112 minutes left. So there!
I heard this on WNED yesterday, when they played it as part of their Canada Day observation. It’s a folk song from Newfoundland, set for chorus by Canadian composer Harry Somers. The group performing this is from Milwaukee, so I guess it can’t be Canadian across the board, but we northern states have a kinship with Canada, I think. Or at least I hope we do.
I’m reading The Uncool by Cameron Crowe right now. This book, which came out last year, is pretty much an answer to the question: “Hey, Crowe, we know that you based Almost Famous on your own life experiences as a kid, so why don’t you tell us the real story?” And I’ll have more to say when I finish the book, but here’s a passage that really stuck with me already:
“Take It Easy” hit the airwaves a few weeks later, like a blast of California sunshine. The band was called Eagles. (You were not supposed to call them the Eagles back then.) The song was instantly memorable, a potent stew of the stuff I’d loved. I always felt that a favorite song has a mind of its own. It arrives just when you need it, and that arrival memory remains for the rest of time. Every time you hear the song, you can remember the feeling, like you’re reading a diary entry. It’s one of music’s great gifts. I bought a used electric guitar, turquoise, of course; learned the play the song; joined a band called the Masked Hamster; rehearsed with the Masked Hamster twice in my schoolmate Russ Schumacher’s garage; was told the band had broken up; walked by Russ’s house a few days later; heard the Masked Hamster practicing with a new guitarist; and decided my instrument was the typewriter. All to the soundtrack of “Take It Easy”.
That thing Crowe says there, about a favorite song being like looking at a diary entry? I could not agree more. A whole lot of “Something For Thursday” has simply been just about that: sharing songs or pieces of music that have been a part of my life. (And yes, some of it has been about exploring new stuff, too. One needs to hear music, not just because you never know when the next song or symphony or filmscore or overture of your life is going to come along, but also because the new music informs the old favorites, gives them context. When you hear some new band that is flying because the band of your youth taught them how to walk, that’s really something.)
So…heck, where was I? Oh yeah, this is a Something For Thursday post. Here’s “Take It Easy”.
With this new format on this site, I’m experimenting more with Featured Images and such to make the front page a bit easier to follow…but anyway, I don’t have a lot of time because we’re off in a few minutes to go see a REALLY BIG TRAIN. So in keeping with that, here is my favorite train song of all time.
One of my favorite James Bond theme songs is Gladys Knight’s title tune for 1989’s Licence to Kill. Both the film and the song tend to be underrated, but I think both are fantastic. The Licence to Kill song starts with the same horn riff that opened the song to Goldfinger, an homage which necessitated royalty payments to that song’s creators. But Gladys Knight’s singing is the real star of the show here. She has one of those big voices that can fill whichever room she’s in, and fill it here she does. This is one of the best of all Bond songs.
