Tag Archives: Toptenlist

Perfect Turn of Phrase

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Why the gods above me think so little of me…

Whether near to me or far…

I love Paris in the Springtime…

It’s a perfect collaboration – Cole Porter’s words and music, Ella Fitzgerald’s perfection in bringing them to life. Something comes into being that continues to be as amazing today as it was in 1956. Timeless and equally of its time. Words and delivery coming together in a way that heightens both. I’m more fully human because I’ve spent time with this music.

I feel the same thing every so often when someone standing at a lectern offers words of scripture, occasionally even singing them. Ancient words oft repeated, suddenly alive in a new way – and offering life to all who hear them.

Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Song Book, Verve, 1956

Unexpected

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It was a gift I didn’t request, didn’t really want, but received on Christmas, 1985. When I finally slipped the album out of the cover just after New Year’s and a day before meeting up with the person who gave it to me, I just wanted to be familiar enough with the songs to prove that I’d actually listened to it. But there was something about Brothers In Arms that kept me playing it over and over again. Walk of Life and Money for Nothing were instant favorites, but it’s the title song that haunts. I’d seen enough of pain, loss, and death to realize how little I knew of pain, loss, and death. Listening to Brothers In Arms, I understood the Vale of Tears, the Shadow of the Valley of Death in a whole new way – Biblical imagery wed to life. And that we cause the suffering and death ourselves far too often.

For this one song, it would be on my top ten list…but the rest of the album is amazing, too.

Dire Straits, Brothers In Arms, Vertigo Records, AIR Salem, Montserrat and Power Station (NYC),1985

There’s a thin line between Saturday night and Sunday morning…

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History Lesson, history lesson…

I first heard Fruitcakes the song driving from New Jersey to New Hampshire, somewhere on the Mass Pike. I stopped off at a strip mall music store in Plaistow, New Hampshire, and bought the newly released album on cassette so I could play it for the last hour of the drive to my parents’ house in Barrington. I’d always liked Jimmy Buffett, but not enough to pull the car over to buy his latest. But for a song that fills me with delight and makes me think, I will (Lyle Lovett’s Church from Joshua Judges Ruth was the second one that got me to pull over).

It’s a wonderful mix of covers and original songs, poking fun at and holes in the boring, question-ending, rigid answers to life, the universe, and everything – and just plain fun to sing along to. Jimmy Buffett was a master at poking fun rather than making fun – no malice or bitterness. Thirty years later, the whole album is still on my most frequently listened to list. To take life and all its complexity seriously, and to hold it lightly; to delight in what life brings, even the mistakes. To lighten the burdens of others, even for the length of a song, is a gift. And a life lesson…

Jimmy Buffett, Fruitcakes, Margaritaville Records, May 24, 1994

It Takes Two…and four more to complete the band

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It’s only 34 minutes long, put out in the beginning of 1963 by Impulse!Records. Every time I listen to it, I hear something new – or I understand something emerging that I hadn’t before. Not one note feels forced in this conversation, and there’s almost an inevitability to one note following another. How is it that the living give-and-take of jazz can feel almost predetermined? It’s a musical mystery.

It makes me wonder about all the many choices that brought me to this point in life – the where of it, the ones I call family and friends, and all the other particulars that would not have been the same had my life taken a different road on this life’s journey. If I hadn’t, then there wouldn’t be…What would the particulars of this life I call mine be? If you hadn’t, then there wouldn’t be…Fill in your own answers.

Had Duke Ellington and John Coltrane recorded a different take on all seven of these songs, I’m sure it would still be on this top ten list: the spirit would be the same even if the particulars within the frame of the songs weren’t. I’m inclined to think the same is true of life in general.

Still, I’m grateful that the years God has granted me have brought these particulars.

Duke Ellington and John Coltrane

What A Dream I Had…

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A man waits in the shadows…

I held your hand…

Slow down, you move too fast…life, I love you…

and the shadows wash the room…cast in our indifference…and you read your Emily Dickenson, and I my Robert Frost…

Home, where love lies waiting silently for me…

Remember me to one who lives there, she once was a true love of mine…

It’s poetry set to music – the voice of an age of war and protest, the voice of life seeking fulfillment. It tugs at my soul, asking questions of life and meaning. Do I sleep, unaware of the clarion call? Of course, I do. Do I move through my days too fast/quickly? Certainly. Haunting lyrics, in the best sense. Gentle, tuneful, beautiful: the union of voice, meter, key, and word. The same could be said of almost any album Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel created. I chose this one because I sang most of these songs in high school chorus.

What a wonderful introduction to existential questions and a glimpse of what is sacred and usually overlooked. I’m quite convinced that it’s one of the reasons I asked the questions that guided much of my seeking God’s face in those around me.

Parsley, Sage, Rosemary, and Thyme, Simon and Garfunkel, Columbia ia Records, October 10, 1966.

On the Road – Again

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I was five years old when it was released in 1969, too young to realize its genius. And way too young to know how difficult it is to create something beautiful, meaningful, or tuneful when disagreements threaten friendships and working relationships both. The four of them went on to do more, but there was no reunion tour. The sum was greater than the measure of its parts – brilliant parts though they were.

It makes me wonder what beauty might come out of other difficult things…

What is your favorite from the Fab Four?

Abbey Road, The Beatles, Released September 26, 1969, Apple Records

Spellbinding

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The range of musical genres on one album, her vocal quality, and how the whole thing hangs together make this one of my favorites. Jazz, blues, musical theater, and pop come together in a way that highlights the unique quality of each – and puts on full display the ability of the artist to move from one genre to another. Nina Simone’s I Put A Spell On You is what a life well lived sounds like – varied, heartfelt, and full of every emotion.

While I was familiar with two of the songs on this album, I was well into my thirties before I listened to the whole thing. I’m inclined to think that was a good thing; my twenty year old self wouldn’t have appreciated the spirit of this album. Some things require a bit of age and life experience to appreciate…

I Put a Spell on You, Nina Simone, recorded in 1964 and 1965, released by Philips Records in 1965

What album do you think requires a little age to appreciate?

(Etta James’s At Last! was a close second to this one…)

Holiday in the Air

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It was in every one of my relatives’ homes, a constant in otherwise very diverse record collections. It’s one of the first albums that comes up in the Christmas Apple playlists. Bing’s versions of White Christmas and Silent Night nestle among more contemporary tunes and artists in malls and restaurants throughout the holiday season.

The album is a mix of Christmas hymns and secular holiday songs; I’ve known every word of every song for well over fifty years – something I can’t say about many albums. Each time I listen to it, some memory of past holidays surfaces – my aunt making fruit compote, my grandfather drinking tea out of his saucer, going outside after decorating the tree to see it twinkle in my grandmother’s bay window, decorating a tree with friends in my Dover apartment. It is an auditory touchstone.

Is it the only or best Christmas album I own? No. Is it the most important as far as what it has added to my approach to the Nativity? Yes. It has been part of the soundtrack of my life as far back as I can remember, and I suspect it will continue to be so – even if and when memory fails.

Wish You Were Comfortably Numb…

There is no pain. Do you think you can tell heaven from hell? All in all, it’s just another brick in the wall. Pink Floyd lyrics are amazing, but add the music and they are mesmerizing. Existential angst and a peek at the darkness that lives inside every human heart shoot through the music and I greet them. Their presence within me is released, if only for the few minutes between opening chords and final notes. They are true to life, a truth that sitcoms and Hallmark movies do their best to deny or cover up.

But they aren’t the only truths, nor the deepest ones. They aren’t the final word, nor are they the ultimate narrative of a life well and deeply lived. In the end, it’s love and a benediction that close the book of life. Amen.

Dark Side of the Moon, Pink Floyd – on the top ten:

Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd

Only Ten…

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Not artists or songs, but albums. Sitting in Crackskull’s cafe in Newmarket, my brother Scott asked the question: what are the ten best albums?

It seems like it should be easier to pick ten albums than ten songs or artists – that the extraordinary ones would rise to the surface simply because I recall fewer of them than either artists or songs. Turns out, not so – at least for me. Some of my favorite songs are buried in albums whose other tracks I barely remember; some artists outshine the music they sing in some inexplicable way, dear to me for their overall artistry rather than a particular album.

Then there are the genre issues: how can I choose ten from classical, jazz, classic rock, metal, grunge, punk, broadway, folk, country, soul, and so on? If the music was created before albums, does it count? What about Live in Concert or Best of collections? And other questions: do I choose my favorites, or the ones I consider the best even if not my particular favorites? Should I choose ones that evoke a particular time, profound because of an association to particular places and people?

Scott’s question has stuck with me for two weeks now, and I’ve been sifting through albums that whole time. Whether I want to or not, I’m already on my way to answering the question.

How about you? What are the top ten albums?

On my list so far: Six Evolutions – Back: Cello Suites by Yo-Yo Ma.

This is the first in Top Ten-ish…