London Town - Simon Lynge

I'm very proud to share a zip code with this guy. Simon Lynge lives in Port Townsend, WA with his wife and son, and he's a world touring musician who (among other things) toured with Emmylou Harris last year. He's originally from Greenland and went to school for music in Europe - got huge as a singer-songwriter somewhere in there and moved to PT after falling in love with the Pacific Northwest.

I've wondered for a while about spreading original music effectively in the modern world while at the same time cultivating a sane-making, soul nourishing home and community life. Simon Lynge has been a great example to me of how much of that is possible. Both he and his wife are working artists and between Simon having an LA-based agent, holding delicious intimate concerts at the beautiful backwoods homes of supportive fans around the Quimper Peninsula, and frequenting the Uptown Pub open mikes to keep his chops up, he seems to make it work. He's an incredibly grounded guy and really gracious and sweet to talk to and play with.

Besides his example as a working musician, he's also a BOSS songwriter with refreshingly solid mastery of his voice and guitar. That and he's gonna come up with the next "Imagine" one of these days for how simple and true his songs can be.
Like this one!

I love listening to him. I love seeing him and his lady and his son around town. I hope to play with him more. And I hope he keeps writing!

For more info check out his website: http://www.simonlyngemusic.com/

Life is Good Blues - Laura Viers

I've heard her name dropping all around me lately, and in the last 24 hours I've fallen head over heals into her music and can't seem to find my way out. This is the first I've seen what she looks like. It has been hard to imagine the face of someone who is thinking and composing the way she is.

This one is killing me I'm learning to play it before it succeeds.

Beats Antique

http://www.beatsantique.com/

White Winter Hymnal - Fleet Foxes

So I know these guys might be old hat for many of you, but I just heard of them and heard then last night and now I can't get this song out of my head!

I was following the pack
all swallowed in their coats
with scarves of red tied ’round their throats
to keep their little heads
from fallin’ in the snow
And I turned ’round and there you go
And, Michael, you would fall
and turn the white snow red as strawberries
in the summertime

I'm In Love with a Nun - Peter Oyloe

Peter Oyloe is a very talented musician and actor who hales from Decorah, IA. He now lives and works in Chicago and though his badassity increases all the time (he just one the prestigious Jeff award for Best Actor for his work in the play "Equis") he's a sweet and grounded guy when you talk to him.

Here's a link to my fave song from his album "Words and Music"

I love it because this whole album features lots of Decorah musicians and I see Iowa dirt roads and bluffs in my mind when I listen to this.

Check out his website too. It's nifty.

But I was elated to find that there's a youtube video of his music too - I'd never heard "I'm in Love with a Nun" before. I'd have to say my favorite line is the one about Jesus being her "main squeeze".
Happy New Year, bloggies dear!

All I Want (from Blue) - Joni Mitchell

As we celebrate the year-oldness of our beautiful blog by showcasing albums we love, I knew from the first mention of the idea that Sundays wouldn't be complete without some mention of "Blue" by Joni Mitchell. And the touting of this album isn't a hard task because I'm not the first to do it, and I certainly won't be the last. I could even talk about the first track by it self and that'd be enough cuz the album as a whole is such a cohesive bunch of songs and what happened to me on first listen to that was a small version of what the album as a whole did to me and...probably a lot of the music scene when it came out.

It was recommended to me by the drummer and leader of the church band I was in. He told me I'd love Joni Mitchell and to start with the album "Blue". I knew it was from his generation, and I knew he had excellent taste. So 17 year old me found it and gave it a listen.

I had never been told about Joni's sweet voice or innovative guitar work, so the surprise of that from a 30 year old song felt like a time warp and a private concert from a young singer who wasn't young anymore. And with lyrics like "I wanna talk to you, I wanna shampoo you, I wanna renew you again and again", it was like I was being sung to by a part of my own brain that I hadn't listened to before. I hadn't started writing songs yet, but this was one of the first songs and albums where I started listening as a writer - because the writing is so damn good!! First hearings of songs are pretty important for me across the board - but this one kinda shifted my reality and I knew it as I listened.



So then there's the rest of the album - lighter sounding songs like "Carrie" and "California" left me wanting the adventures and wisdom of my early twenties to come sooner if they could be anything like hers. And then ballads like "Blue" and "River" made her voice warble in my ears and I wondered why I wasn't alienated by the strangeness of it. I knew that it was the only appropriate sound for the thoughts she was offering. And her piano work as well as her guitar playing sounded like the base and grandmother music of so much music that I liked. I knew that all the Lilith Fair ladies were possible because of what Joni Mitchell had done.

Watch this video if you have a second. In case you don't, I'm typing Joni's documentary interview highlights below:



"During the making of "Blue" I was just so thin skinned and delicate that if anybody looked at me I'd burst into tears. I was so vulnerable and so naked in my work."

"My individual psychological dissent coincided, ironically with my ascent into the public eye. They were putting me on a pedestal and I was wobbling! So... since I was a public voice and was subject to this weird kind of worship, that they should know who they were worshipping."

"I was demanding of myself a deeper and greater honesty. More and more revelation in my work in order to give it back to the people where it goes into their lives and nourishes them and changes their direction and makes light bulbs go off in their head and makes them feel...It isn't vague! It strikes against the very nerves of their life and in order to do that you have to strike against the very nerves of your own."

The Cold the Dark and the Silence - Sea Wolf

I heard this song for the first on the Morning Show on MPR. I feel very lucky that my job at the bakery is enriched by a daily dose of really good music. So whilst kneading breads and scooping cookies out, this song came on and the lyrics caught my ear several times before I actually paused to listen.

I love how encouraging the singer is. I get this very clear image of a pioneer couple out on the prairie having an argument and this guy's trying to calm his lover down, telling her the cold, the dark and the silence aren't that bad. He'd be a good guy to have around in the middle of a Midwestern winter.

I went home and browsed the whole album (Leaves in the River) and loved the whole thing. On a shelf it wouldn't look out of place among Kings of Convenience, Sufjan Stevens, and the Shins. Some would argue that there's a surplus of soft singing, guitar and tamborine accompanied guy bands out there, but I say there must be a reason for it - maybe that's what the world needs right now - and I can think of a song from each of the above that has done my heart good to hear. So go have a listen and add a little Seawolf to your collection - among my other faves besides this song are the title track, "Leaves in the River" and "Middle Distance Runner"

Sea Wolf is actually one main guy named Alex Brown Church with a rotating bunch of musicians playing locally around L.A. He had been writing songs for the and "Irving" but they didn't really fit the band's style so he went off on his own.

Please don't lie, don't lie to me
that you're not afraid, my love.
I know you well enough to know
you can't be alone.

If you were to roll, to roll down your window
you'd find the wind, the ice, the trees
that sway like skeletons outside.

But when the cold, the dark, and the silence come
it's like a sudden rush of water through your heart and lungs.

Please don't fight, don't fight with me
and fold your arms like it's the end.
Can you smell the sweetness of the soil and snow in the wind?

So we're lost, we're lost out here on the plains, my love.
It's only wind and ice and trees that wave from above.

But when the cold, the dark, and the silence come
it's like a sudden rush of water through your heart and lungs.

When the cold, the dark, and the silence come
it's like a sudden rush of water through your heart and lungs.

Don't lie
Don't cry
It's over
It's only the leaves, the trees
I'll never leave you alone
In this car
In the dark, with the air getting so much colder.
It's so clear outside here, in the moon and winter air.

But when the cold, the dark, and the silence come
it's like a sudden rush of water through your heart and lungs.

When the cold, the dark, and the silence come
it's like a sudden rush of water
it's like a sudden rush of water
it's like a sudden rush of water through your heart and lungs.

The cold, the dark and the silence.
The cold, the dark and the silence.
The cold, the dark and the silence.
The cold, the dark and the silence.
The cold, the dark and the silence.
The cold, the dark and the silence...

Love Will Tear Us Apart - Susanna and the Magical Orchestra

So I know that Dylan has already posted the original of this song, but this one seems like a totally different song to me.

The first time I ever heard it, I was sitting alone in the dark of my house in the middle of the night and I couldn't sleep. It was the perfect song to hear under those circumstances. I wasn't feeling particularly lonely or sad or anything, but I started to cry in spite of myself. There was beauty sitting in the dark with me that I hadn't noticed before the song came on. And there was light in the cracks of my life that I hadn't thought to look for before that moment. So yeah, I really like this song.

Susanna and the Magical Orchestra is a duo from Oslo, Norway. Susanna Wallumrod sings and Morten Qvenlid plays keyboards. Together, they write beautiful songs that turn heads, but they also have a knack for doing covers that make you forget there was ever an original version (sorry, Joy Division).

Some nights you need good music to keep you company when you can't sleep. For me, Susanna and the Magical Orchestra is good company.

When the routine bites hard
And ambitions are low
And the resentment rides high
But emotions wont grow
And were changing our ways,
Taking different roads
Then love, love will tear us apart again

Why is the bedroom so cold
Turned away on your side?
Is my timing that flawed,
Our respect run so dry?
Yet theres still this appeal
That weve kept through our lives
Love, love will tear us apart again

Do you cry out in your sleep
All my failings expose?
Get a taste in my mouth
As desperation takes hold
Is it something so good
Just cant function no more?
When love, love will tear us apart again

I Lived on the Moon - The Kwoons

Okay, I'm sitting here typing on a rented keyboard with my rabidly deteriorating laptop posting a song for the day and seeing that my spot has been dusty from utter neglect. I'm sorry, dear ones. It has been a helluva couple months for me and I let a lot of my regular correspondence slip during that time. Though I haven't been able to type from home until now, I have been reading all of your dear posts and listening and feasting on sweetum tunes as usual. So here's my first contribution in a while and I knew that it'd have to be a good one!

I don't even remember how I found this song. I think I might have been surfing digital short films on youtube and stumbled upon the animations of Mr. Yannick Ruig (all of them are amazing!). Then I found this video and that's what made the song for me.

It was commissioned after Kwoon saw one of Ruig's earlier short films that seemed to be from the same world as their song "I Lived on the Moon". And the rest sprouted from there.

Here's the website for the making of the video: http://www.yanim.net/ilotm/ilotm.htm and if you have time, it's totally worth a visit. Ruig goes into detail about the inspirations for many of the visual components and it's neat to see what he saw in the music.

With computer animation technologies getting more fabulous all the time, I'm so stoked to see videos like this one - where the artist behind all the tricks has a sweet vision and tells a good story.

I can't find the lyrics anywhere, but my favorite lyric is undoubtedly the mention of the "three tailed monkeeeeeeys" heehee. Sorry I've been a posting douche.

Playing with PInk Noise - Kaki King

This one speaks for itself. But if you want more, look her up. Everything is amazing.

ALSO!! DEAR ONES!!!! THIS IS FOR YOU!

It's a mixed tape contest! Send in a list of eight to ten songs that inspire you to make the world a better place! The winner gets an Ipod nanno, which is sweet, but I just think it'd be cool to make a mix like that. If you do it, post your mix attached to this entry, or on your own. :)

Corporate Cannibal - Grace Jones

Video directed by Nick Hooker.

This thing scares me. A lot. But it's so friggin' cool that I can't help but love it.

So this is Grace Jones. It amazes me that this woman has been around and famous since the 70's. She was photographed by Andy Warhol, she danced at Studio 54, and she has been a musical force in the gay dance club scene for 30 years! But unlike Cher, (and more like Grace's alien brother David Bowie), the music she is making now is new and interesting and ever intriguing. And I'll observe in passing that Grace Jones and David Bowie MUST have collaborated at some point. Just putting the two of them in the same room together would be like a scene out of "The Twilight Zone" In fact, if you look at their guest appearances in movies over the years, Goblin kings, aliens, Amazons...lots of the fodder for these otherworldly characters was mined from their rock-star personi.

So now this bad-ass lady is writing and producing songs of cultural relevance! And she's using chops that only she has to do so in a really intersting way. This song doesn't scream and protest the evils of capitalism and the corporate monster. It dramatizes it. AND IT'S TERRIFYING!

pleased to meet you, pleased to have you on my plate
your meat is sweet to me
your destiny
your fate

you’re my life support, your life is my sport

I’m a man-eating machine X2

you won’t hear me laughing, as i terminate your day
you can’t trace my footsteps, as i walk the other way

i can’t get enough prey, pray for me X2
(i’m a man-eating machine)
corporate cannibal, digital criminal
corporate cannibal, eat you like an animal

employer of the year, grandmaster of fear
my blood flows satanical,
mechanical, masonical (masonic=Freimaurer) and chemical
habitual ritual

i’m a man-eating machine.. X2

i deal in the market, every man, woman and child is a target
a closet full of faceless nameless pay more for less empitness

i’ll make you scrounge, in my executive lounge
you pay less tax, but i’ll gain more back

my rules, you fools

we can play the money game
greedgame, power game, stay insane
lost in the cell, in this hell
slave to the rhythm of the corporate prison

i’m a man-eating machine…
i can’t get enough prey
pray for me
corporate cannibal…
digital criminal…

i’ll consume my consumers, with no sense of humour
i’ll give you a uniform, chloroform
sanatize, homogenize, vaporize… you

i’m the spark, make the world explode
i’m a man-eating machine, i’ll make the world explode
corporate cannibal…

Hey World (Remote Control Version) - Michael Franti and Spearhead

Tres Cosas - Juana Molina

So I think I owe Parker an arm or something at this point cuz she's just proving herself a musical benefactress of the highest order. She introduced me to Juana Molina's music last year and I've become hopelessly addicted during that time.

One thing that just rocks my brain about Juana Molina is that she is best known in her native Argentina as a T.V. comedian. She had an audience of more than 300 people at her first concert - debut of the music on her first album. After 20 minutes, the audience was shouting disgruntled requests for funny stuff - since many came expecting her to make them laugh. By the end of the night all but 20 people had left, but the ones who stayed laid the foundation for a fascinated and devoted fan base. And unlike most actor-turned-musicians I can think of, her music is truly original and innovative. I love that her music is full of loops and synthesizers, but all the parts grow and work together like an ecosystem.

If you have time, watch this interview cuz it's a good one:

Spey in Spate - Natalie Macmaster

I would give up peanut butter AND Nutella for life if it meant I'd be able to play the fiddle like this.

Throw Me in the River - The Pines

I actually heard about this band from the lady whose house Pine Wilson and I stayed with the night of our gig at the Driftless Cafe in Viroqua, WI.
She said that her husband might have mistaken us for a band called "The Pines" who played at Green Man Music in Viroqua a few nights before. Then Gigi (our hostess) tells us about this band and what they do - that they brought a following of a hundred people with them and that the song "Sparrow and the Bell" was a killer. So I looked it up and this is the closest thing I've found so far (it has those words in the lyric) but that was already enough for a post.

Danny Boy - Swedish Chef, Animal, Beaker

I don't think anything needs to be said about this. But feel free if you have something to add.

Direct Orders - Anis Mojgani

Your mission from ME (should you choose to accept it):
1. respond with a youtube post of YOU rocking out as per the first poem from the video above.

AND/OR

2. Respond with a song that makes you wanna rock out

Of course, you might have to watch the other two poems first because the first one might make you want to and after you do, you might just profess your undying love and respect for Anis Mojgani cuz it just happened to me.

The National Anthem - sung by Whitney Houston

I'm two days late to celebrate holiday patriotism, but let's just say "Tis the Season"

Honk if you remember this musical event:


I was in the third grade when a classmate's dad went to fight in the Persian Gulf and she kept us updated on his well-being throughout the year. One day, she came to class so excited because she'd gotten to talk to her dad over the phone. Everyone laughed a little awkwardly when she told us how her little brother just said "I love you, I miss you, I love you, I miss you," over and over again into the phone to his far away dad. That got me thinking very hard about the scariness of being in danger all the time and that that's what it was like for our soldiers, and that any kind of loving patriotism was one more Care Bear Stare against the Forces of Evil.

I was also raised believing that Whitney Houston was sent to earth from the top choir of angels in heaven. No one told me this. My sister and I figured it out for ourselves at the ages of 4 and 6 thanks to "The Greatest Love of All".

And despite years of keeping a quiet eye on Whitney's People Magazine coverage as fervently as I had done Princess Di's, her voice has always been a blazing fire in my ears and when she sang the National Anthem at Superbowl XXV (friggin' 1991!) I felt like the world was being righted just a little bit more. And it drove home in me the notion that music and the love and energy in it could crumble any wall.

So now I listen to this song with a different perspective of both Iraq wars and both George Bushes than I had before. And the United States no longer seems to be the fearless, virtuous big kid on the playground who keeps all the world's bullies in check. Things about my country and its place in the world that I had thought were black and white are now blazing in multicolor. But the power of this particular Star Spangled Singing hasn't diminished. That moment was swimming in consumer culture context, but it was a link between countless souls for a lightning flash of time, and maybe the thunder from that is still rumbling somewhere. It's tough to see the line between sincerity and underhandedness. It's a beautiful human moment on its own, but in its context, it gives inertia to some not so clearly wonderful things, and some down right shitty ones. I'm aware that the picture isn't simple enough to pick the monster out of the crowd by pointing at it. All the same, hearing this all these years later, I'm angry with the fighter jets who dare to roar past at the end. Whoever set that up thought it would be the perfect thing to drive home "the message of the moment" but now I don't want her singing and the screaming of fighter planes to have anything to do with one another. In the most extreme light, the human spirit of that moment was manipulated into propaganda for the war. It's like turning a hummingbird into a carrier pigeon. You just don't do that!

Path of Green - Nosfell

I don't wanna overwhelm y'all - especially if you only have time to read about or listen to one song a day that's not of your choosing. I just wanna post a few side-dish songs along with the main course cuz I found them all within a half hour of each other and the path I took to get there is kinda interesting.

I'm not putting these songs in chronological order of when I first saw/heard them. If I did that, you wouldn't get to my favorite (and the song I'm posting about today) until last:



It just blows me away. It's like he's not so much performing as thinking out loud in music instead of words. He treats the song like a current or an animal that he has to catch before he can ride it. And the dude is rockin' the counter-tenortude!

Okay. Now that's done I can post the videos that brought me to that one.



Thanks to Kathryn, I am now addicted to Elephant Revival and had to watch every youtube I could find. So then I started thinking of Colorado and hippiness and thought of my contact ball (which is currently living on retainer within the pillows of my couch) and thought I should probably start practicing if I wanna be good at it in time for Faerieworlds. Then I went to that sight and saw pictures of Chris Murdoch and then youtubed him too.


And so to Ghasi Ram Blues by Kaya Project. I love it. And it is yet another reason I'm glad and lucky to have so many dancing and performing friends cuz there seems to be some sort of trend - because they need good music for their craft and so they get good at hunting for it.

Liking this notion of dancer music and deciding to test my theory again, I looked up other illusion art videos to hunt for music and found the following:


Music by Omnia


I knew I'd found something good when I was distracted by the music. Being distracted by music while watching something as hypnotic as poi was the clue that the music must be pretty friggin' interesting on its own.

And so Nosfell entered my consciousness wearing that song: "Sladinji the Grinning Tree".

So far I can't find anything on this guy that isn't in French with no translation icon handy. I wish I'd been raised in the Netherlands where that I'd have learned 5 languages and wouldn't need a translator! Cuz then I could see what this guys peers think of him.

I could have taken ages to post all of these individually - since this post alone contains a month's worth of Sunday songs (if we MUST have only one). But the reason I'm not afraid of posting them all here now is because we've all posted multiple songs at one time or another and never apologized for it. And why should we? There's enough good music out there for our wicked music-hunting skills to bring a whole feast of music to the table once a week! Cheers if you can clean your plate of all I served you today. You must have been really hungry!

Volumen - Björk

I will not deny that I couldn't stand Björk when I first heard her music. I listened to "It's Oh So Quiet" and was very annoyed that she kept screaming. Her picture disturbed me.
Then I stumbled upon a DVD of Björk's music videos called Volumen. Every single video is friggin' visionary and several of them changed the face of music as I understood it. From a musical standpoint, I hadn't realized until I watched the videos what a genius Bj