Friday night music...

Ever since I first heard "A Little Respect" on the radio more than 25 years ago, I've loved Erasure. Their new album is really quite good. I'll let someone else say it better :)

Review by David Jeffries    (as it appears on allmusic.com):               

Following a holiday album (2013's Snow Globe) with this "return to form" album means veteran duo Erasure are now on the cliched career revival path for aging pop stars, but maybe it's just by chance. Make that "likely," as The Violet Flame gets right down to dancey, inspired business on its opening "Dead of Night," a track that pumps with the beat of any given single off the duo's great 1989 album Wild!. Classic lyrics from Andy Bell speak to the morality play that club night can be ("Too many times you're forgiven/Now you cry like you're the victim") then the chorus is like a pair of bright red cha-cha heels (a joyful stuttering of "D-d-d-dead of night") that won't be ignored. If hearing Bell in his Maleficent costume is a decadent kind of delicious, he's still an excellent Sleeping Beauty as well, as the pumping "Paradise" welcomes a new soul mate with open arms and open heart. Synth man Vince Clarke is simpatico in these back-to-the-future surroundings, as the great "Be the One" sounds like he plundered the computer and found some early sketches of Yaz's "Only You." while "Under the Wave" could be seamlessly mixed with all the minimal bleeping and blooping on Depeche Mode's debut album Speak & Spell, also known as Clarke's last hurrah with the band. The big anthem this time out is "Elevation," a cut with the simplicity of Robin S's "Show Me Love" and lyrics preaching freedom to the dancing masses ("It makes you kinda wonder, what are we supposed to do/When the fate of many, is guided by the hand of few/Who-o-oa."), then there's the closing "Stayed a Little Late Last Night" and the heart-breaking "Smoke and Mirrors," both serving the roles of a soul-filling number that sticks to the bones. With all the elements in place, the late-era The Violet Flame sits on the top shelf of Erasure albums, and considering all the greatness in the back catalog, that's no easy task.

One of the prettiest tracks off the album is called "Sacred" :


We close our eyes and fantasise

To see what dreams will come alive

Our created energy runs through

 

When we connect our consciousness

Make our love a guiding light

And I am there in every part of you

 

Never feel that you're alone

Hold on tight and I'll be strong

In spite of all the things we've done

Our love is all

 

 Sacred

 Sacred

 

 We pray for love and deeper meaning

 Holding our emotions in

 Would only keep us prisoners inside

 We let our minds and hearts release us

 Pure intention sets us free

 And there is nowhere left for us to hide

 

 Never feel that you're alone

 Hold on tight and I'll be strong

 In spite of all the things we've done

 Our love is all

 

 Sacred like a thousand stars

 Sacred when I'm in your arms

 Oh you keep me safe from harm

 Our love is all

 

 This is all we ever needed

 all we ever needed

 

 Sacred

 
Speaking of pretty music, one of the most sincere and touching songs ever recorded surely has to be "You Are So Beautiful" as performed by Joe Cocker (Billy Preston and Beach Boys' Dennis Wilson actually wrote it):

from etsy.com

"Featuring a brilliantly slowed-down arrangement courtesy of producer Jim Price, Preston's 'You Are So Beautiful' became this impossibly gorgeous exploration of love's fragility in Cocker's hands. Every crack in his voice spiders up toward another underlying doubt. In a twist, Dennis Wilson of the Beach Boys later claimed co-authorship of the song."

Read More: Top 10 Joe Cocker Songs | http://ultimateclassicrock.com/joe-cocker-songs/?trackback=tsmclip

 

                                                                

I can open jars and take care of spiders just fine, but the one thing I do mind about being single is waking up after a nightmare and not being able (or wanting) to go back to sleep because of the fear and loneliness that seems to sweep through the room. When it's really bad I reach out for one of the stuffed animals that sits on the big wicker chair next to my bed.

Since I've been doing a lot of this lately, I wondered if it's normal to hug a teddy bear so late in the game. When I typed in Google "is it normal to still sleep with a teddy bear?" I actually got lots of reassuring results.

These are just a few of the things I discovered:

*http://www.buzzfeed.com/tabathaleggett/problems-only-adults-who-still-sleep-with-their-bear-will

*Maybe teddy bears are not typically high on the list when it comes to identifying strategies that adults use in coping with life’s stressors. By the time we have reached adulthood, most of us (except perhaps me) have traded in our stuffed animals for more age-appropriate items that we have chosen to comfort us. But whatever we have chosen — and almost all of us have them — these devices serve to offer us solace in times of distress.--from Psychology Today

*This comment made me feel better on gurl.com:

I love to snuggle up after picking up my kids at school with an orange bear named Berry, a Jellycat “Black and Cream Puppy” named Spots, and a blanket I crocheted when I was 7. Back in the day, we learned to crochet at a young age. (If anyone here is as old as I am- I was born in 1966- then you know what I’m talking about!)

*Read more: http://www.gurl.com/2012/11/28/teddy-bear-snuggle-sleep-with-teddy-bears/#ixzz3Gz1o1xfp

A teddy bear (obviously) can't ever whisper words of comfort or hug back, but sometimes having something cuddly to hold on to is almost enough.

 

Jessica Lange as Elsa Mars on American Horror Story: Freak Show

Jessica Lange singing Lana Del Rey's "Gods and Monsters" is about as good as it gets right now. It's not so much that she's a good singer as that she's a mesmerizing one and if anyone else besides Lana is qualified to get the mystical moodiness of the song down it's definitely Jessica Lange as Elsa Mars.

Her normally jaded and suspicious character is so hopeful it's not too late for one more chance at being a fabulously famous entertainer she's all too ready to believe anyone who will tell her there's still time. Elsa's desperation fuels her to hire a fake fortune teller who sees "applause and a man with fierce eyes" in her future.

Each season so far, Jessica has portrayed a completely different woman and it's her superb stage presence, not her singing, that has made both songs ("Life On Mars" from the first episode of "Freak Show" and now "Gods and Monsters") unforgettable.

The actress has said this is her last year of "American Horror Story" and that she will soon be retiring. The show, which reboots each season, will need a strong presence to replace her...Anjelica Huston comes to mind. I think she'd be awesome.

Jessica Lange appears in the November issue of Elle as part of their "Women In Hollywood" issue

Books and Cash on Sunday...



from Uncut magazine...

Anonymous...as seen on Facebook

 



Johnny Cash is about as far from David Bowie as you can get. Even when he ventured into "out there" territory (covering Depeche Mode on his 2002 album, American IV, The Man Comes Around), he made his version the way only he could:

(as quoted in Mojo October 2013) "I heard that {"Personal Jesus"} as a gospel song. And if you think of it as a gospel song, it works really well. We didn't have any major disagreement over that song, I just heard that a couple of people had recorded it, the writer wanted me to try it, and I did, and I loved it. And I went for it."

Some days, music isn't just an interest or a passion, it's a necessity. To go from a sad day to one where you're glad to be alive can be due, in a large part, to music and books. Maybe it's warped to think this way, but when you sometimes find yourself unsure, even afraid, of people music and books take on lives of their own...

 

I find a calming strength in Johnny Cash's voice that I really need today.

 

from Rolling Stone:

 

Born February 26th, 1932 (died September 12th, 2003)
Key Tracks "Ring of Fire," "I Walk the Line," "Folsom Prison Blues"
Influenced Bob Dylan, Merle Haggard, Steve Earle

Johnny cash "sounds like he's at the edge of the fire," Bob Dylan wrote in Chronicles. "Johnny's voice was so big, it made the world grow small." The Man in Black's rolling, stentorian baritone is one of the defining voices in American music, from his earliest singles for Sun Records through his commercial prime in the Sixties and Seventies to his Nineties rebirth. He approached novelty songs such as "A Boy Named Sue" and "One Piece at a Time" as seriously as he did gospel music. "I'd been hearing 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' my whole life, but when I heard Johnny sing it, it dawned on me what it was about," says his collaborator Rick Rubin. "It took on a whole new resonance and meaning. He said the words in a way that you really trusted them."

Read more: http://www.rollingstone.com/music/lists/100-greatest-singers-of-all-time-19691231/johnny-cash-20101202#ixzz3GcP4zraA

Saturday night music

Some people come home, put their things away, get comfortable and then pour themselves a drink...others change into their pajamas and put on an appropriate record.

Tonight, I've been listening to Station to Station*

 

and it's not that hard to believe, especially when you really listen to the whole album, that the man spent the same year he recorded this doing coke and living pretty much on a diet of peppers and milk.

 

I love David Bowie's music a lot, even if I'm not always sure about the man himself. (There are times I wonder how he's still alive given how many drugs he did in the 70s.)

 

He's, thankfully, not so reliant on narcotics for inspiration these days and has done some of his best stuff in years. The Next Day, released in 2013, was terrific.

 

Right now, I'm reading The Man Who Sold The World to find out more about albums such as Heroes, Hunky Dory, Low, Station to Station and Young Americans.

 

There is a lot of neat stuff about songs from each album, some of my favorite snippets are about "Life On Mars." :

 

It was an epic journey from the single piano note that opened the song to the climax of Mick Ronson's gargantuan orchestral arrangement...Bowie's vocal--also a first take, according to producer Ken Scott--was equal to the majesty of the arrangement, as he hit a high B flat at the end of the chorus and held it for three whole bars. The passion of that climax contrasted with the acerbic, almost nasal tone of the verse...The clash of cynical despair and passionate commitment was almost shocking--not least for what it revealed about how Bowie saw his own role as a star in the making, at the end of this remarkable performance of a deeply unsettling song.

 

Author Peter Doggett considers Hunky Dory Bowie's most commercial album of all his career and feels it could have taken the singer to Beatlesque heights. I love the book's focus on individual recordings.

   

* Review by Stephen Thomas Erlewine from allmusic :              

 

Taking the detached plastic soul of Young Americans to an elegant, robotic extreme, Station to Station is a transitional album that creates its own distinctive style. Abandoning any pretense of being a soulman, yet keeping rhythmic elements of soul, David Bowie positions himself as a cold, clinical crooner and explores a variety of styles. Everything from epic ballads and disco to synthesized avant pop is present on Station to Station, but what ties it together is Bowie's cocaine-induced paranoia and detached musical persona. At its heart, Station to Station is an avant-garde art-rock album, most explicitly on "TVC 15" and the epic sprawl of the title track, but also on the cool crooning of "Wild Is the Wind" and "Word on a Wing," as well as the disco stylings of "Golden Years." It's not an easy album to warm to, but its epic structure and clinical sound were an impressive, individualistic achievement, as well as a style that would prove enormously influential on post-punk.

       

For some gentle unwinding on a late Saturday night, you might want to try this...

The cover of Bruce Springsteen's "I'm On Fire" is beautiful and transcendent. It's off of Acid Pauli's Get Lost V and sounds as if Elvis Presley and Chris Isaak somehow merged together to record this. It's just a stunning track.

Another gorgeous song is "Weightlighting" off the album of the same name by Trashcan Sinatras. More than aptly titled, it takes you outside of yourself as if it were inducing some kind of musical astral projection.

weightlifting
i discover the wheel and watch the buildings go by
you talk a little soft, turn off the radio
i just want to hear all the past times
the rushed hours, the endless lives
don’t become a burden
say the word and be free
you will find a great weight lifting
easing your mind, a great weight lifting
just leave it behind, a great weight lifting
and you will find a great weight lifting
it’s been a lonely winter hibernating away
you need a little sunlight on that face
how long can you stay in the darkness?
dust round the empty nest?
you could make you way out
if you lay down the load
you will find a great weight lifting
easing your mind, a great weight lifting
leave it behind, a great weight lifting
you will find a great weight lifting
just leave it behind, a great weight lifting
and you will find a great weight lifting