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The Pillows, "One Life"

The Pillows, "One Life"

This is the song stuck in my head today, so I'm sharing it with you all in hopes of exorcising it.

No, not likely. I'll run into the tune again today, so ... er ... right.

The Pillows are a Japanese alt-pop three-piece; I don't know a whole lot about them, but apparently they have something like eighteen albums and thirty singles to their credit. Like most Americans, I only heard of them because of FLCL, a six-episode OVA that ran on Cartoon Network.

[video=youtube;0ob1cpyd8KQ]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ob1cpyd8KQ[/video]​

Sadly, the song sounds better in its FLCL form, which is a little different because it had to be mixed into the regular sound track for the video. That difference makes the song seem less belligerent, and almost entirely isolates an emotional condition. Of course, it is a depressing song, and perhaps that's the point. As a single, it sounds ... like a single. Within the FLCL framework, it's part of a world that makes absolutely no sense, which a person can relate to only through brief flashes of human conjunction otherwise known as catharsis.

[video=youtube;zLMs4rBWmSw]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zLMs4rBWmSw[/video]​
 
The Way We Were

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...uoCADw&usg=AFQjCNGKKhKF_gq4gO21NdlqIB200LHZCA

In tribute to ......

Marvin Hamlisch, Oscar-winning composer, dies at 68

Composer and conductor Marvin Hamlisch, best known for the torch song "The Way We Were," died Monday. He was 68 years old.

Hamlisch collapsed after a brief illness, his family announced.

In a career that spanned over four decades, Hamlisch won virtually every major award: three Oscars, four Grammys, four Emmys, a Tony, and three Golden Globes.

Hamlisch composed more than forty motion picture scores, including his Oscar-winning score and song for "The Way We Were," and his adaptation of Scott Joplin's music for "The Sting," for which he received a third Oscar.

Hamlisch's musical scores, though intricately conceived, never drew attention to themselves. They served to compliment the on-screen action, not overwhelm it -- enhancing each gesture, each glance, each moment of drama. That subtle approach allowed him to be something of a musical chameleon, easily gliding from searing dramas to off-beat comedies and making him a close collaborator to a diverse group of directors such as Woody Allen, Steven Soderbergh and Alan J. Pakula.

http://music.msn.com/music/article.aspx?news=748905
 
Ironically, it was anachronistic to use Scott Joplin's music in "The Sting." Ragtime was a craze in the 1890s, four decades before the era in which "The Sting" was set. Joplin's signature tune, "The Maple Leaf Rag," was written in 1897. By the ending years of the Great Depression, jazz was well-established and Americans were listening to a new kind of music.

Nonetheless, ragtime was one of the key motifs that went into the creation of jazz--the other was the blues. The blues gave jazz its blue notes, notes that waver unpredictably between their natural and flat pitch; when used skillfully they pump a song full of emotion, even an instrumental. Ragtime gave jazz its syncopation, the accentuation of secondary beats within a measure, giving it a free rhythm and distinguishing it from virtually all previous European and North American music.

Swing was the dominant form of jazz for many years, and its frequent, unexpected accentuation of the third beat in a triplet revolutionized American music. Many Americans could not adapt to syncopated beats and rejected ragtime, and later, jazz. It made them uncomfortable.

Improvisation was the third motif that characterized jazz. Instrumentalists composed music in real-time, playing what they felt at the moment. This made every performance unique, an intimate meeting of musician and listener/dancer. Of course music recordings captured some of these improvised solos. Eventually it became standard for a musician to try to repeat a solo that felt really good and was received well by the audience, adding to it, changing it, perfecting it, and these were recorded for posterity.

Rock'n'roll is now the dominant form of jazz, and indeed in much of the world the dominant form of music. Of course it has added its own motifs to the genre (focus on guitar, prominent rhythm section, loud singing or even shouting, lyrics calculated to offend the parents of the fans, etc.), but it's still jazz. It uses blue notes excessively (some rock melodies can be played exclusively in a pentatonic scale), it is highly syncopated (the standard one-TWO-three-FOUR beat almost makes a mockery of the concept of syncopation with its nearly invariable rigor), and improvised solos are standard.

Everyone who plays or loves rock'n'roll owes a debt to Scott Joplin and the ragtime musicians of 120 years ago.
 
"Shake It Out"


Regrets collect like old friends
Here to relive your darkest moments
I can see no way, I can see no way
And all of the ghouls come out to play

And every demon wants his pound of flesh
But I like to keep some things to myself
I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn

And I've been a fool and I've been blind
I can never leave the past behind
I can see no way, I can see no way
I'm always dragging that horse around

Our love is questioned, such a mournful sound
Tonight I'm gonna bury that horse in the ground
So I like to keep my issues drawn
But it's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

And I am done with my graceless heart
So tonight I'm gonna cut it out and then restart
'Cause I like to keep my issues drawn
It's always darkest before the dawn

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
And given half the chance would I take any of it back
It's a fine romance but it's left me so undone
It's always darkest before the dawn

Oh whoa, oh whoa...

And I'm damned if I do and I'm damned if I don't
So here's to drinks in the dark at the end of my road
And I'm ready to suffer and I'm ready to hope
It's a shot in the dark aimed right at my throat
'Cause looking for heaven, found the devil in me
Looking for heaven, found the devil in me
Well what the hell I'm gonna let it happen to me, yeah

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa

Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
Shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, shake it out, ooh whoa
And it's hard to dance with a devil on your back
So shake him off, oh whoa



http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=...wIGIAw&usg=AFQjCNHMWb9btaZGhyWIaPKlYEwotuvNUQ
 
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