What's on your iPod?

My song for this weekend: "Only teardrops" by Emmelie de Forest & Jacob & Morten. They were the winners of Eurovision Song Contest 2013.


[video=youtube_share;p3f9v8ebuD4]http://youtu.be/p3f9v8ebuD4[/video]
 
Buddha12 said:
Although Cat Stevens wasn't talking much about Islam when he first broke into the music scene . . . .
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Steven Demetre Georgiou (his girlfriend said he had a cat's eyes so he took that as his stage name) broke into the music scene in 1966 at age 18. One of the songs on his first album hit #2 in the UK. He finally made it onto the U.S. charts in 1970 with "Tea for the Tillerman," one of the iconic albums of the Singer-Songwriter Era that also gave us James Taylor, Carole King and Willie Nelson.

His Greek-Cypriot father was Orthodox and his Swedish mother was Baptist. They sent him to a Catholic school in Soho because of its reputation and also because it was close to home. So he was definitely raised as a Christian.

. . . . when he did is when everyone started to dislike him.
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In 1969 he contracted tuberculosis and almost died. The convalescence lasted more than a year, during which he had plenty of time to contemplate life, the universe and everything.

On vacation in Morocco, he heard the Aḏhān, the Islamic ritual call to prayer, which was explained to him as "music for God". Considering the state of the music business in the 1970s--punks and rappers making millions of dollars by insulting everything and everyone with wretchedly bad music (the punks) or no music at all (the rappers)--he was intrigued by the concept of music being for a loftier purpose. Then in 1976 he almost drowned during a California vacation. He promised God that he would work for him if he saved him. A large wave happened to form at that moment and swept him back to shore. The faux-validity of much of religion is merely the astounding power of coincidence, and this "evidence" motivated him to convert to Islam in 1977.

He is a musician first of all who at first didn't want involvement into any religious stuff. . . .
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He gave up music for 25 years after becoming a devout Muslim.

. . . . but was convinced by others to do so.
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Wikipedia tells the story differently, that his "enlightenment" was almost entirely due to personal revelations.

I enjoyed his music before he was involved, that I knew about, with the Rushdie affair. So whenever I listen to his older recordings I never equate what he became as what he was originally and never held that against him for his earlier works. People change and sometimes for the better but then again sometimes for the worse but they can change back again. I agree with you about the bad things people do and say that stick with them but we sometimes fail to see all of the good things that those same people have done or can do once again given to opportunity to change their views.
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Some bad things are so bad that it's virtually impossible to do enough good to even come close to outweighing them. As I said, I will continue to appreciate the music of Cat Stevens, but the only way I can do that is to regard Yusuf as a new and different person, as though Stevens had a brain tumor that changed him fundamentally. That's pretty close to what actually happened!

So I will never be able to listen to the music of Yusuf Islam. There is no way I can avoid conflating it with my grief for the injustice that Yusuf Islam perpetrated on a fellow artist.

I fully understand why so many people can't bear to look at Hitler's paintings. For all I know he might have been a great artist (although the people who have looked at them assure us that he was barely a good artist), but I can't separate that part of him from the more famous, and more evil, part.

Someone wrote a story in which a grand auction of Hitler's paintings was advertised. It drew a crowd of the curious, particularly Jews. The bidding opened on the first piece; it was not on display but there were photos of the whole lot for everyone to inspect. After very sluggish bidding, a Jewish guy got it for $50. The auctioneer's agent took him in the back room and handed him a little metal pot. He asked, "Where's my painting?"

The agent said, "The ashes are right here." The buyer then looked around the room and saw that it was full of little metal pots.

I'm not going to burn my Cat Stevens albums, but only because I like to believe that Cat Stevens was not the person who signed the fatwa.
 
I have been performing Moon Shadow and Wild World on the guitar since I was in my teens. I was so disappointed when Cat became Yusuf, because we lost a great singer/songwriter. Cat's music was always so mystical to me as a teenager.
 
quinnsong said:
I have been performing Moon Shadow and Wild World on the guitar since I was in my teens. I was so disappointed when Cat became Yusuf, because we lost a great singer/songwriter. Cat's music was always so mystical to me as a teenager.
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Most likely he had no more songs like those in him. Most of those singer\songwriter's first few albums are where the good stuff is. I asked myself that same question when i was a writer. After that you really need to collaborate. Bands make out much better long term. The Stones didnt hit their stride until between 72 and 78. Aerosmith seemed to improve overall the longer they lasted.

The only song of his i really cared for was 'the first cut is the deepest' Rod Stewart recorded that as well. Just a matter of taste though.
 
The other night I heard a good song in a dance club called blurred lines. First time i heard that, the DJ was really good right after that he played prince - wanna be your lover. Love the beginning of that.
 
The next song is "L'essenziale" (The essential). It was Italy's entry at Eurovision Song Contest 2013.


[video=youtube_share;S8oaxDV1q6o]http://youtu.be/S8oaxDV1q6o[/video]
 
Stanley said:
The Stones didnt hit their stride until between 72 and 78.
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Wow! That's certainly a minority opinion. "Sympathy for the Devil," "Gimme Shelter," "Honky Tonk Women," so many of the iconic hits that every musician has to already know before you can audition for a bar band: they all came out in the late 1960s.

Aerosmith seemed to improve overall the longer they lasted.
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Yuck! A local DJ said it perfectly a few months ago: "Hey guys! We've put up with 'Dude Looks like a Lady,' 'Love in an Elevator,' 'Falling in Love is Hard on the Knees,' 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing,' and all that other crap. We've been really patient for all these years. But enough is enough! Will you PLEASE start taking drugs again?"

"Dream On" and "No More No More" are two of the greatest songs ever written.
 
The Rolling Stones wrote one of the most popular songs of all times called I Can't Get No Satisfaction.

"(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" is a song by the English rock band The Rolling Stones, released in 1965. It was written by Mick Jagger and Keith Richards and produced by Andrew Loog Oldham. Richards' throwaway three-note guitar riff – intended to be replaced by horns – opens and drives the song. The lyrics refer to sexual frustration and commercialism.

The song was first released as a single in the United States in June 1965 and also featured on the American version of Out of Our Heads, released that July. "Satisfaction" was a hit, giving the Stones their first number one in the US. In the UK, the song initially played only on pirate radio stations because its lyrics were considered too sexually suggestive.[3] In Britain, the single was released in August 1965; it became the Rolling Stones' fourth number one in the United Kingdom. The song is considered to be one of the all-time greatest rock songs ever recorded. In 2004 Rolling Stone magazine placed "Satisfaction" in the second spot on its list of The 500 Greatest Songs of All Time, while in 2006 it was added to the Library of Congress National Recording Registry.

WIKI

[video=youtube;3a7cHPy04s8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=3a7cHPy04s8[/video]

Another Stones song was Paint It Black which was also done in the early 1960's and is another all time favorite song by them.

[video=youtube;n1zBG2TEjn4]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=n1zBG2TEjn4[/video]
 
Buddha12 said:
Another Stones song was Paint It Black which was also done in the early 1960's and is another all time favorite song by them.
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I like that one too, but I've never been in a band that played it. They all play "Honky Tonk Women" and, if they've got a female vocalist, "Gimme Shelter."

Charlotte Martin did a totally spooky cover of "Wild Horses," with a different tempo, a different attitude, and a solo piano. Check it out!
 
Fraggle Rocker said:
Wow! That's certainly a minority opinion. "Sympathy for the Devil," "Gimme Shelter," "Honky Tonk Women," so many of the iconic hits that every musician has to already know before you can audition for a bar band: they all came out in the late 1960s.
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Fraglle Rocker, gmilam and Buddha12, I was mainly using them and Aerosmith as an example to point out that bands or when you have a larger pool of collaborators than people on their own so they last longer. There are exceptions to every rule though.

To me the Rolling Stones BECAME THE ROLLING STONES in the 70s. Exile on Main St., which came out in 1972, was when the writing and musicianship surpassed anything they did in the 60s. Just a matter of taste though.

Plus i liked when they had that gritty New York feel and their music became more instrumentally focused, imho.

I even like Black and Blue, Some Girls etc. and Waiting on a friend (not even sure what album that is from) and time waits for no one, and it wont wait for me. Just some songs that are almost forgotten and dont get much credit. So I stand by my statement

Fraggle Rocker said:
Yuck! A local DJ said it perfectly a few months ago: "Hey guys! We've put up with 'Dude Looks like a Lady,' 'Love in an Elevator,' 'Falling in Love is Hard on the Knees,' 'I Don't Want to Miss a Thing,' and all that other crap. We've been really patient for all these years. But enough is enough! Will you PLEASE start taking drugs again?"

"Dream On" and "No More No More" are two of the greatest songs ever written.
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Well I agree the first round was definitely better for Aerosmith, but commercially you can't argue they did better second time around and they were still Aerosmith. And "Dream On" is one of the best songs ever recorded, great vocals and an amazing guitar solo.

Lately i have been getting into old Surf music, Funk and Rockabilly type bands. I am a mediocre guitar player so it is like discovering all this old music for the first time. My favorite sound is a strat or Telecaster through an old fender or Marshall amp so that only natural to now gravitate to those types of bands. I can never tire of that jangly funk\disco riffing on a strat.

As far as todays music goes, the new or past decade or so blues players\bands are just as good or in many cases better than the older blues stuff. None of this gets played on the radio but i was amazed once i started searching it out.
 
Stanley said:
Fraggle Rocker, gmilam and Buddha12, I was mainly using them and Aerosmith as an example to point out that bands or when you have a larger pool of collaborators than people on their own so they last longer. There are exceptions to every rule though.
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Tony Bennett. :)

To me the Rolling Stones BECAME THE ROLLING STONES in the 70s. Exile on Main St., which came out in 1972, was when the writing and musicianship surpassed anything they did in the 60s. Just a matter of taste though.
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We musicians hear music differently from other people. We evaluate the writing and the musicianship. Everyone else just judges a song by how much it moves them.

Some songs are really simple and require very little skill to play or sing, yet they rouch us deeply.

There were a lot of musical innovations in the 1960s that just blew us away. Technology had a lot to do with it, of course: the vast improvement in the electronics of guitar amplifiers, and of course the invention of the synthesizer. The tenor saxophone, once arguably the mainstay of the rock'n'roll sound, virtually vanished at this time. But the songwriting also underwent changes; genres were merging and new ones were created: folk-rock, soul, acid rock, progressive rock and heavy metal all debuted in that decade. Very few rock stars wrote their own songs in the 1950s (Little Richard and Paul Anka come to mind), but the Beach Boys, the Beatles and the Stones changed all that, and in the late 1960s the singer-songwriter movement yielded an entire new type of music: songs sung with intense emotion by the people who wrote them and therefore knew what they were about.

Janis Joplin be damned, Kris Kristofferson told us what "Me and Bobby McGee" was about: the 1960s had to end because our women grew up.

Somewhere near Salinas I let her slip away, looking for the home I hope she'll find.​

Every one of us hippie guys had that experience.

But I'd trade all my tomorrows for a single yesterday, holding Bobby's body next to mine.​

And every one of us hippie guys has a memory just like that, that will haunt us till our dying day.

Lately i have been getting into old Surf music, Funk and Rockabilly type bands.
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I call rockabilly the first glimmering of real rock'n'roll music. The country music of the late 1940s and early 1950s already had most of the elements of rock: blues modality, a backbeat, and improvised instrumental solos. But real rock'n'roll added something that went far beyond ragtime, Dixieland, swing or bluegrass: an exaggerated syncopation that utterly required a strong backbeat to keep the timing steady.

As far as todays music goes, the new or past decade or so blues players\bands are just as good or in many cases better than the older blues stuff. None of this gets played on the radio but i was amazed once i started searching it out.
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People get tired of old styles of music. This is, of course, a modern phenomenon. Up through the 18th century, musical styles remained popular for hundreds of years. But then composers like Chopin, Wagner and Rimsky-Korsakov began expanding the boundaries of formal music (what we now call "classical" even if it's written in the 21st century). At the same time, industrial technology expanded the potential of popular music.

New musical instruments were invented, notably wind instruments with valves that could play the complete chromatic scale. But even more important from our standpoint: the steel-string guitar. The tonal and dynamic range of this instrument (which Sears-Roebuck sold by mail order for two dollars) turned the itinerant folksinger into a one-man band who could play music for dancing! It's no exaggeration to say that this instrument created the Delta blues, the ancestor of modern popular music.

No, people don't want to hear old-time blues anymore, or even rockabilly. But every time we listen to Pitbull, Katy Perry, Mumford & Sons, or any other contemporary popular singer or band, we're hearing the echoes of all that music that came before and made this possible.
 
[video=youtube_share;6R7jSfLpk7Y]http://youtu.be/6R7jSfLpk7Y[/video]

Probably posted this before. Wonderful emo-goth song though. :bawl:
 
[video=youtube;A4qBYJ00230]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=A4qBYJ00230[/video]

Horse Latitudes & Moonlight Drive
 
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