I purposely haven’t written about the earthquake in Haiti because … there are no words. I’ve been glued to the news on TV and online every day trying to get my brain around it, to in some way comprehend … and I can’t. But I just had to post the video of Jennifer Hudson belting out her cover of The Beatles’ Let it Be at the Hope For Haiti Now telethon last night. It’s spine-chilling, tear-jerking in a good way:
Archive for the ‘Music is my therapy’ Category
Spine tingling
Saturday, 23rd January, 2010I purposely haven’t written about the earthquake in Haiti because … there are no words. I’ve been glued to the news on TV and online every day trying to get my brain around it, to in some way comprehend … and I can’t. But I just had to post the video of Jennifer Hudson belting out her cover of The Beatles’ Let it Be at the Hope For Haiti Now telethon last night. It’s spine-chilling, tear-jerking in a good way:
What was I saying about picking up the phone…
Tuesday, 16th December, 2008In a moment of randomness this afternoon (well, yesterday now, since it’s after 1am), I checked the Ticketmaster website to find that tickets had been released for the Coldplay concert at the O2 Arena. I immediately picked up my phone and fired off a text message to Island Girl. A few hours later we were in our prime aisle location singing along as Chris Martin bounded across the stage.
The one downside to such a display of spontaneity is that I’ve been remiss in carrying around my camera lately. And as giant yellow confetti-filled balloons descended from the ceiling and bounced off the hands and heads of the crowd during Yellow, I composed shots in my mind and whined again about all the great photos I was missing.
I’m wrong, there is another downside… footwear. When I pulled on my high-heeled boots in the morning, the same boots I foolishly wore on Friday despite knowing there would be serious dancing going on that night, it was under the assumption I’d be walking from home to station, station to office, and back again. Those are not concert-going boots. They are certainly not stand on the Underground to North Greenwich, walk around looking for friend and then our seats, stand and/or dance all concert-long, get stuck in crowds trying to catch public transport home boots. Those babies have turned my feet into bundles of stinging, throbbing nerve endings.
It’s a trade-off, I suppose. My aching body may be cursing me now, but there’s nothing quite like finding yourself standing in a darkened arena bathed in light from the stage, watching bands you never epected to see live, surrounded by roaring crowds who can identify all the melodies from their opening notes and know all the words. Especially when you assumed the evening held out nothing more than some hastily-thrown-together food and the Sex and the City DVD.
Why yes, I am a walking cliche…
Monday, 17th November, 2008At any given time I have a theme song. Not quite a la Ally McBeal, or that annoyingly catchy intro Charlotte Church sings on her chat show (“it’s my theme tune, my lovely theme tune, it goes on and on”…ahem), but a song that resonates so strongly with the way I’m feeling I’m compelled to listen to it over and over. I hear it in my head as I sit on the train; the melody wafts through my mind during quiet lulls at work.
I have a staple set of songs that often find their way back into rotation, songs with titles like What If, Love and Affection, Not a Pretty Girl… I think you get the gist…
I’ve been listening to Ani DiFranco constantly since I saw her in concert last month, and Recoil has become my new theme song to belt out to my invisible living room audience:
to all the people out there tonight
who are comforting themselves
if you should happen to see my light
you can stop and ring my bell
i’m just sittin’ here in this sty
strewn with half-written songs
taking one breath at a time
nuthin’ much going on
nuthin’ much going on
Photo Friday – Ani DiFranco @ The Forum
Friday, 7th November, 2008Only a week late this time…
I was so spolied when I saw Ani a year ago at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire because I got in the queue early enough to be right in front of the stage. This time I found myself much further back, having rushed up to Kentish Town from work, so my photos and video are pretty lousy. This is probably the best of the bunch. But click through to my Flickr set and you’ll find much better shots from last year. The photos are unedited, basically because I’m lazy.
I picked up the Live at Babeville DVD (a two-disc European release with bonus CD!) from the merch desk and it’s fantastic. I may have to start showing it to friends as a great introduction to Ani’s music and energy.
Photo Friday – Emmylou @ Hammersmith Apollo
Friday, 24th October, 2008More than a little overdue, ahem.
Taken from my second row seat at my first Emmylou Harris concert (not counting the tour with Mark Knopfler) at the Hammersmith Apollo in September.
And a bonus shot:
Just amazing.
More in my Flickr set here.
I didn’t edit them because at this point I just wanted to get them up so I could post!
My Shining Hour
Friday, 18th July, 2008It’s hard to believe it’s exactly a year to the day since I went to my first ever Barbra Streisand concert.
This is what I wrote that afternoon in a random Notepad file that’s been sitting on my desktop for the past year:
Last night I did what I always do the night before a big event in my life — take an indulgently long bath. It was a clichéd single girl bath — complete with candles (cinnamon scented), chocolate (Galaxy Minstrels), and a glass of alcohol (Tinto de Verano I brought back from Spain.)
I listened to the live concert CD Barbra put out after last year’s North American tour and tried to wrap my head around the fact that I was actually going to see her live in less than 24 hours. I didn’t do a very good job because I still can’t get my head around it.
That’s as far as I got because then, as now, I was at a loss for words.
I distinctly remember the day I became a devoted Barbra Streisand fan: August 28, 1995, four days after my 14th birthday, Sky One showed the TV special of her 1994 concert tour. They’d promoted it heavily, with clips of Barbra in her gorgeous black Donna Karan gown belting He Touched Me gracing what seemed like every other commercial break. Over the years I’d been aware of how good she was thanks to my mum’s love of A Star is Born, which she watched faithfully every time it came on TV. So I looked forward to the special with anticipation, settling myself on the floor in front of the TV that evening, and by the time it was over I was hooked.
I couldn’t get the songs out of my mind, and when the (now-defunct) Britannia Music catalogue came through the post, I begged my mum to order Back to Broadway, One Voice, and the A Star is Born albums. Not long after that I recorded The Prince of Tides from TV and my obsessiveness was complete.
What followed was several years of traipsing around London to various music/video/book shops to track down CDs and imported magazines — I stood in shops flicking through more copies of the National Enquirer looking for any and all Barbra references than I care to admit.
In a way I miss that, in these days of Amazon, eBay, and online news/magazines — stumbling upon new sources of memorabilia, the anticipation of walking up to a display of magazines and walking away with a new article for the folder I’d created that was brimming with clippings divided by sections: music reviews, film, interviews, etc. It became even more fun when Kam joined in with my obsession and we frantically phoned each other to share news of our latest finds, one of us often buying double copies of things to give it to the other.
Despite the increasing rumours I didn’t really think I would ever see Barbra Streisand live, hear the magic of that voice, described as liquid gold, in person. During the final of the three London concerts, the woman sitting next to me whispered to her S.O. something like “I can’t believe I’m actually seeing Barbra Streisand live.” Indeed.
I just found another random file (this one in Word) I wrote the afternoon before that first show:
I’ve dreamed of this moment for nearly 13 years and now the whole thing seems surreal, as if any moment someone will pop up and say “haha just kidding — did you seriously think this would ever really happen?” The truth is I didn’t. Even as I held out hope that some day Barbra would return to London on stage, I never really expected her to do it. She hates performing, she’s happy in LA with her marriage and her house — why would she. Even when she did her U.S. tour and the rumour mill was spinning about London, it never seemed real. That would explain why I never got around to putting aside money for tickets.
So now I’m going to not one or even two, but THREE Barbra shows, each time in bullshit nosebleed seats where I’m sure she’ll just be a speck on stage.
As much I’m excited, I don’t think it’s ever going to seem real. The waiting, the 13 years of waiting cannot be eclipsed by a couple of hours that will fly by as if in a dream.
And I was right — it never stopped feeling like a dream, especially the third show, when I managed to score top price tickets for Kam and myself that Ticketmaster was selling off for the same price as the upper seats and we were close enough to really see her face and feel present, in the moment rather than observing it from afar. For her encores people were standing and rushing closer to the stage, so I got to stand at the front of of our section and be closer than I ever could’ve imagined.
My inevitable fatalism is never lurking far below the surface, and even at the fulfillment of this dream it reared its conflicted head:
As excited as I am about actually, finally going to see her, to hear her live, I’m feeling almost overwhelmingly sad. Because although I was waiting all that time, at least the potential was there — I might happen one day. But now she is. And now, when it’s over, it’s over. I won’t have that hope to hang on to anymore, to look forward to. That one day I’ll go to one of her concerts. Because she’ll have done them for the last time. This really is a once in a lifetime deal.
Maybe I’m looking at this the wrong way. In fact, I know I am. I should soak up the excitement and enjoy every moment, revel in every second. Those few hours will be a highlight of my life and I should live in them, not waste them by getting ahead of myself to when they’re over. That’s a ridiculous waste.
A year later, it’s a lesson I’m still trying to apply.
Here’s the final song of the show, My Shining Hour, from the last night of the tour:
Uneasy listening
Saturday, 5th July, 2008My early summer playlist is unusually melancholy. (I’m listening to Natalie Merchant as I type.) Once the sun comes out and the temperature pushes past 20 degrees, I normally dig out the Motown and classic rock (think Cream/Eric Clapton, the Police, Dire Straits) and segue into reggae and soca as the Notting Hill Carnival approaches at the end of August.
But in my Grey’s Anatomy obsession, I’ve downloaded almost every song from every episode (not one by one — there were a couple of zip files floating around Bittorrent and eMule) and while there are some great upbeat tunes, the ones I adore are the melodramatic tracks like Brandi Carlile’s Tragedy and Breathe (2AM) by Anna Nalick. Plus, Emmylou Harris has a new album out, All I Intended to Be, and that woman just doesn’t do happy…
Here’s what I’m constantly hitting Play on at the moment:
- 9 Crimes – Damien Rice
Hands down my favourite song right now. I stupidly left my mp3 player on the bed when I went out this afternoon, which I only realised when I was on the bus fishing through my bag for it, and I couldn’t wait to get home so I could hear this for the 3,284th time.
- Hometown Glory РAd̩le
Such a great song to belt out in the afternoon and extra poignant because it’s about London!
- I Tell Myself – Correatown
Haunting. Heartbreaking.
- A Bitter Song – Butterfly Boucher
Ditto.
- The Great Escape – Patrick Watson
Both this and Bitter Song are from the Meredith drowning episode, so no wonder they’re depressing…
- God Only Knows – Joe Henry
Bereft. There’s no other word to describe how this makes me feel. But it also makes me happy, because it’s just so good.
- Keep Me Warm – Ida Maria
I cannot get enough of this song. I love the ambience…probably because it’s inextricably linked in my brain with that final scene of Grey’s series 4.
- Dream – Priscilla Ahn
- Giving Up – Ingrid Michaelson
- The Cure for Pain – Jon Foreman
All three above are from that last episode…Grey’s has introduced me to so much great music I would never have otherwise come across.
- Young Folks – Peter Bjorn and John
The most uptempo of the bunch
- All I Need – Mat Kearney
Powerful imagery. Love the climax. Have seen the episode this was on so many times I can practically hear Meredith’s voiceover about time at the end of the song.
- Soldier – Anna Nalick
“if this life doesn’t give you the love you expect // There’s always the next”
- Shores of White Sand – Emmylou Harris
The new album is going to be a grower, but that’s hardly a bad thing — I said the same about All the Roadrunning, which I came to adore. I appreciate this song more each time I hear it.
- Gold – Emmylou Harris with Dolly Parton and Vince Gill
The first time I heard this I think I said “Oh my god” out loud because I was having an eargasm. The blending of those three voices is… gold.
Looking over that list it’s like a soundtrack to wallowing in misery.
Forgotten fairy tale
Sunday, 13th April, 2008As the lights dimmed and the curtain lifted on Friday night’s Royal Ballet performance of Sleeping Beauty, it occurred to me that I couldn’t actually remember the story. Obviously I knew the princess was awoken by a kiss from a handsome prince, but the reason she was sleeping was slightly beyond the grasp of my memory. All the way through the first act, as fairies welcomed the birth of the princess, I was racking my brain.
Clearly Sleeping Beauty wasn’t my favourite fairy tale growing up. Thinking about it, I loved Cinderella and Snow White more… or even better, Alice in Wonderland. Anyway, I felt better when at the first interval one of the women sitting in front of me turned to her friend and said: “Is it that the first spell says she can’t have any children and the second one says she’ll just fall asleep instead?” After the second act, she wondered: “Why did the fairy put everyone to sleep?” Obviously I wasn’t the only one having trouble recalling a basic childhood staple.
My dodgy memory notwithstanding, I loved the ballet. The dancers were of course exquisite, leaping and spinning across the stage, defying gravity on pointed toes. (At one point the princess — I forgot to check who was in last night’s cast — stayed en pointe on one foot while four successive suitors took her hand and walked all the way around so that she turned on the spot… I’m sure there’s a proper name for that…) The staging softly evoked a three-dimensional story book and the lighting was appropriately ethereal. I’m always pondering the way lighting is used to effect in live performances, whether it’s concerts, plays, or ballet — it was pretty and dream-like and worked well.
And the music… there was a worrying moment when the director or whatever of the ROH came out before the curtain rose to say that some members of the orchestra were stranded on a train stuck outside London Bridge station. Having worked near that station for a couple of years before we moved to our current office a little further along the river, I could easily believe it would be close to another hour before they would arrive. Rather than wait for them, the performance went ahead on time, and she said there might be certain “sounds” missing — which gave the impression there would be gaps of embarrassing silence. Perhaps the Tchaikovsky connoisseurs in the audience were painfully aware of the absent instruments, tsking at every missing note, but I was blissfully ignorant.
Being the figure skating addict I am, I kept recognising melodies that show up in ladies singles programs all the time. Every season there’s at least one baby ballerina floating over the ice to Sleeping Beauty.
In fact, 99% of the classical music I know comes from figure skating. The other 1% comes from going to the BBC Proms for the last couple of years, and after 3 hours of lyrical Tchaikovsky I was compelled to check out the Royal Albert Hall website to find they’ve just released the schedule for this year’s Proms.
I’m so excited because there are some great lineups and I’ve already come up with a provisional Must See list full of my favourite Russian composers. I also want to explore some Czech works, having read so much Milan Kundera. Now I just have to wait until July!
Party of one
Tuesday, 1st April, 2008Dance, even if you have nowhere to do it but your living room. ~ Mary Schmich
I need to go to a party, or a bar/club, but in the meantime I will dance around my flat to Evil by Interpol while drinking cheap white wine and scarfing down Minstrels. I’m all about the simple pleasures.
When the rain comes down are you where you need to be…
Tuesday, 27th November, 2007The rain was pelting down fast when Kam and I headed for Camden last Wednesday evening. It was a relief to put down our umbrellas when we stepped inside the cosy Green Note, a vegetarian cafe/bar on the Parkway, glad to have made it without drowning.
We paid the £6 to get our hands stamped for entry to the room in the back where the live music would be, then took a table in the front to order dinner. It’s almost fun to be eating in a vegetarian place, where at least I don’t have to be tempted by meat dishes, although I did have to exercise restraint in not ordering a veggie quesadilla (oh how I love those — I’m very tempted to go to my favourite Mexican restaurant and devour one in all its wheat, chicken, and cheese-filled glory). We ordered a pair of Manhattan cocktails — what is it about cocktails lately? — and did some catching up.
I’m so glad I dragged Kam along, because she’s so much bolder than I am about approaching people (I’m just a little baby chicken), and she blurted out something like “I think you’re amazing; I love your music!” to Rachael Sage as she passed our table. Startled, Rachael graciously stopped and we introduced ourselves.
Once we’d finished eating we headed into the bar for her set and managed to score a table, albeit near the back. The lighting was great for the atmosphere, just Rachael on stage with her keyboard, but not so great for my dodgy camera skillz; hence last week’s grainy picture. I didn’t take note of the setlist, but several of my favourites were in there — Trouble, Wildflower, What If, Featherwoman, Lonely Streets. It was my second time seeing her live (my post on the first is here), and as before she came across as engaging and charismatic, with more asides and anecdotes between — and even during — songs.
Judging by the applause, her dynamic delivery and beautiful songcrafting struck a chord with the crowd, and when Kam and I went up to buy CDs (after a set by Susie Wilkins, who I was hearing for the first time and really liked… go check out her MySpace) the bloke in front of us bought all 7 of her albums. I picked up her latest, The Blistering Sun, and Illusion’s Carnival, which for whatever reason I’d never got around to buying before, to complete my collection.
Kam and I hung around dorkishly whispering about getting our CDs signed and a photo, which Rachael sweetly did. Triumphant, we strode off to Camden Tube, the road glistening under the settled rain drops and streetlights as we excitedly recounted our evening.
* Title comes from Unbeauty, one of my favourite Rachael Sage songs, which you can download here.
