Sunday, August 16, 2009

Welcome to my blog

Hello all. So - welcome to the first post of my second attempt at blog. I think it was about a year ago that I tried to start a blog going discussing the relevance of Marxism in the 21st century, but everyone, including me, got bored with that after about a week and it just fizzled out.

But now, I thought that a slightly more accessible topic might work a bit better - a chance to discuss music. As most of my friends know, I've been spending the past couple of months immersing myself in all the music that I have somehow ignored for the past fifty years - anything belonging to that rather strange genre that I always knew only as "non-classical". Well, it's certainly genre that is a lot richer, a lot more complex, and a lot more exciting than I would ever have thought.

But if there is one thing almost as good as listening to music, it's listening to people talk about music - about what they like, why they like it, what it says or means to them. That's my purpose here - to talk a bit about what I'm listening to from day to day, and to hear about what you're listening to, too.

So join in and see if we can get this one rolling!!

7 comments:

  1. just to get the ball rolling....Tim buckley ' greetings from L.A.'..best most succicnt album of all time...funk, jazz, blues and abit in between ( star rating...4/5)

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  2. Wow ... a comment within an hour of my creating the blog. Thanks so much. No one did that on the Marxist blog!!!

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  3. This is a great idea, Ian. Mitchell's really the music brain of the partnership here, but it's amazing how much I've absorbed. I went for a long bike ride this morning listening to Led Zeppelin. Ramble On is one of my all time favorite songs (and gives energy and somehow profundity to very tired legs).

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  4. Ah yes, I always think of Mitchell whenever I see a Keith Jarrett CD.

    I don't have Ramble On ... which album is it on? I only have Led Zeppelin 4; but clearly it's inappropriate, especially for an obsessive compulsive completist, to not have 1, 2 and 3 as well.

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  5. Ok, here's where I'm ignorant: albums. I just know individual songs, which of course identifies me as a complete fraud on this blog. But damn it, I can sing them ALL.

    I'll get back to you on this. For Mitchell, albums are complete wholes, identifying not only a time and place but often a social/political setting. Me, I'm looking for whether I can dance to it.

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  6. Well, I agree totally with Mitchell about albums and the importance of experiencing them as a whole. Maybe it comes from all those years of listening to things like Mahler and Wagner where nothing lasts for less than an hour. I'll probably post a blog (or blog a post?) on that very issue at some stage. But nothing wrong with looking for the dance factor too - I dance to everything these days, which is pretty amazing given that I can't, and never could, dance.

    Anyway, I did some research and it seems Ramble On is Led Zeppelin 2. Clearly it's a message from powers greater than myself that I need to buy more LZ!!

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