Sunday, April 19, 2009

The Sound of Music

It’s been an interesting couple of weeks in my sector of the blogiverse, with music and fiction taking up about equal amounts of my time. Because there’s sufficient material to warrant two blog posts, I’ll deal with the music aspect in this one, and begin work on the fiction part of it tomorrow.

When Just an Earth-bound Misfit posted a link to Susan Boyle’s video last Monday (see the heading And Now For Something Completely Different), I never dreamed I’d be devoting this blog post to music. But Susan’s singing is superb (her video was viewed more than 30 million times in less than a week). And inspirational. And I couldn’t let it go without expressing my admiration for her talent.

On 4/07, Tarleisio, blogging as MoltenmetalMama, posted The Rock’n’roll Redemption Infinite Playlist, Part One. On the 10th, she posted Part Two. In her inimitable writing style, she reflects on enough heavy metal to start an industrial machine shop. If you’re a “metal” fan, you’ll find treasure trove enough to keep your blades rotating for a week. You’ll have to google each group to find the YouTube videos, but it’s a small price to pay for total eardrum destruction.

Badtux the Snarky Penguin has proof that music is a ghost that haunts the instrument and that only the adept can properly communicate with it. Sungha Jung, a young Korean boy and guitar virtuoso extraordinaire, does a lot of pickin’ and virtually no grinnin’ to prove he’s a serious musician who’s on familiar terms with the ghost. Scroll down the page (if you wait too long, you may have to backpedal a page or more) to find the two videos.

And I would be remiss not to mention Skippy the Bush Kangaroo, who posts a music video daily. His most recent offerings include “The Boss,” Sound Tribe Sector 9, and The Beatles. Gee, with this much music on tap, I sort of feel like singing.

If only I could.

2 comments:

  1. In case one of your multitude of readers is interested in clicking through directly to my postings featuring Sungha:
    A conversation between a boy and his guitar.
    More proof Peaceful Wednesday evening music blogging.

    I don't know what Sungha is going to do with his life as he grows and matures as a musician, he might decide to become a computer programmer or something instead as he realizes that a musician's life is hard and poor, but it is clear that he has already discovered the spirits inside the instrument and thus passed beyond being merely a technician. He is where the music lives.

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  2. Thanks for your comments and for the links, Badtux. Regarding "Peaceful Wednesday . . .": A master and his disciple? It's really hard for me to tell which one is which. But it's another reminder of why I love classical guitar.

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