May 14th, 2008
This will be a recurring feature in which I take two songs and debate which is the better song. It occurred to me in a twitter moment when I had Bizarre Love Triangle earworming me and it took me a second to parse that it was not my favorite New Order song, which is True Faith. Then it occurred to me that Bizarre Love Triangle is the one with a pop song legacy, while True Faith has gotten shorter shrift.
So in this pop song death match, I think True Faith wins on musical strength. But others might disagree. Curious to see if it gets any Twitter feedback; I’ll keep you posted.
Posted in Music by: Helen
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May 5th, 2008
Been a while. I really need to get DJ gear and start spinning at unconferences, given the reception these things have been getting among my social media friends. I have several more that I’ve been working on and hope to get to soon, including one of … gasp! current pop music that catches my ear. It does happen from time to time.
Posted in Music, Playlists by: Helen
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April 3rd, 2008
This is a selection of 1990s music, primarily British. It moves through the decade, going from shoegaze to Britpop to TripHop.
Enjoy!
Posted in Music, Playlists by: Helen
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December 21st, 2007
Oh, what the hell. This is me singing John Prine’s “Angel of Montgomery,” which you may know as a Bonnie Raitt tune.
Posted in Music by: Helen
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October 10th, 2007
Wah. I am starting to sound like a one-note flute sometimes, I guess, when I defend the fringes. But there is one place I’m hard and fast on when it comes to tradition, and that’s church music.
I love hymns and anthems, and I really should be in the choir, but EfM takes precedence right now and I’ve been too peripatetic in the past. I have a good chunk of the 1940 hymnal memorized because most of my churchness was before 1982. When your mom is the choir director, it becomes second nature.
But I find myself just… totally, BLEAH over so-called praise music. I love gospel music, stained-glass bluegrass, orchestral music, international songs of faith, spirituals, secular-music-brought-over, and, most of all, traditional hymns from the 18th and 19th century.
But I went to a church service not too long ago with a creative liturgy, adapted from the one we all know and love, and really enjoyed it. Except for the praise music.
Just wanted to let all my traditionalist friends-in-faith know that I’m not completely outside the box.
Posted in Episcopal Church, Music by: Helen
2 Comments
June 13th, 2007
There’s a song by a Scandinavian band called Covenant called “Like Tears in Rain.” It’s named after a line in Blade Runner. But the song itself, with lyrics that read like a post-apocalyptic Good Friday, always makes me want to write stories where passion beats down vicissitude, where determination conquers despair, where a flower blooms amid the grime and soot of industrial waste and rot.
The book I’m writing, which doesn’t have a title yet, is about a woman who has to unite the powers of good because there is a darker flood coming. And the powers of good don’t want to be united. They’d rather scowl across the aisle at one another and point their fingers at the black and white that each side sees.
Cept, it’s not black and white for these two groups. It’s blue and red. (I swear, when I dreamt this, I wasn’t thinking about politics. The colors are magic, and black magic and white magic implied good and evil, and both alignments are good.)
The book is becoming bigger than me, and every time i sit down to it when there’s no one around and a new wave soundtrack pulsing little gothy synthy beats at me, it gets a little more real.
I’m finally writing what I want to write.
(Okay, maybe the Skinny Puppy is a little too much.)
Posted in Music by: Helen
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May 23rd, 2007
I am brainstorming a faith-related comic with my DFH. Trying to think of a catchy title, I pondered cribbing the title of a famous Depeche Mode song, Blasphemous Rumors. Poking around the internet to see if anyone else has cribbed it, I found this:
http://www.bab.thedrivel.com/?p=43
Click the file for “Gregorian.” This is a haunting song about the crisis of faith that everyone has when they are punched in the face by “bad things happening to good people.” It’s the anthem of my teen years, and even though I’d be redeemed from that despair, it took a long time, and I still understand the haunt. This version reanimates it in an inchoate call to reflection.
Posted in Music by: Helen
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February 4th, 2006
email post flaked out, so this may post twice. if so, apologies, but it’s short, I promise.
but…
am i the only one that when i see “big mommas house” on the movie marquee, I think, “laß es raus”?
Posted in Music, Random by: Helen
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December 18th, 2005
Arcade Fire's Rebellion (Lies) reminds me of OMD's Locomotion, but with jingly guitars instead of goofy synths.
ETA: There's more goth in indie rock than there is in current goth scene. I'm really wanting to spin again, for no other reason than all the cool shit I've heard on itunes radio stations today.
Posted in Music by: Helen
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