Album of the day: “Post” by Bjork (1995)

Bjork is an Icelandic singer-songwriter, composer, actress and music producer, whose work includes seven solo albums and two film soundtracks.  She has been nominated for 13 Grammy Awards, an Academy Award and two Golden Globe Awards (including one for acting).

For her performance in Dancer in the Dark, Björk won the Best Actress Award at the 2000 Cannes Film Festival.

Post is her third studio album: Björk named the album Post for two reasons. First, she saw Debut and Post as a series; the songs on Debut were written before her move to England, while the songs on Post were written after moving to England and dealt with her experiences there. Second, she saw the album as posting her feelings (“for me, all the songs on the album are like saying, ‘listen, this is how I’m going’”). The white shirt with blue and red markings that Björk wears on the cover is an allusion to an air mail envelope, thus giving Post an additional meaning of “mail“.

“It’s Oh So Quiet” performed by Björk is a renamed cover of the Betty Hutton song “Blow a Fuse”.

The music video, directed by Spike Jonze, which was shot in New York City, features Björk emerging from an extremely dirty washroom in an auto shop. She strolls down the main street of an American town and she is joined in song and dance, musical-style, by the local residents she meets along the way, including a group of elderly women, a dancing mailbox, and people dressed as Roman columns. Björk herself performs some tap-dancing and also other kinds of dancing.

The pace of the video corresponds with the song’s tempo—during the slow portions of the song, the video runs in slow-motion but returns to regular speed for the uptempo parts of the song. The video ends with her floating up into the air in front of the camera while the entire town dances behind her.

Click below to watch the video:

 

I have never enough of her…

Kate, again

The man with the child in his eyes (by the unforgettable album “The kick inside”, 1979)

Album of the day: Hounds of Love (1985)

Kate Bush (born Catherine Bush on 30 July 1958) is an English singer-songwriter, musician, and record producer. Her eclectic musical style and idiosyncratic vocal style have made her one of England‘s most successful solo female performers of the past 30 years. Bush was signed by EMI at the age of 16 after being recommended by Pink Floyd‘s David Gilmour. In 1978, at age 19, she topped the UK Singles Chart for four weeks with her debut song “Wuthering Heights“, becoming the first woman to have a UK number-one with a self-written song.

Despite being Bush’s most successful album commercially, 1985′s Hounds of Love is no less experimental from a production standpoint than its predecessors. Not only did she produce it herself, but for this album, stung by the huge costs she had run up hiring studio space for her previous album The Dreaming, she built a private 24 track studio near her home where she could work at her own pace.

The album is split into two sides, with the first side, “Hounds of Love”, containing five “accessible” pop songs, including the four singles: “Running Up That Hill,” “Cloudbusting,” “Hounds of Love,” and “The Big Sky“. “Running Up That Hill” became one of her biggest hits in the UK, and re-introduced Bush to American listeners, receiving considerable airplay at the time of its release. The second side is entitled “The Ninth Wave”, whose title is taken from a poem by Tennyson.

As part of a concept, each track helps to convey the story of a woman who is lost at sea, facing death by drowning, and the tortured night she spends in the water. Bush uses samples and vocals played in reverse to synthesized sounds and folk instrumentation.

The song I choosed is “Hello Earth”

Album of the day: “Kid A” by “Radiohead” (2000)

Kid A is the fourth album by the English alternative rock band Radiohead, released in October 2000. A commercial success worldwide,Kid A went platinum in its first week of release in the UK. Despite the lack of an official single or music video as publicity, Kid A became the first Radiohead release to debut at number one in the US. This success was credited variously to a unique marketing campaign, the early Internet leak of the album, or anticipation after the band’s 1997 album, OK Computer.

“Optimistic” is the video I choosed for you.

Here are the the lyrics of the song:

“Flies are buzzing around my head
Vultures circling the dead
Picking up every last crumb
Big fish eat the little ones
Big fish eat the little ones
Not my problem give me some

You can try the best you can
If you try the best you can
The best you can is good enough
(x2)

This one’s optimistic
This one went to market
This one just came out of the swamp
This one dropped a payload
Fodder for the animals
Living on an animal farm

If you try the best you can
If you try the best you can
The best you can is good enough
(x2)

I’d really like to help you man
I’d really like to help you man…..
Nervous messed up marionette
Floating around on a prison ship

If you try the best you can
If you try the best you can
The best you can is good enough
If you try the best you can
If you try the best you can
Dinosaurs Roaming the earth (x3)”

Album of the day: Coldplay in “Viva la Vida” (2008)

Coldplay is my today’s “favourite group of the day”. “Viva la vida or Death and All His Friends” is probably their most successful album.  For sure, it was one of the most popular in the british, european, australian and american charts.

The “hit single” “Viva la Vida” is the You Tube video that I choosed. Just click below. Enjoy it!

Album of the day: Pearl Jam “Vs.” (1993)

Just click below to listen to one of my Pearl Jam‘s favourite songs, “Dissident”, one of the tracks of the album “Vs.” (1993)

Vocalist Eddie Vedder explain the text of the song:

‘In “Dissident”, I’m actually talking about a woman who takes in someone who’s being sought after by the authorities for political reasons. He’s on the run, and she offers him a refuge. But she just can’t handle the responsibility. She turns him in, then she has to live with the guilt and the realization that she’s betrayed the one thing that gave her life meaning. It made her life difficult. It made her life hell. But it gave her a reason to be. But she couldn’t hold on. She folded. That’s the tragedy of the song’ (Source: Wikipedia)

Album of the day: “Into the Wild” by Eddie Vedder (2007)

All the informations and the links about the movie and the soundtrack  “Into the Wild” in a previous post of my blog.

New Year’s Aphorisms of the Day

“The past is history, the future is a mistery, the present is a gift, that’s why we call it present!”

(Oogway-Kung FU Panda’s Senior Master, Movie “Kung Fu Panda, 2008)

“Only the stupid doesn’t change”

(Me, among others…)

“Lord, give me the strenght for changing the things that I have to change, the humility to accept what I cannot change, the wisdom to recognize the difference”

(Anonymous)

A HAPPY NEW YEAR FULL OF

CHANGES, ACCEPTANCE AND WISDOM

TO YOU ALL!

YOUR FRIEND STEFANO

Albums of the day: Peter Gabriel (ALL OF THEM!)

Impossible, for me, to choose just one album and one song of a man that I consider a genius of the music of our time (and as an artist in general) , Peter Gabriel. So, I decided to add to this post two You tube videos of two of my favourite songs:

“Here comes the flood”, from the album “Peter Gabriel I” (1977)

“Father, Son”, from the album “OVO” (2000)

Pat Metheny: First Circle (1984)

It is difficult to find only one album representing the “musical world” of Pat Metheny. I choosed “First Circle” (1984). At the same time, too rich to be described here his activity and experimentations in any different kind of music  .  I leave this job to Wikipedia.  Enjoy the video. Ciao!