Music: What are you listening to today?
In the spirit of the books and movies threads, here's one to talk about what you're listening to lately and what you have discovered. Tell us if you like it, what it reminds you of, anything you like, short or not, simple or not.
Like the books thread, I'd ask that we keep it mostly to stuff we are listening to or going to listen to soon, or have just finished listening to (that is, like a log more than a resume).
Below is my first entry.
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Bonnie Raitt, by Bonnie Raitt.
My understanding is that this was her first record, which she made when she was 21. Nine out of the eleven songs are covers; the two she wrote are "Thank You" and "Finest Loving Man," and both are good.
I really liked this album. Bonnie's voice is much sweeter here than I've heard her before, and very warm, traveling between notes more fluently, and not yet as raspy sounding as it became. (Which I also like in its own way.) Despite the sweetness of her voice she manages to put some heart into the bluesy material, and sings with what sounds like a real love for the lyrics. It's great to hear someone who doesn't just walk through lyrics. She sounds like she really thought and felt her way through the songs. Many of the most gifted and popular singers out there don't, winding up leaving a lot of a song's power still on the table, so to speak.*
From an Amazon.com review:
Bonnie wrote two of the songs here (Thank you, Finest loving man) but relied mainly on covers, beginning with a cover of Bluebird (written by Stephen Stills, famous as a member first of Buffalo Springfield then of Crosby Stills and Nash). One of Bonnie's major influences, Sippie Wallace, is represented by two songs (Mighty tight woman, Women be wise) while Bonnie also covers Any day woman (Paul Siebel), Walking blues (Robert Johnson) and Since I fell for you (Bud Johnson) among others.
I really enjoyed Walking Blues a lot and wanted to hear it immediately again, but decided to let the rest of the album play out instead of interrupting its flow. The album is good enough that I think I'm going to listen to it again.
By the way, it's in the Rhapsody's catalogue, if you have that service. It's also at Amazon, and the MP3 256kbps download is on sale there for $2.99. You can listen to samples there too.
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*This reminds me of a biography of John Denver that I saw on PBS the other day. I'm not a big Denver fan, but the biography was so good that this is the second time I felt compelled to watch it. Anyway, in it his manager said that at a particular concert Denver sounded exceptionally good, and it seemed like the audience noticed it. His manager recalls saying something like, "Your voice was incredible today. How did you do it?" Denver replied that he was trying to do what he learned from Placido Domingo when they worked together. He said he was amazed by how deep Domingo's art was; he didn't just sing a line, but put the right emotion into it word by word. If he was going to sing about a piece of steel, his voice would sound like steel. Every line was emotionally full, clear, and precise.
I got a bit of a feeling of that in this Raitt album. Raitt very much inhabited those songs when she sang. Unlike some spoiled divas, the newly emergent Raitt got across the feeling that she was glad to be there.
Wow. That last one is terrible. I couldn't follow the plot of the video. And what is the word "panacea" doing in the title?
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lol was actually looking at that last night and scratching my head over that translation
chinese is a very flowery language where everything is put into a cultural context - ie you can say "it's cold" directly, but another way is to go the metaphorical way and say "big winter" or to say a line from some tang dynasty poem they all know like we know shakespeare which was about a cold day so they'll say "plums on a rock" and we're all supposed to know that's a well known line from that poem thus they are saying it's cold
while google translate is a lot better now, back then it never understood the context of anything, and since each character has 20 different meanings and there's lots of combo characters ie if you put them together is a different word entirely
google really struggles with this one because it can't figure out the context
this is probably how they got the english name of the song back when they wrote it, using google translate
but if you use a more professional dictionary, you can see the possible options
ie the first character could be dragon and the second could be tiger, but alas, when combined they can also mean this
and the 3rd one
and the last
so in short, i literally have no idea what it means - which is a very common occurrence for a foreigner in china who is supposedly fluent in the language like me
i knew all 4 of those characters and yet had zero clue what it could mean - again, probably referencing some Song Dynasty philosophy which I and the translation software is unfamiliar with
When I studied Ezra Pound, I read quite a bit about his Chinese translations that worked for some even though Pound couldn't read or speak Chinese. He used someone else's study of Chinese to help write the poems. He also saw the characters as representing what they looked like. For example, the character for "sunrise" looked like a sunrise.
Nevertheless, some of his translated poems are great ones.
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historically speaking they were very base visual representations of the words they were conveying - which over time had shortcuts introduced which took away the visual element
like house is a roof over a pig, man is a field over the symbol for power, woman is the symbol for good and baby, mountain literally looks like how children would draw mountains etc but a lot of other stuff is very esoteric/abstract
i never dove deeply on ezra pound, but it was my understanding that none of his translations are remotely accurate but nobody complained because he was producing beautiful work which was going to be ignored otherwise
as a history buff, it always pains me that 99% of their extremely well documented history is untappable without fluency in the language because there's just not enough interest to translate it to english
this is why you get westerners believing in nonsense like "the mandate of heaven" which in reality is basically non-existent in china, just some random one-off thing that the jesuits clung onto for dear life because they desperately wanted to paint the chinese as people inherently open to the idea of monotheism so keep funding us to convert them and since nearly all western scholarly work on china in the west is based on stuff which itself was based on the jesuit translations that you get a whole lotta mandate of heaven mumbo jumbo casually thrown into stuff by academics who themselves do not speak the language
Pound was often criticized for his "mistakes," but it doesn't really matter.
My colleague and friend is the best translator of Turkish poet Nazim Hikmet. He had some understanding of Turkish, but his wife was Turkish, so she helped with the language. Randy said it needed a poet to turn the translations into poetry.
As an aside, Randy was struggling with a reference in one of Hikmet's poem because it referenced a place in Poland. I happened to have a Polish student, so we were able to arrange a call to her grandfather in Poland to help with the translation.
One of Hikmet's well known poems written after his release from prison.
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in my china days, this was one of the more popular local bands to see live
it was a high variance affair, you never knew which version of them you were going to get
from broody punk rock which would be headbanging fun when wasted at a concert
to more mainstream pop/rock which is very fun live concert music
to whatever the hell this awful stuff is which makes you stand there awkwardly sipping your drink wondering why it's so bad
or this awful song
chances are if i asked around a bunch of my friends wou
I listen to a bit of Korean shoegaze but not sure any Chinese artists
For the Dream Pop fans, I discovered Crushed late in the year and been on repeat a bit. 2 favorites from their 2024 EP
back in the day the macau wynn used to play this song at least 2-3 times a day, i was really surprised
i used to think it was paula cole for some reason (they also played her but not as frequently) and would make stupid jokes whenever they played this song about the cowboys probably left because she wasn't one of the cool kids
finally, someone was like "wtf are you talking about" and the ensuing discussion revealed it was not paula cole but rather a new band
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every single shopping mall in china plays this song
the similarities to tatu and fact i never heard it outside of china, i always assumed it was one of those russian imports which only took off in the china while ignored in the west
but apparently it's euro and widely known in the west
if you're ever on a ferry in aswan, egypt, little kids in rowboats will paddle alongside the ferry singing this song for tips
it's always this song
I love the experiences of fellow posters. **** those who think the Internet forums are a place for idiots.
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I often quote lines from this song to illustrate how meter works in poetry. These days fewer students recognize the songs. Yes, I'm listening to this now.
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the GOOD ^ 4/4 days... quite unlike some the abominations that about in these modern times.
That being said, I have heard a lot of really impressive 'timings' that are expressed by modern artists... we older folks need to recalibrate our programing sometimes so that we wont be left behind.
Old's cool.
Spoiler
There were some outstanding rap groups in the 90s.
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Some kinda recent stuff.
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Don't let the name fool you. This kid is great.
I came across Zee from seeing him a Jedi Mind Tricks video. Catchy jam.
this is my favorite chinese band
link to fave album
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yHcFT8WC...
here's two of the better songs on it
What was everyone's first concert? Mine was Aerosmith during the Get a Grip tour. Jackyl opened. But my second concert was the real game changer. I got to see the Ramones on their final tour. I was fourteen and working at the pool. A lifeguard girl knew I was a fan and asked me if I wanted to see them. One of the best nights of my life.
First 'Major' concert was Yes with Peter Frampton at the Anaheim stadium in Orange County...
rise and fall of frampton has always fascinated me
apparently was the biggest thing ever for a brief period and then everyone forgets about him quickly
Beach House is a band that should just be so much in my wheelhouse and yet I find them just...fine. Hell they are even from Charm City like me. Not sure what it is.
I like them just don't adore them the way many do...odd
If you haven't try checking out their older stuff, their album "Devotion" is a "cult" hit (whatever that means).. and Victoria Legrand is, well.... <3
