Wordless: Strange Brew...The Very Best of Cream

The ultimate band providing a hybrid of blues, hard rock and psychedelic rock.

Here’s the title cut:

An official site for the band can be found here…..

Happy Wednesday!
The Wordless Wednesday hub can be found here

Shine

Collective Soul hales from Stockbridge Georgia and were inducted into the Georgia Hall of Music Fame in 2006. This video is from two days of shows the band did with the Atlanta Symphony Youth Orchestra on April 23 and 24, 2005.

What an experience for those kids to play with a hit band!

Here are the lyrics to Shine:

Give me a word
Give me a sign
Show me where to look
Tell me what will I find (What will I find?)

Lay me on the ground
Fly me in the sky
Show me where to look
Tell me what will I find (What will I find?)

Chorus
Yea, Yea, Yea Oh, Heaven let your light shine down (x4)
Love is in the waterLove is in the air
Show me where to look
Tell me will love be there (Will love be there?)
Teach me how to speak Teach me how to share
Teach me where to go
Tell me will love be there (Will love be there?)

Chorus
Give me a word
Give me a sign
Show me where to look
Tell me what will I find (What will I find?)
Lay me on the ground

Fly me in the sky
Show me where to look
Tell me what will I find (What will I find?)

Chorus
I'm going to let it shine (x2)
Heavens little light gonna shine on me
Yea yea heavens little light gonna shine on meshine, shine on meshine, come on and shine

While the band is not officially a Christian band….some of the members are Christians.
Their website is found here.

Personal Jesus

So have you ever thought about making someone into your own personal Jesus?

Apparently Martin Gore of Depeche Mode fame did. The song, Personal Jesus, was inspired by the relationship between Priscilla Presley and Elvis Presley as detailed in the book Elvis and Me.
In an article published in Spin Magazine Gore stated, “It’s a song about being a Jesus for somebody else, someone to give you hope and care. It’s about how Elvis was her man and her mentor and how often that happens in love relationships; how everybody’s heart is like a god in some way, and that’s not a very balanced view of someone , is it?"

I agree….it’s not a balanced view of someone, but I love the song and I like Depeche Mode.

Some of the adjectives used to describe Depeche Mode is successful, influential, and longest lived for bands that emerged from the early 80s.

The marketing campaign for the song, Personal Jesus, is pretty interesting. Advertisements were placed in the personal columns of UK regional newspapers with the words “Your own personal Jesus” and a phone number was provided. When the number was called folks heard the song.

The song has been covered by many including Marilyn Manson and Johnny Cash.

Here are the lyrics:

Reach out and touch faith

Your own person Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there.

Feeling unknown
And you’re all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I’ll make you a believer

Take a second best
Put me to the test
Things on your chest
You need to confess
I will deliver
You know I’m a forgiver

Reach out and touch faith
Reach out and touch faith

Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who cares
Your own personal Jesus
Someone to hear your prayers
Someone who’s there

Feeling unknown
And you’re all alone
Flesh and bone
By the telephone
Lift up the receiver
I’ll make you a believer
I will deliver
You know I’m a forgiver

Reach out and touch faith

Your own personal Jesus

Reach out and touch faith


The official website for Depeche Mode can be found here

I Just Want to Stop

Wow, his hair.....I loved his hair.



Prior to using his own name for his recordings, Vanelli used the pseudonym Vann Elli. I’m glad he finally decided to go with his original.

Gino Vanelli's official website

Toto's Africa Performed a Different Way

The group featured in this video is Perpetuum Jazzile, a Slovenian a cappella group.

Notice there is no music being played.



The group’s website is found here

Of course, we are more used to the original version by the group Toto.

Have you ever heard the saying that we should only write about what we know?

With that idea in mind the inspiration for this song was a fictional situation where a white boy attempts to write a song about Africa, but since he had never been to Africa or didn’t have much knowledge about it at all he used what he had previously read or seen in movies or on television.

Here are the lyrics:

I hear the drums echoing tonight
But she hears only whispers of some quiet conversation
She's coming in twelve-thirty flight
Her moonlit wings reflect the stars that guide me towards salvation
I stopped an old man along the way
Hoping to find some old forgotten words or ancient melodies
He turned to me as if to say: "Hurry boy, it's waiting there for you"

[Chorus:]
It's gonna take a lot to drag me away from you
There's nothing that a hundred men or more could ever do
I bless the rains down in Africa
Gonna take some time to do the things we never had

The wild dogs cry out in the night
As they grow restless longing for some solitary company
I know that I must do what's right
Sure as Kilimanjaro rises like Olympus above the Serengeti
I seek to cure what's deep inside, frightened of this thing that I've become

[Repeat chorus]
[Instrumental break]
Hurry boy, she's waiting there for you
[Repeat chorus]

Steely Dan….Do It Again

Eruption.....Eddie Van Halen

One of the first albums I purchased after I got my first car was the debut album by Van Halen. In 1978 you could still purchase 8-track cassette and since that’s what my car had….that’s what I bought. I loved every song, and still do.

Initially, Eruption was not considered a song for the album. Eddie Van Halen used it as a studio warm up; however, when a producer heard it he asked that it appear as a track on the album. Years later in an interview Eddie revealed that he had made a mistake at the top end of it.

Gee, a mistake?!?

Clair De Lune.....deleted scene from Fantasia

I've always loved the Disney movie Fantasia.....this is a deleted scene featuring Clair De Lune



If you aren't familiar with Fantasia you might recognize the piece from the movie, Oceans 11.

Desert Rose

Here are the lyrics:

I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand

I dream of fire
Those dreams are tied to a horse that will never tire
And in the flames
Her shadows play in the shape of a man’s desire

This desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this

And as she turns
This way she moves in the logic of all my dreams
This fire burns
I realize that nothing’s as it seems.

I dream of rain
I life my gaze to empty skies above
I close my eyes
This rare perfume is the sweet intoxication of her love

I dream of rain
I dream of gardens in the desert sand
I wake in vain
I dream of love as time runs through my hand

Sweet desert rose
Each of her veils, a secret promise
This desert flower
No sweet perfume ever tortured me more than this

Sweet desert rose
This memory of Eden haunts us all
This desert flower
This rare perfume, is the sweet intoxication of the fall

I’ve always liked this song, but never paid too much attention to the lyrics until now. The Biblical references are interesting. Some state that the lyrics of Desert Rose are inspired by the Frank Herbert novel, Dune, possibly because Sting played the villainous Feyd Rautha in the 1984 film adaptation. Both film and book feature the Arabic language.

The song also features the Algerian rai singer Cheb Mami………the genre of the song is given as World.

Sting’s official website can be found here

Wordless: Another Mother Further

One of the albums I have in my collection....

Anyone else out there like/remember Mother’s Finest? If you need a memory booster I posted about them along with a video of their hit Baby Love back in December.

Happy Wednesday! Check out other bloggers posting wordless or near wordless posts here.

Wordless: Dark Side of the Moon

This album was the point where I graduated from collecting 45s to purchasing albums. It was first available for sale on March 17, 1973. I was eleven. Many critics consider Dark Side of the Moon to be Pink Floyd’s defining work, and is still frequently ranked by music critics as one of the greatest and most influential albums of all time.

Dark Side of the Moon is the third best selling album of all time worldwide and ranks 20th in the United States. It spent over fourteen years on Billboard’s list of top 200 best selling albums, longer than any other album in history.

You can find others participating in Wordless Wednesday here

Fly Me to the Moon!

I was able to see Diana Krall several, several months ago when she appeared at Atlanta’s Chastain Park.

My husband had won the tickets from a radio station. While I had heard her and recognized her voice the concert was my first true exposure to her musical style.

I fell in love….

You can find out more at her her website, her Wikipedia page (she’s married to Elvis Costello, you know?), and her MySpace page.

Here she is performing Fly Me to the Moon:

Cabbagetown

The song I’m bathing in today is “Cabbagetown” by Shawn Mullins. Why? For starters Shawn Mullins is from my state, and Cabbagetown has historical significance for someone like me…an Atlantan.

Cabbagetown is a particular section of Atlanta….you can read about it here…the neighborhood website has everything you would want to know about it.

Quick facts regarding Shawn Mullins:

*best known for his 1998 hit Lullaby. It was number one on the Adult Top 40 and nominated for a Grammy Award.

*Graduated from Clarkston High School in Clarkston, Georgia.

*Friends with Amy Ray of the Indigo Girls.

*Attended North Georgia College and State University where he was bandmaster of the military marching band.

*You might recognize another famous song of his titled “All Im My Head,” featured on the hit tv show “Scrubs.” The song was written after an email was sent out by the producers indicating they were searching for a new theme song. It wasn’t selected, but was used in the first episode.

*The television show “Dawson’s Creek” used his song “Shimmer.”

*His official website is here, his Myspace page is here

Girlfriend

I usually refer to Averil Lavigne as “that angy young girl” when discussing her music with my teenage daughter because her songs are all a little “mad”. However, it would appear that she’s far from being angry, is not the teenybopper you would imagine, and is even happily married as of this writing.

While her style of music is far, far from the country band Alabama, Averil Lavigne found a style and has stuck with it to the point that most all of her library of music sounds similar.

I particularly like her song “Girlfriend”…..

Don’t pretend
I think you know I’m damn precious
And how, yeah, I’m the motherfucking princess
I can tell you like me too
And you know I’m right.

Back in 2007, Lavigne was sued along with co-writer Lukasz Gottwald and her record title. The complaint contended the song was plagiarized from the song “I Wanna Be Your Boyfriend” performed by The Rubinoos. You can read more about the “p” issue over at this Wikipedia page.

Averil Lavigne’s Myspace page can be found here. Her website can be accessed here, and as of today the video clip is Averil performing “Girlfriend”.

Beds Are Burning

The band Midnight Oil got their name by drawing lyrics out of a hat.

Beds Are Burning was the first track from the album Diesels and Dust.

Wikipedia advises “Beds Are Burning” is a political song about giving native Australian lands back to the Pintupi, who were among the very last people to come in from the desert. These “last contact” people began moving from the Gibson Desert to settlements and missions in the late 1930s. More were forcibly moved during the 1950s and 1960s to the Papunya settlement. In 1981, they left to return to their own country and established the Kintoire community which is nestled in the picturesque Kintore Ranges, surrounded by Mulga and Spinfex country. It is now a thriving little community with a population of about 400.

Midnight Oil performed the song in front of a world audience of billions (including Prime M
inister John Howard who has claimed this is his favorite Midnight Oil song) at the closing ceremony of the 2000 Sydney Olympics. The whole band was dressed in black, with the words “sorry” printed conspicuously on their clothes. This was a reference to the Prime Minister’s refusal to apologize, on behalf of Australia, to the Aboriginal Australians for the way they have been treated over the previous 200 years, particularly in relation to native title and the government-sanctioned removal of Aboriginal children of the Stolen Generations from their families.

The official website for Midnight Oil can be found here.

The lyrics to the song are embedded in the video.

New Tatoo

One of my Christmas presents was the New Tatoo cd from Saving Abel. I’ve already featured one song from the cd, Addicted, here.

The title song is really a stand out….