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Posts Tagged ‘Sunday Morning Music’

Birds and Ships

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , , , , , , on February 7, 2016| Leave a Comment »

hundertwasser_land-of-men-birds-shipsThe painting above is titled Paradise-The Land of Men, Birds and Ships.  It’s actually a mural that was painted on a building outside of Paris in 1950 by artists Friedensreich Hundertwasser and  René Brõ.  It was saved from demolition in 1964 although I have no idea where or in what condition it now stands.  I’ve featured Hundertwasser’s work, with it’s rich colors and organic shapes, here on the blog a few times in the past.  I like his work,  I like this and thought it fit well with the song I’ve chosen for today’s Sunday Morning Music.

That song is Ships and Birds from one of my favorite albums, Wilco and Billy Bragg‘s 1998 Mermaid Avenue.  It’s a collection of old unheard Woody Guthrie lyrics set to new music composed by Wilco and others.  This track features Natalie Merchant singing the lead and is just a lovely, simple  song.  A nice way to kick off any Sunday morning.

Have a great Sunday…

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Freedom March

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , , , on January 31, 2016| 4 Comments »

Mavis StaplesFinding some sort of joy in one’s life might well be the answer to most of life’s questions.  It nourishes us and gives meaning to the moments of our lives.  It makes us want to face the new day.

That state of joy is a mighty potent force.

There are people who exude that joy from their very being and I think singer Mavis Staples is one of those people.

Had a chance to see her show last night in Corning and her joy in this world and her music seemed obvious to me.  At age 76, she has a new album, Livin’ On a High Note,  coming out in February and she just rolls on.  Over sixty years of performing and the effects of advancing age can’t diminish her in any way on that stage.  Just a powerful force.

One of the highlights of the show was her performance of Freedom March, a song written back in 1963 by her father, Pops Staples, to mark the famed Freedom March from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama in that year.   For this Sunday Morning Music, I thought I’d share an performance of it from a few years back. Good stuff.

Have a great Sunday and try to find a little joy of your own…

 

 

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20th Century Man

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, Opinion, Photography, Video, tagged , , , , on January 24, 2016| 1 Comment »

august-sander-man-on-street-portraitI was listening this morning to the song 20th Century Man from The Kinks.  Released in 1971 — don’t do the math, it’s a long time ago– it is a song of a man decrying his existence in a time in which he feels he doesn’t fit.  Ray Davies may have felt that he would have been more at home in the 19th century but the odd thing is that the song’s words still fit very well for someone like myself whose life consists of mostly time spent in the 20th century.

Even though we’re well into the 21st century– that new century smell has pretty much worn off by now– I am still basically a 20th century man.

It struck me that the next generation that is quickly coming of age and into their own will be a group born in the 21st century, never experiencing a second in that distant time.  I never gave that a thought before but their time will be spent entirely in a time unlike mine or people of my age.  The 20th century might be just a distant thing to them, a source of old people’s memories and dry historic fact.

Relics.

And maybe that’s a good thing.  I don’t know.  For as pivotal as the 20th was in so many ways, it was mightily flawed and maybe trying to see the world beyond its lenses will be refreshing.

Hey, let me hope, okay?

So for this Sunday Morning Music here are The Kinks and 20th Century Man.  The accompanying photo which jumped off the screen at me is from the great German photographer August Sander who I will be discussing here in the near future.

Have a great Sunday and enjoy your time in the 21st Century…

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See That My Grave Is Kept Clean

Posted in Biographical, Music, tagged , , , , on January 10, 2016| 3 Comments »

Maple Grove Cemetery HorseheadsWe take a walk just about every day in a local cemetery.  It’s not overly large nor does it  have  grand mausoleums or many elaborate memorials.  It’s not even an extremely beautiful cemetery, although there are lanes such as the one shown here that I find lovely.  It’s just a pleasant place to walk in relative quietness.

Part of our routine is to pick up garbage that blows into the cemetery or is left behind by slobs who feel that all the world is their trash bin.  It seems that hardly a day goes by that we don’t retrieve at least a handful of bottles, cups, fast food packaging and crumpled cigarette packs.  I don’t know how much we have picked up over the years but it is a considerable amount.

Too much.

I have began to simply accept that most people feel some sort of right to let others be responsible for their trash but it’s hard not to get angry at the sheer laziness of it.  But we’ll no doubt continue to pick up others’ garbage.  I like this place and the calmness of it plus both Cheri and I have family members and friends buried here.  So, it just seems like a simple act of respect to pick up a few things to keep their graves clean.

I thought I would have this week’s Sunday morning music match the thought.  Here’s the great Mavis Staples singing See That My Grave Is Kept Clean. Have a great day and keep it clean out there, okay?

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Back to Work

Posted in Biographical, Favorite Things, Music, Video, tagged , , , on January 3, 2016| 4 Comments »

GC Myers- Experimental Piece 1995It’s the New Year and I am finally back at work.  I’ve started working on some pieces that have been brewing in my mind for a while, some that are out of my comfort zone.  I don’t know how they will turn out and there’s a good chance that most of this work will never see the light of day.  I have found that quite often work that is too idea based or thought out never gets into any kind of natural flow or rhythm, at least for me.  I have plenty of examples from over the years that I won’t show here.

Occasionally a piece will come along that just doesn’t seem to work at the time but has something that emerges later.  For instance, the piece at the top was an early experiment from back in 1995.  It just didn’t click for me then.  It just seemed too worked and not free enough, if that makes any sense to anyone out there.  But the spiral of the sky found its way back into my work years later in a different form when I developed a way to make it seem more naturally integrated into the painting.  I appreciate this piece much more now than I did 20 years ago.

Hopefully, some of this new work will be good enough to show here.  We shall see…

For the first Sunday morning music of the new year, I thought I’d break out one my old favorites, Hank Snow, the Singing Ranger.  I have always loved his music and there’s something I find really appealing about him that I can’t really explain.  With his small stature, close cropped hair and the looks of a hardware store clerk from years ago, he certainly doesn’t have the cool appearance of a star.  Maybe it’s that anti-cool factor that I like.  He just did what he did in his own way.

Anyway, here’s his Rhumba Boogie to kickstart 2016.  Have a great day and a better new year.

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A Child is Born

Posted in Music, tagged , , , , on December 20, 2015| 11 Comments »

Norman Rockwell Tiny Tim  I am taking a short hiatus from writing the blog just to recharge a bit.  This has been a part of my day for over seven years now and I have tried to put out something every day.  But I am a little run down at the moment , a little depleted.  I need a short break and figure this time around the holidays is the right time to put the blog on hold.  Maybe for a week or two.  Maybe more. Maybe less.

Who knows?  Nothing is written in stone and I might feel like I have something to say tomorrow or next week.

Or not.

Regardless, I send out many thanks to those who check in here regularly as well as my warmest wishes for happy holidays everyone.  Here’s hoping the New Year is a peaceful one.  May Tiny Tim’s wish come to be.

So for this Sunday’s musical selection I have chosen a holiday selection.  It’s a beautiful version of the traditional A Child is Born done by the the late jazz great Thad Jones with the Mel Lewis Jazz Orchestra.

Have a great Sunday and a great holiday.  I’ll be back soon…

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Skating with Vince

Posted in Favorite Things, Music, tagged , , , , on December 13, 2015| 1 Comment »

GC Myers- Party lights smallIn this part of the country, childhood memories from this time of the year usually include the cold and snow in some form.  Frozen ponds with skaters on them.  New sleds at Christmas going down white covered hills.  Bundling up in heavy clothes and hats and boots.

It’s a little different this year thus far.  Today and tomorrow it’s going to be in the 60’s here and there’s hardly a hint of snow or real cold in the future forecast.  While it is pleasant weather to enjoy, it makes feeling the holiday a bit different than in the past.  Christmas lights just seem to have more sparkle in the reflection on snow than on the the still green grass.  Maybe the piece shown here, Party Lights from 2005, was a hint at what this season will look like in the future.

I don’t want to argue the subject of global warming here today.  However, it definitely feels real this holiday season and if this is to be the new norm, it’s going to take a bit of time to recalibrate and adjust to how this time should feel for those of us who live– and enjoy– where it is normally colder this time of year.

Okay, it’s time for a little Sunday music and I thought that the piano of Vince Guaraldi would fill the bill.  If the ponds won’t freeze over for the skaters at least they have his music to enjoy.  Here’s Skating.

 

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“America- The Series”

Posted in Current Events, Music, Video, tagged , , , , , , , , on December 6, 2015| Leave a Comment »

GC Myers- Two Sides Aww, change the channel.  It’s a rerun…

Wait, it’s not another rerun, just another mass shooting/ terror event in Anytown, USA.

Another episode of America- The Series.

Same basic script– crazy ideologue(s) with automatic weaponry goes into a school/church/community center and kills multiple people before dying in a firefight with responding police forces.  Insert a montage of non-stop cable news network coverage with “experts” and politicians  praying and posturing in clips of some saying there are too many guns and others who say we need to be even more armed.

You could even insert a clip here of a nutty bible college president — let’s have him played by Jerry Falwell, Jr. of Liberty College–saying he wanted the students on his campus to have carry/conceal permits so they could “shoot the Muslims.”  Because that’s the kind of measured rational response we expect from those entrusted to lead our kids.  Besides, nothing says safety like an arena filled with armed college age kids.  Kids with inflated self-images emboldened by being raised on a diet of action movie heroes who are somehow never hit by the hail of bullets from their enemies and in a culture of video games that cheapens life.

Seems reasonable to me.  There certainly won’t be any confusion or problems with law enforcement agencies when some of those young armed students are of  African or Middle Eastern descent.  I see a spin-off in the future.

The script plays out for a few days of hand-wringing and funerals but little real action before fading to black.  Hit replay and do it all over again.

That’s seems to be the gist of it.  I wish whoever is writing this crap would come up with a new storyline.

996-226 Elvis in the WildernesssmI am going to change the channel now.  It’s time for Sunday music and I’ve been singing this song all week.  It’s the Tom Jones version of Elvis Presley Blues which was written and performed originally by Gillian Welch.  I am a big fan of Gillian Welch and love her version but I really admire Tom Jones’ take on it as well.  It’s pared down accompaniment really highlights the power of his voice which is still formidable even at age 75.

The images shown here are from my Outlaws series from back in 2006.  The one at the top is Two Sides and the one to the left is Elvis in the Wilderness.  I thought they fit today.

Enjoy the song and have a good Sunday.

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Casting Spells

Posted in Music, Painting, Recent Paintings, tagged , , , , , , , , , on November 22, 2015| 2 Comments »

GC Myers- Spellbound

“Be hole, be dust, be dream, be wind/Be night, be dark, be wish, be mind,/Now slip, now slide, now move unseen,/Above, beneath, betwixt, between”

—Neil Gaiman, The Graveyard Book

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This new painting has a feeling of magic for me, the feeling of an incantation being cast out into the dark of night.  There’s a sense of wishing in the way the Red Tree postures beneath the moon, asking whatever force that moves the moon and brings the light to cast a spell and bring about some sort of change.

Perhaps a spell is nothing more than wishes spoken aloud and defining that gnawing desire inside ourselves.  After all, once we know what we truly want we begin to shape the world subtly, and often unwittingly, so that these wishes might be fulfilled.  And sometimes, if the belief behind them is strong,  these spells become reality.  But many other times the spell is lost in the ether of time and space and they  never come to be.

Such is the nature of spells.

I am calling this piece Casting Spells.

For this Sunday Morning Music, I thought this song  would be the right accompaniment to this painting.  It’s a version of I Put a Spell On You, originally written and performed by the inimitable Screamin’ Jay Hawkins.  This version is from  another true original, the late great  Nina Simone.  Great version.

Have a great Sunday and watch out for spells–they’re floating all over the place out there.

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I Love Paris

Posted in Current Events, Opinion, tagged , , , , , , , on November 15, 2015| 2 Comments »

Paris - Pont des Arts 1953 Henri Cartier BressonI just don’t know.

I am still trying to make sense of the attacks in Paris, trying to understand the logic of terrorism and how people are convinced to follow any quasi-religious group that advances its beliefs through such violence.  It all defies logic and that is a terrifying thing because how can you fight against, let alone negotiate with, such an illogical entity?

What is lacking that would drive people to such acts?  What is missing that drives young people to join these groups in order to give their lives to hurt and kill others? Is it real religious conviction or is it just a matter of them feeling a sense of purpose that they either can’t find or refuse to feel in the world in which they were raised?

I just don’t know.  But I  do fear that this marks a tipping point, that we are in for a long and even uglier struggle, if you can imagine that,  going forward.  It may be that we are already in the beginning days of a type of World War III as the Pope has said recently.  I hope not but when you are dealing with the illogical there’s no telling where this goes.

But my heart bleeds for the people of France.  Part of me wants to jump on a plane to Paris just as a sort of ‘screw you’ to those who wish that country harm, just to let them know that their terror based on a warped and hateful religious vision will not stand up to people who try to live by the motto, Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité.

Liberty. Equality. Fraternity.  These are the uniting qualities of humanity, not just of France, and will not be taken away through a campaign based on fear and hatred.  These are words that we need now more than in any time in the recent past.

Okay, let’s take deep breath.  Today’s Sunday music is a fitting tribute written by the great American songwriter, Cole Porter.  Although there are many, many great versions out there, I chose this one from jazz great Etta Jones–  not to be confused with Etta James of “At Last” fame.  Have a great day and keep the people of France in your thoughts. Here’s  I Love Paris.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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