Mood music

Tuesday, 29 July. It’s 6.30 pm and I am home alone. Drinking some leftover beers from Bakannal’s visit to my apartment last night and settling down to my writing. The karaoke bar across the street has decided thankfully to not blast their speakers at full volume.

I actually finally have “Free Bird” on my laptop but I can wait for its turn on the playlist since some of the songs which precede it are classics in themselves. There is Alanis Morissette’s “Uninvited”, Billy Joel’s “An Innocent Man”, Richard Marx’s “Hazard”, and of course “Hotel California” by the Eagles, the fucking 7-minute version with the guitar solo.

“Free Bird” itself is also the 8-minute version, with guitar solo. For those of you who don’t know this song, I can direct you to another classic piece of art, Rob Zombie’s masterpiece of a film, The Devil’s Rejects – while I am sure “Free Bird” has been used in movies before, this has got to be the best use of the Lynyrd Skynrd signature ever.

[I should probably note here that I started this post as a follow up to this one but the sudden blackout which inspired it has ended.]

All these songs are part of my “Contemplative Playlist”, the roughly two hours of music that I listen while I write. Also notable on the list: “Desert Rose”, Sting and Cheb Mami; “Iris”, Goo Goo Dolls; “Angel”, Sarah McLachlan; “Untold Stories”, by Buju Banton; and “Baker Street” by Gerry Rafferty.

What I need to make my list a bit more complete include: “Soolaimon”, “Brooklyn Roads”, “I am I said”, “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show”, “Shiloh”, “Turn on your heartlights”, “Hurricane”, “Crackling Rose”, and “Playing” all by the greatest fucking songwriter in history, Mr. Neil Diamond. Also, I have to get “Two of three ain’t bad”, and the full 11-minute version of “Anything for love” by Meatloaf. Then of course there is “Una Palabra” by Carlos Valera.

When I tell people the music I like, I often get accused of “selling out” as it were. One friend asked me if I was a middle aged white man from Manhattan. And having a drink with Bakannal and Silver Dragon the other night, the latter expressed shock that I would know the words to some old school dancehall.

The fact is, I have an eclectic taste in music, although I tend to be attracted more to words than the beat. I would rank Busy Signal’s “These are fucking days” right up there with some of the best of Neil Diamond.

“Every day the same shit,
Different gal, same dick
Different flow, same spit
Different drugs, same ship
Same Busy, different hits
With different messages
Reaching out to everyone
In all different communities.”

And another brilliant fucking song coming out of the new breed of dancehall artistes is Bugle’s “Exercise every day”.

“Life for me, this ain’t no fun
De only thing I can depend pun is my gun
I don’t really want to rob Mista Chung, but
Survival a de key in a de slum.”

I’ve forgotten, by now what the original point of this post was but it feels, going on six hundred words, as if it’s threatening to turn into a dissertation.