Zoopraxiscope

One of my theme songs.

A paranoid classic. Although Clear Light didn’t last long, some of the members subsequently had notable careers. Drummer Dallas Taylor played with Crosby, Stills, Nash and sometimes Young; vocalist Cliff de Young acted in a number of movie and TV shows I never watched; bassist Doug Lubahn played on three Doors albums and later co-founded Dreams.

One of Richard Thompson’s more memorable songs.

“Mt. Gulug” from Final Fantasy IX, composed by Nobuo Uematsu, arranged for winds.

Still the most beautiful love song of the 21st century so far.

Danny Elfman gets weird.

From Gryphon’s second and best album, music Richard Harvey originally composed for a production of The Tempest.

I heard this at the grocery store yesterday. Edgy golden age rock has become Muzak.

Middle-period Steeleye Span doing one of their own tunes.

Here’s Liszt the circus acrobat, as played by Gyorgy Cziffra. Cziffra actually was a circus performer during his childhood.

If the guitar sounds a bit like something from Led Zeppelin’s first album, it’s a very curious coincidence indeed. But of course Jimmy Page would never claim credit for anything that wasn’t his, would he?

Peter Schickele is not the only one who can play the quodlibet game. Here’s Ernest Tomlinson’s Fantasia on Auld Lang Syne. (Via Bayou Renaissance Man.)

Another trip to Canterbury.

The show Spice and Wolf didn’t interest me, but the pseudo-medieval soundtrack caught my ear.

A Mike Heron song from the earliest days of The Incredible String Band.

A little yokai metal.

Moose and Squirrel remains the best moment in the history of television (you can make a case for Monty Python or early Simpsons, but — nah). Here’s some of the music, composed by Frank Comstock and Fred Steiner.

The story of Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf, as retold by Rachmaninoff.

Enescu’s most popular piece. According to Wickedpaedia, “For all their popularity, the two Romanian Rhapsodies proved to be ‘an albatross round Enescu’s neck: later in his life he bitterly resented the way they had dominated and narrowed his reputation as a composer.'”