Category: Music

A song about a drummer, without drums. This was the first tune I heard by Steeleye Span, and it is still one of my favorites.

Homage to Stravinsky, transcribed for baroque and folk instruments by yet another bunch of crazy Finns.

Your daily dystopia, courtesy of the band named for drops of nail polish on a piano.

Griffes was potentially a Great American Composer, but he died far too young.

The band once known as “Happy Cancer” never had much commercial potential. So what?

Italian prog rock from 1976, with flutes and mellotrons.

If you don’t hear Steve Cropper’s guitar, it’s because he’s playing a keyboard on this one.

Something I would not have expected from Richard Thompson.

The lyrics are from the medieval Carmina Burana. The music is somewhat more recent.

It’s impossible to be too paranoid — true in 1973, and in 2026.

The Cuban composer and guitarist Leo Brouwer composed much music for classical guitar of varying degrees of listenability. These include his Beatlerianas, such as this.

The ending tune of the curious anime Jinrui wa Suitai Shimashita/Humanity Has Declined, by Masumi Itou. The lyrics are translated here. You can follow the score here.

Someday we’ll get there ….

Jehan Alain: “When the Christian soul no longer finds new words in its distress to implore God’s mercy, it repeats incessantly the same invocation with a vehement faith. Reason has reached its limits. Alone, faith pursues its ascension.”

Fans of the band Renaissance might recognize this.

Celebrate the new year at Marconi’s Prize-Winning Bakery.

Here’s a little Chabrier to end the year.

From one of the first three albums I ever bought, a long, long time ago. One of my high school classmates thought that “Mary” was the Blessed Mother. Others thought she was Mary Jane. I think they were all out to lunch.

An early piece by speed metal pioneer Sergei Prokofiev. YouTube won’t let me embed Yuja Wang’s version, so we’ll have to make do with Horowitz.

Another tune from my sojourn with Aunt Margaret and my Martian relatives.

Along with PFM and Le Orme, Banco Del Mutuo Soccorso was one of the big three of Italian prog. As near as I can figure, this tune from their album Darwin! concerns “Nature, red in tooth and claw.”