Category: Tune of the day

Godowsky’s music probably isn’t excessively difficult for pianists with three or four hands. For those with only two, it’s more of a challenge.

Bill Nelson from his BBD days.

So you think you’ve heard everything?

“Hot Smoke and Sasafrass” (sic) was their big hit, but I liked the flip side, too.

Another barcarolle by Gabriel Fauré. He wrote thirteen of them, all worth hearing. Fauré’s music is not easy to play; Franz Liszt said of his first attempt at one of Fauré’s pieces, “I’ve run out of fingers.”

One of the curious facts about the composers of game music is that Nobuo Uematsu, perhaps the best-known and most popular (except maybe for Koji Kondo) had the least formal training.

A laid-back tune from Gatton’s second and last Major Label Recording.

The first music you hear in Haibane Renmei.

Enoch Soames may or may not have made an appearance in the reading room of the British Museum on June 3, 1997, but the guy with the Shure 55SH mic did indeed keep an appointment made 22 years earlier.

Harry Nilsson had some big hits, but none of them were as good as this early number.

It’s snowing as I type this¹, and the temperatures will soon be subzero. I’m impatient to hear the voices of spring.

Presenting “Django Johnny.”

The Sadistic Mika Band were the first Japanese band to tour Great Britain, and were influenced the likes of Marc Bolan and David Bowie. Every website discussing them has a different explanation of their name, none of them convincing.

Jon Hiseman’s Colosseum in their early days.

Enrique Granados‘s 1911 Goyescas is one of the two great suites of Spanish piano music. (Albeniz’ Iberia is the other one.) Granados was killed in 1916 when the boat he was crossing the English Channel on was torpedoed by a German U-boat.

A spooky tune from 1962. Pentangle covered it several years later.

An example of Japanese “group sounds” from 1968. The bass player, Masayoshi “Louis” Kabe, would later turn up as “Glue” in Speed, Glue & Shinki.

A simple tune in a characteristically straightforward arrangement by Gentle Giant.

“Ma mère l’oye” began as a piano duet for children. Ravel subsequently orchestrated it, which is the version here. Joe Walsh recorded his own version of the introductory “Pavanne.”

Members of The Blues Project joined with fiddler Richard Greene, a Bill Monroe alumnus, and a few other musicians to form Sea Train (two words). Their 1969 self-titled debut had possibly the worst cover of any album — it wasn’t even ugly² — and it sold miserably. I’ve never met anyone other than myself who bought a copy. This is a pity, because it was a fully-realized example of progressive rock, intricate, complicated and ambitious. It’s almost completely forgotten. Sea Train is not even mentioned on Prog Archives.

The band subsequently underwent personnel changes, altered their name to “Seatrain,” and came to George Martin’s attention. The resulting album was better-produced and easier to listen to, and it yielded a small hit, but it was less interesting than the one that preceded it.³