Category: Tune of the day

Some Scottish harp music. Kinnaird occasionally turned up on the old Thistle and Shamrock radio program. She had the most melodious speaking voice I’ve ever heard. She made Fiona Ritchie sound plain.

I got thoroughly sick of “Spinning Wheel” a century ago, but some of Blood, Sweat and Tears’ tunes are not bad. Singer David Clayton-Thomas died last month.

Dave Greenslade, keyboardist with Colosseum and Greenslade, died last month.

IF was a British jazz rock band that never quite hit the big time, despite extensive touring. They formed in 1969 and disbanded in 1975, but I never knew that they had existed until I got online around the turn of the century.

From the soundtrack of the horrifyingly kawaii anime Binchou-tan, composed by Taku Iwasaki. The show has never been released in the West, but the foolhardy can find it online.

Bach with pure intervals, via the moveable frets on a microtonal guitar.

Let’s spend a few minutes with Elana and the boys.

I’ve linked before to the wildly eccentric Jun Togawa’s “Mushi no Onna” as an antidote to Pachelbel’s inescapable, interminable canon, but that’s relatively mild for her. This creepy science-fiction tune is more representative of her art.

Continue reading “Tune of the day #285”

William Henry Joseph Berthol Bonaparte Bertholf Smith, better known as Willie “The Lion” Smith, was, along with James P. Johnson and Fats Waller, one of the developers of the “stride” piano. He was part Jewish, and later in his life he was a Hebrew cantor for a Harlem Black Jewish congregation.

Eccentric prog rock from Quebec in 1975. At various times in their music I can hear influences from fusion, Gentle Giant and the Canterbury school, but they don’t fit neatly into any single category.

There’s no escape from “Smoke on the Water,” so we might as well get it over with. Here’s Red Foley’s take.

From the Dennou Coil soundtrack, composed by Satou Tsuneyoshi.

Symphony Sid Page gets to show off in this one.

Video game music composed by Yasunori Mitsuda, arranged and performed by Alkan specialist Yui Morishita. This is the first in a playlist of Morishita’s arrangement of tunes from Square Enix games. They’re all worth listening to if you have the time.

… and something not so sentimental from Stevie Coyle.

A bit of gooey yet practical sentimentality from NRBQ for those who like that sort of thing….

An approximation of surf music by the Japanese counterpart of Dick Dale.

Rubinstein was my favorite pianist when I was first investigating classical music, particularly for Chopin, but also for Brahms.

A tune about grungy hamsters, vengeful lobsters, spiders and sponges, if I am interpreting the English parts of the macaronic lyrics properly.

It’s surprisingly difficult to find videos of off-track music from 1980 to 2005, even when an album had a Roger Dean cover. That was before YouTube, but too recently for the recordings to be of antiquarian interest. Consequently there is very little available to represent such eccentric bands as Birdsongs of the Mesozoic, and few of their earlier recordings are available there. BotM is classified as “RIO/Avant-Prog” at Prog Archives. Unlike most artists in that classification, they are generally fairly pleasant and not difficult to listen to, though not remotely radio-friendly.