Category: Tune of the day

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.

Today’s chemistry lesson, courtesy of the McGarrigles.

Something to annoy Andy Edwards. VDGG epitomized all that was dark, dramatic and pretentious about prog rock. I like them anyway, though I wish Peter Hammill had sung in a language other than English so I could better ignore the lyrics.

Another Winfield fingerstyle winner.

Time for some Klezmer.

Some twelve tone-lite from Ron Jarzombek. This track — I hesitate to call it a “tune” — is constructed from four suspended chords that combined include all twelve tones.

Something a bit different today: a look Yunchan Lim’s Chopin Etudes and the changing styles of Chopin playing over the years.

Something to annoy all the NBCs at Severian’s place.