Category: Tune of the day

Featuring Stevie Coyle: “Fortunately, not even several years of playing Folk Masses every Sunday could quash his musical spirit….”

Metal is timeless, and every age has its version. Distorted guitars are helpful but not essential. Attitude is what matters.

An innocuous little set of variations on a simple tune, performed by the pianist who kick-started the Alkan revival a half-century ago.

From the first Klezmer album I ever bought, with a cover by R. Crumb.

“The Funky Western Civilization” may be the obvious choice for Tonio K., but I like this one, too.

The “Chant de Roxane,” from Karol Szymanowski’s opera King Roger, transcribed for violin and piano by Paul Kochanski.

I don’t post all that much these days, and that’s not likely to change any time soon. Therefore, I thought I would start posting each day a piece of music that caught my ear, so that visitors will have something to listen to when there’s nothing new to read. Expect anything from Renaissance dances to Melt-Banana. No matter what your tastes are in music, there’ll be something to annoy you.

Can I keep this up indefinitely? Sure. Can you stand a year of it? We’ll see.

We’ll start with an orchestral arrangement of “Beware the Forest’s Mushrooms” from a Super Mario game, composed by Yoko Shimomura. While I have little interest in video games, I recently discovered that some game music is highly listenable, and Shimomura is one of the best composers. This particular piece reminds me of central European composers such as Dvorák and Smetana.