Category: Tune of the day

Alkan is notorious for fantastically difficult piano music, but he could be simple and graceful when he wanted.

Deranged Americana by archetypical hippie freaks, before their minds capsized.

“Even the moon and the stars
Have gone off to drink some wine.”

A historical document from 1989.

A different approach to the Clash classic.

Atomic Ape did an ambitious cover of this, but the original rocks harder.

Motorcycle music of a different sort. This was featured in the twelve-episode Honda commercial Super Cub.

Vai-esque motorcycle music, by another candidate for the title of “best guitarist no one has heard of.”

Brave Combo plays the cheerful Doors tune as a “psychedelic hora (Yiddish polka).”

The only Pink Floyd song I ever listen to.

The Canterbury school of prog rock, as exemplified by Caravan, is distinguished by playfulness, jazzishness, and whimsical, often downright silly lyrics.

May is seven months away. While you’re waiting, you can listen to alumni of Fairport Convention and Steeleye Span.

Some pianistic fun from Jakob Ludwig F.M. Bartholdy.

I don’t have a translation, but I doubt that you really need one.

Keith Emerson and Rick Wakeman weren’t the only keyboardists of note back in the golden age of prog rock. There was Rod Argent, for instance.

James Huneker: “I never thought I should live to hear Arnold Schoenberg sound tame, yet tame he sounds—almost timid and halting—after Ornstein who is, most emphatically, the only true-blue, genuine, Futurist composer alive.”

My father liked marches and played lots of recordings of pipes and drums and John Philip Sousa. I got sick of them. Nevertheless, this medley did catch my ear, and years later I tracked it down.

I could easily post all of Gentle Giant, and perhaps I eventually will. They were the best of all progressive rock bands (you can disagree, but you’re wrong), and of course I never heard them on the radio. This is from Three Friends.