December days: Music

[liv]

angelofthenorth asked for Music - that make you think of people

The first song I can remember associating with a person was Tori Amos' Cornflake girl, which my good friend MK played for me. It's a song about not really fitting in, so very calculated to appeal to a teenager, but also both M and I love Tori's musicianship.

No, I lie, before that my brother Thuggish Poet and I used to sing Bon Jovi's Always as a kind of ironic duet. We were always sort of endeared by Bon Jovi's attempts at poetic lyrics, particularly 'til the stars don't shine / 'til the heavens burst / and the words don't rhyme.

doseybat really expanded my musical horizons when I was in my late teens. It's hard to pick one song of the many that she brought into my life; pretty much anything goth, really. Perhaps All About Eve's December. Or something from 90s era Levellers, as we went to their gig together. Let's say Carry me, though almost anything would do.

My three closest friends from university were all keen on early music and used to sing a lot as a trio, which they reconvened to sing at my wedding, which was one of the happiest moments of a wonderful day. Probably the most characteristically pseudomonas song is Tom making a manteau which is beautifully filthy; the words are more or less innocent as they stand but if you sing as a catch or round, the innuendo falls out. And Strike it up Tabor reminds me of hatam_soferet, because the words make very little sense, so I helped improvise some new (not necessarily more sensible) ones:

Custard and crumble
My tummy shall rumble
Stir it all up until it's just a jumble.
I mean to eat it sideways
It will not last me five days
What a mess
On my dress
Even more
On the floor
But I care nowt

When I first met darcydodo she was singing not early music, but classical, so the song I most strongly associate with her is Voi che sapete from Mozart's Figaro. She pretty much didn't stop singing the entire three years were were going out, though, so songs that remind me of her could be a whole post on their own.

lethargic_man made me a mix tape when we first started going out. An actual, physical one on magnetic tape; those were a lot of effort, back in the previous millennium. Probably the song from that that's most stayed with me is Beth Orton's Someone's daughter. The song Michael by Maggi, Pierce & EJ also reminds me of him, it's a kind of character portrait of someone who shares more with him than just the name.

I've shared a lot of music over the years with rysmiel; if I had to pick one song it would be Sisters of Mercy's Some kind of stranger, though rysmiel also introduced me to Leonard Cohen and VNV Nation and Stan Rogers, whereas it was through doseybat that I first got into Sisters.

Strangely enough jack and I don't have 'our song' at all, because we very rarely listen to music together. Our wedding music was Tant con je vivrai, which also reminds me of siderea who found it for us when I was casting about for songs that fit a very specific set of constraints including working for SAB rather than the more standard four-part harmony. And the XKCD version of Boom-de-yada.

Finally, the song that most makes me think of angelofthenorth is Hymns and arias, which is a sort of meta-rugby chant. Memory can be a strange thing.

Anyway, rather than embedding individual YouTube links, I've put most of these on Grooveshark. I think I've checked most of those that they are the original versions of the song in question and play correctly, but Grooveshark is always a bit random.

[December Days masterpost]

Comments

[gwyddno.livejournal.com]

I can't hear Hymns and Arias without thinking of this version: http://youtu.be/MLxJY9hjz38

[angelofthenorth]

starring you as the Mari Lwyd :)

[liv]

Yay that is awesome! Thank you for linking to the video!

[wychwood]

Haha, many of my memories of darcydodo also revolve around singing. With WW, hanging out in my room singing Simon & Garfunkel, carol singing with a random group of singy people who happened to be around past the end of term...

But then, I imagine this is true of most people who know her.

[liv]

I think if I start listing all my singing memories of D I will very quickly end up weeping. Lots of G&S, and that amazing witch in Medea, and she had phases of singing L'amour est un oiseau rebelle from Carmen, or the Flower Duet from Lakmé. And lots and lots of silliness with A&J beyond the stuff I mentioned. And me helping her learn some synagogue music. And hanging around at the back of chapel while she was rehearsing with the choir. Bits of pop music, too, though really D didn't believe much in music written during her lifetime or even her parents'. If I could save time in a bottle and bits of Indigo Girls, and a bunch of more personal stuff, not just her happening to sing all the time, which I won't write down here.

[lethargic_man]

As song that reminds you of me, which I don't even know about? <adds to list of things to listen to once I'm out of mourning>

[rysmiel]

I am amused that bits of the lyrics of the song you associate with me feel very appropriate and other bits very not so.