My dear colleague Karl is almost certainly the greatest authority on Western Esotericism at our institute ouside of my office. With and without the exception of the latter, he is also almost certainly the person with the best scholarly expertise in that field of study in at least the German-speaking world (Kocku von Stuckrad and Wouter Hannegraaff actually being located in the Netherlands). Be that as it may, definitely nobody in the whole wide world is better acquainted with the topic referred to on the following track from "Spleen and Ideal", the second album by the Australian band Dead Can Dance, Mesmerism:
Thursday, March 28, 2013
Sunday, March 24, 2013
1000 SONGS - DAY 271 SONG # 302
DAY 302: 4 ways of kicking Edgar Allen Poe
1. The classical way of kicking Edgar Allen Poe is done by the one who invented it: Write some really strange lyrics, engage a man to write a string arrangement, add some noises unheard of so far in a piece of popular music, do something between singing and the not yet invented art of rapping to a simple 4/4 rhythm sounding like 2/4, but do it all on the basis of the blues scheme. Lennon:
2. Take away all the strange things, just stick to the chords and the lyrics, return to the blues in it, and record a lengthy number of british latte 60s avantgarde heavy blues. Spooky Tooth did it on "The Last Puff":
3. Stay in the line of Spooky Tooth, but make a straight stadium-rock version of the british tradition out of chords and lyrics. Oasis did it. This is the version on which I would like to be the drumme ("des foat schu urndlich", wie der Wiener sagt):
4. Return to the weirdness in it. The Flaming Lips did it. My favourite cover version. I admire John Lennon for having caused so many singers to remember the lyrics of that song. As you might expect. my favourite lines are: "elementary penguin singing hare krishna, man you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allen Poe". The Gallaghers are not really to the point with that, anyway (Liam comes in to soon with mentioning EAP, kind of ejaculatio praecox).
Sunday, March 17, 2013
1000 SONGS - DAY 270 SONG # 301
Day 270: A one hit wonder from my childhood & a great cover version by the Butthole Surfers
When poor me was a child and teenager, the world was full of one hit wonders; one among them is "Spirit in the Sky" by Norman Greenbaum:
It has been covered by Doctor & the Medics. No need to feature this rather lackadaisical version here... But when it comes to cover versions of songs from my childhood, we have to feature the Butthole Surfers and their GREAT version of Donavan's Hurdy Gurdy Man:
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