That whole album is cataclysmically awesome.
I like Homewrecker the best.
Nina Simone also provides the music to the final boss in Mark Ecko’s Getting Up: Contents Under Pressure. That game had such a fantastic soundtrack.
I’d have to say the last time I was really stunned by a song was when I saw Mountain Man perform here in town at a friend’s bar. The whole set was amazing, but I’m thinking in particular about their song “Animal Tracks”. I caught some video that night you can see on YouTube. Animal Tracks is the second song they perform in the video. It was just this magical performance. The place was packed, but you could hear a pin drop in the room as these three girls who had driven all the way across America sang without amplification.
I am so gonna shit up this thread… but with some good shit motherfuckers…
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3PAJqgeeJf4
No fucking idiotic words neccesary, eh, assholes???
PS: This is MJ at his best! If you don’t know who MJ is, then go fuck off or something…
The Black Keys - Your Touch. What a beat. Modern blues in the key of classic hardbeat blues. Good stuff.
This is unquestionably my favorite band of the last ten years, and their new album is exceptional. This song off it is, as always, incredible to my ears.
John & Beverly Martyn - Auntie Aviator
When I hear this song I often think that Galen Rowell and his wife died in a plane crash, which makes me sad, but then I remember all the great pictures Rowell made, which makes me happy. So it’s all good.
The Automatic Automatic - Lost at Home
Not Accepted Anywhere is a great album with Lost being one of the best. Although, I do not have enough fire about the song to do a fan made video like the people in the link I posted.
The opening theme to the game Populous. Has anyone heard this yet?
Sumerland (What Dreams May Come) by Fields of the Nephilim. Superb rhythm section laying down a profound groove with Carl McCoy in top form soaring around it.
Fear of the Dark by Iron Maiden. <3 Bruce.
The last song that totally kicked my ass is the lead track off the new Fall album,“O.F.Y.C. Showcase”. Mind you, I’m coming up on about twenty-five years’ worth of being continually kicked in the ass by Fall songs.
I don’t want to answer this until I listen to this week’s show in case there’s some secret thing we’re supposed to do, but whatever my answer is I bet it’s due to the song’s use in film or show. I love music, but it’s really only when it’s used in a film that it absolutely blows my mind. I’d always loved the Pixies’ Where is My Mind, but it completely floored me when it played during the end of Fight Club.
Talisman, by Air. The mood of that song is how I want to feel all the time.
Yusuf Islam (Cat Stevens) sings his classic Father and Son with his baby son in the audience.
Stupid Cat Stevens and his stupid songs about fathers and sons and stuff… kicks dirt pouts
I don’t know if it’s the last one, but it does it every time I hear it: “Everybody Here Wants You,” by Jeff Buckley. The official video is kinda lame (it’s posthumous), but the song does it to me every time.
JB’s “Last Goodbye” and “Grace” also knock me on my ass every time. Died way too young, although it’s possible he shot his wad on the one album. The tapes his mother has put together and released since his death don’t come close to approaching the brilliance of the Grace album (except for the aforementioned “Everybody”).
Okay, so…
I am in graduate school working my way toward a doctoral degree in vocal performance and pedagogy, so I guess you could say I like music rather a lot. And one of the things that convinces a fellow like me to pursue an advanced degree in–let’s face it–never having a lucrative career, is having had multiple instances throughout my life of this very thing we’re talking about: being absolutely gobsmacked by a piece of music. Specifically, that whole “hear a piece of music for the first time randomly on the radio and be blown away” type of thing.
The trouble is, once you really get into how the sausage is made, so to speak, it’s terribly easy to lose sight of the joy of your chosen vocation, whatever it may be…even music.
Long story short, I had not had one of these amazing moments for a LONG time until this past February. I was driving home from the library (natch) and heard a piece of choral music (okay, perhaps it is a stretch to call it a “song”) with which I was not familiar, and was so taken with it that I called my wife at home and said, "turn on the classical station! You’ve gotta hear this!..and, “I don’t want to miss the title of it being back-announced between my car and the front door!”
Yup. I’m a nerd.
Anyway, the “song” is “Path of Miracles” by Joby Talbot (who, as it turns out, is a pretty darn good film composer at his “day job”). It’s a 60-minute work for small a cappella choir, which was commissioned by the British vocal ensemble Tenebrae. The piece is sort of a poetic depiction what folks ca. 1300-1400 might have gone through, physically and spiritually, during the long pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela.
Here is one of the four movements, broken into two chunks, courtesy of YouTube:
…might not hit the spot for y’all (and apologies for both the link and the screed that precedes it, should that proves to be the case), but I sure was grateful for the piece…and for how it reminded me in no uncertain terms why I am doing what I am doing.
That posthumous album is just so depressing because the only good thing on it is “Everybody Here Wants You” (and oh, what a song!), while everything else is thoroughly ruined by the production. That he had decided to scrap the record and re-record everything shortly before he passed away because he was so unhappy with the way it was produced just makes me sad. Part of me really thinks that it could have been on the same level as Grace if given the proper treatment. Sigh.
I dunno if this is the very last song that gobsmacked me, but it never ceases to smack my gob.
Department of Eagles - Family Romance
Give it a minute to sink in, it’s great songwriting. A little lo-fi, a little off key, but all of these things add to the brilliance. Endorphin rush always hits at 1:52 when the drums drop.
This nutty latin psych rock mix has floored me. I’ll be blasting this one all summer on my back patio with some double strong margaritas.
I’d have to say “Praan”, by Garry Schyman. Best known as the music to the “Where the Hell is Matt?” video, this track always just gets to me and reminds me that I need to get off the North American continent more and do some good old-fashioned world travelling.