Category: music

First, let me say, I command you to put a Post-It note over the video screen here so that you can’t actually see this totally retarded cliched YouTube video of this gorgeous song. I mean, Charlie Sheen from Two and a Half Men is involved at one point. Like, wha??

I listened to a few different versions of this hard-to-find song and thought this one had both the best sound quality and the absolute worst visuals — and that’s saying something. It was a Sophie’s Choice moment for me, I tell you.

So Post-It note. I command it.

Alternatively, in lieu of scrounging around for those Post-It notes we all have but can never find, I suppose I could allow you to do something like, oh, close your eyes and simply listen. Put on headphones and listen.

This song was a one-hit wonder back in 1972 from British pop band The English Congregation, featuring singer Brian Keith. (Not actor Brian Keith. Although that would be interesting, I gotta say.)

I’m in love with this song now. I can’t stop listening to it. I don’t know how I stumbled across it but I’m so glad I did. So much going on here. So much that’s unexpected. It starts off sounding like a choral piece from the Vienna Boys’ Choir. Literally, the entire first minute of the song sounds like a right proper churchy choir where everyone is singing with their hands clasped in front of their chests, breathing perfectly from their diaphragms, and making perfect O’s with their proper churchy mouths. But then ….. oh then, all hell breaks loose at the minute mark and nothing is the same. The single curl of an electric guitar slams into you and leaves you breathless. The flutes come in — yes, flutes, for God’s sake — in a piping adamant percussive. Which is weird if you really think about it. I play the flute. They’re generally not all that adamant.

And Brian Keith. Good Lord, Brian Keith. All I can say is that the minute …. no, the second …. he opens his mouth to sing, he has me, forever. I don’t want to give it away, but his entrance into the song makes me want to run up and do naughty things to random strangers. He doesn’t sing this song. He declares it. He declaims it. And while he declaims and the guitar curls and the flutes percuss, the perfect churchy choir sings perfectly behaved backup. The elements are kind of nuts, but the whole ….. the whole is brilliant.

And the lyrics …. I kind of love the lyrics …… I can feel your warm face ever close to my lips …..

Ahem. Indeed.

Here’s the weird thing: The first time I heard this song, I thought, “I know this voice. I know I’ve heard this voice before. Where??” I mean, he did not become a well-known singer, unfortunately. So where would I have heard him? Then it hit me: Jesus Christ Superstar. I researched it to see if I was hearing right. I was.

Brian Keith played Annas in the original 1970 concept album of Jesus Christ Superstar.

(Which, in my opinion — and I do intend to write about this — far outshines the movie soundtrack).

The fact that I recognized this not-well-known singer is proof of just how much of my publicly puritanical youth I spent dancing with the devil, blasting this album in secret whenever my parents weren’t home, wailing along at the top of my hellbound lungs. I recognized this man’s voice. Clearly, in some little naughty nook of my brain, I am permanently joined with Brian Keith.

And that’s just fine with me.

So, take a listen. The English Congregation, Softly Whispering I Love You.

(The song takes about 10 seconds to kick in. And, again, I would implore/command you to close your eyes.)

Holy cow. This is almost unbearably brilliant. You know?

By George Benson.

This is to distract you from the lack of posts. I have house guests, you see. Although now that I’ve mentioned the lack of posts, that’s all you’ll think about so maybe I should mention something like peanut butter cup cheesecake to re-distract you from the lack of posting. Although I just mentioned it again so now this post is turning into a kind of verbal Escher drawing and we’re all trapped in it forever and I don’t even know how I did that.

So let’s move on, despite the impossibility of that ever really happening.

Now I hates me the cheesy YouTube videos, but I love this song. He is so damn smooth and the phrasing is gorgeous. MB and I saw him in concert several years ago at an outdoor venue and I tell you true: He sounds just as perfect in person. It was uncanny. He looks perfect and ageless and sounds perfect and ageless and he’s basically some kind of smooth-singing, guitar-strumming Dorian Gray which is the only conclusion a reasonable person can reach here.

Again, yes, moving on. Told you it was impossible.

Did you know this is Ray Charles’ favorite song? S’true.

Just listen. Smoooooth.

Like this post.

By Mig Ayesa

About 5 years ago, MB and I religiously watched a reality TV show called Rock Star INXS. Basically, a bunch of wanna-be rock stars auditioned to be the next lead singer for INXS because, apparently, something had happened to their previous lead singer, you see. So the singers would sing, the screaming scantily clad groupies would be screaming and scantily clad, and the members of INXS would sit in the back of the “chamber” — oh, along with a scantily clad Dave Navarro — and pass judgment on the singers. Some of the contestants were really good, like Mig Ayesa from Sydney, a favorite of mine. He had a genuine sweetness and humility that some of the others didn’t have. He talked openly about being in love with his wife. There was just a realness that radiated from him, not a posturing posing energy that some of the other contestants were desperately working. I loved Mig because he just seemed comfortable in his own skin. (And that’s some pretty nice skin, if you ask me.) Just … no striving. No “working it.” I am who I am.

That realness comes across in his version of “Baby I Love Your Way.” I think it rivals the original. I really do. There were some great performances on that show, but this one, in my opinion, is the best. It just really gets me.

(The performance starts about 46 seconds in.)

By Sugarland.

I’m sure I’m the last person in the world to discover this video, but I’ll post it nonetheless.

I’m not a huge country music person, but this song is catchy and the video is hilarious. The concept is clever and she just makes it work. She’s so over the top with the insanity. She has to be. I love that she’s totally committed to it. It wouldn’t work otherwise. So many things are funny to me in this: the station wagon, the whores workin’ it in the lineup, the ice cream cone bit, the unicorn painting, the insane unitard dance about halfway through, the photo wall, the fact that the guitar player is her benignly smiling accomplice.

Oh, and I love love love that red dress. It wouldn’t make the cut in The Modesty Survey, but whatevs. It’s gorgeous.

“Call me!”

Grace Potter and the Nocturnals. Like her. Like this song.

Think I might this acoustic version even better, though: