Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Encore

You know how you sometimes get a tune stuck in your head, and you go around humming—or God forbid, singing—“Bésame Mucho” all day? (“Hold me my darling and say that you'll always be mine ... The rapture of love makes me want all your kisses each night.” Oh, please shoot me now.)

The pro-active version of this, which I think most of us also share, is occasionally wanting to hear something over and over. Not just a lot. Truly over and over.

My passion for Beatles ’65 subsided some time ago, and this sort of urgent encore listening has ranged from classical (I spent a summer once with Carlos Kleiber’s VPO Beethoven 7th) through what now seems to be called “roots music” (old blues, country, and folk), to jazz (Count Basie’s “Jumpin at the Woodside” is by far the most played song in my iTunes list). Weirdly, I’m now back to the Beatles. “Twist and Shout” has been doing an almost endless loop on my desktop for nearly a week. Maybe this isn’t so weird. I just saw Ferris Beuhler again, and Matthew Broderick’s lip-sync tour de force is hard to resist. The song itself is backed by two of the simplest possible guitar riffs, and I could do without those goofy early-Beatles ooohhs, but with John Lennon doing the shouting in that cold-wrecked raw voice, it’s a terrific rocker. I probably shouldn’t be listening to it. Might strain that left achilles again.

https://youtu.be/RaIjYvIayj0


(
I think this is my 400th post. Not sure what to make of that, but there it is.)

2 comments:

Phreerunner said...

400 and still going strong.
Well done and well written, Mark, I enjoy the regular read.

Mark Alvarez said...

Many thanks, Martin.