what music are you listening to now

[AnthroHeart]

The song has an inspirational beat too.

[Dekalb_Blues]

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lRCoTPB4P6A

I've been meaning to post this for a few weeks now, but of course affairs of state take precedence over such folderol. High-level geopolitics waits for no man. But Brzezinski and Kissinger are such pains in the neck as houseguests, what with their constant bickering over the course of Empire. And it's like pulling teeth, getting rid of them. Had to fake an urgent call from David Rockefeller promising them booze and dancing girls if they'd only high-tail it over to 30 Rock for some Ruling-Partying.
Many fond memories of tous les moments musicaux magiques in beautiful Bethlehem (or "Bethlum" as the locals pronounce it; "Bedlam", as I say it). With plenty of les très chic, très hip chix to dance with!

Typical Bethlehemite gals doing their thang

The beer flowed like wine, and vice-versa, and the music went 'round and 'round, and some of it comes out here, just for the hell of it. I mean, "for spiritual uplift", of course. Always get those two mixed up. Here are some bands I caught:

Bring4th, meet MarchFourth!:

Skip to about 0:45. Absolutely demented spirit-of-Mardi-Gras reform-school marching-band ensemble (here seen lettin' it ride in Telluride).


Killer blues band with my buddy on sax. He, his brother on guitar, and the Sonny-Sharrockian guitarist are heavy-weight jazz players, just laying back in this ensemble, with its fine vocalist:



Here's my man again, this time on guitar, backing a powerful local chanteuse (note: her kids were in the audience, so Mom sanitizes the lyrics a bit around the 4:30 minute mark, singing "I've got a quarter-pounder full of cheese" instead of "... a quarter-pound of weed", thus cracking up the harp-player. LOL!):

I used to live a few blocks from this venue (where I myself have performed, years ago). BTW, that's the Delaware River there; 45 miles downstream, and 240 years ago, General Washington & co. sneakily crossed one snowy Christmas night to beat up the unsuspecting Hessian mercenaries wintering near Trenton, New Jersey. This riverine amphib psyop succeeded big-time.


An absolutely mesmerizing band that I first ran into accidentally in Ithaca, NY, twenty years ago. Like Talking-Heads-meets-Sonic-Youth, but in the American old-time traditional-music groove:



Bernard "Pretty" Purdie, among the most-recorded studio musicians ever, was in the house and performed a rousing few sets with local jazz luminaries. You've probably heard him already, as he's drummed away on Motown hits by Aretha Franklin and on three albums by Steely Dan (among his many hundreds of rock, blues, and jazz recordings with artists ranging from the Rolling Stones to B.B. King to Frank Sinatra):


Next stop, comin' up: other coast, Festival of Disruption! http://festivalofdisruption.com/dive-in/
Annie Clark!! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1d9DsEP_...j7&index=1
Xiu Xiu! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v_HbiDI9gkM
Kaitlyn Aurelia Smith! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gabuAyRAx-I Grooves will be had.


 

[Eddie]

Still revved up from Homecoming; listening to Celebration by Kool and the Gang!

[Dog Star]

inspired by bourbon betty, ty

[Nicholas]

Many lights glowing on the same stage. Not forgetting the legendary Nile Rogers on rhythm guitar 

[rva_jeremy]

In honor of the new Wilco album dropping today

[rva_jeremy]

My favorite band, sadly they are no more. Gary can tell you I played this for him all the time back in the early aughts.

[sjel]

:-/

[rva_jeremy]

[GentleWanderer]

________

[ZebVanZandt]

failed first post on this site

[ZebVanZandt]

https://youtu.be/6QjIHnb5Ivs?list=PLgSDH...5eIgTg54Fo

[Tristen]

I produce and mix music and Ive been listening to TDE's artist SZA alot recently, she has a wonderful voice and great choice in beats but her lyrically content is very innocent and mysterious in a way, I recommend you check her out in this link! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITZXgn81uyk

[Zach]

[Cyanatta]

I produce and mix music and Ive been listening to TDE's artist SZA alot recently, she has a wonderful voice and great choice in beats but her lyrically content is very innocent and mysterious in a way, I recommend you check her out in this link! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ITZXgn81uyk

Only heard Babylon before, but agreed, her voice is amazing.

[Dekalb_Blues]

[GentleWanderer]

_______

[Dekalb_Blues]

Think of this world as modeled at your whim,
Perfectly trimmed for you from east to west;
Yet know yourself a snowdrift on the sand
Heaped for two days or three, then thawed and gone.

In agitation I was brought to birth
And learned nothing from life but wonder at it;
Reluctantly we leave, still uninformed
Why in the world we came, or went, or were.

Were the choice mine to come, should I have come?
Or to become? What might I have become?
What better fortune could I then have chanced on
Than not to come, become, or even be?

Dear lad, steeped as you are in Mysteries,
Why should you load your heart with nameless cares?
Let projects fade away; disport yourself
In the brief hour when life detains you here.

Rise up, why mourn this transient world of men?
Pass your whole life in gratitude and joy.
Had humankind been freed from womb and tomb,
When would your turn have come to live and love?



Poor ball, struck by Fate's heavy polo-mallet,
Running whichever way it drives you, numbed
Of sense, though He who set you on your course,
He knows, He knows, He knows.

Could my heart know, in life, life's hidden secrets,
Death could inform me of God's hidden secrets.
Since I know nothing of myself today,
What can I know tomorrow, after death?

If only I controlled God's Universe,
Would I not wipe away these faulty Heavens
And build from nothing a true Paradise
Where all souls could achieve their hearts' desire?

Fools, with damnation as your destiny,
Sentenced to fuel the eternal fires of Hell,
How long will you still plead for Omar's pardon,
Nudging his mercy from the Merciful?




Misguided foes call me philosopher--
God knows this is the one thing I am not.
I am even less: in such a nest of sorrows
I cannot tell you even who I am.

Man's brain has never solved the eternal Why
Nor foraged past the frontier set for thought.
All intellect be sure, proves nugatory,
However hard we either teach or learn.

Not you, not I, can learn the inmost secret:
The eternal Cypher proves too hard to break.
Behind God's Curtain voices babble of us
But when it parts, where then shall we two be?

Some ponder long on doctrine and belief,
Some teeter between certitude and doubt.
Suddenly out of hiding leaps the Guide
With: 'Fools, the Way is neither that nor this.'




Conceal the mystery revealed to you
From all nonentities, likewise from fools:
In carefulness approach men's inner selves,
Letting none intercept your scrutiny.




[Quatrains from The Original Rubaiyyat of Omar Khayaam: A New Translation with Critical Commentaries, by Robert Graves and Omar Ali-Shah (NY: 1968)  -- I happen to be editing an ebook version of this work, which deals with an 800-year-old uncorrupted manuscript of an important collection of poetic stanzas by the great 11th/12th-century Persian Sufi scientist and poet Omar Khayaam. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Omar_Khayyam Cheers ]

[YinYang]

[Cyanatta]

[Eddie]

[Nía]

[Nía]

[herald]

  beautiful Bird.jpg (Size: 41.01 KB / Downloads: 1)

link to slideshow^^ ^^

"Birds" by Adrian Belew, from Inner Revolution,
and "Birdland" by Weather Report on This is Jazz Vol. 10, from Warner.
A hundred bird images from Beautiful Birds Facebook page.

[sunnysideup]

[Dekalb_Blues]

Re. one of the most powerful and iconic pieces of music of the late 20th century:

First public performance of "Woodstock" by the then-25-year-old Roberta Joan Mitchell (September 14, 1969, at the sixth annual Big Sur Folk Festival, held Sept. 14-15, 1969 on the grounds of Esalen at Big Sur, California, USA), a month after The Woodstock Music & Art Fair (August 15-17, 1969, at Bethel, New York, USA [more than forty miles from Woodstock, NY, incidentally]):


Moar from this event, which in a crucial way far out-hippied the Woodstock event from the positive stance of the inner heart of that generation's truly hip* manifestation of the New, spearheaded in a large way by various Wanderers whose speciality was musical art intelligently communicating the reality of loving unconditionedness at a visceral level: (brief taste) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vt2pceRSUMU ; extended sampling of music, sex, and violence (e.g., random streakers, Stephen Stills fighting with unruly audience member) all at this glorious event-- : https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STJdwZ5H...124DFBA82B The fact that such positivity was (inevitably) subsequently negatively commodified and weaponized in the service of malign conditioning does not nullify the validity of the real thing, which simply assumed further uncorrupted time/place/audience forms as the requisite expert Wanderers emerged in the music scene around the world.

*Fun Fakt: "Hip" is the 20th-century heroin-using culture's adaptation of a 19th-century opium-using culture's term for the act of smoking opium (one typically partook of the waking-dream-inducing stuff whilst laying comfortably on one's side-- one was "on the hip", in optimum ergonomic readiness for The Vision...)

Latest public performance of this piece by its creator, forty-four years later (on June 19, 2013, at a 70th Birthday Celebration held for her during the 7th Luminato Festival, June 14-23, 2013, in Massey Hall, Toronto, CAN):


Coals to Newcastle, or simply self-referentiality out the wazoo? A fairly unique event, musico-geoculturally speaking: "Woodstock" creator (who didn't make it to Woodstock first time around) singing "Woodstock" at memorial-quasi-Woodstock held on actual Woodstock site twenty-nine years later:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xN8o8CjNRJo

Two luminous covers of this iconic song (those of you who are musicians will perhaps know how forbidding a proposition it is to attempt to perform any Mitchell song credibly and creditably -- this of course doesn't stop these tunes being earnestly massacred left, right, and center by a slew of self-impressed but overreaching artistes, many of them professionals who should know better-- see, for instance, most of such efforts posted to YouTube):
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_q...hell+cover

The late Eva Cassidy's dreamlike version is as far from a massacre as is imaginable:

The present Heather Maloney & Darlingside's saudade*-filled version, of which Graham Nash has commented: "Delicious, really excellent... I'm certain that Joni would enjoy this wonderfully heartfelt version of her classic song.":*Saudade: See http://www.bring4th.org/forums/showthrea...#pid209311

  Word. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AnyqVRijCNw



https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/19...080416.htm

 

[Dekalb_Blues]

link to slideshow^^ ^^

"Birds" by Adrian Belew, from Inner Revolution,
and "Birdland" by Weather Report on This is Jazz Vol. 10, from Warner.
A hundred bird images from Beautiful Birds Facebook page.

[BTW, the unique dance-styling we see here of Steve Wahrer, the Trashmen's drummer and vocalist, is lovingly carried on in this vid: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gSMbu5qYuts (the fellow on the left)]





The superorganismic Simurgh in Sufi poetry:

 Decoration outside of Nadir Divan-Beghi madrasah, Bukhara

In classical and modern Persian literature the Simorḡ is frequently mentioned, particularly as a metaphor for God in Sufi mysticism. In the 12th century Conference of the Birds,* Iranian Sufi poet Farid ud-Din Attar wrote of a band of thirty pilgrim birds ("si morgh" in Persian) in search of the Simurgh. In the poem, the birds of the world gather to decide who is to be their king, as they have none. The hoopoe--



--the wisest of them all, suggests that they should find the legendary Simorgh, a mythical Persian bird roughly equivalent to the western phoenix. The hoopoe leads the birds, each of whom represent a human fault which prevents man from attaining enlightenment. When the group of thirty birds finally (after many and many a trial and tribulation, traversing seven realms' worth of increasingly intense experiences) reach the dwelling place of the Simorgh, all they find is a lake in which they see... their own reflection.
*https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Conference_of_the_Birds

A modern cartoon adaptation of this teaching-story:


Regarding a recent edition of this almost 900-year-old work:


Gor blimey, some bloody bird, that 'un!

[herald]

.
Dekalb_Blues,

Thanks for the post. My wife and I really enjoyed the story. It multiplies my reasons for being fascinated with birds. We’ll also hand off the links especially the animated version to our artist niece, and her four year old daughter. Birds are living proof of a benevolent creator logos, right? The Bukharan artwork is fantastic. Is that a simorgh?

As a teenager in the early eighties, I liked the Gabriel/Anderson piece very much.
The Trashmen, I used for part two (linked below). With Annie Lennox’s “Little Bird”.

link to Trashmen/Lennox slideshow

.

[3.4→4+]

Hi!
This incredible song recently came into my life:



I was listening to it eating breakfast and found myself moved to tears,
Stevie was really tapping into some esoteric truth when he sings (emphasis my own):

As around the sun the earth knows she's revolving
And the rosebuds know to bloom in early may
Just as hate knows love's the cure
You can rest your mind assure
That I'll be loving you always

As now can't reveal the mystery of tomorrow
But in passing will grow older every day
Just as all that's born is new
You know what I say is true
That I'll be loving you always

(Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky)
Always
(Until the ocean covers every mountain high)
Always
(Until the dolphin flies and parrots live at sea)
Always
(Until we dream of life and life becomes a dream)

Did you know that true love asks for nothing
No no her acceptance is the way we pay
Did you know that life has given love a guarantee
To last through forever and another day

Just as time knew to move on since the beginning
And the seasons know exactly when to change
Just as kindness knows no shame
Know through all your joy and pain
That I'll be loving you always

As today I know I'm living
But tomorrow could make me the past
But that I mustn't fear
For I'll know deep in my mind
The love of me I've left behind
'Cause I'll be loving you always

(Until the day is night and night becomes the day)
Always
(Until the trees and seas just up and fly away)
Always
(Until the day that eight times eight times eight is four)
Always
(Until the day that is the day that are no more)
Did you know you're loved by somebody
(Until the day the earth starts turnin' right to left)
Always
(Until the earth just for the sun denies itself)
I'll be lovin' you forever
(Until dear mother nature says her work is through)
Always
(Until the day that you are me and I am you)
Always
(Until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky
Until the ocean severs every mountain high)
Always mm mm

We all know sometimes life hates and troubles
Can make you wish you were born in another time and space
But you can bet your lifetimes that and twice it's double
That God knew exactly where he wanted you to be placed
So make sure when you say you're in it, but not of it
You're not helpin' to make this earth
A place sometimes called hell
Change your words into truths
And then change that truth into love
And maybe our children's grandchildren
And their great grandchildren will tell
I'll be loving you until the rainbow burns the stars out in the sky


In this song I feel like Stevie is speaking to a lot of truths in line with the Ra material. Also, the song is an uplifting JAM    This is almost everything I could want out of going to church It is not often that I really process the lyrics of a song, its really rare that I find songs I want to listen to that also have such a strong direct message of universal love.


TL;DR  Stevie Wonder's "As" from Songs in the Key of Life is a transcendent masterpiece

[Dekalb_Blues]

Hello, Herald, I'm glad you found my post's contents of interest. A: Yes. And, as well, a beautifully-executed symbolic depiction of the enigma that is superorganism -- or as Ra calls a certain form of it, social memory complex...  the Sufi dervishes have a technical term, 'jam ("concentration", "the state of being gathered" or "collected")  for a certain relatively "mystical" melding of balanced, sovereign individuals (who are all on the same spiritual page in an essential way... birds of a feather, don't you know!) into a synergistic co-creative group entity under expert direction, for purposes of expedited guided evolution. Certain kinds of human groupings need skilled outside assemblers and arrangers, who then set the group in buzzing blooming sovereign motion according to its own existential logic, trusting that crucial emergent qualities of serene sentience will spontaneously organically arise in a way that will benefit all. At any rate, it's better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick, and keeps the Seekers off the streets, where they might scare the horses. The term "jamming" was much later taken up by Western jazz musicians (and later, perhaps most famously, by Bob Marley) to describe freely-flowing, in-the-groovily spontaneous-improvisational ensemble playing; is it any wonder that the most vibrantly alive music is made in such a way?




(Of course, not everybody's with the avian program:

 )

The same kind of e-pluribus-unum surreal-mélange thing has traditionally been done with the figure of the elephant, another symbol of the Sufi Way:

  Shades of Arcimboldo! http://jamestownelementaryartblog.blogsp...fruit.html

Related to this mysterious pachyderm in a sort of inside-out way is the Sufi teaching-story of the "Blind Men and the Elephant"...











  From days of old, keeping a sharp eye on things.