The Music Post

So it occurred to me, whilst watching SNL, that I really love songs that feel like something is growing inside my brain.

 

I wish there was a better way of describing it than that. Words fall short.

 

The cacophony towards the end of ‘A Day In The Life’ does it. In fact, that’s what gave me the moment o’ epiphany about the whole thing. The beginning of ‘Non, Je Ne Regrette Rien’ does it as well. There’s an instrumental break in ‘Baba O’Reilly’ that does the job, and swathes of Pink Floyd. Were it just the Floyd and the Who that did it, I’d make a blanket assumption that I was enjoying ‘drug music’ without the benefit of drugs.

 

Which is not untrue, but the fact that I get the exact same sensation from Piaf pokes holes in any theory that limits the brain feeling to your typical stoner fare.

 

Back to SNL for a moment, BONUS SONG-AGE! ‘Get Back’ is one of my favourites, though it’s not applicable to the main ‘this music does things in my brain that alter my perception of the world and my own dimensional occupation of it’ thrust of the blog. I just enjoy it. Of course, commercials cut it short, but I have it, so I could, conceivably, listen to it any old time.

 

Sometime I should make a comprehensive list of the songs that affect me like this. I’d be interested in knowing if other people get that, but since the sensation is so difficult to describe (oh sure, you can get metaphysical, wax poetic, but there aren’t sentences to frame the physical sensation. It’s dizzying and lovely.

 

Okay, putting on ‘Brain Damage’ right now, because that and ‘Eclipse’ provide an excellent double whammy. As far as I can tell, the best high-off-music songs are either in the Pink Floyd school, or churchy music, which makes sense, since churchy music by definition wants to bring a closeness to God, perhaps a euphoric spirituality. And then the Piaf, which doesn’t fit the pattern at all, but golly, if it ain’t just fast becoming one of my favourite songs anyway. And of course, anything you hear live.

 

I saw a live performance of Les Mis with the high school French Club. We were up near the back of the house, but the music still reverberated in our ribcages. It was the most stirring thing. People being brought to tears with half the numbers. Great stuff.

 

On a separate-but-musical note– oh gosh, no pun intended, but I can’t bear to take it out now that I can’t unsee it– anyway, I’m trying to think about which composers are my favourites and why, and really backing up those opinions with favourite pieces and movements, and the language and music theory to boot. Classical music, contemporary film scores, any/all of it, really, but I’d like to be more knowledgeable in general about my music tastes.

 

(ending note- after Floyd, ‘The Shadow of Your Smile’ by The Emperors of Swing came on, and listening to it makes me feel tres film noir. I might need to compose a sort of life-soundtrack around that so I can skulk around in trenchcoats in the rain, biting off jaded bon mots before retiring to an office where the only light comes from the streetlamps, through venetian blinds… It’s possible I put too much thought into that.)