Sacred Songs, Part 12: Before and After Silence

Year: 2020
Original Format: mp3

The current plan is for this to be the next-to-last installment in this series; 13 is a good number, I think. It’s always been lucky for me, despite its bad reputation.

No big concept here, just a straightforward tribute to the power of music, one thing we always have to be thankful for. Here’s wishing a happy and healthy holiday, with the emphasis on healthy, to you and yours.

One note: This thing was assembled in a degenerate drug frenzy (meaning: I ate half a Space Gummy), and listening back to it I realized that for some perverse reason all the most difficult stuff is at the beginning (and the end, but that’s another story). If you can make it through the first 10 minutes, you’re gold.

OK, without further ado, smoke ’em if you’ve got ’em, and let’s do this thing.

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Sacred Songs, Part 11: The Garden Is Open

Year: 2020
Original format: mp3

When I started this I thought it would be ready in time for the beginning of summer, hopefully in a world that had gotten more or less back to normal. Obviously things did not work out that way. But it did eventually get done, and at least we still have music. That’s something.

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Sacred Songs, Part 10: Get Outside

Year: 2020
Original format: mp3

Virus or no virus, spring is upon us; the sun is shining, the birds are singing, flowers are erupting violently into color. Times are weird but I recommend getting outside however you can, whenever you can, for as long as you can. This music will sound fine on your headphones, but even better on a speaker that lets it out into the open air, maximum volume please; don’t worry about your neighbors, they’ll love it.

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Sacred Songs, Part 7: Getting Confused with the Rev. Hell

Year: 2017
Original Format: MP3

They would lock me in and let me slooshy holy music by J.S. Bach and G.F. Handel, and I would read of these starry yahoodies tolchocking each other and then peeting their Hebrew vino and getting on to the bed with their wives’ like handmaidens, real horrorshow. That kept me going, brothers. I didn’t so much kopat the later part of the book, which is more like all preachy govoreeting than fighting and the old in-out. But one day the charles said to me, squeezing me like tight with his bolshy beefy rooker, “Ah 6655321, think on the divine suffering. Meditate on that, my boy.” And all the time he had this rich manny von of Scotch on him.
—Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

There’s a lot of ground to cover here, so let’s get to it.

Playlist after the jump.

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Sacred Songs, Part 6: What’s Your Thing?

Year: 2017
Original Format: MP3

Connoisseurs of my oeuvre, if there were any, might notice that parts of this are lifted from a mix CD I made about 20 years ago. What can I say, I’m a sucker for certain songs and segues over and over again. That’s my thing.

Playlist after the jump.

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Sacred Songs, Part 5: Darkness Increased by 1

Year: 2016
Original Format: MP3

So here we are again at the great pivot, the Return of Light. It got especially dark this year, and so the turnabout is especially welcome.

But darkness has to culminate before the change can come, and that’s the basic idea here. Heavy stuff man, but light awaits on the other side.

Playlist after the jump.

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