Memories - One Voice Children's Choir

 

I discovered these amazing children and their incredible voices.yesterday. I've listened to their music all day today and my heart is lifted. This song is about loss, but it is all about hope as well. I wept all the way through it for I have experienced many losses in my life; in our lives for Sheila and I lost a son. We lost her parents and my father and stepfather. My dad and brother died in tragic circumstances. This music makes me sad and joyful all at the same time. And they have many more songs.

This music is like a visit to the New Earth. I imagine us all making music like this throughout eternity. Music should bubble up from the soul and increase our joy. The One Voice Children's Choir does precisely that.

 

Grow Old Along With Me

It's kind of ironic that one of the last of John Lennon's songs was this lovely ballad, "Grow Old Along With Me" in which he prays "God bless our love."  This is the same guy who wrote the anti-religion "Imagine".  One hopes John was able to work it all out with his maker at some point. That said, Grow Old is a very beautiful song. This version is by Mary Chapin Carpenter. The only versions we have of Lennon singing it, are some home recordings which suffer a little from the poorer quality of home recording equipment of the day. 

This is a beautiful song. Perfect for weddings. It's sad that Lennon was looking forward to growing old along with his wife and died very soon after he wrote it.

Tom

Shanghai Breezes

 

This poignant song foreshadowed the end of John Denver's marriage. The song is one of his better songs lyrically and the tune supports the words perfectly. Denver's tragic death in a plane crash shocked his fans, but as any artist hopes to, John left behind a brilliant body of work.

This song is a nice one to put on your playlist on a cold winter evening. You can almost feel the warm Shanghai breezes wafting through your living room. 

Born Henry John Deutchendorf, John was the son of a U.S. Air Force officer. At age eleven, his grandmother gave him her guitar. He took guitar lessons and joined a boys’ choir. At age twenty he changed his name to John Denver and began to pursue a career in music. Peter, Paul & Mary picked up and made a hit with his song "Leaving on a Jet Plane". The success of that song led to John catching a spot in the Chad Mitchell Trio. When they disbanded Denver took off on his own and he managed to catch the social, charitable and environmental sentiments of the 70s and 80s.

 Here's a live version of Shanghai Breezes from John's later career:

Homeless

This little man did as much to end Apartheid as some activist groups. It's a little known fact that neither the government of South Africa, nor the African National Congress, the UN and half a dozen anti-apartheid groups wanted Paul Simon to do the Graceland Tour.  But the naysayers needn't have worried. Simon's incredible musical collaboration with some of Africa's finest musicians did probably more to discredit apartheid and helped unite Africans across the continent than anything done by any two liberal advocacy groups or government agencies.

I love this amazing music. Paul Simon introduced some marvelous musicians to the world, not the least of which included the likes of Ladysmith Black Mambazo, Hugh Masekala, and Miriam Makeba. He really took a beating from anti-apartheid people and from the South African government. They were all wrong as was the cultural boycott that Simon was accused of violating. He was even accused of "exploiting African musicians."  The truth was, he paid the musicians triple and didn't take any money for himself.  Here was a case of good guys versus a good guy. How is it that people who put on the mantle of saviors of the downtrodden are so often selfish, power hungry, narrow-minded twits?

Here is "Homeless", a piece that showcases the talents of the inimitable Ladysmith Black Mambazo (who by the way started out as a church choir).

This clip includes commentary on the genesis of this particular song and the close relationship that developed between Simon and the African musicians during the tour.

And there's a lot more where that came from.

Tom King

A Singing Frog

Okay, one of my favorite songs is sung by a banjo-playing puppet frog and I am not ashamed!  It's been done by other better singers like Kenny Loggins, Sarah McLachlan, Willie Nelson and Weezer, but my favorite by far is by Kermit the Frog as gently voiced by Jim Henson. A banjo playing frog singing on a lily pad in the middle of a swamp just appeals to me for some reason.

Here it is:

 

If you'd like to explore some other versions, here you are.  First up - Kenny Loggins:

Here's Sarah McLachlan's version:

And Willie Nelson's (next to Kermit, I like Willie's):

Here's Judy Collins' version:

Here's a version by (believe it or not) The Carpenters:

Here's Paul Williams. He wrote the original song. He gets all chatty before he sings it, but it's worth hearing if only to listen to the guy that wrote it.

And finally this sweet little version by Weezer and Hayley Williams

It's just a sweet little love song about yearning for peace and love and connectedness.  Seems a lot of people like that idea.

Tom KIng

Somewhere Over the Rainbow What a Wonderful World

I first heard this song in a gentle Adam Sandler/Jodie Foster movie, set in Hawaii, called 50 First Dates.  The artist singing this unusual mashup version of a pair of pop tunes was a gentle giant of a man Hawaiian song-writer Israel "Iz" Kamakawiwo'ole. The song is a plain unadorned medley of what I think are the masterpiece songs of two other singers - Judy Garland and Louis Armstrong. The only accompaniment is Iz strumming gently on his ukulele.


Iz kind of mangles the lyrics if you're a music purists. If you're an old folkie like me, however, Iz shows us the folk music process, drawing from the song the bits he likes in the order that, to him, best says what he wants it to say. The result is a gentle musical idyll that takes you to the beach by a campfire with stars overhead and invokes an appreciation for the wonderful world God has made and the world that is to come some day, over the rainbow.

Iz did a lot of sweet music over his short life. He, like his father, died young. I look forward to seeing Iz again in the New World, healed of his infirmities and forever young. For Israel Kamakawiwo'ole was a Christian I discovered. He embraced Christianity while very much maintaining his connection with his Hawaiian heritage.  His music is peaceful and lovely; something we need in this hard old world sometimes.

Tom

Terrified

This song is by one of my new favorite singers. Zachary Levi you'll recognize if you ever watched the TV series "Chuck". He played Chuck Bartowski the amped up nerd spy. He also did the voice of Flynn Ryder in Tangled and I already posted his duet with Mandy Moore from Tangled. I think one of the reasons I like Levi is because he's openly a Christian and tends to take roles as decent people. Katherine McPhee has done some TV and Broadway musicals. She has a lovely voice and she and Zach do this song very well.

This song describes my youthful approach to romance. I was quite frankly "Terrified"

I love these kinds of duets. My Sweet Baboo used to sing duets with me just around the house. We'd just spontaneously break out in song all of a sudden. It was nice and I liked it very much. Sometimes it still happens over a sinkful of dishes. This song is very close to my "life as a musical" approach to living. This song is one of those that "get me".  As a kid, I always doubted whether I was good enough for anybody else to love.  I worried that even God might have trouble liking an awkward, nerdy, self-absorbed kid like me sometimes. Songs like this make me believe two people can "get" each other like that, even though they are afraid that they can't.

Tom

Perhaps Love Is Like...

One of the things I like in music is really interesting duets. One of my favorites is this love song sung by two guys with very contrasting styles. Operatic tenor Placido Domingo and John Denver team up to ask what love is like. It's a lovely song and says things I believe. Love is just a resting place, a shelter from the storm, It invites you to come closer. It wants to keep you warm. And in those times of trouble when you are most alone, the memories of love will bring you home. That just takes my breath away.

Here's the country mouse and city mouse teaming up together with Perhaps Love: