On my non-iPod

I suppose that my touch of eclecticism will be revealed here, because it's hard to think of three musicians with syles more diverse than these most recent additions to my MP3 player.

In the Hollywood weeks of "American Idol" this season, a couple of performers did songs from Queen, and it triggered nostalgia for the group. After all, their heyday was when I was in high school, and I think most people share the common experience that the music that's new and fresh in those years stays with you permanently. (I deeply resent radio stations that brand this stuff as "oldies." Harumph!)

This is among the most engaging music I've ever heard. If you can't feel moved by "Somebody to Love" or "Good Old-Fashioned Lover Boy," then you have no heart. If you don't puzzle over the phantasmagorical lyrics of "Bohemian Rhapsody," ("Scaramouche, Scaramouche, will you do the Fandango"), then you're just not paying attention. If you don't involuntarily smile at the lyrics to "Fat-Bottomed Girls" or "Don't Stop Me Now" ("I'm burning through the skies, two hundred degrees, that's why they call me Mister Fahrenheit"), then you have no sense of humor. If you can't feel awake and alive while rocking out to "Another One Bites the Dust" or "We Will Rock You," then you're, well, dead.




Next up is the polar opposite, in terms of mood. I bought a Michael Hoppe album a couple of years ago and loved it. Listened to it a zillion times. But, oddly, it never dawned on me that he might have other similar stuff that I would like. A few weeks back, that notion did finally occur to me, and he did, in fact, have other CDs that I thought would be worth trying--and they're nearly as good as the first one (which was cello music). Some would call his genre "easy listening" or maybe "new age," but I think it's closer to genuinely classical. Although more modern in sensibility, it reminds me most of the kind of things that I believe Robert Schumann or Franz Schubert or Felix Mendelssohn would write, were they living today. That may be giving a bit too much credit to Hoppe, since his music doesn't have quite that level of rich complexity, but it at least points you in the right direction. Extremely mellow, relaxing stuff, it is, and very, very beautiful.





Finally, we veer into the genre of world music. Maybe a month ago the Australian parliament gave a formal apology to the "Stolen Generations," a shameful, tragic period in imperialistic history. (See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stolen_generation. Also try to rent "Rabbit-Proof Fence" from Netflix or your local video store, for a moving, true story from that era.) I was listening to the BBC that night, and as part of their coverage of the apology, they interviewed Archie Roach, a musician that I had never heard of before. He was part of the stolen ones, and it caused horrendous havoc in his life, which you can read about here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archie_Roach. He snapped out of his personal hell eventually, though, and became a talented singer/songwriter. The BBC report included part of his most famous song, "Took the Children Away," and I found it so hauntingly lovely that I ordered the above two CDs ("Charcoal Lane" and "Jamu Dreaming") from Amazon.com as soon as I got home, and have not regretted it.

I'm cheating a bit by including them here, because I've found that they're not really great poker music--and when I started this occasional series of music-related posts, I promised that's what I would stick to. But he is so little known here, and so deserves to be heard more widely, that I'm giving this little plug. Give him a try, why dontcha? The sampling feature on Amazon makes it really easy.