The Boss

 Bruce Springsteen - Dancing in the Dark

Just for fun

The simple beat, and lyrics...still enjoyable all these years later.

Paul McCartney Set The Glastonbury Festival On Fire Saturday Night With A Jaw-Dropping Surprise That Had The Crowd Raging—Bringing Out Unbelievable Guests Dave Grohl And Bruce Springsteen!

Facebook post Feb 10, 2025

Musicians = The Grateful Dead

 Congratulations to the Grateful Dead on being named the 2025 MusiCares Persons of the Year! Since their formation in the Bay Area in the '60s, the group has remained a symbol of peace and love, and inspired generations with their genre-bending improvisational style. Coming together to develop and popularize a new genre of "jam rock," the Grateful Dead left an imprint on rock music forever and birthed a cultural jam rock revolution that is still "truckin" today.

Fronted by guitarist and lead singer Jerry Garcia, the group's popularity grew quickly from their roots in the hippie movement in San Francisco. Their fans formed a tight-knit community called Deadheads who followed the band all over the country. With a beloved repertoire of songs like “Sugar Magnolia,” “Touch of Grey,” and “Friend of the Devil,” the Grateful Dead are an inimitable treasure in the canon of American music.

My friends would go to their concerts and record the music onto their little tape recorders (Walkmans, etc) of that era. So getting good balance of the music was sometimes hard but I think this gives a bit of the setting, as well as their music.

Keep Truckin'

Go to Wikipedia for more:

The Grateful Dead was an American rock band formed in Palo Alto, California, in 1965. Known for their eclectic style that fused elements of rock, blues, jazz, folk, country, bluegrass, rock and roll, gospel, reggae, and world music with psychedelia, the band is famous for improvisation during their live performances, and for their devoted fan base, known as "Deadheads". According to the musician and writer Lenny Kaye, the music of the Grateful Dead "touches on ground that most other groups don't even know exists." For the range of their influences and the structure of their live performances, the Grateful Dead are considered "the pioneering godfathers of the jam band world".

After Garcia's death in 1995, former members of the band, along with other musicians, toured as The Other Ones in 1998, 2000, and 2002, and as The Dead in 2003, 2004, and 2009. In 2015, the four surviving core members marked the band's 50th anniversary in a series of concerts in Santa Clara, California, and Chicago that were billed as their last performances together.

Like several other bands at the time, the Grateful Dead allowed their fans to record their shows. For many years the tapers set up their microphones wherever they could, and the eventual forest of microphones became a problem for the sound crew. Eventually, this was solved by having a dedicated taping section located behind the soundboard, which required a special "tapers" ticket. The band allowed sharing of their shows, as long as no profits were made on the sale of the tapes.

Of the approximately 2,350 shows the Grateful Dead played, almost 2,200 were taped, and most of these are available online. 

Deadheads, particularly those who collected tapes, were known for keeping close records of the band's setlists and for comparing various live versions of the band's songs, as reflected in publications such as the various editions of "Deadbase" and "The Deadhead's Taping Compendium". This practice continues into the 21st century on digital forums and websites such as the Internet Archive, which features live recordings of nearly every available Grateful Dead show and allows users to discuss and review the site's shows.

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Peter BersaniDead and Company Tour Family on Facebook

Ive been looking on with great joy and not a little bemusement at the celebration of The Grateful Dead over these last few months. From The Kennedy Centre Honours, to the Grammys and Musicares it seems the world is awakening to what many of us have always known. The music, stories, scene and family that the band in all its iterations have perpetrated for nearly 60 years IS worth celebrating. More than 45 years since my first show the music continues to give me solace, comfort and great joy. Oh the places it's taken me and the friends Ive made.

It must have been the roses..

Jerry Garcia in front of the Grateful Dead's Infamous Wall of Sound.

The Wall of Sound was an enormous public address system designed specifically for the Grateful Dead’s live performances in 1974. It was the creation of audio engineer Owsley “Bear” Stanley. The Grateful Dead gave the sneak peek of the Wall of Sound on February 9, 1973 at Stanford University’s Maples Pavilion but it was on March 23, 1974 when they debuted the completed system during their tour stop at the Cow Palace in Daly City, California.

Weighed over 70 tons, comprise dozens and then hundreds of amps, speakers, subwoofers, and tweeters, stand over three-stories tall and stretch nearly 100 feet wide. Its name could only be the “Wall of Sound”.

Drugs were part of their world, and at concerts (most rock concerts anyway) one didn't have to have

 their own - the amount of smoke in the air would let anyone get high, whether they wanted to or not!

Fabulous music from the roots of North Carolina

I was chasing around looking for something, when thank you dear computer, it just clicked onto the following song by Rhiannon Giddens and the Carolina Chocolate Drops.  Don't ask me where it came from...computer playing games with me.


Rhianon Giddens and the Carolina Chocolate Drops video

Rhiannon's new studio album Freedom Highway is out now!

I have seen the Chocolate Drops, and have watched Rhiannon's career zooming as her talent deserves.  I actually saw them/listened to them after that YouTube video was made, and here's their home page.

Here I'll share one more of hers.
Louisana Man From 2016 on Austin City Limits

"Know thy history. Let it horrify you; let it inspire you. Let it show you how the future can look, for nothing in this world has not come around before. These songs are based on slave narratives from the 1800s, African American experiences of the last century, and the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s. Voices demanding to be heard, to impart the hard-earned wisdom of a tangled, difficult, complicated history; we just try to open the door and let them through." -- Rhiannon Giddens

Well this has wandered a bit hasn't it.. So my blog posts often seem to go.  Hither and thither!

Music and those who bring it to others...

Music is healing.
It touches a place inside us, not so much physical as emotional.
It is where we appreciate beauty.
That place where we suddenly can break out smiling, or crying.
Do we have to learn this? I think not.  I think we all have that spot of appreciation inherent in our beings.

Healing? Yes, because it brings us in touch with that something that is connecting us to beauty, to emotions that want to be expressed. As a counselor, and an elder, I know that healing often comes through expressing our emotions...in a safe way of course.  Not recommending road rage, nor that penicillin isn't a good idea.

Two musical women come to my mind today, women who I know and admire, and am a recipient of their talents and can call them my friends.

Marina Raye - who plays flutes, please listen to an example Here.

I'll just clip from her website about her...

Marina Raye is world-renowned as the "Feminine Voice of the Native Flute". What makes her original compositions so special is their deeply emotive quality which celebrates the essence of peace and harmony. Marina's music is used by many in the healing professions to invoke a state of tranquility and a sense of closeness to nature.

Marina was born in Africa where she spent her first ten years. She draws inspiration from her deep love for the Earth as she shares her vision of the awakening of peace in every heart. Trained as a classical musician, Marina has been called a sonic shaman because of her mastery of the native flute. Her instruments are hand-crafted by her husband, flutemaker Charlie Oakwind. Marina and Charlie live in western North Carolina, in a solar-powered home. They are committed to living gently on the Earth.

Marina and I share more links, having early enjoyed our cat stories together.  And then there's her having purchased some of my pottery, for which I'm so grateful...to think of her home having the pots I created being used by them.   And at my home, I'm doing my yoga or meditating  frequently to Marina's music!

I am fortunate, lucky, blessed (chose the adverb) to know and work often with Annelinde Metzner, a.k.a. Linda.  She is a composer, choir director, leader of Sahara Women's Peace Choir, started the Asheville's women's choir Womansong, teaches music in many forms, and is a very talented poet as well.

Here is a sample of her divine feminine music sung informally in rehearsal at a friends home by the Sahara Peace Choir, when I used to be a member. (I've got a red top on if I remember right.)

And Here's a medley of three songs to the Goddess composed by Annelinde Metzner (www.AnnelindesWorld.blogspot.com) from her songbook, "Lady of Ten Thousand Names." This medley was arranged for the 25th Anniversary Concert of Womansong of Asheville,

Linda has been our music director for the last 10 years, the same amount of time I've been a member of this congregation, The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Swannanoa Valley, in Black Mountain NC

I've been part of a great community where women not only lead, but express the divine feminine through performances, workshops, classes about goddesses, poetry, readings and sharing with everyone.

Participants in a class that studied goddesses all around the world

Winter solstice with choir singing

A couple of men composing music at a grand piano here at Sepia Saturday this week.

Today's Quote:

Stop running from the ferocity of your own Being...
Burn off all your own games to that in you which is
Pure Intensity...
When you meet the very Core of your Being
become completely loyal to the deepest passion in you
and allow no more waste of time - find that devotion
to Reality [Truth] within yourself...

Aisha Salem

 

Music goes to my heart

While the choir rehearsed before the Christmas Eve service, I got a photo of the whole group.  Not possible when the pews are full, which they were just 20 minutes later! The Unitarian Universalist Congregation of the Swannanoa Valley has Linda Metzner as its music director, what a blessing she is!

Linda played the guitar while the children led the whole congregation in singing Away in a Manger.

The culmination of the service was everyone singing Silent Night.  I know I wasn't the only one who didn't have a dry eye when on the third verse Linda stopped playing the piano, and we sang a cappella.  It was beautiful.

And that's how music should affect us, to open our hearts and enrich our lives.  Thank you so much, Linda, choir, and children.  And Rev. Michael Carter also, who had simple and inspiring words for us that Sunday.

I'm sharing this line-up with Sepia Saturday this week...that choir was 15 strong, all lined up, plus a pianist/leader!

SEPIA SATURDAY 400 : 6 January 2018

1914 Family Group Of Women and Children

FAMILY GROUPS : LINES OF CHILDREN : HATS : HEIGHTS

It is time to get your ducks in a row, time to get the family out onto the parade ground, time to get ahead by getting a hat, and a time to reach new heights; as Sepia Saturday enters its eightieth year (or something like that). Our theme image this week - like all the theme images for January - comes from the Flickr Commons collection of the National Library of Ireland and features a 1914 photograph of the Mote Family. Interpret the prompt as you wish...


Today's Quote:

"The job of the poet (a job which can't be learned) consists of placing those objects of the visible world which have become invisible due to the glue of habit, in an unusual position which strikes the soul and gives them a tragic force." French poet and film director Jean Cocte