The music of YOU

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Hello everyone, I dont know if this has been done before, but i think the best way to understand some people is through the music they love. So, with this discussion, link the one song that best describes you and your mentality. Here's mine, enjoy . . .

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xoDzlUPjhdI[/youtube]

i am not sure i agree. i "love" styles of music that are vastly divergent from each other.

i think billy joel is the most admirable composer and performer of easy to understand music (before the 1980's rubbish he released due to managerial pressure) in modern recording history.

elton john is a great "song and dance" man in my opinion. he did write some compelling songs (like "song for you" and "daniel"), but in my own opinion he was not as talented as joel who wrote eg: "scenes from an italian restaurant".
also supertramp is excellent and the others like pink foyd etc. led zeppelin are interesting as well.

jimi hendrix stands out as someone who i can not let myself get swept away with because he has the most major soul and his music is scarily biblical in a way, and it forces me to think in a strange way.

i like best of all frank zappa because he was so complex in his completely correct eccentreic compositions that i am in awe of.
his guitar playing ability is also staggering. he played many instruments.
he never wrote a song about love or sadness or anything serious.

all his songs were totally happy disconnections from seriousness and they so deftly define the lack of adherence to expectation, yet they are so eternally logical and understandable in a symphonic way.

zappa songs have to be listened to quite a few times by most people before they understand the structure.

here is a song by him from that i like.
it is a strange concoction of musical semblances and every note and every drum beat is written and manuscripted by zappa except for stevie vai's guitar solo which he was allowed to improvise.
stevie vai was considered the best technical guitarist in the world by many people.

in this clip, it is easy to see that zappa has a creative realm in his mind far beyond vai's.
he lets vai play his improvisation which sounds great at first, but they accelerate into a choked off breathless high pitched siezure of creativity. it is like vai is trying to blow much pressure out of a small creative hole in his head in the end.

then when zappa takes over and plays his guitar rendition, it is like a breath of fresh creative air.
he is truly a master. remember he wrote every musician's notes including all rhythm (tympany) and nobody but vai improvises their notes. every musician but vai follows their crushingly complicated sheet music instructions. all the musicians are exceptionally talented as they had to be to be included into zappa's musical squad.
for anyone who does not know, zappa is the one playing guitar with a moustache and black hair and a little beard thing under his lip. he does the opening chord.
stevie vai is the guitarist with longer hair



[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MKWBFWneJQ0[/youtube]

but here he is talking about something serious and i just love him. i so easily can understand his words and that is a rare thing.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8UAWqwLjN70[/youtube]

Frank Zappa is wonderful. I am happy to see another Frank Zappa fan. I've loved his music since I was a child and discovered "200 Motels" in a trash bin near my house. It was just sitting on top of the trash and had warped badly but I played it over and over and loved it. At the time, his song "Montana" was also a hit on the radio and I taught the lyrics to friends at school. "Montana" has lyrics that really appeal to children but I didn't understand any of the musical complexity because I was just a child. I also liked to go into the record store and look at the covers of his albums and wish I had the money to buy them (as a child) except for "Weasels Ripped My Flesh" which scared me.

Among my musician friends, his "Black Page" was legendary for how impossible it was to play. I don't think anybody seriously tried. They would just look at it and laugh and talk about how impossible it was. I found it pretty funny too. Just looking at it can give you a headache, let alone trying to play it.


In the 80's I had the good fortune to see him live in concert. He played a very small venue and the acoustics were excellent. When he died of cancer it was a great loss. It's nice to see that his memory lives on in all the people who are devoted fans of his music.

"don't stand so close to me" by the police comes to mind

by the way - i love nightwishes "planet hell"

www.youtube.com/watch?v=qTRGL4s9RLM


I don't know if it sums me up or represents my mindset in general. But Salad Days by Minor Threat does make me ache sometimes for the time when I could get out all my frustrations by just moshing myself bloody against random strangers. At my age, that's undignified and no longer an option (no longer an option for anyone who was in the band, either, since they are also my age). But the frustrations don't go away with age, they increase, while the acceptable outlets for them decrease. Ironically, the song is about not looking back with that kind of nostalgia. But they were in their 20's when they wrote it and in their 40's now, so I bet now they do sometimes look back and wish they were still able to fling themselves into a crowd and not have anything break.

Well i started this to see what others here liked, and could listen to. Just post the one that best describes you. I tend to understand some folks better through sound. I think i misworded it earlier . . . but I would think that a song, or some, just sounds like "you." Something about the selection's lyrics and instrumentation sums up how you feel on a more "average day." For instance, i chose "Sleeping Sun" because i honestly dont see much good in humanity fighting itself, and i would want to just sleep through it all and hope that whatever bleak future we have has a chance at being better for us as a whole. That is my day to day mindset. I know its an overly pessimistic view, but humanity has a lot of growing up to do . . . right now, id say we're nothing more than 10-15 years old compared to the galaxy, with an egocentric way of thinking to match. If it took us 20,000 years to hit this point (going according to documentation of the modern human physique, which is 20k years old), its likely to take another 20,000 years to actually become a mature adult among the galaxy. But, i digress . . . Id like to hear (hear as in listening to the posted song) what song(s) describe you, and why.

I directed a show once where the author/composer asked everyone to write out the, "Soundtrack of your Life"--the ten pieces of music that best encapsulate your life. (It was also the title of one of the songs in the show).

Mine ran something like this:

"Now is the Month of Maying"--Thos. Morley, 1595
The Art of Fugue--J.S. Bach, BWV 1080, 1745-1750
"Der Vogelfanger bin ich ja"--Die Zauberflote W.A. Mozart, 1791
Symphony No. 6 (Pastoral), Op. 68--L. van Beethoven, 1808
"Simple Gifts", J. Brackett, 1848
"The Nightmare Song"--Iolanthe, Gilbert & Sullivan, 1882
"Changes"--D. Bowie, 1971
"Breathing"--K. Bush, 1980
"There are Giants in the Sky"--Into the Woods, S. Sondheim, 1986
"There's a Light that Never Goes Out"--The Smiths (Morrissey and Marr), 1986

To call my musical tastes eclectic would be an understatement.

There are too many songs I identify with to list here (many of them have been posted elsewhere on WP). However, I can think of one instrumental piece that often describes how I feel much of the time. It gives me the chills, no matter how many times I listen to it. Sometimes it feels like it expresses how I feel better than anything I could say.

Plus, this particular video makes for a brief history of the blues, which I think is cool.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UdYRzH10L2M[/youtube]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f9hLcIXi ... 2AE96514A9

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQgFTzL4 ... 9&index=11

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HwzWmF5o ... 9&index=22

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKUITYq4NHw

There are just few songs that I really like to listen to these days. They somewhat show how I feel sometimes, although there are many more songs from different musical genres.

I don't really believe that music defines someone, because someone can love many different genres, although I believe there's something on this.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9GQWqYAkhM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bKTZhyY5-VM[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=btSk_S2KJOc[/youtube]

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JdoFvp4wHtc&feature=PlayList&p=4854DE423F8721C2&playnext=1&playnext_from=PL&index=28[/youtube]
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y3ZYKSDbwQE[/youtube]

Last edited by SoulcakeDuck on 10 Nov 2009, 5:31 pm, edited 2 times in total.

well now i realize that this thread is not asking "what music do you like", but "what music describes you"

i am not describable by any music i ever heard, but maybe i could make up a "song about me" type of idea on the piano.

nah... i do not know what to play to describe me because i am not really anything substantial.


anyway, a very good friend of mine decided that "fool on the hill" reminded him very much of me. i like the song but i like it because of it's melody.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n3InMTrfdgI[/youtube]

my (another) friend who's name is sonia likes kate bush and she says that "the man with the child in his eyes" is her "anthem" (wrong word she chose) to me.



here is a clip of the song that sonia decided was her idea about me.
(but i do not talk about the sea much unless i am asked).
i do not really understand how it relates to me, but i like the song

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9F5XHZ0NPGc[/youtube]

kate bush was exceptionally gifted in my opinion.

I do like a lot of music & I don't think there's one track, for me. Maybe Soul Asylum's Runaway Train is nearest, in many ways. Also like plenty of the others on this board, though!