Friday Inspiration
St. Vincent
Hi friends,
For the month of November, my Friday Inspiration posts will happen in the afternoon. I’ll send them out immediately after my online listening session that I’m doing through the New Horizons International Music Association. If you were at today’s session and are new to my Substack, please consider subscribing to receive my weekly emails. It’s free!
St. Vincent
Today we listened to St. Vincent, as well as a lot of additional music. Because each Friday Zoom session this month is short - only one hour - I play snippets of a lot of different music. For those who want to dive deeper and listen to all of the music, here is today’s playlist:
If you don’t already have a Spotify account, it’s easy to sign up and there are free and paid versions, so everyone can have access.
We watched a segment of David Byrne’s American Utopia which is currently available on HBO’s streaming platform, MAX.
Today’s session was about why we are so connected to the music of our teen years. If you haven’t checked it out yet, I recommend reading this short article: Why We’re Obsessed With Music From Our Youth.
To get you started on your weekend, here’s a video of St. Vincent (Annie Clark) performing “Lithium” with Nirvana during their induction into the Rock ‘n Roll Hall of Fame.
Next week we’ll examine whether it is possible to connect deeply with new music later in life. If you’d like to read about this in advance, I recommend checking out Thoughts on Listening to New Music, Emotion, and Memory.
Have a wonderful weekend full of music and art. Dance. Sing.
Be creative.
~Russ
Hi Russ, I was not able to attend last Friday in real time, but I just watched the recording. Much of it resonated with me. I turned 15 in 1967; the 60s and 70s were my music era. I was and still am drawn to bands with orchestration, especially horns. Chicago, Blood Sweat & Tears, Tower of Power, and yes, Herb Alpert. Herb is the reason I picked up trumpet in 6th grade. I am now drawn to band and orchestral arrangements of 60s and 70s music. There is lots of good stuff out there that has been arranged for larger ensembles: the Beatles (we played one at Snow Pond last summer), Led Zeppelin, Queen, Rolling Stones, Chicago, Stevie Wonder, Neil Diamond, Ray Charles, Bon Jovi, and even more recent artists like Ed Sheeran, Coldplay, the Weeknd, OneRepublic, Yiruma (who?). The list goes on. I listen to this stuff over and over, can't get enough of it.