Twelve Months of Music: March
Welcome to the erupting orange of March. Wintry death overcome is the theme (introduced by Mr Wagner) and the gut-raptures of a dawn that nobody believed would ever arrive. Foundationally a clear-eyed, innocent and everlasting YES, but not always necessarily sublime, the birth of a new land contains raw granite, seismic ruptures, bursting blood-vessels and a few parturient screams too you know!
- Siegfried’s Funeral Music Richard Wagner (Szell)
- I’m Free The Who & The London Symphony Orchestra
- El Eco Y El Carretero Afrosound
- The Lions and the Cucumber Manfred Manfred Hübler & Siegfried Schwab
- Mundo Cocek Boban Markovic Orkestar
- Siki, Siki Baba Kocani Orkestar
- Panis Et Circenses Os Mutantes
- He Will Come He Will Come Elpida
- Lust for Life Iggy Pop
- Gut Feeling / Slap Your Mammy Devo
- I’m Alive Tommy James & the Shondells
- Rite of Spring Igor Stravinsky (Markevitch)
The Siki Siki Baba link goes not to the Kocani Orkestar’s original but to a cover by Beirut who I went to see in Osaka, where they played this song in a third encore; such joy, which this video doesn’t come close to replicating — the audience here seems to be comprised entirely of bored Parisian hipsters rather than weird wild Osakans* — nor any of the KO’s versions I could find on youtube. Try and imagine perhaps this song, a hundred times more passionate (and I seem to remember more tightly performed), with a thousand rapturous Japs around you.
THE TIME OF THE SUMMONING
Ai: Do all the swans really belong to the Queen?
Me: Yes.
Ai: And all the dolphins too?
Me: Yes, and whales.
Ai: What other animals?
Me: Cats.
Ai: All the cats belong to the Queen?
Me: Yes, all of them — we’re just borrowing them.
Ai: What happens when she asks for them back?
Me: Well they’ll all go, won’t they?
Ai: I’d like to see that… the Queen on the palace balcony, arms in the air… millions of cats…
Me: It’s called ‘the time of the summoning’.
* A common stage observation of bands playing in Osaka is: ‘You guys are so much better than Tokyo!’
