The following TumbleStone Posts are the first five which included music, using embedded YouTube clips. These were all posted in April 2016. Often the music is simply linked to a characteristic of a stone, especially a colour or a pattern.
1) “Gabriel’s Stone: A Musical Meditation” – This Post uses “Gabriel’s Oboe”, written by Ennio Morricone, an instrumental piece from the movie “The Mission” (1986), one of my top ten rated movies. “Gabriel’s Oboe” is played by the Munich Radio Orchestra conducted by Ennio Morricone, in a live concert in Munich, 2005.
2) “A Touch of ‘Blue’…” – Lucinda William’s song, “Blue”, refers in this Post to the blue flashes within a polished stone. The song is off Williams’ 2001 Album “Essence” which heralded her move from country to more alternative folk-rock. Her scratchy and tired vocal suits the song perfectly, the lyrics having been described as “heartbreaking laconic poetry”. Williams’ best-known song is perhaps the lively “Passionate Kisses“, while some of her later work could be described as darker and more angry.
3) “Changes Come…” – This is the final song on Disc One of the two-disc Album “Ohio” by Over The Rhine. Over the Rhine is an Ohio-based band, the core of which is the husband-and-wife team of pianist-guitarist-bassist Linford Detweiler and vocalist-guitarist Karin Bergquist. The band is named after the Cincinnati, Ohio neighborhood of Over-the-Rhine. Their style has been described as “an eclectic mix of folksy art-pop and rock with occasional excursions into jazz”. There is a down-to-earth subtle Christian sensibility to their music – “The light, the dark both running through me…”, something that can be seen in stones as well as in people’s lives. My most favourite song of all time is one of theirs: “I want you to be my love”. Rated not far behind is their “Born“.
4) “Raining on the Rock…” – John Williamson is an Australian folk singer with the ability to convey with insight and power the landscapes and people of his country. His musicianship with the guitar is outstanding. “Raining on the Rock” is one of his strongest and best-known songs, released in 1987 on the Album “Mallee Boy”. Sometimes Williamson can be wickedly funny (“Old Man Emu”, “Bill the Cat” and “The Vasectomy Song”) or sweetly romantic (“Boomerang Cafe”, “You and My Guitar” and “Special Girl”) or deeply touching (“Cootamundra Wattle”, “Galleries of Pink Galahs” and “A Bushman Can’t Survive”) or deeply patriotic (“A Flag of our Own”, “True Blue” and “Diggers of the Anzac”) but strongly critical of war (“And the Band Played Waltzing Watilda”, “Only 19” and “We Will Stop the War”), and a powerful environmental advocate (“Goodbye Blinky Bill”, “This is Australia Calling”, “Dingo” and “Rip Rip Woodchip”). I saw John Williamson having coffee in a mall in Hamilton one day – he was in town to give a concert. I approached him and explained that I appreciated his music, used some of his songs in my lectures, and that I called my first Dexter-cross calf “Special Girl”. He generously invited me to sit with him for a while.
5) “Summer Comes…”: This phrase, capturing the summer-like light from a yellow and white quartzite, comes from The Decemberists’ song, “June Hymn” (from 2011 Album “The King is Dead”). The Decemberists are an American indie rock band from Portland, Oregon. Colin Meloy provides their rather distinctive voice, at times drone-like. The band’s name refers to the Decembrist revolt, an 1825 insurrection in Imperial Russia. Meloy has stated that the name is also meant to invoke the “drama and melancholy” of the month of December. Some of their songs can be described as epic story-telling, others are whimsical, or highly stylised, often literate, and then there are upbeat, often lush, songs, like “June Hymn“. The Urban Dictionary calls The Decemberists “the most excellent historical/literary indie rock/pop band that ever hit the airwaves”.
The second five musical pieces used in TumbleStone Posts can be found here.
11 thoughts on “The First Five Musical Pieces on TumbleStone”