Songs Before Flying

Two more and I'm off to Amsterdam:

15 Dakot from Meno'im Shketim (Quiet Motors) by Asaf Amdurski

Inta Omri - Mica Shitrit's take on the song made famous by Umm Kulthoum.

August Ups & Downs

In chronological order:

Will There Be Enough Water - The Dead Weather
The Dead Weather is Jack White of The White Stripes and The Raconteurs, Alison Mosshart of The Kills and Discount, Dean Fertita of Queens of the Stone Age and Jack Lawrence of The Raconteurs and The Greenhornes.

Sun King / Mean Mr. Mustard / Polythene Pam / She Came In Through The Bathroom Window. From "Abbey Road" by the disintegrating Beatles. Shuttling between dreamy--groovy--obnoxious.

Smells Like Teen Spirit (Nirvana) woke me up wide one night.

Ani Eshtagea - Chava Alberstein with Matti Caspi (traditional Spanish tune)

High and Dry by Radiohead.

Being Boring - Pet Shop Boys. Love zebras.

You Got Me - the Roots feat. the queenly Erykah Badu

Girl From the North Country - Bob Dylan

I Cut Like a Buffalo - the Dead Weather again

Twist in My Sobriety

A haunting doom-toned song with a compelling melody that seems to lend itself to any genre, but especially to darker ones. I found it incarnated as country, pop ballad, cabaret, house, death metal, and even that Korean kid on acoustic guitar. Here are a few cover versions I picked out.

German Gothic rock band Dreadful Shadows. Worth a listen for Sven Friedrich's deeper than Hades voice.

Taiwanese singer Chyi Yu, proving the song works even with a sweet voice and little expression.

Club mix by Les Adams feat. Alexis.

Mash-up by DJ Not I - Wu Tang Clan & Eminem vs. the original.

And the original by Tanita Tikaram, from her debut album Ancient Heart, released when she was 19.

Mostly Words

Something I wrote in an email recently and thought I'd share. It's nothing new, just putting in my own words a philosophy I deeply believe in .

"...
Humans evolved with a certain lifestyle and rhythm of life: living in close-knit social groups, sleeping/waking with the sun, alternating intense exercise with rest and lots of leisurely play, socializing, exploration. We're still pretty much the same organism... any time we start departing from the way nature made us, things start to go awry. Just because something is "normal" for these times, doesn't mean it's the right or healthy way. A "normal" health-conscious person spends the day under even artificial lights until he switches them off abruptly and expects to fall asleep. Stuffs food down his gullet at regular intervals. Exercises in movement patterns made for domesticated rodents and machines. Is chronically stressed - rarely peaking, never relaxed and worry-free. Pushes the round pin of relationships into the square hole of cost-benefit analyses. No wonder our bodies and minds become deranged.

Not saying we should all give up the advantages of modern technology and go live in a cave, or that we should forgo science as a tool for optimizing our health and quality of life. But I definitely think 200,000 years of homo sapiens should give us some guideline as to what things we can not leave out of our lives."

* * *

Slow Like Honey - Fiona Apple

Capoeira & Beyond

I'd like to share the latest from Ido Portal, with whom I trained since 2001.

"Floreio is a movement modality that involves high end development of joint mobility, strength, endurance, control, balance,
quality of movement, flexibility and dominance of one's body all blended into a flowing, beautiful art."

Here is one of Ido's demos of Floreio flow. He also has excellent taste in music =)

Some creative applications from my "classmates". I'm so proud of them *sniff*

Visit Ido's blog for more.

Week's Soundtrack

Just the moods from the last few days:

None Of Us Are Free - Solomon Burke (courtesy of House again)

You Can Leave Your Hat On - by Randy Newman, performed by Joe Cocker.

Bizarre Love Triangle - originally New Order. This version is attributed to Jewel but I think it's by Australian band Frente! - the idea for the remake is theirs anyway.

Umami

Zera e Reza - Caetano Veloso

Jabberwocky (by the Rev. Charles L. Dodgson, famed as Lewis Carroll) - three expressions:

Muppet Show Jabberwocky

Jabberwocky as a Celtic ballad by Donovan

Progressive rock Jabberwocky by Ambrosia

And -

You Can't Always Get What You Want - the Rolling Stones