Top Ten Freebie: You Get Music

Today’s TTT is a freebie, so I’m going to share some music I’ve loved this past year. But foist, the tease!

This is what the screen gives the humans. It gives them the same escape. They don’t know when or how they came to be on their phones. They only know they are freed from the plodding, repetitive step of moment after moment. The joys and sorrows of life are muted for them, and they are carried down the road of time without knowing or caring. (My Dear Hemlock)

Now, here’s some music I’ve “liked” on YouTube in the last twelve months. Judging by this list you’d think I listen exclusively to country/bluegrass/folk, but that ain’t necessarily so. It’s just what moves me enough that I “smash the like button”.

“Morgan Wade?! That’s a surprise!” said no one who has read this blog in the last 2+ years. I’d never gone to a concert before this year, and I wound up going to two Morgan Wade concerts.

Fiddles! Yodeling! Buck-dancing! (Okay, the buck-dancing is in their other videos.)

What a fellowship, what a joy divine,
Leaning on the Everlasting Arms!
What a blessedness, what a peace is mine,
Leaning on the Everlasting Arms!

Mozart dropped a new hit! Nice.

I stumbled upon Beloe Zlato a few years back when I found a video of four women singing a folk song in harmony in the middle of a metropolitan courtyard. Being a fan of traditional folk music, I’ve followed them since.

… Well, I come down here from the mountain top
And I cut you down like an autumn crop
My love for you will never stop
But I pulled you over like a small town cop …
Hay fever’s knockin’ at your door
You can feed the dogs lyin’ on your floor
Took all your gold from your chester drawer
I can drive you crazy, yes, I can

A few years ago I heard Sierra singing Steven Earle’s “The Mountain” and she’s been a favorite since. Skip to 1:15 if you don’t want talky. (That recording of “The Mountain” no longer exists on YouTube, alas for you.)

So, I knew Tulsi Gabbard years ago as an anti-war Democrat, which makes her an endangered species. (Or made. She left the Dems to be independent for a bit and now she’s officially registered with the Republicans, because the neo-con day in the sun is over.) I knew Jocko as a former Navy SEAL and life coach, a dude who dishes out hard advice to his audience, mostly men. Advice like — you’re in adversity? Good. You’ll grown from it. Also, set your alarm for 4:00. You don’t need to sleep in. You need to carpe the diem. Akira the Don has made musical mixes of some of his talks that are good stuff for morning power-walks. The idea that these two know each other is wild.

I can’t be defeated as long as I’m needed
I live for the hope in your eyes
I’m a fool for darkness and a fiend for light
Could you blame me one last time

Sierra Ferrell is one of my favoritist country singers, and Tod was someone I was really into a while. Turns out Ben and Sierra Ferrell have known each other for years, according to people who stalk them on reddit, (I only stalk Morgan.)

That restaurant we were gonna visit, it’s for sale
Time waits for no man, baby
Time can go to hell
I miss you on Tuesdays, our evening drives
I’m on the highway alone and I just close my eyes
I know I’ve made my bed and I’m lying in it
I was hoping you’d come here and lie with me for a minute
I know it’s asking for death
It won’t help me heal
There’s a time to love and a time to heal
A time to love and a time to kill

One of my favorite songs from her new “Obsessed” album. If you’d like, like, you can buy her handwritten lyrics of this for like $200. (I’m not that #obsessed, sorry.)

Lake Street Dive is a band I’ve loved since 2019. I almost went to see them in Iron City last year, but forgot about buying tickets.

Obviously I could give Morgan or Sierra some more love, buuuuuuuuuuuuuuuut Allison Young and Josh….Turner? have been favorites since 2020. (Josh Lee Turner. I googled it. Josh Turner did a good country song called “Would You Go With Me” which is an old favorite.)

And now the one I saved for last because people might think I’m crazy if they saw it earlier. Yes, it’s musical.

Okay. Yes. We’re bored now. We’re all bored. But has it ever occurred to you, Wally, that the process which creates this boredom that we see in the world now may very well be a self-perpetuating unconscious form of brainwashing created by a world totalitarian government based on money? Just a few days ago I met this man whom I greatly admire, he’s a Swedish physicist — and he told me that he no longer watches television, he doesn’t read newspapers, and he doesn’t read magazines. He’s completely cut them out of his life, because he believes we’re living in an Orwellian nightmare and these things are turning us into robots. It seems quite obvious that the whole world is going the same direction. I think it’s quite possible that the 1960s were the last burst of the human being before he was extinguished, and that this is the beginning of the future, that from now on there will simply be all these robots walking around — feeling nothing, thinking nothing! […]

“And when I was at Findhorn I met this extraordinary English tree expert who had devoted himself to saving trees, and he’d just got back from Washington lobbying to save the Redwoods. And he was eighty-four years old, and he always travels with a backpack because he never knows where he’s going to be tomorrow. And when I met him at Findhorn he said to me, “Where are you from?” And I said, “New York.” And he said, “Ah, New York, yes, that’s a very interesting place. Do you know a lot of New Yorkers who keep talking about the fact that they want to leave, but never do?” And I said, “Oh, yes.” And he said, “Why do you think they don’t leave?” And I gave him different banal theories. And he said, “Oh, I don’t think it’s that way at all.” He said, “I think that New York is the new model for the new concentration camp, where the camp has been built by the inmates themselves, and the inmates are the guards, and they have this pride in this thing that they’ve built—they’ve built their own prison—and so they exist in a state of schizophrenia where they are both guards and prisoners. And as a result they no longer have—having been lobotomized—the capacity to leave the prison they’ve made or even to see it as a prison.” And then he went into his pocket, and he took out a seed for a tree, and he said, “This is a pine tree.” And he put it in my hand. And he said, “Escape before it’s too late.”