marramgrass

Gedeon Maheux suggested a group blog for today. It sounded fun, so here’s my contribution.

From Ged:

What are some of your favorite “story songs”? Everyone loves music, but often times songs that tell a story stand head and shoulders above the rest. The musical tales these songs tell turn them into either one hit wonders, or classic generational hits. Which artists write the most loved story songs and is there a consensus on the best one of all time? We just may find out.

I thought this would be difficult, but it was surprisingly easy!

“And The Band Played Waltzing Matilda” by Eric Bogle. Quite a graphic and hard-hitting sung tale of the ANZAC soldiers at Gallipoli. It’s been covered almost as many times as Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah”, and a couple of those covers (The Pogues’, for example) are great, but I’d recommend hitting up iTunes for Eric Bogle’s recording on At This Stage.

“Scenes From An Italian Restaurant” by Billy Joel. An admission to having some Billy Joel in my record collection will probably banish what little credibility I’ve managed to accrue over the years, but there you go. This is a song that I remember enjoying every time it came on the tape player in my dad’s car, and having dug it out again I still appreciate it — although I’m no wiser as to what on earth is going on in the prologue or epilogue. The Stranger is an album that really deserves to be given a chance.

“White Collar Boy” by Belle & Sebastian. The Life Pursuit is a great wee album, and this tune is my standout track from it. A gaolbreak tale told with fantastic humour:

You were chained to a girl that would kill you with a look.
It’s a nice way to die, she’s so easy on the eye.

Belle & Sebastian tend towards the slightly kooky, but this is probably one of the most accessible tracks of what I think is their most accessible album.

“Dic Penderyn (The Ballad Of Richard Lewis)” by Martyn Joseph. Martyn Joseph is the Welsh singer-songwriter with a tendency towards protest and a voice that knows how to make a point. “Dic Penderyn” is his telling of the hanging of an innocent man after the 1831 Merthyr Rising. This is a song that gives me shivers every time I listen to it.

“I Hung My Head”, a Sting song as recorded by the great Johnny Cash. Cash’s vocal drives home the sorrow and resignation of this bleak song’s protagonist. If you happen to lay your hands on the album, American IV, don’t let it go. The whole disc is fantastic.

For more sung tales check out the other participants of this group blog:

• Living in the Now
• The (mis)adventures of a macintosh administrator
• MikeSchramm.com
• Hardcore Geek
• Glitschka Studios
• mizaru.me.uk
• ChristinaWarren.com
• AustinHeller.com
• masonsklar.com
• A. Emory
• alainedouard.vndv.com/
• The Sound of Silence
• Gedeon Maheux

All of a sudden, tomorrow is Ash Wednesday and the beginning of Lent. It’s only been about three hours since Christmas, hasn’t it?

In my infant and growing discovery of the liturgical calender, Lent is a season that I’m not terribly familiar with. It’s never been more than that funny time when folks give up chocolate, but we don’t really understand why.

Maggi Dawn has posted a timely reminder of a popular skewed understanding of Lent, and points to an earlier series of posts she made in 2005. If you’re interested in the ideas and the history of the season (I am), I suggest reading them. I will be.

I’ve just discovered (via Kottke) Why We Write. It’s a daily (ish) series of essays, mainly (but not solely) by writers who are currently striking members of the WGA.

It’s in my nature to be sympathetic to this strike, enthusiastic as I am about many American drama and comedy shows. Independent of that, though, the essays on the site that I’ve had a chance to read yet are fascinating and fun.

So check the sidebar over there for a new link, and I suggest you plug it inot your reader.

Recently I posted about going on a bit of a Gaiman kick. (I still haven’t made it to see Beowulf, which is disappointing, but life gets in the way.)

Anyway. Clicking around the web (as you do), not writing the bits I should be writing (as you don’t), I stumbled across this unusual yet compelling little tale of romance and hero-worship. Warms the cockles, doesn’t it.

While I’m here and feeling ‘literary’, I was in the car on Monday and heard a short story by Michael Morpurgo. I would recommend going and listening to it, but you’ll only be able to find it on that link until Monday, so don’t wait.

There are many elements to my character I’m not proud of. One of them is that I find it difficult to not say “yes” — leading to a ridiculous busyness that seems to even get in the way of itself. The day job keeps me going; the little sidelines are fun but often include missed deadlines; the writing I throw at the world here becomes inane as I discover that all my words get taken up by paid work and when I sit down to write for me (which is all I ever hoped for this site) it’s become a drudge and the best I can do is chuck out a daft pun or another dull post about computers or gadgets; my understanding of ‘important’ gets skewed; relationships suffer…

Of course the other side of it is that I’m privileged in many ways: the people I encounter everyday, the comfort of my life, the opportunities I’m given and the experiences I find. I say “yes” because I can, and that’s not a state to be taken for granted.

But in my busyness, what do I miss?

I’ve been invited to join a group blog at The Mockingbird’s Leap. It’s a short-term thing, and the idea is simple.

beauty and grace are performed whether or not we will or sense them. the least we can do is try to be there.

Annie Dillard

Through the season of Advent we commit to seeking to notice the wonder around us, the ‘beauty and grace’ that God showers the world with whether we see it or not — he’s like that. Which will mean lifting my head from the busyness in front of me, looking around and allowing my awareness to breathe.

This morning I came to a decision. I spent a few weeks trying out this BlogRush thing, but today I have ditched it and deleted this site from the network.

It’s a pretty harmless thing in itself, and it’s always fun to attract more visitors, but the widget that they give you to display is just plain ugly. I’m not pretending that marramgrass is a shining example of wondrous web design, but the BlogRush widget is just too much for my poor eyes.

My cousin over there on the sidebar (The Zoo OF Small Plastic Animals - a groovy name if ever there was one) has taken up the NaBloPoMo challenge (as has Ruth). Stephen has at last ditched that horrible Livejournal blogging thing he had going on, and appears to be approaching it with gusto. This is a good thing in many ways. The main one is that he tends to be a funny and entertaining guy (even without my family bias), so the more he writes and the more we get to enjoy, the better.

Of course, just reporting on that constitutes a really feeble excuse for a daily post, but it’s Sunday evening and I’m still fully medicated for the dodgy back, so what can I do about it?

I don’t know.

Is it sufficient for me to put myself on the line and hint that I have a couple of (hopefully) majorly interesting, entertaining, worthwhile and insightful — maybe even inciteful — posts half-planned for this month of challenge?

I hope so, because that’s all you’re getting for now :)

I’ll try anything once…

Following on from Andrew, I thought I’d try out this BlogRush thing that seems to be getting a lot of exposure.

We’ll see how it pans out.

It’d be nice if you could style their widget a bit - as it is it’s a bit on the massive side, which is why I’ve shoved it right down to the bottom of the sidebar there.

Traffic is not my aim, here, but it does make me feel popular and validated :-/

I’ve added two new people to the sidebar, and I can recommend their blogs to you:

Ruth Elkin is a youth worker I met last year at the PCI YM Summer School.

David Seah is a designer-type who spends a fair amount of time considering himself and his approach to life; the honesty of his self-assessment is quite humbling. He also designs forms, lots of them, some of which are exceedingly cool and potentially very useful.

Others may join the list soon - I keep discovering cool, interesting and entertaining sites.

The comics are funny, if very gamer-y. Works for me, maybe not for you. But the heart of the matter is a way with words that runs something like this:

You couldn’t pay us to play Lair any more than we have already. The game has given me a new respect for the professional reviewer, because when a game like Lair hits their desk, they have no recourse. They must tread, as Dante did, down that scarred staircase and into the greasy throat of hell.