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August Moon Day 10 prompt: I love the power of music to lift the spirits. I head to the stereo and put on...
...Candi Staton singing "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," a forty-six-year-old song when I first heard it in The Jam Coffeehouse back in 2012. It may have been Madeline Bell's take on it, or Renee Geyer's -- or, this being Nashville, who knows, someone here in town with a good set of pipes. None of the versions I've listened to since quite match what I remember, but I wasn't paying close attention to the cafe stereo in the first place, which made it all the more annoying several weeks later when I realized the chorus was still in my head.
I find the lyrics of the entire song pretty creepy, truth be told, and most of the melody doesn't grab me either. But that first/third line of the chorus: Just four notes. Maybe three measures? Sometimes that's all it takes. Sometimes I sing along with the mp3 on my computer, and sometimes that line leaps out of my lungs at random -- a bolt of attitude between deadlines or destinations. (And sometimes I get super-silly and sing "dog dog-dog dog-dog-dog dog doggggg /dog dog dog / dog dog dog" at Miss Abby.)
"Lift the spirits" isn't quite the right phrase for me. I have been known to turn up Alkan's piano concerto when I'm upset, but I don't associate "comfort" with "lift." Left to my own devices, I'm likely to turn tomyself music [hello, Freudian typo!] not for uplift or lightening up, but to provide whatever I'm in the throes of -- anger, ambition, gratitude, grief, nerdiness, nostalgia -- with company and fuel.
This gingerbread jukebox was on display in Asheville a few years ago. Speaking of intense... :-)
...Candi Staton singing "I'm Gonna Make You Love Me," a forty-six-year-old song when I first heard it in The Jam Coffeehouse back in 2012. It may have been Madeline Bell's take on it, or Renee Geyer's -- or, this being Nashville, who knows, someone here in town with a good set of pipes. None of the versions I've listened to since quite match what I remember, but I wasn't paying close attention to the cafe stereo in the first place, which made it all the more annoying several weeks later when I realized the chorus was still in my head.
I find the lyrics of the entire song pretty creepy, truth be told, and most of the melody doesn't grab me either. But that first/third line of the chorus: Just four notes. Maybe three measures? Sometimes that's all it takes. Sometimes I sing along with the mp3 on my computer, and sometimes that line leaps out of my lungs at random -- a bolt of attitude between deadlines or destinations. (And sometimes I get super-silly and sing "dog dog-dog dog-dog-dog dog doggggg /dog dog dog / dog dog dog" at Miss Abby.)
"Lift the spirits" isn't quite the right phrase for me. I have been known to turn up Alkan's piano concerto when I'm upset, but I don't associate "comfort" with "lift." Left to my own devices, I'm likely to turn to
This gingerbread jukebox was on display in Asheville a few years ago. Speaking of intense... :-)
