Song of the day: It actually makes sense!
When I started the Song of the Day feature here, I felt slightly guilty: After all, it didn't have anything to do with mental health, but as I used to edit the music section at PW, and as I have kick-ass eclective taste (she says humbly), I figured I could make a case for it.
Now I find such a precedent, um, precedes me. PW music editor Brian McManus just hipped me to a band called BiPolar Bears out of Australia; he suggested they become the official TTWS house band. But there's actually an organization called the Mental Health Music Network, that is committed to providing a creative outlet for people with mental illnesses, and there are several bands and individuals making crazy music. Granted, most of this action to be taking place in Melbourne, but I feel certain it's an idea that could catch on here. I can't see it now: Spikol and the Trouble plays CBGBs.
Are you in?
Comments
Hi, Liz. How about bipolar house composers? Handel, Beethoven, Schumann, and Mahler. Jazz musician/composer: Charles Mingus.
Off the top of my head, a sampling of some of my favorite music: Louis Armstrong - St Louis Blues (sheer exuberance); Mahler - Symphony #6 (travels uncharted emotion pathways); Litle Richard - Tutti Fruiti (how can you not love this?); Beethoven - Egmont Overture (when you don't have time to listen to his Ninth); Puccini - various arias (nobody does sad better); Celtic or Celtic-influenced music (alternatively lifts me to a new spiritual realm or makes me want to march into battle); Fred Astaire - Let's Face the Music and Dance or Night and Day (a dead heat for best cinematic moment of all time); Ella Fitzgerald - Mack the Knife (speechless); any version of Tiger Rag (my personal antidepressant); Stones - Sympathy for the Devil (my nomination for best 60s song); Duke Ellington - The Mooche (early jazz with an attitude); Louis Jordan - Beans and Cornbread (I know I'm depressed if this song fails to get a rise out of me) ...
Okay, I'll stop right there. My point (which amplifies yours): Music is healing. It lifts us out of our crappy here and now head space and puts us in a different place entirely. I can escape from being me. Or I can be more me. Either way, I always return to earth feeling far more satisfied, more complete ...
Posted by: mcman | July 30, 2006 10:13 AM