Monday, June 9, 2008

Great Music Monday-Gravedigger

I have decided to put in a new weekly feature. Since it is Monday and we could all use some music to help us start the week off well, I will post "Great Music Monday"* each Monday for as long as I feel like it (could be a few weeks, a few months, or a few decades).

And for the record, I use Paul O'Neill's, the founder of the Trans-Siberian Orchestra (TSO), explanation of great art: "The purpose of art is to create an emotional response in the person that is exposed to that art. And there are three categories of art; bad art, good art and great art. Bad art will elicit no emotional response in the person that is exposed to it, i.e.; a song you hear in an elevator and it does nothing to you, a picture on a wall that gives you the same emotional response as if the wall had been blank, a movie that chews up time. Good art will make you feel an emotion that you have felt before; you see a picture of a forest and you remember the last time you went fishing with your dad, you hear a song about love and you remember the last time you were in love. Great art will make you feel an emotion you have never felt before; seeing the pieta, the world famous sculpture by Michelangelo, can cause someone to feel the pain of losing a child even if they've never had one. And when you're trying for these emotions the easiest one to trigger is anger.

Anyone can do it. Go into the street, throw a rock at someone, you will make them angry. The emotions of love, empathy and laughter are much harder to trigger, but since they operate on a deeper level, they bring a much greater reward."

Or to put it another way from the TSO biography: "music that was so melodic it didn't need lyrics. And lyrics that were so poetic that they didn't need music but once you put the two of them together, the sum of the parts would be greater than the whole, and you couldn't imagine them apart."

So, now, on with the music. This weeks selection is performed by Willie Nelson, so please enjoy "Gravedigger"



*Some time on Monday I will post the music, unless it is a holiday, then it may wait until Tuesday. Or if I am out of town, in which case I will try to have an automatic posting set up.

No comments: