Country skeletons from the closet

It's Friday, and it has certainly been a week.  I should look up the moon's phase to see if there is an explanation in the form of extra gravitational pull or something.  While the first week of any quarter is always a hopping time, there has been an additional degree of emotional volume to this week that is out of sort. This is one week I will be glad to put some sort of wrap on come day's end.

Very varied playlist today, yet nothing was jarringly incongruous. Four instrumental pieces and two vocals, one of which is a sort of skeleton in my musical closet. Having grown up surrounded by mostly country music, I find I have a low tolerance for it now and little of it in my collection.  However, I do have some nostalgia pieces that have crept in over these digital music years, pieces I sought out for one reason or another and quietly slipped in through the back door when I hoped nobody was looking.

Growing up with country music meant more than just the music that played over the old Grundig stereo my dad brought back from Germany or on the radio (later, eight-track player) in his truck, it also included TV viewing.  The Grand Ol' Opry, Porter Wagner and Dolly Parton's show, the Glen Campbell Show, Hee Haw, Pop Goes the Country, Marty Robbins' show (with that big black and white checked piano!), and Minnie Pearl everywhere with her hat's price tag showing. So the occasional highlight tune from those years will pop up now and then, such as Dolly Parton's original recording of I Will Always Love You.

The Live 8 concert recording of The Long and Winding Road by Paul McCartney and U2 is very good.  Arguably the best recording of that song, and that's saying something.  Terence Blanchard, from the Flow album, was just getting started on Wadagbe as I pulled into the campus.  Like the rest of that most-excellent album, the music is strong and evocative.  It really deserves to be listened to without distractions and (ideally) with a good set of headphones.  There are so many rich layers of musical activity that it takes that kind of focus to experience them all.  Time, alas, I don't have this morning.

The full playlist:

 - Victor Krauss: Here To Be Me

 - Pat Metheny & Brad Mehldau: Legend

 - Dolly Parton: I WIll Always Love You (Original Version)

 - Sam Baker: Prelude to Pretty World

 - Paul McCartney & U2: The long and winding road

 - Terence Blanchard: Wadagbe (intro)

 - Posted via iPad.