Aloha Tuesday Motivation | Grateful Edition | #267
Happy Faux-Aloha Friday!
As we approach Thanksgiving, I cannot help but feel gratitude for so many things. Music, as you probably have guessed, is something I am passionate about and certainly grateful for. Music is that universal language that all of humanity can recognize instantaneously. A unifier of sorts! And what better than something that brings us all together in a time when we need it the most. I wanted to share my eclectic taste in music with you to enjoy throughout the long weekend. If you get a chance to engage with any of the links, maybe use the music as a meditation on what you might be grateful for this holiday season.
Scott Joplin, who was born this week, in 1867, was the pioneer of Rag Time and his song "Maple Leaf Rag" is the quintessential Rag Time composition. In it you will find equal parts happiness and melancholy. His influence is evident in all forms of music that came after him including Rock and Roll and Jazz. Posthumously awarded a Pulitzer, Joplin during his lifetime was self aware (if not a bit confident) that his impact (and genius) would be embraced only after his death.?
Jimi Hendrix was also born this week and I can never get enough of his masterpiece "Little Wing." Check out this track from Binary Star, an underground hip hop ensemble, circa the late '90's. Listen carefully to the opening sequence and you will hear a wonderful quotation from Bruce Lee, who was also born this week.
"Alice's Restaurant" by Arlo Guthrie is part of a Thanksgiving Holiday tradition of mine that goes back over two decades. Historically, radio stations, on Thanksgiving, have played this Opus in its entirety due to its reference to Thanksgiving. On Thanksgiving, I used to drive around between households scanning my car’s FM radio trying to find it being played. Nowadays, I simply cue it up via some music app. It is an 18 minute masterpiece of musical parody protest poetry and worth a listen.
It wouldn't be an mpg ink playlist without a little bit of Phish. "Ghost" feels like my defacto theme song these days, owing to the fact that my four year old, Arlo, has become obsessed with it. I'm certainly at fault for this and definitely not complaining about it. This "Ghost" is from a haunting at MSG during their New Year's Eve run in 2010. At around the nine minute mark, the band engages in some of the most inspiring improvisation that culminates in this bright light, major key peak, and coasts back into the song proper.
Lastly, I have four dogs, all named after Grateful Dead songs, Althea, Samson, Ruby Claire, and Dupree. Here are the links to those songs to help round out this Grateful Play List!