Music is your own experience…

Music is so important to me in so many ways.

I can be sitting at my favorite coffee shop, editing photos and a song will start to play and it can take me back to a moment in my life and a memory just floods inside my head.  This probably happens to you too.  Sometimes it’s a good song, sometimes it’s a bad song.  To this day, there are a handful of songs and bands that I can’t listen to without giving myself a pep talk to not get emotional because it brings me to one specific bad moment in my life.  Mazzy Star is one of the bands that comes to mind, I just can’t listen to them because of something that happened years ago when I was a young wart hog.  Every time i hear Fade to You i just pause because I know something bad is coming…it has never failed, and I do hope one day it does, because I really love them…thin line they say.

Then there is always that one song that can get me to dance, or that one song that has always been in my favorites playlist and I never tire of.  Just the other day I was driving home when the sun was setting and I was listening to the radio thinking, “I wish my favorite song would play right now.” And bam…the next song on the radio was Incubus’ Wish You Were Here.  Isn’t it just one of those perfect zen moments when that happens. You are one with the universe and the universe is one with you.  Perfect moments that make life, oh so very sweet.

In a blue moon, an album will come out that I’m just in love with: Mana comes to mind,  a couple of years ago it was Julieta Venega’s Limon y Sal and around the same time Nelly Furtado’s Loose.  Yes, I’m aware they’re not the Beatles, Pink Floyd, The Clash, The Band…Tennessee Ernie Ford…ahaha, but I loved those albums. I remember being addicted to Café Quijano as well.

Se llama Lola y tiene historia,
aunque másque historia sea un poema.
Su vida entera pasó buscando noches de gloria
como alma en pena.
Detrás de su manto de fría dama
tenía escondidas tremendas armas,
para las batallas del cara a cara
que con ventaja muy bien libraba.
-Lola by Café Quijano

There’s this one song that La Ley sang live with Ely Guerra on an MTV special called, “El Duelo.” E-v-e-r-y time she gets to the part where she does this screaming interpretation…tears.  Big huge globs of tears just poor out of my eyes. That part just touches my music heart and soul. On the video it’s at 4:40…just look at that passion in her eyes, hear it in her voice. Tell me that doesn’t touch your music heart and soul!

What is it about MTV unPlugged sessions that just are freakin’ amazing? There’s this one song by Ricky Martin featuring La Mari Chambao, Recuerdo…and when it hits 3:10…just yep…touches my music heart/soul. And yes, I did just say Ricky Martin…

Luis Miguel always triggers one of my favorite memories.  I was in the car with my parents and I was about 18 or 19.  Luis Miguel is my mom’s favorite singer.  The cd was playing and Por Debajo de la Mesa comes on.  My father was driving and my mom was in the passenger side.  He reached for her hand and starts to sing in a very forced good voice (i love that man!) and he starts singing louder the part that goes:

Y es que no sabes lo que tú
me haces sentir
que no hay momento que
no pueda estar sin ti
me absorbes el espacio
y despacio me haces tuyo
muere el orgullo en mi
y es que no puedo estar sin ti.

Translation here

There was this one magical moment between my parents where my mom let my dad be his cheesy romantic self without stopping him and she smiled at him with love in her eyes as he kissed her hand.  I will NEVER forget that.  To this day, any Luis Miguel song starts to play and my dad, in his very forced baritone voice starts to sing his songs.

I wish I had the ability to sing with just an amazing voice like in that one scene in Walk the Line where Joaquin Phoenix sings Folsom Prison Blues to the record label guy for the first time.  Not that I want a dude’s voice, i just want to have that power in my singing presence, that’d be so cool.  Not that he’s better than Johnny Cash…it’s just an example.

Or I wish I had guitar fingers. You ever walk around and look at people’s fingers and think, “Man, he’d make a bad ass guitarist!! If he’d listen to Joe Satriani for one minute he’d totally get a new passion in life!”  I do.  I get envious.

And then there are days where I seek new and extraordinary voices to sing to my heart and soul and I’ll go on youtube and just start looking around.  I have found some amazing people on there.  Right now I am completely in love with this one girl, Kiersten Holine.  No, i’m not a lesbian, and yes I am in love.  With her voice, with her beauty, with her guitar playing…her music makes me melt.  I can’t get enough.  I keep searching high and low everywhere for her covers, her music, her cd on iTunes…she’s kind of new.

Maybe it’s just a me thing. We all have different tastes.  But if you like her music, please support her and buy her album.  Download her covers on last.fm.

and not to knock She&Him (i love you Zooey Deschanel!!!) but her cover of she&him’s cover of The Miracle’s You’ve Really Got a Hold on Me is…superb! When I heard this I was going to a shoot, and it inspired me to title one picture from that shoot after the name of the song…

She’s incredible, and right now playing non stop on my ipod is this:

another favorite:

Okay, so go support her. Visit your local record store, ask about the local bands, support them too. And next time you’re paying for your lunch and the guy/girl at the cash register is handing you a pen to sign your credit card slip, look at the fingers…i’m telling you. Before you know it, you’ll be as jealous as i get…   Also, don’t forget…next time you’re hanging out and laughing until your stomach hurts and having a perfect moment, pause for a moment and see if there’s a song playing. Maybe you can store that memory years later when you’re driving around running errands, on a busy day…and it’ll make you smile, if even just for a moment…zen.

“Music is your own experience, your own thoughts, your wisdom. If you don’t live it, it won’t come out of your horn. They teach you there’s a boundary line to music. But, man, there’s no boundary line to art.” – Charlie “YardBird” Parker