Monday, April 16, 2007

Monday Music Mambo -- Stress Relief

Mememeister Rfduck took a moment from preening his feathers to exclaim, “Hi everyone! I'm back, as promised. Today is National Stress Awareness Day.”

1. Name two artists who give you stress.
There are so many punk, hip hop, rap, and similar artists that fill the bill. Eminem and Bonnie “Prince” Billy come to mind. So does Kanye West. Really, though, there are so many whose names I've not even bothered to learn...
2. Name two artists who relieve your stress.
Leonard Cohen and Joni Mitchell do it for me. So do Dire Straits and Jethro Tull, in their own ways. And there's always Nora Jones...
3. Name two songs that relieve your stress.
Tacoma Trailer on Leonard Cohen's “The Future” album is one. Waltz #1 (Nunley's Carousel), written by Billy Joel and performed by Richard Joo, which appears as a bonus track on “The Essential Billy Joel, Disc 2”. Jeff Buckley's Hallelujah (from his 1994 album “Grace”) does a nice job, too, but it has become a musical cliché, sad to say.
4. Name two albums that relieve your stress.
The ones I turn to most often lately are Johnny Cash's “American IV: The Man Comes Around” and George Martin's reimagining of a dozen Beatle's classics on his 1998 album “In My Life”.
5. When you're stressed, do you ever want to grab a guitar and smash it into an amp like Pete Townshend?
That thought has occurred to me once or twice but I hate the waste of a good (or even cheap) guitar. Then again, I hate to bet, too. Must be my Scottish heritage showing through.

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