"This is the end. My only friend, the end. It hurts to set you free. But you'll never follow me. The end of laughter and soft lies. The end of nights we tried to die. This is the end."
Taken from their eponymous debut album, this track is a haunting ode to 'The End'. It alludes to a far larger scope than simply human death, the whole concept of finality is called into play. Imagine staring from the stern of a ship, you see its jettisoned melee of evanescent spume fizzing over the water and remodelling itself in a billion unique configurations. Each altered form symbolises a distinct birth and death. There is a certitude of ending to the bubbly islands propagating from the wake of the ship, like the fluctuating borders of countries or dismantling icebergs: 'Of our elaborate plans, the end. Of everything that stands, the end.'
Morrison follows the passage of the slaughter of these forms and less the births. Inside Death's sunless ravine of transition - 'the King's highway' - lie murky, crestfallen shadows. Lining the banks of the road, insane, contorted children plead with the phosphorous sun for a rain that will never fall. A cold, seven mile long snake rasps its way up to greet you; a psychopomp, a 'blue bus' to the other side, beyond the 'end of nights we tried to die'.
Morrison's Oedipal monologue itself calls on mothers and fathers, squirming under their creative virility to engage in murder and lewd copulation. Progenitors give life and in doing so create 'weird scenes' inside the 'goldmine' nightmares of their offspring. I think we can all agree this is pretty scary stuff! Expect the Grimm Reaper to be playing this on his ipod when you meet you final hour!
"Well, I wait around the train station. Waitin' for that train. Waitin' for the train, yeah. Take me home, yeah. From this lonesome place"
This track has been spoken of as a portent of the singer's death. No definitive studio recording was made but Hendrix played it live many times, notably at the 1969 Woodstock. Blues trills weave lyrics of a lonesome desire to return to the bosom of time, to take a train, to disregard and leave the manacles of being. The music of today misses the loose genius of characters like Hendrix. His untimely death reminds us what a talent he was, as each day his achievements overshadow his ocupational peers.
"When I die and they lay me to rest. Gonna go to the place that's the best. When I lay me down to die. Goin' up to the spirit in the sky"
Norman Greenbaum is generally regarded as a one-hit wonder with this song, but that's because, stupidly, his work concerning the ownership of milk cows wasn't taken seriously enough. 'Spirit In The Sky' is a particularly upbeat tune about death. At first the obsequious flattery towards Jesus seems straight forward; Greenbaum is happy because he's gonna hang out with the big JC for eternity, most likely they will be sharing bowls of Angel Delight and stroking each others hair. But then a little more reading reveals Greenbaum as a full-blown Jew! Greenbaum cleaned up this quandary in a 2011 interview with Ray Shasho:
Norman Greenbaum: “If you ask me what I based “Spirit In The Sky” on… What did we grow up watching? …Westerns! These mean and nasty varmints get shot and they wanted to die with their boots on. So to me that was spiritual, they wanted to die with their boots on.”
Ray Shasho: So that was the trigger that got you to write the song?
Norman Greenbaum: “Yes. The song itself was simple, when you’re writing a song you keep it simple of course. It wasn’t like a Christian song of praise it was just a simple song. I had to use Christianity because I had to use something. But more important it wasn’t the Jesus part, it was the spirit in the sky. Funny enough… I wanted to die with my boots on.”
"Life it seems will fade away. Drifting further everyday."
The American metal band had to feature on this list! They have thrilled multitudinous people over the years. They've helped fasten the rope over the lips of personal Tyburn trees and sharpened the razors for teenage stoned death games. This version from Big Day Out is particularly massive - honestly what the fuck>?! This is AMAZING!
This piece doesn't explicitly allude to death, but it sounds like the footsteps of ghosts in an empty cathedral. Whilst listening, its mood makes it impossible to ignore mortality, perhaps all art must reflect both birth and death, sensorial and non-sensorial, is and is not. Chopin is considered one of the most important composers of the romantic era, earning him the epithet 'poet of the piano'. This prelude uses chromatic progressions beautifully and hosts phrases over the unusual 7th and 1st beats of the bar. The entire track is geared to encompass every spectrum of physics and emotion, science and myth - and lead us into a new romantic truth. " '"Beauty is truth, truth beauty - that is all/Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know." - John Keats.
Source: Livemusic.fm
Source: Livemusic.fm
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