The Music Advent alphabet (A-C)

I think I mentioned before that #musicadvent - which has always been a Twitter thing - was doing A-Z this year (skipping X). I said I might not do it, and then in the middle of the night one night this week I posted a version of Bad with lyrics. Unfortunately it was very late at night and I failed to notice that the lyrics are apparently from a non-English speaker who got some of it wrong - "find away" instead of "fade away" - but anyway, still a great song. (I think I posted the LiveAid version of this last year, and that's here.)

But that aside, I wasn't really intending to do this daily, partly because I couldn't think how I would choose songs. Then it occurred to me, kind of belatedly, that I've had iTunes since it first started - what's that, over 10 years now? - and that after all this time that contains a pretty exhaustive list of what I've listened to in the last decade, and it's easily sorted by title. So that's what I'm doing. I'm not going to try to post it over here daily like I did last year, but I'll try to post them here periodically.

I just picked stuff that seemed interesting to me. Everything here is music I like, and I'm going to try to keep from second-guessing my own taste. (People are so judgmental about other people's taste in music, and it's easy to get defensive. My taste is pretty much all over the place, quite frankly, but leaning toward rock & alternative.)

So I've been posting catch-up choices on the #musicadvent tag, and here's what I've posted so far:

A - Across the Universe, Michael Johns' cover. I always thought he had a beautiful voice. If you listen to the Idol judges afterwards, 2 of the 3 said this performance was too low-key, but I've found that I listened to this one pretty frequently over the years.

B - Bad, U2 (bad lyrics and all)

C - Chrome Plated Heart, Melissa Etheridge, a live version from Germany in 1993

(And I think three videos is enough for one day. I'll do some more tomorrow.)

More Music Advent (D-F)

Well, since I declared in the last installment that three videos are enough for one entry, and it's already the 6th, here are another three, D-F. (It's almost the 7th already, but I'll worry about that later.)

For D, I picked "Down in the River to Pray," which is from the movie O Brother Where Art Thou? and sung by Alison Krauss (& a chorus). I thought I remembered seeing a video for this song which featured Krauss herself, but I couldn't find that one, if it actually exists.

I have a choir background and a definite fondness for old hymns, which may also account for the next one.

"Es ist ein Ros' entsprungen" (or, in English, "Lo how a rose e'er blooming") - The King's Singers

This is the first holiday song this year but probably not the last.

And I know it doesn't particularly go well with the other two, but for F, I remembered how much I used to love "Fortress Around My Heart" from Sting. This video has a weird little wrap-around that I don't remember seeing before. (Maybe by 1985 I had mostly stopped watching MTV, though.)

(Expect the next three along about Wednesday, I guess!)