Unchained Melodies

Ive wanted to do this thread ever since the Music for your Authentic Self thread was started.

I felt that to me there are just so many songs I relate to and love. I cannot just limit it to one song. Especially when songs are like moods and as our moods change so do our songs.

There are other threads of bands which I love and which have a large amount of songs that can be posted for them. But this is more the miscellaneous musicians that dont have enough songs to create a whole thread dedicated to just themselves.

But it will definitely be a collection of music that makes me FEEL something.

Wether for a sentimental reason, or just the pure sublime beauty of it.

Most of all I want it to be about actual music artists. The word artist can rarely be applied to musicians these days. I really lament the lack of creativity and experimentation in music today.
And I totally mourn the death of someone feeling so inspired to create something beautiful in the medium of music and share it with others- so those others can feel the pain, happiness heartache, joy, and ecstasy too.

Kashmir has to be possibly my most favourite song of all time. I just don't know what it is that I love about it, but it touches me on so many levels. It is EPIC put into sound.

I love the middle eastern influence. I love the lyrics. I love the passion. I love the blend of rock and ballad and non western cultural influences all meshed into one sound.

If I could say a song summed me up, it would be this one..

Neil Young doing a magnificent guitar piece for the movie Deadman.


If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear to man as it is -infinite.

Power of Love

Sylvian, Ingrid Chavez and Ryuchi Sakamoto
Heartbeat (Tainai Kaiki II)

I live in world in which how white the teeth in your mouth are, is more importance than the words that come out of it.

I have LONG had a problem with this fixation on beauty over brains.

I have been meaning to begin a thread about the use of celebrities to keep the masses from individual thought, just as they did with religion in the dark ages.

This is to be continued..

With all this talk about the "average" guy in bed and all the stereotypes of what we should be applying to ourselves as either sex, I was reminded of an old song: Joe Jackson's Real Men.

At the tender age of 14, I was introduced to the exquisite sounds of Joe Jackson by my mother and one of my aunties.

Years too young to really comprehend or grasp the sublime depth of this musician, the sound still worked for this learning teen.

All the times when my mother used to work at a restaurant late at night, I used to turn all the lights off and put her Joe Jackson music on, lie by the fireside and drift into a deep sense of cloud nine... which were some of the best memories of my entire life.

It's only now I finally see the meaning behind the words.

As Decius, to me, pointed out. We start off as pure, young and innocent. Then become trained to think and act a certain way and never be the true spiritual characters we could be.

What is a real man? As innocent males, we are bombarded with images and stereotypes at such a young age; and we follow peer pressure to be the biggest, toughest man on earth... as that yobbsih behavior gets us the women.
Who're (pardon the pun.) at the time, being told how to behave, and who they should be with, to 'keep the race going.'

It's sad that I recall still to this day, my aunt saying about how this man had such a deep way of talking to her through his songs- but was far too ugly to ever be with.

I lament that a man who is in control of his feelings, his feminine side and who is so sensitive to a woman's needs to make them truly fulfilled, is unable to be seen as the true seed women should be growing in their gardens.

Regardless of Joe Jackson's unattractive façade, this member likes the fact, way back then he was able to see the circle we are trapped in as a human species.

As men and women, we are too afraid to step out and be more than what we could be, because we all want to, like sheep, fit into some grey, watered down genetic breeding stock.

I am a man who is in touch with his manhood. I admit to crying a lot, and I and not afraid to show my weaknesses in front of other men. As only a REAL man can ever be vulnerable in front of other men and show his true self.

Thank you Decius, for encouraging me, even moreso, to introspectively look at myself and not follow the 'herds.' To be strong when I need to be; and compassionate when I should be.

The song says the rest...

This video is "the best of" when it comes to music videos.

Be it even moreso, it sums me up right now.

There's so much more I want to say about it... I will when I can come back from the place I am with it.

So anyway, when I come back from where I sometimes ascend I am able to describe it. Albeit, as a shadow of what it really is.

Parabola is one of the greatest songs to me. It is great in its sound. Also in its symbolic video clip.

But most of all - it's celebration of life.

You have to really think deeply and to feel passion on a level no one normally feels to know what I mean...

But if you can, you will know what I mean when I say songs can make you experience another state of consciousness.

I listen to this song when I am running, and feel the sounds and words paralleling with the feeling of blood pounding and adrenalin flooding through my body. And the words "celebrate this chance to be, alive and breathing" echoing in my mind and body and soul..

And I feel so alive. So wonderful. So ecstatic.


You feel so "now" with songs like this.

Eeeesh, I do promise to stop posting Tool stuff. Except this song accompanies Parabola. You may even notice the same guy running about. And its as celebratory of life as the other.

I LOVE these songs and clips.

Unkle. Rabbit in your headlights.

You may recognize Toms Yorkes voice as the singer.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=noExWvmqaec

This song and video to me is a metaphor for those who walk a different road. Those who are so different that they get run down for not following the flow.

It shows apathy in its worst aspect. No one would run down some one and not stop. But they run down ppl other ways, every day in a rush to fulfill thier own non important needs and dont bother to stop. They go with the world's flow, and to them, anyone else is nothing except roadkill.

Yet, I, and many like me, are different. We walk other paths. And I'm not weak. I'm not a mumbling idiot like this guy, but I represent those who walk those other path.

And no matter how many times I've been pushed aside. No matter how many times ive been run down by society's apathy and indifference, I too still get up.

And you and I both know that in the end we cannot beat a car. You cannot stop the way society is as one person.

But I still walk that path. In the hope that I will help make it easier. In the hope that with more like me, walking the hard and different path, we will wear a track for others to take courage and follow.

Then one day, we will change the flow, and find a way that works for us all. That stops the mindless movement of metal and plastic, powered by small minds and herd instincts, rushing through lives, to go nowhere fast as possible.

But the thing I relate to the most is the very end of this clip. You cant imagine just how much ive seen that image in my mind and felt that feeling, before I ever saw this clip.

There are times when I feel that power within me. That feeling of being impossibly unstoppable. When I cannot be pushed aside, when everything must obey my will, when anyone I come across, no matter how much power they wield: must yield.

I have felt that feeling numerous times. That inner power. That inner deity lurking just beneath the surface. That animalistic, killer instinct.

I feel this most when I have been working out. When my blood flows hot. When my adrenaline is washing over me. When my endorphins are lifting me up where I cannot feel pain at all. Where the energy I am, my life-force, is so heightened, so empowered... That. I. Can. Not. Be. Stopped.

Man I love that feeling.

Duuuuude! That is one of my favorite videos. I had forgotten all about it. When I first saw it years back, I related to it in exactly the same way you describe here. I think the coat is very symbolic too. When he leaves that part of him behind, abandoning his protective layer, he discovers true strength.

You're right about the clothing thing. I was gonna put that in too but I felt I was already rambling on too much.

But I interpret it as his shedding of societies chains. IE, we wear clothes for the sake of conformity and sometimes even prestige. While he was still a slave to conformity and society's rules on behavior, he was unable to be totally free. But once he had learned to shed that final shackle, he was, and gained true power.

BTW, that pose he struck when the car hit him. Its actually how I mediate when I'm standing up. And whats interesting about that, is it was a progression from the standing meditation technique I was taught when doing Tai Chi. And one of the things in Tai Chi they do is "root" themselves in the ground and become immovable. Ive seen old guys stand still and have 4 or 5 younger guys try and move them- and fail.

So I like the symbolism of that.

*shutting up now.*

I learned that "rooting" technique in Aikido

I actually had a hard time deciding between the original or the Pantera cover, since the cover is better sound quality and has the coolest video. (check it out if you like this one.)

This is Planet Caravan by Black Sabbath.

Ive been listening to allot of their earlier work and its nothing like what Ive always thought they were about. Which is not my style.

The lyrics are so poetic and inspiring I wish I was able to write something like this.


Planet Caravan.

We sail through endless skies
Stars shine like eyes
The black night sighs
The moon in silver trees
Falls down in tears
Light of the night
The earth, a purple blaze
Of sapphire haze
In orbit always

While down below the trees
Bathed in cool breeze
Silver starlight breaks down the night
And so we pass on by the crimson eye
Of great God mars
As we travel the universe


Oh my lamentation at how we've gone from that to...

yeah yeah aha yeah
smack dat bitch
superman dat ho
aha yeah yeah
aaaaaye aaaaye!