Peter and the Wolf

i've become re-enamoured with peter and the wolf, and all things Red - the guy, you understand, rather than the colour. although, the colour is nice too. in fact, it's a pretty good word altogether: rolls of the tongue. rrrrrred. roll those r's.

anyway.

here's a couple available on the website, as well as a nice radio station idea - 'the phone in' seems to be where the music is literally phoned in...and as i'm writing this, i can sense that it's probably a very old concept, and i'm really, really behind the times. kind of scary, considering i'm 18. shouldn't i be on the cutting edge? is that right?

peter and the wolf - the fall


red hunter - couches by the sea

fuck it. i thought it was a cool idea. so, here's one of your phone ins, which i'm sure have gone out of fashion. the presenter has all the personality of a car crash, but i like the way they don't really care how shit the quality of the phone line is, and the way Red keeps checking to see if the phone has cut out. sorry, i can't remember which radio station this is from. in fact, i can't even remember how i found it. the wonders of those inner-nets.

peter and the wolf radio session

the fall is a song i will probably always love. you know those mixtapes you always imagine, the ones that contain all the perfect songs on? this would probably be on there. maybe i have bloghyperbolicitis, but i'm going to just go with it.

couches by the sea always swings me around, because it's got that 'is this really a good idea?' philosophy hanging around it. on the one hand, "here on the island/no one's gonna find us, darlin'/no one even sees us unless we want them to" sounds great, really great. "disappear with me" brings it into slightly more sinister territories, but really subtley - you wouldn't think there was anything dark about it unless you were thinking about it already. it is complete and utter solitude - of that much we are sure. but is it blissful solitude or ignorant bliss? 'disappear' is all too often used romantically; but it also reminds me excessively of film noir, something like cat people, where dissapearing into the shadows is all kinds of sinister. are they disappearing onto an island, or is the island just a representation of some 'other place'?

i have no idea what the couches signify, but the way they're just sitting there, "we will watch the moonlight from these couches", it always gives me the image of them sitting there, mouths open. not happy, not sad...in fact, completely emotionless, numb. "on these waves of blue", you've got some very light and free imagery, and while the lotus flower (mentioned slightly earlier in the song) is often associated with purity in body, speech, and mind (reaching towards enlightenment), it is also used, in buddist symbolism, to represent 'floating above the muddy waters of attachment,' which i immediately associate with milan kundera's (somewhat plagurised) idea of lightness and weight. it's important to get a balance rather than be totally weighed down, or be completely off in the clouds. the song is definitely a tightrope in similar ways to kundera's loose philosophy, and the beauty of the lyrics, guitar and vocals melodies is really offset, at least for me, by this idea of floating off, never to return. it's infinitely appealing, as well as a little scary.

wow. sorry, i really didn't mean to rip the song apart like that. it was just going to be a short thing, but i guess i've been thinking about it more than i realised.