Laurel Massé
Reflections on song and spirit
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December 03, 2011
Kashmir 1994
Just because.
Dec 3, 2011 2:23:00 PM
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Rests between the bright shiny notes
Mrs. Peel and I are sitting side by side, looking out the window. The morning chatter-clatter of starlings on the postage-stamp lawn in front of my apartment has already abated, leaving us to gaze at metal and bricks, the traffic...
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Cool school
This is wonderful on many levels. It's a great story about jazz and the culture of jazz, a story about being, and trying to be, cool, and, most wonderfully, a story that can teach you how to tell a story....
Laurel Massé
A singer's singer, and a song's best friend.
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Laurel Massé:
Hi, Kevin - Slight correction to your comment:...
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All shall be well: Julian of Norwich
Kevin Ainsworth:
Hi Laurel In a previous comment to this post I...
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All shall be well: Julian of Norwich
Laurel Massé:
Hi Kevin! If there had been no Mrs. Peel, my ca...
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Have a beer with St. Brigid and God!
Laurel, I truly love you and think you are talented beyond belief. However, I must admit, I can't believe that someone with your talent has deemed Led Zeppelin as great! I think we, in America especially, have been forced to accept crap like Zeppelin and other drug induced people as a legitimate form of music. So many so called artists and musicians from that era rose to stardom because of the drugged up young people that didn't know or care how really lame and limited they were.
Posted by: patrick | December 03, 2011 at 04:01 PM
Hi Patrick. I know Led Zeppelin wasn't to everybody's taste. But I was in a band in high school that did Zeppelin covers. If I ever run for office, that will come out, so you might as well know now. A few years later, when the Transfer and Zep were both signed to Atlantic Records, I had an interesting conversation with Robert Plant at an industry party about singing harmony.
I picked this particular clip because of the inclusion of the frame drummers. I like how the rhythms move back and forth between the traditional and the rock. You can hear where the song's roots might be. Jimmy Page is a very accomplished guitarist - do you know that he was one of the premier studio musicians in England before he started Led Zeppelin? He could read and play pretty much anything.
Though I don't expect everyone to like the same music I do, I am a bit sad that you feel the way you do about the music, musicians, and audiences of the 60s (for the record, I was also at the original Woodstock). I confess that it seems to me that much pop music today is both derivative and imitative of what was done in that era. So, how lame could it have been?
Of course, I am delighted by your sweet opening sentence, and I thank you for commenting.
Blessings, Laurel
Posted by: Laurel Massé | December 03, 2011 at 06:54 PM
I missed rock music in the 60s (obsessed with musicals) and the 70s (obsessed with classical music), so I've never heard it before. I love the mix of cultures. It's interesting and fun to hear really good musicians from different cultures figuring out how to make music together.
Posted by: Sandy | December 03, 2011 at 08:20 PM
Man alive, how can anyone who claims to be into music, not at least acknowledge Zep. I advise any fan of Manhattan Transfer, and especially Laurel to check out Led Zeppelin III. I am more in love with Laurel Masse than I was before I noticed that she was into Zep. Don't worry though I still listen to Bessie Smith, McCoy Tyner, Art Blakey, McKinley Morganfield, and all the wonderful music that has poured its melody, time signatures, and beauty into the soul of humanity since the Dionysian age. Music is wonderful and evocative, and its rhythms intoxicate our lives. Rock and roll, does it for me, just as much as jive, boogie, funk, progressive, folk, roots blues, romantic era classical etc etc. To wonderful Laurel, Happy New Year, and try to swing over to the UK soon and remind us of your talent and beauty.
Posted by: Damian | January 02, 2012 at 09:11 PM