zion

January 18, 2013


Whenever Double Jeopardy is on, there's a 70% chance that i will watch it.
It's just one of those movies, we all have them.
Plus, there's this scene, a funeral march where the Spirit of New Orleans Brass Band is at the head of the procession.
They're playing 'St. James Infirmary'.
This song has a physical effect on me.
It's as if i can feel it playing out in the back of my neck, a firm hand cradling it in a melancholy, consoling kind of way and that is always a welcome feeling.

I have yet to find the Spirit's version but when there's Louis Armstrong, you can't do much better.
I haven't listened to enough Dixieland, i think i need to remedy that.

Listening to music like this puts me in mind of another song i love by The Zion Travelers:

I first heard this in the Glasgow branch of FOPP.
It pretty much stopped me dead.
I was having a timid moment, so my Dad asked the girl over the counter who was playing - i'm a fraidy cat sometimes, so sue me.
Turns out it was one of the songs Bob Dylan played on his Theme Time Radio Hour.
It was bought immediately.
Yet another thing i'll miss from music stores!

And then there was this:
I think just about everybody knows this song but i remember when i first heard it. 
I was in my teens and wasn't listening to anything like Blind Willie Johnson, nothing even close.
And it was like seeing a mythical creature.
Nothing should be so sad, yet so heartening but it was and remains so.
That in itself is a mythical beast.


Listening to: Holobody 'Stomp Coda'
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