purchase [the band]
"A tad obvious" says our own Seuras, speaking of feathers and lead in his heavy/light post a few days back. The same holds true for any of the opposites we have poked at in this theme - "a tad obvious". My choice of awake/asleep is no less obvious, once we say it outloud, it is: "but, of course."
That said, I think I can say I now have a favorite song from The Band's oevre. I mean, there are several fine tunes over the 10 years from '68 to '78 that included Robertson in the band. But I particularly like the - I'm going to call it a jangle - of the song. Maybe it's the semi-ragtime keyboards in the original recording? I like the sound almost as much as I like the lyrics. Just a few of them that are stuck bouncing around my head:
you will be hangin' on a string from your when you believe
you will relieve the only soul that you were born with to grow old and never know
I could wake up in the morning dead
And if I thought it would do any good I'd stand on the rock where Moses stood
But then I came across a version that Rick Danko (the vocals on the original) shared, and -for me - the song gained further respect.
Another awake. I confess I have never really felt a reason to follow Katy Perry's music. I can see why some folks do and did, however. But when I see that she, too, has an awake song, I guess it's time for me to dig a little deeper than knowing that she's done some American Idol stuff. Her <Wide Awake> from 2012 sounds to me like most of what I have heard of her music/style ("...anthemic and often sexually suggestive...electro-pop...", per britannica)
As for the other side of the coin ("ah", he says a little belatedly, "another pair of opposites we have here"), let's go back to Abbey Road, 1969, pretty much the end of the Beatles as a band.
Golden Slumbers is one of eight short songs that make up the 16 minute track titled <Medley>. You know the song. It's the one that begins "Once there was a way ... to get back home ... sleep pretty darling do not cry ..."
Let's continue sleeping with a listen to the better known version of Mbube, the song originally from Solomon Linda back in 1939 - the one that you've probably heard the version of from The Lion King as well as this one from The Tokens. It's not particularly going to put you to sleep, but maybe you don't want to spend the night near a sleeping lion, whether you "hush my darling" or not.
And we'll wrap it up, although there's plenty more to cover, with an appropriately named band (that I again really don't know much about except their name, which fits the subject): Asleep At The Wheel. They've got a coupla songs that - besides their name - touch on sleep: Midnight in Memphis, and an album titled <Keep Me Up Nights> plus more, for sure (In My Dreams ...)
