Sting and The Hounds of Winter at Norwegian Wood 2012

I had the pleasure of hearing Sting last night at a packed Norwegian Wood. I got hooked on The Police songs very early, but never got to hear the band live. So it was good to finally get to hear Sting. This was his playlist last night:

·         All this time

·         Every little thing she does is magic

·         Englishman in New York

·         Seven days

·         Demolition man

·         I hung my head

·         Driven to tears

·         Fields of gold

·         Message in a bottle

·         Synchronicity

·         Shape of my heart

·         Love is stronger than justice (The munificent seven)

·         The hounds of winter

·         The end of the game

·         Never coming home

·         Desert rose

·         King of pain

·         Every breath you take

·         Next to you

He did a great version of ‘The Hounds of Winter’. My God, what a fantastic song—beautiful haunting lyrics and melody. The background vocals last night were done by a young woman who had an incredible voice—her voice sent chills down my spine. Lovely. I’m including the lyrics to the song here (pure poetry), along with aYouTube video of the song above.

The Hounds Of Winter    by Sting

Mercury falling

I rise from my bed,

Collect my thoughts together

I have to hold my head

It seems that she's gone

And somehow I am pinned by

The Hounds of Winter

Howling in the wind

I walk through the day

My coat around my ears

I look for my companion

I have to dry my tears

It seems that she's gone

Leaving me too soon

I'm as dark as December

I'm as cold as the Man in the Moon

I still see her face

As beautiful as day

It's easy to remember

Remember my love that way

All I hear is that lonesome sound

The Hounds of Winter

They follow me down

I can't make up the fire

The way that she could

I spend all my days

In the search for dry wood

Board all the windows and close the front door

I can't believe she won't be here anymore

I still see her face

As beautiful as day

It's easy to remember

Remember my love that way

All I hear is that lonesome sound

The Hounds of Winter

They follow me down

A season for joy

A season for sorrow

Where she's gone

I will surely, surely follow

She brightened my day

She warmed the coldest night

The Hounds of Winter

They got me in their sights

I still see her face

As beautiful as day

It's easy to remember

Remember my love that way

All I hear is that lonesome sound

The Hounds of Winter

They harry me down

Deadmau5 next week at Oslo Spektrum

I was swapping through TV channels last night, and settled on MTV Live, which just happened to be showing some choice live sessions from Roskilde 2011. Exactly at the time I watched, Deadmau5 was performing. I have to say that I’ve never seen anything quite like it, but to be truthful, I haven’t been following a lot of the new music for some years now. It got to be too difficult, with all of the 'one popular song' groups that came and went. I haven't heard of Deadmau5 before, but he has been around since 2005. Anyway, this was just out and out wild! Really caught my attention, especially because the main performer--Joel Thomas Zimmerman—wears on his head what he calls a ‘mau5head’, which is some kind of computer-controlled mouse head with large ears. This mouse head appears in many different colors and designs, and the expressions on the face shift and change shape and swirl. A sinister (Mickey) mouse staring out at the audience from the darkness, into the darkness, from some chaotic fractal hell. The visuals were fantastic, and for me at least, it was a rare glimpse into the future, how electronic music will be (probably a hundred times more sophisticated by that time—let’s say forty years from now) in terms of the digital effects, computer-controlled light show, use of strobe lights and anything else that musicians use these days to heighten the effect of their music. These are just a few of the instruments he uses (and that I’ve NEVER heard of—info from Wikipedia): Nord Lead 2x, Moog Little Phatty, Voyager RME, Ableton, Fruity Loops, Allen & Heath Xone 3D, Allen & Heath Xone 4D, Lemur Input Device, Ableton Live, Monome 256, Reaktor, Cubase, Kaossilator, Nuendo, Native Instruments Maschine, Smithson Martin Emulator, and Dave Smith Instruments Prophet '08. And in a case of synchronicity, while I was online reading about him, I saw that he is playing at Oslo Spektrum next Wednesday, May 30^th. So I got tickets. I’m looking forward to seeing him live. I’ll let you know how it was next week.