And the winner is...

Who wins most pretentious blog of the week award? I do!

The other day I was discussing, with a colleague, the concept of aggressive suicide. By later that afternoon J and I were chowing down on sushi in London. In the evening we were watching Sting playing 16th century songs on a lute.

Come on, beat that!

Actually the lute music was stunning. Sting looked suitably nervous but had able assistance from Edin Karamazov, who certainly brought the idea of shredding alive on a lute. The songs were mostly by John Dowland, who could write beautiful, melancholy music any modern composer (or songwriter) would love to claim. There were a few surprises too. Having heard a piece by the Robert, the son of John Johnson (Elizabeth I's court lutenist) Sting encored with a piece by another Robert Johnson. Hellhound on my trail. It's all blues.

It's truly refreshing to see someone, who really doesn't need the hassle, doing something new for the blatant love of the music.

Comments

Art Durkee said…
I've always said that John Dowland wrote the Elizabethan Blues.

Flow, my tears, fall from your springs / exiled, forever let me mourn . . .

Man, that could easily be Delta blues, later on.

I would have loved to see Sting et al. do Dowland, then both Robert Johnsons. I wonder if there is a trend going on now, with Bruce Springsteen recently releasing an album of roots folk music associated with Pete Seeger.
fjl said…
Isn't doesn't need the hassle a little more to do with being the proud posessor of twenty million after selling the world 'Don't stand so close to me?' ..pretentious? Moi??

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