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aniwdog favorited a video
(7 months ago)
Fleetwood Mac-Rhiannon-1976
Rhiannon is the story of a lady that is from another world ~ called the Bright world ~ and she leaves her kingdom to bec...
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Fleetwood Mac-Rhiannon-1976
Rhiannon is the story of a lady that is from another world ~ called the Bright world ~ and she leaves her kingdom to become the wife of a king ~ a mortal king ~ but goddesses really can't marry mortal kings, if they do they lose their powers ~ their magic powers. And they don't lose the knowledge of them they just ~they know everything that's going to happen they just can'tdo anything about it. Which is a much more difficult way to live than not having magic powers is to not be able to use them and know exactly what's coming and to not be able to tell anybody. So she comes down and does her whole trip, and it's just a whole story ~ it's a wonderful story.
And she has these birds that sing and that is the legend of the song of the birds of Rhiannon. And they sing this song that is uh, said takes away pain and suffering and if you hear the song you just sort of blank out and go away and then when you wake up everthing's all right. And it is a wonderful, wonderful story which I use a lot, because there's a lot of ~ there seems to be a lot of need for the story of Rhiannon around lately, because if people are sad or have lost anybody or something the story really makes a lot of sense. -Stevei Nicks
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aniwdog favorited a video
(9 months ago)
This wonderful song was done by both Liza Minelli and Marc Almond, as well as being performed and written by the legendary Charles Aznavor. It tell...
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This wonderful song was done by both Liza Minelli and Marc Almond, as well as being performed and written by the legendary Charles Aznavor. It tells the story of a male performer who is also a drag queen, who changes sex before the audience's eyes, starting out as quite amusing, a little like Harvey Fierstein's famous and brilliant film, "Torch Song Trilogy". The song then goes on to explore the alienation and bigotry of being gay in a world where it's not accepted, and in fact caused resentment and being shunned, the very world still remembered by older gay men of the 1950s.
When Liza Minelli sang it at a Gay Rally in 1985, times were much easier for gay people, and it seemed that bigotry had become a thing of the past. The lyrics of this song seemed less relevant and more belonging to a far distant age.
But times change.
America has suffered seven years so far, and virtually lost all its civil liberties, under the puritanical rule of George Bush, and it's no longer cool to be gay in the U.S.A. In a time when people can be arrested without trial, have their phones tapped, and even have their records banned simply for speaking out, what chance did gay people ever have under such a hypocritical regime, more like Germany in the early 1930s or America in the dreaded 1950s McCarthy era, than any America most of us ever knew.
And sadly and unimaginably, having returned back to Victorian values, where gay marriage is banned and same sex unions are frowned upon by the bible bashers and the moral majority, the words of this song have taken on a terrifying new meaning. My dear friend Paul Savory asked me to do a disco version of the song for my fabulous new album, "Disco 2008" and I found the perfect singer to deliver it, star of the "Rat Pack", George Daniel Long, who played Sammy Davis Jr. George, being openly gay as I am, was glad and proud to sing it. But once I got my teeth into the lyrics, I realised we weren't just covering a song with gay appeal. Here was our chance to do something genuinely worthy, and I only hope our production and our wonderful video, so amazingly edited together by Adi Denney, can do the words of the song justice.
It's been a long time since I made a truly gay record. In 1983, "So Many Men So Little Time" was adopted as the anthem of gay America, in a more promiscuous time when AIDS hadn't quite yet hit home. In 1984, "High Energy" took a music form played almost exclusively in gay clubs, and turned it into a worldwide smash, with seven million sales. Now twenty three years later, here comes my most important gay record of my career. I hope you all like it. If you do, please spread the word, get people to watch it and hopefully, in December, buy the album.
The whole album of "Disco 2008" is a return to my own Disco roots, a collection of songs full of soul and camp joyfulness - from Tina Charles singing about being a vamp, to Hazell Dean singing about Trading Him For A Newer Model, to the outrageously larger than life McKoy Sisters, to Sheila Ferguson making her most exuberant disco record ever, to George Daniel Long making his quiet plea for gay acceptance in a cruel and bigoted world.
In December, I beg you, if I have ever made a record that any time in your life, either touched your soul or your feet, I implore you to support this album, and help me show the world that we still care about the music we listen to and dance to.
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