Gavin Bryars, “After the Requiem” (on the album of the same title): Bill Frisell & a string trio perform a requiem for a friend of Bryars who died in the Lockerbie crash; it’s mostly composed but climaxes at the end on a cathartic guitar improvisation (mostly just swelled single notes).
Helen Merrill, “Young and Foolish” (on You and the Night and the Music). Duet with the pianist Masabumi Kikuchi.
Iris DeMent, “Easy’s Getting Harder Every Day” (My Life).
Zoot Sims wiht Jimmy Rowles, “(I Wonder) Where Our Love Has Gone” (If I’m Lucky).
Eric Dolphy, “Tenderly” (Far Cry). Acapella alto saxophone.
Mike Westbrook, “Holy Thursday” (Bright as Fire). This is a 15-minute version of the poem from Blake’s Songs of Experience; a touch dated, but the way it builds from the quiet lyric at the start to the loud & hard-swinging ending is quite remarkable.
John Stevens, Derek Bailey and Kent Carter. “Cheers/Tears” (One Time). Recorded a year & a half before Stevens’ untimely demise, but this track serves as an unintended farewell. He is ordinarily a drummer, but here is playing a bugle.
Bill Frisell, “Strange Meeting” (he’s recorded it many times, but the most moving version is on Live on Gramavision).
Blossom Dearie. “Tea for Two” (Once Upon a Summertime). This version is slowed down to an extraordinary extent, & is a remarkable reworking of a tune which in most other contexts is annoying. One might also cite “Manhattan” from this disc too.
I could go on, but the list is long enough. Most of the above are quiet downers. --N
Jeff Buckley’s cover of Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah” and his live version of Van Morrison’s “The Way Young Lovers Do” from the Sin-e EP. Wow, did he have a voice.
The Mighty Clouds of Joy - “Walk Around Heaven”.
John Coltrane’s “A Love Supreme”.
Stevie Ray Vaughn playing guitar.
Kurt Cobain’s sigh/noise of anguish towards the end of “Where Did You Sleep Last Night?” (off of the Unplugged album). That noise sums him up for me.
If you mean pure spine-tingling, have to stop and listen, and maybe tear up, for me it has to be “Contessa, perdona…Ah, tutti contenti,” from the finale of Act IV of Mozart’s *Marriage of Figaro.*The first time I heard it, I just couldn’t believe the beauty of it. Mozart must be court composer for the angels.
“Going Home,” played by a solo piper, particularly at a funeral. (It was played at Payne Stewart’s funeral.)
“Barrett’s Privateers,” sung by Stan Rogers. Brings home the futility and “glory” of war like no other song. (Close second in this category: “The Band Played Waltzing Matilda.”)
In the fun yet sad category, “La complainte du phoque en Alaska,” by Beau Dommage. (Man, that’s dating me.)
In the farewell category, in addition to “Edmund Fitzgerald,” there’s “Let Me Fish Off Cape St. Mary’s,” by The Irish Descendants:
And to break the mood, another fun one: “A Walk in the Irish Rain,” again by The Irish Descendants.
Nearly anything by Vaughan Williams.
And to close: Mozart’s *Requiem.*I always play it when someone I know has died. I wait until I’m alone in the house, and play it all the way through. It’s my way of saying good-bye. I’ll play it later tonight, because one of the senior lawyers from my department passed away last night.
O Fortuna, from Carmina Burana–getting done to death now, but still effective.
Wagner–Siegfried Funeral March, from Gotterdammerung. Literally makes my hair stand on end. Pilgrim’s Chorus from Tannhauser.
Beethoven–transition from 3rd to 4th movement, 5th symphony.
Handel, Messiah–in the Amen, just before the end, there’s one note–just the sopranos, everybody else is on a quarter-note rest–that does it for me every time. Plus For Behold, Darkness Shall Cover the Earth. And Hallelujah, of course.
Side note–I used to think I really liked the movie Excalibur; but it turns out I just really, really like the music (Siegfried, O Fortuna). I was very happy when I discovered what those songs were.
“Morning Has Broken” on bagpipes (w/pipes & drums & military)
“Lullaby of London” by the Pogues
“You Learn – Unplugged” by Alanis Morissette
“And the Healing Has Begun” by Van Morrison
“Belong” by R.E.M.
“Hill Street Blues” theme song
I will give a third vote to Moya by Godspeed You Black Emperor! and also Mogwai Fear Satan by Mogwai(the only song by them that I don’t find boring). I am surprised to find other gybe! fans here. Other songs that give me chills - The Great Below by NIN, Rape Ritual by downset, the third track from A Silver Mount Zion, some stuff by Sigur Ros, and Tank Park Salute by Billy Bragg.
Adaggio for Strings by Samuel Barber
My Funny Valentine as sung by Ella Fitzgerals from the Rodgers/Hart Songbook
Strange Fruit by Billie Holiday
Are You Going With Me? by Pat Metheny from the Travels CD.
One More For the Road as performed by Frank Sinatra
Blue Railroad Train as perfromed by Doc Watson
The opening notes from Dark Star -10/9/89 as performed by the Grateful Dead
One O’Clock Jump by Count Basie
Polovstian Dances by Borodin
Rhaposody in Blue by Gershwin
Who Are You? by the Who. Very, very, very loud.
That give me the chills, too. What a night, and right up front. I have a boot from that night, and it still gives me chills. I didn’t really beleive what I was hearing until I heard the verse.
There is unbeleivable crowd noise when people realized what was going on. And that realization came in stages (if you know what I mean, and I think you do). That was easily the best Dead show I’ve ever seen. The next night was not too shabby, either.
For those that don’t know the Dead, Dark Star is one of the Dead’s signature tunes from about 1968-1975 or so. They hadn’t played it in years until 1989 in Hampton, where they were playing as “The Warlocks”, their 1966 name. I gather that the Dead were banned from Hampton, but The Warlocks were not. Business interests won out, and they were allowed to play. Jerry was off the smack at that point, and the Dead were started sounding really good that fall and whipping out lots of older tunes they had not played in years.
I have a pretty clear recollection of the crowd slowly coming to realize what they were hearing - it was so unexpected. On my tape the band is pretty much drowned out by the crowd flipping its collective wig.
Dark Star was played the second night of the two night run. The Help/Slip/Frank from the previous night got a similar reaction, IIRC.
Unfortunately, I missed the Attics of My Life encore on the second night. I had just driven my space cruiser through the Crab Nebulae, had pulled into a dilithium crystal station near Io to clean the windshield, and couldn’t make it back to Hampton in time. Either that or I was so zapped that I had wandered outside to try and regain my composure. Yeah, that must be it. To this day my friends kid me by saying “Hey Lee, wasn’t Attics of My Life great? Damn, what a great time. You were there for that, right?”
Yeah, the idea of yelling SHUTUPSHUTUPSHUTUP at the top of my lungs crossed my addled mind, briefly.
It did, but I remembered Help->Slip as the second night & Darkstar->Playin->John’s->Playin->D/S->Death as the first. But you know how that goes. Help->Slip also gave me the chills.
Jeez…where to start…The classical music ones are easier to remember off the top of my head:
Ballad of Heroes by Britten --a vastly underperformed work, IMHO.
and, in a similar vein, Britten’s War Requiem, especially the Lacrymosa. I defy you to listen to Peter Pears singing “Is it for this the clay grew tall?/ O what made fatuous sunbeams toil/to break earth’s sleep at all?” and not be moved.
“The Battle on the Ice” from Alexander Nevsky (Prokofiev). When the orchestral accelerando kicks in and the low brass growls, I can just feel the adrenaline pumping. Makes me want to go slay some infidels.
Last movement, Quartet for the End of Time (Messaien). Ethereal and transfiguring in its beauty.
Elgar’s The Dream of Gerontius – but only if I get to sing.
A few live concert moments:
Bach’s St. John Passion performed by Paul McCreesh and the Gabrieli Consort. I saw this in concert a few years back; at one point during the mezzo aria near the end I realized I had stopped breathing I was listening so hard. Wow.
Colline’s aria from the last act of La Boheme. Here’s this guy singing to his coat, of all things, and I’m up in the balcony with my eyes streaming tears. I didn’t cry when Mimi snuffed it, so why the big deal about the friggin’ coat? No idea.
I’m sure I’ll think of a dozen more as soon as I post this.
Another vote for that one. It tears me up every time I watch Highlander. (Yes, I watch Highlander a lot. Yes, I always get sniffly when Heather dies.) It’s the anguished, “When love must die,” that gets me.
I love soundtracks. I don’t know if it’s because I associate the music with feelings I had during the movie, or if it was the movie scores that made the emotions of the movie so poignant.
I get chills when I hear:
The main titles from Blade Runner
“Darkside of the Moon” from Apollo 13 (ethereal vocals by Annie Lennox, no relation to Pink Floyd)
The first time that Darth Vader’s motif wafts into “Anakin’s Theme” in Episode I.
“Elora Danan” from Willow
Dave Matthews did an awesome medly of “Don’t Drink the Water” and “This Land Is Your Land” on Live from the World Cafe. I wasn’t able to tape it at the time, and I’m desperate to get my paws on a recording. The whole thing is very intense. When he gets to the end of “Don’t Drink the Water,” he’s just hoarsely hissing out, “And I live with my hatred/And I live with my jealousy. . .,” and then suddenly he’s sweetly crooning “This land is your land/This land is my land. . .”
I love Johnny Cash doing “The Wanderer” on U2’s Zooropa.
And I can’t think of anything classical at the moment, so I’m sure I look like a Philistine. Aha–I know, I’ll go for the obscure: Poulenc’s Quatre Motets Pour un Temps the Penitence.
