Tori Amos - Happy Phantom
Keaton Henson - You
I can’t donate my organs so I want my body to go to a teaching hospital where surgeons-in-training can carve me however they need, hopefully while cracking irreverent jokes and checking their cellphones. Whatever’s left can go wherever amputated limbs are usually tossed. But if there’s some kind of get-together (memorial sounds too formal) I’ve got some songs I’d like to be played. Like Todd Rundgren’s Last Ride. In My Life by the Beatles. Lots more. Basically forcing my kids as a captive audience to finally listen to the music I like. The play list would wind down into bluegrass, like I Am Weary, Let Me Rest, and as of now ending with Vince Gill’s Go Rest High on That Mountain. I would hope that with the booze, food and weed, a good time would be had by all.
I’ve always planned on no services for my demise, in the fear that no-one would show up anyway. However, my recent retirement party led me to believe that I have had some beneficial effect on some people, and they might want to have an occasion to remember.
I’d start out really, really sad: Dido’s Lament (When I Am Laid in Earth) by Purcell, which has the advantage of being from an opera in English. This would be played as people gather, and will get them in the properly sombre mood.
At the end, after everyone has had their say, I’d go with “Some Other TIme” from “On The Town.” This expresses perfectly how I will feel after I’m dead.
For any other music, I have about 60 mix tapes of vocal jazz that they could play, if they can find a cassette player. Or they could run my iPod on Shuffle mode.
This is probably massively unoriginal, but The Flamings Lips’ ‘Do You Realize?’.
Here too! I also want a tombstone with an eternal flame around a figure of a man in torment.
Time by the Alan Parsons Project.
It seems like the perfect funeral song for an agnostic.
Goodbye my love, Maybe for forever
Goodbye my love, The tide waits for me
Who knows when we shall meet again
If ever
I plan to be cremated and I want Burning Love by Elvis Presley played. If The Flying Elvises can be enlisted to scatter my ashes during a jump, so much the better.
Moody Blues’ Night In White Satin including Late Lament
Alan Parsons Project’s Old and Wise (perhaps The Zimmers’ cover)
Annie Lennox’s Into The West from LOTR III (perhaps Happy Rhodes’ cover)
Hymns: It Is Well With My Soul
How Great Thou Art
Joyful Joyful We Adore Thee
Instrumental: Richard Wagner-
Magic Fire Music -Der Walkure
Siegfried’s Rhine Journey -Siegfried
Siegfried’s Funeral March -Gotterdammerung
“Amazing Grace” sung to the tune of “House of the Rising Sun.”
I’ve actually pondered this question before, and my answer was Frank Zappa’s “Son of Mr. Green Genes.” Reason- I don’t really know.
The Parting Glass (traditional), the version by the Pogues.
Pepper Mill wants Creedence Clearwater Revival’s Out my Backdoor.
Me, I’d like something classical. One thing I like is J.S. Bach’s Little Fugue in G, as rendered by W. Carlos on the synthesizer. (It appears on Walter Carlos By Request, and shouldn’t be confused with the more familiar Toccata and Fugue in D)
How Great Thou Art , I always think of my Grandma
Amazing Grace -
and
Just Breathe Pearl Jam
“How Can I Keep From Singing”
Over my wife’s objections, I want The Hell of It and Box of Rain played first. After that it’s anything goes.
I looked that up on Youtube, that actually comes up really well.
This is “Viper” by Dixieland, better known as Abby’s Song from Kate’s Funeral (NCIS). Here it is on Youtube.
“Spirit in the Sky” full blast and maybe “l Love The Dead” or “Cold Ethyl” both by Alice Cooper. Definitely “School’s Out” at some point in the proceedings!