What's your favorite musical moment?

Right now it's the guitars at the beginning of Comet Gain's "My Defiance".

kevin
+ http://tullamarine.org

 

It's probably cliched but I love Jimmy Page's sold during "Stairway to Heaven"

My 2nd one is actually a whole song. Radiohead's "Polyethylene" starts off as a quiet acoustic number and turns into a more rocking song in the 2nd half.

 

A few recent favorites include:

1) Yo-Yo Ma's entire cello part for the Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon soundtrack. Regardless of what people think of the movie, the score is a fine piece of music.

2) The bombastic chorus of P.O.D.'s "Boom"

3) The Serbian Orthodox Church's musical rendition of the "Our Father" prayer, it is perhaps the most serene thing I've ever heard, just beautiful...and I don't even speak Serbo-Croatian...the music is just unreal. It is a short piece of music, so I will include the whole song.

4) The Philip Glass-esque piano intro to Moby's "In My Heart"

5) The looping frenetic theme of Philip Glass' score for the movie Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

 

This has to be explained in its context.

Spring 1987, Meadowlands Arena, and I'm 16 years old. Five sold-out nights for U2's Joshua Tree tour ($12.50 a ticket, maybe?). The lights go down, and there's about a minute of deafening noise from the crowd but no music. Finally the low keyboards of When The Streets Have No Name start in total darkness, a few lights flash on stage as Edge begins the guitar, then a few more as Adam starts the bass line. Then Larry hits the drums, the guitar goes into full chords, dozens of white lights flood the stage and the arena, and Bono is standing there right in front of me on the right side of the stage, looking into my section, the coolest rock star in the world in a leather jacket, just surveying the totally berserk crowd.

If I saw the same thing now -- and come to think of it, the Elevation tour had a similar Streets intro -- it would not have the same effect, for sure. But when I was 16 all of the theatricality had so much meaning and emotion that I totally fell for it. Some 15 years later, whenever I hear Streets, I think about those opening concert moments. I never had goose bumps so strong before, and I haven't since.

 

I'm gonna limit my list to anything but classical, seeing as my knowlege of clssical music is at best not very good.

However, the 1812 overture is one of my most favorite pieces of music. ever. -

1) JOhn Bonhams Drum solo in "moby dick" from "the song remains the same"

2) the last 5 minutes of "only in dreams" by weezer

3) the beggining of Andrew WK- Get ready to die

 

The last track on Rattus Norvegicus by The Stranglers is a track called Down in The Sewer. For the mosty part it's a pedestrian instrumental but the last two minutes has this blinding piece of music called Rats Rally which gets progressively faster and faster until you think they can't take the tempo up another notch. Then they take it up another notch.

The operatic sample on The Sun Rising by Beloved takes me back the a time and place in an instant. In fact the chilled groove of that song could easily be included as well.

 

The final crescendo-style chorus in Camper Van Beethoven's "She Divines Water."

 

The theme playing when Indy uses the staff of Ra in the maproom and when he and Sallah are in the Well of Souls.

Randy Rhoad's solo during "Suicide Solution" on the "Tribute" LP.

The final "Revolution!......I remember now." at the end of "Operation:Mindcrime"

 

Favorite Recorded Musical Moment

The transition from "Big Day Coming" to "From a Motel 6" on Yo La Tengo's Painful. "Big Day Coming" is the slow version of the song with spiraling feedback in the background which seems to build throughout but ultimately builds up a good deal of tension. Then the song ends and "From a Motel 6" immediately starts with a searing guitar solo which is a tremendous release of the earlier tension. It is physically impossible for me to not jump around and play air guitar to it; even after all these years.

Favorite Live Musical Moment

While I'm tempted to give the nod to Bob Pollard of GBV launching cans of beer into the crowd during "I Am a Scientist" at Summerstage in Central Park, I have to go with an encore from Pavement at NYU. For the last song, Steve Malkmus started asking people in the packed crowd what song they wanted to hear. Each suggestion got Malkmus more annoyed as he couldn't find one that he liked. Finally, he just explodes, "****************** IT!! LET'S DO DEBRIS SLIDE!!" The crowd erupts and fans climb on the stage as Pavement launches into a blistering version of "Debris Slide". Everyone was jumping around and going nuts. It was exactly what rock-n-roll is supposed to be.

Murf

 

From a soundtrack, I think I like the main theme from "The Patriot".

From a live experience, I'd have to say the Weezer concert I went to last week. Just being with thousands of other Weezer fans and singing along to every single song was F*in fantastic. Also, and this may be the only time acceptable, but when they played "Who Let the Dogs Out" at Shea Stadium. The Mets just won the NL Pennant and I was with 55,000 people, so kinda had to join in, and it was kinda fun. Hmmph.

 

The quiet part in the middle of "Black Metallic" by The Catherine Wheel gives me goosebumps every single time.

 

The first time I heard the guitar intro to the Sex Pistols' "Pretty Vacant," it made the hair on the back on my neck stand up.

 

My favourite live moment is undoubtedly this:

I had just moved to Portland a couple of years ago and it would be my first time seeing Sleater-Kinney as a resident of this lovely Rose City. This was also back in the days when I was absolutely mad for them, like I had never been for any band before. I had always liked the drummer, Janet and the lead vocalist/guitarist, Corin, but had never really cared for the other guitarist, Carrie. Probably due to the fact that she was everybody's favourite and I really couldn't understand what all the hullabaloo was.

The show took place at a venue in the industrial district, a rather small one that had just opened up. The Kinney were going to be part of the first show happening at this place. Pretty small place, nothing fancy about it at all.

So what happens is that I take up my position in front of the left side of the stage. I'm sure there was a discussion with the girlfriend at the time as to where we should stand. I probably wanted front-right, to be in front of Corin, but we ended up front-left, in what is now my customary spot at Kinney shows.

They play and I do my usual thing, I dance like there's no tomorrow, I have song specific dances, etc. Everytime I look up at Carrie she's got this huge grin on her face, smiling at me. I'm smiling back too at this point and it just keeps going on for the whole show. Finally towards the end, they play a track called "The End of You", about how they are just as human as their fans, how friends & family are more important to them than chasing the almighty dollar. The song's almost ending and as she's finishing the line "No bigger spotlight than shown on the ones brave enough to live..." her right arm slowly moves to end up being pointed straight at me.

Just one of those moments that a genuine connection was made and still my favourite live musical moment ever. I'm not into them as much these days, but that is something that I still cherish and still means something to me.

kevin
+ http://tullamarine.org

 

My favorite musical moment would have to be when the Jets and the Sharks finally square off in a rumble to end all rumbles under the bridge and Tony kills Bernardo in a magnificent crecendo to a powerful first act of West Side Story.



What? What?

 

"In the Hall of the Mountain King" by Edvard Grieg. Dun dun dun dun dah dah dah, dah dah dah, dah dah dah... I always imagine that must have been what 17th century headbangers listened to.

Also, the 20th Century Fox theme music at the beginning of any movie still gives me chills because of Star Wars.

 

Great thread.

Classical:

Carl Orff's 'O Fortuna'. It's cool by itself, it was cool in Excalibur (and dozens of other medieval films), and it was very cool as the opening to Ozzy's "Tribute" album.

The Chorale to 'Ode to Joy'. There's a reason it's on the pure gold album attached to the Voyager space probe.

Fully agree with Unorthodox Yank: Tchaikovsky's '1812 Overture' rules.

Pop/Rock/Metal:

The accoustic guitar intro to Boston's 'More Than A Feeling'

The alternating synthesizer and guitar intro to Zeppelin's 'No Quarter'

The intense guitar intro and solo for Ted Nugent's 'Stranglehold'

All of Pink Floyd's 'Comfortably Numb'

 

From Fark:

 

Creed's Press release announcing their breakup?

Two live moments I witnessed that I absolutely loved.

I saw Pavements last North american show before their breakup on the Terror Twilight tour at Bogarts in Cinci. I had no idea it would be the only time I would see them. If I did I wouldn't have been so drunk as to not remeber hardly anything after jumping around during "Two States" screaming my head off. But, before the opening song Makmus comes out smirking looking slightly annoyed and beat down by the road, and says "A lot of people say this is our best song, so maybe we should start with that..." and then launches into Grounded, just the opening guitar part gets me each time. And it was in the top 2 or three songs I wanted to hear that night.

Also, the first time I saw Over the Rhine was at an outdoor festival at Eastern College in September one year when I was in school. Outdoor show, just in a field, I remember watching the soundcheck and just loving it. It was just a cool fall night, candles on the stage, and they wound up soundchecking some of my favorite songs and just looked glad as hell to be there bantering back and forth with teh audience and taking requests at soundcheck. It was just cool.


As for recorded moments...

The way Bernard Sumner's voice strains just a little bit on "Age of Consent" when he sings "I saw you this morning thought you might like to know..." even if I am not singing along the first part of that song I always pick it up there involuntarily no matter what my mood.

And...

On the Verve's No Come Down collection of live tracks and b-sides when they are doing "Gravity Grave" and Richard Ashcroft realizes the plug is about to be pulled on them and he shouts, "We got one minute more, one minute, one minute, ONE MINUTE!!..." just before McCabe goes into a guitar solo that never seemed to happen on later Verve records.

 

Fave live moment:

I've mentioned this one several times, but . . . my bro, a friend, and I went to see Mudhoney play at the Western Washington University gym in 1992. Sometime during one of the opening acts, we run into another buddy, and he tells us that Nirvana were going to play a surprise set before Mudhoney went on. Needless to say, we were skeptical. Then, after the second opening act, the roadies hit the stage, and one of them starts tuning a left-handed guitar.

I saw Nirvana four times; that time was my third. It was utterly amazing. But the greatest moment (besides meeting everyone after the show) was before their set actually started, when I realized that the rumor was true and that I was tremendously lucky to be in that room.

Also, the one time I saw the Replacements, they were transcendent.

 

Classical:

Depends on the moment, but the one I keep coming back to is the third movement of Rachmaninoff's Symphony No. 2 in E minor. The melody was stolen for a bad 70's tune, but if you can get past that it's pure genius.

Live Moment:

The Jam, May 1982, Ritchie Coliseum, University of Maryland. I had a Jam cover band in HS, and Paul Weller was an absolute God to me. This was late in the life of the band, but the show they put on was absolutely the best I've ever seen. The set was close to two hours, and it was non-stop dancing the whole time. The only other show that came close for me was the English Beat six months later.

 

Fully agree with One Day More.

There’s nothing better than the Hallelujah Chorus from The Messiah. I have to stand when I’m listening at home.

When I became aware of the “musical moment” was listening to Joe Jackson’s Is She Really Going Out With Him? when he notches it up beginning with the lyrics: There’s a man there who’s marked down as dead, cause I’ve had my fill…

The Kings released This Beat Goes On and Switch Into Glide as a single song and the transition from Beat to Glide remains my favorite 3-4 seconds of song.