Pomp and Circumstance, Land of Hope and Glory & “the graduation song”

Growing up, I was always aware of The Proms, especially The Last Night of the Proms, but since my Mum didn’t have a love of classical music, it was never something that I watched or ever had a desire to watch.

For some reason unknown to me, last week I ended up watching some of the pieces from The Last Night of the Proms of recent years and I fell in love. I must have listened to Land of Hope and Glory about thirty times, including blasting it out in my car on the way home. Land of Hope and Glory is a song with the words written by A.C. Benson to be sung over the music, Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 by Edward Elgar. It’s a truly patriotic song and easy to see why it caught on so quickly when Elgar played it for Queen Victoria in 1901.

Mechanical music

My wife happened upon this YouTube video today and I was just blown away by how creative it was.

Wintergatan is a Swedish folktronica band that have spent the last two years ago building a giant music box out of wood, metal and LEGO that uses steel marbles to play instruments including a bass guitar, vibraphone and drums.

I have watched this several times, in awe at how each marble is lifted into place and rhythmically fired towards an instrument to hit the right note at the right time. So creative.

A realisation that’ll make you feel old in a heartbeat

Are you ready to feel really old?

I was born in 1985. As I was growing up, the music of the 80s was fairly current, 70s was a bit dated, but music from the 60s was really old. The 50s and earlier was prehistoric and I’m not sure that I really heard too much music that predates the 60s.

Thinking about this is somewhat bizarre because in reality, the 60s were as recent as just 16 years prior to my birth, but that segues nicely into my next point.

My favourite album: The 2nd Law

Whenever I’m asked for my favourite anything, I always seize up because a favourite anything is so binary. It’s less clear cut for me and I can always convince myself that there are many favorites for different occasions and situations.

This is equally true for my favourite album. It’s so hard to select a single album which reigns supreme above all others. There are certainly a lot of good albums out there.

However, I think that all considered, my favourite album ever is The 2nd Law by Muse. Muse have probably been my favourite band ever since Origin of Symmetry came out. Their songwriting, production, creativity and especially their talent (as evidenced by their live performances) have rightly made them one of the biggest rock bands of the 21st century.

Muse!

Martina treated me for my birthday and bought me tickets for Muse. She was originally supposed to come, but since she was pregnant, we decided it wasn’t the best idea for her to come.

It was the best concert of my life. Absolutely fantastic. The band themselves are incredible live, and then the sound, effects, energy, lighting and lasers just made for an unforgettable experience.