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More meme fun

Hi everyone. Sorry I took so long to post again, but here I am again with some more memes. These questions I found over on Andrea's site. They are just too good to not answer in my own blog.

What five bands/artists (past or present) would be your ideal concert line up and why?

The opening act of my dream concert would be the late, great Jeff Buckley. I'd put Jeff first to start things off nice and easy with a low-key "Live at Sin-e" style set. Jeff would get the crowd pumped up and also make the wait for the other acts easier.

Next would come BeauSoleil with their high-energy Cajun dance tunes and wonderful songs sung in French. They'd "kick it up a notch" after Jeff and really get the crowd excited. They're one of the best live acts around, so there's no way I could ever leave them out of a concert.

After BeauSoleil would come the Smashing Pumpkins. They'd inject a bit of rock and roll into the evening because there's a lot of non-rock stuff in my dream concert. They'd also bring a perfect blend of loud, hard rocking songs and more tender, quieter, piano and acoustic guitar sounds.

Natalie MacMaster would follow the Pumpkins. Her bubbly Canadian personality would shine through and lighten things up a bit after the crunch of Billy Corgan's guitar. The crowd would be up and dancing again after hearing her lively jigs and reels. But they'd not even be close to getting energized because the headliner of the night would be . . .

The Afro Celts!! There are few bands who can pack a punch like this group, and pack a punch they would! Their danceable Celtic and African sounds would make the crowd jump and smile and sweat, and everyone would beg for more. After a blistering, powerful nonstop set, the Afro Celts would bring out some of the other musicians for one last jam of the night. Everything would end on a very high note and the crowd would not sleep that night because the show made them that pumped up. No one would ever forget what great times they had seeing these amazing musicians perform.


Pick an artist/band and select five songs. Why are these your five favorite songs?

I'd be very tempted to select BeauSoleil for this, but I've talked so much about their songs recently and, frankly, I don't know what more I can say about their songs except I love them all. So I'm gonna go ahead and talk about the Afro Celts/Afro Celt Sound System! Hmmm. . . they have five albums. I'll pick a song off each album!

1) Whirly Reel 2 (Folk Police Mix) - from Volume 1: Sound Magic
I could have selected "Dark Moon, High Tide" for sentimental reasons, but I think Whirly Reel 2 is the song I enjoy the most off the Afro Celt Sound System's first album. It has a thumping club beat mixed with awesome bagpipes. It's a very enjoyable song to listen to and it will never fail to make you want to dance. It definitely shows how the blending of techno and Celtic works.

2) Release - from Volume 2: Release
"Release" is the first song and single from Volume 2, and it really departs from the lighter sound of Volume 1. It has a dark undertone and more of an African sound. Having Sinead O'Connor singing on it doesn't hurt either. I love it because it has a nice groove to it and it penetrates your mind if you listen to it long enough.

3) Colossus - from Volume 3: Further In Time
This is the song that made me fall in love with the Afro Celts. It's a great blend of the African and the Celtic. It plays like a big jam session where the melody gets traded off between instruments. The drums bring a nice beat to the music and the pipes and whistle keep things fun and bubbly. It's a great song for the band to play live and it's mucho enjoyable.

4) The Other Side - from Seed
One word to sum up this gem: percussion! "The Other Side" is a light, African-sounding jam with some awesome group vocals from the Screaming Orphans and, most of all, LOTS of pounding percussion from the rhythm section! You'll lose track of how many drum sounds you hear, and the highlight of the song is an awesome and LOUD percussion break where every drum makes its presence felt! This track must have been a blast to record.

5) Rise Above - from Pod
"Whirly 3" is an amazing song and a favorite of most Afro Celts fans, but I'm going to choose the remix of "Rise Above It" from Seed for my highlight from the Pod remix album. This track not only starts the album off right, but it shows the possibilities of remixing a song. The song starts off with an ambient vibe and slowly brings in the chorus of the song. After the intro, we're hit with a funky guitar riff and then the main groove smashes in. What the Afro Celts have done is kept the overall sound of the first mix of the song while adding additional vocal sounds and isolating the emotionally significant sounds from the original mix. Basically, it sounds a lot like the original but yet it's different and it keeps what I like about the song and expands on those elements. I find it interesting that they chose to only keep certain parts of the song, leaving out the main vocals by Mundy as well as the fiddle break near the end. The new mix gives the song a vibrant energy and sounds familiar yet fresh.