GenderLife Forum: The Information Exchange

...at the link below and then tell me your opinion

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mGYZaX6FJ8w

Music critic and dj hat on ?


What a load of Boring old shit it is its dead has no life to it no meaning

whats the point in this piece ...unless you are gonna hang yourself from the nearest bridge ?

Total rubbish in my opinion ...even worse than pink Floyd

ya, i'm sure it's great for those dark moments when, passively watching your blood turn the hotel bathwater a ghoulish shade of crimson, you spend the final blurry minutes of consciousness reflecting on the absurdity of your life, the indifference to it's ending, and how, despite the fact that you'll soon be little more than a big messy surprise to the inn's housekeepers, you can't help but worry that the $2.78 change from Burger King left on the nightstand might be too little to tip the poor ladies.

something by Yanni might be cheerier.

Not my taste, but I'm an uncouth philistine.

Indeed, it is very depressing and "suidical" and I have to say that the fact that this song used to be one of my favorites 1-2 years ago worries me a bit.

Gosh, that's the sort of stuff I listen to cheer me up half of the time. If the standards for depressing are so low around here, then I guess 95% of the music on my computer is plain slash-your-veins-open fare.

The recording is quite poor. YouTube does no justice to orchestral music, and since I'm a HUGE fan of it, to me sound quality is important. Anyway, I've heard Gioconda's Smile before on the DMX channel and it's a very nice suite, simpler than other compositions by the same author, and with the usual melancholy style of Manos. It's perhaps my favorite by him (although I wouldn't consider myself a fan).

In general, melancholy Greek tunes are great when played by this orchestra. They don't do as well with the more livelier, dancing stuff. By the way, Gioconda's Smile is a suite composed of several parts. That one is, if I remember correctly, "Portrait of My Mother."

Well,I'm not real familar with classical music,but I do listen to it occaisionally whe I want to totally "chill out".I find it best(for me personally)to listen to at night with all the lights turned off,laying down with my eyes closed(that way I can hear all the different instruments being played).One of my sisters was in orchestra when she was in school,and I went to see her perform lots of times,along with hearing it at home when I was younger,and just sorta got used to listening to it.It's not my first choice of music to listen to,but I do listen to it occaisionally...

I like this one from Bach

Phantom Of The Opera(this isn't the whole performance)

Mom must have been charming, I'm sure.

I have to say that the fact that you are familiar with Manos surprises me. I am familiar with him bacause I am Greek, but I thought that few people out of Greece knew him.

Anyway, this is indeed "Gioconda's Smile". If you go to Youtube you can find the whole suite at a much better recording.

"Gioconda's Smile" is a very nice suite, but I think that the best wort of Manos, his masterpiece, is the music that he wrote for the soundtrack of the western film "Blue". You can find some information about it here.

http://www.sirius.gr/diskography/album_details_eng.asp?AlbumID=306

One other highly-acclaimed work of his is "Magnus Eroticus" from which you can listen to a couple of songs at the following links.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bvyGlqXE0uA

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zg7Sd9EC9e0

And for the people who do not enjoy depressive music and prefer happy music, another song of his called "The waltz of the lost dreams"

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2X9uhG_M0do

Oh I'm a fan of all sorts of instrumental/orchestral music, from Franck Pourcel to Hossein Alizadeh. Together with baroque, orchestral compositions from the 30s to the 70s are my first love.

Orchestral is quite big in South America, and over there we had several radios always playing themes from around the world in orchestral versions. Greece and the other Mediterranean countries are foremost, as well (for cultural reasons; after all, Spain is a Mediterranean country).

In fact, the record collection (LPs) I brought to North America with me are mostly orchestral pieces, including a recording by Dimitris Mitropoulos of some traditional dances and his famous "Bull on the Roof" recording from 1945.

Actually the first time I heard of Manos was in the Blue score. If you've seen some of the film music I've posted, I'm a big fan of the music of westerns--both Morricone and Tiomkin enjoy a special place in my collection.