Musical meme

[unixronin]

OK, I'm going to have a go here at technoshaman's "important music" meme.  I have little hope of keeping to his "ten-ish" guideline, and no specific order is implied.  I'll try to include explanations where I can pin them down.  This means it's going to be long, so I'll put it behind a cut.

So, music that's important to me for one reason or another, Volume 1 ....

• RAF March Past (Walford Davies)
• Bridge over the River Kwai (Malcolm Arnold) -- My grandpa was captured by the Japanese in Burma, and died working on the Death Railway and the Kwai bridge.  It just took him 35 years to do it physically.
• Mountain Men (Jethro Tull)
• Scratching The Surface (Saga) -- Oddly, this one first grabbed me because I misheard "Outside of the tube" as "Outsider too" ...
• Countdown (Rush) -- This one should speak for itself.
• Manhattan Project (Rush) -- And so should this.
• Between the Wheels (Rush)
  

  You can go from boom to bust, from dreams to full of dust
  You can go from rockets' red glare, down to Brother, can you spare
  Another war, another wasteland, and another lost generation

• Rough Boys (ZZ Top) -- There's something haunting about this.  That's all I can say.
• Home Is Where The Heart Lies (Wolfstone) -- No Celt-at-heart can be unmoved by this.
• Sunday Bloody Sunday (U2) -- I used to live in Belfast.  Last I knew, which was 1978, the post office across the street from where we lived had been blown up five times, and the police station down the street had been blown up twice.
  My father was in the RAF.  We would have been targets.
• Homeworld - The Ladder (Yes) -- It's the scale of the vision, and the imagery, as much as anything else.
• Born To Run (Bruce Springsteen) -- About escaping ...
• Bat Out of Hell (Meat Loaf) -- ... and, in some ways, being unable to.
• The Last Resort (The Eagles) -- There's a lesson to be learned here.

  Who will provide the grand design, what is yours and what is mine
  There is no more new frontier, we have got to make it here We satisfy our endless needs, and justify our bloody deeds
  In the name of Destiny, and in the name of God
  And you can see them all, on Sunday morning
  Stand up and sing about what it's like up there
  They call it Paradise, I don't know why
  You call some place Paradise, kiss it goodbye

• Calling All Stations (Genesis)
• Standing (VNV Nation)
• Further (VNV Nation)
  

  At the end of days, at the end of time
  When the sun burns out, will any of this matter
  Who will be there to remember who we were
  Who will be there to know that any of this had meaning for us

• The Hand of God (Julia Ecklar)
  

  If your god helps the helpless, may he help you all well
  I'm bound for the outside, to find my own hell
  And I'll no longer run from the sounds in the night....

• A Call to Arms (Mike & the Mechanics) -- It's about fighting for what you believe in, when you have to.
• Mountains of Burma (Midnight Oil)
• One Man's Fool (Genesis) -- This wasn't written in response to 9/11 - in fact, it predates it - but it could easily have been.
• Closet Chronicles (Kansas) -- Another oddly haunting one.
• The Band Played Waltzing Matilda (Eric Bogle) -- A poignant picture of the futile slaughter of the Australia-New Zealand Army Corps at Gallipoli.
• Top Gun Anthem (Howard Faltermeyer & Steve Stevens) -- I love to fly.  'Nuff said.
• Wallflowers (Peter Gabriel) -- The plight of political prisoners
• Solsbury Hill (Peter Gabriel) -- Another form of escape, and the "I don't really belong here" thing again.
• Won't Get Fooled Again (The Who) -- Meet the new boss, / Same as the old boss ....
• Starship Trooper (Yes) -- Yes is just so good at these soaring flights of the imagination.
• Desperadoes Under The Eaves (Warren Zevon) -- I always wanted to meet Warren Zevon, because I wanted to ask him, "What do you see when you 'look away down Gower Avenue' from the Hollywood Hawaiian Hotel?"  I guess I'll never get the chance now.
• Guide Vocal (Genesis) -- ... Because nobody would understand / And you kill what you fear / And you fear what you don't understand ...

How many is that?  I wasn't counting.  I could go on like this for a long time.  Probably best to stop here.

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