WHAT’S ON YOUR TURNTABLE?
In this episode, Spindleverse explores some of the best renderings and tributes to Edgar Allan Poe in popular music. Putting aside the efforts which focus on scary and ominous composition — and the over-exposed Stevie Nicks Annabelle Lee song — we have uncovered several gems that illustrate modern musical performers’ ability to draw a range of emotional and intellectual expression from the work of America’s great Gothic Horror storyteller.
ANNABELLE LEE
Sarah Jarosz
Sarah Ellen Jarosz is an American singer-songwriter from Wimberly Texas. Her debut studio album Song Up In Her Heart was released in 2009 and the song “Mansinneedof” was nominated for a Grammy that year. Her second studio album, Follow Me Down, was released in 2011, featuring features guest musicians Bela Fleck, Viktor Krauss, Shawn Colvin and others — included this track of Poe’s poem Annabelle Lee. To us, it is a cut above the better known Stevie Nicks version and arguably one of the best examples of poetry set to music available today.
NEVERMORE
Edgar Allan and the Poe Boys
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DFzK7CpqutM
A band from Baltimore Md, home to what they call America’s ‘first string band music.’
Once upon a midnight dreary, while I pondered, weak and weary Over many a quaint and curious volume of forgotten lore While I nodded, nearly napping, suddenly there came a tapping, As of some one gently rapping, rapping at my chamber door.
“’Tis some visitor,” I muttered, “tapping at my chamber door—
Only this and nothing more.”
I WANNA KNOW (Pit and the Pendulum)
Lou Reed, Five Blind Boys of Alabama
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLkb3r5Xpkg
From The Raven is the nineteenth solo studio album by Lou Reed (2002). It is a concept album recounting the short stories and poems of Edgar Allan Poe and was based on his 2000 opera co-written with Robert Wilson, POEtry.
In addition to Reed, the album features a number of guest vocalists including Laurie Anderson, David Bowie, Steve Buscemi and Willem Defoe. The co-producer of the album, Hal Willner, had previously overseen the Poe tribute album Closed on Account of Rabies, which included tracks that featured the voices of Jeff Buckley, Marianne Faithfull, Christopher Walken, Dr John and Iggy Pop
Under the intense scrutiny of Ligeia’s eyes
I have felt the full knowledge
And force of their expression
And yet been unable to possess it
And have felt it leave me
As so many other things have left
The letter half-read
The bottle half-drunk
f the human soul, In consideration of our arrogance our radical, primitive irreducible arrogance of reason, We have all overlooked the propensity we saw no need for it the paradoxical something which we may call perverseness, through its promptings we act without comprehensible object
We act for the reason we should not
We act for the reason we should not
For certain minds this is absolutely irresistible, it is a primitive impulse, the overwhelming tendency to do wrong for the wrong’s sake, we persist in acts because we feel that we should not persist in them
so I wanna know
I wanna know
I wanna know
I wanna know
Why we persist in action we know is wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong
I wanna, I wanna know
EL DORADO
Dan D Dirges
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q58GfVoi2As
Musician from Seattle Washington, lives a mile from a, stretch of Highway 99 along Aurora Ave. N. in Seattle is notorious for prostitution, pimps, drug dealin and pawn shops that act as a fence for crooks who break into houses. He performs traditional folk songs and original songs on guitar, banjo and homemade mountain banjos.
Gaily bedight, A gallant knight, In sunshine and in shadow, Had journeyed long, Singing a song, In search of Eldorado. But he grew old- This knight so bold- And o’er his heart a shadow Fell as he found No spot of ground That looked like Eldorado.
RADIO POET!QUE: A Spoken Word Radio Review 