My Emm Gryner Top 40! #’s 40 – 36

Emm GrynerAs I stated in my last post, Emm is a very prolific songwriter, and as a way to revisit all of her catalog, I’ve gone through to chronicle my favorite of her songs. Emm’s strength run the gamut of blissful, heady pop to emotional power ballads, with some 80’s prog-influenced rock and roll. I think this list reflects her range well and slightly surprised me with its final ranking.

#40 – The Spark (Only of Earth)

Anchoring my Top 40 Emm songs, comes a track from her highly ambitious, newest album, Day of Games, the first in a trilogy of albums titled Only of Earth. Propelled by birth and loss, Only of Earth sees Emm really stretching her musical creative skills, borrowing from progressive story-telling and musicianship from the 70’s and 80’s to find new inspiration. The Spark kicks things off with some crunchy rock and roll that really opens up her songwriting to new heights.

#39 – Boy Races (Science Fair)

If I’m being honest with myself, after creating this list, I would have to say Emm’s 1999 homemade album Science Fair remains my favorite as a piece. There’s a sense of youthful bravado, while at the same time an earnest poetry that resonates beautiful across generations. Recorded on an 8-track, it outsold its major label predecessor, Public, in just two months. Boy Races is a complex, epic-feeling love story, with lyrics I don’t really understand, but with a complex musical structure that shows off Emm’s skill as a songwriter.

#38 – Home (Northern Gospel)

A mid-temp soulful piano-driven pop song reminiscent of the best Elton John, Home is taken from Emm’s 2011 album, Northern Gospel. As many of her songs, it tells a rather melancholy story, but there’s something comforting in the lyrics despite its seeming regret.

#37 – Hello Aquarius (Public)

Lush and over-produced, Hello Aquarius is the opening track to Emm’s first-and-only major label release, introducing a young, multi-instrumentalist, singer/songwriter to a public that largely ignored her. It’s filled with youthful heady concepts, indecipherable lyrics, and pop hook after pop hook that this listener found impossible to ignore. The album was called Public, and it was released in 2008. Several of the songs were first recorded on her indie album, The Original Leap Year, and Emm re-recorded the album in its entirety as a bonus album for her fans in 2006 called PVT. I love how many of Emm’s vocalizations have continued thoughout her recording career. This was my first Emm experience and I’ve been hooked ever since.

#36 – Lonestar (Asianblue)

A lot of Emm’s songs deal with heartbreak, and Lonestar is one of these. It’s also a classic example of the poetry of Emm’s lyrics that often stick in my brain (and I’m not a lyrics person). In this case the opening pair of lines, “All the stars above, I named for you — Constellations spun like a sea of aquablue.” Sound promising, but unfortunately, the “you” mentioned leaves Emm behind, much to her confusion. It’s all wrapped up in an unerring melody that evokes the longing of young love. Lonestar is the first of 5 great songs from her 2002 album, Asianblue.

Karaoke Dorkness

Okay, I’m surrendering all pretense that I’m not a dork. A friend of mine from college posted several Facebook status updates to his profile lately that redirected to a site called SingSnap. What is SingSnap, do you ask? It’s online karaoke. No more, no less. But just think about it… we habitual karaoke-ers pick out our songs at home. We rehearse them. We learn every nuance of the original recording. And then after we humiliate ourselves in public, we try to learn the quirks of the karaoke recording track so we can do better next time.

Imagine if you had that power at home. The power to record and re-record at will. The power to add effects to your stage performance. The power of karaoke-social-networking. Mwah-ha-ha-haaaa….

I even bought a gold membership for six months before actually saving any of my recordings because it adds reverb and compression to your voice recording. I’m a sucker, I know. But listen to my first lame attempt. I can do better, I know, but I wanted to get this up for my friends suffering from heat exhaustion at the Library Leadership Institute for Massachusetts. Reports say that they spent the day in a non-air conditioned room all day when it was 90 degrees outside. It may have been upwards of 105 degrees inside!

Sushi-go-round

I am so in love with this video. Some American tourists in Japan just set their video camera on a plate and send it around the kaiten-zushi at a Japanese sushi bar. It’s awesome to see all the different diners and their reactions. And the climax is so surprising and suspenseful!

Someone please turn this into a music video.

Powerfully Moving; Simply Beautiful

My friend Bruce was visiting a few weeks ago, and while he was working on his laptop in the next room, he started playing a song which prompted me to comment, “Ah, Rufus Wainwight…” to which he replied, “No, Matt Alber.” Well, I was surprised, the vocal resonance and song stile was very similar to Rufus, especially from that first, self-titled album. A few minutes later a video popped up in my e-mail, and I got to see Matt performing in the video for his song, “End of the World.” Now music often moves me to tears, but rarely does video. In this case, both aspects of this beautiful song got me choked up. From the longing melody to the simple visual of streaming sunlight, “End of the World” is one of those song/video combinations that knocks it out of the part. Almost every image, from the way the barber tips Matt’s chair back to the look on his face halfway through the film, takes my breath away. I don’t want to say anything else so you can experience it yourself, so take a look.

Something I NEVER thought I’d see

So, during the first two or three years of the 1980s, my favorite band was a little South African outfit called Spider.  They had one top 40 hit called “New Romance (It’s A Mystery)” but became better known for a what a couple of their members went on to do after the band broke up.  Anton Fig was their drummer, and he was well-known for performing nightly on the David Letterman show.  Holly Knight played keyboards, and she went on to be a famous songwriter who wrote songs for the likes of Tina Turner, Pat Benatar, Heart, Aerosmith and many, many more.

Having missed my one chance to see them live (they were supposed to open for Alice Cooper at the Cape Cod Coliseum and I bought tickets but the show was cancelled!) and never having known them to shoot a video, I thought my chances of ever seeing them perform — even faking it — were nil.  Well, leave it to YouTube. You’ll recognize the song because Tina Turner went on to make it a huge hit.  However, Spider recorded it first, and this version will always be the one I remember and cherish the most.  (Although it’s edited way down in this clip.)

Feast your eyes on this!