I love music and used to be a DJ back when I had a partner with a vehicle. I was invited to participate in Monday's Music Moves Me a weekly meme hosted by
XmasDolly.
This week's theme is the elements. You know Earth, Air, Fire, and Water. Basically the idea is to post songs that follow the theme. I love themes and thought this would be a great challenge.
Of course the first thing I thought of was
Earth, Wind and Fire. They remain an influence on modern music and were quite big in the 70's but still perform to this day. Sticking with the elements I chose
Serpentine Fire as my song to represent the element Fire.
Earth Song, by
Michael Jackson is a great song with a powerful video and message that brings attention to our Earth and the effect we have on the environment. Whatever you may think about Michael Jackson as a person his music and talent has laid the foundation for pop music, modern dance, and quality music videos.
In The Air Tonight, by
Phil Collins came to mind for the next video to represent Air. The musical accompaniment at the beginning has an airy quality about it. I have fond memories of this song being played at our high school assemblies every time as people started filling the benches. When that powerful drum segment of the song would come on (doo-dom doo-dom doo-dom) everyone would stamp their feet to the beat of the drums making the music all the more powerful.
I had heard that the song was about a drowning that Phil Collins witnessed which later during the performance of this song he singled out the guilty party. Years later I found out that the story is actually an urban legend. Phil has denied this story, his song is actually about his divorce .
Water brought to mind
Water, by
Lenny Graf. This choice is a departure from the old school songs I have listed so far as it's a children's song. It's a hilarious song literally about water sung between Lenny and Patrick who would rather not sing about Water.
Of course I couldn't leave it at that and so I challenged myself to pick songs for the elements from Chinese tradition. The
Wu Xing, also known as the Five Elements is Earth, Fire, Water, Metal and Wood. There is also a cycle of the Elements being associated with Chinese Astrology's cycle of animals. A person's year sign can
be a metal monkey, a wood rooster etc. In ancient match-making customs couples were brought together according to their compatible
signs. In Japan, completion of an entire sixty year cycle of twelve animals and
five elements is celebrated in a special birthday for sixty-year olds
called kanreki
.
So for Wood it was hard to think of something until through a Google search I was reminded of
Norwegian Wood by the
Beatles.
Metal makes me think of
Heavy Metal a great animated feature from 1981 and the title track by
Sammy Hagar fits well enough. The video shows scenes from the movie which is NOT a cartoon for kids and influenced by the fantasy magazine of the same name.
This was fun! Check back next Monday and we'll do it again!
