Crazyfinger

Radio Darvish

Just discovered this radio station browsing through iTunes.  What a find...!  (Photo of Darvish Khan courtesy Wikipedia)

Shirinjan (Uyghur folk song) and Noor Jehan...

Miss M. tells me this song may not be all that popular in Xinjiang in spite of what the YouTube title says.  She ought to know as she is from there.  Be that as it may...


And who can resist Noor Jehan...?

"Once in khaki suits, gee we looked swell"

Some days this song comes in on the radio around 5:30am in the morning, just when my alarm goes off and I am wide awake, transfixed, no, mesmerized by the magnetic power of this song.  Some days I feel everything that I am is rolled into this song and delivered in a most touching rendition.  And there is more than one version.  Can't say which one I like the best, they are all good.  Here is a list of them, so I can come back to them whenever I want.

1. Bing Crosby version
2. Al Jolson verson
3. Charlie Palloy & His Orchestra version
4. Judy Collins version
5. Tom Waits version

Here are the lyrics.  The Judy Collins version will melt you.  Makes you wonder why Greg Lake never recorded this song.  Push comes to shove, I think I'd pick Bing Crosby version. 

Where To Now...?

Strangest thing.  No matter how much I resist the urge to express, get angry at myself for breaking the silence, this stickiness remains.  Driving back to airport at 5am in the morning in Washington DC, it occurred to me that pointless-ness as a state of being is perhaps the last frontier.  After all, when one understands so much, is at peace with so much that was once the source of restless-ness, what was once love turns into a tendency to leave things alone.  Leave people alone.  Leave oneself alone.  To make way for something else.  Funny how often in moods like these, the song and the soldier creeps back into my mood.  I think I will now remember this song as the one to go to, whenever I need to recover from the pointless-ness.

Pakeezah - 1

This surely is one of the most subdued choreography....it is amazing how brilliantly the whole song sequence is filmed.   First time we bought a "smuggled tape recorder" from Shahran hotel, it came with a cassette tape of, what else, Pakeezah.  This too was his favorite...