I used to stay in a large cheap hotel over a cinema in downtown Algiers. Just down the road was what in the days of the French had been the Catholic cathedral, now a mosque. Five times a day a recording of a muezzin doing the prayer call would be played from its tower, now a minaret, at phenomenal volume.
The usual muezzin recording was of some ghastly fellow, no doubt a sincere believer, who made the call to prayer sound like a very large dog being sick. But once or twice a week - don't forget the first one was at dawn - the muezzin sang a fabulous glissando piece of music that I would defy anyone not to be moved by, or fail to understand whatever their language. Just sublime.
I stuck my cassette recorder on the balcony one afternoon and got the good muezzin loud and clear, along with a few honks from the traffic below. Really prized that tape, but it's long gone.
Oddly enough some religious Algerians seemed to think it was sort of sinful to enjoy that wonderful prayer call for itself. Especially of course if one was an unbeliever. Idiots.
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I'll just stick with Angus and Lemmy:)
The Pogues probably:)
Pat
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Now you're talking Pat. On the way home last night in the snow I was varying widely between styles. Started with some AC/DC, "Highway to Hell", finished with "Astral Weeks" by Van Morrison. The bit where he sings "in another face" at the end of that particular track really moves me in an odd, slightly disturbing way. What does he know that I dont?
Anyway: Lud, you officially crack me up.
:)
tt
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>>> Really prized that tape, but it's long gone. <<<
Tis a shame Sire, as you could have stuck it on Youtube!
ere's one of a close friend ~ www.youtube.com/watch?v=tUoWdP_ipOc
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Unfortunately, perro, my computer is refusing to play youtube all of a sudden. It tells me to get the latest flashplayer but won't install it because Javascript is turned off or something. It also says it won't install it if Firefox is open. But it won't do it if it's closed either.
It will play some film links, but not youtube ones at the moment.
That muezzin was really something though. I think what the puritanical Algerian Muslims were trying to tell me was that the content was the important thing, not the form. They didn't like me complaining about the vomiting dog muezzin because the content of what he was bawling was sacred, therefore every bit as good as the content of the other muezzin's song.
This is a perverse, wilfully philistine attitude in my opinion. Just take a look at the New English Bible, or indeed the English text of the Catholic Mass, if you don't believe me. Form counts.
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Lud did you google the flash removal tool and then re-install it? I usually find it fixes this issue.
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Thank you Rattle. I will give it a try, but when it comes to computers I am the most incompetent dangerous mimser you could imagine. Strange but true! The nippers are better at this stuff than I am.
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>>> That muezzin was really something though. <<<
Yes, I can just imagine Lud, it must have been some experience - especially with their culture on the one hand and an AK47 in the other!
I don't adhere to any Religion really, I lean towards being a freelance monotheist, but one thing I have found is that all these 'so called' Religious wars are nothing of the sort really - they're about money + power IMO.
Anyway, back to the OP ... if you ever do get youtube to play - give this one a whirl ~
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FqOfXumI18A
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Anything with a trumpet solo would arrest me in flipping between stations.
I used to play one, also a cornet and baritone horn.
It`s a very long time ago but I can still feel a trumpet in my hand when listening and the fingers on my hand twitch a little - funny that.
There`s nothing like hearing a Yorkshire brass band cracking into a march - up the hill in Upper Mill - sound bouncing off the walls of buildings and in the background the adjudicator in his box, listening to the `set piece`in the great competitions.
A trumpet solo though, as opposed to the softer more rounded tone of the cornet. Something else and out of this world really.
I was always flaky on the high notes - lips too thick and more suited to the lower register, in instruments with larger mouth pieces.
A good jazz trumpeter then, to listen to at Christmas - old self taught school, a handkerchief draped over the fingers - to not show the fingering positions as different to those of us who learnt more formally.
Actually, Eddie Canter would be great also with `apple blossom white` ??
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Yes, I do Perro. Thanks for that ;-)
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Went to a brass band concert on Friday. Frankly I was dreading it but now a convert, really very good. Anyone know where I could get some ferrets and wide leg trousers ?
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