X&Y

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Customer Review: 2nd copy
Lost my 1st...Not sure how! They just keep getting better and better in my opinion. If you like this one you HAVE to get Viva La Vida!
Customer Review: Average
6/21/08 Before you read this review check out Coldplay's latest CD "Viva la Vida". It is light years ahead of this CD "X&Y". I guess I am so addicted to Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, and other great bands of the 70s-80s that Coldplay falls flat on it's face for me. Or, my expectations of "almost uniformly" stellar British rock bands is unrealistic. As most people do when listening to music, one finds that you do compare the new with the old. And so, in fairness to the change in technology and my own personal taste, I compared this band to my current favorite in world rock music, the astonishing rock-your-rear-off Afro Celt Sound System Band whose singer Iarla O'Liondird's vocal range is so utterly astounding. (Even Josh Groban plays AFCSS at his live concerts). After listening four times to this CD "X&Y", I still found Chris Martin's nasal, and at times, irritatingly whiney voice boring and monotonously repetitive. He is up and down his vocal range over and over on nearly every song. About midway through the CD it felt like I was listening to the same song over and over with musical variations. For me the song lyrics were mostly juvenile and often trite. Especially on the song "X&Y". HOWEVER, Their band members' musicality and instrument talent is undeniable. For this reason I can say I somewhat enjoyed the CD. Overall, if I have to pick a listen to again, maybe, these songs merit a redux: "White Shadows"; "A Message"; "Low".

I took my bike during 2007 Rainbow Festival in Malm, Sweden, to go to an evening of queer poetry with Jan Hammarlund. Jan is the first openly gay artist who was played in Swedish radio in the 70s, that way he himself is a part of our LGBT heritage. The program read: 2000 years of queer poetry round the Mediterranean sea. Sappho, Catullus, Kavafi. In some way I could feel it was interconnected with my own recital, performed the day before - Music from the closet.

Classical music and the composers/ poets/ artists/ mathematicians etc and so on, imprisoned in the closet by others. I felt relaxed after the successful performance and ready to fill up with new inspiration. I did get inspired but in ways I had not thought about. It hit me, with a force, that what we had both done with our programs was to point the finger at something we seldom talk about. Our history. Our unfathomably rich history. I say unfathomably as we are not talking about little side tracks or behind the scenes people here!

Three of the most well known pictures in the world are made by the same artist. Every body knows his name. Few dare to say he was gay. By not telling things the way they are, by pushing the most important icons of the western world into the closet century after century, by distortion and lies and silence all of us whom belong amongst the LGBT crowd are forced to live within a false lack of historic perspectives. This in spite o the fact that we really do have a very rich heritage to get inspired by. Instead the focus is put on hate crimes, aids and HIV. This way we can be referred to as victims, poor them and the majority can place themselves on a slightly higher level. I mean, really, who wants to admire and get inspired by a dyke? Nadia Boulanger, Michelangelo, Joan of Arc, Leonardo da Vinci, Aaron Copland, Handel, Schubert and Sappho how human where they? Human enough to be counted amongst those contributing to the development of our society and proud western heritage? Apparently. But would they be allowed to get married - today?

Would Rumi survive in Iran these days? Probably not... So I am asking myself: Who is supposed to be able to take part of the human rights and the heritage of humanity? Which ones are a little more human, a little more important than others? Which ones are less important? Who decides? And not least I ask my self: What of immeasurable value has been created by LGBT people? No one of "those deciding" would really dispute that Leonardo da Vinci is very important to this day. But was he human? Was he human enough to take part of the same rights that heterosexuals have? I think we can say no to that. He was not. Not then and not now!

What I and Jan did during the Rainbow Festival here in Sweden, was to actively lift some of the most important cultural icons out of the closet. Some giants of which western society is constantly in debt. We use our professions to dare say what is constantly hidden from us. Things like: Apparently Leonardo da Vinci was gay! You see, when I hear Jan Hammarlund read Catullus addressing another man, so erotic it bites the skin, I have to laugh out loud. Laugh because I blush, because it is such high standards and because he was one of us. Sappho, Catullus and Kavafi are all part of our honorable LGBT past. We have to understand that if "we" do not say that out loud "they" will not say it for us. More queer poems to the people! Not bad, eh?

2007 Stella Scott

Stella Scott is a Swedish opera singer and lgbt activist sitting on the board of the RFSL counseling of Skane.

To hear her sing or send a message you can visit http://www.myspace.com/stellascott

To get 1 FREE eBook, Daily Power Boosters, with 101 tips to help better the world, please click the link http://web.mac.com/spiritsings/Buy_one_get_five/Free_eBook.html This article may be reprinted on websites as long as the entire article, including email link and resource box are included, and unchanged. Kindly inform the author here about publishing: stella@scott.tf

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