SMoss

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Member Since: 2/7/2003
Total Mixes: 24
Total Feedback: 770

Other Mixes By SMoss

CD | Theme
CD | Single Artist
Cassette | Mixed Genre
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Cassette | Theme
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Prospero's Cell

Side A
Artist Song
Savina Yannatou  Why Little Bird Do You Not Sing 
Athenians  Adrachti 
Count Basie  Our Love Was Meant To Be (1937) 
Savina Yannatou  A Lissome Maiden's Grief And Faith 
Bryan Ferry  Where Or When (original in 1937) 
Billie Holliday  They Can't Take That Away From Me (1937) 
Duke Ellington  Mood Indigo (1930) 
Petro-Loukas Chalkias  Skaros 
Athenians  Inconstant Heart 
Bunny Berigan  I Can't Get Started (1937) 
Tommy Dorsey (vocals E. Wright)  The Music Goes 'Round And Round (1935) 
Savina Yannatou  You On A Hill, I On A Hill 
Russ Columbo  Paradise (1932) 
Billie Holliday  Easy Living (1937) 
Mode Plagal  Pikrodafni 
Bryan Ferry  Time On My Hands (original in 1930) 
Manolis Angelopoulos  O Prosfigas 
Jeanette MacDonald & Nelson Eddy  Ah! Sweet Mystery Of Life (1936) 
Soula Birbili  To Trizoni 
Savina Yannatou  Smyrnaean Air 
Count Basie  I Keep Remembering (1937) 
Side B
ArtistSongBuy
Athenians  With A Cigarette 
Savina Yannatou  Morning Has Broken 
Lionel Hampton  On The Sunny Side Of The Street (1937) 
Michalis Nikoloudis  Topos 
Duke Ellington  Creole Rhapsody (parts 1 & 2) (1931) 
Bryan Ferry  The Way You Look Tonight (original in 1936) 
Sibelius  Karelia Suite (pt. 2: Ballade) 
Count Basie  Let Me Dream (1937) 
Savina Yannatou  In The Beautiful Bygone Days 
Billie Holliday  I've Got My Love To Keep Me Warm (1937) 
Eddie Duchin  I Only Have Eyes For You (1934) 
Guy Lombardo  Bei Mir Bist Du Schoen (1937) 
Eleftheria Arvanitaki  Tha Spaso Koupes 
Count Basie Orchestra  Mood Indigo (original in 1930) 
Psarantonis  Kastrinos 
Count Basie  Good Morning Blues (1937) 
Savina Yannatou  Ipne Pou Pernis Ta Pedia 
Bing Crosby  Wrap Your Troubles In Dreams (1931) 

Comment:

2 CD's

PROSPERO'S CELL

(For my friend Erik* and his wife Jill)

Spirits, which by mine art
I have from their confines call'd to enact
My present fancies
- Prospero (from The Tempest by William Shakespeare)

In 1935 writer and poet Lawrence Durrell, a 26 year-old Englishman, and his wife `N' moved to Greece to begin a 4-year sojourn in the Ionian island of Corfu, also known as Corcyra. Years later he published Prospero's Cell, an edited version of his diary during that period. This mix is made to bring to life, as much as possible, the time and place invoked in his book.

Once duke of Milan, Prospero had been overthrown by his brother and set adrift at sea. Washing up on his own island, he becomes lord and master of the sprite Ariel, the half-human monster Caliban, and other inhabitants of the island. The title of Durrell's book refers to Prospero's abode on his fictional island and, it seems to me, to his own little white house in Corfu. (The house is on the cover)

As lord and master of this mix, I too have employed a sprite to see to my wishes. In Durrell's book he often comments on the silence engulfing his isolated home. However, I have instructed my sprite to deliver a hand-cranked phonograph, and many of the popular records of his day and decade to Durrell's house in Corfu. His cell need no longer be engulfed by silence! Mixed in with jazz, popular songs, and a classical piece of the day are some Greek songs that might be similar to tunes the writer and his friends heard while on the island.

Why Little Bird Do You Not Sing? - Savinna Yannatou
(A Thracian lament for the fall of Constantinople)
Why, little bird, do you not sing
as once you did?
Ah, how can I sing
as once I did?
They have clipped my wings,
They have silenced my voice..

"Somewhere between Calabria and Corfu the blue really begins."

"We have taken an old fisherman's house in the extreme north of the island. Ten sea-miles from the town, and some thirty kilometers by road, it offers all the charms of seclusion. A white house set like a dice on a rock already venerable with the scars of wind and water. The hill runs clear up into the sky behind it, so that the cypresses and olives overhang this room in which I sit and write. We are upon a bare promontory with its beautiful clean surface of metamorphic stone covered in olive and ilex: in the shape of a mons pubis. This has become our unregretted home. A world."

"At night the piper sometimes plays, while his grazing sheep walk upon the opposite cape and browse among the arbutus and scrub. We lie in bed with our skins rough and satiny from the sea-salt and listen. The industrious and rather boring nightingales are abashed by the soft liquid quartertones, the unearthly quibbles of the flute. There is form without melody, and the notes are emptied as if drop by drop on to the silence. It is the wheedling voice of the sirens that Ulysses heard."

"We breakfast at sunrise after a bathe. Grapes and Hymettos honey, black coffee, eggs, and the light clear-tasting Papastratos cigarette."

"Not that time itself is anything more than a word here. Peasant measurement of time and distance is done by cigarettes. Ask a peasant how far a village is and he will reply, nine times out of ten, that it is a matter of so many cigarettes."

"N. has been away for three days now. The silence here is like a discernable pulse-the heart-beat of time itself. I am all day alone on the great rock; the sea is cold-its chill hurts the back of the throat like an iced wine; but blue as the grave, while the sun is blazing. I have received word from N that we are now the proud owner of a 20 foot cutter, carvel built, and Bermuda rigged."

"W
image for mix

Feedback:

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g.a.b. l@bs
Date: 10/25/2003

w
o
w !

& the art of mixing may never be the same.
(is all this printed inside the jewel case Steve???)
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jefferson
Date: 10/25/2003
i think this deserves a round of applause...!
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SMoss
Date: 10/25/2003
g.a.b. - if I could figure out how to do a little booklet like the record companies do, I'd do it. My casual perusal of MS Publisher did not yield results. comments from anyone on an easy way to transfer an MS Word doc to a cd booklet format?
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Mixxer
Date: 10/25/2003
Steve, truly a tour de force - fantastic.
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erik1966lutig
Date: 10/25/2003
Steve, this is simply unbelievable.
Thank you so much.
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McDonald12
Date: 10/25/2003
quite brilliant, Steve. Great work. I would dearly love a copy of this.
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valis
Date: 10/26/2003
A staggering work Steve. The effort shows and shall be rewarded. ( I am kicking myself-hard, I couldn't contribute now.)
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Thomas_Mohr
Date: 10/26/2003
Awe-inspiring.
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Curtis_Burns
Date: 10/26/2003
This is a thing of beauty.
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Sean Lally
Date: 10/29/2003
This is fantastic. Don't know how I missed it earlier.
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p the swede
Date: 10/31/2003
just what Sean said
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Ken Harris
Date: 10/31/2003
Deserving of all the accolades preceding this one. The liner notes alone make this a magnificent achievement, but the concept of imagining what music Mr. Durrell and his wife might have found appealing is dazzling. I've often daydreamed (maybe fantasized is a better word) of time zapping someone like Mozart or even Ben Franklin to the modern day and introducing them to the concept of recorded music on some very sophisticated equipment under the most ideal of circumstances...What would Mozart find exciting? Would he be drawn into the lush sounds of, say, 101 Strings? Would he stomp around the room at "Get Down Tonight" by KC And The Sunshine Band? The gears are clicking and maybe, just maybe, I'll try to tackle something like this someday...Especially enjoyed the Bryan Ferry covers and the Tommy Dorsey track...All of it is wonderful, actually...Encore, please!
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SMoss
Date: 11/1/2003
Thanks very much for all the comments. I love travel books in the age prior to jet plane mass tourism, and the memories this one gave me about a decade ago have stayed with me. I had to reread it and do the mix.
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Brave Little Toaster
Date: 11/4/2003
steve, thanks for the comments on my bipolar mix. how about this double cd for mine? email me if you're up for it and we'll swap addresses. this looks sublime...
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gobi
Date: 11/30/2003
absolutely awesome.
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Nest of Vipers
Date: 8/13/2004
This looks absolutely beautiful. Maybe we need to talk about a trade?
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Nest of Vipers
Date: 10/5/2004
This is a lovely mix, Steve, thank you.
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gobi
Date: 11/30/2004
Steve, it's been a year since I looked at this. I still love the look of it. Am I too late for a trade?
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gobi
Date: 2/5/2005
I'm listening to disc 1 (again) as I type . . . I hope that Erik and Jill love it as much as I do.Simply awesome. I had guessed it would be great, but that was a guess - now I know.thankyou