Google has been sending Styx fans to aworks this week looking for I Am the Walrus. While I knew I had mentioned Styx covering Aaron Copland's Fanfare for a Common Man, I just figured out the Beatles connection:
Buried in a prior aworks post:
The Walrus in Memorium by Terry Riley played by Gloria Cheng-Cochran. This is a light-hearted set of variations on I Am the Walrus by the Beatles.
And the reason people are searching:
[Styx is] getting more and more airplay from radio stations who are falling love with our live recording of The Beatles' "I Am The Walrus" which we are now sending to another 1000 stations.
The composer Terry Riley is the namesake for the Who's Baba O'Riley ("It's only teenage wasteland."). Originally, Pete Townshend played an ARP synthesizer (or Lowrey organ) on the song. It was later covered by Pearl Jam and the Grateful Dead. Live MP3 here. Riley interviewed on his compositions and rock music:
In the '60s, the work that I was doing was more parallel to the work that was going on in rock. There was the similarities and the kinetic energy that both musics had.
If you are looking for harder, more intense Terry Riley music, The Walrus in Memorium, as a piano piece, is probably not it. You might try Shri Camel or Poppy Nogood with keyboards and electronic effects.
• Magical Mystery Tour Amazon sales rank: #455 and popular (#12) at UC Berkeley (no surprise) along with The Byrds, Hail to the Thief, Justin Timberlake, Cecilia Bartola, the Emerson Quartet's Art of the Fugue, the New Pornographers et al .
• Who's Next Amazon sales rank: #1,013
• Gloria Cheng: Piano Music Of John Adams And Terry Riley Amazon sales rank: #47,003
• Shri Camel Amazon sales rank: #67,843
• Poppy Nogood Amazon sales rank: #147,869
• Cheng CD discounted at Berkshire Record Outlet: $2.99
• Prior aworks post mentioning Gloria Cheng.
• Disclosure: An earlier Emerson, Lake & Palmer reference drew zero traffic my way although my linking to a page by the director of the Eminem Mosh video resulted in some blogdex traffic.
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