Brother Martin and the Intangibles

Musicians are magicians, but not all of us do magic for the same reason. I play music to project and effect a heightened state of consciousness, to the best of my somewhat limited technical ability. But, as one of my teachers observed, passion and enthusiasm can make up for the limits of skill and talent, and so I hope you will accept these humble musical offerings in the participatory spirit in which they have been created: that none of us should go to the grave with our songs unsung. May this music inspire you to express your own highest aspirations.I have been playing piano ever since I was tall enough to reach the keys. I have always been totally fascinated with pianos, but have always been too lazy, intimidated, or busy to take lessons, so I have evolved a style that I would call folk piano. Imagine people sitting around a campfire, playing their pianos and singing songs.....I took up saxophone in my teens from a love for the big band music of the thirties and forties, then got my mind blown by Ornette Coleman and Jerry Garcia. I have never played sax commercially, but have played informally with many guitarists and drum circles through the years. I also play hand drums, in part because it seems rude to play saxophone all the time in such contexts. As W.C. Fields once remarked, A gentleman is somebody who can play the saxophone and doesn't. So I am a gentleman some of the time.I have always loved to sing but only recently, with the help of a voice instructor, have I figured out how to consistently sing at least passably. Before that, I had some horribly embarrassing moments.Sometimes the electric keyboard is merely to provide the appearance of bass, drum, and organ accompaniment, but sometimes I do like to take full advantage of the possibilities of modern electronics.So this band is called Brother Martin and the Intangibles, in part because I am the only tangible member of the band. I enjoy playing music with others but haven't been able to figure out how to play saxophone and piano and sing my best all at the same time! Someday, perhaps, a solution will present itself......Meanwhile, I would be happy to play acoustic piano (and occasionally sing) in a tobacco-free Amsterdam-style coffeehouse...similar venues will be considered. Make me an offer!. ABOUT THE MUSIC. hope you enjoy the new music!...the songs that were taken off, plus cover songs that can't be featured on Myspace, are available at my website .PRETTY PEGGY--a traditional folk song from the Civil War, a plaintive tale of love and death and the futility of war, repopularized by the Grateful Dead, gets a New Orleans treatment here. Since Myspace now allows longer songs, I have upgraded this to the full version. .NOT SATISFIED--There is a class of beings called "hungry ghosts." Because of their greed and selfishness, nothing ever satisfies them. It's as if they have enormous, hungry bellies and little tiny throats that can't swallow anything. There's nothing they'd like better than satisfaction, but because of who and what they are, it constantly eludes them. Some of them appear to be people, and this song is dedicated to a couple that I have known. I haven't heard from them in quite a while. I hope it's because they finally figured out that one's own satisfaction comes from caring about someone else's.Stylistically, I guess you could call this R&B.YOU N'ME originated from two sources. The first was a dream in which I was at a big hippie party in the country. The band was playing this song, but instead of the hook being "you n'me" they sang "it comes to you"--that is, me--it was MY personal responsibility to right all the wrongs of the world. In that dream, I felt overjoyed by the knowledge that there is something I can do that will make a difference. The second source for this song was my wicced stepdaughter, who is an extraordinary human being, telling me horror stories of life in a big city high school in the twenty-first century. I'm glad I got through h.s. in the relatively palmy and unregimented sixties! This song is heavy metal/blues--if you like the jam, you can hear a longer version on my main websiteEYEBALL FLOWERS--another ambient/space piece from "Music For Bodypainting, an album that will come out one of these years. This is an edit; the full version can be heard at my main website .Since we can now put six songs on Myspace, I have brought back a couple that I've already featured:NUMBER ONE WITH A BULLET was written not long after 9-11, as the full implications of the Cheney-Bush coup and the Homeland Security State began to sink in. I wish I could say things are getting better, but I'm not even sure the next election will wake us from our current political nightmare.MAGIC REVOLUTIONARY is a somewhat more upbeat take on the same situation. It is an attempt to write an English-language song in the Qawwali tradition of Nusrat Fateh Khan, but with a Vajrayana Buddhist rather than Sufi orientation. Vajrapani, invoked in the chorus is a form of Buddha who purifies people through powerful jolts, which is my understanding of what was happening back in the sixties. Certainly those who have not taken their 60's lessons to heart have had to pay a steep price!In addition to my Dmusic site , I now have an archive of original songs at Soundclick . Enjoy!photo credits for pix of me, "how we live," and "you n'me" to my amazing wife, Cindy Moonrose aka "The Salad Gurette"