Redeem the Time

What if you just really needed to hear Mark Knopfler and/or Dire Straits?

. . . At work.

(Lets say you just knew that hearing that guitar would increase productivity).

Well, nothing a pair of headphones and the trusty “internets” couldn’t solve.

The Oracle of Google, after I arranged the innards and shards and did a moderate amount of prostrating, pointed me to a magical, mystical webpage:

www.danceage.com

I still don’t quite know what to make of this ugly looking website, but I got to listen to all the Dire Straits and Knopfler albums I wanted, all the way through.

The website can be in Persian if you so desire. Many of the albums are in a strange . . . arabic electronica? . . . style? . . . but there is also some Pink Floyd and Paul Simon. Hmm . . . along with Rammstein and Dido . . .

Even the name of the site is slighty off—Dance Age? Or like, total danceage dude?

Maybe both. I don’t really care, cuz it immediately satiates my Knopfler guitar needs.

And I mean, how could you pass up a free listen to a whole album of Yngwie Malmsteen from 1995. He blissfully plays like its 1985, and we can all pretend like Seattle was just a rainy city that has something to do with Jimmy Hendrix.

Yngwie does always needs to be told—less talk, more guitar. Still, lyrics like:

You have got no wings but you have always tried to fly
Your soul is burning up like a fire in the sky
Some say I’ve been had, and that’s too bad
I know they’re wrong
Some say I’ve gone mad, and that’s too sad
I’m much too strong

Like the demon’s eye
Watching over me
Relentlessly

are suprisingly refreshing these days.

Note—he does not refer to his own whiny weakness in the sappy, depressed manner of today’s youth, nor does he glorify his own strength.

After all, that demon’s eye is relentless.

As a special gift to us, Yngwie walks the fine line between featherweight lyrics meaning absolutely nothing and metaphor-laden, foreshadowing-heavy lyrics that mean way too much. In the verse above, for instance . . . well, we kind of get the general gist of things, right?!

And the guitar KICKS ASS.

But dude, Malmsteen doesn’t quite put it all into the aptly titled, “Fire in the Sky.”

The album is called “Magnum Opus,” and it applies to track #11, the instrumental “Amberdawn,” which is TOTALLY BITCHIN.

Danceage is a new sweetness in my life, allowing for a needed bit of musical pleasure.

Shake that rug stereotype you racists!

Thank the Persians for something today, and check it out.