Music of the Day, 11 February 2024

the music of my dreams (literally)

Credit/blame goes to

Dan Epstein

for today’s MotD. At the end of January, he wrote “Midnight Mott”—an article that focused on Mott the Hoople’s appearance on The Midnight Special. While he waxed enthusiastic about both the newish YouTube channel that’s posting full episodes of the show and the big acts featured along with Mott the Hoople, what caught my attention was the mention of bagpipe prog. I had to hear that! There’s more of a story than you might think behind my eagerness to explore that subgenre.

I was in my mid 30s when I left my spouse. For the first time in my life, I was living alone. It was exhilarating. It didn’t take me long to realize how much pent-up stress I’d been living with; both body and mind starting to relax produced some strange experiences.

The strangest and most common by far was a wild phenomenon that happened as I was falling asleep. The fucking weirdest mashups of musical genres would come into my mind and jolt me awake. The one I remember best was a combination of funeral dirge, klezmer, and rock. Like a dream one awakens from, the music faded as my awareness grew, leaving me doubly sad that I couldn’t capture what I’d heard in order to experience it again or share it with others. All I have are these wholly insufficient words.

As my autonomic nervous system slowly returned to a healthier balance, the musical mashups began to fade.¹ Dan’s mention of bagpipe prog obviously reminded me of them … and when I set out to find more bagpipe prog than the single song performed on The Midnight Special, I found something even better, to my ear.

It isn’t prog, but bagpipes + rock + dubstep² = a big “Hell yeah!” from me. To shake things up even more, the band is not Celtic. The SIDH is an Italian band. It’s hard to find a lot of information on them;³ this article on Untapped Sound is the only substantive piece my research efforts turned up.

I was very happy to find this kickin’ song and the band. I listened to a few other songs on The SIDH’s YouTube channel and will explore that more before deciding whether to purchase any music. I also discovered that Celtic rock is a subgenre that’s growing in popularity and often features bagpipes. That made my weekend. There’s something about bagpipes that has always enchanted me, so I’m happy to see the love spreading.

My maternal grandfather gave me a couple of recorders⁴ around the same time he bought a flute for me. I fooled around with them a little, but as I had no music for them—and they aren’t as easy to play well as most people think—they’ve mostly sat unused. That lively whistle intro has inspired me to find them and give it another go. I’m sure everyone within hearing distance would prefer that to my taking up bagpipes!

1. They have intermittently recurred, but never with the same frequency as back then

2. As this is the first dubstep song I’ve knowingly heard, I’m taking the band’s word for it on this

3. There may be more on FB and Insta, but as I’m not on either, I don’t know what’s there

4. They’re called whistles in Celtic music. The two I have are in different keys