Frank Terzo – Mamma 11 11 22
“Weeping may tarry for the night, but joy comes with the morning.” The world has been in a worse state throughout its troubled history. But not recently. And, anyway, there’s never been a generation on this planet that has possessed shorter memory than ours. The trouble always seems sharp, brand new ,and impossible to overcome.
The only way seems to glance at things that might well be eternal. What we can do is try to hear the voices from the past and find some consolation and advice there. If great men and women managed to do their best with what they had, perhaps we can find courage from them. Rock-adjacent music, at its best, is about bravery and about the certainty that we will win over tough times.
Frank Terzo’s “Mamma 11 11 22” is a beautiful elegy to parents, to their wisdom and their dreams. Musically, it resembles songs like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” compositions that blend a few simple chords to the truth and nothing else. Its directness makes it most powerful, while the gruff but soulful vocals sing of a world where greed and power are drowning out everything that’s decent. But with such laments comes a promise as well. We shall overcome and this despair will merely be a memory.
Matty Myatt – When I’m Dead Just Throw Me In the Trash
There are wonderful and mysterious happening in every village ever written about in a South American novel. Magic and reality blend together seamlessly. Nobody’s life is meaningless and nobody’s life is merely their own. In fact, whether they know it or not, what they really are is a part of a giant and important story that could not be told without all of the supporting cast.
We stumble through our lives in every other place on Earth. Most of the time people don’t want to be told about dreams, let alone magic, fate, or any of that stuff. At least, not until they’ve had their third coffee of the day and the bell’s about to ring on another day. But fail to make some kind of reminder of even those most ordinary days, and you’re condemning yourself to be forgotten.
Maybe that’s not such a bad thing after all. Maybe it doesn’t matter much. Matty Myatt is pretty brave to say that, and to write about his hometown, about pacing nervously through each day, and about casual love affairs the way he does. “When I’m Dead Just Throw Me In the Trash” is a very well-written song about small moments, the weight of them, and the possibility that they’ll go on forever if somebody strongly wants them to.
