Daily Archives: June 17, 2024

Monday Night Mojo – Top 10 Music (Mojo & Funk): (7) Ben Harper – The Woman in You

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Burn to Shine album cover

(7) MOJO: BEN HARPER –

THE WOMAN IN YOU (BURN TO SHINE 1999)

B-side: Glory & Consequence (The Will to Live 1997)

ALBUMS:

The Will to Live (1997)

Burn to Shine (1999)

Diamonds on the Inside (2003)

 

“Love carved sorry in his face

The woman in you is the worry, the worry in me”

 

A voice like smooth smoky honey with a soft sad blues aftertaste – Ben Harper is an insanely talented singer-songwriter and multi-instrumentalist, playing an eclectic mix of blues, folk, soul, reggae and rock.

Ironically my entry here, “The Woman in You” from his fourth studio album Burn to Shine in 1999, was effectively a B-side as inexplicably it was never released as a single.

 

As for the B-side of my entry, “Glory and Consequence” was a single from his third album The Will to Live in 1997 – the lyrics just have that hauntingly evocative resonance for me.

 

“I would rather me be lonely

And you have someone to hold

I’m not as scared of dying

As I am of growing old”

 

That hits me right in the heart – perhaps a little too hard.

 

And as for the balance of my Top 10 Ben Harper songs:

(3) Faded (The Will to Live 1997)

(4) Mama’s Trippin’ – Freedom Mix (The Will to Live 1997)

(5) Sexual Healing (Live from Mars 2001)

(6) Burn to Shine (Burn to Shine 1999)

(7) Steal My Kisses (Burn to Shine 1999)

(8) Diamonds on the Inside (Diamonds on the Inside 2003)

(9) Brown-Eyed Blues (Diamonds on the Inside 2004)

(10) Everything (Diamonds on the Inside 2003)

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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Top Tens – History: Top 10 Books (5) Geoffrey Blainey – A Short History of the World

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(5) GEOFFREY BLAINEY –

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE WORLD (2000)

 

“The most prolific, wide-ranging, inventive, and, in the 1980s and 1990s, most controversial of Australia’s living historians” – that last epithet was for his commentary on public affairs, so naturally I like him.

Geoffrey Blainey is Australia’s leading historian – and the leading historian of Australia itself, coining the definitive phrase for that history in the famous title of his book The Tyranny of Distance.

Wide-ranging indeed – upon graduating, Blainey initially eschewed academia for the private sector as a freelance historian, studying and writing the history of a mining and railway company in Tasmania.

He subsequently ranged through Australian history, with a focus on thematic history “organized around the exploration of the impact of the single factor (distance, mining, pre-settlement Aboriginal society)”.

Of particular interest to me, his range extended to the “rhythms” of global history – “two centuries of conflict in The Causes of War (1973)”, “examining the optimism and pessimism in Western society since 1750 in The Great See-Saw”, the history of Christianity, and the “tempestuous” 20th century.

And of course this book – which with my interest in global history I tend to regard as his magnum opus, apologies to The Tyranny of Distance.

What distinguishes Blainey in my eyes, both generally and in his book, is his eye for theme – especially themes outside the usual political or military history to which history is slanted, particularly global history.

A single volume history of the world must necessarily be compact yet Blainey not only achieves this but also seamlessly works in chapters on themes that elude other such histories.

For example, a chapter on the historical impact of the night sky on humanity. Or a chapter on the conquest of night by artificial lighting. Or of time itself by mechanical clocks in western civilization.

Or such resonant images or phrases that stick in the mind like Venice as the Silicon Valley of Renaissance Italy – through its glass-making as the cutting edge of technological innovation such as lenses for telescopes or microscopes, which I’m tempted to add to the conquest of time and night as the conquest of light.

 

RATING: 4 STARS****

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