It may come as a surprise to you that DMB is a favourite of mine...

...but it is - and you shouldn’t be - because, whether looking at the music creation and production, the lyrics and performance, this group of coalesced musicians is really something special.

What I appreciate most is the lyrics; they are often about exactly what they refer to, as in this song - which is about earth circling satellites watching us to get and give information. 

But what’s inescapable - if one thinks beyond the immediate and obvious - is that the lyrics point to a greater truth, an overarching reality that’s waiting to be discovered. In the case of this song, it’s while we watch ourselves, there’s something beyond ourselves, something bigger, much bigger that’s watching us.

Isn’t that one of the primary functions of music; to still us or ask us to be still so that we begin to alter our breathing and experience what’s in between, unseen, above, within?

In his biography, the Russian pianist, Sviatoslov Richter, referred to this very thing.

He writes that a student was playing Liszt’s Transcendental Etude “Evening Harmonies” and it wasn’t going well. (By that, he meant that while the student was a wonderful technician, he completely missed the point of the piece).

After a few more failed attempts to get through (and as it was dusk) Richter threw open the window of the studio, gesturing with extended arms pointing outside saying, “There! Play that!”

The student, perhaps because of his age and lack of knowledge, saw and played only notes and indications to be followed with a religious fervor...while Richter, the master, knew of and lived in the implied nuances, in the vast chasms of space that connected the notes...

...which reminds me of another DMB hit, “The Space Between” from the album “Everyday.”

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