Sometimes when WBEZ has a little space to fill in, they play some nice, non-jazz music or an interesting audio file. This can happen between shows, or sometimes within one that goes to station break for long enough to play a song or two.
Music is selected by Jim Nader, who is also responsible for inflicting The Annoying Music Show on an unsuspecting world. He produces Magnificent Obsession: True Stories of Recovery, which airs at a terribly early time Sunday mornings, but that is extremely worthy of a listen for the moving tales of addiction and redemption, and
for the music that soothes the soul. The interstitial segments feature similar cuts, of the kind that make you sit up and listen attentively, because you may not have heard it before, and may not hear it again.
Quite often, they play something that sounds so beautiful and evocative, I had to track it down. Turns out it’s a Leonard Cohen song from the CD :”More Best of Leonard Cohen, but it’s performed by a disembodied, female sounding electronic voice named “Victoria:”
It’s going to happen very soon
The great event, which will end the horror
Which will end the sorrow
Next Tuesday when the sun goes down
I will play the Moonlight Sonata backwards
This will reverse the effects of the world’s mad plunge
Into suffering, for the last 200 million years
What a lovely night that would be
What a sigh of relief, as the senile robins
Become bright red again, and the retired nightingales
Pick up their dusty tails, and assert the Majesty of Creation
UPDATE: A couple of Magnificent Obsession episodes, plus the “Music Of” episode, are archived as podcasts at Silent Treatment, a recovery support website. “The Great Event” is on the music-only one, along with a heart-breaking Roy Orbison tune and the song used for the main titles, “Sweet is the Melody.”
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