Recent listening: Julia Ecklar
So I just wondered if you all were familiar with Julia Ecklar? She does very professional filk, and has for a long time. My brother gave me one of her later cds for Christmas, “Horsetamer”. It’s an interesting contrast to a tape I’ve had for a long time — she’s moved way beyond “woman with guitar”, see. At this point, she has a whole instrumental section, backup singers, and, sometimes, voice actors to do voiceovers. Pretty impressive!
This cd includes two songs based on Elfquest, which I wouldn’t have known except my brother told me. I never read any of the Elfquest comics or graphic novels or whatever they are. Ecklar does do vengeance very, very well. She sounds really passionate about it! My favorite as far as that goes is a song from her cd “Divine Intervention”, called “Temper of Revenge.” I haven’t listened to that for a long time, but I could hardly forget some of the lyrics: “I will ride out at dawn when the sun’s in the sky so the buzzards can see where the bodies will lie.” Whoa.
Anyway, on this “Horsetamer” cd, she has a nice piece based on Susan Cooper’s The Dark Is Rising series. I really like that one. Actually it keeps running through my head now. She did a great job tweaking the lyrics from Cooper’s own poems and prophecies to make them scan properly.
And there’s a song based on Dune, “Shai Halud”, that kind of makes me want to go back and re-read bits of Dune.
Most impressive of the lot is a four-song set including her older work “Tin Soldier” that probably does a better job encapsulating Ender’s Game than the movie — lots of voiceovers in that one. The set, in case you’re interested in the MP3 files, are “Ender Interlude I”, “The Battleroom”, “Ender Interlude II”, and “Tin Soldier”. You would want the ones from “Horsetamer” in order to get the right version of Tin Soldier.
Ironically, the title track, “The Horsetamer’s Daughter,” seems rather tedious to me. It goes on and on, and nothing about the story it tells seems unexpected or even very interesting. Even though I love horses as much as the next person. But then, I’m not familiar with the book it’s based on, which probably makes a difference. I had to look online even to know that it’s based on something in Darkover, which I have to admit I never read. (I know, right? But I never did.)
Anyway, if you’re not familiar with Julia Ecklar, you might try some of her songs. I see most of them are indeed available as MP3 files now. Now that I have been reminded about her, I’m going to download some of the songs I have on tape — particularly “Crimson and Crystal” and “Temper of Revenge.” Oh, and “Silver” — I always loved that one. Oh, yes, and “Terminis Est,” that, too.
