The Key to a thousand hearts

I know that the following is not a brilliant theory -after all it’s just a song- but the last time that I felt so close to someone’s words was years ago so I had to write about it and share my small ‘’epiphany’’.
This morning I woke up with a song in my head. Now, this is quite normal if you think that I hear this song at least once a day for the last three weeks. What is so special about it? I think that a bit of a background history is necessary here before I attempt to answer this question:
There is this rock group called ‘’Ksylina Spathia’’ and before you exclaim ‘This is Greek to me’ and abandon reading, yes it is Greek and in English their name would be ‘’Wooden Swords’’. This group is not together anymore but their frontman-lead singer/composer- Pavlos Pavlidis has a solo career-thank God because he is just incredible. Anyway, this group is my favourite; it signifies my first concert, my first summer loves, lyrics written on school desks next to L+M=L.F.E and so on. Then I left them for some time…You know, sometimes in passionate love relationships, you may need to put some distance. Then, when you return fresh to the old loves, you either fall for them all over again or say goodbye forever.
I came to London. I left cds behind; I had my music on my PC. And then my PC crashed. And I lost some files. Among those files were two of their albums. To be honest, I didn’t mind that much then. But after eight months, a friend visited me and she brought with her these albums. The first night I heard them, I almost cried. It was all about the voice and the melodies. But then...boom! One song...three lines...stuck in my head.
I am pretty sure everyone has thought at one point or another that a song has been written for him/her. It is when a line expresses what you feel, what you live or think much better that you would. So, here I was, lying on my bed, listening to Pavlos singing ‘’I have a thousand keys which open hearts but they don’t fit to the door of my own prison, someone has to take me out before it’s late, you have to come, only you can’’. Now here it sounds bad. It doesn’t rhyme, it’s not poetic but still, there is something in it that refuses to be lost in translation. It is this idea of you holding the keys to other people’s hearts but not for yours. And who has yours???
This morning that I woke up with these lyrics in my mind, I started thinking how could this work as a theory of love. I mean, there is the theory of the other half, lost in the universe, waiting to be found so we could be complete again. But for a reason I can’t explain I find the idea of the ‘’keys’’ more interesting, mainly because it has complications. Don’t forget, you don’t just look for the person has the key to your heart; you also have keys to your hands. You carry the freedom of other people’s hearts in your hands. So, you have responsibility. If you are lucky, one of those persons whose key you hold, may have the key to your heart and thus, you two live happily ever after. If you are not, you will live with an imprisoned heart.
How many times do we fall for people that they are not interested? They unlocked our heart but we don’t have the key for theirs. And how many times do we unlock other hearts and they offer us their love but because they don’t have our key, they are doomed to be rejected? Now, someone might say that there are skeleton keys...well, yes, it’s true but there is always the risk of the true key holder appearing and kicking the trespassers out…
I know that it is not a brilliant theory -after all it’s just a song- but the last time that I felt so close to someone’s words was years ago so I had to write about it and share my small ‘’epiphany’’. And I was so glad that this came from an old love…

Life on Goldsmiths Earth

I was late for college that day
a man was shot outside Iceland...
Welcome to Matt’s Winkworth wonderland, right on your door!!!
Matt claims that it’s just like the movies and the truth is that listening to his cd is as if someone had composed the soundtrack for a movie based on your life. Now, how often can you say something like that for a debut album?
I am not a music critic more than I am a critic of anything. But I like music and I honestly admire talented people, especially those with talent in music -writing songs, playing instruments- simply because I have not. Moreover, in this era where cheap pop or pseudo-rock with repetitive lyrics and melodies is the passport to success and recognition, those who have something original to present and do not follow the trend deserve praise.
I first saw Matt in Goldsmith’s Musical Society production of Hedwig and the Angry Inch; he was the musical director and he played the keyboards. Then, a friend of mine had one of his songs, ‘Just Like the Movies’, playing in her myspace account. It was love at first hearing. It was fresh, sweet and original. After almost three months he had a launch party for his first cd. I decided to go because I wanted to hear him play live and also to listen to the other songs. I was almost sure that I would buy the cd in the end of the night (support Goldsmiths graduates!!!) but I would feel much better if I made sure that the rest of the cd would be as good as ‘Just like the Movies’ promised to be.
Well, it was a great live. Both the live performance and the cd have mainly an acoustic atmosphere with the piano being the king of the instruments but in the cd it is accompanied by trumpets, drums and quitars. The songs are surprising; they combine a variety of styles but there is a sonic coherence that is captivating; when you start listening to the first song, you have to listen till the very last. And every time I listen to the ‘Infatuated’, at the part where Matt declares ‘no, I am not in love’, I have to stamp my feet the way I stamped it at his live due to ‘lack of a drummer’!!
Since all criticism is subjective, I will mention my very favourites and then, because I believe that the songs can speak for themselves, I will write some of the lyrics in an attempt to show how true these songs are.
Personal favourites then, ‘Second-Hand Smoke’, ‘The finer points of being happy’ and ‘Pucksong’
followed by the lines from ‘Life on Earth’ that prove how close to real life Matt is:
And so we live by the artefacts we collect
by the memories we select
by the fantasies we forget we fantasize
Strange, all this time we have to change
though we rarely re-arrange
our life on earth
I am pretty sure that there are a lot of musicians like Matt, studying in colleges and recording their cds with the help of friends, classmates and fellow musicians, covering the expenses themselves, and searching for gigs to play. They have things to say that the already rich and famous guys have long forgotten. So, next time you feel like buying a cd, a trip to independent productions may reveal the music treasures you were looking for.