photo credit to ember999

Tomorrow is the first official day of spring, which is delightful to my somewhat pagan heart. And, as someone who occasionally (or often, depending on whom you ask) feels she’s living in the wrong time period, I take this opportunity to wish you a happy Vernal Equinox. May you, like the Sphinx at Giza, orient yourself towards the sun tomorrow and have a bright and promising kind of day. (Or at least look forward to the weekend.)

And should you need a soundtrack for your celebration of spring, I am here to answer the question: “Just what kind of music does one listen do when suffering from temporal instability?” If you, like I, have ever been told you are a ‘living anachronism,’ you use ‘archaic’ or ‘funny old’ language in your daily speech, or merely have an irrepressible desire to shout ‘Huzzah!’ then I recommend a dose of Renaissance Rock.

Renaissance what?

Rock. No, seriously. Mix together a healthy dose of escapism, a passing acquaintance with Shakespeare, a quartet of teal kilts, and some guitars and fiddles, and you end up with The Lost Boys, a group of temporal travelers at least twice as crazy as I am. I treated myself to their newest album a few weeks ago (Heroes and Scoundrels, though their other relatively new album, the Teal album is also excellent) and have been happily humming “Warriors for the Working Day” and other excerpts pretty much ever since. Humorous skits about the escapades of a bunch of rowdy minstrels escaping the Tower, consorting with Merlin, and entertaining the occupants of taverns are interspersed among the music, and while it’s not exactly what I’d call soothing background music, there’s a fun assortment of musical styles involved. The Lost Boys throw together Renaissance-era and traditional folk songs set to new instrumentation, modern rock songs with anachronistic lyrics, and a bunch of original works that are extremely catchy, like my favorites, “Life is Good,” and “Scoundrels.”

If you’re looking for further ways to indulge a bit of temporal instability, I also recommend the Mediaeval Baebes*, and for a more authentic experience, Sting’s Songs from the Labyrinth, a collection of lute works by Elizabethan composer John Dowland.

*Watch out, their website has automatic-play music of some of their works, which are lovely, but I don’t know if there’s a way to turn it off.