Posts Tagged ‘music’
It’s November!
How many times have I written of my astonishment at the arrival of a new month? November is here. This morning there is a beautiful fire in our fireplace and the clocks have been changed back to standard time. The pump has been removed from our little landscape pond and the leaves covering the surface are locked in a layer of ice.
The garden hoses (we had a dozen of them strewn about the place) have all been drained, coiled, and stored. It feels like November. The one family on our country “block” that came trick-or-treating for Halloween last year, showed up again Friday night. Luckily, this year Cyndie had purchased candy, so we treated the one family, and yesterday I tried to eat all the rest.
“Oops, I slipped and another chocolate-almond-coconut concoction flew into my mouth.”
Cyndie recently coerced me to spend some time on a jigsaw puzzle by pitching in to spread out the pieces and flip them all face-up. Puzzling is both soothing and exhilarating for me, and it always evokes pleasant memories of assembling them when I was young. I find that dallying on jigsaw puzzles while listening to well-loved music tends to bring new depth to old songs. The music seems richer and the puzzling becomes doubly so. I finished the puzzle Friday night.
Yesterday, I drove the Grizzly around and collected all the stacks of cut wood that have accumulated from the trees that either fell in the wind, or were cut to clear trails and fence lines. There is no shortage of wood to be split and stacked in the shed. Meanwhile, there are still tree trunks under brush piles that remain to be sawed into fireplace logs, after I chip the branches above them.
Last night I had a dream that involved my needing to plow snow. As shocking as it is to accept that the month has already arrived, it definitely feels like November to me now.
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In Mind
Lately I’ve had Chastity Brown‘s music in my mind, particularly, her song “Lift Us.” It suits me. You know how I feel about love, that it certainly does lift us. I think she’s got it right with these lyrics, and every other nuance of this recording, as well. She wins me over right away at the opening guitar up-strums, but then the way the bass slides to enter with the drums; the background “ooo ooos;” the light balance, yet fuzzy substance of the electric guitar; the emotion with which she distorts the pronunciations –getting “lift” to sound like “leeeeft;” the rhythmic bounce that carries the whole thing all the way to the end.
I highly recommend you take the time to pay extra attention to the details as you listen, but be forewarned, when you listen to all the detail, songs have a way of burying themselves in your mind.
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I was heading down a road
Going nowhere
But I didn’t even know
Ya know I didn’t even care
But along the way
Came a word I was needing to hearChorus:
Love can lift us
Oh love real love
Love can lift us
Talkin ‘bout love real loveSo you say you’re all alone
Drowning in a sea of people
I will throw you a rope
Pull you to shore
So you can feel thisChorus
Talkin bout love
If you’ve ever been on the floor
Aint go no where to go
Just lookin up keep lookin upChorus
credits: from Back-Road Highways, released 24 March 2012
© all rights reserved Chastity Brown
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Can’t Stop
Okay, I admit it: we are smitten with my son’s new album. I awoke this morning with one particular song running in my head. I just needed to hear it again, and when Cyndie noticed the sound of it playing, she asked me to play it again, out near the kitchen, where she could hear it better, because she wanted to hear that song, too.
If you read yesterday’s post here, and didn’t want to explore all the songs on Julian’s album, I will promote one for your consideration. Listen to “Of Mistress, Master, and Malcontent.” This song includes vocals from Dave Marshall, Julian’s friend in Chicago, and the blend of their voices together is a joy to behold. They have created an arrangement in this song that is captivating, and I think deserves to be heard by a wide audience. I have submitted it to a local radio station for consideration.
Do you think they will be able to see past the gushing parents to take time to consider the music for its own merit?
I hope so. That would make today a real SUPER Sunday.
Enjoy the day!
Big Accomplishment
This past week, we received an email from our son, Julian, with the subject: “My album has been RELEASED!”
Even though some of my son’s taste in music is different than mine, I can’t stop myself from listening to the whole thing, over and over. What a parental rush!
You can read his descriptions of the What, Why, and How, and listen for yourself at the web site he created to share his music: jaywalkerbroadcasts.com.
I recommend you sample enough songs to discover the wide variety of voice and instrument he has put together.
Talk about highly capable, he wrote songs, played all the instruments, sang, recorded, found and financed a professional studio to do mixing and mastering, and then built the web site to distribute his product. And, he did this as a side project to his current full-time day-job. To say we are proud of him, and all he accomplished with this, is an understatement.
When I was young, and heavily interested in recording artists of the time, one thing that boggled my mind was, when individuals would play all the instruments at such an accomplished level, so as to be able to produce a marketable product on their own. Now my own son has done just that!
I remember showing Julian a few things on my guitar when he was little. Then, he took up percussion in the school band, and off he went, playing guitar in rock bands, becoming an accomplished drummer, developing his singing, and developing skills on keyboards and bass guitar. Julian has performed live, in a variety of bands, in a wide range of venues. It’s the stuff that some folks dream of doing, and others actually make a living doing, but he has done it as just one of his many life interests.
Cyndie and I are always thrilled with the music our children make. I’m pretty sure we were annoyingly proud of watching our kids as marching band percussionists for many years. We drove Julian to ‘battle of the bands’ gigs back when he and his school friends didn’t have driver’s licenses. We were also fixated for quite some time on a video that Julian and friend, Dave Marshall, produced while Julian was living, and going to school, in Stockholm, Sweden, and Dave was back in Chicago. I’m including it here again, with Julian’s permission, because we still love it so much.
Julian has now gathered years of his music in a present day recording. He has included guest artists from high school and college days, and put together a legitimate album that he is distributing free on the internet. We think this is a really big accomplishment. I hope you will give it a listen, and then share it with all those who you know that have an appreciation for what he has produced.
If you agree with me, that his efforts are worthy, I invite you to post a comment at his site, or on any of the music sites he links, so he doesn’t just hear it from Mom and Dad. We all know, our support can appear to be a little biased.
Songs Sung
I’m in a bit of a fog, buzzing still from last night’s broadcast of the 54th GRAMMY awards show. It had me staying up a bit late for a night before my morning soccer. That, and from all the tributes being offered in memory of Whitney Houston over the weekend. The Grammy’s had so many live performances, there hardly seemed but a handful of awards presented during the broadcast this year. I think I approve.
What caught my attention? Opening song by Bruce Springsteen and his band. Paul McCartney performing, (how come it looked like he had no idea what the beat was when he clapped along to other people’s performances?). Foo Fighters. Chris Brown’s dance number and the creative graphics projected on the set. I didn’t know Bruno Mars before last night, what a cool performance that was. The Beach Boys together again! Adele’s return to singing after throat surgery. The tribute to Glen Campbell. It was a good year.
Let’s hear it for recorded music, old and new!
International Indie
There is a risk in posting a referral that already has millions of views (was over 9 mil, now almost 24M!), that the reading audience will have already been there, done that. In my case, I’m taking the chance that at least a few of the usual visitors here at Relative Something have yet to experience this one.
Several times in the recent past, my ear has been grabbed by one particular song on my radio station, 89.3 The Current. The artist is a Belgian-born Australian named Wouter “Wally” De Backer who performs under the stage name of Gotye. The song is, Somebody That I Used To Know, and features New Zealand singer/songwriter Kimbra.
However, they aren’t the ones who finally connected me with this song. That honor belongs to a group of Canadians performing as Walk Off The Earth, who have recorded a cover version of the song, with all five members playing the same guitar simultaneously.
Watch the video on youtube.
Take some time to explore the variety of videos that Marshall & Gianni and friends have posted at the Walk Off The Earth (WOTE) site. They demonstrate a good playfulness and fine sense of humor, a bit reminiscent of the videosong art of the duo Pomplamoose that I was shouting about last year.
Random Segues
Yesterday I walked in the door with the mail and found a $10 iTunes gift card I had ordered through exchanging points in my Recyclebank account.
I’d forgotten I ordered it, since it had been a couple weeks.
During the drive home from work, a song on the radio (that I was hearing for the first time) intrigued me enough to want to look it up when I got home.
That reminded me I had been meaning to search for a Levon Helm song I heard playing on the credits of a movie I recently bought.
Found Levon’s song, “A Train Robbery,” on the 2007 album, Dirt Farmer.
I listened to the samples for most of the songs on the album and liked them enough to want all of them.
Price of the album download on iTunes: $9.99.
Forgot about searching for the song I had heard on the radio.
For some entirely unknown reason, the Levon Helm songs brought to mind some Bob Dylan lyrics from his song, “When You Awake” that The Band performed.
Ollie told me I’m a fool. So I
walked on down the road a mile, Went to the house that brings a smile
Sat upon my grandpa’s knee, And what do you think he said to me?When You Awake you will remember ev’rything, You will be
hangin’ on a string from your… When you believe, You will relieve the only soul
That you were born with to grow old and never know.
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Snow’s gonna come and the frost gonna bite, My old car froze
up last night. Ain’t no reason to hang your head I could wake up in the
mornin’ dead. Oh! And
if I thought it would do any good, I’d stand on the rock where Moses stood..
That last line has rolled around in my head for as long as I’ve heard it, starting sometime in the 1970s.
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If I thought it would do any good, I’d stand on the rock where Moses stood.
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Real Event
Just a (not really) typical night down at the U…
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Did I mention that it rained? Rained and rained? It did. That was the wettest I have been from rain that I can recall. My fingers became pruned. I am only a casual fan of U2, but I have the utmost respect for them. Being there was definitely special. It was a really remarkable event Saturday night. In addition to the natural excitement of such a large gathering of fans, and the world-class production of the show, we were able to view the fireworks of the Minneapolis Aquatennial Festival during the concert. And it all coincided with a pretty dramatic lightning display traveling across the sky. It was not very clear which of the flashes and booms were coming from which source.
With the weather having been so incredibly hot and humid lately, the fact that the evening started out pleasantly comfortable may have caused me to drop my guard. I did not fully prepare for the obvious outcome that played out. Not only did I get really wet, so did everything in my pockets. Luckily, both phone and camera survived. My wallet looks a bit worse for the wear.
Actually, the soaking was not the worst part. Waiting can be a real drain, but waiting in the middle of the night when you are soaking wet was a real buzz-kill. There was gridlock in the vicinity of the stadium for a long time. We were prisoners in the parking ramp for 1 hour, 45-minutes. The eventual exit involved turning around and driving the wrong way down, since everybody else was doing it.
Eventual bedtime… after 2 a.m. Fitting, I’d say, for such a significant event.
Friend Blessings
I have been blessed with a true friend in Gary Larson, my trekking buddy and cycling comrade, who has welcomed Cyndie and me into his semi-annual gathering of long-time friends for their music parties. Last Saturday we joined the gala event for a fine dinner followed by some spontaneous music making. Dessert was so spectacular that Cyndie paused to capture it in a picture.
It is an interesting challenge for me because I never mastered the finer points of music theory which would allow me to actually know what chords to play for a given key. When attempting to play along with somebody in an unrehearsed performance, I am left to hunt and peck for something that sounds right. They have been polite to accommodate my shortcomings and we forge ahead together for a very enjoyable session.
Here I am with Peter on mandolin and Mike on banjo. We are performing the obligatory opening number… tuning. Since I rarely seem to know what chords to play, my first cheat is to look over at the finger position of the other players. However, if they aren’t playing a guitar tuned the same as mine, what I see doesn’t provide me with information I can use. It adds to the excitement.
One of my favorite things to do is harmonize when singing. It can be a bit tricky since I usually don’t know the words to the songs, and often find myself guessing about the intended melody.
I complicated things a bit on this occasion, since I was well into my little experiment of playing doctor with my asthma condition, and in its untreated state, I was suffering from a compromised lung capacity. (See yesterday’s post, if you haven’t already.)
In a beautiful demonstration of true friendship, Gary called me yesterday, after reading my post, to offer some perspective about treating an affliction like asthma. I was pretty uncomfortable all day long with pressure that felt like someone was sitting on my chest, and my persistent clearing my throat with a regular cough interval, was annoying me for how annoying it must be for everyone else. I decided that as soon as I got home from work, I was going to resume my regular full dose of control medicine that I have been prescribed.
I may not know what my ultimate un-medicated situation would be these days, but I do know that my asthma is treatable. Whether or not I am currently experiencing the worst it would get, I think my experiment has proved well-enough that I am a legitimate candidate for medication to control my condition.
Thank you, Gary, for taking the initiative to call and share your thoughts. It is what a friend would do.
Striking Fancy
I no longer recall why I was feeling a need to try to define my tastes in music, but it has been looming as a task I should tend to since I mentioned it in a post last week.
So, what music strikes my fancy? First of all, keep in mind that I grew up in the ’60s and ’70s and that will be clearly reflected in the bulk of what appeals to me. I think it would be fair to say that a core interest of mine is singer/songwriters. Two people who come to mind right away are Bruce Cockburn and Ani DiFranco, but that list includes Greg Brown, Neil Young, Joni Mitchell, John Hiatt, Rickie Lee Jones, Bob Dylan, Bonnie Raitt, Jackson Browne, Joan Armatrading, Michael Johnson, Harry Nilsson, Karla Bonoff, Loudon Wainwright III, Lucy Kaplansky, Randy Newman, and Steve Goodman, to name enough that I’ll leave someone worth mentioning out.
I like the guitar sound of Eric Clapton and the ’70s rock of Derek and the Dominos, The Allman Brothers, Santana, The Band, Little Feat, Dire Straits, Hall & Oates, and Loggins & Messina, as well as the monumental groups, The Beatles, Rolling Stones, Doors and The Who.
I have a weakness for harmony and that drew me to Crosby, Stills, & Nash. Some of my favorite harmony is provided by singing siblings, of which The Roches may take the cake. Los Lonely Boys are siblings whom nail some pretty fine vocal harmony.
There are times that I get a hankering for music out of the jazz category, and Weather Report is probably what best defines the subset of jazz that I find most appealing. Steps Ahead, a jazz fusion project of vibraphonist, Mike Mainieri, is also one of my favorites, especially when Peter Erskine was on drums. I’ve got some Al DiMeola and Larry Carlton in my collection.
I have always had an ear for acoustic guitar. The group, America, knew how to use several together to great effect, as did the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Guitarists Leo Kottke, Norman Blake, David Bromberg, Billy McLaughlin, Bruce Cockburn, Pat Donohue, Laurence Juber, Peter Lang and Rodrigo Y Gabriela come to mind.
I like randomness and that leads to my interest in Wookiefoot, Adrian Belew and his work with The Bears, Hindu Rodeo, Tim Curry, Trey Anastasio, Bela Fleck and the Flecktones, Moxy Fruvous, Robert Randolph & The Family Band, The Duhks, and Pomplamoose. At the same time, I am a fan of classics like Chicago, The Rascals, Lovin’ Spoonful, Three Dog Night, Cat Stevens, Joe Cocker, Leon Russell, Van Morrison, Bruce Springsteen, Fleetwood Mac, Supertramp, Pink Floyd, Steely Dan and the solo work of John Lennon and George Harrison. I don’t think there has ever been a song that Stevie Wonder recorded that I didn’t enjoy. I like some Roxy Music and a fair amount of Talking Heads. I’m a huge fan of Stevie Ray Vaughan. That brings to mind the band, Indigenous, and their guitar star and singer, Mato Nanji.
More recently I have liked what I’ve heard of Ray LaMontagne, Of Montreal, Nickel Creek, The Avett Brothers, and Mumford and Sons. All of them probably reflecting the artists I have listened to for so many years.
For what it is worth, that is a painting of some of my musical interests using just a portion of the colors that make up the sound pallet from which I have been influenced. Time will tell what purpose it might serve… if any beyond what it is on its own here as a random Tuesday post.
Relative Something 