all your taste is in your mouth

The Christmas CDs — guilty pleasure or not so much?

Now that we’ve all had a chance to listen to the latest set of Christmas CDs, why don’t we share our opinions on each disk? I was thinking, from each disk, we could pick the least guilty (”hey, I really like that song — you shouldn’t feel guilty about liking it”), the most guilty (”I just can’t listen to that one — sorry”), and maybe one other observation, like, on Carl’s CD, the version of that Bread song is not the one we all know and remember — maybe it’s a victim of the long feud between David Gates and James Griffin. I’ll post my comments on Friday or Saturday — I encourage/challenge you all to do the same.

Todd update

When I’m sleeping in on a Sunday morning, I usually try to see who is performing on Private Sessions on A&E. This past Sunday, Hall and Oates were on, and they mentioned this website where folks come to Daryl Hall’s house for a bit of drink, a bit of food and some music. Now, I know Daryl’s not the most popular guy, but the premise seems pretty good, and he’s had some great folks on, including, last month, Mr. Rundgren. They made their own sausages from scratch, they drank martinis, and they played some excellent music (it’s most of the Hall and Oates band, except for Oates). They did a bunch of Todd stuff, including Can We Still Be Friends, which I’ve never actually seen him perform in all the shows we’ve seen, one Hall and Oates song, and a couple of soul classics — Expressway of Your Heart and the Average White Band’s You Got It. He’s also done a session with Nick Lowe, which I haven’t checked out yet. The website is www.livefromdarylshouse.com — give it a once over.

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U2 at Giants Stadium (much belated sorry)

Yeah, yeah….it’s about one month late…sue me.   ( I posted the video now too )

Also, sorry for the “report” style.  I’ve been doing too much of this at work and my brain doesn’t work otherwise right now.

Opening Act:

Muse –  After I bought the tickets (back in March) and I knew who would open for them, I downloaded a bunch of their songs so I’d be at least a little familiar.  It worked out because there wasn’t a song they played that I hadn’t heard.  They were very good live and seriously rocked the stadium.  Only problem they had was either the mixing of the singer’s mike or his poor use of it, because the lyrics were terribly garbled or drowned out for most of the songs.  But they were good all the same.

U2:

Bowie’s “Space Oddity” was played to announce that they were about to come out….and everybody in the stadium got the message.  Here was their set and…

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CD Review- Green Day

Here it is…The first official CD review…and I was right in my initial response to what my reviews would be like. Green Day’s new CD “21st Century Breakdown” completely bites. I don’t know if they tried to make a concept CD without a concept, or just completely forgot what they were doing while recording, but this lame POS (short for piece of ….) couldn’t suck more. I would have rather had producer Butch Vig put out a new Garbage CD than have to listen to this “garbage”.

There are exactly two good songs out of 18 here, East Jesus Nowhere and Horseshoes and Handgrenades (and not because they drop a few “f” bombs in it). The first single, Know Your Enemy, is ok if you can take the constant repitition. The rest of this CD is lamer than a Kenny G record. There are three ballads on this thing…Does Billie Joe think he is Paul McCartney now? Each one is whinier than the next. He even quotes McCartney in the last one, 21 Guns, using the line “Live and Let Die”. And the chorus to this sounds oddly like Mott the Hoople’s “All the Young Dudes”. UGH!

One other problem…Do they now…

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Are We the World?

Obviously, I have been spending quite a bit of time outside the homeland.  But even before this, I tried to expose myself to music you don’t hear normally – in particular “world music”.  My guess is it is referred to as “world music” because it doesn’t generate from an English speaking country.  However, most countries DO speak English and everyone from Britney to Creed to Bon Jovi sells in every part of the world.

 But “world music” doesn’t sell here.   Granted, I don’t listen to the type of music that sells by the bushel in India or France or Japan.  Most of that is pop music of the ilk I can’t stand – even in my native tongue.  However, there are some amazing discs out there in foreign languages.   Sa Dingding’s “Alive” is a beautiful record sung in five different languages and French singer Anaïs recent album “Love Story” is a really fine piece of pop. Dervish is an Irish band who sings strictly in Gaelic.  I’ve even heard guys rap in Turkish, Arabic and French and it sounds great.   And we hear “world music” everyday!  If you’ve been to Cirque de Soleil you’ve heard it.  If you’ve listened to a soundtrack – say…

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Hell freezes over … again

Is this one of the signs of the apocalypse? First, hell freezes over and now this. I think I always knew Don Henley was a greedy bastard — this confirms it. Needless to say, I will not be attending this conference.

STEVEN LEVITT DELIVERS KEYNOTE AND DON HENLEY PERFORMS Together, SAPPHIRE and the ASUG Annual Conference provide unparalleled business-critical learning opportunities because they combine current, real-world customer experiential education with visionary insight into future SAP application offerings and business strategies.

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Where do you find new music?

Since some of us (and you know who you are) constantly lament the lack of good new music, that begs the question…

Where do you find new music?

For me, it is mostly thru Pandora.com.   I’ve programmed my station at Pandora.com to be music I can listen to while working.  Since I’ve been “teaching” Pandora what music I like for almost 3 years now, it really is very suited to my taste.  I find new new music and old stuff I had never heard before.  But obviously limited by what I have seeded the station with.

I still listen to the radio sometimes.  My favorite stations are the non-commercial WPKN at the University of Bridgeport and the commercial station WEHM in Long Island which is very much an anomaly in commercial radio, just check out one of their playlists.  And every once in a while, I’ll actually hear something on a TV show or movie soundtrack (Once comes to mind) that I like.

I hardly ever try artists I’ve read about or someone else has recommended.    I need to hear an artist for the first time without any preconceived notions.

That’s it for me.  A very small universe to find new music in…

So what am I missing?  Where can you discover…

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What Is It Called?

Here we are – 2009.  Another decade has nearly past.

So – where’s the music?

We just did CDs based on five decades of music.  Each of those decades had a sound that branded it – sometimes more than one.  Almost all of these forms sprang from the Youth of the day.  Some were in protest of the way things were.  Others were protesting the protests.  But all the forms were propelled by the “under 30” crowd.  Created by and for, bought and sold to the young.

The 1960s, of course, basically created music as we know it.  The Beatles, Beach Boys, Dylan and the Stones were basically genres themselves.  Rock (as opposed to rock ‘n roll) and Pop became the terms and offered numerous branches that still thrive today.

The 1970s gave us Glam Rock and Hard Rock (per Led Zepplin and others) and Prog Rock (or Art Rock).  There was the Singer/Songwriter genre and Bubblegum.  Then Disco and Punk toward the end of the decade – each the antithesis of the other.

The 1980s showed Punk move to New Wave.  Corporate Rock (Toto, Foreigner) and Hair Bands were products of MTV and a rebellion against punk and new wave.  The end of the…

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Happy St. Patrick’s Day

One of my favorite Irish tunes…also known as the Humors of Whiskey:

So stick to the cratur’ the best thing in nature
For sinking your sorrows and raising your joys
Oh what moderation gives hope to a nation
Or brings consolation like poteen me boys.

Full lyrics here:

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Evoking fond memories or bad cover band

So, for the first blog entry, I’ve decided to discuss a music topic, one that I hope will generate plenty of “lively” discourse. The topic is bands that continue to tour long after they’ve ceased to be relevant, and whether those bands evoke fond memories of days gone by, or have they become just a bad cover band.

Rolling Stone actually ran an article a few issues back called “The Battle of the B-List Bands” which referred to competing bands touring on the “good name” of former big bands, like L.A. Guns, the Temptations, Guess Who and Asia. The article tried to assess which of the competing bands were truer to the band in its hey-day, either in terms of how many original members were currently touring or which band had more essential members. In some of the examples, there was no contest — of the two touring Asia bands, one has all four original members and the other has a guy who for a while filled in John Wetton’s spot as lead singer. Aptly stated by the writer, “if you have to see Asia, go original”.

This got me thinking of other bands who tour on what might have been a big name…

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