Joey Gibson's Blog

Archive for the ‘music’ Category

I use the last.fm application on my Mac to “scrobble” what songs I’m listening to. This allows me to keep a record of what’s been playing, but it mostly allows me to be a complete exhibitionist and show “the world” what sort of music I like. When I indicate that I “love” a song, that even shows up on my Friendfeed page, for added coverage.

This morning, I happened to be on my last.fm page and I noticed the graph below, showing my top 15 artists by the number of songs I’ve played by them.

Pretty interesting, eh? I’ve always had diverse musical tastes, but Frank is still the man. If you go to my page, the little arrow icon indicates that you can listen to some of that artist’s work. Shame on them for not having anything by Eilen Jewell!

If you watched Idol last week, you were treated to a bunch of mediocre renditions of classic Motown songs, plus a stunningly beautiful re-imagining of Smokey Robinson’s “Tracks of My Tears.” Adam Lambert is the one who pulled off that coup. He sang with an acoustic guitar, upright bass and slapboard-drum-type-thing, and it was so tender and gorgeous and moving. If he continues with performances like that and his brilliant reworking of “Ring of Fire,” he’s going to go all the way.

Ryan Seacrest makes a point of saying that you can buy recordings of the contestants’ performances on iTunes, so I tried to do just that last Thursday. Unfortunately, last week’s performances weren’t available yet. I tried again this morning and they were. But what they are selling is not what you heard on the show. I went directly to the link for Adam’s “Tracks Of My Tears” and when I previewed it… WTF?!? Gone is the simple rhythm section and Adam’s tender vocals. Instead, you get Adam doing karaoke vocals over the original recording’s instrumentals. That is not what I wanted in the song, and given the comments from 587 other fans, not what most people want. Idol pulled this same switcheroo last year with Jason Castro’s performance of Brudda Iz’s “Somewhere Over the Rainbow.” In Jason’s case, however, the tenderness of his singing and his ukulele playing were left intact and you couldn’t really tell it was not the same performance that you saw on the show.

The people who are really upset are those who prepaid for the song. I know I would be too. This should serve as a cautionary tale to anyone who is thinking of preordering any Idol performances in the future. There’s no way I’d pay in advance for anything from Idol now.

By the way, if you’re technically inclined, you can buy the video of his performance that was so beautiful and then rip the audio track into its own mp3 file. That’s what I’m going to do. But you shouldn’t have to do this. Idol should be selling what we heard on the show, not a studio do-over. I don’t have a problem with them also selling the studio do-over, but what people want and expect to get is what they heard on the show.

I don’t usually believe it when I see emails or blog postings saying that for everyone who posts/forwards this email/blog posting that Company X will donate $Y to Charity Z.

But this one is for real.

The lovely Neko Case, and Anti- records are giving $5 to Best Friends Animal Society every time someone posts her new song on their blog. I loves me some Neko Case, so here it is. And if you have a blog, follow these directions to post it yourself. I like the song, BTW.

03/06/2009 Update: The player plugin was popping up errors on some browsers, so I removed it. If you want to hear the song, use one of the links above, or go buy the album. It’s great.

Yesterday was a good day for me on several fronts. Let me tell you them.

First, whilst searching for various things in the iTunes store, I saw that Metallica had released their new album, Death Magnetic. I had bought the first single, My Apocalypse, a couple of weeks ago when it came out, and I was excited that Metallica might be good again. I was a Metallica fan from way back in the 80’s. I loved, loved, loved every album up to and including …And Justice For All. I didn’t like “the black album” at all for several years, but then it grew on me. I thought everything after that, starting with Load, sucked out loud. I listened to the samples of the new album and immediately clicked the “Add to Cart” button. I’ve listened to the whole album about 5 times now, and it’s playing again as I write this. This album is full of awesome. It’s fast and heavy with glorious Kirk Hammett guitar solos throughout. If you liked “old” Metallica, you will love this album. Buy it. Memorize it. Love it. Standout songs include “My Apocalypse,” “Broken, Beaten & Scarred,” “The Judas Kiss” and “All Nightmare Long.” 

I was also happy to see that iTunes had finally added 0 + 2 = 1 by the very strange band NoMeansNo. I had this as a cassette, back when it was originally released, but I haven’t been able to find it in any format since. iTunes had one or two NoMeansNo records, but not this one. I have been checking periodically, but they never had it. Until yesterday. I’ve listened to it twice since buying it. It’s heavy and a bit odd, but very good. “0 + 2 = 1″ and “The Valley Of the Blind” are the best songs on the record.

And if that weren’t enough musical goodness, Dar Williams’ new album, Promised Land, was also available. I think this is one of her best albums ever. I have her entire catalog, and this album has already moved to the top of the list for me. It has her signature lyrical twists, and it’s quite upbeat, with beautiful melodies. I’ve only listened to it twice since buying it, but it’s really good. My favorite songs, so far, are “It’s Alright,” “Buzzer” and “Troubled Times.”

Yes, I have eclectic musical tastes.

Next, as anyone with an iPhone knows, Apple released iPhone OS 2.1 yesterday. I was really looking forward to this update because OS 2.0.2 had lots (and lots) of problems and annoyances. The biggest problem I had was with how long it took to backup the phone. Every time I plugged it into my Mac, it would easily take over an hour to do a full sync. That’s absurd. I have less than 2 gigabytes of stuff on the iPhone and it took one-hour+. I have 60 gigabytes of stuff on my iPhone, and a sync never takes more than a few minutes. The other major annoyances were a terrible lag when using the onscreen keyboard, and the fact that when you updated an application, it didn’t stay where you put it, instead moving to the first available open spot. Not good. 

I’m very happy to report that iPhone OS 2.1 has fixed these problems, for me, anyway. A full sync is taking around five minutes, which is completely reasonable. The keyboard feels responsive, and after updating applications, they stay where I put them. Bravo, Apple. Keep the goodness coming, KTHX.

And finally, the first two discs of season 3 of Weeds arrived from Netflix. I watched the first three episodes last night, staying up far, far too late in the process. Damn, I love this show, even though I know I shouldn’t like it, if you know what I mean.

After Apple announced iTunes 8 yesterday, I downloaded and installed it, eager to see the new “Genius” feature. This feature had been rumored to be similar to Pandora, the wonderful service that finds you more music based on what you already like and don’t like. In actuality, Genius has two parts. The first is the “Genius Sidebar” which shows you songs from the iTunes store that “match” or in some way go with the songs currently selected in your library. The second part generates playlists based on a song selection. You select a song, click the Genius button, and it generates a playlist of songs from your music library.

Since I have such varied tastes in music, I decided to give the sidebar a whirl. I selected “Rock This Town” by Stray Cats and checked my results. Expecting to see other rockabilly bands, I was a bit surprised to see the top three results:

1. The Romantics: What I Like About You
2. Kiss: Strutter
3. Mötley Crüe: Shout At the Devil

I guess they went with 80’s bands instead. The rest of the list included Billy Idol, Jane’s Addiction, Cheap Trick, and others whose heyday was in the 80’s.

I then selected “You and Me and Rainbows” by The Tear Garden. I was shocked to see the top recommendation was a song by Jessica Simpson, but then I saw the text at the top saying that they couldn’t find anything based on that song, but here’s the list of top songs at the iTunes store right now. Reassured that the Genius was not a moron, I carried on.

I then selected “Sixteen Tons” by Tennessee Ernie Ford. Genius did a good job with this one. 

1. Jimmy Dean: Big Bad John
2. Marty Robbins: El Paso
3. Hank Williams: Your Cheatin’ Heart
4. Roger Miller: Dang Me

In this case, not only did it match the generation, but it also matched the genre and feel of the song pretty well.

I then tried several Tom Waits songs. Most of the results involved Neil Young, Tom Petty and Nick Cave, none of whom I like. Based strictly on which songs I was picking, I don’t think the matches were very good. You could argue that the bands gained fame at roughly the same time, but Tom Waits’ style(s) don’t really match with the recommendations, in my opinion.

Pressing on, I selected “Steppin’ Out With My Baby” by Tony Bennett. The top recommendations were:

1. Fred Astaire: Puttin’ On The Ritz
2. Frank Sinatra: Nice ‘n’ Easy
3. Bobby Darin: Call Me Irresponsible
4. Ella Fitzgerald: Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off

Good selections. What I like most about the first one is that this Tony Bennett album was a collection of songs made famous by Fred Astaire. Thus, having an Astaire song as the first hit seems very genius-like.

Next, I selected “Quicksand” by Abdel Wright, a Jamaican singer who does mostly folksy, protesty songs. I don’t understand the results from Genius, which included Maia Sharp, North Mississippi Allstars and Kyle Riabko. The Duhks were also included with a cover of Sting’s “Love Is the Seventh Wave.” None of these songs/artists share a style with Wright, and I didn’t detect any degree of protest in the thirty second clips. Curious.

Finally, I tried two songs by Afro Celt Sound System: “Deep Channel” and “Lovers of Light.” The results for “Deep Channel” were mostly Indian-influenced groups, which don’t really fit, but weren’t awful. The results for “Lovers of Light” were much better, including a song by Baka Beyond, which was very similar musically. These results rather impressed me, as this band bends and blends styles.

So far it’s hit or miss with Genius. I haven’t used the playlist-generation feature much yet. At this moment I’m listening to a Genius-generated playlist based on “Deep Channel” and I’m not too sure about these results. 

Click to see larger image

Some of the results seem OK, but not all. I can only assume that as more people use Genius, the results will get better. For now, if you’re looking for recommendations, you should probably rely more on Pandora than Genius.

On Idol last night, Jason Castro announced that he was going to sing ‘Over the Rainbow,’ as performed by Brudda Iz. When I heard that, I thought, ‘OK, this is either going to be insanely great, or really awful.’ As it turned out, it was unbelievably great. He captured the essence of Iz’s version, but he owned it, too. And he played the ukulele! I was almost speechless when he finished. He got praise from all three judges, which he richly deserved.

You can buy Jason’s version of the song from iTunes, which I just did. I’m on my second listen right now. Wow.

I really wanted to see The Reverend Horton Heat, one of the best rockabilly (psychobilly) bands around, tonight in Atlanta. Unfortunately, there were two major “cons” against the show that made me decide against it.

First, the show is tonight at The Tabernacle in Atlanta which, as I’ve complained before makes every band that plays there sound awful. Second, they have two opening bands. One is Hank III, the grandson of the legendary Hank Williams. Not interested. The other opening band is Nashville Pussy who I had the misfortune of seeing a few years ago when they opened for Motörhead. I have absolutely no desire to see those losers again. So I’m going to save my money, stay home and just listen to the Reverend’s records.

Two points to any reader who spotted the title of this blog entry as an homage to the Reverend’s second album The Full-Custom Gospel Sounds of the Reverend Horton Heat, which happens to be my favorite of the band’s records.

If you like rockabilly and/or punk, check them out. Though not with kids around. They aren’t really a kid-friendly band.

I went to see Neko Case last night at The Tabernacle in Atlanta. She sounded great, vocally, but I was reminded again of the reasons why I hate going to shows at the Tabernacle.

• It’s in downtown Atlanta.
• They took a beautiful, old church and desecrated it.
• The acoustics suck. Not just “suck,” but “completely, totally, royally suck.”
• It’s hot as hell inside.
• The smoking lounge is in the basement, directly below the main performance hall. Guess where all that disgusting smoke goes. Remember, smoke rises.
• The sound engineers believe all the attendees are deaf, and thus turn all the soundboard knobs to 11.
• The acoustics suck. Mightily. (Yes, I know this is on the list twice.)

I said that Neko sounded good, but I need to clarify that. I could tell that the notes were correct as she sang, but had I not known the words to her songs, I would have no clue what she was saying. This goes back to the acoustics sucking, and all the soundboard knobs being turned to 11. And when Neko was talking, I have no idea what she was saying. She and Kelly Hogan made some comment about Chik-Fil-A and Kelly said something about Neko’s “wicked axe” but that was all I could make out. The sound was loud and overlapping (that’s the best word I can think of to describe it) and it was nearly impossible, once you added in crowd noise, to understand what she was saying.

I really don’t like going to shows there.

It’s just after midnight on June 26. Kelly Willis‘ new album, Translated From Love was just made available on the iTMS, and since I pre-ordered it, it was a-waiting for me to download it. Oh, yeah. I’m four songs into it, and it’s really good. I have all of Kelly’s stuff, but the last two, Easy and What I Deserve, have been my favorites. Based on what I’ve heard so far, they may have some competition with this album.

Kelly’s voice is just as smooth and luscious as always. She has that Austin twang, and her music is about as far as you can get from the “pop country” that passes for C&W these days. Kelly, Mindy Smith and Neko Case are my favorite ladies. You should check them out.

Kelly is coming to Atlanta on July 7! I went ahead and bought my ticket the other day, after I got hosed on the Mindy Smith show selling out. I was not pleased about that. I love both these ladies’ music, and I really wanted to see Mindy. Oh well, at least I’m assured of seeing Kelly.

I’m sitting here working while listening to my latest purchases for iTunes (curse them!) and I was just struck by an abrupt change in style. I have very eclectic musical tastes, so buying disparate styles at one time is not unusual for me. But sometimes when listening, I get caught off guard.

I started out today with Oingo Boingo’s “Dead Man’s Party,” a classic. Next in line was the lovely Sara Evans doing a Dwight Yokam song. Next came the latest single from Liz Phair, which is quite good. OK, so far. Next was some old Eric Clapton and some even older Cream. A quick track by the one and only Lemmy Kilmister, singer/bassist for Motörhead, with an old KISS song. Then into a fairly long stretch with the entire Haus der Lüge album by the great Einstürzende Neubauten. That record lasted 45 minutes or so. Now here’s where the abrupt change occurs. The last Neubauten track ends and on comes… wait for it… “Looking for Love (in All the Wrong Places)” by Johnny Lee. I was jarred from my trance by that one…

It’s 00:17 and I’m listening to the first Travelling Wilburys record, which came out in 1988. I bought it then and still have the CD. I listen to it occasionally, and I’m always struck by how good the music is on it. I’m struck because I never liked the music of any of the Wilburys individually. It’s just a really good collaboration where all the parts work together to, IMO, create something better than the parts themselves. That doesn’t happen all that often. Most “supergroups” that put out records pretty much suck.

Speaking of rocking as I was a moment ago, I have to plug Only Way to Know for Sure by Rollins Band. I’ve been a huge fan of Henry Rollins since his Black Flag days. I saw him in Atlanta (at the now-dead Metroplex) on his first tour after going solo, way back about 1988. Anyway, his most recent record is a live recording from Chicago that is excellent. I’m sitting here working with this record blasting from my speakers. It’s good work music. Loud, fast and heavy. Very nice.

If you’re a fan of Hawaiian music, then you know who I’m talking about. If not, you should become acquainted with Brudda Iz as quickly as possible. Actually, you may already be familiar with his music and not realize it.

“Brudda Iz” was a man called Israel Kamakawiwo`ole. He was a very large man, with the voice of an angel. He did a medley of Somewhere Over the Rainbow and What a Wonderful World that is an extremely beautiful thing to hear. The only instruments were his voice and his ukulele. The song has been used in lots of commercials, and you can hear the part you’d be familiar with by clicking here.

I remember when I finally discovered who sang this song. I was at a Borders browsing the international music section, looking for a Kate Rusby record, when I noticed that they had one of Iz’s records on a listening station. After reading the staff recommendation to listen to the medley, I turned it on and was instantly met with the song from “that commercial” that would get into my mind and not go away. I don’t know why I didn’t buy the record that day, but I didn’t.

Anyway, several of his records are on iTunes now, and I bought his 1993 record called Facing Future two days ago. I’ve listened to Somewhere Over the Rainbow many, many times since then. My son loves it, too. What’s kind of funny is that he does a cover of John Denver’s “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” though customized for Hawaii as opposed to West Virginia.

Sadly, Brudda Iz died in 1997 at the way-too-young age of 38. I found this article and this one in the Honolulu Star-Bulletin covering his death and memorial service. The second article says that while his body way lying in state in the capitol rotunda, 10,000 people filed past to pay their respects.

Anyone who knows me knows that I am constantly listening to music. All the time; working, playing, sleeping… well, maybe not sleeping. But I have music going all the time. I just looked at the counts in my WinAmp music library, and here’s what I saw:

Artists:	557
Albums:	868
Songs:	10,728

That includes all my ripped MP3 and Ogg files, plus those songs I’ve purchased at iTunes and live concert files in FLAC, SHN and Monkey Audio formats. That’s a heck of a lot of music. I didn’t realize just how much I had.

Just this morning, I was listening to a random selection of songs, and several times a song would start playing and I had no idea what/who it was. And that’s kind of funny.

Two days ago a friend turned me on to AudioScrobbler, which is sort of a social network for music lovers. You sign up, download a plugin for the audio player of your choice, then start listening to music like you normally do. It will report what you’re listening to and aggregate you with everyone else. You can then link to other people who listen to the same stuff and see what else they listen to. This is a great way to find bands you didn’t know about, but that are similar to bands you already listen to. If you’re interested, my page is here.

While being honored by the Country Radio Broadcaster, Dolly had this to say

I think of radio as a great lover. You were great to me. You bought me a lot of nice things. Then you dumped my ass for younger women.

She’s a tough old broad, eh? Read the rest.

I wrote a pipe tune last weekend called “Lament for South Asia” that was inspired by the continuing images of death and destruction caused by the tsunami. The number of people who have been killed is staggering. I can hardly wrap my mind around such a tragedy. This tune started in my head while lying in bed last Thursday night. I wrote the bulk of it on Friday, then finished it up on Saturday. The recording of it was “interesting” since I have very lousy recording gear… Anyway, I don’t claim that this is the greatest pipe tune ever written, but I’m quite pleased with it. If you are interested in hearing/playing it, use the following links:

• Sheet music in PDF format.
• Sheet music in PNG format.
• Computer-generated MIDI rendering. This is a “recording” of the tune, played by my computer.
• MP3 of me playing the tune on a set of Walsh Shuttle Pipes.

All I ask is that if you decide to perform it, give me credit for writing it and make a donation to disaster relief in South Asia.

Also, any feedback (either comments posted here, or private emails) are welcome.

Update (01/09/2005): Someone far more skilled in the musical arts than I realized, as I did, that this tune just didn’t feel like a 5/4, but something in triple meter. I tried several variations (3/4, 6/8, 12/8) but couldn’t manage to get all the notes to fit. To quote the king From Amadeus, there were simply “too many notes.” Well, this far more skilled person, Scott McClellan, transcribed the audio of my playing, and sent me a wonderfully rendered transcript in 6/8. It does fit! After seeing what he did, and playing it just to verify, I reworked my ABC source file, and re-rendered the PDF and PNG files. The links above now point to the new-and-improved versions. Thanks, Scott.

I’m sitting here in my hotel room, trying to find something on tv when I end up on the Drew Carey show. All of a sudden, who should be playing live, but Motörhead! I love those guys! I remember the first time I ever saw Motörhead was on an episode of The Young Ones. They used to have a band play every episode, and on this particular one, I heard “Ace of Spades” for the first time. I was hooked. Ooo yah! I saw them live a few years ago in Atlanta. They were great, but the three opening bands sucked.

Tammy and I just got back from seeing Dervish at the Variety Playhouse and all I can say is that if they come to a town within 100 miles of your house go see them!!! I’ve been waiting to see them for over 10 years now and finally they come to Atlanta. What an awesome show. The entire group, all seven of them, were extremely dynamic. They are tight and play some extremely fast, yet extremely musical, jigs and reels. Cathy Jordan is a lovely woman with a beautiful voice and typical Celtic sense of humor. Her introductions and occasional jokes were a highlight of the evening.

I took a pocketful of money with me to pick up the remaining Dervish records to complete my collection. I bought Midsummer’s Night, which I’ve been unable to find in America for the last 4 years (possibly because of it’s… umm… interesting cover…) and their latest record Spirit. Most of the sets they did tonight were from Spirit, but they did a bunch of older stuff too, much to my delight! So, again, if they come anywhere near you, go see them!

That picture is far from being the best photo in the world, but I took it from a table, not 5 feet from the band, with my LG VX6000 cameraphone.

Well, my second (again) piping lesson came off pretty well tonight. I say ‘pretty well’ because it’s been one month since the last lesson and very little practice was had during the Christmas and New Year’s season. I spent about an hour Sunday evening practicing until my lips were so weak I couldn’t keep a seal on the chanter. It was horrible… I had spit running down the length of the chanter, making for a slippery playing experience. It was disgusting. Anyway, I practiced a bit tonight before heading out to John’s house, which was sort of dumb because I started having the same lip failure even before I left the house. As a contingency I took along my Shuttle Pipes in case I suffered catastrophic lip failure whilst at my lesson. I am happy to report that no such failure occurred.

What did occur was me getting my ass kicked by this passage:

Most of the lesson went fairly well, but we spent the last 15 minutes working on just that one damnable passage. My fingers just went all wonky when I came to those two measures and refused to play properly nine times out of eleven. The rest of the tune was very nearly perfect, but not those two spawn-of-Satan measures. O no. Very frustrating, indeed. Back when I was taking lessons five years ago I always had problems with this bit, so this really isn’t anything new. That doesn’t make it any less aggravating.

Ah well, I’ve got two whole weeks to work on it and get it polished up. Now I just need to practice during those two weeks, and not wait until the night before my lesson…

As a rule I don’t like country music. I love bluegrass, but not country. As a rule. But I love and adore Sara Evans and Martina McBride. Anyway, while I love these ladies and their music, I do have to ask: is it a written law somewhere that to participate in the ‘country music scene’ you have to sing songs with deplorable grammar? Yes, I’m a certified Grammar Nazi™ and this annoys me. Sara and Martina both have lovely voices and sing great songs, but they are peppered with lines like “Don’t need no copy of Vogue magazine,” “He don’t give a damn,” and “A town that I ain’t heard of.” This is all too common in country music, not just with these two. It’s all over the place.

But the question is: Why? Are there classes available in Nashville to unlearn proper grammar rules for prospective song writers and singers, and if so, how many credit hours are required in ‘Hillbilly Grammar 101′ in order to get a record deal? Is there an exam given by the country record labels before they let someone record to ensure they don’t come off sounding like British nobility? Clearly they don’t want something like “Righto! I do not require a copy of Vogue Magazine,” “He does not give a damn,” or “Gadzooks! A town the likes of which I’ve never heard,” but would it kill these people to use proper grammar? There are hundreds of perfectly delightful songs that get marred by stupid grammar choices. Alas.