Also picked up

Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash (written by his wife and first recorded and performed by her sister). Pretty easy song and very well known.

Looks like the gig is going to happen.

possible gig coming up

Earthstock at SBU on 20-April. Megachild has played this event a few times. Tonight I worked on two Paul Simon songs: Me & Julio and Homeward Bound. I'm also going to try Folsom Prison Blues by Johnny Cash. One of my Madison bands played this (I think it was Seed Pod 17, with me, Eric and Matt). So it's pretty familiar. These should be popular songs to do.

Postcards From Paradise - Flesh for Lulu

[click on post title for video link]
A lesser known band in the whole Ramones -> Psychedelic Furs-> Jesus and Mary Chain lineage of postpunk with some really great songs is Flesh For Lulu. This song has apparently been covered by quite a few artists since it came out in 1987, including Paul Westerburg. Which seems about right, the guitar chords sound like the chords in a lot of his songs.

Here Come Cowboys - Psychedelic Furs

[Click on post title for link.]
The Furs are a top 5 all time favorite and influence of mine. This is one of my favorites from their Mirror Moves album, when they were in their prime, in terms of both songwriting and producing their sound. Just learned the song too. Surprisingly simple and very easily transposed down into the comfortable area of the uke neck.

Here Comes the Rain Again - Eurythmics

[click on title for video link]
Eurythmics were among the coolest of the wave of early 80s artists that hit MTV in the early days. They have a lot of great song, but this one has always been my favorite. It has the minor - 5th (of the relative major) - 4th chord progression that always gets me as a hook (cf. just about every Steve Nicks song that is any good). Annie Lennox's vocals are second to none. Dave Stewart is just plain cool.

Peanuts - the Police

[click on title for link] One of the hoppier tunes off their 1978 debut album, Outlandos d'Amour. Live footage of the Police is always informative for players. They get a lot done for a trio.

Apples

I grew up eating an apple a day, probably from age 5 or so to age 15. My grandparents had a couple of small apple orchards and we ended up having apples all winter. The varieties I remember were: macs, romes, northern spies, 20 ounce (a really good tasting cooking variety), greenings (another cooking variety), yellow and red delicious. The varieties in the stores now don't resemble these very much and in many ways are superior. More flavor. Brown a lot slower. I'm particularly impressed by Braeburns and Galas, especially since these are among the least expensive varieties.
This time of year we were reduced to wrinkled up yellow delicious (which were still quite sweet) or maybe some spies (which have a very nice taste) or romes (my least favorite - hard on the outside, grainy and not much flavor in the flesh). The more recent varieties really store excellently.
BTW, the red and yellow delicious that we had back then are nothing like what goes by those names today. I think there is huge variety in that strain (or name appropriation).

New (re)learns

Worked on Substitute (the Who) and Magnet and Steel (Walter Egan) this evening. Both were songs I checked out in the very early uke days last fall, before I was yet doing much with the instrument.

Into The Groove - Madonna

My all time favorite Madonna song. IIRC it was featured in Desperately Seeking Susan, which I like a lot, but more because of Rosanna Arquette than Madonna.

Flesh For Fantasy - Billy Idol

This is one of several songs of his that I've always liked a lot. This live version gives an indication of how important the studio was in the production and impact of the album tracks. He sounds very vulnerable when it's just him and the guitar. The crowd for this MTV gig wasn't exclusively paying attention to the music. Must have been a party for something.

The Glamorous Life - Sheila E

A unique and amazingly talented performer. This live performance is scintillating. Beyond that, for me there is a mystique around this 1984 song and others of its time because I wasn't listening to top 40 at the time yet there were some really really great pop songs emerging. There's an abstractness about this particular song that I've always found appealing. It's almost like the song was wasted on most of the ears it hit. Ephemerality is a key character of most pop. They didn't know what they had there.

Piano in The Dark - Brenda Russell

I don't know any of her other material but this is a brilliant song. B part into C part is about as hooky as a hook can get. It's all about the hooks.

Night Ranger

This 80s band is still loved by many, no doubt, but is also a bit senamentalized as lightweight kitsch by some. Probably both because of their name and because of a single song, the accessible but sort of strange Sister Christian. Somewhat unfortunate that this is what they are remembered for. Their breakthough hit Don't Tell Me You Love Me is really great and is even a bit proggy in places. And their lesser known hit Sentamental Street (couldn't find good video) is also a really nice song.

Sine qua non

Are misogyny and sexual hang-ups the sine qua non's of all fundamentalist religion? Sure seems that way.

Cyndi Lauper - All Through The Night

Another great song by Cyndi Lauper. When this genre of 80s songs came out I was busy transitioning from hard rock to college radio/alternative music. I was not attracted to top 40, didn't really take time to listen to the songs, didn't take them seriously. It's sort of a personality trat of mine that I tend to discover things many years after they were popular and have been long abandoned by the mainstream culture.

Shooting Shark - Blue Oyster Cult

My all time favorite blue Oyster Cult song. From 1983's underrated The Revolution By Night album. Very atmospheric. Great chord progression. Awesome vocal.

Time After Time - Cyndi Lauper

A classic pop song from a very classy and talented artist of the 80s. Started learning it tonight. Took a bit of listening and trial and error to get all the changes.

Got some practice in yesterday

With the plugged in baritone uke setup in my office. Getting more use to it. Had the effects box working and played with settings on it and the amp. Tightened the end screws on the tuning knobs for the two high strings. Seemed to stay tuned better after that.

another new learn

Unhappy Birthday by the Smiths.
Love this song. Dark like all the rest of their stuff. But a heck of a fun song to sing. And play.

Crush - Jennifer Paige

I've always loved this song, from 1998. Chord progression rocks. Separate hooks in verse and chorus. I have a thing for high, breathy female vocals and Paige is killer throughout, the soul is right there. Don't think much of the video but Paige has the dark eyes with blonde hair contrast going, which hooks me as well.

low hanging fruit

Currently searching for easy to learn songs by the Replacements. Let's see if I can find anything.

Lola

After an aborted attempt a few weeks ago, I finally learned it tonight. I was telling Shian-Ren and Ru-Jun about Al Yankovic's "Yoda" version of this song and got the lyrics to both of them. It's a hard song, with three distinct parts that take me all over the fretboard the way the instrument is tuned and the way I do chords. I tried three different transpositions and settled on the middle one of those.

I love this TV version of the Kinks "Lola"

Here is "Yoda" by Al Yankovic

new learns

"Alsatian Cousin" - Morrissey
"The Gambler" - Kenny Rogers
"The Zoo" - Scorpions

The first and third are long time favorites of mine. The second is a classic song I grew up with and a lot of people know (easy to play too; even with the key change).

How it went

Antarctica - didn't play; was running short on time and confidence
Country Roads - went well; opened the set with it; a keeper
Last of the Famous IPs - good, need to slow it down though
Breakdown - good but short
American Girl - ditto; could have been sharper
Smoke on the Water - hard to do the guitar lick consistently while performing live; closed the set with it; may not actually be a keeper
Karma Chameleon - did not play; very underconfident about this one
Smells Like Teen Spirit - went pretty well, one of the highlights; got good response
Ghost Riders in the Sky - made some mistakes, hard to pull off without messing up lyrics
Roxanne - the other highlight of the set; people liked it
Free Bird - there was a request, but my mind was blanking, didn't attempt it

Gig went OK

The Megachild set went well. I'll miss playing with Pat and Rocio. Rocio's new band, which she is fronting, is pretty good. The TralfazWizard Experience set was OK but very rough around the edges. I'll have more to say about it in future posts.

gig tomorrow

The Tralfaz Wizard Experience gets off the ground tomorrow night opening for Megachild and Electric Platypus at the E&E retreat afterparty. The songs are ready give or take some lyrics I have a mental block issue with. The hardest thing will be getting used to the acoustic-electric, which has a much higher action. And playing it through the effects and amp. And playing and singing into a mic. Haven't done that before. OK, this will be pretty challenging. Hopefully I can still relax and have fun with the songs.

A half step too high

The third string on my new acoustic-electric ukulele just would not stay at Bb. I even tried changing to a wound metal string instead on a nylon one but the same thing happened. So I took all four strings down one half step. The string seems to hold OK there. I'm now playing all my songs a half step lower because of this change (I also made the change on my acoustic one at home). This actually impoves my ability to sing a few songs and doesn't seem to harm the others.

Simone - Thomas Dolby

Apparently Thomas Dolby had a new album out last year. I ran across this advance video and gave it my first listen. Jazzy, Latin rhythm, laid back. With the visuals, both rollicking and retro, as he is wont to be from the beginning. Very nice.

Destination Unknown - Missing Persons

Got really into Missing Persons in early 1989 in my last semester of college even though their main work was from the early part of that decade. This performance is a lip-sync of Destination Unknown for German TV.

Free Bird

Some fool will be calling for this Saturday night, so I went ahead and learned it. Pretty simple, but couldn't pick it up from just listening - it has a prominent D chord which makes it too low for my baritone uke, which only goes down to F. So I picked up the chords from a guitar tab site and transposed it down a bit so I'm not going way up on the neck to get that chord.

It's of course a tremendously boring song to listen to. Lynyrd Skynyrd has a bunch of much better songs, such as Gimme Three Steps and I Know a Little, to name just a couple.

Antarctica - Men Without Hats

My version of this song is pretty different (no synth lead, but I manage to get the menacing relative minor to major change in the rhythm guitar/bass down pretty well). The lyric sites don't agree on the lyrics to this song at all and there are a lot of propagated errors. This is a fun song to play. Will be interesting to see how it flies in the set. Pretty cryptic song that not a lot of people have even heard before.

Cloudburst at Shingle Street - Thomas Dolby

(click on entry title above for link to song on Youtube)

One of my favorite unconventional pop songs ever. Lyrics below. The last two lines have been iconic in my mind for over half my life (even with an ever-changing definition of "you"; a lot of the time there was no "you")

We climb the cliffs
And hang from trees
Wrap the rocks and pave the beach
State of shock at flick of switch

(mindless) into the cloudburst overhead
I wanna get my face wet
It's been buried in the sand for years
(headlong) into the cloudburst naked
There's really no escaping it
There's gonna be a cloudburst here.

Come out of your shell
And look at the sea
It may be just as well
You stayed here with me
Private hell at turn of a key

(blindly) into the cloudburst overhead
I wanna get my face wet
It's been buried in these hands for years
(mindless) into the cloudburst naked
There's really no escaping it
There's gonna be a cloudburst here

And it's dawning on me
I've been a cork in the ocean, been bobbing in the North Sea
Then take this vest of plaster, these boots of concrete
And mark them down as surplus, return to Mulberry...
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
Cloudburst at Shingle Street
When I was small I was in love in love with everything
Now there's only you

Flying North - Thomas Dolby

Somewhat continuing in the futurist dystopia theme, although Dolby always adds a decidedly retro-tech flavor, this song is one of my favorites off The Golden Age of Wireless. (lyrics in the screen shot)

My solo act

I'm naming my solo act The Tralfaz Wizard Experience. First gig is 17-Mar E&E retreat afterparty.

Revised set list

Antarctica
Country Roads
Last of the Famous IPs
Breakdown
American Girl
Smoke on the Water
Karma Chameleon
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Ghost Riders in the Sky
Roxanne

Someone will proably yell for Freebird. I wish that cliche involved one of the Lynyrd Skynyrd songs that was actually interesting.

Blue Flower - Pale Saints

In the 90s I went for shoegaze/dream pop in a big way. Pale Saints were one of the main artists in that genre on college radio. Here's Blue Flower. Would have been great to see them live.

Thirty Frames a Second - Simple Minds

One of my major influences as a band, their early stuff is relatively unknown. This song has that futurist dystopic vibe I've been talking about. Machine like rhythm section pumping drone throughout. The vocal is either trying to escape robothood or embracing it it, maybe both.

Heaven (Must Be There) - Eurogliders

This was the only US hit by this Australian band (1984). Very jaunty and bright with a nice vocal. Still have the 45 rpm record of this around somewhere.

Sleep (is For Everyone) - Sad Lovers and Giants

I really love these guys. Very atmospheric. Bleak but melodious. Pretty clearly Joy Division/early New Order/ early Cure influenced. Here's Sleep (is For Everyone) from 1989. Pretty sure it's about heroin, like a lot of great songs, sadly.

Added to the set

Karma Chamelion by Culture Club. Was not into them back in the day. Those were my hard rock days, before I shifted to alt/college rock via a quick journey through pop. But huge respect for a lot of these songs now. Virtually all pop was throw-away in the 80s. But a good fraction is worth revisiting. My favorite Culture Club song (I don't know many) is Miss Me Blind, but that one is ill-suited for a solo uke/singing rendition.

Learning songs

Learning songs, especially for playing them solo, is a great way to study the basics of songwriting in detail. I'm learning and appreciating a great deal about the artists' aesthetics in the songs I've been learning.

Blue Kiss - Jane Wiedlin

The Go-Go's were amazing and Jane Wiedlin was always my favorite Go-Go.

Blue Kiss

Possible set list

On 17-Mar for the departmental retreat party, I'll be opening up for Megachild and Rocio's new band (calling themselves Electric Platypus at the moment). I'll have a short set. Here's what I am thinking so far:
Ghost Riders in the Sky
American Girl
Straight Into Darkness
Roxanne
Smells Like Teen Spirit
Smoke on the Water
Antarctica
Last of the Famous International Playboys

Young Boys - 805

(I always thought it was Young Boy singular but the poster on Youtube seems to be in the know about the band and posted it as Boys.)
A period piece from 1982 from Syracuse band 805. I really like this song. Today we would describe it as progressive or "proggy", in this case because of its highly precise orchestration, especially in the instrumental section. Never saw these guys live. I was too young. But there were a lot of bands in western NY that were trying to achieve this kind of sound. Songs like this had to be pulled off exactly the same way every performance and every fan of progressive bands like this (supreme example = Rush) knew every single lick of every beat and measure of the song and expected no alterations. Very interesting looking back on this sound and era.

Roxanne - Police

Learned it tonight.
One of the most recognizable of their early songs. I'll have to sing it an octave lower than Sting. Should be a good one for gigging.

Russian Christmas Music - Alfred Reed

Of all the music I played in band in junior high and high school, this was one of the only pieces that at the time I found to be sublime. And it took a long time of playing it (it was a pretty challenging piece for that level) to appreciate it. I played chimes and tympani, which were at different ends of the percussion section, so I was going back and forth a bit. But there was also a lot of time to just sit and listen. The atmosphere is definitely wintry. Still sounds quite epic, actually.

Smells Like Teen Spirit

Never was much into Tori Amos or Nirvana. But I've always really loved this Tori Amos cover of Smells Like Teen Spirit, which was a B-side of one of her singles. Much better than the original, in my opinion.
I tried this song on the uke last night. Looks like a keeper. However, now that I know what the lyrics are, I'm underwhelmed by them.

Leipzig - Thomas Dolby

Great little obscure Thomas Dolby song from 1981. Has his signature lonely, techno-alienation, atmospherics. The chorus makes it. Great chords. Sweet transitional synth flourishes against a droning bass line.

Magnificent Seven - The Clash

One of my favorite Clash tracks, from 1981.
This TV performance is at a breakneck pace that must have been difficult to pull off. Emphasized by the jumpy, low quality video. The vocal is breathless. The studio version sounds very downtempo and spacious by comparison. Idiosyncratically atmospheric.

Good practice

The Megachild threesome of Pat, Rocio, and myself had a really good practice tonight getting ready for our dept retreat party gig in March. Ru-Jun was really good keeping Mommy company upstairs and not making too much of a mess painting and eating snacks. This bodes well for future practices.

Cemetry Gates - the Smiths

This song was the first Smiths song I ever heard, probably around 1985, and remains one of my favorites. The tight strumming, the chord changes, Morrissey's velvet lilt. A completely new sound to my ears then and has yet to be duplicated by anyone. I built a mystique around this sound. It seemed so sophisticated. It helped that artsy college kids who I thought were immensely cool liked this music. But it was still mostly the music itself.

A Forest -the Cure

From 1980. Pretty close to being a pure mood. It actually moves non-slowly underneath in the bass and guitar. Restrained. Gothic chord progression. A great example of stripping down the idea of pop, going somewhere no one has much before (the chords), capturing a narrative essence, and exploiting the hell out of it to very rich effect.

Getting difficult

To reanimate the Megachild corpse these days. We will one more time for the dept. retreat party sans Steve who will be out of town. Pat is finishing and heading to the west coast. Rocio is playing with a different band these days. And Steve is pretty busy. I've had a musical reawakening of sorts with the uke and am still interested in new instrumentation possibilities. I'm thinking about recruiting some players on campus and getting a new band thing going there.

Tom Petty songs

While I was waiting in the car for my eyes to undilate after my ophthalmology appointment, I started to work out some Tom Petty songs on the uke. These are some of my favorites and it's really cool to know how to plan them:

American Girl

One Story Town

A Woman In Love

Straight Into Darkness

Gotta say though, some other songs that have relatively easy chord progressions are really hard because of the way he phrases his lyrics. He sometimes jams a lot of words into single lines.

Martin Briley - The Salt in My Tears

From 1983, this got some airplay (or I wouldn't have known about it). But it remains a pretty obscure song. Great little guitar-figure driven pop song. Nice vocal harmony in the choruses.

For pure wistfulness

The Korgis 1980 hit Everybody's Got To Learn Sometime was a revelation. Nothing sounded like it, either in its production and instrumentation, or more basically in its chords and structure. This song is pure mood. The sound anticipates an entire swath of pop that came after, encompassing bands like Tears For Fears and Dream Academy, the latter being one of the army of artists to have a hit covering the song (unfortunately that version is apparently not on youtube).

The essence

Of course the essence if this dual embrace/dread of the hyper-modern can be thoroughly felt in the seminal Computer Love by Kraftwerk. It's not just the synthesizer instrumentation. It's the wistful narrative of the chord changes. Sweet sadness.

(I Love You) Miss Robot - Buggles

I really love the whole Living in the Plastic Age album. The atmosphere, especially of Miss Robot is simultaneouly a utopian and dystopian vision. It's Euro and modern, like International Style architecture. But it's knowingly over the top. Falling in love with the perfection of a robot who cannot love. It's nostalgia for a future that never was and can never be. It's so damn lovely...

Kihns other big hit

Jeopardy. I didn't like it for quite a while. Not enough of a change into the chorus. But years later I came to really appreciate the incredibly solid rhythm track of this song. Laid back, subtle, funky, just cool.

Breakup Song - Greg Kihn Band

From 1981, couldn't escape this song and didn't want to. Terrific chord progression hooks in both the verse and chorus. Nice harmony in the chorus. A near perfect song.

Fire Lake - Bob Seger

Not many rock artists had more huge hits than Bob Seger in the 70s and early 80s. Fire Lake from 1980 is by far my favorite. The chord progression of the verse (of the whole song really) and the backing vocal harmonies (which included Glen Frey and Don Henley of the Eagles) make the song.

Marys Danish - Dont Crash the Car Tonight

From 1989, the beginning of my peak college radio listening period. Tight tight boppy guitars and rhythm section. Great vocal harmony.

Dramarama - Anything Anything

Great band name. Did very well on college radio in the late 80s and 90s. Here's the iconic Anything Anything from 1985. Classic thrashy dynamic oscillations.

The Lemonheads

I've always liked their songs, raw and simple but usually hooks lurk in them. Gotta work one of their songs into my uke playlist soon. Here's Stove.
.

Some songs I am working on

To play with the uke

Last of the Famous International Playboys - Morrissey
Smoke on the Water - Deep Purple
Working on My Tan - Tim Curry
Substitute - the Who

songs I will try to tackle soon
Hang Fire - Rolling Stones
Careless Whisper - Wham

Right Down the Line - Gerry Rafferty

From 1978, this is a beautiful song. I especially like the smooth keyboard chords driving the rhythm section on top of the textural Latin percussion instrumentation.

My Favorite Eagles Song

New Kid in Town
Laid back tempo, prominent keyboards, nice harmony. It must have been the winter of 1976-1977, my family spent the winter break helping clean out the basement and fellowship hall of our church. My brothers and I were too young to help much and were bored out of our skulls. All we had was Mom and Dad's old green AM transistor radio listening to WHAM, then a top 40 and news station. New Kid in Town and Abba's Dancing Queen played at least once every hour.

Van Halen

Most of Van Halen's work as a band I can take or leave. The David Lee Roth era was far better than the Sammy Hagar era. From the earlier stuff, there are three songs I would want with me if I got deserted on an island or planet somewhere:

Ain't Talkin' 'Bout Love

I'll Wait

Panama

Another very cool instrument

The bowed psaltery.
Very sweet and beautful sound. Looks like a lot of fun to play.

Singapore Rice Noodles update

I still enjoy Singapore Rice Noodles a lot. Mostly get them from just a few blocks away, the Great Wall in Sound Beach. They have gotten really good at this dish, definitely rivaling Sung Wo in Rocky Point. The family who used to run the Great Wall we became friends with. They have a little boy about our daughter Ru-Jun's age. They unfortunately moved to NJ (and started a restaurant there, I believe). Their cousins now run Great Wall. They love to see Ru-Jun come in and always give her lollipops.

Alice's House - Psychedelic Furs

Another favorite of mine. Great ascending bass line in the verse - chromatically gothic sounding. The end of the chorus has a nice rally back into the intro line. Very simple pop song, but extremely elegant.

Groove Salad

My other internet radio favorite is Groove Salad. Trippy, trancy, acid and deep housey. Great music to work to in the lab or take a nap to. Very atmospheric.

Flashback Alternatives

Listened to Flashback Alternatives for the first time in probably about a year while I was working in lab today. This is simply the best 80s music station I've ever found on the web. There are a few commercials but this is a small price to pay for the range of 80s alternative and pop music that FA plays. At various times in the past I interacted with the regulars on the website there and I even donated a couple of 'Til Tuesday CDs to DJ Ed, who runs the station a few years ago. I'm really glad this station has been able to stick around. I've been introduced to a lot of great, more obscure 80s and 80s-inspired more recent music on FA,

Here Come Cowboys - Psychedelic Furs

One of my favorite songs from one of my favorite bands. But the video leaves a lot to be desired, unfortunately.

Antarctica - Men Without Hats

Very tension filled song in both the studio and their live version. I started working on a much more laid back version on the uke this evening.

A very cool instrument

the shahi baaja

Kid - the Pretenders

Always one of my favorites of theirs, from 1979 (or at least was in the charts then). There is a lot of roughness to the live performance linked below, but it's interesting how they really try to reproduce the studio arrangement and sound of the song on stage. Not easy.

Kid - the Pretenders

Jesse - Carly Simon

Also in the country pop vein, the soulful and catchy Jesse by Carly Simon, from 1980, which got a ton of airplay but has since largely disappeared.

More Multiverse stuff

At each moment, there is a virtually infinite number of possible futures. There is also a virtually infinite number of pasts that could have led to that moment. There are many different ways to get to the same future. But there seems to be only one path through the past which got to the current moment.
Not sure what this means, exactly. But it seems important.

Bette Davis Eyes

Predictably a mention of Kim Carnes is going to turn to this song. a monster hit from 1981 written by Donna Weiss and Jackie DeShannon. Sparkling thru the massive radio overplay, it was a striking juxtaposition of Carnes's raspy vocal and machine-like synth pop that somehow produced magic. The chord changes are right in my sweet spot (see also any number of Stevie Nicks songs).

Kenny Rogers

Kenny Rogers had two songs in the Billboard Top 100 in 1979, The Gambler and She Believes in Me. My favorite song of his is the duet with Kim Carnes Don't Fall In Love With a Dreamer from 1980. Great harmonies.

A 1979 instrumental hit

Rise by Herb Alpert. Replete with the bassline later sampled by The Notorious B.I.G. for Hypnotize. Downtempo, funky, contemporary jazz marketed to the disco buying public. There is a resignedness about the song that seems to anticipate deep house music as well.

Time travel

I don't think time travel is possible. I think that the past does not exist once each moment is gone. At each moment there are essentially infine possible futures all containing that moment as their past. As each time interval ticks by, one of those possible futures becomes the present and access to the previous moment and anything before that is gone forever.

Violence

Our aide Min's favorite country song is El Paso, the 1959 Marty Robbins song. The chords are pretty simple. Classic western story, sad and violent.
El Paso - Marty Robbins

Country Roads - John Denver

John Denver was huge in the 70s when I was growing up. This is one of my favorites from among his many hits. Deceptively simple song. The bridge (C part) makes the song. It just sticks in one more chord in addition to the 1 4 5 constructions that make up the rest of the song.
Country Roads - John Denver

Camphor - The Fixx

I've always had an affinity for this deep cut from the Fixx's 1986 album Walkabout. I used to take afternoon naps listening to this album. Camphor is the last track. It seems to exactly correspond to the feeling of waking up gradually from a comfortable rest.

A 1979 pop gem

It was massively overplayed, but I've always loved Escape (The Pina Colada Song) by Rupert Holmes. Clean, downtempo, rhythm section hook that drives the verse. Big vocal hook that picks that up in the chorus. Fun story and surprise in the lyrics. Really the perfect pop song.

New songs learned

"Everywhere I Go" a Nick Jr. kids song, "Country Roads" by John Denver, and I'm Walking the Floor Over You" by Ernest Tubb, which IIRC was depicted in the movie "Coal Miner's Daughter".

Cowboy songs so far

There are a lot of songs known as cowboy songs. So far, I know the chords to Home on the Range, My Darling Clementine, Red River Valley, and Ghost Riders in the Sky. Memorizing the lyrics, however, is going to take some time. Next on the radar are El Paso, Back in the Saddle, and Jingle Jangle. These songs tend to have simple structures with just a few chords and have melancholy or even morbidly sad lyrics.

1979

Check out a top 100 singles chart from 1979 and among the many crosscurrents of pop going on at the time you'll find this:
Are Friends Electric? by Gary Numan's band Tubeway Army. Numan could, unembellished, play a humanoid species other than our own in a SF movie. His voice and the cold delivery are clearly pointing to a post-human, yet still romantic, future. Under the tightly orchestrated synthesizers is hard, driving, rock. This is hybrid music from a rich time of hybridization and experimentation.

Gig on Friday

I'll be playing a sing along on me uke at Ru-Jun's day care on Friday. I've been learning and practicing kids and Christmas songs at home most evenings the last month with Ru-Jun singins and dancing along. Teally fun and is helping me to de-stress.
Here is a partial list of the kids songs that I've picked up:
Ive been working on the railroad
My Bonny
Twinkle Twinkle
ABCs
BINGO
the Hokie Pokie
Camptown Races
Yankee Doodle
Puff the Magic Dragon
Oh Susanna
Pop goes the Weasle
You are my Sunshine
The Old Gray Mare
When the Saints Go Marching In
Mary Had a Little Lamb
Itsy Bitsy Spider

Camouflage - Stan Ridgeway

There are probably hundreds of rock songs that bear the strong influence of Ghost Riders in the Sky but one of my favorites is the absolutely brilliant Camouflage by Stan Ridgeway.

Cowboy songs

So far I've learned Clementine, Home on the Range, Red River Valley, and Ghost Riders in the Sky, which might just be the coolest song ever.

Baritone ukulele tuning

Since I am not a guitar player, but i do have some experience with four string bass guitar, I decided to tune the uke in fourths like a bass. So the tuning is C F Bb Eb. This is very unconventional. I could not find any mentions online of this tuning with this instrument although I did see that people like to experiment with different tunings on ukes. I like the fourths tuning even though I have to move up and down the neck a lot for 1-4 and 1-5 changes. I picked up the chords for about 15 holday songs and I have about the same number of childrens' and folk songs, with more on the way. At some point I'll post a list. This has been very fun.

Straight Into Darkness - Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers

Straight Into Darkness Tom Petty & the Heartbreakers
No one fused keyboards and guitars in the late 70s/early 80s better than Tom Petty. This song and the Long After Dark album have long been my favorites of his.

The Multiverse

This seems like an intuitive idea. I bet that 100s of people originated it in one form or another and never promoted it as an original idea. It also seems pretty damn untestable, so i.e. not science.

Christine McVie

I've always liked Christine McVie's vocals. Low and smoky in an entirely different way than Stevie Nicks. Her solo work is underrated,
Got a Hold On Me - Christine McVie

Gold- John Stewart

Always live to revisit this late 70s hit that was not spoiled by its massive radio overplay. Probably Stewart's strongest rock effort, having long been established in folk. Intersects with the Fleetwood Mac axis with Stevie Nicks on backing vocals. Great use of the major -relative minor dyad. Nice keyboard line and simple instrumentation.
Gold - John Stewart

Baritone ukulele

I bought myself one of these and tuned it in 4ths like a bass (because I have bass but not 6 string guitar experience) and have been teaching myself how to play chords to accompany singing. Mostly holiday and kids sons so far. Very fun. Mine has a very rich, guitar- like sound. (sorry couldn't post a picture from the web using the iphone app)

I'm Back

Well, Old Grimy lives in Texas now. He did a good job on the blog in 2008 but neither of us had time between then and now to keep it up. No more. I'm back to talk about songs. There is other stuff in my life (mostly good, some bad) but that is for elsewhere. Here is an amazing song (Magnet and Steel by Walter Egan; in case the link below doesn't imbed) from the 70s, which until I looked up its info on Wikipedia I didn't know Stevie Nicks sung backup on (yet another plus for the song). It's a downtempo ballad with echos of Motown in the chorus, but the chord progression (simple involving mostly a minor and the 4 and 5 chords of its relative major) is what makes this song. And the driving, but slowish, tempo. And the incredible sweetness of the chorus. Enjoy.

Magnet and Steel - Walter Egan