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

Ultravox LCD Sounsystem Bowie

A buncha live videos. No theme. Just stream of consciousness connections...

This video is pretty special. So much synth. Ultravox - The Thin Wall



Vocals and synth-laden sounds remind me of... LCD Soundsystem, "Get Innocuous"



Granpa Bowie strikes my mind again with "Golden Years" too, I think. Goddam what fanaticism.

The Killing Moon, Stars, and the Sunder the Milky Way

A cosmic medley of songs.

The Killing Moon, Echo and the Bunny Men (1984). This song has been covered quite nicely by both Nouvelle Vague and Pavement.




Instant Karma!, John Lennon, (1970). Phil Spector produced and isn't it nice to see Yoko crocheting blindly?


Under the Milky Way, The Church (1988). Australians know how to do some cosmic music, huh? make sure to listen for the EBow solo at 2:22... and is that an eye in the egg? ewww.

New Romantic

Violens - descendents of New Romantic?


Basis of New Romantic, so devo, so funky. Spandau Ballet.





Japan - Ghosts - great synth and vibes



Grandaddy Bowie kills the scene.

Tomorrow Never Knows

Today I have been steeping in John Lennon and Brian Wilson. I have listened to Tomorrow Never Knows many times in a row now. The wikipedia page on this song talks about the interesting experimental procedures that were developed in the recording of this song, which apparently was never performed live because of the impossibility of repeating the song. Sounds like 2/3 of every Megachild song. Not that ours approach the greatness of the Beatles. Lyrical ifluences came from the Tibetan Book of the Dead, which is a really out there piece of literature and also the Leary et al. Psychedelic Experience.



The drum riff of "Tomorrow..." seems also to be repeated in the song "End of Music" by Ontario band Do Make Say Think (the riff converges on the Beatles riff a little after 3 minutes into the song).

I have been playing around with some vocal layering on Stair Bears (Bear Shoulders version). I go way off key and things break down in lots of places, but I think there are some interesting bits in it here and there. Working on my vibrato, but it would be awesome to hook up to a Leslie Cabinet like Lennon did. Plastic Soul, man, plastic soul.

I also recorded some things on my cellphone when I was attempting to fish. Then I chopped up some bits and rearranged and amplified and filtered some of it and added some vocal drone track. The song is called Moan You Snake Oil Salesman, a play off of a Blind Lemon Jefferson's song, "Black Snake Moan" and the anachronistic term for an exaggerator (sort of an abstract jab, I guess). I used a "helium voice" effect on one layer of vocal, which comes across sort of similar to the effect in "Tomorrow Never Knows" and the skipping crunchy static noise is similar to some of the stop that comes out in Do Make Say Think's label-mate Fly Pan Am. Here for example is Jeunesse Sonique.

REM - Crush with Eyeliner

I was just rocking out in the shower to the Megachild song Bannisters. I was thinking about how to lift this song back up... and then I started thinking about the early-mid nineties album Monster from R.E.M. This album provided ample anthems for my early high school years, although I remember that I ultimately traded the album with a friend in order to get my hands on Soundgarden's Superunknown. Although I still love that Soundgarden album (which also provides great anthems, especially "My Wave", which sticks in my head when I am surfing, and "Fell on Black Days" is a great song to sing along with on a long drive).

R.E.M. had already established themselves well before Monster, and some might even say that this album is not among their greatest works. It met with fairly great commercial success, as I remember, especially the single "What's the Frequency Kenneth?" Although there were a few mellow numbers on the album, there was a rocking fuzzy-reverbed & distorted guitar component that was characteristic of most of the album. "Crush with Eyeliner" is a song with a moderate tempo that exemplifies that guitar work, paired with some groovy bass work, and Michael Stipe's fun & bizarre lyrics.

I'm thinking that Bannisters could adopt a little bit of the sound from Monster, if our gear permits it.

Deerhunter Blog

The band deerhunter often leaves aural/visual goodies on their blog site. I really like the mix of music available for download you can get at this link. Esp. listen to the Beach Boys' Can't Wait Too Long (shows up about 42 minutes into the mix and finishes it up)

enjoy.

Energetic Crooning

To keep up with the different ideas around the song Stair Bears, here is a song from Arcade Fire. I like the persistent energy of this song, and I guess that the phrasing of my lyrics are largely substitutable for the melody of the song. It wouldn't be the first time that I write a song from the melody of another when its stuck in my head and I can't remember the lyrics of the original.

Keep the Car Running


Also, I mentioned in the earlier post that there was a vocal/keyboard refrain that was reminiscent of "Voices Carry".... it originally started as something a little bit more in the vein of Beach Boys, which has also been recaptured by bands like Animal Collective. Hear them croon with weird water/paper crinkling sound effects in this tune:

"College"

Obvious Connections. Black Moth Super Rainbow and the Velvet Underground

The end of "Stair Bears" turns into a synthed out, drummy, psychedelia fest, with vocals that are pretty Jim Morrison-y in yell mode.... the music is sort of like Black Moth Super Rainbow, but if we could regularly achieve such heights of synthed out drummy psychedelia fest, I would be... well... psyched.



The visuals at a BMSR show are reminiscent of Velvet Underground/Andy Warhol's Exploding Plastic Inevitable...

Strange Sources- Phil Collins, Hall & Oates, Iggy Pop

Simple bass lines. These could underlie the new Megachild song "Stair Bears". Stair Bears also has a nice keyboard refrain (it started as a crooning vocal refrain) that could give it another layer of hook. I think of it similar to the keyboard hook from a previous post by Slig.... "Voices Carry"

Phil Collins - Can't Hurry Love


Hall & Oates - Maneater


Iggy Pop - Lust for Life

Broken Social Scene and Jam Philosophy

Broken Social Scene provides hope and validity for the musical model that Megachild adopted. The band is composed of a rotating/shifting/fluid cast of men and women, often beardy scruffians of varying ages, and often teetering on the razor's edge of becoming overcrowded with sound.

Their songs seem to emerge from jams, which can tend to be... well... jammy. Often deliberately sticking with a riff for much, if not the entirety, of a song. They uncover the emotive core of their music readily, and to me evoke the robust realization of that nameless song you've been humming or singing inside for days and days.

I'm sure that the describes the creative process for a lot of bands, but it definitely seems to be one of the approachs of Megachild. Everyone has stored up their musical energy for a week or more and is ready to release. The best nights come when everyone has a musical idea to bring to the table and when everyone else clicks in to round out the sound.

Despite their tendency to jams, Broken Social Scene can deliver some tight sounds with pop hooks. Watch the embedded stuff below and follow links to get a sense of what their moods produce on a given evening.