Alsatian Cousin

Here's my cover of this song - one of my favorites from Morrissey.  Voice is still rough; getting over a cold.

Earthstock 2012 gig - links

Here's the complete list of song videos from the 2012 SBU Earthstock performance

opening jam

smoke on the water

Roxanne

Unhappy Birthday

The Gambler

Ring of Fire

Homeward Bound

Country Roads

The Zoo

Unhappy Birthday - Earthstock 2012

Here's my version of the Smiths' Unhappy Birthday from SBU Earthstock 2012.  Screwed up the transition from the first verse into the chorus, but it otherwise turned out OK.

My cover of Here Come Cowboys

link
By the Psychedelic Furs.
Messed up one of the transitions into the chorus.  And Ru-Jun was running around.
This song is probably a keeper for the next gig.

Smoke on the Water - Earthstock 2012

The opening song in the Tralfaz Wizard Experience Earthstock 2012 set.

We Will Not Be Lovers - the Waterboys

Love this song. Simple chord progression, rather loosely played. But the raggedness is a critical part of the delivery with these guys. The guitar arpeggios that come in during the chorus are awesome. A rare occasion when a jam concept works in a song.

Thousands are Sailing

My favorite Pogues song. Fairly straight foreward but has a couple of challenging progressions. Of several of their best known songs I looked at, it's the only one without a completely dark lyrical passage in it.

no chance yet

To go through the video from Earth Day. So I don't know how it turned out. It was windy, so the mic on the camcorder might have been noisy (no wind screen). Hopefully some time in the next few days.

Wondering Where the Lions Are - Bruce Cockburn

I remember listening to this song on the radio in junior high after school while doing homework.

Time Travel

I've mentioned this before.  Physicists like to talk about time travel because according to the current standard model, it is theoretically possible.  But I suspect that either this will turn out not to be the case or that like a lot of things, it would be so technologically difficult, even for the most advanced civilization, that it is essentially impossible.  As far as we know (at least according to public knowledge and conventional scientific/historical understanding), no one has time-traveled into our historical timeline from the future or between points within our historical timeline.  Or if they have they've done it without being detected (either directly or in terms of causing anomalies - although it is arguable whether we would be able to detect the latter).
Another possibility is that from any point in time there may be infinite possible pasts (just as there are infinite possible futures), such that the singular historical timeline that we imagine ourselves having is essentially a needle in a haystack that would be very hard to get to.  This could protect us from getting time-travelled-into.  That would certainly be funny if time travel were ever invented.  You might not travel into the past that you wanted.  In fact, you would be very very unlikely to...

Alternate universes

Is it provable that an alternate universe, with physical laws different than the known universe, could exist?

continuing the contrast

two new learns this evening:

Waylon Jennings' Dukes of Hazzard theme

Julian Cope - Charlotte Anne

Too Late For Love - Def Leppard

Sort of grew up listening to this kind of stuff on hard rock radio.  They became a cliche, but their songs are simple and powerful and have good progressions (and because of that, they are really accessible).  Just learned it - pretty easy with a fudged chord or too.  Should be a fun one to play for people (like the Scorpions song).

Changes - Yes

Another great song from 90125.  I used to play the xylophone intro riff in the percussion section in band before practice when we were messing around.

Out of Touch - Hall and Oates

These guys had tons of amazing songs in the 70s and 80s. Hard to grow up listening to pop at that time and not be hugely influenced by them. Vocals, songwriting, rhythm tracks, they could put it all together and evolve with the time and never churn out derivative product. Here's Out of Touch, from 1984, performed at the perspicacious distance of 11 years in 1995.

More Country

Country songs are definitely the easiest to play. The chord progressions are usually 1-4-5 with maybe an extra chord or two. They are also typically short. And pretty fun. I can affect a country-type accent pretty well.
Tonight I learned Charley Pride's classic "Kiss an Angel Good Morning" and Willie Nelson's immortal "On the Road Again". Great stuff.

Our Song - Yes

From 1983's 90125, a really tremendous album. The pop end of proggy (in terms of hookish accessibility; not that top 40 fans ever accessed most of the songs on the album other than "Owner of a Lonely Heart"), but so many musical ideas per song.

How it went

Things went OK today.  It was really early in the Earthstock program, so there were only a handful of people watching.  Which was OK because I made quite a few mistakes.  Forgot an entire stanza of Me and Julio.  There's a video.  I'll take a look at that this weekend and see if I can get some clips posted.  More on this in a later post.  The rest of the day was crazy and Ru-Jun and I need to get to bed.

Difficult to practice

With Ru-Jun very annoyingly interrupting almost every song.  But got through the set.  Will be in the sun tomorrow, with sweaty hands.  Hard to move up and down the neck.  I'll try to have someone video it.  I have the equipment but I don't have anybody to run the camera yet...

Set is ready

Still a couple rough edges here and there but the set of songs I listed on 4-12 is pretty much ready. I'll give it another run through tomorrow night. I only have 30 min, so maybe I'll give people some options of what they want to hear.