Rhonda Vincent - Sunday Mornin' Singin' LIVE!

Well, I got it.  I've been taking advantage of that free music offer that Valero is doing when you buy a 44 oz. fountain drink.  Also I've torn a few credits from cups that people tossed in the street instead of putting in the trash.

As I had mentioned before, this is a collection of gospel songs, or gospel-related songs performed in her usual bluegrass (or bluegrass-related) style. They were all recorded live, and these are the most well-behaved audiences I've ever heard on a live album.  Most of these songs don't even sound like they came from a live performance until you hear the applause at the end of each piece.

Most of these songs are original, but there are a few old traditional hymns in the mix.  One song, "His Promised Land," is performed a capella (nothing but voices), but for some dumb reason they stick a half-step up key change in the middle of it.  This is a typical trick in pop music to keep a boring song from sounding quite too boring, and in the vast majority of cases it's musically illogical and irrelevant.  Suddenly changing key without reason between stanzas of a hymn is just weird and jarring.  I felt like someone sneaked up and poked me in the stomach without any provocation.

I'm listening to it as I write this, and just came across another song with a similar unnecessary key change.  I hate to harp on this, but man it's just not right.  But I'm sure her audiences have been conditioned through listening to so much pop music* that they expect it and to them it sounds good.

Now where was I?  Oh yeah, there are a few old traditionals here:  Just As I Am, God Put a Rainbow in the Clouds, Joshua and The Old Rugged Cross.  Possibly a couple of others, I'm not sure, but those are the ones I'm familiar with.  In the case of "Just As I Am," I could go so far as to say terribly familiar. But this version I like.  It's a little faster than I'm used to hearing it, and it's got a nice little swing to it that makes it sound like a waltz.  She sings only three stanzas, which is probably a very good thing or she would've had to stick in a couple of those modulations just to keep people from drifting.  The most "complete" version I know of has six stanzas.  Once, during a particularly long and grueling service, we sang the whole thing through twice.  Twelve stanzas of "Just As I Am" at once.  I must admit that we might have benefited from a couple of key changes that time.

Unfortunately, since I downloaded this, I didn't get any documentation with it.  I'm going to have to look up most of these songs and see if they are traditional hymns or not.

Okay, two a capella songs, the one previously mentioned and another called "Fishers of Men."  She has a really good group of singers with her.

All in all, a great album in spite of my personal little gripes that don't matter anyway.  I'm not going to say that I recommend it because I doubt that any of my readers listen to much gospel or bluegrass, but if you do, you should get it.  And please note that by "gospel" I do not mean "contemporary Christian."  As a general rule, I don't listen to lame pop music, no matter what the lyrics are about.

I might have to eventually buy this on CD anyway just to get the documentation on it.  If anyone reads this who has the CD, I would be very thankful if you'd go to the trouble of scanning and emailing me the booklet.



*When I say "pop music," I don't just mean what most people refer to as "pop."  I mean pop, rock, modern country...pretty much anything that's not classical, jazz or old hard-core country/folk, which has much more in common musically with classical than it does with modern "country."

Chris Rea - The Road to Hell (1989)

Well I'm standing by a river
But the water doesn't flow
It boils with every poison you can think of
And I'm underneath the streetlight
But the light of joy I know
Scared beyond belief way down in the shadows
And the perverted fear of violence
Chokes the smile on every face
And common sense is ringing out the bell
This ain't no technological breakdown
Oh no, this is the road to hell

When music is the topic and I mention this album, invariably the person with whom I'm speaking has never heard of it.  Never heard of Chris Rea, never heard either of his two radio hits from this album.  And it's a real shame.

In 1989 I was listening to Austin's KGSR quite a lot, which is how I heard of this album and these songs.  I suppose if I had gone as far as Austin I might have found it in a music store there, but in all of Seguin, San Antonio, New Braunfels and San Marcos, there was nary a copy to be found.  Take a look at the top 100 hits of 1989 and what do you see?  Crap.  Pure, unadulterated crap (except maybe for that one R.E.M. song).  Just count how many times you see Milli Vanilli (Milli frikkin' Vanilli) on this list.  When it came to music, 1989 was a terrible, terrible year.*

Of course, it hasn't gotten any better.  Top pop hits continue to suck, but there's a good reason.  It's because even back then, 22 years ago, as Chris Rea tried to tell us, we were already on the road to hell.

Chris Rea plays slide guitar and has a voice full of the warmth and soft roughness of a dirt road in the summertime.  Once you hear it, you will not forget it.  He's from England, and he wrote one of the best Texas songs I've ever heard.

But no radio station in S.A. ever played it, so if you lived here back then, I'm sure you never heard it.  Unless you tweaked your antenna until you could pick up KGSR like I did.

Ah Pook The Destroyer - The Silver Key

Ah Pook The Destroyer are a duo consisting of Paul Shapera on vocals, keyboards and percussion and Matthew Broyles on vocals, guitar, bass and vocoder.  The Silver Key is their musical interpretation of the H.P. Lovecraft story of the same title.  From their website:

When people think of H.P.Lovecraft, the first mental impression tends to arise from the dark depths of the Cthulhu mythos. But Lovecraft was also a philosopher, a true iconoclast untempered by the literary zeitgeist of his age. One of the clearest expressions of this aspect is the short story The Silver Key. Ostensibly belonging to his dream-tale canon, upon further examination this is actually in many ways a manifesto, an accounting of one man's attempt to understand the society into which he was born, and the judgment that it is found lacking.

The most interesting aspect of translating this story wasn't the actual storytelling, which was secondary. It was the soundscapes and depths of emotion that different ideas the story presented could lead to musically. This story lends itself particularly well towards being reconceived into music because it is not an event oriented tale. It's a rumination, which suggests music so very well.

As far as musical style, I would say it's safely within the genre of progressive rock.  Too many attempts at "Lovecraftian music" fall into styles (death metal, for example) that are not easily accessible to most listener's ears, but this is not one of those.  This album is a mixture of spoken narration and sung lyrics.

You can listen to the whole thing by streaming it online.  Just go to Ah Pook The Destroyer and follow the links.

Slaughter of the Bluegrass

From the official website:

Slaughter of the Bluegrass is a band that plays unplugged versions of death metal songs. We use traditional bluegrass instruments and arrangement ideas and try to keep the essence of each song we cover.

People ask us why we choose to play metal songs, and we answer them that we just want to play good songs, which in this case happens to be in that particular genre. As it turned out, people who aren't used to hearing growling vocals, guitars drenched is distorsion [sic] and heavy drums, could still appreciate these compositions, only in a new form.

They haven't released an actual album yet, but you can download what they've done so far from their website, or look them up on YouTube.

Metal bluegrass

I've mentioned before that I load my phone up with mp3s, since it's also a rudimentary mp3 player, which I can listen to through the built-in speaker and it sometimes helps me pass the time while I'm working. Lately I've had it loaded up with a bunch of new acquisitions, which lately has been mostly either metal or bluegrass. So today I went looking for "metal bluegrass" and discovered Slaughter of the Bluegrass.

Amorphis album art

Travis Smith talks about the Amorphis album art. Inspired by the Kalevala. Interesting.

Map of Metal

Map of Metal. Tricky for me to navigate with my limited RAM, but still, a very informative and entertaining source of information on metal music in all its many forms, with plenty of audio examples via YouTube links.

WW2 vintage 78 instructional record found in flea market

Imagine if you're storming Utah or Omaha beach during the Normandy Invasion in 1944, you reach the cities of Bayeux or St. Vigor le Grand and you have no way of communicating with the locals.
In World War II, the U.S. Army wasn't quite concerned about communication skills, with understanding. However, there was an attempt in 1943 to teach American soldiers enough foreign language for basic interraction. Former Sulphur resident Gary Doucet found this out, while combing through a flea market in Winnie, Texas.
Doucet, who is an avid collector of vintage vinyl records, stumbled upon a World War II Audio teaching aid in near mint condition, which he considers to be one of his prized possessions.
"I've been collecting records for several years and enjoy coming across vintage items," he said. "But this one, was really unusual. I basically came upon an old beat up box at this flea market in Texas. Inside this tattered box was a few old 78s in their original sleeve.
"When I reached the last record, the memo sheet was underneath," he continued. "It was miraculous that the record and the memo survived over 60 years."

Interesting. More at Collecting Vinyl Records.

This is it

Iron Maiden - Seventh Son of a Seventh Son

I bought this one based partly on listening to samples at Amazon, and also because I read in more than one place that they had heavily used synthesizers, so I thought the sound of this one might appeal to me more.

I really like it. So far my favorite track is "Can I Play With Madness."

I'm sure I'll get more of their stuff in the future, but for now I'm probably going to go in a completely different direction for the next couple of albums that I'll get with my self-imposed music allowance.

H.P. Lovecraft is a friend of mine...

via Lovecraft eZine

Something I've thought about doing

Organizing your record collection with a spreadsheet.

In the late 80s, before I had my first computer, I created an index card catalog of my whole collection. At the time, it took up two of those little index card boxes. Back then I also had the physical collection itself quite organized, like this.

1. Male solo artists (alphabetically)

2. Female solo artists (alphabetically)

3. Groups (alphabetically)

4. Classical (not really sorted because most had multiple composers per record)

5. Odd stuff that didn't fit anywhere else (not really sorted, either)

It isn't organized very well anymore because first moving it from my dad's house and then eventually moving it from our old house to our new house pretty much wiped out the organization, and I just never have felt like fixing it. It would be a pretty big job.

I never bothered sorting by genre because I don't really think about that. For me there are really only two genres: stuff I like and stuff I don't like.

This is so awesome

UPDATE: When I originally posted this, the collection was being sold for $1.99. It's higher now.

WoodSongs podcasts

I discovered last night that WoodSongs Old-Time Radio Hour has free podcasts, either video or audio-only. Just click here for the subscription links.

Nice...

This just turned up on the radar: X5 Free Classical Sampler: Gregorian Chants.

Not very big, only 5 tracks for about 20 minutes of music. Also, Gregorian chants are most certainly pre-classical (pre-baroque for that matter) but still, free Gregorian chants!

I'm tellin' ya, X5 is a label to watch out for.

These just in...

I'll undoubtedly say more about these later, but for now...

I put off buying that Kate Bush album for far too long. I was planning on ordering a different album with it (to get free shipping for an order of more than $25), but my dad called me the other day and asked me to get that other album for him, and he'd reimburse me for it. Of course it's already ripped and all the covers & booklet have been scanned for my own collection. My dad and I still come together musically on old-time country and bluegrass. Rhonda Vincent is a bluegrass musician.

Bonus...the back of the CD booklet.

Oh, by the way

Styx: The Complete Wooden Nickel Recordings

I guess I should have first mentioned (before the previous post) that this came in yesterday. I already had the RCA reprints of their first four albums as records, but when I saw this collection I wanted to get it on CD. Two CDs that include all of the first four albums, and some interesting liner notes. Also CD-booklet sized full-page reproductions of the original cover art, which was much better than that crappy RCA cover art. I might post a comparison of the cover art later on. What the heck.

The "Wooden Nickel recordings" refer to the albums they made while on a label called Wooden Nickel Records, which according to the source of all information, carried Chicago-area bands but couldn't survive after Styx started getting more famous and moved to A&M.

Interesting (to me) musical trivia

I always thought this sounded familiar, but I never made the connection.



Now try this one. If you don't want to listen to the whole thing, skip up to 1:10. This is the segue between "Krakatoa" and a short version of "The Hallelujah Chorus" from Styx's album The Serpent is Rising.


From the liner notes:

The Serpent is Rising concluded with an imposing choir-and-church-organ rendition of the "Hallelujah Chorus" from Handel's Messiah. Equally offbeat was Curulewski's bizarrely theatrical "Krakatoa," which incorporated a striking electronic riff borrowed from the pioneering duo Beaver and Krause, hence their credit as co-writers. Many years later, that passage would be used by filmmaker George Lucas as the sonic logo for his TXH theater sound system.

From Wikipedia, Beaver & Krause:

A variation of the end of their track "Spaced" from the Wild Sanctuary album became the dual gliding synthesizer soundtrack for the original THX Sound Logo in movie theaters.

So there you go. It sounds to me like the TXH version was sped up a little and "punched up" in the recording, but it's still the same. Now I have to go see if I can find some of Beaver & Krause's stuff.

The journey continues...

Death metal Friday

At Regrettable Music.

2¢ song review: "Pray for You"

You know what, Jaron? This song isn't funny, unless you consider praying for your ex-girlfriend to be killed in a car wreck to be funny. Here's some advice: be a man, get over it and move on. You're such a smarmy, whiny little douchebag, it's no wonder she dumped you. You should be thankful that she didn't do the world a favor and crush your skull with a flower pot.

Happy birthday to me!

From icon vs. icon:

Tommy Shaw, guitarist of legendary rock band Styx, is set to release his debut Bluegrass album, “The Great Divide” on March 22nd, 2011...

Now I realize this might freak some folks out. I must say I am pleasantly surprised. I already knew he played mandolin, since he played it a couple of times with Styx--I'm pretty sure he played it on "Boat on the River" from Cornerstone, for example. His voice seems--to me--to have that high, keening timbre that is well-suited for bluegrass.

The album is to released on CD, vinyl and digital formats. I will definitely be looking to download it come the 22nd.

Check out the link, there's an interesting video that's mostly talking with a little music.