more music

Sorry about the dirth of tunes lately, but we got a PS3 and movies and video games have been kinda key since then. My bad. But here is a girl group that broke through the hidef madness with some low fi rock and roll. I was turned on to them by my friend Stephen Meijas, whose blog is listed in my blog list, so check him out frequently.

These girls are one part Nirvana (in a murkey sounding studio) and one part Shirelles and one part Ramones. Kinda sorta. They have a low fi sound and the singing is buried in back of enthusiastic and distorted guitar. It is not vitruoso stuff, but it rocks. Maybe that is WHY it rocks. Check out this video and then get the record. I did for $12.

Slow Train Coming

It may be the devil, or it may be the Lord, but you gotta serve somebody.

What a great album! I just transfered this one to the hard drive, it is so great to hear Bob really enthused with a topic. Yes, it is aggressively Christian, yes, he really did get baptized in Pat Boone's pool, and yes, this is a great Dylan album. I have the SACD, which sounds fantastic. I have not heard the remastered version that was released a few years ago. Slow Train is great, so is I Believe In You, and the title track.

This video version from an awards show rocks hard. Bob was hoping the audience would hear him, you can feel it. And he is right you know, you gotta serve somebody.



I love the background singers and the driving rhythm on this version. Rock on Bob.

affirmative

I go through months were I needs me some Yes. For years, literally, I would listen to Roundabout, from the Fragile album, and sulk. Where was the bass? Oh, I could hear the trebley part of the bass on that amazing line, but where were the bottom octaves? The deep stuff? It was not on the first copy of the album I bought. I heard a little bit more on the British copy of the album, maybe even a tiny bit more on the Japanese pressing, but the bass was never in the place.

Then came cds. Fragile was one of the first cds I bought, but it sounded so tinny and tipped toward the treble that it hurt my ears. I decided I would never hear the real bass. The father of one of my daughter's classmates is a bass player in town. At some school even we got talking, and it turns out he had been searching for the same grail. Where is the bass on Roundabout? He had never found it either.

Then came the DVD-A of Fragile. DVD-audio uses a dvd disc for almost strictly music. The music is presented at much higher bit rates than cds. They sound great. And the format is dead as J. Edgar Hoover. But that version has the bass. It shakes the room when I play it. It moves your guts around. I told my friend about it, and he bought a special player just for that disc.

I am ripping that version to my computer this morning, so I can listen to the bass at the push of a button on my computer. I expect to annoy my wife a lot this month! Well, more than usual.

As for the album itself, it is hit and miss for me. Roundabout is killer, obviously, but the little sections done by the individual members are not what I buy a Yes album, well, several damn version of this Yes album for. I buy them for Long Distance Runaround, South Side Of The Sky, and Heart Of The Sunrise. The trippy stuff. Man.

Oh sure, Mood For A Day is OK, and The Fish is kind of interesting, but Cans and Brahms still sounds horrible even on DVDA. To me, that was just time that the lads could have used for a proper song.

I saw the band in Red Rocks. The bass was there in the foothills of the Rockies my friends. The band even had surround sound which they tastefully used exactly twice, once on Roundabout and once on Owner Of A Lonely Heart. Surround sound at a large outdoor arena is intense. I think 35% on the audience peeked right then.

So get out your Yes, and give Fragile a listen. Play some air guitar or bass or drums, and try to not hate me because I can hear the bass on Roundabout.

Musical Prejudice

One of my musical projects is putting my records and cds onto my computer hard drive so that I can enjoy the tunes in a more user friendly fashion. And it is great, I have them loaded up on Media Player and can listen to my cds and high resolution vinyl sourced files with ease. I expected this ability to make it more fun to listen to tunes, and to make them more accessible for my wife and children, and it has done that. For instance, it is easy and simple to listen to different versions of songs or just Ben Folds or all Beatles. My wife and oldest daughter responded by listening to music more. Cool! But I expected that.

I did NOT expect that my cds would sound so much better once they are ripped to my hard drive. I rip them at full resolution, that is what external 1 terabyte drives are for! And they sound better than they do when played by my rather nice Denon universal player. I use a M-audio sound card that can play the 24/96 vinyl files and use my Denon receiver to decode the data. And it sounds fantastic!

But those are not the real topics of the post, just encouragement for any reader of this humble blog to do the work to put their music on their hard drive. At full rez, you will thank me.

The real subject I wish to address is a form of prejudice. You see, after I rip the files, they are sorted into a genre. Now the genre is typically wrong or simplistic. Ben Folds does not always ROCK, he is more likely to POP or even POWER POP. And he writes a mean BALLAD. Think Brick. I do not want to hear Brick, a BALLAD when I am wanting to ROCK out. So I go in and make more accurate genre labels for each song on each album. It takes time, but it is time well spent.

So I get an artist like Phil Keagy or a band like King's X and they are lumped into RELIGIOUS or CHRISTIAN. Huh? I guess I can kind of understand Rebecca St. James being in that genre, but it is difficult to make that fit when she does songs like this:



OK, it starts off nice and gentle, but that is rocking in the middle! I agree that her lyrics are explicitly Christian. But many of The Clash's lyrics were explicitly socialist. And I do not see their music lumped together with Billy Bragg because of the world view of the people who make it. Here is Phil Keagy. Most of his music is classified in the RELIGIOUS genre, but does that fit his wide variety and diversity of musical output? You decide. Here is Phil playing what I call ACOUSTIC.



Wow. And it is wonderful in full resolution over your stereo. It has no words, but it is RELIGIOUS? Now I am sure Phil dedicates his music to God and Jesus, way to go Phil! But so did Bach. And if this is RELIGIOUS, what is it when Phil does this?



I think that fits the genre of ROCK or AMAZING GUITAR if I had that genre. Perhaps I will! But most of Phil's excellent work is put in RELIGIOUS. And some people would rather be caught listening to Perry Como than shopping in the RELIGIOUS aisle of even iTunes.

If this is you, stop being so prejudiced. It is keeping you from knowing and listening to outstanding music. Now I appreciate and am blessed by the spiritual content of Christian music. But I love listening to the Clash and I do not share their world view. If you are avoiding good music because it is Christian, your life is the poorer for it.

So listen to some Phil Keagy, some Rebecca St. James, some Jennifer Knapp, some Petra, some King's X. Rock out with The Call, funk it up with Kirk Franklin, bob your head to Toby Mac. Heck, I am an old fart, so I am not hip to even a small percentage of the excellent Christian music being made. I will the stuff I know and love in the future, but in truth, to hear about it, you will have to seek it out. Because mainstream wants to put it in a little box that does not fit.

But you, gentle reader, are not the kind of person to accept that kind of prejudice.

Rock on.

CHICAGO VI

I was looking for a video of Al Green doing "I'm So Tired Of Being Alone" with Chicago. It is included on the remixed cd of VI. I have been grooving to that song hard! I found it, almost. The clip had been removed due to the copyright holder's somplaint. Well, I understand that, even though it makes me sad. So here is another song from the album, Feeling Stronger Everyday.

Anyone Can

By the X-teens. No, not what you are thinking. This is from the early 80s in Chapel Hill. The X Teens were a great new wave band that I saw many times. One of my favorite songs of theirs was Venus. My claim to fame is shouting out "Play Aphrodite" at a concert. Kitty, the bass player and one of the singers, laughed and introduced the song as "Aphrodite."

I have their EP on vinyl. Two copies actually. I need to get their full length cd. Really fun music, get yourself some the legal way.

crack this cd?

I am finding this cd intriguing. I am not sure if I really like it yet, but I keep trying it out. How is that for a muted endorsement? part of the trouble is that the bass gets busy and congested on my home and car system. This is no surprise in the car, but the home setup usually gets the bass fine. Listening to it yesterday with the eldest daughter, the bass was undefined and indistinct. There is lots there as the bassist plays hard, loud, and uses lots of double stops, but I keep wanting to hear it better.

So I am unconvinced, but I am still going back for another listen. The music is heavy metal, but it is, again, interesting. Check it out, try the crack the sky website which has cool graphics and mp3s. But be aware, the lower fidelity mp3s are easier to listen to than the cd because of the lossy compression. Weird that.

Here is a video, because it only makes sense to give you a taste of the music. Enjoy and rock out.

Joe Jackson

An obscure album by Joe, this has none of the New Wave passion of the first two records he put out. It has a pervasive reggae and ska beat, but it is Joe writing the lyrics. Side two is so great! (I have the vinyl.) It starts with Crime Don't Pay, a bit of noire and lounge. Then Someone Up There which would have been at home on "I'm The Man. Battleground is social commentary to a beat, and Biology has a bit of a punchline. Pretty Boys is pure ska with some melodica thrown in, and finally Fit looks at outliers from false dichotomies. Really. And it rocks, well, except One To One which is a ballad.

How does it sound? Really OK. Some of the songs are practically mono, no that there is anything wrong with that, but don't expect room filling sonority on the tune Beat Crazy. Instead, it is punchy and crisp. There is a lot of compression used, especially on the faster numbers. The bass playing by Graham Maby is great, but you certainly do not need a subwoofer to enjoy all the bass this recording has to offer. Not that I felt cheated on any of this, it is mixed to be an exciting, punchy recording, and it delivers. My copy is an A&M original, perhaps the CD option from 2007 gives you a bit more bass, but I cannot vouch as I see no reason to pick up a digital version.

Joe is the man, and this record is one you should own.

But here is a taste to see if you agree.