a step into the dark, music and life

The Return...

2007-07-23T20:27:00.000-06:00

I am finally back from the edge of the world. It was actually a five week road-trip across the country. We didn't get to check out any music. The closest we got was when we arrived in Buffalo next door to where Old Crow Medicine Show was playing. Unfortunately the concert was halfway over and we felt nearly dead after hours of driving. The trip was great, but very tiring mentally and physically, which are actually the same thing when you break it down to basics (glaring at Descartes in a mental image). We have been busy doing things around the house because of the time we spent watching HGTV while trapped in California when our fuel pump was being repaired. Getting back to work might actually give me a break, since I have the whole summer off and have no excuses to prevent me from working.

I actually bought a cd out of a store, something I haven't done in a year or two. I usually buy used cds or download them because I refuse to pay more than $13 for a cd since they hardly cost a thing to manufacture and produce. Chris Cornell's latest album magically appeared in the dreaded Walmart we were shopping in while in Wyoming. I was excited to hear that Audioslave broke up because Euphoria Morning was one of my favorite albums ever. This new disc didn't come close to matching up to his first one. The cover of Billie Jean just killed me. Why? Why? Some of the other tracks were worthy of a listen more than once including the latest James Bond movie theme, but it was a generic album that lived up to its Rolling Stone review.

I am currently watching the CMA music festival. Taylor Swift's debut cd was actually a good release. "Tim McGraw" isn't annoying and the rest of the album is worthy of a listen when I'm washing dishes.

Something smells like cabbage and carnies...

2007-05-28T21:42:00.000-06:00

Ever wake up and just wonder if somewhere, someone is watching your life (i.e., The Truman Show) in real-time? It freakin sucks to feel like that. To actually wonder if someone is watching and laughing his or her butt off at you and the situations you get yourself into over your lifetime. Irony would probably make the screen turn blue to the person watching my life. Sometimes things just really suck and it seems like someone has to be watching for it to all actually make sense. I hope that it's someone other than God, because if it's just him watching, I am ticked off at him again and I hate it when I feel that way. He's God, it's not very wise to push your luck with him about most things because he has the final say and authority. Some things just don't make sense to me. Life would be a lot easier if it was more like handling a loaded gun. You know when you pick the thing up, the weight of the choices you can make with it. Waving it around would be totally stupid and irresponsible, just handling it seems somewhat safer. It doesn't come that easy most of the time for some reason in the real world regardless of how safely you handle the gun. This leaves me wondering if there is just something that I did to bring certain things upon myself. My thinking is going way beyond the simple behavior/consequences relationship which I consider to be a no brainer. There are just some things that couldn't have been foreseen by Gandalf or Merlin regardless of their skills and abilities. These things seem to materialize like beings boarding the Star Trek Enterprise and I know that rarely ever do things appear like this, but sometimes they do. They can seem totally unrelated to anything that proceeded them and I think they may actually not be connected in a major way at all. It's hard to not find minor connections, but major warning signs don't always manifest themselves even to the parties in question. It almost seems like God or the observer just decided to see what would happen if one variable was altered. How might things change if A=1 rather than A=6? It's like I think I hear laughing somewhere, but I know it's not actually there on a conscious level. It's in the preconscious somewhere barely spilling from the deep, dark depths of the mind. Elliott Smith, how is Miss Misery? I don't think I want to know. Expectations aren't a good or bad thing, however, how you handle not having them met successfully can turn you into something else entirely different. Boeings look great when they are flying high in the sky, but the same plane looks like some scary, grey bohemith on it's way to explode against the ground. Where am I right now Kubler-Ross?

Maggie Austin: Georgia Clay Road

2007-05-08T22:22:00.001-06:00

Maggie Austin
Georgia Clay Road
Gulfwind Records

Rating: 85 out of 100

The debut album from Maggie Austin, Georgia Clay Road, can best be described in four words: good, clean, country music. This is independent country music at its best and should have listeners wondering why Maggie Austin isn’t a well-known name already. The album is definitely a great one for the shuffle setting and could stay in the CD player for days at a time.

All of the songs are well interpreted by the musicians and listening to the album proves that they weren’t micro-managed while recording. There is not a bad song on the entire album, but overall “That’s Me” has to be one of the best ones because of the slide guitar and the chord progression of the song, especially during the chorus.

Most of the time albums start with their strongest albums and gradually start to die off at some point before either totally dying or coming up for a last breath at the end with a decent track. This album doesn’t do this at all. The last four songs are among the strongest on the album and show such variation in styles. The variation of styles among the last four include bluegrass mandolin (“Rain on a Tin Roof”), blues infused rock (“What Do I Do with Me”), a pop ballad (“I Wanna Be That Song”), and pop/country (“This Is Forever”). The song selection for the album is great and it keeps the album flowing well, never bogging down on the road in one mood.

Austin has a really clean, alto voice that handles each melody with a playful energy on the upbeat songs. Her vocals on the more emotional songs sound great when relating to pitch, but she misses some of the emotional content. It doesn’t sound like she is singing about things she can relate to on “Does Anybody Love Anymore” and “No Good in Goodbye” even though it’s obvious she has experienced those types of feelings. If she just took more chances in expressing the feelings people experience while in those types of situations, she would be hitting the nail on the head with the slower songs.

Family albums that are worth listening to are so much easier to find in country music today than in the past. Georgia Clay Road is one of these and is definitely one worth having in your collection. It’s not another generic country release and it’s hopefully a great beginning for Maggie Austin. It will be interesting to see what happens with her career in the future.

Ryan T. White

Found out more about this album at: www.maggieaustin.com

Found out more about Ryan and music at: www.thelaterrye.blogspot.com

stressed

2007-03-28T18:50:00.000-06:00

It's been a while since the last post. The university, my school, and everything else have kept me supremely busy. I have been feeling lots of stress lately and haven't been coping with it very well. I pick up the guitar when I feel like it and put it back down within a few minutes, unable to believe anything I play on it is worth anything. I last played the bass during the Crabb gig and just picked it up for a singing Saturday night at a church. We were the only group on the sign, but we had to wait behind a group and then a soloist before getting on the platform. The crowd looked dead and only responded to one song without prompts. The other song they responded to was an acapella number and I was the one prompting. It was quite disappointing and I didn't get home until really late. I have been somewhat sick and just tired. I get home and just plant down on the couch, doing nothing but watching tv and listening to music. I can't even remember what all I have been listening to lately. Counseling, school, and taking a couple of college classes is not a great combo to take on, but it's possible. Things will be winding down after we get back from the trip, but then I will be worrying about where I will be working next year. The job I have will be refilled like a prescription next year, so I pray a counseling job at a decent school will be mine.

We leave for London a week from tomorrow and I am really excited about it. It's definitely going to be a different experience for us and a real break from home and the U.S. Planning is still going on for the road trip, but it's looking like it will be lots of fun. For some reason I have thought about checking into the possibility of getting endorsements from companies, but I will probably be too lazy to actually fool with it. It's a cool idea though, imagine getting paid to display a logo while doing what we want to do anyway and not having to pay for portions of it.

Brazzaville: Welcome To...Brazzaville

2007-03-14T22:08:00.000-06:00

Brazzaville
Welcome to…Brazzaville
Web of Mimicry Recordings

Rating: 78 out of 100

Welcome to Brazzaville is a compilation release of selected tracks from Brazzaville’s three prior albums Brazzaville 2002, Somnambulista, and Rouge on Pockmarked Cheeks, plus two previously unreleased tracks. Mimicry Records released the album as a way to introduce the band to new listeners. The band’s sound features bossa-nova grooves, dirty rock, laid-back club jazz, and even some elevator music in the style of “The Girl from Ipanema”. Think of Ed Harcourt fronting Los Lobos in an opium den with Wes Cunningham’s stylings.

David Brown seems to be very aware of his influences and has blended them together for an eclectic world sound diverse it its elements, but balanced. The instruments are well-placed in the arrangements. It seems like a live show would be quite a task considering all of the instruments that would need to be present to try and duplicate the studio versions of the songs.

“Christmas in E.C.” features kaleidoscope keys and acoustic guitar arpeggios floating over a bossa-nova groove which rides on a snare back-beat. A horn section fills out the sound and even features a trombone solo which melts into the sound. “Motel Room” sounds like a guitar arrangement that Lindsey Buckingham would have written with Ed Harcourt singing along to staccato bursts of organ and teases of sassy violin. “Queenie”, with its lush synths, gliding guitar arpeggios, Santana-type lead guitar, and haunting background vocals, should be playing on the radio with the likes of Beck’s Sea Change. “Sewers of Bangkok” features dirty distorted power chords, searing synth sounds reminiscent of Pink Floyd’s “Welcome to the Machine”, and lyrics that are spoken sometimes as a whisper at times rather than sung.

All fifteen of the tracks fit into one of the categories listed above, but the categories themselves get a bit repetitious by the end of the album. Brown’s lyrics mostly stay depressive and dirty throughout, covering themes of love, drugs, and loss from different corners of the world. His voice is on the verge of mumbling on some tracks and understanding the lyrics gets even more confusing in some places considering that Brown is multilingual without warning on some of the songs. This album would be a good pick for anyone, especially those liking a mix of different world influences and good old rock and roll.

Ryan T. White

For more information:

http://www.webofmimicry.com/

http://www.brazzaville-band.com/

Greetings from India!

2007-03-14T21:33:00.000-06:00

Saturday night was an interesting one. We went with some friends to India Night, featuring the food, dance, and flavor of India. My wife and one of our friends wore the outfits the Indian women normally wear, and I just looked like I had escaped from church. We started things off by checking out the Spring selections from the Indian Mary Kay and all of the other propaganda. After about an hour, the appetizers finally made their way out to us. They were really good, but not very filling. Within 30 minutes, we made it to our table and then waited for the food to make it onto the buffet. The food was awesome, filled with lots of Currie and spices from Houston. The ice cream was a little odd, since it was mixed with different types of nuts. I haven't really had Indian food or deserts before and I wish there was somewhere nearby that cooked the food. We then moved into the theatre to watch some Indian dances. This turned out to be the worst part of the evening. The whole thing was so disorganized. The light guy and sound guy must have never gotten together to practice. They started the first dancer off with the wrong song. She ran off of the stage and then came back when the right one started. She did two songs and didn't move around that much, so I got fairly bored quickly. A dance line of young girls came out and had a difficult time staying together, which was funny, but sad at the same time. Two guys dressed in red came out and danced together. It was like synchronized swimming, but on stage legs rather than in water. They started and then ran off of the stage and then came back out again. The highlight of the evening featured artist, musician, and master of confusion, Tony Dupois. He started a soundtrack of a thunderstorm, before starting to speak and not be heard. As soon as he stopped talking, he cut off the track and then began to breathe into the microphone loudly. Next, he stretched himself and yawned into the microphone. We sat confused and contemplated the situation. He then began to make strange noises. My wife and many other people started laughing loudly. I couldn't blame them, but I was trying to figure out what Tony was trying to do musically. Then, James Marshall joined in making noises also along with Dr. Ram. All three of them joined together in noise before Tony started playing with some bowl. Then all three of them stopped and Tony began to bang away on his keyboard, doing some type of fusion of jazz and Indian music. He was joined by James on Congas and Dr. Ram on his tiny drums while pieces of his artwork were shown on the power-point screen behind him. This went on for a while and was a mixture of scary, funny, and sad: just a giant pot of confusion. The whole 'cast' then came out and began petting the dog and reaching for the sky. The whole event started at 6pm and we didn't make it out until 11pm. it was quite a long night and we were really worn out. I don't think I will make it back to India anytime soon. Hopefully the next event will be organized a lot better, which means some planning.

Take It Easy

2007-03-10T00:01:00.000-06:00

I recently ripped Don Henley's Actual Miles and have been listening to either it or The Eagles' Greatest Hits 1971-1975 ever since. It's a really great cd, one worth leaving in the player for weeks at a time. The progression from heavy country influences to the Joe Walsh rock era is quite interesting and a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame concert with all original members would be surreal. For some reason I didn't think Don Henley was the original drummer, but I was wrong. I hope they get back some of their grit when putting out the new album. What I have heard on the radio so far sounds like something Richard Marx would turn out if someone would actually let him into a studio to danced around for a bit.
I may not be able to see the Police this summer, due to a trip I have already promised my wife. This is a great disappointment, but the truth is that I never thought that I would ever see them get over their egos and get back together again anyway; go figure.
Harry Connick, Jr. was another artist I hoped to see somewhere near LA, but since he moved to MA he can only land in NO and can't figure out how to get himself around the rest of the state. When my friend Mark and I saw him in '95, somehow he wandered into LSU and played a show for a few hundred people. If LA and music is so close to his heart, why can't he make it to major population centers in the state to perform? Hmm...
Maybe I will actually get to see Crowded House then, 1 out of 3, nevermind.

Back to the iPod. Today's letter is C. C is for can't, in the sentence, "I can't get my shift key to stop sticking."; frustrating.

Caedmon's Call used to be one of the top independent, unsigned bands in the country. Just Don't Want Coffee and My Calm/Your Storm were two of the best independent albums I had ever heard back in the mid 1990's, but when their eponymous debut for Warner Bros. came out, most of the reworked songs were trashed with gapped arrangments which left out intriquet guitar work and instead velcroed in string players holding single note movements. "April Showers', "Forget What You Know", "This World", "Jar Of Clay", and "Coming Home" are some of my favorites from the two indie albums.
The Cardigans' "Lovefool" is one of the funkiest, funniest songs I have ever heard. I have lost count of the movies and commericals featuring the song and I can't get it out of my head when I hear it. First Band On The Moon was a great disappointment, but someone gave it to me.
Carey Ott's Lucid Dream is a confusing album for me because of all the different versions available for download. There was the orginal 4 song ep, then the iTunes version with 2 bonus tracks, and the emusic version with 2 other bonus tracks. I actually downloaded all three, so I have 16 tracks for the 12 track Lucid Dream cd. My favorites are "Am I Just One", which I heard before it ever made it to Grey's Anatomy, "Mother Madam", "Daylight", and "I Wouldn't Do That To You". It's a great pop album with so many different influences. I love it when I discover great music on my own.
You can't always trust Zach Braff. I learned this the hard way a couple of times. I first heard "Blue Eyes" while watching Garden State and instantly fell in love with the song. I got the soundtrack and loved it so much that I bought Cary Brothers' eps All The Rage and Waiting For Your Letter. I was instantly disappointed and felt stupid for wasting my money and time on the albums. The music wasn't bad, it was just nothing special and I couldn't connect to it.
Chaos Is The Poetry is one of my favorite albums of all time. It's difficult to describe the concept album because it is full of influences. Lanny Cordova was the brains behind the project and he got together with some friends from Magdalena and some studio musicians to record the album. It's full of rock anthems, piano ballads, pop, funk, and even a track with a rap on it. There's not a bad track on the album, but ebay and half.com are probably the only places that have it since it is out of print.
I have never been a Cheap Trick fan even though "The Flame" and "I Want You To Want Me" are two great songs. I checked out Rockford from the library and got excited. It's hard to find good pop-rock and the album was full of it. The first three tracks, "Welcome To The World", "Perfect Stranger", and "It Takes A Lifetime", make up one of the best 1,2,3 punches I have heard in quite a while.

The Gin Blossoms: Live from Vinton!!

2007-03-03T22:22:00.000-06:00

My ears were still ringing last when I got home from the concert. I had to turn up the tv to be able to hear and I really hate it when that happens. I already don't have the best hearing from playing and listening to so much music over time, so each time that happens I fear I am slowing turning into my dad. There was no opening act for the Gin Blossoms and the concert started about 20 minutes late. I enjoyed the concert, but found it kind of sad. I can't imagine what it must feel like to be at the very top, opening for Toad The Wet Sprocket, traveling the country while ruling the charts, then not being able to cope with success and the death of a friend, only to hang it all up to start back at the bottom, playing for 200 people at a horse racing track. They may be playing bigger gigs somewhere else, but playing at Delta Downs can't be a high point for any band in a career. The drummer was the only band member not around from the New Miserable Experience Tour. Robin, Jessie, Scott, and Bill sounded just as good as ever when they were making a full effort, which was most of the time. For some reason Robin got a kick out of singing into peoples' cell phones while on stage and going into the crowd. It got really annoying and he seemed to have difficulty concentrating on some parts of songs. He had a bad habit of flashing the 'peace' and 'rock on' bullhorns after every little thing he did and somehow managed to play tambourine on almost every single song. One of my friends actually got a picture with him and got to play the tambourine for several songs. She said that he had definitely been drinking and seemed kind of drunk. Who knows, maybe this is the normal concert experience. I usually don't get to sit close enough to see those kinds of things. I was less than 20 feet from the stage and Robin was all over the front of it. The set was a mix of songs from New Miserable Experience: "Allison Road", "Found Out About You", "Hey Jealousy", and "Lost Horizons"; Congratulations I'm Sorry: "Follow You Down" and "As Long As It Matters"; Major Lodge Victory: "Learning The Hard Way", "Come On Hard", "Someday Soon", "Heart-Shaped Locket", "The End Of The World", "Long Time Gone", "Super Girl", "Let's Play Two", "Curious Thing", and "Fool For The Taking"; and what was probably the favorite of the night, "Til I Hear It From You". That's a lot of songs and would seem like a long concert, but keep in mind that most Gin Blossom songs are pop gems, that last just long enough to be nice and then end. The combined time of the concert was 75 minute, which included an encore of two listed songs, a weird, unannounced Robin bathroom break/band jam session, and a drum solo that never went anywhere in particular (Louie Weaver would have kicked his butt easily). For some reason the band decided to run the only song I have ever hated from them, "Heart-Shaped Locket" into the ground over and over again. I wanted to hose them off or throw something at them, but wussed out because who in their mind would do something stupid like that at a casino with so much security? Bill Leen's bass playing was quite entertaining. He would dance with his bass in semicircles, never missing a beat or note with his trusty pick. I have never seen someone play that thoroughly with a pick. The guitarists were both quite capable of playing complex guitar parts, but John Hampton's production during New Miserable Experience gave the band a 'jangle' rock sound, almost ripped straight from Peter Buck's Document era. The arpeggios killed me. Why does one guitarist have to continue to hammer the same pattern out through an entire song while the other guitarist plays mainly power-chords to carry the songs.
Once again, live concerts are always fun for me and getting to see a good band again was a great experience. I just wish Robin would have left the cell phones out of it.

Crazy After All These Years

2007-02-25T00:10:00.000-06:00

Thursday morning, I left town for a conference and just got back today in the middle afternoon. It was full of therapists (insert therapist joke here) and classes. The presentations went well and were very informative, except for the session in which the presenters read all of their information off of the power-point slides on the screen while we held the handouts in our hands. Paying a few hundred dollars to be treated like a kindergartner is not my idea of sheer joy. The really interesting thing about the conference was that I was once again informed that I looked just like someone else. This may not seem like an odd thing, but this has happened to me several times over the years. My sister was out with some friends and they all thought they saw me at the bar. She walked over and discovered that it wasn't me, but another guy she already knew. Another time a nasty Cruella DeVille woman stopped and asked me how my mom was doing, calling her by name, although it wasn't my mother and I did know the woman. I told her how the woman was doing and later figured out that she thought I was my friend. Then someone else confused me with another friend of mine by a guy trying to hit on my friend's sister. He asked how the parents were and I told him since I did know how his parents were doing. Another friend of mine took me to her friend's place of work, Pier 1, to hang around for a while. When we arrived, they all accused me of being someone else until I got within a few feet of them. These are my best examples of this and there are others I have probably forgotten. During this training it happened two more times. I met a therapist on Thursday and he told me right off that I looked like old what's his name that he went to school with. Then this morning, an attractive PhD. told me that I looked like her brother's boyfriend and that wasn't a bad thing. She also asked me if I was still in grad. school, which I took to be a compliment. I joked with her that I must be the most average looking guy in the world. (That also bring up how a man who has traveled the world over told me that I could pass for at least five different nationalities without a problem. He was a freak, but maybe he's right and I could travel abroad more to find out the truth. ) With this being said, I have a hard time understanding how easily I blend into the background when around other people when I look so much like every other guy out there.

My motel experience at Crestwood Suites was one of the worst ones I have ever had, if not the worst one for me ever, if it somehow tops the Microtel Inn incident. Here are both, you decide:

Crestwood Suites is the white-trash version of Bradford Home Suites. The wall looked really dirty and parts of it were painted while other parts of the wall had a stale, brown color dribbled on them. The room had a smell to it that I can only explain as 'overused'. I killed one roach on the wall, never a good sign of a great hotel room. There were no lights above the front parking lot, so breaking into a car would have been simple and now for the worst! I stayed on the second floor and for some reason had people staying right above me. On my last night there, I arrived at 7pm to hear him, her, or they moving about overhead. 'It' did not stop moving and continued to move even after I awoke at 6:15 am, and beyond that time until I left. It sounded like it weighed around 350 pounds and each step shook my entire room. I wore earplugs as I slept to cover up any outside noise, since I am a super-light sleeper. At some point it actually used a vacuum cleaner on the floor. I was so ticked off. I only got 2 hours of sleep and then had to sit through 5 hours of lecturing awake. I called the front desk 4 different times and the Anna working there never got things to settle.
Microtel Inn off of I-10 near Baton Rouge was the place I stayed the night before I took my licensing exam at L.S.U. I had a room on the second floor and was kept awake by stomping feet and the interstate traffic right outside the window. A South Park marathon was on and I had a hard time not watching it. I got about 45 minutes of sleep and then drove toward L.S.U. I didn't know that it was homecoming weekend, so I had to park a mile from where I was taking the test on campus, and then had to wait an hour to start on it because the people administering the test waited 45 minutes for people late from traffic problems. I fell asleep and woke up as the test was handed out to me. I felt like crap and slept most of a day once I got home.
The bottom line is that it's better to pay through the noise for a good hotel room, rather than get a good deal, never get decent REM sleep, and feel like crap.

Blameshift: Drop Down

2007-02-20T20:17:00.000-06:00

Blameshift
Drop Down

Rating: 45 out of 100

The latest release from the band Blameshift, Drop Down, finds the New York-based band riding on the coattails of the post modern rock scene that attempted to fill the void left by the death of grunge and the mass mating of hip-hop with modern culture. Their mix of neo-punk, aggression, musical dynamics, and blend of vocals and rap create an atmosphere in which they question the meaning of life and how screwed up things are in the world. Tackling such large topics without clear messages and the almost laughable snarling of some of the lyrics puts the band taking a plunge into a wading pool of thought.

Blameshift’s sound may have listeners wondering if the band sat around listening to Linkin Park, Evanescence, Creed, 12 Stones, and Slipknot the entire time they were recording the album. Jenny Mann and Tim Barbour split the vocal duties, which makes things a little more interesting. Neither seems to have had vocal lessons, since their deliveries are a bit jumbled, stalemating the flow of the songs. Mann sounds like a mix of Tanya Donelly (Belly), Amy Lee (Evanescence), and a younger Sam Phillips; not a bad voice, but not the right voice for this type of music. She is not aggressive and sounds more fit to lead some contemporary pop rock-edged outfit. Barbour’s voice fits the band like a glove, even though he sometimes pretends to be a rapper left off a Linkin Park tour bus.

The title track does a good job of setting the mood for the album, with its crunchy, hard-rock sound before descending into some borrowed 80’s dance tune with a poorly mixed Linkin Park rap and vocal duet. Retro-punk shows its dyed hair and ragged clothes on “From Here On In”, although Mann could use voice lessons from Joan Jett regarding how to do punk properly. Repetitious guitars also plague the song and prevent it from ever truly taking off. Blameshift can’t help but draw some comparisons to Evanescence, being a hard-rock band fronted by a female voice, and a song like “Love/Misery” doesn’t help kill those comparisons. “Haunted Dreams”, a power punk Blink 182 clunker, has more stops in it than a city bus, which really kills the flow of the power chords on the chorus. “The Maguire Incident” starts off different from everything else on the album with chorus delay before turning things up a notch with all the distortion they could muster up to turn this song in another Evanscence epic.

Blameshift definitely has the desire to succeed, but still needs to grow as a band to get there. Their half-hearted effort to sound passionate on Drop Down is disappointing and the vocal yells and snarls sound like a temper tantrum. The band doesn’t sound cohesive on the album and made the mistake of producing the album themselves without noticing that they don’t have a sound to call their own. Only time will tell if Blameshift can turn the tide.

Ryan T. White (read more about music at www.thelaterrye.blogspot.com)

For more info about this release: http://www.blameshiftmusic.com/

Alex Arestegui: Proem

2007-02-19T23:52:00.000-06:00

Here is the first of one of the many reviews I did for another website. More shall appear...

Alex Arestegui
Proem
Novel Records

Rating: 68 out of 100

It’s not surprising that studio musicians are struggling for work with musicians like Alex Arestegui in the music community. If an artist is looking to make an album and likes the idea of an electronic sound, hiring an entire band and paying out a bunch of money doesn’t make sense when someone like Arestegui can do it all. He has been working with the program 'Fruit Loops' for the past five years and now at age seventeen has released Proem.

The release is a collection of eight electronic pieces all performed, produced, and engineered by Arestegui, basically an electronic version of Lenny Kravitz. Most of the tracks are so beat-driven that listeners will want to get out of their chairs and dance, dance, dance, since this is an electronic dance album. “Of Love”, an atmospheric accension of a dance song, starts off the album pounding the listener into submission. Then the track temporarily gives a false sense of peace with lush synthesizers before pounding away again with the beat mixed from an intricate arrangement of sounds. “Endless Bay” is not too dissimilar to the first track, except sounds of some animal creep into the mix. “Dusk” starts off as the backdrop for a R. Kelly song which never happened, but turns into a steady percussive loop of beats and melodic arpeggios. “Tsunami” has the most interesting texture with its beat being composed from what sounds like the breaking of sticks. Varying ascending and descending keyboard lines make things even more interesting. The album ends with a track which sounds like the prologue to a Journey song before it turns into an ambient Asian piece, dwelling on the roots and fifths of chords.

The downfall of Proem is that most of the songs follow the same pattern. They start off with a short intro before kicking off with the beat which will define the song. After the song settles into its groove for a few minutes, the slow paced middle section takes over to cool things off a bit. Next, a short intro begins as the beat which defined the song takes over again at full throttle. Mixing the song writing formula would have helped things, along with not pounding the beat so hard that it actually threatens to tear the eardrum.

Ryan T. White http://www.thelaterrye.blogspot.com/

For more information: http://www.novelrecords.com/

Oh Crap! It's the Grammies!

2007-02-11T23:08:00.000-06:00

I was excited all week about seeing the Grammy Awards tonight. I know last year, I was avoiding them. Stupid thing to do since I missed U2 kicking butt all over the stage and also getting awards. Tonight, I was working on a paper for a class and sat talking to my wife while she watched "Grease" on NBC. Blah Blah, grrrr...I hate it. Out of nowhere it struck me, "Oh crap, the Grammy Awards are on CBS and The Police are opening things!" I ran to the tv, changed the channel, discovered we don't actually pick up a CBS station clearly, and then ran into the other bedroom. (We don't have cable tv. This freaks out a lot of people. They ask what my wife and I do all the time and they are actually curious because they figure we would have about a dozen children by now because we don't have cable. We tell them, "We read a lot, talk - mainly me- and watch movies that come in the mail". They just don't understand how we can survive. My parents even have cable, although they still don't know what stations go with which numbers and only watch maybe two to three hours of tv a day. Go figure.) I finally get it to show up more clearly on the tv in the bedroom and my wife comes in with the vacuum cleaner asking me which tv I want to watch the show on as she moves the plug even closer to the wall. I explain about reception and she leaves. It was 7:3o and yes you guessed it, The Police were done at 7:05. Argh!! I watched the rest of the show and they never peeped out from anywhere. I can't put my disappointment into words. The Grammies hath avenged me.

Farewell to the World

2007-02-10T22:39:00.000-06:00

Last night was the big night; we opened for the Crabb Family on my school's stage. We did well with our five songs. The acapella song we opened with went okay, then the next 3 were all new ones and sounded better. I enjoyed playing them for the first time live and for probably the third time ever. The last one was a song we do every concert. I have a hard time naming songs because I don't actually sing any lyrics, I just play the bass and hope to hear the guitar and keyboard piping out of the monitor mix. We only took up maybe thirty minutes of the concert, which was probably a good thing because the rest of the concert took up three hours of my life.

The Michael Boelyn Group was up next. They were a vocal trio with a pianist, keyboardist, tracksmith, and whatever else. It was confusing because he played a Yamaha and we heard drums, bass, guitars, and everything else. I hate soundtracks like I hate war; they put good musicians out of a job. After they finished The Crabb Family took the stage and took off on a three hour tour. Adam Crabb looked like Ryan Seacrest and Jason looked like the X-Men's Wolverine freshly escaped from the military hospital in his faded jeans, leather jacket, patchy beard, and 1980's Jeff Porcaro haircut. They began by playing "Slow Dancing in a Burning Room" from John Mayer's Continuum and somehow morphed into a slow-paced, blues version of "Shout to the Lord". My wife and I were really surprised, but we like John Mayer too. They continued with the worship songs for a while, throwing them through the remix shredder. The arrangements sounded like they had been rehearsed thoroughly, showing the band's attention to detail. Then they went through the classic songs for all the fans out there. I recognized some of them, but I have never really listened to a Crabb Family cd. Maybe forty-five minutes later, the church service broke out with all of the 1-4-5 throw in a random 6 chord progressions. All of the music sounded good throughout, but the concert was basically the Jason Crabb concert featuring the family. Jason played like a guitar god, sang like he had been buried with the blues since birth, and worked the stage like he was James Brown's gospel counterpart. Right before the last song, they announced that they support Holt International, a great cause, but the presentation went on for probably about twenty minutes. The organization sounds great and successful, but the presentation was at a bad time, since we were all wanting to get out by that point. Two and a half to three hours was a little much of the Crabb Family for anyone and a three and a half hour concert was way too much for just about anyone (I think, at least).

My parents were too exhausted to go eat with us after the concert. I asked my mom what she thought about the music and she said that she had a hard time picturing me playing that kind of music. She enjoyed the Crabb Family a lot. My dad didn't seem to be having the best time, but he is like me and has a short attention span (probably about an hour for that concert).

I felt jealous while watching the family jam out for that long. It would be awesome to travel around playing music all the time, but I am sure it would be really difficult to have anything close to a normal life while running around all the time.

Back to the iPod:
"Horse with No Name" is one of America's best songs and one of the best radio songs ever. It is quite infectious and one of the best for karaoke. "Lonely People" always keeps me wondering about the silver cup and how it's related to marriage.
Amos Lee's "Keep It Loose, Keep It Tight" has a really soulful groove planted on some great acoustic guitar.
The Appleseed Cast is another Radiohead influenced noise band. "Here We Are" and "Peregrine" are two of my favorites from Peregrine.
Aqualung's piano-based pop has more flavor than Keane, but not the melodic sense. "Left Behind", "Brighter Than Sunshine", and "Strange and Beautiful" are all great songs.
Aqueduct is next with "Five Star Day", a great track which leads right into
The Arcade Fire because it sounds like it would have been a b-side to Funeral. Neighborhoods 1 and 2 ("Tunnels" and "Laika") sound like a more accessible version of Talking Heads. The singer's voice borders on psychotic at times and the music has a great beat to it.
Ari Hest opened for the Finn Brothers at the House of Blues in New Orleans. "They're on to Me" is a great pop track driven by the acoustic guitar. I should probably check out the rest of the cd sometime.
Army of Anyone got me pretty excited when I saw them on The Tonight Show. I downloaded the album the day it came out to only discover that I had actually discovered Talk Show with a different singer. The album starts out great, a little rock with Beatles influences, and then just doesn't go the distance. It got rather boring and I haven't picked it up since.
The Association is one of my parents favorite bands. They liked them so much that they actually hiss when I mention the Beatles. My parents first date was at an Association concert, too bad they switched to country music shortly after that and stayed with it until I was in high school. There are too many good songs on Greatest Hits; don't even bother with a regular album from them, all the good songs are here. We actually drove around and sang the entire album. There were five of us and we knew all the words and split up all of the vocal parts and did a decent job.

That's it for the A's. (I am currently listening to the E's, but I wanted to start at the beginning, so there is a lot of backtracking on my part.) The B's will start shortly and I can see the major one up above this paragraph.

Who's been checking out your Hanes?

2007-02-07T21:59:00.000-06:00

Alexi Murdoch's Time Without Consequence is a great album in the style of Nick Drake. "Orange Sky" has been championed as the best track on the album by different tv and movie soundtracks. It's a really mellow album, nice for just driving around for some peace of mind or for reading on a Sunday afternoon.
Jump from mellow to metal with Alice in Chains. "Man in the Box" and "Heaven Beside You" are two of their best 'heavier songs'. I prefer the Jar of Flies E.p. over all the rest. It's hard to beat songs like "No Excuses" and "I Stay Away".
Alison Krauss' "Restless" is a great song, so much better than the bluegrass tracks I have featuring her. The song has a lot more of a pop feel to it, with roots music to drive it along.
It's sad when a band's first album is their best, even after 3 more attempts to top it. All Star United's self-titled debut is one of the best Christian pop albums ever, full of British pop fluff done in a tasteful way. "Torn" is one of my favorite songs ever, then add in "La La Land", "Bright Red Carpet", "Angels", and "Drive". I saw them on their first tour days after they had signed their first record contract. They were with Third Day and Seven Day Jesus. Ian, the lead singer, actually signed one of my acquaintance's underwear. That was kind of scary.
"I Just Want to Be Loved" from A.M. Radio is next up, one of the great songs off of the Smallville Talon Mix. I hate that all of these shows are putting out albums of indie music, only because it's the popular thing to do, not because they really want to promote new music from people needing some exposure.
Even though I find it somewhat annoying, I have Amanda Marshall's Tuesday's Child on here. "Love Lift Me" and "Shades of Gray" are good songs, but the rest of it is either really generic or too soulful for me. I honestly have this because the producer ex-boyfriend of a girl I liked swore by this artist.
Ambrosia was a band I had heard of, but I only laughed at their fruity name. I heard an inside music podcast featuring David Pack and was surprised to learn that he was a founding member of the band and also wrote "Biggest Part of Me", one of my favorite songs. The rest of Anthology was decent, some better than other including "How Much I Feel" and "You're the Only Woman". Hard to believe that this prog rock came from the same West Side Story producing genius.

Like Dandruff from a Shoulder

2007-02-04T20:04:00.000-06:00

We practiced tonight for Friday's concert. It went okay, but they pulled two new songs I have never heard before out for me. They know it frustrates me, but this is my main musical outlet for now. I guess that's a positive in a way though because it pushes me even more so to finish my music and find songs to play with my wife. I felt kind of rusty, buy how great can you feel when you are playing songs you've never heard. Before that, I was tangoing with paperwork regarding counseling in my school and it would be so much easier if I didn't have my counseling licenses. I called a guy I work to go meet up somewhere and just hangout while drinking coffee and tea. I think he just brushed me off even though we had talked about doing something earlier this week. Then later, I called another old friend of mine to see how he is doing since his grandmother just passed away rather than go by and see him at the time, because I didn't know the condition of all the family. He didn't answer and I left the always awkward voice mail. I have hated leaving voice mails since high school. I would have what I wanted to say to a girl planned out and then I would get an answering machine. That totally changed the dynamic because you were no longer talking to just her, it became addressing at least one parent or possibly the entire family which then meant if they weren't expecting your call, the girl would more than likely get railed about the whole thing and then she would be too embarrassed to even return the call, if she could even call back (which as weird as it sounds, some parents would not let the daughter call any guy back), or the girl would act like the whole thing never happened. Those were some torturous years for me for many reasons. It was like Mike Tyson was beating the crap out of my self-esteem. While pursuing my undergraduate degree, I worked at a pharmacy where I was responsible for calling people about prescriptions and I had to leave a lot of messages. This was even worse because of confidentiality I could not leave important details on the message because some people didn't want others to know personal info. How do you say something by saying nothing? Yeah, confusing as always.
I guess the whole point being, I don't really reach out to do much with others and the day I do I go 0 for 2. So much for being social. I just need to start talking to really old people at Book-A-Million again...that would be guaranteed reinforcement for my continued attempts to socialize.

More under A for the iPod:
A.J. Roach almost sounds like Travis Tritt on "Grandaddy"(I always want to add another d).
Abra Moore's voice soars on "I Do". It's not the greatest song, but I find it quite sexy.
Adam Richman's "Mary-Anne" is a great rock song. Who could resist the lyrics 'Mary-Anne, you're such a whore!' It's a great up-tempo number.
The Afters confuse me. I Wish We All Could Win starts off as I good rock album, one of those from a band of Christians trying to be taken seriously, or so I thought. As I made it through the album I came across a number of songs which sound like altar calls, not a bad thing, but obviously they have fallen into the trap set by the music market: if you put too may altar calls on an album, you get labeled and removed from reaching as many people as you could have with maybe one e.g., Lifehouse's "Everything". The album is definitely worth hearing and they have come along way from chilling with guitars in the corner of the Starbucks where they worked.
Aimee Mann has a lot of melancholy music and that's why I have never bought an entire album of it except for the Magnolia soundtrack, but it's not on my iPod. "Humpty Dumpty" is one of my favorites from her, but "Dear John", as good as it is, doesn't come close.
Al Green's "Let's Stay Together" has one of the best grooves ever.
Alannah Myle's "Black Velvet is one of my favorite songs ever. Her voice is great, but that bass-line vexes me each time I hear it. Too bad her career never went anywhere, she was hot.

more to come...actually thousands...

Rodeos are for the literate too!

2007-02-04T00:59:00.000-06:00

My wife and I went to our first rodeo last night. We got to check out the whole thing from the sky-box with one of my friends from the band and had a really good time. It's hard to believe that I am from and still live in the South and have never been to one. I had watched them on TNN when it was still a network, but never in person. It took a little time to figure out what was going on and then add in that the box was full of people I did not know. Time to turn on the social skills or put on the 'life of the party' hat. Yeah, I don't have one, so I talked to people about random things to fill time, not realizing that the practice would help me out later. Guys were roping, riding bucking broncos and bull, wrestling cows to the ground, and roping each other. There were some women too, but they only knocked over barrels and jumped on moving horses. Rodeos haven't moved much past the days of male dominated society, but outside of that, don't think of Rodeo and Rednecks having lots in common. It was a fairly modern event featuring pyrotechnical effects, a JBL sound system, and very little country music. It was like a wrestling event with all the random rock music including Billy Idol, Joan Jett, AC/DC, and Neil Diamond. I enjoyed that more than other parts actually. My friend told me that hardly any of the 'cowboys' competing tonight actually listen to country music. Most enjoy hip-hop or jam to rock music. I felt sorry for the animals, but my friend insisted that the animals were well taken care of by the contestants and caregivers and that most of what they do while competing on and with animals doesn't do any damage. He rodeos (Is that actually a verb?) himself, so either he believes that or just says it to believe that it's okay, I am not sure which.

As we left we ran into an old friend of mine whom I have not seen in quite a while. We got into conversation and talked nearly an hour. It went well since there was a lot to catch up on, but talking for that long can be difficult even for me. I almost ran out of things to talk about; okay, I mean safe things to talk about (safe meaning that we wouldn't get into an argument or irritate the crap out of each other), which has only happened a few times to me while actually talking. My wife enjoys these times and refers to them as rare. We covered everything from jobs, to wives, to old friends, and old grandmothers. There wasn't much else left to cover, except for the invite to do something sometime. He still hasn't done it from the last time and even mentioned to me that he had just done that to another one of our 'old' friends even though he had meant to call. Sometimes I miss this friend, but other times I think about how much different things are now. Maybe I would feel better if I got a few things of my chest and then I might care more about getting together with him to hangout, but as of now, it's not something I think about on a regular basis. Rarely ever do I sit around and wonder what people are doing and it's only for a moment if that even happens. I think it's funny how every time I run into one of my old friends that they tell me "Man, I've really been thinking about you lately!" I think in my mind, "That's interesting, because I really don't think about you." I am sure if we get together, we will go into more detail about what was discussed before and other more uncomfortable topics will pore forth, but I will wait to see if that happens. Maybe things will go a lot better than they did the last time we went out and met to eat. If everything else fails, there's always the old stories about us and the friends we never see anymore.

Friday night will be our next concert. Our website is www.thearenos.com and we will be opening for the Crabb Family. This is their farewell tour, since they are breaking up later this year due to reasons beyond their control, from what I understand. We are playing a six song set and hope to record with Gerald Crabb later on this year. (Who knows, I might be able to land a song or two on the project. I would really feel successful then, if finishing two songs is a big deal to me now. Writing daily will really help me if I know I will have to sit down and wait until the time is up, I will hate feeling like I am just wasting time.) It will be fun. My wife will be coming (she never goes to our concerts because she doesn't really like the style of music, but she loves the Crabb Family and hates that they are breaking up), so will my parents and maybe a couple of other friends. It will be interesting and I might have students actually show up and recognize me as a minor celebrity (haha).

I am currently reviewing all of the music on my iPod and it's taking an awful long time to get through it. I will have to backtrack to cover it all, but I will finish eventually. This is another way to get myself to write daily.

#'s

Actually the iPod starts with numbers rather than A. 3 Doors Down is the first entry and the song "Let Me Go" is a great one. That's the difficult thing about having one of their cds: the two radio songs on the album are great, but the rest is a generic mix of modern and southern rock. This song was supposed to be featuring on one of the Spiderman soundtracks, but they decided to keep it and use it as one of the two song album quota for radio songs.

311 is next with "Amber". This is one of my favorite songs of all time and it rings through my head ever so often, leaving me humming it because the chorus is all I can remember word-wise. Too bad they did so much rap rock and attempted to be The Cure, their pop music is good.

A.C. Newman's The Slow Wonder is a really enjoyable album for cleaning up around the house. It stays upbeat most of the time and it's full or great, crafted pop songs. "Miracle Drug", "Drink to Me, Babe, Then", "On the Table", and "Most of Us Prizefighters" are a great 1234 song combination, "On the Table" being my personal favorite. I would listen to Newman's solo work over The New Pornographers anytime.

We are not even ankle deep into the stuff in A yet, but it's time for sleep.

Shopping for Guilt

2007-02-03T14:08:00.000-06:00

This morning I went to one of the places I hate the most in the entire world: Walmart. I first started hating Walmart because a friend of mine was obsessed with the store and being there. I hung out with him a lot and we went around to different places just to pass the time away, waiting for something to happen in our boring lives. This was more the case for him than me evidenced by the time that he decided to see how many Walmarts we could make it to in just one afternoon. This happened one morning after we had decided to drive out of town and I happened to be riding in his truck. We made it to four stores in the afternoon and I hated it and told him how stupid it was, but what do you do when you are two hours from home and not in your own vehicle. (Okay there are a lot of things I probably could have done, but I was so embarrassed by the task of the day, I didn't want to tell anyone about it at the time). That happened years ago and the valuable lesson I learned was to never ride in vehicles with stupid people.
We only go to Walmart ever so often, hardly ever on a regular basis. My wife says that Walmart makes her feel tired as soon as she walks through the automatic doors. The longer she shops, the more she feels like a zombie, and when she gets home she has to get in the bed or pass out on the couch. I just feel dirty when I go, guilty because my saving money is stealing money from others. So I still hate Walmart, but for different reasons, and it's not just the store I hate, I hate what's behind the store even more: greed and selfishness. I won't on all the evils of the place including: the tax breaks cities give the store in the first place; how local businesses are put out of business because they cannot compete; undercutting those producing goods for them; ignoring environmental guidelines; claiming products are organic when they aren't; referring workers to the welfare system rather than providing them affordable insurance and or benefits; operating sweatshops in other countries so they can avoid paying taxes; threatening workers with their jobs if they won't work overtime, then not paying them for the time anyway, and etc...

With all that said, I was still there this morning buying things because I can't find them hardly anywhere else. I am such a hypocrite (a word Jesus made famous, of course not in English) and there's the guilt. I really do try to shop somewhere besides Walmart, but I end up back there anyway. Shopping at the other stores probably isn't much better since they are all chains of some major group and run business with greed, but not to the extend or magnitude of Walmart. If you don't like it, I guess you can always grow your own stuff in your own backyard. I am way too lazy for that, but it would be the safe way to live (funny since Safeway is actually a grocery store chain).

I have been watching movie since I got home, basically wasting time. "Everything Is Illuminated" was actually good. It's sometimes hard to tell with the independent movies. "Little Miss Sunshine" is really funny, although not in the laugh out loud sense. Tonight, I will go to my first rodeo, who knows how that will go. That's the nice thing about getting to hangout in a corporate box, if you are bored, you can eat and laugh a lot. The box at the Nashville Predators game we went to had a really great view and was a lot of fun.

I decided to go back on a schedule again. I have some time, but don't produce much with it. I don't want to look back ten years from now on the last ten years and think "What did I do with all that time and what do I have to show for it?" I really am trying to kick perfectionism out of the window so I can be realistic and enjoy life, because life isn't perfect.

Test yourself: How many times did I type Walmart in this post?

Thanks, but no Thanks?

2007-01-31T22:53:00.000-06:00

This evening I went by Starbucks to work on a journal article for one of my classes and also to pick up coffee for my wife before I came home. I ended up next to a table full of people, the only table left in the place. It was rainy and nasty outside, so everyone was camped indoors with something warm to drink, except for me. I had a vanilla creme frappuccino and a piece of iced lemon cake. I started working on my paper and eventually habituated to the noise of the coffee grinder and voices. All four of the people at the table next to me got up and left to go outside and I noticed a set of keys left on one of the chairs. I grabbed the keys, walked outside, and asked about the keys. One of the guys says, "Oh, yeah, they're mine.", takes them from my hand and turns around to the people he was with, continuing his conversation. No thank you, other response from him. This offended me, even though maybe it shouldn't have. I am from the South, so I am used to people being polite and saying polite things like "thanks" and "you are welcome". It was just odd to be ignored by someone when I thought about not even fooling with the whole ordeal.

I was actually able to concentrate on my work, which was a good thing, but it is not the ideal place to meet for class, especially when it comes to discussion. I was really distracted by the music because I liked each song and was trying to figure out which artist played each song. I had to really focus hard on my professor's voice to understand what she was saying. The place is also very small and packed out with machines. I figured out that the cream on top of the frappuccino is basically solid lard and that's why it sticks to the top of my throat. Nasty, and I will keep it off of the thing.

Boundaries are a Must! Part I

2007-01-28T23:08:00.000-06:00

The lower you set your expectations, the less disappointment you will probably face. I don't like to think that I am a pessimist, but I probably sound like one most of the time. There's just different perspectives when it comes to life. Some of us see how everything works out and if it doesn't right now, then eventually over time things will work out for the best. Others just see how things are presently and for one reason or another can't see very far past that. They also tend to forget about how things have worked out in the past. Both of these perspectives come into play when dealing with tasks and with people. It seems a lot easier to deal with tasks rather than people because we can control tasks, but cannot control people at all. So basically I can guarantee that I will do something and it will happen because I decide in my mind to do it. People are so much more complex because if you depend on them and they are having a good day, then chances are good that you can actually count on them. However, if the good day was a fluke and on the day or days you were supposed to depend on them, you end up dealing with a different person, good luck. This brings up the conflict which most people deal with at some point and sometimes at many points in life: Do I do something because I want to do it or because I feel guilty about the situation and my feelings of obligation won't leave me alone. It's all about boundaries, something which takes a lot of work, but are well worth setting in place. One of the main reasons for setting them is that I am in charge of how much disappointment I will feel if someone lets me down. I don't feel responsible because I believe in a person's autonomy in making choices in life. Making large efforts when there is no point because it will go nowhere is a complete waste of time.
Yes, sometimes I can be really lazy and it almost seems like I can't depend on myself, but I am getting better. I finished two songs last night and I am not rewriting them at all! I have another on the table to work through, hopefully this week, but I need to invest time in a journal article for one of my classes and draw up some forms for school. It shall be a busy week.

In the Long Run

2007-01-26T20:56:00.000-06:00

"In the Long Run" is a lot more than a cool Eagles song, it's a perspective some can view life from time to time. Lately I have been looking at how fleeting friendships are and how that having long term ones are a rarity. Most of my friends disappeared for a while after I got married, and then after I moved 30 minutes away they pulled a David Copperfield on me. It was kind of a shock. It's so easy to get into a regular routine of doing things with certain people because it seems like you have for so long. You learn to depend on them and think that they do likewise. When they are gone, well the skills used to develop friendships are so rusty that it's difficult to know which tool to use and how. Now, don't take me as helpless and confused about how to make friends, I just don't have regular places where I hangout anymore. I am married. My wife is my best friend and I spend a lot of time with her, therefore, I don't go out a lot by myself to hangout and when I do, it's weird trying to talk to random people. During college it was easy, but I tried to stay away from home as much as possible and kept running into the same people time and again. My wife had the same difficulty, but worse since she moved here not knowing anyone except the people I knew. We have made some friends, the ones next door being really great and fun, but now with school starting for me it's even harder to find time when I can hangout in places where I meant meet someone.
I used the word fleeting earlier because in the long run, the short term friendships aren't really that lengthy compared to the length of an average life. Friendships are built on commonalities. When they are gone or change, so does the relationship. Sometimes commonalities disappear and then the friendship becomes an uncomfortable void between two people. No one wants to say another about it because of the guilt. We always want to place blame for failure, whether it's us or them to blame because it brings resolution. It's not just one person's fault. Relationships at their foundation should be balanced on the shoulders of two parties, never one. When things weigh more on one person more than another, it's only a matter of time before it crumbles. I have outgrown plenty of friends and have learned that when one person grows and another doesn't, well, the end is near unless the relationship grows too. It's taken time, but I have learned that all of this is just a part of time and it's best to remember the good times. Setting boundaries with those people and not doing more work than they do to make things work was the best lesson of all.

I jammed to Crowded House all day while driving and I am ready to see them live! How long will I have to wait?

Thankful for Reunion Tours

2007-01-23T17:50:00.000-06:00

It's been a strange a strange thing for me. I usually discover bands after they have broken up or members have died, leaving the band a skeleton of what it once was. I first began listening to Toto (Past to Present and IV) in 1990 right after Jeff Porcaro died of a heart attack (um, cocaine overdose) and even though Simon Phillips is a great drummer, the band has never sounded the same. The Police first came to my attention when I finally figured out that "Every Breath You Take", "Message in a Bottle", "Roxanne", and "Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic" were all by the same band. Their greatest hits album was one of the first cds I ever bought and I wore it out. I ended up buying Message in a Box and loved every minute of it. Of course by that point in 1994, the band had long broken up and with all the venom left there was no hope of ever seeing them as a band. I became the rabid Sting fan, buying all of his cds and I also bought Andy Summers' The last Dance of Mr. X, a progressive guitar album. Crowded House broke up months before I purchased Recurring Dream: The Very Best of Crowded House. I couldn't get "Don't Dream It's Over" out of my head and then obsessed with the cd for months, discovering all the rest of the songs, which never made it to radio in the States.
I type all this as an introduction to this: Crowded House has reformed with Neil, Nick, and Mark (still looking for a drummer to attempt to replace Paul), and The Police are reportedly going to go on a stadium tour during this year!! I am so excited and ready to spend the money to see both bands play live. I am afraid of the ticket prices since, so many people have offered huge amounts of money to see reunion tours occur. I wasn't too surprised with the Crowded House reunion, but the Police reunion blew me away, even though it hasn't been confirmed as of yet. Only time will tell if Jeff Porcaro will come back from the dead and wow me with the total Toto experience. (I would have believed it was just as likely as The Police getting back together before I heard the announcement Sunday morning.)

Random: I hate fleas. The dog and cats are scratching and biting, although I have no signs on the infestation on me. I picked at least ten off of the dog the other day before we gave her a bath. The cats didn't enjoy the bathes as much, but survived. Vacuuming sucks, literally.

It's also Girl Scout Cookie time again! It was a lot easier to buy them this year, since my niece is selling them, and she is hard to resist.

Pefectionism

2007-01-20T16:35:00.000-06:00

I have been thinking lately that I really don't get the things I want done completed or resolved and also that I don't know what keeps me from getting those things done. Not really related, but I sometimes think I should come up with a dictionary which gives definitions to words and how they relate to my life. That actually wouldn't be anything new, since the Devil's Revised Dictionary is an awesome resource for a laugh. The word of the day for me would be:
perfectionism (verb)-def.- how to never get anything done. a.k.a.-playing it safe, homeostatic.

I really do think that I could be successful at a lot of things, but I know how I am and so does my wife. It really frustrates her how I can come up with a clever idea, expound upon it, and within two weeks, sit my butt on it and not hear of it again. Some would call it laziness, but it's not about being lazy, or maybe it is. I guess it depends on how you define it. I do want to put the energy and effort in, and I have the energy, I just have an extremely difficult time sitting done to do the work. I have a hard time focusing when I have the pen on in my hand or the guitar in my lap. I lose interest and can't move forward. There are times that I feel plugged in and the ideas are bouncing like they should, but I am usually sitting in church or in class and by the time I get to where I can work on things, I have lost that focused intensity and am left feeling disappointed and confused. Updating this blog is the most consistent writing I have ever done.

I have probably 6 audio cassettes full of song ideas, either featuring lyrics, guitar or bass chord progressions or riffs, and vocal lines recorded from countless cellphones, tape recorders, and stereos; several notepads full of half-written lyrics; and a couple hundred post-it notes with random words written upon them including working titles or phrases which were just too cool to part with so I kept them around for future use. A few months back I went through most of the written things I had kept since high school and early college days. Most of them did not make the cut and ended up as reading material for the raccoons digging through my trash. Some of the collegial stuff is good, but most is unfinished and unheard. I really do get ideas, but I am just about always missing that one line to finish it off and make it complete. Obsession with an idea is a must and it usually takes place for a few months, before another idea pops up and then leaves the prior one in the dust literally, until yet another idea pops into my mind.

Today I put some thought into the whole situation and how it has been annoying me for so long. Most people just think that I just play stringed instruments and sing, which is true, but I want more than that. I really want to piece together the music I play and have more control over it because I know what I like and how I want it to sound. That could mean that I would be a great producer if most people agree with what I think about how things sound, but that's totally separate from actually coming up with original ideas and making them happen from scratch. I think am projecting way too much into what I think other people will think, therefore, defeating myself before I ever get a real start. I have the ear of Simon Cowel, but I am not on television trying to be somewhat friendly and keep people watching a show. My mind must think that others would judge what I put out just as harshly as I do, even though most probably don't care and of course I tend to forget that there is not one artist/performer loved by everyone. That's just impossible. I think I am comparing my present day self to the one fresh from high school. This music isn't even in the same genre of what I was doing then and I am not the same performer. It's waste of energy to think this far into things, but that's what I do. Most people musicians perform for don't have a clue musically what's going on and they just feel a connection and enjoy the music. I don't think enough about those people and think far too much about the 5 to 10% who think and hear similar to me.

Speaking of my audience, we, The Arenos, will be opening for the Crabb Family on Feb 9th. The auditorium will be full and I am guessing that it holds about 600 to 800 people. It looks like we will not be working Daywind, although that's not for sure right now. The deal just isn't looking as good as the offer we got to record with Gerald Crabb in Florida. I still don't have all the details, but I guess that's what happens when you are the bass player. Just a side note, black gospel songs take more effort than I thought when it comes to working up acoustic versions of them on guitar. Not impossible, but time consuming.

Yes, pefectionism was spelled incorrectly on purpose. I obsessed about that the entire time and also about the spelling of lazy because I just looks wrong for some reason, even though I learned to spell it in probably second grade and haven't spelled it wrong since then.

The meeting is now in order

2007-01-17T18:33:00.000-06:00

I had an interesting night last night. I am currently teaching at a middle school, filling in for a teacher taking a sabbatical. This semester I will complete two classes and then after the necessary paperwork, I will be certified as a professional school counselor. I stayed at the school late, making phone calls to parents and was home for only a few minutes before remembering that there was a meeting with my city council representative starting in thirty minutes. I grabbed some food and ran out the door to the meeting. Getting involved in city politics is a little strange for me, since I have never seen myself as a political person. Okay not that much of one, but I guess we all are to a certain degree since we have opinions. The older people get, the more they think people are interested in what they have to say. It seems that the opposite might be true, which is unfortunate for the younger generations. Of course keep in mind that wanting to do things the same way because they have always been done that way is not a very logical train of thought when things are not going well. There were about twelve people at the meeting and also the city council rep. and a candidate for the state house. I was by far the youngest person there, but I am used to that I guess. The main problem with my city is that problems have been talked about, but nothing has really been done to implement solutions. The mayor seems to like to smile and wave, being a great face for the city, while things are not working around him. He isn't really doing his job and is putting the responsibility on other people. Pointing fingers is tacky and doesn't get things done, so I won't start. I don't know these people, all I know is what I see happening and not happening in the city. I just want recycling bins to be made available to the citizens at no charge and for my trash to get picked up on the day it's supposed to get taken from me, so the raccoons don't set up a home within my can. I guess this could get interesting.

Pandora internet radio is something my wife has turned me on to and now I am flooding myself with even more music. It is so much better than Launchcast from Yahoo! in that you can make several stations so that you can skip songs until you reach your limit on one, and then switch to another one each time you run out of skips. Initially, you pick a song or an artist and then the program actually matches other music by different means to what you picked, supposedly by comparing bars of music against each other. My Neil Finn and Sting stations have been great so far.

We have been doing planning for the London trip coming up in April and the cross-country road trip which will be taking place in June. Lots of places to see, people to meet, and things to write about...who knows how many books I could milk out of it.

Fat, Fat, Fat, Fat, Fat

2007-01-15T17:46:00.000-06:00

I am not talking about a person, just the nasty substance which courses through our blood vessels, looking for any open opportunities to build up and kill you over time. (Just say the title of this post to yourself as you hum or sing George Michael's "Faith". I guess that idea is due to karaoke. The microphone we bought features the song and I think I do a decent rendition.)
I am a label freak. If some food item, canned or bagged, has a nutrition label on the package chances are I have read it and know what's in it. My wife hates it, but she and the media have created a monster. I am more like Jekyll and Hyde. Some things are easily avoidable, but others call out to me like the Sirens..."Eat me, eat me!" I avoid fast food at just about all costs, but going out for dinner at an actual sit down restaurant usually turns into an unhealthy adventure. My snacks around the house have gotten healthier and I have stopped buying things that I should not eat and at school most of what I have to eat is free of the worst things. It's amazing how many of our foods have either added sugar, salt, or fat throw into them to help make us crave them more. Some claim that it almost makes the food addictive to some. If you want more information on that, read the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser and check out the documentary Super Size Me. It's not too difficult to avoid fast food restaurants. You have to actually drive there to get the food, so if you don't go out, you won't get the stuff. When you go to the store it gets more complex. There are so many different terms for ingredients that you could be reading it and need an interpreter to figure out what's actually on the label. The most confusing one is trans fat, probably the worst thing you can actually put in your body. It's so bad for you that the government has mandated that manufacturers list how much of it is in any food product. The trickiest part of the label issue is that a product can have under 0.5 grams trans fat in it and still be listed as zero. It's only listed if the product is higher than 0.5 grams trans fat or higher. So in theory, you could eat 5 bowls of Bluebell Ice Cream, each bowl listed at 0 grams trans fat, that should be 0 grams of trans fat. But, pretend that each bowl of Bluebell has nearly 0.5 grams of trans fat in it, you could actually be eating 2.5 grams of trans fat and not even know it. Kind of scary isn't it? That was how the law was passed. I have been eating a ton of Bluebell, my favorite ice cream, because I am eating through all junk food which doesn't have a ton of trans fat in it. Once it's gone, I don't plan to buy anymore. Bluebell has partially hydrogenated fats and/or oils in it, which is another name for trans fat. The instant hot chocolate, my wife's coffee, baked Cheetos, Doritos, most candies with chocolate in them, and anything listing shortening as an ingredient. I didn't realize it until I started hunting through the info on the labels. Fully hydrogenated oils/fat are supposed to be safe, although they contain some saturated fat and my peanut butter had plenty of it in it. I started researching to see if my peanut butter was safe and that's how I ended up typing all of this off the cuff. Amazing how a taste of peanut butter brought upon all of this thinking.

Now Introducing...Steve Perry

2007-01-10T19:56:00.000-06:00

It's interesting that when the church board introduced our candidate for pastor before he spoke on Sunday morning, I discovered that his name is Steve Perry; yes, the same. "Lights" automatically popped into my head and didn't leave for most of the service (great song that it is, it was the wrong venue for the song). Of course he wasn't from Journey, since he doesn't have the pubescent voice or long hair. The message he delivered was pretty straightforward, just what the majority of the congregation wanted to hear. This of course guaranteed that he will be voted into the position. It's strange to me that he has been the only person to actually be voted on by the congregation.

As I type, President Bush, or Bushee as I like to call him, is trying to get 20,000 more troops to put their lives on the line for the "freedom" of Iraq. Interesting to hear him come up with a new strategy after 3000 troops have already died. It seems like nothing we tried will work since it should have happened in the first place and it will be interesting to see if he will pull forces out in November as he claimed he would. I am interested in whether he actually has the power to order troops in without approval from Congress. The president should have waited for the U. N. to act with the U. S. rather than jump in without a parachute.

Eat Sleep Repeat from Copeland is an eclectic mix of sounds and instruments. I put it in today to help improve my mind. Starflyer 59's Talking Voice vs. Singing Voice has been in my cd player for the last week and a half and it has been quite the mellow album, but worth a week and a half of listening. The Appleseed Cast's Peregrine has been interesting with its soaring instrumental tracks. Earthsuit has been a stretch for me, since I was hoping it would be more like Mutemath. Jeremy Enigk's World Waits is up next for a listen when I get a chance.

Why are so many crappy shows on tv struggling to make it? I watched two episodes of Law and Order last night, but neither was the original, which I still think is the best. It got shifted to Fridays, the worst night to be on for me, since I am hardly ever home to see it. I just don't connect the same way with any of the CSIs currently on CBS. I have just about given up on any of the new shows except for Heroes. I think I will just put Talladega Nights on instead.

Cozumel or Bust

2007-01-05T21:49:00.000-06:00

Our last excursion day was spent in Cozumel. There were stores all over the place and in each doorway we were greeted by at least two people begging us to come in their store. Most of them started with the phrase "We've got a great deal for you honeymooners!" and they would try to put fliers in our hands. We avoided most of these stores, but the ones we went into put selected at least one worker to follow us around for the duration. Argh! It was more annoying than any other stop on our trip for these reasons. Prices were marked most of the time, so no haggling. We caught a taxi and made it to the hotel from where we would leave to go para-sailing. It was really fun and freaky at the same time. We went out on a boat from which you take off and land without even touching the water. Anna didn't want to go up, but decided to eventually. We were afraid of hitting the water, but went up so fast that we forgot about how high we actually were off of the ground. You could see most of the city from the air and also the different colors in the water down below, supposedly caused by walling off the city. It was a fun experience from me because I have a flat butt and the harness strap kept slipping off of me because of this. When I hit the boat, I was about to fall out of the harness and hang by more arms, so when I landed, I hit feet first almost flatfooted. Lots of pain immediately shot up my legs. My wife didn't have this problem with landing or with the strap on her harness. After getting back to the hotel, we ate a Tex-Mex meal in Mexico.

This ended up being our worst day of the cruise because our snorkeling trip was canceled and we didn't find out until we had raced across the city to get there. The boat rudder was dysfunctional and we couldn't get our refund then, which prevented us from being able to book with another snorkeling group. We ended up spending more time in shops being bothered by more salespeople before finally getting back to the ship. The snorkeling trip was the thing we were looking forward to the most. I did get to go to a music store which had lots of Mexican made guitars which is not that different from the U.S., right? I did get to play a few nice guitars and the owner showed me lots of pictures of instruments he has in his museum of traditional Mexican music. He also travels to schools to teach kids about Mexican music history. The guitars were cheap, but I really don't need to buy another one and I only want a Telecaster at the moment.

I did some more karaoke that night and slept a whole lot because I was so worn out from walking all over the city.
Yesterday actually, my wife got a karaoke machine to plug into the front of the TV. The whole system is built into the microphone and has a chip in it featuring 300 different songs. It was really fun, but the music is midi so after a few songs, you wonder if you are in the grocery store being friendly with the pretend versions of popular songs. My wife actually sang in a talent show and should have won. This spurned us into deciding to work together on some songs and karaoke is great practice for singing whether people want to admit it or not.

Belize Navidad

2007-01-01T20:51:00.000-06:00

On our Wednesday, we traveled to Belize, Belize City in fact, to go on more excursion adventures. Lots of shops again at the port, but we weren't being haggled to much be people outside of stores. Our guide Taz took us on a great tour of the city by van before we headed out of town. He was very informative about everything to do with his country including the little things which I find are usually the more interesting ones. In the recent past Belize was called British Honduras and they are still part of the British Commonwealth. They are the only country in Central America with water safe to drink from the faucet. People only worry about crime occurring in the bad parts of town. The country's ambassador has no security, walks his dog and jogs out on the street alone, and flys on the regular airline. There are many orange orchards in Belize and they sometimes supply concentrate to Florida Orange Juice (those hypocrites). We hiked a mile and a half in the secondary rain forest to where we jumped into the cold water with our tubes and headlamps. Taz pointed out various trees and explained what the bark could be used for and mentioned that pharmaceutical companies have visited to find out information about the plants and trees and their uses.

I have never floated down a river in a tube while wearing a headlamp and I would do it again in a heartbeat. It was a lot of fun except for pulling some dead weight around with me. She looked really great in her tube-gear so it was worth it too. We got to see some interesting limestone formations and bats. I hated bouncing into walls and of course there is always the fear that something will grab me from below or bite at my ankles. I don't mind being underground, so that just wasn't an issue.

The zip line was a lot of fun although my wife thought that I stuck in the middle on a couple of runs because I was scared. I don't see the logic in that because getting stuck meant that I had to pull myself to the trees or the next person coming at me feet first would really hurt me. We were hurdling through the rain forest from great heights, but it wasn't as cool as I had hoped. I like great falls and these were safe and gradual. We did have a drop at the end, but when you land four feet off the ground and hang there for a while, it kind of removes the fear from the situation, if there even was any. Being a guy and wearing a harness just don't go together very well. Another reason I can't understand how guys can ride horses.

We watched karaoke tonight and I didn't sing because I was way too chicken to get up in front of a group of drunken people and open up on a microphone. I am not the best karaoke buddy because I take it way too seriously. Each song is like a performance which will judged harshly simply because that's what I do to the people doing songs. I remember just playing a song on my guitar while a friend played away on his saxophone at a camp one night just for fun. Another guy started making funny faces and I wanted to yell at him and take a few swings at him with my fender. Yeah, I didn't do it and knew that I couldn't just joke around with music while with the wrong people. Karaoke is a lot less intimate, so hopefully I will grow up a bit about it since most of the people doing it suck anyway.

Hung on Music

2006-12-30T01:42:00.000-06:00

I wonder if Hussein's hanging will be on Youtube? It happened so fast. I remember seeing that it would occur within 48 hours, but forgot about it. I got into it with someone about who was responsible for not seeing Saddam go down during Desert Storm. It's kind of weird that he's dead and things in Iraq seem just about as bad as they were when he was on the loose. Of course I am ignoring many details which probably changed, but people are still dying and Iraqis continuing to kill Americans won't bring him back to power especially since he's dead. Hmm, this could get interesting if he's actually not dead and he in hiding like Vaughn was on Alias, recovering and preparing to come back and wow us all! Doubtful.

Christmas went well...I am going to London in April! Yea, I am very excited about it and have already started planning how touristy I will be. My wife has booked just about everything and we have also added in traveling to Paris to stay for a night. Many cds made it to me through the holidays also which will be mentioned as soon as I can actually listen to them. The bands include The Elms, Starflyer 59, Sanctus Real, Earthsuit, Mae, and Switchfoot. Yes, a Christian band extravaganza.

Livingston is Alive

2006-12-30T00:46:00.000-06:00

Guatemala was our next stop and it was the only rainy day for us. It did let up after a couple of hours, but factor in that Anna and I were carrying a duffel bag filled with 80 pounds of school supplies and also a backpack with about 35 pounds of more school supplies. The supplies were given to Anna by some of her students. She had asked them to bring her school supplies rather than gifts for her. Anna had emailed a hotel owner from Livingston about bringing supplies for the children of the town because she had read that they really lack school supplies and that the teachers strike a lot. We had to carry both of the bags out in the rain from the ship, down the gangway, and to the actual warehouse which housed all of the shops. After we met the guide, we had to carry the supplies back out to the dock where we would get on a smaller boat which would hold 10 people and then ride about 30 minutes to the hotel from which we would sail to the schoolhouse.

We ended up waiting outside for over an hour, but once we got on the boat we took off immediately. I am from Louisiana which basically has a landscape just as exciting as my flat butt. At first I thought the mountains I saw were part of the storm raining on us, but then I figured out that those weren't dark clouds and at least three of them were volcanoes. This was freakishly mind blowing to me because I have been teaching my 8th grade students about volcanoes, tectonic plates, limestone formation, and erosion. This area in Guatemala was the result of two plates crashing into each other. Everything was made of limestone and it was even visible in areas where trees had not been able to grow. No eruptions of course, but the landscape was exciting to me.

We went down the river passing various homes on our way to the school. Most of the people waved at us nicely and a few kids actually rowed out to us to get some supplies before we reached our destination. When we reached the school area, 30 to 40 kids and some adults came to meet us and we gave out supplies. I was not satisfied with sitting in the boat so I got out and started handing things out to kids, mainly notebooks and paper. They weren't too excited to receive the reformed trees and seemed apathetic about them. I took a few pictures of kids and of Anna handing out things before I reached the candy which was deeper in the bag. It was like dangling a bloody stub in front of a shark; the kids mobbed me and started taking the candy out of my hands. I tried to give each kid a piece, but had to give up. The other adults with us on the boat had some supplies, but stayed in the boat handing them out as a master hands dogs treats for being good. I hated that. I wanted to interact as much as I could even though I couldn't speak a word to them in their tongue. This left me feeling shameful because I wanted to do more to help these people, but under the circumstances couldn't. Also add in that the people who were with us seemed to be looking down their noses at these people who have a totally different world view than us. I think I projected my feelings on to the natives while we were there quite a lot and in this instance I really wondered what these people thought about us being there. Did we look as if we thought they were spectacles when we stared and took pictures? Did the people think "Hey, it's those stupid, snobbish Americans again, we really hate them, but man we get to rip them off with our sweatshop souvenirs."? There's no way for me to know and I am thinking way too much about things once again. The Americans we were with made comments which led us to believe that they thought the natives were stupid because they don't live like us and that they feel adventurous by coming to this wasteland to stick it out for a few hours. When our guide proudly pointed out things they noticeably acted unimpressed and sometimes made comments to back this. I felt embarrassed to be with them sometimes and did my best to ask our guide questions about his hometown.

We stopped at a shop on the way back to the hotel where products were made from different plants and trees by hand. I bought a really neat journal which was all made from banana trees and we would have bought more, but the women could not speak English. We had to climb way uphill to go to the bathroom while at this place and something unusual about the bathrooms is that you can't flush toilet paper. Well you can, but they have signs in English asking you to not do it. I guess some lines can only handle so much waste.

The food back at the hotel was a surprise to us. My wife's bowl of soup featured an entire fish with its head, a crab which had only been boiled to death, and shrimp which had not been peeled at all but had at least one thing in common with Marie Antoinette. She wasn't that brave and just ate broth and shrimp. My snook was bland, but the hot chocolate was the best ever! The power had gone out and since there is only one power line running through the area, it goes out about any time it rains which is each and everyday in rainy season, so we aren't sure how things were cooked. We walked through the town for a while after eating and shopped at a few places. The people were very polite and didn't attack us to buy things too often.

Overall it seemed like the people we saw were content with their lives and that the merchants were the best off once again. Tourism seemed to reign supreme and the people were just accepting of this even though Livingston was the first port in the region and was now not much of one at all. It was nice to see a place almost as it should be rather than built into some unbelievable extravaganza by the cruise companies.

Confusion in Costa Maya

2006-12-28T01:08:00.000-06:00

Our first stop was Costa Maya. There were a bunch of shops with a bunch of things, but we weren't that interested because of all of the people trying to convince us to buy from them. We waited for our tour for a while because the bus was late and then ended up in a van with about ten other people instead because of different issues. The ride was a long one and our tour guide did a great job giving us information about the area. The telephone arrived to these people within the last year and there is no running water. Water is delivered daily to each home and then pumped from the side of the house to a black tank on top of the home. That's all the water the family will get for the day. If they use all of the water, then they will have to go without until the next day. The starter homes have roofs made from the leaves of nearby trees just as their Mayan ancestors build theirs three thousand years ago. These roofs last up to twenty years, withstand wind and rain, and allow air to ventilate through the home. The better off people build their roofs out of aluminum or tin. You can distinguish the middle class from the lower class by whether a family has a satellite dish or not. That's the second thing they buy after a television for the home. Shows can be watched in some stores, but you have to pay to watch them. Most of the people still grow their own food and travel to the store to get some things if they have money. They may walk or bike miles to get there if they don't have the money to pay someone else to take them. There were only two paved roads and they intersect each other at one spot. The rest of the roads are really dirt or limestone and provide a bouncy ride most of the time. The Mayan ruins we visited were about thirty minutes away by van and as soon as we climbed out into the open, the humidity slapped us with heat. Instant sunburn occurred and the ruins were rather impressive to view as we surveyed them, but after looking at one set, you have just about seen all there is to see. I got bored after the first two hours of the four hour tour. We saw tree roots where the Mayans would hide to stay safe from the hurricanes, the stone foundations which they attached the large roofs composed of layers of leaves, different medicinal uses for the bark and leaves of certain trees, and how the temples were used to help the leader see if his people were about to be overrun by invaders. After all of this was done, we were supposed to go to a nearby village to have a traditional Mayan meal would be prepared for us, but no one else in our group requested this, so we didn't get to try the meal and discover whether we would get really sick or not. We could have still gone to the village, but by the time we left we were starving because we were actually supposed to eat at the halfway point, but it didn't happen. My wife did get some beautiful dresses, but we were disappointed that we didn't get to do what we had planned. The truly amazing thing about the Mayans to me was that they knew how to use what God had given them in nature to help them survive. I am referring to the plants and trees being used to help cope with injury and to improve health. We ate the leaves from one tree and found our tongues to be numb. Our guide then explained that the leaves are the source of novocaine. Scientists actually travel (have traveled) to places like Costa Maya to study the plants and how the chemicals in them affect receptor sites in neurons. The chemicals are then either taken from more plants and put into a medicine or are synthesized from chemicals that work similarly on receptor sites and then put into medicines for sale to the public. This is another good reason to keep rainforests around for the future.

A short introduction to Central America

2006-12-27T18:45:00.000-06:00

Why is it that taking a nap actually leaves me feeling more tired than when I went to sleep? Yeah, long question, probably a long answer also. I am still at my in-laws on a Christmas visit. Things are going quite well. Today I put insulation in the attic and then helped put a surround sound system in a storage building. Of course that has little to do with the rest of my post, but sets my frame of mind.

On Christmas Eve, my wife and I returned from a seven day cruise with Norwegian Cruise Lines. We went to Central America and visited four different areas. This was a first for me since I have never been out of the U.S. or been miles away from land. It was a little freaky at first to look out the window and see nothing but water. This didn't really worry me, nor did the idea of the ship sinking or getting horribly sick from the food or someone with a horrible virus. What worried us the most was that the boat would not wait for us if we missed it and some of our excursions were timed close to departure. That and dying while para-sailing, but neither proved to be problematic. The activities on the ship were nice and keep us too busy almost. I enjoyed getting to lay down and read a book while watching CNN. The food turned us into gluttons. So many choices and it was already paid for, so we didn't resist and sometimes had dinner twice.

A lot of details, but they aren't really what I want to go into detail about on this post. We visited four different areas Central America including Costa Maya, Guatemala, Belize, and Cozumel in seven days and I have never seen anything like it in person. I went to see sites and have great experiences through excursions, but came back feeling uncomfortable about how I live a materialistic life and am so blessed to live in the U.S. even with all of its shortcomings. The ship docked at a port for each place we stopped and each port was pretty crazy. As soon as we got off of the ship, people in costumes greeted us for pictures. This really bothered me a lot because it just seems so demeaning for a person to dress up in a costume that isn't even relative any more so a snobbish tourist can get something to keep in a photo-album. Outside of the photo-ambushes were lots of shops with people pushing items on tourists. These areas were built as a tourist trap and some of the prices were fixed and listed, some were listed but not fixed, and some never even listed a price. I hate arguing or bargaining, as many called it, over an item. Just tell me what you think it is worth and I will pay if I agree with you. I wish it was that simple, but in a lot of the places it was not, so I let my wife handle it because she seems to enjoy it. I did persuade a lady in Cozumel to lower the price of an ostrich belt from $18o to $60, but it was only because I really wasn't going to buy the belt and she was actually bargaining with me. All of the items looked like they came out of one large sweatshop where hundreds of people probably work extremely long hours seven days a week for something less than a dollar an hour. (This week on CNN a report stated that the Bratz dolls are made in sweatshops in China where workers spend sometimes 96 hours a week working while making what equates to 17 cents U.S. per hour. The company did not deny this and went on the record saying that the workers get a fair wage for their work time. If that's on the news, then think about what goes on outside of the news and don't forget that Walmart has been nailed for this also.) We kept seeing the same items all over, but different prices. Selling these souvenirs is life for a lot of the people and they are the ones making the most money on average. I just can't imagine getting up in the morning, packing a bunch of items, driving to a location, unloading them all, sitting all day haggling with tourists over prices, packing up everything, then driving home to take care of the normal household duties; and it's every single day. Of course this is everyday life for them and since they know nothing else because their towns are so dependent on tourism, they just except it. That makes me feel uncomfortable and I am and was projecting my feelings onto these people because I don't think I could live that kind of life and be content with it. Most of the area outside of the ports was empty and basically looked unsettled. Some dwelling places were built right in the area and the rest are outside of the port and require transportation to get to them. So things went from very settled and commercialized to vast empty stretches of land.

The Hardest Working Man in Show Business Will Work No More

2006-12-25T12:19:00.000-06:00

First off, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all! I am with my in laws and wife way away from home, just returning from an entire week out of the country. I haven't fooled with a computer, my phone, an iPod, or just about anything else which I take for granted in a week. Well, there was the TV featuring a few new movies and reruns of Law and Order, but that was about it. I will give more details later, but first off, I am trying to recover from the news I just read on MSN. James Brown is dead on Christmas morning at the age of 73. I just read about him still kicking butt and taking no prisoners with his music as he has from his start a few months ago in Rolling Stone. I fear Christmas will be funky no more. I hope everyone is well and that the season finds all of your in good health and spirits. Time for a Christmas lunch and more sugar. More later... and frequent updates forthcoming...

Standing Lonely in The Ernest Tubb's Theater

2006-11-06T23:48:00.000-06:00

On November 2nd, The Arenos (including me) loaded up a lot of gear into the bus (Whitesnake's old tour bus) and headed to The Ernest Tubb's Theater in Nashville Tennessee. We were invited to play in a festival put on by the Bluegrass Gospel Music Association. Two three song sets were all that was required of us for the day. We only got to do three songs because they overbooked the festival and were trying to be fair about it. We nailed all three songs and didn't make any noticeable mistakes while on stage. The whole thing should be available on GMT (Gospel Music Television).
Before we performed, we were approached by a representative from Daywind Records about working with them on a project. This was before he had a chance to hear us, but he had heard of us. We will have to plan things out ad see about signing with them at least for this album. They may give us a chance to get our music out to more people.
Most of the groups we heard were decent at best; nothing too scary. Although, one family was quite annoying and they sang the song I hate the most besides "Rank Stranger", which sounds like some song about a hobo with body odor: "Working on a Building". Oh I hate that song. Some banjo picking sucker would yell out a note like a cattle call and hold it for at least a minute, before changing notes and going really flat.
One thing that bluegrass does not have is groupies. There were no young women lurking about waiting for people to come off of the stage. This may have something to do with most of the groups being families or extended families. There's nothing wrong with family friendly music with a family friendly message. Hardly anyone talked to us after we had performed, so I stood around holding my bass and waited to go get food. I didn't know who any of the people were so conversations would have been difficult and I don't have a background in Bluegrass so I didn't know the important people. I did see Johnny Cash's sister at the Ernest Tubb's Music Store, but someone had to tell me it was her.
It was a very interesting experience and hopefully it won't be my last trip to Nashville. I wonder what it takes to get nominated for a Bluegrass Gospel Music Award?

Nashville with Hardly a Plan

2006-10-28T22:54:00.000-06:00

Saturday Night Live just isn't funny anymore. I tuned in to see Beck perform and his band was set up just like the last time he was on while touring Guero. I almost thought they were showing archived footage of the performance. SNL just really doesn't have any performers worth watching other than Darrell Hammond and he is no Wil Ferrell.
Thursday we will be leaving to go to some bluegrass festival at the Ernest Tubbs Theater in Nashville. We will be playing a 3 song set in the morning and a 3 song set in the afternoon on Friday, before heading home some time on Saturday. It should go well, but we don't practice enough to ever be flawless, which would be nice. I forgot to post about the last few outings we had over the course of three months.
We went to Alabama to play at a church that Marty Stuart frequents and we played for part of the Sullivan Family while we were there. They wrote a couple of the songs that we play and seem quite talented. Their banjo/guitar player and back singer Chad played a few songs on his own and sounded great. If he was more charismatic, he could put out a solo album and rock Nashville. Unfortunately, the church only had about forty people there for the concert, so it seemed like a lot of trouble for nothing but politics. On the way back we stopped at a church in Breaux (pronounced "Bro") Bridge and had a much better response with a hundred people. I don't think we sold a lot of albums at either place, but it was fun. Our most recent performance was at a family reunion in east Texas. There were probably about sixty people there and it was the most relaxed performance we have had lately. We played until we ran out of songs. Of course they had more songs, but none that I knew, so I got to pretend which is always an adventure.
Centerpoint sounds like it would be an important place at the center of somewhere besides nowhere, but it really is the center of nowhere Louisiana. We went to weekend restaurant where bands play southern gospel in exchange for food and we got great food. It was all fried and will help me to an early grave. There were about forty people there who sat and watched us like someone staring out of the window at a nursing home. A mentally disabled man greeted us as we drove up by yelling that we were late (always a nice way to start things off) and he actually took care of the financial dealings. The old people who stayed around afterwards asked us a lot of vague, stupid questions which didn't help things along as we ate.
Nashville will definitely move things along for us since we will get to play before lots of people. Hopefully, more bookings will come out of this and make it worth it.

Mercy Me's latest album Coming up to Breathe has blown me away. I listened to the whole thing today and wasn't annoyed by a track. Please understand that this is a rare thing for me since I have a short attention span (not ADHD). Muse's Black Holes and Revelations was great background music for cleaning up around the house. The song tempos varied and parts of it were dark, light, and a mix of both. How We Operate from Gomez hasn't made it out of my cd player at work. I hardly make it past track 6, but when I do, I get surprised by the quality of tracks on the second half of the album, since they are usually the ones which lack energy and greatness.

Catching up on Music

2006-10-11T17:01:00.000-06:00

I have been listening to various things in the last few months. Music is always moving in and out from various sources, so much that I only stick to the things which rub me the write way. Alexi Murdoch sounds like he's trying to channel Nick Drake without all of the emotional baggage. The beginning of Time without Consequence starts off well, but bogs down somewhere around the halfway point. "Orange Sky" is a great track and I am glad I found out about it from somewhere other than The O.C. Jubilee was a great album from Grant Lee Buffalo and the heart of the band, Grant Lee Phillips continued his great writing and vocal style with Ladies Love Oracle, his first solo release. His haunting voice and towering melodies are unique and worth listening to when trying to wind down after a long day. I downloaded some Hit the Switch tracks for free from emusic.com and was scared quickly into not listening again. It was a little too heavy for me in the evening. Leigh Nash's Blue on Blue is a great album. She has a heavenly voice and it's nice to hear her be able to sing freely about various topics. The album has more of a Nashville sound than all Sixpence had laid before her and if she can connect with the right audience, she might actually do well. If has been a few days since I downloaded South's Adventures in the Underground Journey to the Stars and I really haven't taken it out of my car yet. The songs are a mix of influences and the majority of them are upbeat, poppy tracks that keep me in a good mood. KEXP Seattle featured the band on a live podcast and I couldn't help but give the album a try. Another band I fell into from the same station, but on different day is the Summer Lawns. Their album First We Waited...Then It Started has Radiohead's OK Computer written all over it, but for some reason has confusing bits at the end of just about each track which really don't connect well with the tracks which follow them. It was great for a long drive and their cover of "This Little Light of Mine" was one of the strangest, but most beautiful tracks I have ever heard. One of the albums I had been looking forward to hearing for a while was The Choir's O How the Mighty Have Fallen. "Nobody Gets a Smooth Ride" is one of the catchiest songs I have heard this year and has been the victim of the repeat button several times. Good Monsters from Jars of Clay was voted album of the year by CCM magazine in September when it was released even though 3 months remained to be heard this year. That's a little forward for me, but still it's a good album. The first 2 tracks "Work" and "Dead Man" are hook-laden modern rock songs from a largely acoustic band and are two of the best tracks on the album, unfortunately, they don't set the pace for the album. "There Is a River" sounds like it was left off of Redemption Songs and is a great song which could easily be turned into a bluegrass jam. Most of the other songs suffer from verses and choruses which don't link up and aren't the easiest to follow, but it's great to hear something totally different from Jars of Clay which doesn't fit the CCM format. I mentioned John Mayer's latest album Continuum in my last post and I definitely give it a thumbs up on both hands. It's a must have for any John Mayer fan and a should have to any one else who loves good guitar music. I got Mockingbird for free from Derek Webb's website. It's still available to anyone who will mail 5 friends about it before getting it. I think it was worth it, since it was free and I have been a fan of Caedmon's Call for years (really just the old independent albums before they joined up with Warner Brothers). The album is really eclectic folk and is great entertainment for a lazy Sunday afternoon. Five for Fighting's Two Lights was a large disappointment. The only track I kept was "The Riddle" and that was only for sentimental value. It was infected with a overwhelming slow pace which bored me severely. How We Operate from Gomez has been one of the greatest surprises. "Notice", "See the World", and "How We Operate" is the best 3 track lineup to start an album this year. Most of the time I don't make it past those songs, but when I do, I really enjoy the album. Paul Simon's Surprise features some great songwriting, but isn't too exciting overall. The Wreckers Stand Still Look Pretty is more entertaining and radio friendly. I didn't know what to expect when I first gave it a listen, but I found pop melodies hung over a blend of country and rock influences. It wasn't annoying, although bits seemed predictable. That's a lot of music and there's always more.

John Mayer/Sheryl Crow Live at the Woodlands

2006-10-09T20:38:00.000-06:00

Friday, my wife and I escaped school after a half day and drove 2 and half hours to The Woodlands to get in line for the John Mayer/Sheryl Crow concert which would start at 6:3o. Of course for the first time ever, I overestimated our drive and traffic time, leaving us with an hour wait before we could get in to get seated. We sat out on the hill, this time we remembered to bring a blanket and some books, unlike the last time when we went to see Sting and Annie Lennox. I brought lawn chairs and food and then found out that we couldn't bring either in because the pavilion sells its own food and lawn chairs while tearing wallets from victims' pants. We setup right on the cement walkway behind the rail, basically the first row of the hill. It's always a better seat than in the overpaid seat section where there is no room to move your legs or seat comfortably; where your arms will lock or rub with some person you don't know for 3 hours or so.

Our blanket was just off the center of the stage and just left of the center speaker cluster. The sound was great and couldn't have been much better. Marjorie Fair opened the concert with a depressing 30 minute set. The only song we knew was "Empty Room" which appeared on a Paste Magazine Music Sampler. It was also the best song. For some reason Evan kept starting songs in a major key for the verse and then would seemingly run blindly into a relative minor with the fanfare of Starsailor. It wasn't bad, just parts were disjointed and their set really didn't set the stage for John Mayer.

John Mayer Set list (sorry, I can't remember where the last two songs fit into the set):

Belief
Vultures
Why Georgia
Slow Dancing in a Burning Room
Good Love is On the Way
No Such Thing
Daughters
Bigger Than My Body
I Don't Trust Myself (With Loving You)
Gravity
Waiting on the World to Change
In Repair
The Heart of Life
Bold As Love

Mayer started at 7:15 with "Belief" a mid-tempo song with lots of R & B flavor. Most of the music on his new album Continuum has this type of flavor, which is a step forward for Mayer. His first full length album, Room for Squares, established him as a pop star and Heavier Things took the pop and solidified it thematically and lyrically. The John Mayer Trio live album showed off Mayer's blues chops and showed that he wasn't just some pinup, but it isolated a lot of listeners who bought the album based on what they had heard before from Mayer. Mayer has channeled a blues-infused pop featuring great melodies and solos reminiscent of Eric Clapton's solo records over the years; something that most listeners can connect with on some level because the music offers something to just about everyone. His set primarily came from his latest album (nine songs), two of them first featured on the JMT Try along with "Good Love Is on the Way", and then two of the biggest songs from each of his first two albums. Mayer had another two guitarists on stage, a keyboardist/organist, two horn players, and the bassist and drummer from the Any Given Thursday Live DVD. They were a tight band, but sometimes their sound was overpowering, cluttering the quality for the crowd. Mayer seemed to have improved on the guitar, combining different styles in his new material to make things more interesting, although he seemed more impressed with his guitar playing than with the actual songs he had written and his arrangements showed his confused priorities. He overplayed several solos on several songs, taking monumental Clapton moments and turning them into acid-induced Hendrix lapses of reason. Granted he did things on the guitar that most of us could only dream to play in real time even if we understood what he was doing, but he reminded me of Steve Lukather playing an extended solo at the end of the song "I'll Be Over You" on the Toto Livefields DVD. He started off playing what was on the original song from Farenheit and then ten minutes later, way after everyone else in the band had stopped playing, he looked up and stopped abruptly, looking like he was ready for the men in the white coats to take him to his bed for night-night. Mayer was all show and didn't make much of an effort to connect with the crowd, but his performance was well worth the drive and the cash we paid.

Sheryl Crow::::

A Change Would Do You Good
Hard to Make a Stand
My Favorite Mistake
Anything But Down
The First Cut Is the Deepest
Good Is Good
It Don't Hurt
Redemption Day
I Know Why
Strong Enough
Real Gone
Steve McQueen
Soak up the Sun
Everyday Is a Winding Road

ENCORE

Is It Makes You Happy
Rock N' Roll

LPB (Louisiana's PBS) plays either the touring dvd from The Globe Sessions, Soundstage, or The Very Best of Sheryl Crow at least once a month and my wife and I watch each just about each time it comes on Tv. Something about seeing Jeremy Stacey playing drums again (I saw him play for the Finn Brothers at the HOB New Orleans a year before the hurricane) and enjoying so many of Crow's songs helps it to not get old. The concert really held no surprises, but the sound quality was excellent and a four piece string section only helped things. The set list included many crowd favorites, but also included some slow-paced songs that kind of faded into the background, taking away from what she was trying to communicate to the crowd. They filled the space between the well known songs, but killed the momentum. Crow's band was fairly solid, not a surprise since she's been playing with them for years, but "Strong Enough" sounded severely disjointed and Crow seemed to lose her place a few times on "Soak up the Sun". Crow is a great guitarist and she had no difficulty with singing while playing her acoustic, but she could only hit the root notes while playing bass and singing. This took away from the songs and the overall sound of her music. Her portion of the concert was so much more enjoyable than Mayer's because she connected with the crowd and played arrangements which supported the messages the songs were trying to convey.

Overall, a great concert except for the creepy woman smoking half a dozen cigars behind us, the strange man next to us who was playing air guitar for his wife, and the drunken college frat guy who was yelling rock and roll demanding a "high five" before running back into the crowd.

Reviews will appear magically from thin air

2006-07-28T23:07:00.000-06:00

Posting takes a lot longer these days because of the summer sprawl. My job situation is also changing, so things won't be the same, thankfully! The website I was posting upon, www.musicshopper.info, is now crashing into oblivion. The problem is that I have a lot of albums left to review and nowhere to post them, so they will appear on this blog and be routed to the artists from here.

Lately I have been busy with even more music, buying more than I could possibly ever need or listen to regularly. Guster's Keep It Together has been ringing through the house and "Amsterdam" has been my anthem of the summer. Glen Phillip's solo albums Mr. Lemons and Winter Pays for Summer don't match up to my favorite Toad the Wet Sprocket albums Fear and Dulcinea. They have a lot more of the folk sound rather than the arena rock which I enjoyed in the 90's, but Toad did have its soft, sensitive side also. Josh Ritter's Golden Age of Radio confused me greatly. I left the room and when I came back thought I had put in some Dylan album. Carey Ott's Lucid Dream has been the most played as of late. Two free bonus tracks from emusic, another two free tracks from iTunes with purchase of the album, and I already had the four song ep when i re-bought the album. "Am I Just One" is the best song on it, but my sixteen track cd of the album and the bonus tracks is great all around and doesn't really hit a spot of boredom. There's more to this guy than just being a Grey's Anatomy pinup. The Red Hot Chili Peppers' Stadium Arcadia has some nice material on it, but I can't get their last two albums out of my mind while I am listening to it. Two discs? Just a little too much heat for me all at once. The Stereophonics have been adding some more rock to my day, but haven't got too much attention from me at this point. The Fray has also gotten frequent spins around the house. I have read about them being compared to Coldplay, but what band with piano and guitar isn't getting compared to them these days. I don't think they sound too much like them for the record. Their melodies are enjoyable and the album doesn't get boring until the end. My John Mayer/Sheryl Crow tickets for The Woodlands have arrived and I am just about as excited about that concert as I am about the new Chris Cornell solo album hitting shelves sometime in September. His first post-Soundgarden release, Euphoria Morning, is in the top five of my personal favorites.

So long for now.

Ryan

My Spins

2006-06-07T19:42:00.000-06:00

I have been busy listening to all kinds of music in the past month due to reviewing some albums (which takes a lot longer these days due to work) and my subscription to emusic and of course the iTunes Music Store. Four cds a month from emusic for only $9.99 is simply unbelievable.

emusic is probably the best place to start. I actually found Toto's Falling In Between and instantly downloaded it although I feared I would be disappointed by its content. I was right, I really didn't enjoy the album. There are a couple of songs worth hearing, but the album overall is a waste of their talent. If Through the Looking Glass, one of Toto's first albums free from Sony/Columbia, was an indication of what kind of music they write and record when they don't have to please eager executives looking over their shoulders for a hit, then FIB is solid evidence of what I feared being manifested. The Slow Wonder from A.C. Newman (The New Pornographers) has been my favorite from emusic lately. I can't get enough of "Miracle Drug" and "On the Table". The music pops along and I can't get the melodies out of my head. The Fire Theft's first album (reformed Sunny Day Real Estate) is a different type of album ranging from piano ballads to rock operas of Pink Floyd proportions. Enigk's voice is still ever present and does not disappoint, although I still want to hear something along the lines of How It Feels To Be Something On.

My iTunes library is similar to the national debt. Switchfoot's latest, Nothing Is Sound, has some good songs on it including the single "Stars", but was a bit of a disappointment to me. Similarities across multiple songs bore me easily and I don't like getting lost while listening to a cd. I have been a fan since The Legend of Chin and had all the albums before "Meant to Live" hit. Their sound has grown, but the variety seems to have been negated. The Animal Years from Josh Ritter is one of the best albums I have heard in a while. I first heard "Girl in the War" on a Paste Magazine sampler and couldn't wait to download the entire album (with bonus track in tow from iTunes). "Girl in the War" is still my favorite song on the album, but "Thin Blue Vein", "Wolves", and "Lillian, Egypt" give it fierce competition. I Wish We All Could Win, the latest from The Afters, is a solid rock album with a few quiet ballads. One of their songs is theme song for some Mtv reality show (the downfall of music television and video hits one) if that actually means something. I really like the vocals and guitars and wasn't disappointed. Downhere's Wide-Eyed and Mystified is a different album altogether. Two vocalists take turns in this four piece featuring piano, guitar, bass, and drums. You would swear that one of them is attempting to sound like he's with The Darkness or D.C. Talk, but he thankfully never commits, allowing enjoyment to occur. Downhere picks some moments to rock and brings a Coldplay/U2 vibe to their sound at some key moments before going the way of modern rock or piano based ballads.

Indiana Gregg, my latest review was on Something Like Me, brings a great pop blend of soul, rock, folk, and blues to the top 40 market. She's more of a hit across the Atlantic, but should be over here also. What pop fan wouldn't want to hear vocals which blend Alanis, Sophie B. Hawkins, and Ani DiFranco? It was a good debut album and her website www.indianagregg.com is up and running. Check it out to get a sample of her sound (songs play after the site fully loads) or check out her myspace page for more clips.

Keane has a new album coming out soon and I hope it can somehow out do their debut, Hopes and Fears. I have only heard one track from the album and am curious how they plan to maintain the keyboard, drums, and bassline (without a bassist on tour with them) sound without getting boring. I guess Depeche Mode managed something similar to that, but they had two key pounders going at it simutaniously. I want Keane's new album regardless of whether they stay true to the keys or not, and I am also looking to purchasing Carey Ott's Lucid Dream. I bought the Ep after downloading "Am I Just One" from the Paste Download Vault and couldn't stop singing the song for probably a month. That was before the blowup from being played on Grey's Anatomy, gag, network dramas. All four songs from the Ep are on the new album, but there are ten new ones if you include the two iTunes bonus tracks included with the album. It's hard not to buy it. Almost like not supersizing for $.20 extra.

Ryan

I hope Reid Jamieson is in the studio somewhere in Canada, making another great album.

2006-05-01T21:22:00.000-06:00

It's hard for me to believe that I've not posted in over a month. Time passes so quickly and I have heard that it only gets worse. Do what you want to do now, or it may never happen. Lately, I have been listening to some really good music for reviews.

Roger O'Donnell, ex-keyboardist for The Cure and Psychedelic Furs recently put out a cd called The Truth In Me. It's mainly instrumental and sounds a lot like the incidental music used in shows like ER, flashbacks of photographic memories in movies, and other dramatic type of footage. It was really an enjoyable album, entirely composed on a Moog Voyager keyboard; even the loops and percussion sounds. This album doesn't sound like The Cure, even though O'Donnell did some great work with them in the past. It's great background music to keep you awake while you read and do things around the house.

Reid Jamieson, a singer/songwriter/guitarist put out The Unavoidable Truth in 2004 and I requested a copy for review a few weeks ago. Wow, this is a great release. "Last Day of The Year" is one of the best songs I have ever heard. I really can't find anything wrong with it. The length of it, the slightly country/pop/folk sound, warm inviting vocals, and heartfelt lyrics regarding letting go of the past and starting anew are perfect. "Common problems" is another great song. Jamieson's soaring, heartfelt voice carries this song along, as well as the other songs on the album. This album is definitely worth a listen and will not disappoint as long as you can handle hearing a pedal steel guitar on almost all of the tracks.

I have other cds stacked for review, a bunch of different releases in many styles. Hopefully, I will have them done soon and then I'll have a chance to figure out how to use Cakewalk Guitar Pro 3, something I ordered with the rest of my bonus. The analog four-track got a little boring to use around the house.

I pulled out some tapes the other day and listened to them while driving around. I actually held the mini-tape player to my ear and listened to my life set to music. Most of it was just guitar, but it started off well ideas from seven years ago and spanned to the middle of last year. It's amazing how music can bring up all kinds of memories without effort. I think that's what keeps people coming back to music; they associate a moment in time with a song that was either popular or special to them at the time and never let go of it. Think about it, people connecting "Every Breath You Take" (a song Sting wrote about a stalker-type character obsessed with his ex) with loving someone else and playing at their wedding for a dance. I guess people enjoy music outside of this and just want something to help keep their minds off of things or to break the monotony of things. I guess I use music in all those ways. I can't hear "Vaseline" from Stone Temple Pilots without thinking back to eating lunch with roomate at the cafeteria during my first semester of college. He was and still is a really nice, soft spoken guy that got stomped on at a Metallica concert. I clean around the house with a Foo Fighters dvd cranked and hardly ever get behind the wheel without a cd playing. Sometimes I think people are afraid of sitting quietly and actually listening to themselves and life. I wonder what life was like before people actually had music or tv to occupy their minds all the time. They probably had a lot more time to think about how to handle things; that doesn't mean that they did though...

Ryan

Love Song Frustrations

2006-03-21T23:09:00.000-06:00

I have been so busy lately that I haven't really had any time to sit down and do a review. The cds are stacking up and keep coming, but I will get to them eventually. I have a one time bass playing gig in which we will be playing love songs for couples. It will be interesting and there will be little or no practice. The guy in charge gave me a cd with the songs and lyrics written out with the chords listed. This is better than what I usually get, but the chords were wrong on a couple of the songs. This drove me up the wall a bit because I am really obsessive about getting songs right. I came home today and didn't stop until I got the songs right, first playing the bass to get roots, and then using the guitar to make sure I had the chords right. They probably think I am a freak, but it really bothers me when things are sloppy, and using the chord charts of random people just doesn't cut it. The two songs were Edwin McCain's "I Could Not Ask For More" and Bryan Adams' "Please Forgive Me". It feels like I am practicing for a wedding. There's one more practice before Friday night, when we will be playing a total of six songs. I hope it doesn't suck and I am trying to stay positive.

I finished using my free emusic downloads and will have to join to download more. The site, www.emusic.com is a great resource for downloading music from independent artists or from major artists' independent albums released before a major deal or after the deal disappeared. I got Elliott Smith's Either/Or, Josh Rouse's 1972, The Guggenheim Grotto's Waltzing Alone, and Denison Witmer's Safe Away. The drawback to using the site is the difficulty of searching for the artists with albums available on the site (of course I could have screwed that up). iTunes seems a lot easier, compared to emusic's randomly ordered lists of artists fitting a certain genre. I did find other albums which I want to purchase and with the 40 songs per month for $9.99 deal, it comes out to a quarter per song, which is a great deal.

I spent some of the weekend in Houston and didn't feel brave enough to go to the rodeo to hear music. It was really windly, so bad in fact that the sand on Galveston Beach hit my face so hard that it felt like I was getting sandblasted. Now I know how the walls feel.

Ryan

I Miss Elliott Smith

2006-03-13T23:03:00.000-06:00

Although I never knew him, I really miss Elliott Smith. Unfortunately, I didn't discover his music until he had already passed away, even though I had read about him in Paste Magazine a couple of times. He put out such great music, even though from what I've read, it seems like he had a somewhat miserable life. It almost sounds shallow to say that I wish he still had more music coming out, but that's the only way I will ever know him. He killed himself and hearing his final cd Basement... is fairly depressing already without adding in that the album is basically his goodbye to life and the world we all know. I work with mentally ill people everyday and still I cannot get used to the idea that people just don't want to live. I haven't really been in that position, so I guess I can't relate to it very well, although being dead is probably easier than making certain decisions. Of course that's a matter of perspective.

American Idol is getting more annoying, so I am at the point of not watching or caring what happens next. I am sure I will hear the results somewhere after it's all over and I will hear the music while listening to Kidd Kraddick in the morning, along with Clarkson and all the Claymate jokes.

Looks like another bass gig is on the horizon; Bryan Adams stuff and some other rock songs yet to be determined. I need to write up the southern gospel gig, opening for the Crabb Family, but I have no time at the moment. I have heard we will be opening for the Talleys somewhere down the road. That should be interesting since I love southern gospel so much. I am a walking, breathing contradiction sometimes. I guess it's better to know that than to be ignorant of it.

Last week I read Velvet Elvis by Rob Bell. It was a very interesting book about the Christian faith and how screwed up some people have made it seem to the world. Right after finishing that, I turned around and read Rolling Stone's article on Scientology...very interesting and confusing stuff. I try to keep an open mind, but it seems really expensive. Someone like me could never pay for a single audit, I can't imagine tons of them.

Ryan (currently listening to Elliott Smith's Either/Or)

Falling In Between

2006-03-02T21:56:00.000-06:00

One of my favorite bands of all time, Toto, has just released their latest album, Falling In Between. Okay, It wasn't just released in the U.S. It was released just about everywhere else first, then the U.S. I find this very frustrating. Toto is an American band. You would think they think of America first, but they can't afford to do this. The majority of people in the U.S. doesn't know Toto is still alive (although drummer Jeff Porcaro did die of an overdose, although a heart attack was first given as a cause of death; the band has been through numerous lead singers; and David Hungate ran out on the band to do Nashville studio work). In the world of music, Toto didn't really have noticeable success after Toto IV, which won them Grammies and other things I am not taking the time to research at the moment. When I say the world of music, I mean the U.S. and Britain. Outside of these two countries, Toto is a very successful band, hence they released their latest cd in Japan first. Only die hard fans like myself actually noticed the release here in the states even though the album hadn't hit the stores as of yet. I still haven't seen the album, but thankfully iTunes has it up, I just don't know if it's worth a buy. Melanie off of Mindfields was the last 'single' I actually heard on the radio, and that was satellite radio at Booksamillion, not on the top 40 crap station. The clips on iTunes weren't enough for me or my friend and fellow Toto fan, Rig (He actually saw Toto in Biloxi at a casino, which is were most washed up American bands make money in the States, staying way from large audiences because there's no way enough people would show too make it worth the effort. Their 25th anniversary Dvd was recorded in Amsterdam, not in Los Angeles, their home. All of the fans with visible mouths, were singing along word for word with the band, and those were the dutch. With a following like that, why bother to play dates in the States except to please the few fans). I still think Toto is great, but they are starting to fall in between the cracks in my cd collection which has just about every other release from them. I hate gambling with cds; do I take a chance wasting the money or save for something else? Who knows? This blog is probably not in the best order and may seem random. It's hard to type and watch episode 18 of Monty Python's Flying Circus at the same time.

Grammy Boycott (not really)

2006-02-08T20:37:00.000-06:00

It's time for the Grammy Boycott again. It's not really a boycott, I just really don't care that much about the whole thing. Sure some of the live performances are worth watching, but I would rather do other things with my time than watch the bloated egos compete against each other on stage. Most of the performances which were halfway decent in the past ended up being ruined by the one-up attempts of thugs to get their names in the headlines the next day. I usually flip through the ceremony to watch a little bit of the affair. Right now I can't tell if the singer is man or a woman and it's onstage with Fantasia, the worst of all the American Idles.
It seems like most of the artists I like aren't a part of the ceremony anyway. They are off in indie land or they released music which wasn't even considered for a nomination because it didn't fit the "radio friendly" format. It also seems like a lot of categories were made up to please the masses of listeners (which have nothing to do with the awards anyway, that's what the American Music Awards are for). I usually read through the list of winners on MSN the next day and don't feel too surprised by what I read.

Looks like I might be playing bass again for a band. It's progressive bluegrass/country, something I don't really make an effort to listen to because it annoys me. True, this sounds like a contradiction, especially since I won't be making any money off of this. Even though the music isn't what I would consider to be "a slice of heaven", nothing compares to being able to play music with live, warm bodies rather than sitting around the house on a stool wondering how well things actually sound. Playing with other musicians helps me to grow because: I play better since I don't want to embarrass myself; I enjoy interacting with other musicians; and I am great at playing for a gestalt experience ( I don't get a big head and try to lead the band with the electric bass). I haven't heard the band's music yet, but it's something along the lines of Nickel Creek and traditional country/bluegrass, which is Nickel Creek once again. It should be interesting. More updates will follow soon.

Halftime

2006-02-07T22:29:00.000-06:00

I am a Stones fan, no denying it. I don't know how they can still be around after all these years; but they are and they still sound great. I tuned in for the halftime show Sunday night (after watching interception after interception) to see how they would do. Mick's voice was spot on and although he never did the chicken-walk, he did dance around like a madman at times. Keith and Ron took turns looking lost and not being sure which song they were playing. Darryl Jones continued to keep things moving along, although he seemed to have lost some of what he had 25 years ago when he was playing for Sting. Charlie looked like he was making as little effort as possible in playing the songs. I expected two guys in white to pull him from the stool to a wheelchair, before rolling him down the ramp, to the van which would take him to the nursing home where he spends most of his time air-drumming. Charlie's purple shirt was almost the show stopper of the night (god how brave he must be!), but Mick won out with the skin hanging down from where his triceps were hidden from sight. The skin bounced around a bit when he threw his arms up: just plain scary.

Never again; I wish...

2006-01-28T21:31:00.000-06:00

Nickelback: aka a mediocre rock band with average songs, except for a couple of hooky songs.
While listening to the local 'supposed' all rock station (Pearl Jam was followed by an old Rod Stewart Song) while i was in the shower, I heard "Never Again", one of the worst songs I have ever heard played on the radio as a single. How many more cheesy 'don't abuse women' songs can be written? Please take it up a notch with something people can sink their teeth into. Nickelback's song is so predictable in the songwriting element and in the musical aspect (another turn up the distorted powerchords and play on the beats song) that after the first ten seconds you should be done with it. I wanted to jump out of the shower and cut off the song about as much as I have done when "Lady Lumps" kicks on. It's hard to believe that "Never Again" was actually a single, but I guess since just about all of the songs sound the same, the choices were very slim for a good single from the start.

music from my rabbit ears

2006-01-20T21:36:00.000-06:00

This morning I happened to wake up to the Today Show on NBC and Matt was giving a 'bow down and cry holy' intro for K.T. Tunstall, someone I've not heard of before this morning. I don't remember his exact words, but he seemed to think that she had an original or different style (I was half awake, not wearing my contacts, trying to figure out who the heck she was and where I was). I heard something like a click-track start up and then some palm-muted scratches. The loops began shortly after and that was the foundation for her entire song. Hmm, wasn't that original when Howie Day was doing this back before Australia, although it was new to me at that time (of course since then, he has sold out to the Adult Alternative market with the song "Collide" and the other versions of the same song on the same release, except the track "Perfect Time of Day".) Tunstall's voice was nice and she definitely had to be talented to pull off the 'one woman band' on the Today Show. On the other hand, the song was rather boring and didn't really go anywhere, a pet peeve of mine. I wonder if she will draft a full band for a tour, or if she will keep this solo gig going.

Brendan Benson is a name probably known to most from his appearance on one of the Smallville soundtracks. I didn't know him from that because I don't watch the show. To the surprise of many, I don't have cable or satellite (great DMB song) at home. We watch major network tv and have too much to watch even then, so we have kept away from another pointless bill. I found Benson's music in the Paste Magazine Download Vault. I had heard of Benson before, but didn't know it. The jingle from one of the Ford Fusion commercials features "Cold Hands (Warm Heart)" and I recognized the music, but didn't know who it was. I broke out one of the mix cds I had made and listened through it until I figured out it was him. "Gold into Straw" was the other track available from Alternative to Love. I liked both tracks, so I bit the bullet and bought the cd. I have listened through it a few times, but I have had so much music around lately that I haven't had time to really listen and let it grow on me. I downloaded a live John Vanderslice concert from www.johnvanderslice.com (Live and Direct) around the same time and I've been listening to it instead.

There are some tv commercial songs which I never get a chance to figure out at all and many on tv shows which the shows' websites say nothing about. Random songs on shows get me excited. The best example I can think of was one night on Scrubs. The show ended with Coldplay's "Everything's Not Lost" from Parachutes. I didn't even recognize the song, but after the show I ran, knowing it was Coldplay, to my cds and pulled out The Blue Room Ep. It was the wrong one, so I next pulled Parachutes and was glad to find that I wasn't crazy. It's interesting that a lot of shows including Grey's Anatomy, The O.C., One Tree Hill, Smallville, and Scrubs are trying to tie in to those favoring music mostly found off of the radar. This is good for indie music because of the exposure, but bad at the same time because the tracks don't really give the viewing audience the best representation of a band's sound. Take for example Jet's "Look What You've Done" featured on one of The O.C.'s many mix albums. It is a simple Lennon/McCartney ripoff which gathered a lot of radio attention for that reason alone, pathetic. That song would give some the idea of a pop album with maybe a little rock, but that's totally wrong since the rest of the album is a southern rock romp straight from The Black Crows' songbook, which was originally stolen from too many names to mention. Either way, that means more albums sold for Jet, which is probably what they wanted anyway.

Kelly Clarkson is a hypocrite

2006-01-19T23:21:00.000-06:00

Ruben disappeared after going the easy, Christian music market; Fantasia was a shrieking joke; Carrie went on home to the 'backwoods' to be largely ignored because of her music genre; and Clay, even though he didn't win, has been the subject of scary rumors and has even written a book. Compared to the others, Kelly has definitely been the most successful of all from American Idol. Her second album, Breakaway, is a decent album. I actually have it and like most of it, although it does get a bit repetitious after halfway through the songs (not even close to being as bad as Avril is at sounding the same over and over). Surprisingly, she only wrote on a few of the songs, but now wants to act like she was the god of them all. She and her reps were refusing to allow other Idol hopefuls to perform her songs for the show that gave her all. Simon blasted her in the press (that's the time the press used), although I have heard him blast Idol hopefuls worse than the story I read from the A.P. Kelly Clarkson would still be performing crappy songs with a mediocre band in a trashy bar for tips (and working there during the week at night) if not for the American public and their phones. What an ungrateful little pinup. Unfortunately, it's not too surprising to me. It's not like she's the first self-centered person in the U.S. She has since 'changed her mind', which of course means her publicist told her that she looks like an idiot, people are starting to hate her, and we can only remember hearing her voice singing 'her' songs. That of course brings up another issue which I will rant on at another time: the Nashville hit machine and how songwriters are undervalued. Yeah, way to go Kelly, you worked so much harder than all of the other successful artists/bands. You really put The Police to shame, since you performed at places like CBGB's where maybe only 3 people showed up, slept in vans during tours, and didn't even have enough money at times to support your family or buy yourself a cup of coffee. I am sure your success had nothing to do with you being an attractive, young lady with a pretty smile which you used to charm America; the same people you snapped on with the 'better than thou' stance which you have taken. Shame, shame, shame on you, you ungrateful "Breakaway". What's happened to you "Since You've Been Gone". (Yes, I am a huge Police fan; the were one of the best bands ever they worked their selves into the ground to get a break even after Sting's songs were rejected by both the UK and US.)

a first step into the dark

2006-01-18T19:30:00.000-06:00

Welcome to my world of chaos, okay not that chaotic. I am a counselor/therapist with professional licenses, that's the day job. Psychology is great, even better since Tom Cruise isn't on board with the whole thing; but music is my first love and my passion in life. I am a perfectionist trying to learn to not be so obsessive about everything. I do review cds through a website in the UK and have been doing that for the past 6 months, all indie releases, some of them on indie labels, some of them right out of peoples' shoeboxes, yes with the foot odor. I really want to write full time, but am not in the place to do that at the moment since I live in southwest Louisiana (yes, Rita trashed my roof and yard) and nothing happens here musically, unless you count Wayne Toups.

I am currently watching American Idol, laughing my butt off. I really don't like the show, so I am already sounding like a hypocritical freak right out of the cannon. But, I love watching how horrible the people are which come in before the actual voting starts. I don't know how most of those people can not have a clue as to how horrible they actually are when performing. I guess everyone thinks they are great at something, I mean, I think I am great at tearing apart any music at any time, just totally trashing it, and I love it! These people must think the singing is their bag and wear it proudly over the shoulder and their family and friends love them too much to take the bag from them, put it under a car, and run over it fifteen times.

I hope to keep my posts about music I am listening to, possible things I am reading, and things that creep in from life. My attention span can be short and it is right now.

Rye